UPDATED: Distant Worlds 1.0.4 Public Beta 2 Now Available

[Erik Rutins]

Tomorrow, we hope.

[Tyranicus]

Thanks Eric! It's givin' ya a hardtime on this one huh?

[RViener]

Erik, I've generally been supportive of the process of updates but it has been a month since release and there have been 3 official updates and 3 or 4 beta updates and to tell you the truth the vast majority of issues are fixes to get the game to where it was expected to be. This is not just my opinion but reflected in the "What's New" readme that comes with each update beta or final. What should be made clear is what the intent of this process is. There is clearly a disagreement on what the game was expected to be and what it is as of now. Most of the improvements simply are to get the game to where it should have been upon release. There are still some bugs that are game breakers but for the most part what should be happening now is for you to get the game to be internally sound that is , in my opinion, to make the rules and structure transparent, understandable and consistant.
A Beta is a Beta. Why must you delay and delay release of a Beta if the purpose is to provide external testing for the program. Maybe you should be more clear on what you are trying to "improve" at each iteration rather than annoucing on release what you did. If there was a more coherent plan with each release I would understand the "big picture" better and maybe us Beta testers would have a better idea of what to look for. I guess what I'm saying as an example, is maybe a narrower focus on certain larger issues is in order i.e. "automatic" sounds neat but maybe making all functions totally automatic can't be done in a single update because the feedback is not available until testing is complete. Is it beyond the scope of the program to have an AI be able to accomplish the task? Whereas re-adding a button to a screen is several orders of magnitude easier.
I hope this makes some sense. Sorry for the rant.
Bob Viener
 

[Erik Rutins]

Bob,

This beta is taking longer than expected because of the amount of economic rebalancing we had to do, which is not something we expected to have to do after release (we already went through this well before release). The previous two 1.0.4 Betas also had more bugs than we would have liked, so we are trying to be more careful with this one. We more or less overhauled the economy again after Beta 2, we didn't just tweak it, but I think you will all be happy with the results. We hope it will release tomorrow and will become official by the end of this week or next Monday.

When you say we should go ahead and release it whenever as it's a beta, unfortunately things don't work that way. You can look at the feedback across the entire forum since 1.0.4 Beta was released. By and large, people are speaking about beta issues and beta balance as if it is the official release. As much as we want to continue the public beta process to give you all input into these updates, we also can't just dump an untested build on the public, we need to give it a test ourselves first and balance-testing is quite time consuming.

I expect that 1.0.4 Beta 3 will make a lot of people happy and 1.0.4 official should be a very good release. I believe the balance is much better and the fairly ambitious goals we set to improve how other parts of the game work should be fully realized once 1.0.4 goes official within about a week from now.

Regards,

- Erik

[Tyranicus]

Found one more bug[:(]. The shields that the Zenox have the Megatron Z4 are still considered "Latest Design" even when Im researched up the tech tree.

[NativeTexan]

Possible Bug:

I paid a pirate group for six months of protection and then sent a fleet
to attack their base. The base did not shoot back at my attacking ships.
When the six months of protection elapse the base would then shoot at my attacking ships.
Tested with beta 1.04 v2

[Okim]

Hmm. That`s a very nice exploit! Pay the most powerful pirates for their protection and then crush them without any retaliation

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: NativeTexan
I paid a pirate group for six months of protection and then sent a fleet
to attack their base. The base did not shoot back at my attacking ships.
When the six months of protection elapse the base would then shoot at my attacking ships.
Tested with beta 1.04 v2

Thanks, this should already be fixed in the next release, which is due out today.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Okim

Hmm. That`s a very nice exploit! Pay the most powerful pirates for their protection and then crush them without any retaliation

I don't think there are any such powerful pirates. Pirate bases always suck, and I have frequently seen them get accidentally destroyed by explorers. One time a pirate base even lost a shootout against a colony ship. Colony ships aren't even ARMED!

[Okim]

IIRC pirates can sometimes use your ship designs, so if you design a powerful and well-defended gas mine they can eventually use it and thus become a bit more powerful than usual.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Okim

IIRC pirates can sometimes use your ship designs, so if you design a powerful and well-defended gas mine they can eventually use it and thus become a bit more powerful than usual.

No, pirate gas mines are all special gas mines that are not like yours at all, because they include a shipyard and more weapons, while standard gas mines are unarmed, and therefore, not very good targets for imitation. Pirate Gas Mines are STATE, while normal Gas Mines are PRIVATE.

[Erik Rutins]

The 1.0.4 Public Beta 4 is now available, please see this thread:

tm.asp?m=2452592