Matrix Games Forums

Hi everyone,

Time for another preview of what's on the way. I just synced up with Elliot to make sure we were on the same page and I think you will be happy with the upcoming improvements and fixes.

Below are the items that will be in the next patch. Because of the rebalancing, we will have this in testing a bit longer, so we expect it to go to a public beta around the 19th.

BALANCE FACTORS

* Rebalance number of colonizable planets and abundance of resources
* Racial bonuses apply in more gradual manner for multi-racial empires
* Trade valuations for colonies, bases and tech rebalanced
* Decrease likelihood of empires colonizing in other empires systems
* Reasonable limits on arming civilian ships. AI allows for defensive weapons, with no negative impact on relationships
* Enforce size limits on Resupply Ship. Also enforce minimum percentage of space as cargo storage, etc to limit how many weapons can be on board
* Limit negative effects of poor reputation on your empire's colonies, i.e. citizens less concerned about your reputation, especially for certain races


NEW FEATURES

* Add auto-refuel option for all ships, even when manually-controlled
* Manually-controlled military ships automatically engage enemies, no need to manually select targets
* Add mass-retrofit option from Ships and Bases screen
* Allow turning off display of ships at galaxy- and sector-zoom level (fleets, bases, military ships, civilian ships, etc)


BUGS

* Fix bugs where fleets may have missions cancelled
* Fix bug with 'ghost ships' and defeated empires
* Fix other minor bugs


There may also be other items included in the patch, but this is the minimum list.

Looking good. Thanks for giving us the heads up. I have never seen a company that keeps so in touch with their customers.

Keep up the good work guys!

[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]
[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o] [:D]
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Excellent job, guys. We appreciate all the hard work and dedication!

[:)][8D]

I am continually amazed by the responsiveness of this dev team...

Yay.

I can't thank you guys enough for the support you're giving this game. [:)]

The auto-target for manual ship control is absolutely imperative. Getting a beta around the 19th is really fast turnaround for such important changes, I eagerly wait for the expansion and the great things that will have.

I also want to mention an important idea I had about the end-game. It would be nice to have another victory condition similiar to MoO, where a galactic vote is taken and if a civ has enough votes, that civ wins (based on pop). If anyone doesn't except the vote, they are attacked by everyone.

In terms of retrofitting and upgrading. I respectfully submit, if it's within the bounds of your architecture, to re-focus on the name of the ship vice the role in terms of upgrades. What the Navy would the call the named class instead of the role.

For example, the USS Carl Vinson is a nuclear aircraft carrier of the "Nimitz" class. The role is an aircraft carrier. If I wanted to create two design classes with the aircraft carrier role, I might name the other design, "Queen Elizabeth".

When I upgrade my design, I don't want my Nimitz design to "obsolete" my Queen Elizabeth design. I want a Nimitz II. When I upgrade my Queen Elizabeth design, I want a Queen Elizabeth II.

As it currently stands I get very strange results with multiple named designs of the same role. The name sometimes suddenly changes (particularly if I have chosen my own name) instead of increasing the roman numeral. Bases suddenly go from being "Weapons Research" to "Star Base" and then I have three or four "Star Base" designs with nothing to distinguish them except the costs and size.

Can DW's code distinguish designs by Name instead of Role or do the automation routines rely so heavily on role that this is a hard change? By that I mean, is your AI going to choke on the possibility there are two designs for a small freighter? or which Gas Mining Station should I build if automated?

Great work!

Decrease likelihood of empires colonizing in other empires systems

Please dont do this, instead please reduce the relationship penalty you get from colonisation in each other's systems (in particular if they have friendly relations/treaties). I find it nice that there is his current relationships in which empires can share a star system.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

* Enforce size limits on Resupply Ship. Also enforce minimum percentage of space as cargo storage, etc to limit how many weapons can be on board

The problem with this approach is that cargo space doesn't need to be very high on ANY kind of ship before the amount of cargo space available becomes Ridiculously Huge. This was an issue in Space Empires as well: The requirements of sticking a large percentage of cargo space on a ship resulted in even small transports developing Ridiculously Huge cargo capacity far in excess of anything that anyone would sanely NEED, simply because it was required to be there. If anything, there shouldn't be any explicit limit, resupply ships should simply be limited to the size of a deep-space base instead of treated as a planetary base, or the limit should be in absolute cargo space rather than percentage, especially since the game already seems to treat resupply ships as a "giant mothership". If you consider an 800-point resupply ship with a 25% cargo space requirement, the resupply ship will have 200 points of cargo bays, or 25 cargo bays, for a capacity of 25000. This is a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE amount of cargo space that exceeds that of mining bases.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

* Fix bugs where fleets may have missions cancelled

Does this fix the annoyance where ships ordered to do something like load troops, retrofit, or move will decide to drop their orders in favor of doing something idiotic, like chasing a frigate, instead of doing what they're told to do?

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Rebalance number of colonizable planets and abundance of resources

This is very vague. Does this mean more colonizable planets and more resources, or less? I'm thinking we should have more resources, but less colonizable planets, so that a given planet becomes more important and less prone to colony spam. Also, less filler systems that have no use. Does a star with no planets serve any real useful purpose? Even with today's technology, we can determine that such a place is immediately uninteresting, and too many of these just wastes map space.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Reasonable limits on arming civilian ships. AI allows for defensive weapons, with no negative impact on relationships

What is "reasonable" and "defensive weapons"? For instance, I arm mine like the East Indiamen of old, which means they carry weaponry comparable to a low-end warship. Reasonable? Plus, if the limit is hardcoded, it will not keep up with the times: If enemies start becoming more heavily armed, you have to more heavily arm your freighters as well. I've noticed that pirates imitate your ship designs, which immediately starts an arms race. Because of this behavior, the number of guns on merchant ships starts becomes a continuously increasing trend until a merchantman becomes carries enough weapons to flatten an entire planet to combat pirates with weapons capable of destroying a small moon.

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Manually-controlled military ships automatically engage enemies, no need to manually select targets

Does this mean that they will disregard orders and run off and chase enemies, or merely that they will fire upon any targets of opportunity if not given a specific target and merely told to move? Will they cease firing when their fuel starts to run low so they have enough to leave the fight and make it back to base?

Can't wait for this. Keep up the good work guys!

Look great.

"Rebalance number of colonizable planets and abundance of resources" - This is to slow the economy down a bit?
and this "Trade valuations for colonies, bases and tech rebalanced" will make the AI less likely to sell it's colonies?

And btw, the 19th? Like in about a week [&:]

Thats insanely fast [X(]

Wow can't wait for this one it addresses nearly all my issues with the game. Had a fantastic game this weekend but on a 700 star map but by the end it just looked like a mess of blue which was my colour will be great to control whats displayed on the map.

Thank you for the update on your progress

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

* Fix bugs where fleets may have missions cancelled

Does this fix the annoyance where ships ordered to do something like load troops, retrofit, or move will decide to drop their orders in favor of doing something idiotic, like chasing a frigate, instead of doing what they're told to do?

It should fix the problem that a fleet of yours that is under complete manual control may suddenly become idle. I've think I've seen this often, but I couldn't really nail it, was never entirely sure I hadn't done something stupid. It may happen when a fleet is scattered, part of it doing combat while the rest is on move or refuel order. Suddenly when combat has ended for part of a fleet (or so I think without having any way to back this hypothesis up), every ship stands idle. Which is bad, bad, bad when you wanted to collect all those ships somewhere or have those low on fuel remedy the situation. Has been a major headache for me.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Reasonable limits on arming civilian ships. AI allows for defensive weapons, with no negative impact on relationships

What is "reasonable" and "defensive weapons"? For instance, I arm mine like the East Indiamen of old, which means they carry weaponry comparable to a low-end warship. Reasonable? Plus, if the limit is hardcoded, it will not keep up with the times: If enemies start becoming more heavily armed, you have to more heavily arm your freighters as well. I've noticed that pirates imitate your ship designs, which immediately starts an arms race. Because of this behavior, the number of guns on merchant ships starts becomes a continuously increasing trend until a merchantman becomes carries enough weapons to flatten an entire planet to combat pirates with weapons capable of destroying a small moon.

Good point. For me, either it's useless or too much. I found the current situation preferable and would have liked it, if the ship designer forbade putting arms on civilians or warned clearly about it. But you cannot please everyone.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Manually-controlled military ships automatically engage enemies, no need to manually select targets

Does this mean that they will disregard orders and run off and chase enemies, or merely that they will fire upon any targets of opportunity if not given a specific target and merely told to move? Will they cease firing when their fuel starts to run low so they have enough to leave the fight and make it back to base?

Disregarding of manual orders already happens - around bases as far as I have seen. Recent event: A smaller fleet of mine was engaging an enemy base while being intercepted by enemy fleet. The fleet was the bigger threat to me, so I manually ordered my ships to engange and gang up on enemy ships. After a short while, most or all of my fleet snapped back to engage the base. Me fuming!

What Eric probably means, and is another 'me fuming' inducing occurence, is when the current target of a group of ships is destroyed, this group of ships goes idle for a (more or less long) time while combat is raging all around, often within weapons range. This is just so awful. And it doesn't seem to hit the AI empire's fleets as much or at all (just a sidenote: if combat actually were to work under my control, which is currently hardly the case, the AI side would be hit hard - the more actual control I get, the more the AI will be left in the dust).

* Add auto-refuel option for all ships, even when manually-controlled

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Yes!!!  If this works, you have just fixed my biggest gripe with the game, namely: If I am a galactic ruler, why do I feel like a gas station attendant?

The other changes are almost as sweet, but that guy there is huge.  Well done.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
* Rebalance number of colonizable planets and abundance of resources

This is very vague. Does this mean more colonizable planets and more resources, or less? I'm thinking we should have more resources, but less colonizable planets, so that a given planet becomes more important and less prone to colony spam. Also, less filler systems that have no use. Does a star with no planets serve any real useful purpose? Even with today's technology, we can determine that such a place is immediately uninteresting, and too many of these just wastes map space.

I Assume this is in relation to the fact that there are a large number of sub continental planets - such as ocean and ice worlds that only a few races can colonise at the begining of the game - giving these races a massive advantage.

ORIGINAL: Gertjan

Great work!

Decrease likelihood of empires colonizing in other empires systems

Please dont do this, instead please reduce the relationship penalty you get from colonisation in each other's systems (in particular if they have friendly relations/treaties). I find it nice that there is his current relationships in which empires can share a star system.

Sorry, but I'm in support of reducing the frequency of this. I always find it annoying when someone else "horns in" on my territory.