A preview of the v1.9.5.6 Change List

[Erik Rutins]

This will be available as a public beta later today. It will not go official until the end of next week and there will likely be one more beta update before then. Just starting to catch up now that Elliot is back from his vacation. [8D]

This build has the following changes from 1.9.5.5:

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when drawing ships
- fixed crash when giving monetary gifts to other empires
- fixed crash when sorting ships in fleets

MODDING
- allow including GameText.txt from a custom mod (i.e. read from theme folder)
- altered images\units\creatures folder to be read from the mod (if present) instead of the root game folder
- allow modding MP3 files in sounds\EFFECTS (not just WAV files)
- fighters now properly use WeaponImageIndex value in fighters.txt to allow customization of fighter weapon effects

SHIP DESIGN
- AI ship design now properly adds damage control components when repair bots are unavailable
- further optimized AI ship design process to allow shrinking designs with maximum construction size while still ensuring critical components are present (e.g. weapons on military ships)
- Fighter Bay components now considered as weapons in military ship designs (i.e. can have military ship designs with no weapons except for Fighter Bays)

GAME BALANCE
- AI now gives higher preference to mining station build locations that are closer to space ports, colonies, etc
- strategic resources used in construction (for components) now weighted slightly higher when considering stockpiles at spaceports and elsewhere

OTHER
- slightly improved game performance
- can now build bases in disputed systems if your empire has a colony in the system

[Cauldyth]

Welcome back! [:)]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
- AI ship design now properly adds damage control components when repair bots are unavailable
- Fighter Bay components now considered as weapons in military ship designs (i.e. can have military ship designs with no weapons except for Fighter Bays)

Whoot!

[Icemania]

Some very useful changes there that I look forward to testing. Thank you Erik and Elliot once again!

[Nanaki]

Looks interesting. Hoping to see more bug fixes squeezed in there next week. I found a lot of bugs.

- strategic resources used in construction (for components) now weighted slightly higher when considering stockpiles at spaceports and elsewhere

As a pirate, I noticed that my freighters really, really, really dislike transporting raw materials (both strategic and luxury) to spaceports, infact all they seem to want to do is do smuggling missions. It would be nice if the Smuggler AI reserved a handful of freighters to stock my spaceports. Especially my main shipyard over my capital planet. It is infuriating when you have a spaceport thats out of raw materials, and a dozen nearby idle mining bases with full cargo bays doing absolutly nothing. The only reason I have not ragequitted is that independants ironically, end up fulfilling the spaceport resource requests my smugglers refuse to do.

[DeadlyShoe]

excellent changes.


@Nanaki - good point, i always thought htere should be a distinction between Pirate and Smuggling freighters. *shrug*

- AI now gives higher preference to mining station build locations that are closer to space ports, colonies, etc

does this count for gasminers too?

[Erik Rutins]

Hi Nanaki,

Your list is on our radar as well and we are investigating.

Regards,

- Erik

[Nanaki]

ORIGINAL: DeadlyShoe
@Nanaki - good point, i always thought htere should be a distinction between Pirate and Smuggling freighters. *shrug*

It would probably clutter the build menu... It already gets quite crowded with all the civilian ships listed. Another thing that makes it an issue is that generally pirates will not be able to amiciably trade with empires, empires love breaking protection agreements (I would really like a non-protection agreement truce that empires would be far less likely to break) and without a protection agreement your stations treat their civilian ships as hostile. This also makes it difficult to trade considering that you are only able to either directly transport resources yourself using your own freighters, or sell to independants whom are limited in number and probably decrease over the course of the game as they are spread thin and are destroyed by space monsters and collatoral damage.

PS: Also, Pirate Resort Bases are broken. Destroyed Pirate Resorts are not properly removed from the game world which results in them still costing the pirate player maintenance even though it no longer exists.

[DeadlyShoe]

It would probably clutter the build menu... It already gets quite crowded with all the civilian ships listed. Another thing that makes it an issue is that generally pirates will not be able to amiciably trade with empires, empires love breaking protection agreements (I would really like a non-protection agreement truce that empires would be far less likely to break) and without a protection agreement your stations treat their civilian ships as hostile. This also makes it difficult to trade considering that you are only able to either directly transport resources yourself using your own freighters, or sell to independants whom are limited in number and probably decrease over the course of the game as they are spread thin and are destroyed by space monsters and collatoral damage.

as far as I know there's no gameplay distinction between light/medium/freighters so you can just use one of those classes.

[impi07]

I'm a new player and have a small request. Would it be possible to close a window by pressing escape? And only after all windows are closed the main menu will open. I cannot count the times I see this window because of this[8|]

[MorningDew]

ORIGINAL: impi07
I'm a new player and have a small request. Would it be possible to close a window by pressing escape? And only after all windows are closed the main menu will open. I cannot count the times I see this window because of this[8|]

+1

[mensrea]

Good stuff guys. Especially happy about the custom gametext thing. Thanks very much.

[Rhikore]

[&:] No Sub-Characteristic Modding yet? I guess E&E missed my posts. [:(]

[tjhkkr]

Thank you!