Latest Patch Rating

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Oh yeah, and I personally do not think fighters should be able to fly around in space within the system like they do. I think they should have no strategic movement at all, and thus be limited to the sector in which they are launched.
As they are, fighters are too damn powerful, and they skew the balance of the whole game. Not to mention that carriers are greatly diminished in importance by the way fighters work right now.

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That is really easy to mod. Just go into ShipSizes.txt and change the fighters. Set them to require 4 engines per move, max engines of 4 if you want. Add a third ability to the hull. The ability should be "combat movement" and give them something like 4 extra combat movement to compensate for the loss of normal engine effectiveness.

Instantly you have fighters than can only move one or two squares per turn on the map (so they can attack, but can't replace carriers), and have near-normal speeds in combat.

You can fiddle with the bonuses given by the afterburners in components.txt, boost the fuel usage of the fighter engines, until you get the mix just right for you.

If you remove all of their strategic movement, then fighters won't be able to attack. You will then have to remove the fighter engines from the game, and add more sizes of afterburners so they get movement bonuses of 6-9 in combat.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 23 June 2001).]

[Phoenix-D]

quote:

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Originally posted by Possum:
I'm gonna give it a 6 (Average)

We waited a long time for this, and it didn't really do much of anything, other than fix the fighter stack bug. That by itself should have been the work of no more than a week or so.

OK, so we piss and moan about the AI sucking rocks, and we get lectured about how hard it is to design a good AI. OK, fine.

But where are the Drones? Where is the scenario editor? Where is the IP connectivity?

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Didn't do much of anything, eh?

quote:

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Version 1.41:
1. Fixed - Minor indexing errors.

Version 1.40:
1. Fixed - Statistics for a design would not be updated if a ship of that design
was given away during a trade.
2. Changed - Increased the shields and decreased the cost of the Massive Planetary
Shield Generator.
3. Fixed - Ground Combat: Only troops and population should show in ground combat.
4. Fixed - Ground Combat: Damage would grow in excess of the actual each turn.
5. Fixed - Ground Combat: The close button should be disabled until combat is complete.
6. Fixed - The Solar Sail description should say that only one works per ship.
7. Fixed - The AI will sometimes trade for technology he doesn't need or can't use.
8. Fixed - The Create Planet minister would send all ships to the same location.
9. Fixed - The Scrap Window should show all ships sorted by name.
10. Fixed - The retrofit in simultaneous games would not always work correctly.

Version 1.39:
1. Fixed - System Gravitational Shield Facility was not working.
2. Added - Added “Stop Star Destroyer” ability to System Gravitational Shield facility.
3. Fixed - Pressing the E key in combat would sometimes cause a crash or an End Combat
dialog too soon.
4. Changed - Minimum maintenance cost for any empire is 5%.
5. Fixed - Error when loading a game with a map which had more than 255 starting points.
6. Fixed - Starting points in maps were not being cleared upon load. This would
eventually cause a crash in any game that was started from a map which had
starting points.
7. Fixed - With Omnipresent View selected, cloaked ships would not be shown correctly
when a ship with sensors was present in the system.
8. Fixed - Successful intelligence defense would sometimes result in you having intel
defense projects more accomplished then when they started.
9. Fixed - The Close Warp Point component was not using supplies when activated.
Version 1.38:
1. Added - You can now hold the Shift key in the Select Package window to
add or remove resources at a rate of 10,000 per click.
2. Fixed - Spelling error in "Energy Dampner".
3. Fixed - AI was not following the "Maximum maintenance Percent of
Revenue" line correctly.
4. Fixed - The AI would still try to construct a unit design even if there
was no space for it anywhere in the galaxy, and would not move on
down the list of designs to purchase.
5. Fixed - The AI would often upgrade all of its facilities even when it didn't
really have the money to do so.
6. Fixed - Remove the extra "Weapon display" line for the Tractor Beam II.
7. Fixed - When a race accepts a subjugation treaty, all of its other existing
treaties will be broken, and all of those players will be notified.
8. Fixed - Re-fixed the problem with the Low Supply icon on fighter Groups.
9. Fixed - Fixed bug where non-cloaked defenders in an obscuring storm would
not battle visible enemies moving through the sector.
10. Note - If you turn on the Resupply Minister, it will give orders to any and
all ships, regardless of their individual minister setting.

Version 1.37:
1. Changed - Increased cost to retrofit.
2. Added - Command Line option -nd (which should be placed at the very end
of the line) which will prevent any display of dialogs.
3. Added - Exit Code when running the exe from the command line.
0 - Successful.
1 - Invalid Master Password.
2 - Invalid Player Password.
4. Fixed - When downsizing a ship using retrofit, the number of damaged
components display might show too high a number.
5. Fixed - Allegiance Converters should not work against ships with
Master Computers.
6. Fixed - All designs in the Designs Window are now listed sorted by name.
7. Fixed - Small fighter Groups would show the out of supply icon even
at 100% fuel.
8. Fixed - If a planet was destroyed in combat, all the units that were
housed on the planet would not be showed as killed in the
design statistics.
9. Fixed - Swept mines were not being added to the killed statistics.
10. Fixed - A player would not receive enemy fighter designs if the designs
were housed on a planet during combat.
11. Fixed - Simultaneous Game: The protector in a protectorate treaty would
often not store any resources.
12. Fixed - Rare Access Violation when Host is processing a turn.
13. Fixed - Added a fix for the garbled log message display even though unable
to repeat.
14. Fixed - Simultaneous Game: Changing the colony type would not take effect after
a turn was processed.

Version 1.36:
1. Fixed - Map Editor: Access Violation when you tried to edit a
planet after deleting one.
2. Fixed - Map Editor: After saving a planet with a name that does
not end in a roman numeral, the next time you tried to
add a planet in the same system, you would get a Range
Check Error.
3. Fixed - Map Editor: Removed systems names from the combo box that
are already in use.
4. Fixed - Occasional driver or VxD errors when using the Resolve
Combat feature.
5. Fixed - Compiling a turn from the command line was not working.
6. Fixed - Fighter Groups were getting a cumulative offfense and
defense modifier.
7. Fixed - Sometimes fighters would not fire on targets if their first
weapon could not target the remaining enemy pieces.
8. Fixed - A target planet in the combat simulator would show the wrong
player's population bars.
9. Fixed - Long Messages to other players would get cut off in the Log
Window.
10. Fixed - When a new empire is created by rebelling from an old one,
the new empire would have all of the log Messages from the
old empire.

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that's not much of anything?



[This message has been edited by Phoenix-D (edited 23 June 2001).]

[Possum]

Congratulations, Phoenix, your command of the cut and paste functions is truly awe-inspiring

Granted, it squashes a bunch of piddly little annoying bugs, and the one big one. But it does nothing else of any major consequence.

Having said that, let me also say that MM and Shrapnel offer much better support, more frequent fixes, better responsiveness to fan input, etc etc etc, than any of the big corporate game companies. I'm not forgetting or denying that.

[This message has been edited by Possum (edited 24 June 2001).]

[Instar]

quote:

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Originally posted by Possum:
I'm gonna give it a 6 (Average)

We waited a long time for this, and it didn't really do much of anything, other than fix the fighter stack bug. That by itself should have been the work of no more than a week or so.

OK, so we piss and moan about the AI sucking rocks, and we get lectured about how hard it is to design a good AI. OK, fine.

But where are the Drones? Where is the scenario editor? Where is the IP connectivity?

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Do you want to learn Delphi, and program the game? Hey, it takes a lot of work to program anything, especially a game! (For the TCI/IP thing, in MSVC++, sockets are easy enough to do, but in delphi I dont know.)

[Possum]

Instar, the man asked us to rate the patch, and requested that we explain our rating.

So I did so.

What's your beef?

[Instar]

Eh, I didnt get this patch, as I have the beta.
I was just being grouchy and stuff, sorry

[Nitram Draw]

I agree, the patches are great but lets get some of those new ideas into the game. I've said it before, I'll pay for an add on.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease so lets not let this idea die!

[DirectorTsaarx]

As far as I can tell, the following items are intended to improve the AI; granted, it still doesn't help the AI set long-term goals, but it fixes some of the fundamental problems with the AI:

Version 1.40:
7. Fixed - The AI will sometimes trade for technology he doesn't need or can't use.
8. Fixed - The Create Planet minister would send all ships to the same location.

Version 1.39:
1. Fixed - System Gravitational Shield Facility was not working.
2. Added - Added "Stop Star Destroyer" ability to System Gravitational Shield facility.

Version 1.38:
3. Fixed - AI was not following the "Maximum maintenance Percent of Revenue" line correctly.
4. Fixed - The AI would still try to construct a unit design even if there was no space for it anywhere in the galaxy, and would not move on down the list of designs to purchase.
5. Fixed - The AI would often upgrade all of its facilities even when it didn't really have the money to do so.
9. Fixed - Fixed bug where non-cloaked defenders in an obscuring storm would not battle visible enemies moving through the sector.

Version 1.36:
7. Fixed - Sometimes fighters would not fire on targets if their first weapon could not target the remaining enemy pieces.

And yes, another "master of cut and paste"... but I wanted to point out that there were some AI tweaks other than fixing the mian fighter bug. I agree that it took WAY too long to get the patch out, but it seems like they kept fixing some fairly important things all the way through...

[rdouglass]

IMO, some of the stuff people are requesting / complaining about is NOT patch stuff. Patches are supposed to fix problems and bugs, not add / enhance features.

Having said that, I do think it is time for a feature release / expansion pack. I've also said before I'd be willing to shell out a few bucks (boy, that's going to start a discussion).

Back to the topic: The majority of the 'play' bugs seem to have been fixed with this patch especially the fighter bug. I agree with Possum when he stated the comittment of MM to the gamers, however sometimes some of us expect too much...