Post 1.84 beta history

[Atrocities]

Posting these updates has been a long standing tradition of this forum. A most enjoyed, and welcome tradition at that.

[deccan]

If the patch is not finalized yet, I have a couple of requests:

1) Make it so that ships can ram fighters and satellites in strategic combat, as they can in tactical.

2) Fix the bug in the simulator that gives a stack of fighters only the amount of supplies that a single fighter has.

[Prince Xizor]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Sort of... there was before the game was released. I do not know the details, but I do know that they gave the go ahead to post the Version history files for beta Version. Nothing wrong with that.

I agree. Nothing wrong whatsoever. Another reason for me to love MM.

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Posting these updates has been a long standing tradition of this forum. A most enjoyed, and welcome tradition at that.

And a fine tradition it is! Keep it up!

I ask because many of the companies I buy games from, such as Paradox (I have Europa Universalis 2, Hearts of Iron, and soon Victoria), require their betatesters to sign NDAs which prohibit them from discussing the details of a patch until it is about to be released.

[ December 03, 2003, 06:06: Message edited by: Prince Xizor ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Changed Population Transport minister so that it takes population
to lowest populated planet regardless of distance and also taking
into account if a pop transport is already heading to the planet.

personally, i'd rather have it transport to the planet with the lowest pop and the highest maximum pop.

[Fyron]

Beta testers had to sign NDAs. But, they were (partially?) released from them at some point.

[Slick]

It would be great if the population minister (PM) also considered the atmosphere of the planet and population when moving races around. If the PM started to do this, I would definitely use him. As it is now, the PM will eventually move wrong-breathing population to planets and thus make them domed. I think adding right-breathing population and removing wrong-breathing population is much more important than building up population numbers. Bonuses for undoming a planet effectively make it 5 times bigger for facilities and cargo. With a couple of other-breathing races in your empire, you can significantly increase your effective empire size without colonizing any additional planets.

The Colonization Minister (CM) should use this idea too. The CM should pick a target planet for colonization, then pick up right-breathing population from a convenient place (not necessarily the planet that constructed the colonizer) then colonize the planet. If the CM did this, I would definitely use him too. Keep in mind that if this method was used by the ministers, it would also improve the AI which is always a good thing.

Lastly, the PM should recognize the "magic numbers" for population as defined in settings.txt. He should try to the max extent to maintain populations of 100, 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, etc. on each planet so as to maximize population bonuses. He should know that a planet population of 1900 is no more beneficial than 1000, but those extra 900 people could better be used to raise other planets to a level of 100 or 500. Aside from undoming planets, this is the whole reason to move population around. Also a planet at max population level can't generate more population and it should be used as an available source of population.

As it stands I use no ministers because of their inherent flaws. IMHO, the PM and the CM would do the most to cut down on some of the micromanagement required in this game and recognizing planet atmosphere types is crucial to improving them. Though I wouldn't turn on the CM until mid-late game because choice of the right planets to colonize in the early-mid timeframe is too important.

Slick.

[ December 03, 2003, 14:50: Message edited by: Slick ]

[se5a]

good point slick...