SVN Update Log

[Lavo]

Update: April 28th, 2011

 

You know those annoying little, useless defenses? They're going to be a pain in the $%& now. All but the Ion Cannon have been updated, as per the following:

 

Turbolaser Defense: Range extended to 20 000, now uses up 0 tactical slots. So while it is still fairly weak, it can be massed in numbers. This also will help the backwater planets that have virtually no tactical slots; make turbolasers. In SW they're a galactic standard, and as they are by no means exemplary as defenses, I think this will be fine.

 

Hangar Defense: Range for main guns and missiles extended to 20 000, secondary lasers extended to 12 000.

 

Missile Defense: Now has a good deal more health. They also cost a bit more, but the trade-off is well in your favor.

 

Golan Platform: Lasers now have 20 000 range.

 

These are not all set in stone and are merely initial changes; as usual feedback is appreciated and encouraged.

 

Edit: Also the Hardcell Transport is now a scout. In reality it was never used for combat; having been used as a transport. The AI also liked spamming these at times for some reason, much to it's detriment, and this will alleviate that.

[Snowba11]

Will test these this weekend they all sound great though a nice set of changes imo.

 

Also on a side note any idea on when it/if will switch to diplomacy? I'm was looking into buying the other day but have no real point unless we change over to it.

[Lavo]

Update: April 29th, 2011

 

Venators (all) can now fire missiles from it's sides. Miid Roik (capital) and Clustership's main guns' rate of fire has been changed to 7.5 seconds between shots; this is the standard for capital ships and is something I meant to do with the Vong rehaul, but missed. Upped the Torpedo Sphere's shielding to 20000 and Hull Restore Rate to 4. Imperial Dreadnaught has a shield restore rate of 10, on par with it's Republic brother and other non-ISD Imperial cruisers. Missile Defense now has a shield restore rate of 10, up from 8. Turbolaser Defense's cost has been reduced, shield restore rate doubled to 10, and firepower decreased a good deal (now it's at approx the same firepower as the Tector and Miid Roik's main guns).

 

Also on a side note any idea on when it/if will switch to diplomacy? I'm was looking into buying the other day but have no real point unless we change over to it.

I have no idea when the switchover will be tbh. Pretty much when Evaders tells me to I'll switch or something... Though I'm a bit tied up now by school, so personally I'd prefer to wait until that's done before doing the switch (as I'm sure there will be a chunk of compatibility stuff to do >_<). More importantly perhaps is that the Vong are nearly well balanced.

 

If the Vong are fixed up before the switch to Diplomacy, this would be ideal, as at that point I can worry far less about ship/faction balancing and focus on the Diplomacy tech tree, stations, tactical structures, plus ship, structure, and research costs (aka. increasing them).

[Lavo]

Update: May 1st, 2011

 

Did this while the forums were down, missile techs have been fixed up, the first damage and range missile techs are now for fighters/frigates, while the last two are for cruisers/capitals/structures. Penetration is still for both however This was done in order to bring these in line with the descriptions, balance, and in order to ensure that missiles don't get an obscene range increase. Of course, I'm open to change on the missile damage changes, and have been considering reverting that one in particular; as to bring the total amount of bonuses more in line with their Turbolaser counterparts.

[Lavo]

Update: May 2nd, 2011

 

Turbolaser Defenses now cost 0.3 tactical slots each. To put this in perspective, if you use 6 tactical slots for Turbolasers, you can have 20 of those turrets. I might put down the tactical slot usage to 0.2, which would allow for 30 turrets with 6 tactical slots, but I'll wait for some feedback first.

[soul0reaper]

I'd let the damage stack, reduce them all slightly if the total +dmg is too much.

Not really sure about range nerf, didn't see much difference.

[Lavo]

Update: May 6th, 2011

 

Lucrehulk BB range fixed, Providence (both) missiles have greater range (still less than Turbolasers), Vong capitals have had more fixes, the missing strings from the Defense tree have been added. Edit: Forgot to mention, Missile and Turbolaser Defenses have had their shield refresh rate reduced to 8; with proper Defense research this goes up to 10 however.

[Lavo]

Update: May 7th, 2011

 

ISD has had it's bombing reworked, again, as I didn't know that burstCount is purely cosmetic. It has the same DPS as before the change however. The Nebula/Rejuvinator SD now have the ISD's planet bombing stats, as well, it is supposed to basically be a smaller but upgraded ISD. The supercaps which had "standard" planet bombing stats now have stats which are equal to that of the ISD's. The Vong's supercap now has the same planet bombing stats as the Executor/Viscount/Praetor/Mon Remonda/Geo SDN/others. In addition, population killed per bombing has been redone again, now it is 2.5 times as much as it was before it was changed to 4 times. This was done as population killed simply went from one extreme to another; from never killing people to slaughtering them very quickly.

 

Edit: Hardcell now properly works as a scout; it won't go and join fleets and attack ships unless ordered to. The Counselor corvette also no longer uses a fighter attack (forgot to put this in earlier).

 

I'd let the damage stack, reduce them all slightly if the total +dmg is too much.

I'll probably nerf their damage again.

[Lavo]

Update: May 15th, 2011

 

Vong's Scout Ship has had it's main missile battery damage doubled to 222.75, MC60 and Battle Dragon have Heavy instead of VeryHeavy armor, Nebula SD no longer requires research, now has cruiser Ion Volley and tractor beams for it's abilities, and has slightly more powerful main guns. Edit: The Vong's Gunboat now properly functions as a scout.

[Lavo]

Update: May 16th, 2011

 

Capital ships and supercaps now properly fire forwards, when appropriate. Star bases have had their shielding and hull points reversed; they're much more durable now. The BAC and Battle Dragon have had their accel/turn values upped, Proficient has been redone, it's essentially an NR Recusant now, the Defender has been reworked and it's now basically a modern Dreadnaught without planet bombing capabilities but can colonize, and the Majestic has been reworked, it's now competing with the BAC to be the NR's second best cruiser. The BAC also now has Missile Barrage instead of cruiser's Torpedo Volley, for balancing reasons. I've also included something I believe should reduce late game lag, do tell me it helps at all. Also, if you figure out what it is, don't say what I did, I want to see what people have to say about lag first.

 

Edit: Jump Blocker, Interdictor, CC-2200, CC-7700, and Vua'spar now require Gravity Wells to be researched before they can be researched. This was put in as the AI has a tendency to use these vessels and structure without Gravity Wells researched, which, in all cases but the Vua'spar, essentially makes the ship useless as the ship is only useful due to it's Gravity Well Generator ability.

[Lavo]

Update: May 17th, 2011

 

CC-2200 now has Medium armor instead of Light and the Pirate's turbolaser emplacement is now in. Originally they merely used the Imperial's, which is something I did not notice when porting over NU's GalaxyScenarioDef file. Now they have their own, custom and proper, Turbolaser Defense with beefed up armor and maxed out abilities.

[Lavo]

Update: May 18th, 2011

 

Oh no! It's another update, fourth day in a row. Anyways I'm pleased to announce that the majority of Vong ships now have icons. The only ships that lack them are the squadrons and Clustership. Some, such as the Miid Ro'ik, came out better than others, and if anyone has an icon to offer up, do post it (must be able to fit in a 22 by 22 pixel square). The Proficient has a proper icon now, and the Nebula/Rejuvinator SD's has been tweaked. A bunch of string fixes and modifications have also been slapped in as well.

 

With this update comes a new ship, the Sentinel landing ship. This transport is a frigate colonizer for the Imperials, however it cannot capture resource asteroids and has very little hull. As it lacks a proper model and icon set, in the interim it is using a corvette's model and the Gladiator SD's icons. The reason why it has been created and added is that the AI cannot properly use the Gladiator SD for colonizing; and this has been hampering it's effectiveness. With this addition, the Imperial AI becomes far more brutal and efficient, as if it was the Empire itself.

[Lavo]

Update: May 27th, 2011

 

Star bases have had the range of their missiles fixed, it's now at 20000 as it should be. The Rejuvinator has had it's weapons load out changed a bit and it now has Coordinated Targeting instead of Missile Slavo, which will make it a much more useful capital ship. A bunch of new Random maps have been added, the Enlarged series. The objective of this mod was to put some space between players, so players aren't right on top of each other right after they start. Some of the multi-system ones have not had the actual number of planets increased, however now the players have been distributed among all of the systems. Following the discussion here Ludo Kressh's Music Mod has been added to the beta.

[MrPhildevil]

Could you list those new maps, perchance?

[Lavo]

List of new maps in last update:

Huge Single-System Random Map Enlarged Planets

Huge Single-System Random Map Enlarged

Huge Multi-System Random Map Enlarged Planets

Huge Multi-System Random Map Enlarged

Large Single-System Random Map Enlarged Planets

Large Single-System Random Map Enlarged

Large Multi-System Random Map Enlarged Planets

Large Multi-System Random Map Enlarged

Multi Medium Large Random Enlarged Planets

Multi Medium Large Random Enlarged

Medium Large Random Map Enlarged Planets

Medium Large Random Map Enlarged

Medium Random Map Enlarged Planets

Medium Random Map Enlarged

[Lavo]

Update: May 28th, 2011

 

MC60 now has a filler model, the same as the one used by the MC80 CRS, MC 80 SRFS, and MC80 Diplomatic Cruiser. The Extra Terran planet now starts with 2 Constructors as it should (in Quick Start) and each faction's starting Terran now spawns with the minimum number of mines pre-build (aka. start with 2 Crystal, 5 Metal).

[Lavo]

Update: May 29th, 2011

 

Gravity Well Generator ability ranges have been changed. The CC-2200 and CC-7700 have a range of 25000, the phase jump structures and Interdictor and Vua'spar 50000, and the Rejuvinator and Geo SDN have 70000.

[Lavo]

Update: June 6th, 2011

 

NR ships now (for the most part) have HUD icons, kudos and thanks goes out to MrPhildevil for 'em! Ion cannons now have their own proper mainview icon (aka. the icons you see when you zoom out from ships/structures) show up. Vong's Hangar Defense and Golan Platform now fire proper Vong projectiles. Sacrifice, star base's self-destruct, Kamikaze, and Shields Double Front, autocast conditions modified. Ships (all), structures (all), star bases and their upgrades, have had their costs doubled. Starting resources (credits, metal, and crystal) has been significantly increased for all maps. Blockade ability now takes twice as many credits per cargo ship.

[Lavo]

Update: June 15th or 16th, 2011 (coming when SVN is back online)

 

Added in Defender cruiser's HUD icon (forgot this last time), fixed Interconnected maps, gave some Vong structures their own unique model (zoomed out icons are the same as before), Grav Wells tech now has an its own icon.

 

BAC's main guns have been slightly upped, Majestic's shields have been reduced by 1000, MC30c has had it's missile battery's range extended, AI now properly moves in range to fire them, and it's turbolaser's damage has been reduced, to balance this out. CC-9600 frigate's missile class has been changed to PHASEMISSILE due to conflict with one of it's abilities. Vong frigates have had more tweaking (save for the ROIKCHUANMARA). All non-shielded fighters now have a slight hull repair rate (0.05), in order to stimulate field-repairs and in order to not make them absolutely outclassed by later game shielded fighters (as research benefits their hull repair rate, of 0.5, whereas non-shielded had no such benefit).

 

Pirates can now make interstellar hyperspace jumps, time before first pirate raid increased to 45 minutes due to concerns raised here, time between raids raised to 15 minutes from 13, Infrastructure Rebuild Speed tech has been removed in order to make planet bombing feasible, and attempted to put in a fix for early game AI slowness.

[Lavo]

Previously mentioned update is now up.

[Lavo]

Update: June 17th, 2011

 

Added a less strenuous backdrop for the main menu, did some minor string work, and attempted another fix to the AI's lack of expansion.

 

This fix works by attempted to create a sort of "buffer" between a player's homeworld and the general slew of the map, with planets that require no research or the Ice colonization tech (level 2). Unfortunately, it is not entirely possible to create a true buffer; one can spawn right next to an Industrial planet along with others, or have two planets connected to you, but one is a dead end and the other leads to a Shipyard, to give some examples. So far this has only been implemented on the standard Medium Random map. I'm requesting testing on this, as I'm not sure if this fix helps much, if it all. It may be the secret to getting the AI to work, or it might be a total waste of time.

[wbino]

I've never thought that the ai was slow to expand. On a list of top 5 issues game wise, it would'nt make my list. Maybe the issue is the uber strength of the neutral planets... the ai can't handle their strength properly.

But as a player standpoint I love the strong neutrals as it give's me something to conquer, not just rollover as per vanilla. Lavo didnt see much difference in performance( if I did correctly) in galaxy file fix, I have updated my svn and testing beta as is.

Performance needs to be improved, unless my quad 2.4 is not up to the speed needed to turn these planets... .Requiem and SOA2 run much smoother on my machine, but again NU is the reason I'm sure.

[Lavo]

Your quad core isn't good enough for Sins. Sins can only use one core, that's due to how the engine is. Unless you get an uber powerful single core, Sins will never run to it's full potential, which will basically never happen.

 

NU has indeed lead to a decrease in performance; I noticed this after the shift from S+ to NU. It's a shame that the galaxy test run I asked you to do didn't do that much... This would mean that a planet's gravity well size doesn't make much of a difference. Or, the Large planets, as they are 40k larger than the standard planet size, slowed down the game as well and thus killed the test. More likely it's the former.

[Lavo]

Update: June 21st, 2011

 

Custom maps have been fixed and now load properly. Issue with the Imperial Torpedo Sphere has been fixed. Edit: Fix for regular Ecumen planets added.

[Lavo]

Update: July 13th, 2011

 

This is the latest update, posting for reference due to the server crash.