List and Observations in BETA testing MK II

[Planetkillerzz]

Let me just preface this saying this mod has gone through major visual fidelity since my last thread and testing times.

Very awesome work to the SoGE team and especially you Lavo, I know without you maintaining this project it would probably not even be alive now.

 

 

Observations so far:

 

- Despite the overwhelming awesomeness of the new visual fidelity this mod has got, I have but one complaint in this category. The new missile effects are too over the top for me. I like the anonymous effects and visuals of the old missile effects considerably better. Star Wars does not come to mind for me as huge on effects all-out overwhelming missile spam/size of missiles with glow effects etc. But this is a matter of taste. I like the more"clean" old version. This is for missiles only however. All other fidelity is superb.

 

Bugs:

 

- Graphics for gun effects ie laser etc seems to be massively toned down from the entrenchment releases. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, first I thought maybe the faction I played was not ported right to rebellion but its the same everywhere, my friends commented on this as well. Lack of explosion effects, lasers etc, major detractor of fun. In fact prob THE major detractor of fun. We see the debris left from dead vessels but only little in effects. They are there, just brief, rare and far in between.

 

- Some ships adapt the Player Setup color choice entirely. This has to be a bug? It looks fantastically lame to have a full blown orange vessel etc. The grey base line is nice the color adaption is not.

 

- Issues at the time of this post with NR during text file enable of mods. This causes me and other who has reported this to crash before ever loading the game. This is not because of in-game mod enabler (we don't use it) Credit goes to Didact to find the temporary workaround: Remove NR folder and edit the mod count and entry listing in the text file enable. FIXED

 

- Playing Republic, The Mandator Titan causes automatic minidump if the "Combat Platform" is active both manual deployment or if using auto-level

 

- "Mouseover" crash to desktop issues? seems to happen only when I am mousing over some ships ? (uncertain as of yet) seems to be only when playing Empire

 

- Titan class ship playing NR is severely bugged trying to "get built" in the Titan Foundry. (I tried several loads and finally managed to wrestle one out, but not sure how I finally got it out. Random Map. EDIT: Found out its because its all weird. When researched any titan, a timer starts on the titan foundry, when done the auto-cast makes a titan, but free of cost. Reproduced in all games all factions weve played since our re-entry to testing

 

- NR Titan (the big one forgot its name) cannot attribute ability points manually after 1st one. However auto cast ability gain seems to bypass this problem

 

- NR Battle Dragon has ability point that can never be used. In fact tons of capitals have this same bug. I think maybe this is intentional due to the way caps work now?

 

- Vong ships explode the instant they're construction cycle is finished, which in turn make them unplayable for obvious reasons as of this post. This behaviour is also reported by others (see Didact post on this) FIXED

 

- Research Icons playing Empire faction shows under weapons research way out of the actual box in the middle of space to the extreme right of the screen.

 

- Upgrading Golan platforms have 2 icons who are different and whom both grants "Volley Fire" which one is correct? are they both correct?

 

- Random dump to desktop. No/few mini-dumps are generated/reported just "sudden death" overall stability has decreased substantially since pre-rebellion for me. Good news is the game can be resumed if saved and can continue on, so not sure what plays a factor here.

 

Questions Section:

 

- Does it matter how high we set our graphics settings ? I know a lot of mods recommend various settings from high going down and/or bloom disabled? is there any pointers here or can we do whatever we want without it having adverse system stability issues?

 

- Are we still supposed to use Mantis bug tracker? http://warlords.swrebellion.com/mantis/view.php?id=502 - and if so, its giving me a lot of red text errors ATM like:

 

SYSTEM WARNING: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Denver' for 'MST/-7.0/no DST' instead

 

PC Specs I am running this on:

i7 - 3930K Cpu

Windows 7 - 64 bit

32 GB Ram

Gforce 690 GTX

- Nothing is overlcocked

 

The Game Settings:

All effects set to high

Bloom is disabled

Shadow Quality is set to high

Resolution is 2560x1600

Anti-Aliasing is set to x8

Texture Filtering is set to x16

Edited September 9, 2012 by Planetkillerzz

[Lavo]

Fix the NR issue. One of it's files retained a line it shouldn't have during the capital conversion project.

[Lavo]

Bolded is myself replying.

 

- Graphics for gun effects ie laser etc seems to be massively toned down from the entrenchment releases. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional, first I thought maybe the faction I played was not ported right to rebellion but its the same everywhere, my friends commented on this as well. Lack of explosion effects, lasers etc, major detractor of fun. In fact prob THE major detractor of fun. We see the debris left from dead vessels but only little in effects. They are there, just brief, rare and far in between.

 

This is occuring due to engine changes in Rebellion. I don't know how to fix this truthfully.

 

- Some ships adapt the Player Setup color choice entirely. This has to be a bug? It looks fantastically lame to have a full blown orange vessel etc. The grey base line is nice the color adaption is not.

 

I need to know which ships do this so I can fix it.

 

- Playing Republic, The Mandator Titan causes automatic minidump if the "Combat Platform" is active both manual deployment or if using auto-level

 

I thought I had fixed this, will look into it.

 

- Titan class ship playing NR is severely bugged trying to "get built" in the Titan Foundry. (I tried several loads and finally managed to wrestle one out, but not sure how I finally got it out. Random Map. EDIT: Found out its because its all weird. When researched any titan, a timer starts on the titan foundry, when done the auto-cast makes a titan, but free of cost. Reproduced in all games all factions weve played since our re-entry to testing

 

You should not be able to build Titans normally. Will look into the pricing issue.

 

- NR Titan (the big one forgot its name) cannot attribute ability points manually after 1st one. However auto cast ability gain seems to bypass this problem

 

Will look into this.

 

- NR Battle Dragon has ability point that can never be used. In fact tons of capitals have this same bug. I think maybe this is intentional due to the way caps work now?

 

Not a bug; this sort of thing has happened many times before, it occurs when there's nothing to "invest" points into.

 

- Research Icons playing Empire faction shows under weapons research way out of the actual box in the middle of space to the extreme right of the screen.

 

Picture please.

 

- Upgrading Golan platforms have 2 icons who are different and whom both grants "Volley Fire" which one is correct? are they both correct?

 

- Random dump to desktop. No/few mini-dumps are generated/reported just "sudden death" overall stability has decreased substantially since pre-rebellion for me. Good news is the game can be resumed if saved and can continue on, so not sure what plays a factor here.

 

Check to see if you have a paging file enabled for the partition/HDD Sins:R is on. Also don't play with all the races enabled unless necessary.

 

Questions Section:

 

- Does it matter how high we set our graphics settings ? I know a lot of mods recommend various settings from high going down and/or bloom disabled? is there any pointers here or can we do whatever we want without it having adverse system stability issues?

 

Disable bloom and deep space skyboxes. That's it really; you might want to tone things down from "Highest" to "High", but this depends on the number of races you have enabled and your hardware.

 

- Are we still supposed to use Mantis bug tracker? http://warlords.swrebellion.com/mantis/view.php?id=502 - and if so, its giving me a lot of red text errors ATM like:

 

Just use the forums for now.

[Planetkillerzz]

Thanks Lavo, Appreciate the reply. I will furbish you with all your requests today/tomorrow.

[Lavo]

Missed the Volley Fire bit; will look into that as well.

[Planetkillerzz]

Did you fix the graphics overall "bug" so that effects now work? Since the last update I am getting a lot more traction on effects and lasers and such.

As a "control group" I said nothing and suddenly my friends said it too. - or maybe I am just going mad with delirium!

 

Anyways to the issues at hand. I have skipped the questions you have since fixed as pr your own statements (I have not checked this myself but I assume you got it sorted by saying so)

 

#1 Ships adapting total coloration.

It seems it is not ship related as much as it is faction related. Playing Republic. When playing republic everything from buildings in space to consular scouts are "tainted" complete color of my player setup coloration choice.

 

#2 "Titans" and their production.

You write that we should not be able to build titans normally. I am assuming we are speaking past each other here? I mean ofc super-capitals = Titans = being built in Titan Foundry building? if not then there is more to this entry than I imagined. If not, and we are talking about the same thing, then the following applies:

- Foundry/Production is confusing and at best set up wrong. At this stage the foundry has AutoCast automatically enabled so when you build/Que your first Super-Capital then it will auto produce one every chance it gets if your economics and fleet supply allow it. It should be set to manual build just like any other facility in game no?

- Ship appears at edge of the gravity well at seemingly random point when AutoCast on Foundry has almost made it to cooldown. Why not just produce it like normal ships/titans do and let it be produced, come out of foundry when its done? I guess what I am saying is why make it so confusing for no apparent gain/reason?

- During said confusion I managed to build 2 Allegiance Super Caps playing Empire for the price of one by hitting build, cancelling the build (during my confusion) and then re-enabling the build.

 

#3 Research Icons being awkward

Picture is here: http://40k.vadercrane.net/?p=18 Please let me know when you have seen it so I can remove it

 

#4 Golan Volley Fire.

You state you're currently looking into it. Be aware that it is not all factions who has this issue.

 

#5 Stability of the game

LAA fixes this completely across all machine configurations (we are 4 that plays this) with not a single crash despite long games on huge maps. - Or you can page file, whatever works for you. Although I consider this sorted/fixed it is too bad that the game is unplayable without these circumvention's but it is not a big issue and I know you guys are facing horrid limitations of 32 bit engine so face-palm, all is good

 

#6 Graphics Settings

I am using all "high" settings, being paranoid I do not use highest. Deep sky boxes and bloom are disabled. (I was not aware of deep sky boxes until you told us actually)

 

#7 New Republic Mediator Capital Ability "Torpedo Volley" bug

will fire on nothing until out of AM if set to AutoCast despite being no enemy ships within range.

 

#8 Bug Tracking Generic

I will use this post to make new entries as I find them if any until you inform me otherwise. Too bad I liked mantis but this will do

 

Last note of today is:

Ion Cannons are way out of control. Super-Caps should not be instantly disabled by 1 single Ion Cannon. And before the comments come with "you should not fly it alone" etc even so manual control makes them(super caps) useless even when dumping a staggering almost 400 command into 1 single vessel as an example and before I hear "it is cannon/fluff" either then fine but in game mechanics we can put up a lot of them = destroying "fluff" and utterly knee-capping their use. Ironically often in their text it says things like "sector wide command vessel" etc. I think not It is not game breaking, just not very fun. This becomes obviously multiplied by human players using them but also the force multiplier of the ion cannons is simply so out of whack that it beggars belief.

[Lavo]

#1 Ships adapting total coloration.

I need a list. Though the Consular shouldn't have this, I'll look into it. Edit: Do you happen to be on an nVidia GPU? If so, that might be the reason this is happening, update your drivers.

 

#2 "Titans" and their production.

As I said, this must be set up in it's current fashion for two reasons: 1) It gets around Stardock/Ironclad's Titan system, which limits factions to 1 Titan and rebuilds that single Titan with all it's XP after death. Can you imagine how horribly unbalanced it would be to have a Viscount rebuild at level 10 after you killed it? Or that say the CIS would be limited to a single Geo SDN while the Imperials have an Executor? 2) It must be set on autocast by default otherwise the AI will never get supercaps. You can toggle off autocast yourself if you desire so. The random point you mention occurs due to how the buff in question works, it cannot be changed.

 

#3 Research Icons being awkward

Seen it. Those icons are intentionally very far off; they are there as they are the AI-only techs I've mentioned in the past. I don't think I can move them any further than their current position without causing MDs but I will try.

 

#4 Golan Volley Fire.

It's probably me having done something stupid. Edit: I'm not seeing this on my version. Picture please?

 

#7 New Republic Mediator Capital Ability "Torpedo Volley" bug

The Mediator doesn't have that ability. Do you mean Siege Torpedoes? As that ability has a huge range; it might be targeting something you can't see.

 

Supercaps should not be targetable by the planetary ion cannon, which totally disables it. I see that I accidentally put Titans in it's target filter, thank you for pointing out this awful bug. Also, in regards to the particles, I've been noticing it as well, it isn't just you. Odds are it was an engine issue that SD/IC solved themselves in 1.04.

[Planetkillerzz]

#1 I do use Nvidia Drivers although they're the newest ones so do not know what to do about that - no biggie

 

#2 Np, Now that I know it is completely cool and I agree on all points so removed from issues list.

 

#3 Research icons is NOT an issue with their current location now that I know. It was more a "hey do you know these things hover out there?" thing

 

#4 Golan Volley Fire is easy though. Play NR They volley fire ability on the Golans are both located in the top left corner first Icon and again on the bottom row 2nd from the left so technically you can upgrade 4 times on the Golan in two separate places to get volley fire ability. If you still need pics after this let me know

 

#7 NR MC90 "Concussion Missile Salvo" my apologies^^ and no there is nothing within its range it spasm triggers anyways and it is random but often while hostiles are in system but way out of range. That is unless the circle of its range is wrong by a huge margin. Either way.

[Lavo]

1) Yeah, certain nVidia cards for some reason do not like to work well with Sins, causing anything from what you described, to inexplicable MDs. Chim has sent me saves where he was MDing at a certain point, but I couldn't reproduce it on my ATI card.

 

3) I moved them over a bit more in the latest revision. Can you still see them?

 

4) Ah, I looked at the Imp's Golan. Will check the NR's later.

 

7) Torpedo Volley is only supposed to fire when there's at least one target in range; I'll look into this one after the others.

[Planetkillerzz]

#7 Concussion Missile salvo, not torpedo volley

#4 Actually Empire Golan has same bug. Since the Icons differ maybe its just a description error? but its def also on empire golans (playing it as we speak)

[Lavo]

Probably a description error. Can you give me a picture? That will make it easier for me to track it down/fix it. And yeah, the NR/Imp Golans are the same outside of HUD icons and squads, so it should occur with both Golans.

[2IRRC]

Latest patch causes a MiniDump as soon as the .exe is launched through steam. The game worked 100% up to now. Not sure what just happened. The biggest change was adding in the Vong so I removed them. Bingo the game launches. I put it back and re-run the update 10 times in a row to make sure it's all there. Run game and.... crash as soon as I click on the link.

 

Yeah so right now I'm not using the Vong.

[Lavo]

Arg I thought I had fixed that Vong MD before uploading... Will fix. Edit: Yeah it was a simple error. Uploaded fixed file.

[Planetkillerzz]

Probably a description error. Can you give me a picture? That will make it easier for me to track it down/fix it. And yeah, the NR/Imp Golans are the same outside of HUD icons and squads, so it should occur with both Golans.

 

Because description is wrong I do not know which one is what nor what else I could upgrade it with instead

[Lavo]

To be fair, as the icon in question lists it's effect as being antimatter related, and it's icons being antimatter icons, I dare say you're being a bit silly when you say you have no clue which icon does which.

 

That being said I've tracked this down and fixed it.

[Planetkillerzz]

To be fair, as the icon in question lists it's effect as being antimatter related, and it's icons being antimatter icons, I dare say you're being a bit silly when you say you have no clue which icon does which.

 

That being said I've tracked this down and fixed it.

 

Come now, that was kinda the point a humorous "hint hint"

Thanks for the fix good sir

[derivativedeviation]

Got to sink some heavy time in this and I'm digging it so far.

 

While arbitrary, it feels as if ships travel in-system too fast. Of course, there isn't really a top speed in space, just acceleration, but it looks peculiar to see a Star Destroyer fly across a system in short order.

 

The only other thing is that it is very difficult to see any fighters.

[Lavo]

When it comes to speeds, there's always the speed constant which can be set to slow before you start the game. Also, don't forget, there is a very large range of grav wells in SoGE, from the small dwarf planets to the massive asteroid belts.

 

Fighters are small as well, canonly speaking they are in fact that small.

[derivativedeviation]

I know they are small, I played a boat load of Phoenix Rising for Empire at War.

 

I did lower the ship speed already, but those Star Destroyers still move quickly. It's not a problem or anything, but it is slightly jarring.

 

There hasn't been anything else really that's stuck out to me. I guess the only thing I would like would be some more research into diplomacy, which seems a bit bare bones for the Empire in its current state.

[zoommooz]

I know they are small, I played a boat load of Phoenix Rising for Empire at War.

 

I did lower the ship speed already, but those Star Destroyers still move quickly. It's not a problem or anything, but it is slightly jarring.

 

There hasn't been anything else really that's stuck out to me. I guess the only thing I would like would be some more research into diplomacy, which seems a bit bare bones for the Empire in its current state.

 

What I do is change the setting in the game constant files to better reflect (for my own preferences) speeds of all ships. Find the ships speed section and change:

 

shipPhysicsSpeedData-Slow

shipLinearMaxSpeedGameSpeedScalar -3.50

shipLinearAccelerationGameSpeedScalar -8.00

shipLinearDecelerationGameSpeedScalar -2.00

 

Now as Lavo noted, with the huge gravity wells it can really take some time to traverse them, so the above may be too slow for you (I make many changes to my game which slows many other things down)

 

Apart from the above change you may also want to change the jump angle to 180 degree's, which allows jumps from system to system without having to 'go through' the system. Combat travel speed is still slow, but without changing the jump angle, my above settings will make traveling to other planet (say 6 jumps away) unbearably slow, even for me.

 

In regards to research, the diplomacy techs have only just been added, and indeed, are very barebone (they were a simple port from vanilla sins). I am currently in the process of upgrading the tech trees to give a bit more uniqueness to each race (not completely, 6 races makes for a lot of work). Once this is done, the diplomacy techs will get the same treatment. So, WIP.

[Lavo]

I'm going to play around with the jump angle.

[derivativedeviation]

I like what you guys have just suggested. I'll be able to sink some time in tomorrow or Sunday and I'll tell you what I think.

 

And jumping from across the gravity well is brilliant.

 

The only thing that you guys might want to change then though is how Gravity Well Projectors work then so as to make interdiction much more viable in such a scenario.

[Lavo]

I'm not sure how to change GWGs in such a fashion that the AI would be able to use it. The passive set-up is the best thing that can work with Sins' engine. Unless you are referring to something else?

[derivativedeviation]

Which file will I find the info for ship speed?

[Lavo]

On a ship basis, or global? The former is in each ship's entity file, the latter in gameplay.constants. The one thing I'll warn you about is, for individual ships, that mass plays a part in a ship's speed/maneuverability, and I'm planning to redo those values for pretty much all ships.