List and Observations in BETA testing MK II

[zoommooz]

Hey, Lavo, as I am going through the tech trees (which BTW is going well, Empire is fully complete, working on the Vong now) I noticed that the two 'star dreadnought design' techs (for Vong, have not checked the others) have a loyalist/neutral switching associated with it. Is this intended?

[Lavo]

Yes, this is how I lock out factions from their second supercap. This is also why, if you looked at the playerRACE files, that I've ignored any faction stuff in the relations files; I have no intention of using factions otherwise (note: the Rebel/Loyalist setup in vanilla Sins is race, not faction, based).

[derivativedeviation]

Research could be fleshed out a little bit. I'm thinking turn the phase jump angle to about fifty or sixty. Otherwise it just looks a little odd to see ships jumping across a system.

[Intrepid64]

Yes, this is how I lock out factions from their second supercap. This is also why, if you looked at the playerRACE files, that I've ignored any faction stuff in the relations files; I have no intention of using factions otherwise (note: the Rebel/Loyalist setup in vanilla Sins is race, not faction, based).

 

Sorry if this has been addressed before, but could you clarify what you mean by locking factions from their second supercap? Do you mean that a player should only build 1 type of supercap in a game?

[Lavo]

Do you mean that a player should only build 1 type of supercap in a game?

This is correct. The supercap system has been setup in such a way for two reasons:

1) The system would entirely fall apart if a faction could build both supercaps at the same planet, due to buff chains.

2) Gameplay and whatnot, makes players choose one of the two which will have a large effect on how they play.

[zoommooz]

Just a question/observation. Because I set my lab count so high, could this be the reason why the AI is not researching? In my current game, I loaded one of the ai's, (Vong, cruel), and it had plenty of money, plenty of ships but had only research two things (ship access ones-hour and half into game). If so, I will change back to normal lab counts immediately. Also, Empire tech 'Iron will of the Empire' should be set to tier 3, not 4.

 

Edit. Any thoughts about editing player hyper space data? With all the races exactly the same maybe some mild thing could be done here, especially with the jump charge time.

 

1. Jump time increased to 15 secs for all races (this would make the races with charge up techs actually worth more, as because it is a percentage upgrade, 10% of 7 secs is still only a .7sec benefit.)

 

2. Perhaps jumping to a friendly well could be adjusted, (I am thinking only slightly 1.00-->1.15) as the race has better knowledge of its own systems.

 

3. With the new capital ship system, those cruisers that go up level, but have nothing to spend it on. Would it be possible to give them a token ability (two would be better) to use up the plus sign level up , maybe passive ones which

 

a) gives half a point of armor X 3 levels

 

b) adds 2% bonus to damage output. X 3 levels

 

Because they are set very low, it would not take away from the need/want to use the 'elite capitals' but would mean getting rid of the plus sign, and a small, subtle way to tailor your cruiser ships.

 

Just some random thoughts as I play.

 

Oh and I noticed something quite strange. I order my ships to jump to another gravity well (single ship), and instead of heading to the exist point of the well it try's to fly straight towards the planet at sublight speed. Re-ordering the ship to the planet fixes this behaviour. Never seen this before. Any idea's?

[zoommooz]

Sorry Lavo, another question.

 

With the ISD-elite (the one with tractor beam passive) I noticed that the tractor beam no longer has a range, how exactly does it work now. Also, some of its weapons are listed as 0 damage???

[Lavo]

Just a question/observation. Because I set my lab count so high, could this be the reason why the AI is not researching? In my current game, I loaded one of the ai's, (Vong, cruel), and it had plenty of money, plenty of ships but had only research two things (ship access ones-hour and half into game). If so, I will change back to normal lab counts immediately. Also, Empire tech 'Iron will of the Empire' should be set to tier 3, not 4.

As I noted in PMs, setting the lab counts high will slaughter the AI. It cannot handle high lab counts; it already struggles with the default lab count. I would suggest changing it back to normal lab counts asap. I also will note that the Cruel and Vicious AIs won't work with SoGE as somehow that can bypass the faction system, aka. an AI faction can get the techs for both of their supercaps.

 

1. Jump time increased to 15 secs for all races (this would make the races with charge up techs actually worth more, as because it is a percentage upgrade, 10% of 7 secs is still only a .7sec benefit.)

Not so sure about this, but no harm giving it a shot.

 

2. Perhaps jumping to a friendly well could be adjusted, (I am thinking only slightly 1.00-->1.15) as the race has better knowledge of its own systems.

Could work. Sounds like a good idea. If it weren't for engine limitations, we could get this to work with planets that have a spy probe active, which would be nifty as well.

 

3. With the new capital ship system, those cruisers that go up level, but have nothing to spend it on. Would it be possible to give them a token ability (two would be better) to use up the plus sign level up , maybe passive ones which

 

a) gives half a point of armor X 3 levels

 

b) adds 2% bonus to damage output. X 3 levels

Capital ships already do get health and weapon damage bonuses as they level up; it's noted in their respective entities. I'm not going to give them a passive just to get rid of those spare skill points, something that has occurred on various ships since Entrenchment. These ships are powerful enough as it is; I don't think making them even more powerful is a good idea.

 

Oh and I noticed something quite strange. I order my ships to jump to another gravity well (single ship), and instead of heading to the exist point of the well it try's to fly straight towards the planet at sublight speed. Re-ordering the ship to the planet fixes this behaviour. Never seen this before. Any idea's?

Engine issue, have experienced it personally, it can't be helped.

 

With the ISD-elite (the one with tractor beam passive) I noticed that the tractor beam no longer has a range, how exactly does it work now. Also, some of its weapons are listed as 0 damage???

The 0 damage Beam weapon (to be renamed to Tractor Beam soon enough) is how the ability works; it's an actual "weapon" that applies a speed debuff when fired. It's very much a WIP, but it should work well once it's refined. It has a 3000 range atm, and not all ships have the thing fleshed out yet.

 

Edit: Noticed that Wookiee Slaves tech, among other techs such as RESEARCHSUBJECT_IMPROVED_ENGINES, are absent from the files you sent me. Is this intentional?

[zoommooz]

Thanks for all the answers.

 

Edit: Noticed that Wookiee Slaves tech, among other techs such as RESEARCHSUBJECT_IMPROVED_ENGINES, are absent from the files you sent me. Is this intentional?

 

Certainly not (Damn). Will check what I sent and correct immediately. (PM sent).

 

Edit: Oh, on second thoughts, the jump charge up time change thing would only really work in my game where the additional shield and hull points (250% 175%-respectively) I add to each ship means that even frigates have can survive in combat. 8 additional seconds charge up time at base hull and shield levels would be a catastrophe.

[zoommooz]

Just jumped into a neutral system with a ISD with 3 tie, and 3 bombers squads. It just happen that a lancer frig was the closest ship. Now, all 6 squadron's auto attacked it, and with one flak burst, it completely destroyed all six. This (to me at least) seems perhaps a little OP. Heavy damage, with some destroyed maybe, but all destroyed? Anyway, just an observation.

 

Edit: Has the mesh highlight filter be disabled? Normally ship shadows/contrast can be quite noticeable, but seems ships are quite bright, with filter check/unchecked not making any difference.

[Lavo]

Just jumped into a neutral system with a ISD with 3 tie, and 3 bombers squads. It just happen that a lancer frig was the closest ship. Now, all 6 squadron's auto attacked it, and with one flak burst, it completely destroyed all six. This (to me at least) seems perhaps a little OP. Heavy damage, with some destroyed maybe, but all destroyed? Anyway, just an observation.

Do note that you're sending fighters at an anti-fighter ship. That's not exactly a good idea, isn't it? That being said, without the flak burst, groups of 12 or more anti-fighter frigates are no threat to massed bombers, even though they should be. The flak burst is made so that you can't simply spam bombers and send them at Lancers and kill them easily. Do remember how canon wise dedicated anti-fighter frigates, were akin to a hot knife slicing through butter when it came to starfighters. This was seen during the Thrawn campaign with Imperial hit-and-run tactics, where Lancers slaughtered the NR's starfighter defenses, and the Second Battle of Helska of the Vong war, where two Ranger gunships held off hundreds of coralskippers.

 

Of course, the alternative to this is to give anti-fighter frigates a new damage type, with an absurd damage bonus to VERYLIGHT (aka. fighter) armor, and lowering the capabilities of flak burst. Though I'm somewhat hesitant to do this as fighters can get a massive health bonus from research, between hull and armor research, this is effectively over 60%. As it is now, flak bursts are balanced out to represent total destruction of X fighters, versus killing all fighters with

 

Edit: Has the mesh highlight filter be disabled? Normally ship shadows/contrast can be quite noticeable, but seems ships are quite bright, with filter check/unchecked not making any difference.

It hasn't been disabled or changed at all. Perhaps less visible it's due to the skybox illuminating the ISD?

[zoommooz]

Yeah, the squadron's auto attacked, the lacer was right where I jumped in, but I can see your point. Also did you see that I sent you a pm? It has the missing files, with one of them being a buff that is necessary for one of the other techs to work properly.

[zoommooz]

Questions/cpmments.

 

Having a fight with the alliance (as Empire) and one of their capital ships is attacking one of my hangar defences. Now:

 

1. Visibility-From the distance they are fighting at, from my hanger, I can see the mesh of the enemy ship (not icon), but conversely, from the view from the enemy ship I can only see the icon of my hanger. These two objects a fairly equal in size, so I thought I should be able to see both, in addition, to the fact that as you scold closer to the hanger defence it suddenly 'pops' into view being quite large. Where can I adjust the icon/mesh filter just for this structure (at the moment) because I sure this has something to do with CPU performance?

 

2. The flak ability of my hanger does not seem to be working correctly. I checked the target filter for it and it does indeed say fighters, but in game I cannot target fighters. IIRC, is did not need aiming before (flak ability on other ships/structures) by to use this one, a targeting pointer comes up. Am I missing something?

 

Thanks

[Snowba11]

Questions/cpmments.

 

Having a fight with the alliance (as Empire) and one of their capital ships is attacking one of my hangar defences. Now:

 

1. Visibility-From the distance they are fighting at, from my hanger, I can see the mesh of the enemy ship (not icon), but conversely, from the view from the enemy ship I can only see the icon of my hanger. These two objects a fairly equal in size, so I thought I should be able to see both, in addition, to the fact that as you scold closer to the hanger defence it suddenly 'pops' into view being quite large. Where can I adjust the icon/mesh filter just for this structure (at the moment) because I sure this has something to do with CPU performance?

 

I was getting soem similar issues to this last week when playing a few games but put it down to the multi system maps which I was playing as between different systems it happened better/worse depending on their position from the playershome planet, thus the chnage in maps. You weren't playing these on the older map versions by anychance? If not there must be soemthing else causing this. Sometimes when I zoomed right in on the gravity well the odd ship was visibley firing at soemthing howver unless I zoomed as close as it would go I could not see any ships or even icons of what it was shooting at.

[zoommooz]

No, this game is on the latest hutt map. While I am at it I might ask you:

 

1. Is it WAD that we can only build structures very close to the planets now?

 

2. Had some real problems with a gas giant titan non-colonizable plant, with ships not wanting to jump properly out of the system, resource capture ship having trouble navigating around it.

 

3. Told Lavo about this already (he said engine limitation), but almost every time I tell a ship to jump, I have to actually stop the ship, then re-issue the command, otherwise ship will fly towards destination at sublight speed. Now, although I believe Lavo, I also can note that during entrenchment and diplomacy play (for me at least), this never happened, and its only my recent games (which are have all be rebellion, on starwars maps) that I have experienced this.

 

So, not really sure what these problems are related to (Engine, maps, or ?????) but there really does seem to be some new issues. Anyway, will do some more fiddling and see what turns up.

[Snowba11]

No, this game is on the latest hutt map. While I am at it I might ask you:

 

1. Is it WAD that we can only build structures very close to the planets now?

 

2. Had some real problems with a gas giant titan non-colonizable plant, with ships not wanting to jump properly out of the system, resource capture ship having trouble navigating around it.

 

3. Told Lavo about this already (he said engine limitation), but almost every time I tell a ship to jump, I have to actually stop the ship, then re-issue the command, otherwise ship will fly towards destination at sublight speed. Now, although I believe Lavo, I also can note that during entrenchment and diplomacy play (for me at least), this never happened, and its only my recent games (which are have all be rebellion, on starwars maps) that I have experienced this.

 

So, not really sure what these problems are related to (Engine, maps, or ?????) but there really does seem to be some new issues. Anyway, will do some more fiddling and see what turns up.

 

Not too sure if im honest, if it is a problem with gas giant titan I can easily change them to gas giants, if needed let me know. The structures thing I have never really noticed as 9/10 times I use auto placement. The one thing I did notice once was the size of the gravity wells - this maybe has something to do with my zoom problems, which should be sorted will test later if I get a chance after the system changes. Have the gravity well sizes been chnaged at any point ?

 

There is one other theory to this could the maps scale be out significantly to be causing a slowing of travel between planets ? If this is the case again let me know and I will take a look at reducing the scale of the maps - usually I set the main star to approx 3000 radius.

 

To increase sub light speed it would require chnaging every individual ship, correct ? Or is there one of the researchs (forgot name atm - far jump drives??? roughly was tier 3 had a green/blue/black icon) that allows far distance travl could that be tweaked to effect all ships and eliminate the problem ?

[zoommooz]

"To increase sub light speed it would require chnaging every individual ship, correct ? Or is there one of the researchs (forgot name atm - far jump drives??? roughly was tier 3 had a green/blue/black icon) that allows far distance travl could that be tweaked to effect all ships and eliminate the problem"

 

No. This is easy to change. In the player entity file,the base phase speed is set/changeable. Still playing.will post if I find something definitive.

[zoommooz]

Ok. Noted that:

 

1. On your map, the placement is different to random maps, with yours having the narrow band around the planet, random is the standard anywhere placement.

 

2. The problem with ordering units to jump/units not behaving correctly 'seems' to be with your maps only. On my current random map, the afore mention jump problems have disappeared completely.

 

Not complaining my friend, just trying to help isolate the problem.

[Lavo]

1. Is it WAD that we can only build structures very close to the planets now?

 

2. Had some real problems with a gas giant titan non-colonizable plant, with ships not wanting to jump properly out of the system, resource capture ship having trouble navigating around it.

 

3. Told Lavo about this already (he said engine limitation), but almost every time I tell a ship to jump, I have to actually stop the ship, then re-issue the command, otherwise ship will fly towards destination at sublight speed. Now, although I believe Lavo, I also can note that during entrenchment and diplomacy play (for me at least), this never happened, and its only my recent games (which are have all be rebellion, on starwars maps) that I have experienced this.

 

So, not really sure what these problems are related to (Engine, maps, or ?????) but there really does seem to be some new issues. Anyway, will do some more fiddling and see what turns up.

All of these, I believe, can be traced back to the new map version. Remember how I said that maps by default now force you to put in building placement/hyperspace settings? That could be causing this issue. I will try to kill these strings in Snow's maps to fix them. Though Snow should never try to edit these altered maps, just give me unaltered versions straight from the GalaxyForge.

[Snowba11]

1. Is it WAD that we can only build structures very close to the planets now?

 

2. Had some real problems with a gas giant titan non-colonizable plant, with ships not wanting to jump properly out of the system, resource capture ship having trouble navigating around it.

 

3. Told Lavo about this already (he said engine limitation), but almost every time I tell a ship to jump, I have to actually stop the ship, then re-issue the command, otherwise ship will fly towards destination at sublight speed. Now, although I believe Lavo, I also can note that during entrenchment and diplomacy play (for me at least), this never happened, and its only my recent games (which are have all be rebellion, on starwars maps) that I have experienced this.

 

So, not really sure what these problems are related to (Engine, maps, or ?????) but there really does seem to be some new issues. Anyway, will do some more fiddling and see what turns up.

All of these, I believe, can be traced back to the new map version. Remember how I said that maps by default now force you to put in building placement/hyperspace settings? That could be causing this issue. I will try to kill these strings in Snow's maps to fix them. Though Snow should never try to edit these altered maps, just give me unaltered versions straight from the GalaxyForge.

 

Zoommooz m8 thats fine Im glad you manage to isolate the problem, I have no problem what so evr taking a bit critism. Np Lavo, so I must not edit the maps correct? No problem. If you don't mind could you explain exactly what the problem was, sorry didnt quite pick it up in your previous post - sorry probably just me being thick. Has the problem occured since I edited the maps and removed the other stars or has it been a problem on the maps from the originals. Is there anything I must be doing using Galaxy Forge for future maps to prevent this happening again or should I just process the maps to yourself ?

[Lavo]

In essence, there's not much you can do yourself. If you open the GalaxyForge, you'll see these two categories for every planet; moveAreaRadius and hyperspaceExitRadius. This was added in Rebellion, it overrides the settings of the values set in a planet's entity file. In your maps, this basically gave planets absurdly small galaxy wells, what I did was removed those lines from the map file, forcing the game to load the values from the planets' entity file.

[Snowba11]

In essence, there's not much you can do yourself. If you open the GalaxyForge, you'll see these two categories for every planet; moveAreaRadius and hyperspaceExitRadius. This was added in Rebellion, it overrides the settings of the values set in a planet's entity file. In your maps, this basically gave planets absurdly small galaxy wells, what I did was removed those lines from the map file, forcing the game to load the values from the planets' entity file.

 

Cool understood, so obviously each planet type has a different value for this or is there a giving number I could use for these in production >? Would it require input on every planet or could I just add it to the new default planet?

 

And if I made a huge map with say 200 planets is it more work to fix that than a map with 10 planets or is it just the same ammount of lines need removing ?

[Lavo]

It isn't hard at all to remove the lines, regardless of the size of the map, I have a program that I use to do it. Just make sure you use the same hyperspace values for every planet. I'll post up said program at some point.

[zoommooz]

Couple of questions/observations:

 

1. How exactly does the new Vong 'self destruct' work (ie thresholds etc).

 

2. Because the dreadnought are now capitals, their targeting passive ability does not work on them any more. Any thought of including capitals in the target list?

 

3. Noticed that in a gravity well of a friendly, they had 30-40 of the zero supply cost ships lurking about. Do you think that the ai spamming these ships may add quite a bit to lag problems?

 

Thanks

[Lavo]

1) Basically when it's shields hit 0, the ship is entirely disabled (weapons, engines, regen, etc), and if it is not destroyed within 60 seconds the ship will die anyways.

 

2) That's a bug, nice catch. Thanks for the heads up!

 

3) Sure, every ship takes up CPU power. However the worst is fighters due to their sheer numbers. If the AI wants to spam them like an idiot, it can have all the fun in the world.