Beta 5 Impressions

Thanks for the report and kind words!

Other than the space bar bug, this build has been pretty stable. But that is a very big BUT.

What is a very big BUT?

Other than the space bar bug, this build has been pretty stable. But that is a very big BUT.

What is a very big BUT?

What space bar bug?

Found a change project bug On a high production planet, select a project that completes on the next turn. You can't change the selected project. For example, a planet production 200 shields selects Shipyard cost, 80. The new exe wont let it change. It seem the new pop-up doesnt pop-up.

1) Minor race building Battleships
2) Survey ships finding add'l ships: Corvette, BattleAxe
3) Major race AI planet defecting to minor race

I have a problem with this as well, even though I suspect this change is a response to the reports of lost social projects when buying them. Social projects, whether bought or build, should not loose the shields applied to them when another project is selected regardless of whether the project is built or bought. No warning should be needed. Completing only one project in a turn is understandable, but you should be able to switch back to a purchased project and expect it to complete in the next turn. There should be no need for a warning.

Similarly, for ships, there should be little need for a popup. If I have completed 100 shields towards a constructor and switch to a colony ship, then to a battleship, the ship project should still show 100 shields completed towards what ever ship is selected. The only time a warning popup might be useful is if someone tries to buy a ship that already has enough (or more than enough) shields to complete the ship on the next turn (IMO, not really needed) or tries to switch to another ship of lesser cost after buying a ship (perhaps a one time popup that says "only one ship will be completed on a planet per turn."). The real problem here is in expectations. Popups that ensure the user has the "designed" expectations may be needed, but should not interfere when the user's expectations are not in violation of the design.

sorry for posting twice.

I agree. The planet dialog system will be going back to beta 4Z's system.

1) 'The only time a warning popup might be useful is if someone tries to buy a ship that already has enough (or more than enough) shields to complete the ship on the next turn'

This doesnt happen. The Purchase button is not available when there are sufficient shields available for military or social projects.

2) ' projects, whether bought or build, should not loose the shields applied to them when another project is selected regardless of whether the project is built or bought. '

I agree 100% though I havent tested the above. A 1/2 finished project is just 1/2 done. It doesn't matter if priorites changes and a different project is selected, the other partially done project will wait until resources are again available to complete construction.

3) The shield overflow problem remains. It looks awful and I hope its fixed before release. What is wrong with creating a 100 unit shield?

Ted,

I got a popup when a ship would be "completed next month" that asked me if I was sure I wanted to change the ship project. And I had only seen a small part of the change in the behavior for the project selection list before I posted my first comments. I discovered more after my post; for instance, when you buy a ship, the ship list is cleared and the "completion in" box shows "purchased". The behavior you mentioned for ships ("the purchase button is not available") was from build 4Z and before. I have not tried purchasing a social project to see what it does.

I think the changes for the project selection lists in build Beta 5 are completely wrong, as, it appears, so does Brad (" The planet dialog system will be going back to beta 4Z's system"). If it goes back to what it was in Beta 4Z and adds a one time popup for the ships when someone tries to buy more than one that says "only one ship per turn can be built on any one planet" and fix the bug where a bought social project will loose its shields or dissapear from the list if another project is selected and bought then I think the original complaint will have been solved.

Jack, any idea if and when the shield overflow problem will be addressed?

Have you seen a shield overflow in beta5?

i haven't yet

I haven't either.

I get the shield overflow when production is increased by starbases, usually 5 per sector. By managing my trades, I am able to run my planetside and starbase factories at 100%. My average planet puts out 300+ shields and the 1 with Omega and Hyperon planets, over 1000 shields.

I just checked and the production assist on star bases is now additive if you have more than one star base in a sector with these upgrades. Good work SD.

I am thinking of putting in a cap on production based on the planet quality.

Essentially, at some point, no matter how many factories and goodies you have there should be a limit.

Heh, at some point the planet is basically like Corsacant (from Star Wars) or however it's spelled.

Brad,

In all fairness the starbases could be looked at as orbital factories which are adding to production in that sector. It's just that due to the way the game is designed that all the production queuing is based on having a colonized planet in a star system in that sector.

Don't agree on limit .. unless tech advances keep raising it, in other words at 'industry level 1' can production max is x, but at level 2 higher by some factor. Also concur with the statement on starbases .. moving industry off planet is what we are talking about now on earth so why not available in the future.

Just my view.

Yes, but there HAS to be a maximum. There are only so many resources per planet/per sector. Unless we somehow figured out how to create matter there will always be a limit to production.

If you recycled all the junk that we trow out, you probably would not need to
mine and transform the mineral (aluminum)
You could send your garbadge to a starbase for processing, in out out of sector.
The capacity issue would be one of how fast you can harvest junk. Would you run out of junk as population grows? :notsure:

Starbase have Fusion and Anti-matter reactors for power. Louis is right! What other resources do they need?

The limit to the number of starbases built does depend on:
1) whether you need to build warships or constructors
2) The high cost to keep your factories running

Its a challange to keep peace with 5 AI for the 10 years after colonization to build a fleet of starbases.

Please don't change the way multiple bases work in harmony. If you want to tinker with the bases, I have 2 suggestions: you already have plenty of cultural places on a base but missing 1) a hotel for guests and 2) a bank for the factory workers earning.

We're not going to change star bases.

Just saying that at a certain point, planets shouldn't be producing 800 IUs per turn. The game mechanics start to fall apart.

It seems to be harder to get a planet to produce enough to overrun the visible space, still not impossible especially when dealing with degenerate behavior (i.e. 100% in research/social/military).

Few problems I've encountered:
1) Having several transports in a fleet uses all the soldiers in the fleet to attack the planet. However, only a single transport is removed after the battle ends. So if I had 3 transports each holding 1000 troops and attacked a planet with them all in a fleet, the army would attack with 3000 soldiers. the planet would start with 3000 people (I have a few red resources) and I'd still have 2 transports each with 1000 troops for a net gain of 2000 people . Haven't had a chance to verify this behavior in 5A due to a couple CTDs.

2) A slider is needed for alien statistics as they also continue beyond the bottom of the page.

3) The interest rate bonus (or penalty) causes the alignment of bonuses to get screwed up. Has to do with interest rate taking two rows in the left column without a corresponding increase to 2 rows in the right % column.

4) I don't know if this is common for other people, but the Arceans seem to be running their economy heavily into the negatives almost every game I've played recently. About a year or two later their economy recovers, but it seems to be rather frequent. (playing at both bright and smart levels).

Do like that the other empires seem to be taking different strategies towards the game. I can see a difference (drengin definately the most warlike).