Alpha 5 comments

from Stardock Forums
On the Economic screen
- Locks on the sliders when there are more than 2 (ie Military, Social & Research).
- Also, check on how it is doing the math and rounding, at one time I had it reading 20%, 31% & 51% (for a tidy sum of 102%).
- Spending rate had an odd jump one time:
49% 62bc
50% 61
51% 47
54% 45
- How come when you reload a saved game it places me into the science screen? It does remember the amount of research made (per the slider on the bottom), but it still has me choose what to research again.
- other issues that I have seen referenced on the boards, Altarian starfighter off by 1/2 square in movements kept trying to attack me, but couldn't, nor could I attack it. Also, came across the no turn button problem but when I reloaded an autosave it went away.

Sorry if these issues are old and I didn't know. Thanks.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Right now, I have a save game that, in spite of playing with those sliders every which way, won't spend resources. Every planet says "No Resources" (military and social) and the technology screen says 1000 months to research shields. Should I send someone a save game file?

This has happened to me twice now; it happened, I used "restore empire" and then a few months later it happened again.

As an aside, how interested are people in spelling/grammar mistakes? Should we wait for the beta to start listing these?

As God King says, "Sorry if these issues are old and I didn't know"-- I scanned through subject lines, but didn't see anything that sounded terribly relevant,

Me
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
God King, by your first bug report do you mean that the focus gets stuck on that slider if you happen to catch it the wrong way? If so, that is on my list. If not, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

The default setting for any game, new or loaded, is to start at the research screen. I'll check out the re-initialization for the selected tech. It should still research that tech even if it's not being shown as selected.

The stuck button should be taken care of in the next build. We're still stymied by the mis-aligned ships bug, and the guy who initially wrote the code for ship movement isn't here, so we can't (a) make him fix it or (b) play practical jokes on him in revenge. :)

As for resources, if you have a really crappy planet, you won't have enough to do anything with the default tax and spending settings. You can try raising taxes and your spending rates until you get more resources, but raising taxes lowers morale so you have to be careful not to go too high. I try not to raise taxes above 40%. Usually, colonizing a better planet in another system will help your resources problem, or you can purchase a social project like Soil Enhancement that will increase the quality of your planet.

At this point, we're not terribly worried about spelling, grammar and typo issues. Most of the strings in game are in text files (and the other ones we'll be changing to be stored in the text files) to make translating to another language easier. This also has the advantage that we'll be able to import them into Word and run the language checker on them.

It's ok if you report old issues because you haven't been here the entire time, and it's good to be reminded of old things once in awhile. We have a master bug list where we track the reported bugs, so whenever anyone is between implementing new things or gets stuck with bug hunting duty, we check that list.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the info.

As for the bug I reported, let me make myself more clear.

I have a save game where I've colonized something like 15 15+ planets. All of a sudden, _all_ of the planets have no resources to spend on either military or social projects. Research also takes forever. However, my income is something like 200 per turn. No matter how I mess with sliders, the situation stays the same-- no planet will spend resources on the projects I have assigned to them-- they're all going into income.

It's not a design issue-- it's a bug. When I restored my empire (rather than restoring the saved game) the problem was gone (it was a few turns earlier) but it cropped right back up a few turns later. I have a saved game that displays the behavior even after exiting and restarting the game. If anyone would like to see it, let me know and I'll e-mail it.

Me
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Cari,
Thanks for telling us about the master bug list. I hadn't known about it (and may have
even asked once) and didn't know if I should have been recycling those old threads or
not.

Would it be possible to include a list of the bugs fixed with each build? Then we can
check for odd side affects or conditions that might have been missed. Otherwise, we are
basically testing in the dark.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the info. A copy of what was changed with each version would be most helpfull.

That was the bug I was refering to with the sliders. Also, and by rereading I see how I wrote if confusing, is if we can get some buttons attached to the sliders to lock one in place and adjust the others so that the first (locked) one doesn't change.

I take it that the government types don't do anything yet? if they do, I havn't noticed any effect. What should I be looking for? Thanks again.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Hagmanti:

The only thing that I can think of without seeing the saved game is that your morale must be very low. Once your morale drops, your production goes down, which means that you have less resources to build with, which means that your people get unhappy because you're not building them social projects. Running a deficit and/or having high taxes will make your morale go down.

If this doesn't sound like it addresses your problem, please send me your saved game file to

[email protected]
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, I haven't been able to set a habit of posting the list of bugs supposedly fixed. I'll try to remember to do it for the next one.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Couple more comments:

When the 3rd line of a completed project is shown, the bottom 1/2 of the text is cut off (gfx error?).

There is no scroll bar with more than 4 completed items.

The mini map shows what species controls what quadrent even before they have been discovered. Shouldn't that be covered by the fog...

A lot of times I have trouble moving the wrong ship with autopilot as I have the same type of ship, but I had the wrong one highlighted.... thus my fleet crosses 1/2 the galaxy before I know it is out of position.

Giant jumbo galaxy is so large the mini map is very difficult to use. Perhaps a +/- function on the mini map to make it more usefull.

Are there plans to be able to just shrink the game so it can play in the background instead of having to exit it?

How come the systems always seem to have 3-5 in a quadrant, quadrants that have systems are adjacent, and there are large numbers of empty quadrants? Couldn't the stars be a bit more spread out / even?

I know there is a document that describes what is intended for future work (not the bug list) such as future units, research / technology, government options, etc. If this is was available (with the disclamer that this is preliminary & not to be upset if it doesn't happen as described) it would be helpful to have. So would the bug list. I know it is a lot of work to make and then maintain the list. Thanks for the consideration. Rich
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
And even a couple more:

Space ship info, cuts off HP of Battle Cruiser (gfx?) as only enough space for 6 lines of text.

Staar Fighter text - the # after the name (when 4 digits long) appears very close to the slider.

Sometimes, if you click on an enemy planet, it allows you to change the production que (I havn't experimented much with this to see if it doesn't just change it back when you leave or anything).

Any one know how to get a list of what each planet has built, or if that is or isn't a feature considered for the future?

Thanks again.

Rich