Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Change Log
Published on February 29, 2008 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals
Beta 5 is now here! LOTS of changes.

+ NEW: Ascension Victory is now enabled!
+ To win by Ascension Victory, build starbases on the Ascension Crystals scattered throughout the galaxy to absorb their aura.
+ Each starbase on an Ascension Crystal will give you 1 point per turn towards the necessary 1000 points to win
+ AI will use specific ascension-based flavor text to describe why they are going to war with you if that is the reason.
+ AI will now list ascension as one of the reasons why its relations with you are lower
+ AI will lower relations with you if you start to collect ascension crystals
+ Drengin AI will attempt to pick up ascension crystals if it is powerful enough (the others won’t yet)
+ When a civ is within 100 turns of winning by Ascension Victory, a notification window will appear in the upper left hand corner of the screen

+ NEW: AI Designed ships for player - optional
+ With the changes to the tech tree, most of the core ship desgins are either inaccessible or not useful to the player by the time that the user can build them -- this should help with that.
+ When the option is ON, you can set the weapon focus by clicking on the focus button on the shipyard, and the AI will try to design ships using those values.
+ As soon as you research a tech that unlocks a ship component or increases miniaturization, the AI will attempt to design ships for you. After that, it will re-design them once a game year (about 48 turns)
+ AI designed ships now use specific ship templates based on their weapons, and ships designed for the player use the name of the template for the ship name
+ The AI will only obsolete the player's ships if the previous design of the same focus is inferior to the new design (this does not affect designs you create yourself)
+ Players can now create their own ship styles for the race they are playing
+ In the ship styles, the first template is for ships that primarily have beam weapons, the second for missiles and the third for mass drivers
+ Added descriptions to the default templates to give more helpful info on the Custom Ship Style screen

+ NEW: Added AutoLaunch options
+ These options are for people who may not always use rallypoints but want their ships to automatically launch from the planet so that they can immediately take orders
+ AutoLaunch
+ Option to have rallypoints follow same rules as autolaunch
+ Min num of defenders in orbit before auto launching attack ships
+ Option to AutoLaunch transports

+ NEW: Improvement images
+ Biosphere Modulator
+ Dark Energy Lab
+ Doomsday Generator
+ Interstellar Refinery
+ Mercenary Academy
+ Molecular Fabricator
+ Robotic Farming
+ Shrine of Tandis
+ Shrine of the Mithrilar
+ Stellar Forge
+ ZeroG Amusement

+ NEW: Enabled custom maps and scenarios

+ NEW: Korx get festival of capitalism to help improve morale

+ NEW: Custom races are now enabled, with the ability to pick which tech tree they are using

+ NEW: Added treasury to the InvasionOptionsWnd so that you can decide which tactic to use

+ NEW: Drengin now design scouts

+ FIXED: Made it so that you can't select the default tech tree for a custom race

+ FIXED: Bug on missionwnd where the spinner for difficulty was obscured by the string for the galaxy size

+ FIXED: Bug where AStar wasn't checking for Ascension Crystals, which caused stuck turn button

+ FIXED: Bug where graphs were not drawing the last point

+ FIXED: Changed it so that negative values are set to 0 for the graphs - we may want to change this eventually but we would need the ability to draw in a zero line

+ FIXED: Made the graphs use their min value as the 0 value so that the graphs fill the whole area

+ FIXED: Bug in collision detection code when checking for colliding with a star that was causing stuck turn button

+ FIXED: Bug where negative values were messing up the graphs

+ FIXED: Added code to try and prevent anomalies from respawning on AI rallypoints

+ FIXED: Added code for the AI ships to deal with rallypoints that are blocked (which causes a stuck turn bug)

+ FIXED: Bug where AI wasn't checking to see if a rallypoint was marked as destroyed before assigning it as a location. This should fix stuck turn issues and possibly crashes

+ FIXED: Changed the settings in release mode to use more accurate floating point numbers, because it was causing rounding errors

+ FIXED Bug where resource graphics were not being created

+ FIXED: Bug where Terror Star gfx was in the wrong place after attacking a star

+ FIXED: Bug where spending sliders on the Economy tab of the Finance Management screen didn't update their slider positions from a previous in a new game.

+ FIXED: Crash when going to the CivManager's stats tab after starting/loading a game from within a game

+ FIXED: Bug where having a negative weapons ability would make attack ships have 0 attack. Now they get at least one.


+ TWEAK: Fixed typo in War Profiteering

+ TWEAK: Added labels to the screen where you pick your techs for your custom civ for available and selected

+ TWEAK: New colony maintainence decreased from 15 to 12.

+ TWEAK: Only constructors, terror stars and attack ships get charged maintenance now

+ TWEAK: Updated Twilight's icon

+ TWEAK: Techs are now more expensive


Comments (Page 1)
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on Feb 29, 2008
Bless you! Bless you all! I've really been looking forward to this. Thanks a million!
on Feb 29, 2008
Still no weapons module for Thalan starbases?
on Feb 29, 2008
LOL I have to hi light the fonts to see the post stardock team

it is a real light gray and on this dark skin you almost can`t see it !!!   

thanks for Beta 5

never mind it fix !!!
on Feb 29, 2008
Fantastic, thanks for tweaking the tech costs!

Ascension victories should be quite interesting...
on Feb 29, 2008
Cool, let's have look to it.
on Feb 29, 2008
Custom Races - fantastic, and good timing as I think I've had a go with every standard race now. Now, let's see what this thing can do...
on Feb 29, 2008
Delicious... Autolaunch sounds really useful for me
on Feb 29, 2008
"After that, it will re-design them once a game year (about 48 turns)"

Aren't turns 1 week? How is it 48 turns instead of 52?

=-=-=

Looking forward to playing custom races!
on Feb 29, 2008
"After that, it will re-design them once a game year (about 48 turns)"Aren't turns 1 week? How is it 48 turns instead of 52?=-=-=Looking forward to playing custom races!


Perhaps they simplified the year into 4-week months...

As for the changelog... ~clears throat and does his best Monty Burns voice~ Exxxxcelent.
on Feb 29, 2008
OMG THANK YOU! Exams done, work done, SPEED HOME AND DOWNLOAD WOT!
on Feb 29, 2008
One more question. Should we expect any more substantive changes to the civilizations (new techs/planetary improvements/ship modules/starship modules/attributes)? Or are the rest of the civ changes going to be AI and graphics?

In other words, should we bother making suggestions/recommendations/comments on balance?
on Feb 29, 2008
What does War Profiteering do? What is the difference between 50%, 10%, 0%, -10%, an 50%?
on Feb 29, 2008
What does War Profiteering do? What is the difference between 50%, 10%, 0%, -10%, an 50%?


While any races are at war, you'll get some money for "selling them the goods they need to fight". Such an excellent income for the Drath...
on Feb 29, 2008
time for more testing YAY
on Feb 29, 2008
Just 4 more hours until I get home to try it out....I don't think this would constitute killing a 1/2 day of vacation lol.
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