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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 2)
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on Feb 29, 2008
WOW! Great update guys. Many thanks and def worth the wait

Oh and thanks for giving me more work to do for the dummies guide

on Feb 29, 2008
Note to designer of the program icon: Excellent! Nice to see the contrast from the Dreadlords. Fire VS Ice.
on Feb 29, 2008
Define "here". It is not on SDC.
on Feb 29, 2008
Well, I think it will come very soon just have a bit more patience.
on Feb 29, 2008
THANK YOU Stardock for another great beta. But i got a question, when you guys start working on the TA campaihn, will you guys use the campaign editor?
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?

Yes. In fact, I plan to do a long series of play-testing games (and blog about them) where planetary improvements are added, tweaked, changed, etc.

I'll also be reading the forums so that I can pre-bias myself to look at potential balance issues.

Plus, if I lose a game to the AI then I am a sore loser and will change the game accordingly.

on Feb 29, 2008
It is on SDC. I've downloaded it. Admitedly mine said 0.96a[b].006 and the date is still on 19/2/2008, even after refreshing XML data..
on Feb 29, 2008
Ive downloaded it, but for some reason the custom civilization portrait doesnt show up when i choose my new race. Any thoughts?
on Feb 29, 2008
I've got a quick question. My install shows several items in Option as having "String Not Found". I'm guesing those are the toggles for the new stuff like AI ship builds. Do I have a corrupt install, or are these just not labeled yet? If the later, would someone mind posting what each toggle is? You could just post them in the order they show up. Thanks!
on Feb 29, 2008
Where exactly do I configure the autolaunch? I see the option in the menu, but no interface where I can set the parameters you described.

Same goes for the auto-design. The 'focus' button always is greyed out for me.
on Feb 29, 2008
It is on SDC. I've downloaded it. Admittedly mine said 0.96a[b].006 and the date is still on 19/2/2008, even after refreshing XML data..


0.97[b].001 is Beta 5
on Feb 29, 2008
What a list! I am double-gobsmacked!  
on Feb 29, 2008
It is on SDC. I've downloaded it. Admittedly mine said 0.96a[b].006 and the date is still on 19/2/2008, even after refreshing XML data..
0.97[b].001 is Beta 5


OUCH. Then the update doesn't show up for me at all no matter what server I use or after refreshing XML. I double checked it is set to show betas, but since I have installed 0.96a[b].006 already, it must be set.

on Feb 29, 2008
Nice change for ship maintenance! That eases the economic crunch a little in the colony rush, and trade will be more efficient (oooh... gotta start a Korx game this weekend). Constructors still cost maintenance, but they have a short life. The maintenance costs will mostly kick in when your economy is stronger, and you're cranking out military ships. Cool.

The Ascension victory option is very interesting. If I'm reading it right, it's sort of a shortcut military victory, right? A race only has to take and defend the area around the crystals, instead of dominating the map and destroying other civs. That will shake things up, if a race goes for that victory option. I assume there's some block against the player just rush-scouting the map, and then rush-building on those things? Will that lower relations enough to trigger insta-war with all the other races? I hope the AI is pretty aggressive at stopping an early rush for Ascension.
on Feb 29, 2008
Hm, okay than I have the same problem and can't see them, too.
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