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v1.03A now on StarDock

v1.03A now on StarDock

1.03A: April 30

New Features:
+ Morale Tweaked to allow higher populations
+ AI players more likely to surrender when hopeless
+ Generally slightly more money to play around with
+ Easier to trade with the AI, particularly at lower difficulty levels
+ New +7% planet quality ability available
+ AI less likely to trade evil techs to good players and vice versa
+ Sector Influence Tweaked such that growing your civilization from your bases of influence will have more impact.
+ Lightning Shield for Starbase moved down to Dreadnaught tech.
+ AI tweaked to respond to starbase threats more at higher levels, less at lower levels.
+ underlined listbox text (for future hyperlinking features).
+ Ship values tweaked considerably. Significantly more fun we think.

Ship Changes:
* Star Fighter slightly more expensive but now has 3 attack instead of 2 and twice as many hit points.
* Scouts slightly more expensive, have 1 maint point now.
* Avatar MUCH tougher but also more expensive
* Dreadnought more expensive, more to maintain but will also therefore be relatively more powerful.
* Battle Hammer Nerfed
* Ranger much tougher, costs more.

General increased costs because populations will grow larger with this new version which in turn means more tax money.


Defect fixes:

-fixed crash opening submit screen because of techlist string
-fixed stack overflow in treaty screen
-fixed bug where you could start the screens loading from empty save game list
-fixed disappearing resource
-fixed fleet data not updating
-fixed ships not saving home colony (should fix missing bonuses problem)
-Trade Goods, Super Projects, and Wonders won't get overwritten with going to the Details window
-Fixed crash on End screen when clicking on SOCIETY tab
-Fixed crash on Stats Screen with the "Social" Misc. stats window
-Put "Discoveries" on the Research window in List Boxes (previously wouldnt display all the uncovered Techs and such if it ran out of room)

Data Fixes:
-fixed typos reported by SF
-fixed morale anomaly
-fixed sea dome event
-made sure that tech list is scrollable even with "new" listboxes
-fixed trade fed fees
-tech capital now doubles bonus as it says in the description.
-fixed bonus events with weights that are too high
-fixed pods event



1.03 Late night update April 25, 2003
Fixes:
+ Arceans were trying to hijack civilian trade ships to defend their colonies which resulted in eradic trade revenue. Trade ships are civilian controlled, governments (human or computer) are not allowed to control them. Fixed.
+ Crash bug with string parsing fixed (yearly update).


1.03 Update: April 25, 2003
Tweaks:
+ AI trading for money tweaked a bit
+ Arcean AI defends planets better
+ Trade Goods now more valuable for trade

Bug Fixes:
+ Fixed Range Ability Bonus at start
+ Fixed Luck to be +25%
+ Social/Military Production Abilities now work as designed (round off error addressed)
+ Torian AI constructor madness addressed
+ Economics tested (no bug found, trade income can vary from turn to turn. In 1.03, the AI is much better about building starbases that pump up their trade so players are seeing more variance).


1.03 Update: April 24, 2003
Tweaks:
+ Mouse wheel behavior on domestic policy screen changed to be like it was.
+ Political Party selection cleaned up a little bit.

1.03 April 23, 2003
New Features/Tweaks:
+ Universalists and Industrialists added with proper abilities
+ Additional AI enhancements
+ Efficiency Production Bonuses get penalized if they are > 3X the planet quality.
+ Sector Influence is now weighted between the distance of the nearest starbase and the distance of the nearest star.
+ Colonies on planets + Colonies on planets + AI will disband poor quality colonies.
+ AI more aggressive at trading techs for $$$ at higher levels
+ Military resource doesn't increase Hitpoints Ability (it wasn't supposed to in the first place). Just weapons/defense.
+ Arcean AI personality now enabled with the previously disabled "nasty AI" tactics at higher levels.
+ AI chooses political parties better now (will use mods now intelligently)
+ Some performance tweaks for more responsive UI on lower end machines
+ Trade Federation UP issue nerfed - always has a time stamp on it. No eternal federations.
+ New Underlying MP3 engine implemented. This should cure those who were having random crashes related to sound.
+ Some tweaks to ship values.
+ Senate handles more political parties
+ New MP3 player integrated in to work on systems where the MS MP3 codec has gotten creamed.
+ General AI updates
+ Planet Quality Ability nerfed


Bug Fixes:
-Generic governor no longer adds trade goods/wonders/achievements to queue
-fixed a potential crash in yearly planet dialog (wasn't checking for null alien civ pointer)
-Moved the autosave to happen before the AI begins calculating to resolve a crash issue (game crashing during the auto save on some systems).

1,515 views 38 replies
Reply #26 Top
I don't know what all the uprising is over Battlehammers...in the scheme of things, the Alliance said, let's upgrade the battleaxe, but let's give it some firepower too so we don't have to augment it with extra attack ships. Maybe the HP's are too high, but 40 makes it useless. 60-70 would be better. It's supposed to be able to take on Battleships and dreadnoughts after all..
Reply #27 Top
"-fixed ships not saving home colony (should fix missing bonuses problem)"

Does this mean that if you build a shipyard it will affect ships that were already launched? If so, does it only happen once you reload a save game?
Reply #28 Top
Just to confirm, the 7% PQ pick was intended to replace the 5% PQ pick? Sounds reasonable, given the fact that apparently someone thought that the 5% PQ pick was too cheap, as the 7% pick is almost three times the points. It's just that the feature list just said that the 7% pick was added, not that the existing pick was changed/eliminated.
Reply #29 Top
Obviously the game developers have been listening to all the comments about the Battlehammers being so cost-effective in comparison to Frigates and Battleships.
Reply #30 Top
Well, the game is kind of biased against defense in any case, as a quick comparison of the number of modulues that give attack bonuses versus the number giving defense bonuses will show. Battlehammer was the last useful defense ship, and now the HP are down so its more or less been pulled out of the game. Its not a big deal for someone like me who's not posting games to the metaverse, its easy enough to adjust the ships. I'm curious tho' why the designers have taken such a pro-offense stand...and does anyone know if its possible to add more defense modules to the starbase list?

Reply #32 Top
Hmm if there is more cash around, and cash is more valued by the AIs vs. tech, how much is tech devalued?

Its fine to make the AI's like cash more for tech, but to also make cash easier/more abundant...

Seems counter intuative to me.

Its fine to try and fight the tech-whoring strategies, and to allow for someone to maybe skimp research and up their savings, but I'm a bit worried about the balance that has been struck here.

Anyone who's used the latest patch have a comment about this?
Reply #33 Top
@Popup Target: The 5% pick is the same and still is around. The 7% pick is in as an insanely high-cost pick (something like 8 picks).
Reply #35 Top
moodgiesanta: It wasn't available in the game I started last night 1.03A.056).
Reply #36 Top
The way that the bonuses from improvements to ship works is that each ship keeps a pointer to where they came from and then when their defense and attack values are calculated, it pulls the ship improvement bonuses from their home colony. But previously, the home colony was being re-assigned when the game was loaded instead of saved and restored. So all new ships built in colonies will be ok; the other ones might be a bit screwy.
Reply #37 Top
Thanks, CariElf. So that means that if you build a shipyard it immediately improves all ships that had previously been built on the planet as well as any new ships that are built. Good to know.
Reply #38 Top
moodgiesanta: I upgraded to .057 last night and both the 5% and 7% picks were available, so it was a transient problem, whatever it was.