Entrenchment Update

Kay, I'm gonna pass out the torches and pitchforks early.

Just kidding! Thanks for the update!

Is it still possible to pre-order entrenchment and get the Beta?

I am now considering jumping into the Beta for entrenchment since I can't wait for the final version to come out

Yes it is.

Thank you very much for a sing of life. We of course know you are working very hard for the update and it is nice to hear from you. However i think what everyone is looking for in information is what recommendations are you putting and what modifications are you putting in how they should work and the vision you currently have. Just knowing the direction your going would greatly help in the anticipation leading up to this next patch.

Man, I can barely wait... Well, I guess there is no other option... sigh...

Hey, guys! Thanks for the hard work! thumbs up for ya...

yeah, I figured mines would take some work to fix. some of the other balancing issues are probably more of a discussion and then resetting values thing.

well, I'd have loved to have it this week, but you guys take the time you need, quality is paramount after all. and thanks for the info, I really appreciate you let us know as soon as something concrete was in sight.

Any chance we could get a sneak-peek at what has been updated?  I have to say, I'm very excited for this update.

i know this has been shunned but any chance of a mine sweeper in the final release?

Thx for the update Yarlen.  Yeah, it blows that we'll have to wait till next week, but hey...it will be worth it.  Can't wait for more updates (especially those that list what is being changed).

You guys rock. 

Thanks for the news about the upcoming update. I know a lot of us were starting to wonder if one was going to happen or not. I'm sure we'd love to get some kind of heads-up about what the changes in the game are going to be and where you got them from!

Yay!!! I'm back into Sins: Entrenchment...I went on a COD5 spree and I was working over break so no time for a time-consuming game haha....Can't wait!!! Should be good!!!  Hopefully Starbase range is increased enough to defend a grav well...

Hopefully Frasers & IC manage to kill those goddamn sync bugs and all that stuff that was popping up now and again ever since 1.1 was released. I wish I see a single product in this damned money sucking industry that has its "final version" actually less buggit than its first beta.

I'm not complaining here.
Actually, with all the ironclad's commitment to it, Sins happen to be the focus of my hopes.

I just hope...

Thanks for the update.

YAHHO maybe after this I will find some one to paly against online Because now it is kind of HARD to find any one that is willing to play and because I happen to Like to make and use custom maps this is even harder because I need help by way of some to help test them to know what I need to change to make them better.

Great news. Everything i have seen in entrenchment has been great... apart from the mines. they have got to be the single most annoying feature ever if deployed all over your star... you cant leave fleets there, you cant send fleets through... Please change them to be defensive only weapoms (i.e an area you deploy via the defensive weapons menu).

As i said though, apart from that, great, and thanks for letting us know.

Thanks for the post letting us know you are at least lurking on the forums {i myself am very partial to lurking} reading what we have to say about the BETA.

Great news on the possible update soon.

Hi all!

Let me try to hit up multiple points in one post.

+ We won't be closing the Entrenchment beta (which is atypical). If you pre-order Entrenchment, you'll automatically get access to the beta.

+ As someone guessed, mines are the cause for the additional time.  The Ironclad guys are reworking them so that they're better balanced.

+ I'll see if I can get a partial changelog for the next update.

+ Desync issues are really hard to track down and I don't know if these have been resolved internally or not yet. A safe bet is that if you encounter desyncs to please zip up your Sins minidump (check the readme in your Sins directory for where these are located) along with your save game and a description to support(at)ironcladgames(dot)com.  Ideally we need these for all the players in your group.

More soon!

I might as well add on to this one Per Blair (I'm sure he wouldn't mind me posting):

We definitely tracked a false positive sync bug and a real one. If that group of guys has the logs they should definitely send them directly to [email protected] as that tells us if it’s the bug we fixed or if it’s a new one. We haven’t received any logs for sometime so they definitely didn’t send them yet. Here are the settings anyone interested in tracking sync bugs should be using.

CalculateCheckSumTickFrequency 50
CalculateCheckSumDetail 3
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsInGameTickFrequency 0
SaveCheckSumSnapShotsOnSave TRUE
IsCheckSumLoggingOn FALSE

(The settings referred to are in the user.setting file) The logs are needed from *all* players in a desynched game.

a partial change log would be nice. I wouldn't be too surprised, if many other things were already more or less decided on. thx the info.

yeah....what he said.

And thanks...definitely thanks.

Will the update be getting some optimizing? I'm having some wonky lag issues at about four fleet upgrades in on a 5 planet map.

During combat the game will be moving fine at about 30fps. Suddenly though, it will slow down to 5-12fps for awhile(10-20 seconds) then pop back up to 30. This process keeps repeating.

To avoid the subsequent "Oh yeah, what are your PC specs?" post.

Game Settings: Low @ 1680x1050 resolution no AA

AMD Athlon 4600+ x2 (2.4ghz)

2GB DDR800 RAM

ATI Radeon 4850 512mb (8.12 Drivers)

Windows XP Home (32bit)

with that gfx card u should be able to get maxed settings @ 1680x1050 with full aa. my one 9800gtx got me 60+ fps (constant) with 1.5 (now i have sli though). maybe it ur cpu. its a dual core rite? i have a quad, it mite be the cpu bottlenecking the gfx card.

I reduced the screen resolution to minimum to test out this theory. It's still running really slow during combat which leads me to believe you're right. I'm a little disheartend though because my CPU is 210mhz above the recomended spec.

I and my friend have the same "problem" Lost, but it was mentioned in other threads, and we just figured it would get worked out slowly as the beta progressed.  But we do get "slide shows" towards the end of our games.  I'm guessing it had something to do with all the mines; we stopped using mines (and never play with/against Varasi), and it seemed to help quite a lot.

As for desinks, I and my friend were talking, and we dont recall having one (via Lan games) in a very long time; but they seem common online, I wonder why that is?  In fact, since when we played online, we used ventrillo (which makes it hard to remember if you were talking online or in person), we are not even sure we have EVER had a desynk during a lan game; if memory serves us, only online.  Anyone else get the same ammount of Desynks with Lan play as they do online?

I have the same problem except i have always encountered it, even in the original. But for some reason its always at the end of the game, If i have a huge fleet in the beginning or middle it doesnt lag up at all but if i invade with a medium fleet at the end of a game its laggy even on medium sized maps. Odd though cause of my system specs,

2.5-3 gigs of free ram depending on how cooperative Vista is at the time

2.6 ghz processor

Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M (graphics proccessor cause I have a laptop) <- 4.3 out of 5.9

I run everything on highest except for the top line which is only on high because of a crashing problem with entrenchment due to optimization problems.