Star Control v1.01 (Released 9/27)

from StarControl Forums

Hello,
Glad to hear that so many of you are enjoying the game so far. We have some important fixes for you, including ones for stability, bad save games, and achievements. Please read below for details.   This build also includes full support for Russian.  


Balance

  • Lowered salvage reward of Scryve Probe. Now less than Scryve cruiser.
  • Second scryve encounter: re-added flak cannon, reduce damage on both weapons
  • Increased RU awarded from battle even more to reward murderin'.
  • Slight decrease in drag on your ship.
  • Fleet Coordinator module's AI is smarter

UI

  • You can now remap the interact button.
  • The RU text on minerals and the value on Critters are now properly translatable
  • The custom match screen better handles translated text that was longer other languages
  • Added a warning if that your page file size is too small
  • Better support for ultrawide screens (32x9)
  • Added grid lines on the sector map and mini-map
  • Bringing up the sector map no longer breaks auto-pilot
  • Added message for when you scan a low-value planet
  • The game now remembers the systems and planets you have visited and faded down the star graphic in the minimap and sector map. Labels are also faded and the line becomes green vs yellow for those visited.  This change is not retroactive.
  • You can no longer auto-pilot to a destination outside of your fuel range.
  • Planet scan screen now shows a count of the value of minerals on the right-hand side above the minerals list.

Bugs

  • Fixed several startup crashes
  • Reworked how autosaves are saved to prevent them from getting corrupted
  • Fixed a problem where a corrupt save would prevent you from saving or loading.
  • Start-up times improved on non-SDD drives. This affects starting to main menu only. We're working on a fix for new/load game times as well.
  • All Achievement are now working correctly
  • "First Contact" achievements should be award retroactively.
  • Perf boast for the end game dialog movies
  • Despawn any other mercenaries when you hire the Mercenary Captain
  • The Scryve will no longer continue to expand after the Xraki reveal
  • The Measured wander away if you have a peaceful exit with them.
  • The codex screen no longer crashes on 4K in non-English languages
  • All Measured and Phamyst NPCs are made less aggressive after the game is over.
  • Phamysht no longer pursues player after Xraki reveal.
  • Any dialog with Phamysht ships which ends peacefully results in the Phamysht flying away
  • Fix for the Harmony fighter not awarding any RU in adventure mode
  • You can hand in hyperdrives quest after beating the game.
  • Moved Vrooms planet in Alpha Mensae and some planets in Acturus closer so you can actually land on them.
  • Asking Measured about the Drenkend no longer breaks the game. They really don't like each other.
  • Fixed a save game problem with non-english keyboards
  • The Sirius quests can no longer be exploited for infinite RU.  Sorry!
  • Fix for typos with the Measured NPCs.
  • "Removing a unidentified character on Trombley II that you can't interact with.    
  • Fixing an Objective typo with the Stranded Refugees quest
39,764 views 24 replies
Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I opted in, loaded up my saved game, and immediately got a bunch of the missing Steam achievements.  However, I think I'm still missing:

Earful
Carnivore

If Earful is awarded for fully resolving the Drenkend attacks on the Mu'Kay and all other non-three ear species, I've done that. And I'm now sure I've collected more than 100 critter meat for Carnivore. Although those would, like the others, be retroactive.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 2

I opted in, loaded up my saved game, and immediately got a bunch of the missing Steam achievements.  However, I think I'm still missing:

Earful
Carnivore

If Earful is awarded for fully resolving the Drenkend attacks on the Mu'Kay and all other non-three ear species, I've done that. And I'm now sure I've collected more than 100 critter meat for Carnivore. Although those would, like the others, be retroactive.

Those two are indeed not retro-active.  

Reply #4 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Isox2121, reply 1

Any method to get the opt-in if on GOG?

No we don't have opt-ins on gog.  

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Before installing this opt-in I had released the Xraki and defeated their Juggernaut headed to Earth, at the cost of 3 of my own ships.  After installing this opt-in, I have now lost 3 entire 14 ship fleets trying to defeat the Juggernaut heading towards the Pinthi home world. Did the opt-in significantly change the difficulty level?  Even after adding two fleet defense modules (at +20% each) I lost badly. And I'm playing on the Easy setting BTW.

Reply #6 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 6

Before installing this opt-in I had released the Xraki and defeated their Juggernaut headed to Earth, at the cost of 3 of my own ships.  After installing this opt-in, I have now lost 3 entire 14 ship fleets trying to defeat the Juggernaut heading towards the Pinthi home world. Did the opt-in significantly change the difficulty level?  Even after adding two fleet defense modules (at +20% each) I lost badly. And I'm playing on the Easy setting BTW.

We didn't change difficulty.  Can you double check your settings?  Also are you using the fleet coordinator?

Reply #7 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 6

Before installing this opt-in I had released the Xraki and defeated their Juggernaut headed to Earth, at the cost of 3 of my own ships.  After installing this opt-in, I have now lost 3 entire 14 ship fleets trying to defeat the Juggernaut heading towards the Pinthi home world. Did the opt-in significantly change the difficulty level?  Even after adding two fleet defense modules (at +20% each) I lost badly. And I'm playing on the Easy setting BTW.


Can I ask if they are the same type of ships? 

Reply #8 from StarControl Forums Top

Patch is live folks.  

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The campaign difficulty from the Options menu is Easy.  I am not using the fleet coordinator. 

I just replayed the battle again and managed to win while losing 6 ships, including 3 Mu'Kay.  Maybe I was having a really bad day yesterday.

BTW, while attempting to load my save I hit escape while the AMD ad was displaying (before the intro video started), then when I loaded my saved game instead of seeing the universe I saw the AMD ad with the minimap in the upper right and my ship stats in the upper left.  Can't reproduce the problem though. 

Reply #10 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting Publius, reply 10

The campaign difficulty from the Options menu is Easy.  I am not using the fleet coordinator. 

I just replayed the battle again and managed to win while losing 6 ships, including 3 Mu'Kay.  Maybe I was having a really bad day yesterday.

BTW, while attempting to load my save I hit escape while the AMD ad was displaying (before the intro video started), then when I loaded my saved game instead of seeing the universe I saw the AMD ad with the minimap in the upper right and my ship stats in the upper left.  Can't reproduce the problem though. 

Glad to hear that you won the fight.  

I'll see if we can repro that issue internally. 

Reply #11 from StarControl Forums Top

When / how is the opportunity to opt in offered? I'm on Steam, and I'm not seeing it (restarted both Steam and game -- nothing).

Reply #12 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting SeniorOp, reply 11

When / how is the opportunity to opt in offered? I'm on Steam, and I'm not seeing it (restarted both Steam and game -- nothing).

The patch has been released. Opting-in is no longer necessary.

Reply #13 from StarControl Forums Top

OK, thanks. I guess I just have to wait for Steam to get around to it ... because it's not shown up yet.

Reply #14 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting SeniorOp, reply 13

OK, thanks. I guess I just have to wait for Steam to get around to it ... because it's not shown up yet.

You may need to restart steam to get it to pull down the latest. 

Reply #15 from StarControl Forums Top

Or go to Downloads and see if it's there.

Reply #16 from StarControl Forums Top

I have restarted Steam several times, and it never appeared in Downloads.

That being said, it looks to me like I may have a bunch more achievements, which would suggest it is installed. But one of the improvements listed above is gridlines on the sector map, and I do not see those. 

So, How can I check whether the patch is installed?

Reply #17 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting SeniorOp, reply 16

So, How can I check whether the patch is installed?


 

On the main menu, it should say v1.01.53103

I'm seeing the lines on my build here. What graphics setting are you on?

Reply #18 from StarControl Forums Top

[edit] OK, my bad. I did not zoom in. When I first open the sector map, the lines are close to invisible; I did not see them. When I zoom in, though, they become more visible (although still subtle). So they are there. Sorry for the false alarm.

--------

The main menu does say v1.01.53103, so despite not seeing any 'install', it appears there. But no gridlines, unless I'm looking at the wrong thing.

Graphics settings: 

Resolution 1680x1050

Fullscreen

AA 8x

Texture ... Great

Shadow ... Great

Vsynch

My Graphics card NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1080

i7-8700K with 32 GB RAM

 

Reply #19 from StarControl Forums Top

In this update, are there any graphic optimizations? On some of my platforms it really runs slow, or will that all be slated until there's a vulkan release?

Reply #20 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting VuxHunter, reply 19

In this update, are there any graphic optimizations? On some of my platforms it really runs slow, or will that all be slated until there's a vulkan release?

We have increased stability on high end hardware. But not optimizations for low end hardware with this patch. Vulkan is coming and may help.

Reply #22 from StarControl Forums Top

I still seem to be experiencing nvidia issues with Windows 7.  The nVidia driver flat-up crashes and attempts a recovery.

I did a test to see if it might have been OS related and installed 10 on the same hardware and SCO worked. No Nvidia driver crash.  Not sure if the patch completely addresses the issue...

 

Reply #23 from StarControl Forums Top

Well, thanks, that does solve some of the revolving crash problems I had with this.  I suppose the Trombley II fleet encounters that I had were all for naught!   

 

I still think though that this game was released in an obvious beta status (as in, there's no way the playtesters would have missed some of these issues even with a cursory playthrough).  As a founder on every single Stardock game (and a Star Control fan in particular), could we please consider a John Carmack's release date ("when it's done") in the future?  Many of these bugs really broke the atmosphere of the game for me as I waited until formal release before trying it.  We've waited over two years, addressing critical bugs and imbalances before release?

 

Also, and this is a question to my fellow players as a design choice, is the Juggernaut supposed to be able to outrun an Earthling cruiser missile and faster than a cruiser can turn?  That makes for a fairly broken ship that really doesn't have weaknesses in a player's hands and leaves the player to cheese the AI to win.  The Juggernaut is really not the Ur-Quan Dreadnought where it's a fantastic ship that does have exploitable weaknesses, I think that ship is basically a hard counter to anything the Alliance fields at this point.

 

I also have the Nvidia crashes.  I continue to send my dump files to Nvidia (PDXLan direct connection) for analysis.  It seems to be a driver interaction with the game.

Reply #24 from StarControl Forums Top

Quoting lord999, reply 23

Well, thanks, that does solve some of the revolving crash problems I had with this.  I suppose the Trombley II fleet encounters that I had were all for naught!   

 

I still think though that this game was released in an obvious beta status (as in, there's no way the playtesters would have missed some of these issues even with a cursory playthrough).  As a founder on every single Stardock game (and a Star Control fan in particular), could we please consider a John Carmack's release date ("when it's done") in the future?  Many of these bugs really broke the atmosphere of the game for me as I waited until formal release before trying it.  We've waited over two years, addressing critical bugs and imbalances before release?

 

Also, and this is a question to my fellow players as a design choice, is the Juggernaut supposed to be able to outrun an Earthling cruiser missile and faster than a cruiser can turn?  That makes for a fairly broken ship that really doesn't have weaknesses in a player's hands and leaves the player to cheese the AI to win.  The Juggernaut is really not the Ur-Quan Dreadnought where it's a fantastic ship that does have exploitable weaknesses, I think that ship is basically a hard counter to anything the Alliance fields at this point.

 

I also have the Nvidia crashes.  I continue to send my dump files to Nvidia (PDXLan direct connection) for analysis.  It seems to be a driver interaction with the game.

 

I completely agree with you.  

I have come to the point where the bugs, crashing, hanging and consistant lagging have completely taken away from any decent experience from the game and it really makes me sad.  When the game is suffering from performance and stability issues, it's really difficult for me to become immersed in the story.  

To make matters worse is that I have tested this game on 8 different computers and every single machine is experiencing some sort of issue playing this game.  There's not a single computer I own where this game runs flaeless or even mostly stable which I find very disheartening...

Also, I'm very surprised at how resource-hungry this game is! There's some serious performance issues that need to be addressed.  For example, in hyperspace, framerates drop heavily at times, does the entire solar system have to be rendered at full resolution when the planets in hyperspace are only a few pixels wide? I completely understand that character animations, textures and shaders do consume a lot of resources, but loading screen after loading screen as I watch my resource monitor jump several hundred megabytes? Something isn't right.  Also my CPU (which is an i7, also my Ryzen does this!) redlines at strange moments for minutes at a time and completely hangs up the gameplay.  Like there's some sort of massive memory dump taking place.

So until these issues get rectified, I am completely holding off on playing this game.  It's shelved until further notice. :(