Inert's list of problems.

3. The light map is affected by the background instead of the stars. The hull still lights up from the stars' light but not the lightmap. Click for full picture.



As you can see, the lights glow (on the bottom), I made sure of this by rotating the battleship around a bit. It is glowing despite facing the star, with the light of the background on the back, which would cause the lights infront to glow.

You seem to misunderstand how the glowmaps work. AFAIK, lights in the glowmap simply remain a fixed brightness regardless of lighting or lack thereof--so the glowmaps will always be the same brightness even when the surface is fully lit, but they'll (generally) be less noticeable since the surrounding texture is nearly as bright as they are.

Well I guess that was kind of vague; let me show you another example:

pretty big picture

A planet becomes very obvious because there are lights on the planets when there's little or no light source shining on it. The first picture shows the light source coming from the star, which creates a very normal effect; light coming from infront doesn't shine on the back.

But after doing a 180 degree turn, you can see a huge light (which is part of the background) but it doesn't cast any light onto the planet (as you can see in the first picture). I circled an asteroid in both pictures as a reference point to try and get my two pictures into orientation.

Shouldn't there be a light source that acts as the background light as well? It's kind of awkward to know there's a giant light behind you which casts no shadows or rays.

Yes, the skyboxes are just textures. They don't actually cast light.

Well then I guess it was intentional.

I figured there could be a global light set in as the background lightning, but seeing as how I don't understand how different "galaxies" are created (new backgrounds in each galaxy; I assume it's a sphere per galaxy), I can't recommend a way to attach a global light for the background (but I guess Ironclad doesn't intend to anyways).

Thanks though.

Wll you can't really expect the game to have thousands of light sources... Or only NASA and ESA (and some chemical and physical labs that simulate nuclear fusion and the likes) will be able to play the game. Would look nice, though.

thats perhaps the single best reason to become an astrophyscisist. (not intentionally belittling anyone's life achievments or devotions...)
the freaking awesome amazing COMPUTERS!

4. The phase jump inhibitor seems to work as soon as you start building it, instead of after you finish building it.

Yep, this has been reported a number of times. Keep on posting whatever you find though in case it hasn't

5. The hotkey for exiting the menu for building fighters in hangars (and possibly capital ships, too?) is mapped to "t", and even says it is mapped to "t", even though it is in the "g" position. Not sure if this is a bug, but it was confusing for half a second.

6. The turrets on ships do not turn even though the muzzle flashes is not aligned with the turret. Is it because moving turrets are not implemented yet, or a bug, or not planned to be at all?

Moving turrets aren't implemented. There's been no decision on if this is something that will be added or not, afaik.

7. Sometimes ships, when jumping from system to system, jumped in the middle of the gravity well surrounding the sun. I don't know if this is fixed by the "gravity well no-jump" code but I would like to bring it up before the patch is fully released. I do not have access to the screenshot until Sunday night, but I assure you it jumps well inside the gravity well.

8. Ships seem to travel at normal phase jump speeds until after a point, where upon they speed up nearly 500%. Not sure if this was intended, but they speed up and slow down when exiting/entering systems, respectively.

Culture lines do this as well. As soon as it hits the system boundary and enters the area between stars they speed up a lot. I figured this was intentional so that it doesn't take forever and a day to get to the next star.

actually, I believe they speed up 700%.
anyway yes it was purposefully implemented.

I've seen and reported #7 as well.

#8 is indeed intentional.

yeah, otherwise the vast scale of the game would render intersolar travel almost impossible, by the time your enemy arrived you would be able to have a fleet all ready to go and counter his pathetic, puny force.

indeed, I think interstellar travel takes about the right amount of time. It's just a bit odd that sometimes, when two planets in solar systems seem really close, you still have to jump form star to star.

they are still huge expanses apart, trust me.

the closest the galaxies come is probably 20, 30 x the distance between any one set of planets. and thats my most conservative estimate.

9. Saving over your game causes the game recording to break up into parts (I think) instead of being one continuous file.

10. At the end of the video recording, the game locks up.

asuming you mean solar systems...
pluto (back when it was a planet) had an orbit (presumably still has though) of about 250 AU's, which is about 0.004 Ly.
Alpha centauri is about 4.3 Ly away...or about a fice hundred times further then getting from pluto on one side to pluto on the other side of the solarsystem.

all top-of-my-mind, so feel free to point out any guestimation mistake



I'm well aware of that, no need to insult my intelligence....
The point is though, that the image on screen shows two planets being closer then their respective suns, thus the ships jumping from system to system SEEM to take a detour.

if I come up with one I'll let you know

I'm talking in game, thank you so much.

yeah, this confuses me to.

I like the idea of inter-galactic jumps being completely free, no need to use the sun.

Beta 2 - Technical problems

1. The planet upgrade's exit button hotkey is set to A; it should be set to G.

2. The planet upgrade's upgrade ship capacity hotkey is set to A; it should be set to R.

3. Ships still shoot through asteroids.

4. I think missiles (from missile frigates) do damage before they hit. I've seen a whole barrage hit and do no damage, but sometimes they mysteriously explode before the missile contacts.

5. The text for Pervasive Economy is grammatically incorrect.

Beta 2 - Gameplay Problems/Whining

Problem: Capital ships are readily accessible early on; in comparison, cruisers are less accessible. Capital ships are also very cheap (it translates to about 1 or 2 mins waiting time to assemble enough funds for a capital ship).

Suggestion:
-Move Capital ships up to tier 4. Move cruisers down to tier 2. Move all frigates down to tier 1.
-Increase the costs of capital ships (around 200 - 250%). Decrease the cost of frigates (around 10 - 30%).
-Increas the supply cost of cruisers (around 6 - 9, except the robotics cruiser).

Why: By making capital ships less accessible early on, players will be forced to use cruisers and frigates as their main force instead of "teching" up to capital ships (which are only tier 2). Granted, their initial expense make more difficult to build, by waiting a couple minutes, one can gather enough funds to build one. All it takes is one or two capital ships to dramatically increase the effectiveness of a frigate group, so they should be a little harder to obtain. By putting cruisers in tier 2, players will be more inclined to build cruisers as their main force, instead of capital ships which will then be used to counter cruisers later on in the game. Making frigates cheaper encourages players to mass produce them to support their main force of cruisers. One would only need to build about 5 - 7 cruisers, and then have them backed up by some 20 frigates. Initially, one would build a lot of frigates to establish systems, and then add a capital ship or two, which would turn them into battle fleets. Instead, cruisers will now be added to frigate groups, which makes them more poweful without turning them completely into war fleets.

Problem: Crystal is too difficult to obtain early in the game. In comparison, metal is too easy to obtain.

Suggestion:
-Make crystals more abundant, or equally abundant as metals.
-Move crystal and metal mining so that they start on the same tier.

Why: Just make crystal more easier to obtain, or metals a little less easier. I have effectively stopped relying on crystal mining and utilizing expensive black market techniques to obtain crystal. Due to overabundance of metals, I sell those for credits in which I use to buy crystal. I've seen asteroid systems with 3 metals and 1 crystal. Even though crystal is a secondary source for humans, it is still an integral part of research and higher class ship building, and should be made a little more easier to obtain.

Problem: Trade ports are expensive in comparison to their placement on the tech tree. Refineries are ridiculously expensive.

Suggestion:
-Move Orbital Commerce up to tier 4.
-Reduce price of Trade ports and Broadcast towers (by 10-20%).
-Reduce price of Refineries (by 35-45%).

Why: These are important components to a successful economy, but they are way too expensive to invest in, and the pay off time is well around 10 minutes to break even. Not to mention all the implied upgrades (upgrading logistic slots). Building a refinery and a tradeport is often enough to exhaust most logistic slots in a system (with lv2 logistics). These are middle game components, something one shouldn't worry about until well after a successful economic base to begin with. However, even with a successful base, building just two or three of either a tradeport or a refinery can bring economy to a halt. They should be reduced to encourage wide spread usage, but not until later in the game.

Problem: Planet upgrade research seems illogical. Planet allegiance are based on jumps and not distance.

Suggestion:
-Aside from Terran planets, make other planets require research before colonization (pretty much just arid planets)
-Make planet upgrade research independent of each other (for example, make improved arid colonies independent of improved civic design)
-Instead of just increasing population cap, make research improve what the planet is good at (population for Terran planets, improved mining around ice planets, etc.)
-Change planet allegiance to depend on distance rather then jumps.

Why: Planet upgrades seem illogical if they merely upgrade population cap. There's no reason to upgrade the planet cap on ice planets, we don't get any income from them anyways (not any reasonable amount). I don't see the point if the max on a Terran planet is 338 and the max on an ice planet is 110. Also, I've had a planet be the farthest away, but only be marked as -25% because it was two jumps from my home planet. The longest two jumps of my life, that's for sure.

An excellent and thorough examination as always Inert - thx so much for this, its invaluable material. I can't really disagree with you on much however our team's philosophies on the capitalship access issue do differ. The intent is to make them accessible early enough that you can have the time to nurture and grow them over the course of the game. However, there does seem to be growing support for shifting them around a bit. It's definately something we'll be looking into again soon.

My right alt button doesn't work. (Due to a quick ctrl-alt-delete I know my keyboard isn't broken)

The light factory gives off a gigantic piece of debris when destroyed. It looks like only the object's scale is off, but right now it is bigger than the factory itself.

There is a noticeable delay between when the Kol's gauss cannon hits it's target and the damage is actually dealt.

The scuttle button is tiny.

I'm starting to think every planet/asteroid/whatever should have its base logistics increased by one. Even a dead asteroid should be able to field a research station.

[EDIT]

Right now I think capital ships sometimes change targets after using special abilities, even if its one they activated automatically, thereby requiring you to babysit them to make sure they are firing on the proper target.

I've got a game now where the pirates have wiped out the AI, but the game is still going on. (I set up a 1 vs 1 against an easy AI since I wasn't in Beta 1, and I don't think either of us placed any bounties)

[EDIT2]

When zoomed in all the way it can be very difficult to tell which ships you have selected. There needs to be some kind of indicator.

When reaching the end of a phase jump, ships should move closer to the center of the gravity well. It's annoying to realize that the larger garrison I sent some time ago still has to traverse the entire well to engage attackers from the opposite side.

I'm sure that'll be helpful Angros. I made this one a while back because the gameplay feedback thread gets so clogged up with random replies that sometimes things might get overlooked.