.95 Feedback and minor bugs

[Annimagus]

Just played through a solo round as the New Republic against the Empire on the Corellian 3-player recommended map.  The Empire fought tenaciously, but lost in the end.  I loved it; the game is beautiful and plays like a dream.

Now for the feedback!

First, the fixes to the Golan defense stations and the addition of planetary shields made for much more defensible borders.  Once I had a nice choke point, I just built up defensive stations, placed a fleet in orbit, and had a grand time farming capital ship XP as the Empire launched wave after wave of attacking ships at me.  It got hairy once when I forgot to upgrade my fleet capacity and they showed up with damn near the game's maximum number of ships, but their assaults weren't lightning-quick bombing runs to deny me planetary control this time; they were actual assaults.  Stripping control of a planet takes a lot of time and effort, regardless of how well defended it is, which I like.  So, thanks!

One odd thing about Golans, though: even playing as the Republic, I was building TIE fighters and TIE bombers on my Golan IIIs.  Was that intentional?

Also, when the MC80 colonized a planet with a ranked-up Colonize ability, it would spawn an extra constructor (as intended), except that instead of a tug, it spawned a Vasari construction vehicle. On the plus side, tugs spawned properly after the first colonization (ie, with appropriate planetary upgrades), and the Vasari constructors would eventually just disappear.

There were several ships and technologies available to the New Republic BEFORE their research in the tech tree. Assault Frigates start out constructable, despite not being researched. Force Pull and Force Push both have research points in the tech tree, but both abilities are available without doing the research, and neither research seems to unlock anything. Are these researches simply to improve the ships or abilities in question, or are they supposed to be unlocking things?

I liked the split between civil and military stations.  One thing, though: When playing multiplayer, will teamed players with disgusting amounts of money will be able to construct stations over each others' planets, as in base Sins?  If so, it's still possible to get all the station benefits on one planet: simply build civilian stations over your own planet (for the government-in-orbit, max-allegiance-increase, and trade), and military stations over your ally's planets (to actually blow stuff up). If you trust your ally (or have locked teams), then you get all the station benefits over your most important planets.

I'm sure you know this part: The Viscount Star Defender still only has one ability to select at levelup, which is sad. I had 4 points just sitting there, unused, taunting me every time I looked at my fleet composition.

I turned the Galaxy Gun off for my playthrough, as I hate racing to destroy them just to preserve my planets.  How does the Galaxy Gun interact with planetary shields and health upgrades?  Is it an instant destruction, or does the projectile have a damage value that can be mitigated?

One last thing, an issue I ran into during a playthrough just before this patch: My roommate and I were playing NR on a galaxy-spanning map, with a team of enemy NR computer factions and a team of enemy IR computer factions.  The IR factions were building Galaxy Guns like crazy, but neither of us could get a fleet out there to destroy them: the enemy NR had us hemmed in, and trying to trek through their territory to destroy the Guns was a great way to lose fleets.  Our ships were defecting left and right to the enemy NR factions, which kinda sucked.

Don't get me wrong, I love that passive (10% chance for ships to defect when they leave your gravity well), as it forces the enemy to engage you one planet at a time.  But when strategy demands a lightning strike deep in enemy territory, it's just too damn powerful a defense to overcome.  Even three planets in and it can strip an invader of half their fleet.  Great when they're defecting to me; awful when my ships defect to someone else.

Can Fleet Commander auras be made to lessen the defection chance?

Again, many thanks!

[Annimagus]

I suppose it'd help if I read changelogs.  Disregard the parts relating to the tech trees.  They'll be polished when they're polished.

[TheHubby]

Just signed up to leave some feedback, figured I'd add it in here.   Currently playing my first .95 game, and just had a couple thoughts on the UI. For the planet UI, I love having the type of planet show even when zoomed out, though currently with no colony techs needed, it doesn't really matter. However, I also have something I don't like, and that is the ship indicators for friendly and enemy ships. The circles are always there, so unlike vanilla, it's not that easy to tell if there are ships at any given planet. I know it fills in red depending on number of ships, but if you only have a couple ships at a planet, it's hard to tell is something is there. I'd suggest that you only have those indicators appear if there is a ship or enemy ship at the planet like the fleet indicators in vanilla.

Also, the icons for individual ships when you're in a gravity well view seem a bit to generic, it's hard to tell which ship is which without zooming in enough to see the ships themselves, which kind of invalidates the point of the icons.

Keep remembering things I wanted to mention, thank goodness for edit. Don't know if it's on purpose, but unclaimed planets always seem to be protected by 2 carracks or one lancer or one lance and a carrack. I kind of miss having to work at all to colonize better planets even if they are just neutral. Makes larger games a bit tedious before you actually run into your opponents.

After further play: The NR Endurance fleet carrier needs a serious tweak during balancing, it loses a massive amount of firepower compared to the Nebula to carry only 1 more squadron than a Quasar. If it's keeping the current sad firepower numbers, it should field at least 6 squadrons of fighters. As it is, I see no reason to build it at all, it's got no firepower and not enough fighters to even really call it a carrier. You're far better off building 3 Nebulas, you get the same fighters and massively more direct firepower.

Loving the mod, but just wanted to toss a couple of my thoughts in.

Oh btw, the captcha for signing up/posting is a bit much, wouldn't you say? I feel for any dyslexics trying to sign up.

[Pali]

Pretty sure that while Force Push/pull can be selected on level up before you do the research, they won't actually be usable until you do.  A few other abilities work this way as well, such as Boarding Parties.

The Endurance has some seriously powerful abilities - don't build a fleet out of them like you do Nebulas (mixed with MC90s, of course), build a handful and let them debuff enemy fighters, buff your own, disable ships and Force push others out of the fight.  It's a support cruiser, not a ship of the line.  By comparison, the Nebula's abilities are quite lackluster.

I like the idea of a Fleet Commander aura to mitigate defections.  Also agree with having the ship indicator circles vanish altogether if no ships are present.  That would be very helpful.  Otherwise, once I got used to it I really like the new UI.

[slevered]

Hey guys! I am one of the devs. Thanks for posting your feedback, if you find any more issues, or things you like about the mod (because that can be just as useful), don't hesitate to place them here or on the moddb site. I and the other devs are watching those for your feedback so we can compile all together to discuss it.

Off of the top of my head, I can answer a couple of these guys for you

Don't know if it's on purpose, but unclaimed planets always seem to be protected by 2 carracks or one lancer or one lance and a carrack. I kind of miss having to work at all to colonize better planets even if they are just neutral. Makes larger games a bit tedious before you actually run into your opponents.

We are most likely going to do some kind of planetary balance pass, which includes neutral spawns.

One odd thing about Golans, though: even playing as the Republic, I was building TIE fighters and TIE bombers on my Golan IIIs.  Was that intentional?

Also, when the MC80 colonized a planet with a ranked-up Colonize ability, it would spawn an extra constructor (as intended), except that instead of a tug, it spawned a Vasari construction vehicle. On the plus side, tugs spawned properly after the first colonization (ie, with appropriate planetary upgrades), and the Vasari constructors would eventually just disappear.

I'm sure you know this part: The Viscount Star Defender still only has one ability to select at levelup, which is sad. I had 4 points just sitting there, unused, taunting me every time I looked at my fleet composition.

I turned the Galaxy Gun off for my playthrough, as I hate racing to destroy them just to preserve my planets.  How does the Galaxy Gun interact with planetary shields and health upgrades?  Is it an instant destruction, or does the projectile have a damage value that can be mitigated?

One last thing, an issue I ran into during a playthrough just before this patch: My roommate and I were playing NR on a galaxy-spanning map, with a team of enemy NR computer factions and a team of enemy IR computer factions.  The IR factions were building Galaxy Guns like crazy, but neither of us could get a fleet out there to destroy them: the enemy NR had us hemmed in, and trying to trek through their territory to destroy the Guns was a great way to lose fleets.  Our ships were defecting left and right to the enemy NR factions, which kinda sucked.

Don't get me wrong, I love that passive (10% chance for ships to defect when they leave your gravity well), as it forces the enemy to engage you one planet at a time.  But when strategy demands a lightning strike deep in enemy territory, it's just too damn powerful a defense to overcome.  Even three planets in and it can strip an invader of half their fleet.  Great when they're defecting to me; awful when my ships defect to someone else.

Can Fleet Commander auras be made to lessen the defection chance?

Again, many thanks!

We know of the Golan issue, just forgot to switch 1 string in the code.
The colonize thing is most likely an issue of the ability script, which should hopefully be easy to fix.
We will (about 95% sure) be adding more abilities for the Viscount, but it wasn't a priority for this patch. I definitely remember talking about new abilities with the team.
There is no protection from the Galaxy Gun ability but the Galaxy Gun construction mechanics changed a bit from the 0.9 patch.
The fleet commander thing might be cool, but there could be some implementation issues during hyperspace jumps. I will make sure to bring this up next meeting we have.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Corey]

There were several ships and technologies available to the New Republic BEFORE their research in the tech tree. Assault Frigates start out constructable, despite not being researched. Force Pull and Force Push both have research points in the tech tree, but both abilities are available without doing the research, and neither research seems to unlock anything. Are these researches simply to improve the ships or abilities in question, or are they supposed to be unlocking things?

I've just checked the Assault Frigate and it definitely requires the research to build it.

As for the Force Push/Pull thing, with abilities there's two separate tags to tie them to research; I'm pretty sure Pali is correct in that you can spec it but can't use it but I'll check, and we'll likely use both tags in the future to prevent confusion.

I liked the split between civil and military stations.  One thing, though: When playing multiplayer, will teamed players with disgusting amounts of money will be able to construct stations over each others' planets, as in base Sins?  If so, it's still possible to get all the station benefits on one planet: simply build civilian stations over your own planet (for the government-in-orbit, max-allegiance-increase, and trade), and military stations over your ally's planets (to actually blow stuff up). If you trust your ally (or have locked teams), then you get all the station benefits over your most important planets.

I don't think there's anything you can do to prevent people from building them outside their own territory. That's also how people control uncolonizeable gravity wells though too, so if we could it's probably not desirable.

Our ships were defecting left and right to the enemy NR factions, which kinda sucked.

Don't get me wrong, I love that passive (10% chance for ships to defect when they leave your gravity well), as it forces the enemy to engage you one planet at a time.  But when strategy demands a lightning strike deep in enemy territory, it's just too damn powerful a defense to overcome.  Even three planets in and it can strip an invader of half their fleet.  Great when they're defecting to me; awful when my ships defect to someone else.

Can Fleet Commander auras be made to lessen the defection chance?

There are a lot of values in the mod that are pretty overtuned just to test functionality pre-1.0, and this is probably one of the worst offenders. When it's finalized, it's likely to be around 2%. That being said, while it would be nice to have the number be alterabl;e by other factors, it's determined by a flat rate in research that cannot be changed or influenced by anything else.

Just signed up to leave some feedback, figured I'd add it in here.   Currently playing my first .95 game, and just had a couple thoughts on the UI. For the planet UI, I love having the type of planet show even when zoomed out, though currently with no colony techs needed, it doesn't really matter. However, I also have something I don't like, and that is the ship indicators for friendly and enemy ships. The circles are always there, so unlike vanilla, it's not that easy to tell if there are ships at any given planet. I know it fills in red depending on number of ships, but if you only have a couple ships at a planet, it's hard to tell is something is there. I'd suggest that you only have those indicators appear if there is a ship or enemy ship at the planet like the fleet indicators in vanilla.

It does still work the same as vanilla; the indicators only appear with ships, but the casing (in vanilla the brackets, in the mod the circles) are always there. That can't be changed. We will however look at decreasing the thickness/intensity of the side circles so the emphasis is more on the coloured bits.

After further play: The NR Endurance fleet carrier needs a serious tweak during balancing, it loses a massive amount of firepower compared to the Nebula to carry only 1 more squadron than a Quasar. If it's keeping the current sad firepower numbers, it should field at least 6 squadrons of fighters. As it is, I see no reason to build it at all, it's got no firepower and not enough fighters to even really call it a carrier. You're far better off building 3 Nebulas, you get the same fighters and massively more direct firepower.

As Pali said, the abilities have a large impact in this case, and it's a great support ship; rather similar to how I think people undervalue the World Devastaor next to the Praetor. 6 squadrons is vastly more than anything else in the game and gets way too close to the fighter lag problems that make the game unplayable, and when considering fighters it's important to keep in mind not just the amount you can field at once, but also sustainability. Between fielding one extra squadron at a time, two extra squadrons over a battle, and the buffs those fighters get, it's significantly more powerful. The other thing we're looking at doing is making fighter counts scale up with levels with dedicated carriers. That being said, it is getting some combat buffs (not enough to bring it anywhere near the Nebula, but there was a typo that took away a significant portion of its damage).

Oh btw, the captcha for signing up/posting is a bit much, wouldn't you say? I feel for any dyslexics trying to sign up.

It's an unfortunate necessity until better spam prevention becomes available; it may seem excessive, but immediately after any of them are removed the forums get inundated with (no exaggeration) up to 500 spam accounts and 100 spam posts per day.

Don't know if it's on purpose, but unclaimed planets always seem to be protected by 2 carracks or one lancer or one lance and a carrack. I kind of miss having to work at all to colonize better planets even if they are just neutral. Makes larger games a bit tedious before you actually run into your opponents.

This is one of the major things in 1.0; populating the maps with more pre-set stuff, including neutral stations, fleets where they make sense, and other stuff.

[Annimagus]

I certainly don't MIND being able to get all the benefits of both stations on a planet when playing with locked teams; my friends and I usually wind up playing what essentially amounts to space-based trench warfare in base Sins; we love our stations. I just thought, for balance reasons, it was something to consider. But there being not much to do about it... well, I'm not complaining.  =)

Re: Defection rate: sorry. I need to remember that values are still being tweaked. Good to know that it's static, and will probably be a lower number on final release.  Too bad about Fleet Commander auras, but I kinda figured that idea would be too complicated to work. Thank you!

Re: ability research: interesting. That might explain why I had two or three ships with boarding party but no captured enemy vessels until very late-game.  Sorry for the confusion on the Assault Frigate.

Hubby: It took me a while to figure out how to use the Endurance, but oh, man, once I did, it was wonderful. Pali's right: they don't need a buff, they're fine just the way they are. The debuff they can lay on enemy strike craft is incredible, and I had three of them spaced through my formation throwing that out by turns (My formation included nearly twenty capital ships and a Viscount, just to give you some idea of scale).  It let my strike craft just WIN fighter duels and kept my weaker cruisers safe(-ish) from enemy bombers. In the fight I went into where they were most effective, the Empire had perhaps a 3-2 or 2-1 edge on me in TIES, but those TIES barely had enough time to scuff the paint on a Bothan Assault Cruiser before my A-Wings, V-Wings and X-Wings caught them.  Most of the ship abilities for the Republic are fantastic, and I love having them. I agree that the Nebula could use some love, though.

Was there a theme to the Nebula's ability design, or even to the ship class itself in Star Wars literature? I didn't read many stories that featured them, so I don't know what it might be a good idea to make them capable of. I'm not a huge fan of Overwhelm (I'd always rather keep my shields and fire at lower power), though "Target Hangar" is nifty in long fights.  I'd say give them Ion Bolt, but almost all the Mon Cal ships have that anyway, and (as hilarious as watching my fleet stun the entire enemy fleet might be) that'd probably be bad for balance. Perhaps something similar to the Kol Battleship might be suitable? Rename its Railgun ability as "Bombardment Turbolasers" and just give them a really high-damage shot with a cooldown? That sounds kinda boring, though... I'd say something to improve shield block rating or recharge efficiency, but again the Mon Cal ships have that in spades. The Unity battleship's abilities are no help, and I don't know the Vasari ship abilities at all.

Hmmm.  How about a tractor beam?  Blase, I know, but it is technically a variety of Star Destroyer. A debuff with a moderate duration that reduces the target ship's speed and maneuvering power (like, but less crippling than, the Gravity Screw ability from the Unity starbases in base Sins) might do the trick. In the movies, tractor beams are invisible, so you wouldn't have to worry about a visual.

Oh! Rescue teams! Nebula-class cruisers can send out shuttle teams to pick up nearby escape pods. (They don't actually have to send out shuttles; they just draw the Escape Pods to them, or even just give all nearby Escape Pods a buff to increase their speed.) If you want to make it a basic ability, give it a relatively short range and scale that up as it levels.  If you want to make it a capstone ability, give it a long range to start and have it increase the normal bonus from gathering escape pods. Either way lets Republic players feel like good people for picking it and makes retrieval in chaotic battles a little easier.

I forgot to mention in my original post: the new UI is beautiful and intuitive. Props to the designer(s). I kept getting a little freaked out looking for the "bribe the pirates" button and not finding it (any time my credits get over about 5k in base Sins I look for Bribe), but I'll get over that eventually.

[TheHubby]

I'll have to work on using the Endurance, my first thoughts on it were colored by the concept of carrier in some other mods and vanilla, where the ship would field significantly more fighters than other buildable ships. Thanks for the quick replies, good to see an active team.

[OzWolf]

However, I also have something I don't like, and that is the ship indicators for friendly and enemy ships. The circles are always there, so unlike vanilla, it's not that easy to tell if there are ships at any given planet. I know it fills in red depending on number of ships, but if you only have a couple ships at a planet, it's hard to tell is something is there. I'd suggest that you only have those indicators appear if there is a ship or enemy ship at the planet like the fleet indicators in vanilla.

I Have added some indicators to the planetary gauges for friendlies, modules and enemy presence. We will see how they feel during general testing of the next release. I have a few other ideas for the indicators of this approach doesn't work out.

[Void]

The Sovereign's Crack Mantle ability doesn't do any damage to planets, even though it says it does.

Edit: Also, TIE Defender squadrons seem to prioritise larger targets over fighters.

[Indignation211]

I was just digging through the files and I discovered that the DamageAffectType for the Executor's ion cannons is set to "AFFECTS_SHIELDS_AND_HULL". I presume it's supposed to be "AFFECTS_ONLY_SHIELDS".

[Ostwind]

I just finished a 1v1 match with a friend of mine both playing Empire and I wanted to post some of my comments. Keep in mind these are just some thoughts. We play on slow ship speeds so fleet placement is really important for us. In the first ten minutes of the match we fielded mostly IMP Star Is and abused the probe ability. Because of this we spent lots of time dancing around each other to grab planets. I felt like the probe really took the skill out of scouting and drew us into more boring stand offs than normal. The second problem was the ground to space weapons. Since they were mounted on the culture stations culture "spam" became a really big problem.  Three stations could wreck havoc on fleets when focused and the only way to stop that annoying culture spread was to build your own stations. This further increased the stand off mentality. Third problem was the Altor, we had huge problems using it because it's range was so small compared to the hitboxes (not sure if that is the right term sorry) of ships. It was really hard to use out of combat and almost impossible in combat. This really makes the repair station super good because we could just camp our fleets around our repair station's large radius and get "infinite" fighters without taking the time to move an Altor from ship to ship. This also heavily favors a stand off. By Celestia, the fighter supply system was great though! It was so awesome actually keeping an eye on this realistic style fighter superiority system. I kept my TIEs docked and spent them like precious gold in combat. I'm going to get my other friends to download this mod and we'll see if anything else falls out of the woodwork. Keep up the good work, this mod has lots of potential.

[Corey]

I felt like the probe really took the skill out of scouting and drew us into more boring stand offs than normal.

Yeah, we definitely agree on this and have wanted to address it for a while. The solution I'm favouring at the moment is making the Probe Droid ability be accessible only at higher levels for the ISDI.

The second problem was the ground to space weapons. Since they were mounted on the culture stations culture "spam" became a really big problem.  Three stations could wreck havoc on fleets when focused and the only way to stop that annoying culture spread was to build your own stations. This further increased the stand off mentality.

Again, something we agree on- them being on holonet relays really wasn't something we ever intended to keep, they were actually put on there for testing purposes and never moved. The most likely solution in this case is to put them on Starbases  as an ability.

Third problem was the Altor, we had huge problems using it because it's range was so small compared to the hitboxes (not sure if that is the right term sorry) of ships. It was really hard to use out of combat and almost impossible in combat.

This is something mitigated both by larger cast ranges and some improvements to the autocast logis for the Altor's abilities. At least one was pretty much set to use whenever the AI felt like it, so it would rarely actually look for targets to use it. That has changed.

The repair station thing will probably not be as effective going forward, either. The plan there is to have its abilities cost some supply, and then have that supply have to charge up over time. Visually, I've also been thinking about having a shuttle going back and forth between the station and the planet it orbits so that the supply doesn't look like it's coming from nowhere, but that's potentially less feasible/more problematic.


Thank you for the feedback, hope you continue to enjoy the mod.

[Redraline_Salkos]

Well, I had intended to talk about some things I had encountered playing .95, but they've been covered for the most part. Every now and then I end up with fighters left behind either by forces moving on or having their carriers destroyed (most likely the latter) that stubbornly cling to life until I get a ship out to take care of them. Isn't there supposed to be health lost by fighters over time when their carrier is destroyed to demonstrate lack of ability to refuel? Any other complaints I might have had have been addressed already. Great work on this, I'm looking forward to 1.0.