Patch notes for Commander Update (V0.8.8.0, Build ID: 822379)
Patch notes for Commander Update (V0.8.8.0, Build ID: 822379)
This update adds Ship Captains and Planet Leaders to the game! Hundreds of small single-pilot ships were flung back in time during the final battle with the Revenants and now wander the stars looking for signs of civilisation. Roughly once every 150 turns, a legendary ship captain or planet leader will find your empire and offer to work for you in exchange for some money.
Each commander has various bonuses, some of which are flat bonuses and some of which increase every level. Ship Captains and Planet Leaders have an XP rating between 0 and 1000, gaining 1 XP every turn and a new level every 100 XP for a maximum level of 10. Each commander also has a minimum game turn before they'll show up, so the best commanders will be revealed as the game progresses. Some are also restricted to particular races or races with particular traits. Note that the commanders all currently use the same placeholder image, and that we'll be replacing this in the future.
Planet Leaders
Planet Leaders can be assigned from the Services tab on the planet screen. They give bonuses across the entire planet to stats like percentage bonsues to research, food production, metal production, energy production, shipyard build capacity, ground combat rating, troops per city, city shield efficiency, and ground turret damage. They can also give flat research per turn, money per turn, or a global diplomacy bonus.
Ship Info Window
The Ship Info Window has been completely overhauled, and now shows the ship's main stats and a visual list of its weapons, modules, ship crew, and ship captain. To get into the ship info window for a particular ship, just right click the ship in the fleet or system window. From there, you can look at its stats and assign a captain.
Ship Captains
Ship Captains can be assigned to a ship from the Ship Info window and provide bonuses to beam/projectile/drone/missile/bomb damage, ftl speed, dodge chance, armour HP, shield HP, shield recharge rate, armour regeneration, combat speed, combat bonus when boarded by enemy marines, reactive strike damage, beam weapon range, projectile gun range, missile speed, drone speed, or crew XP. They can also have flat bonuses to research per turn, money per turn, or a global diplomacy bonus.
Crew XP and bonuses:
Ship Crew now have an XP rating between 0 and 500, gaining a new level every 100 XP for a maximum level of 5. Each creman has a chance of being an elite crew member who starts at level 2 with 250 XP and can reach a maximum of 1000 XP for a maximum level of 10. Elite crew also have a chance of rolling as scentists or engineers rather than civilians and soldiers. Crew currently gain XP each turn when in orbit of a planet with a Training Facility, and in a future update we'll add XP to crew after each successful battle.
Crew levels are currently used in the ship boarding code, which will become apparent when we iterate on fleet combat and add boarding options. We also plan to have each crew member contribute a bonus to the ship based on their level, such as a bonus to weapon damage, shield recharge, or armour hitpoints. If a crew member is killed in combat (say by boarding marines), they are replaced with a rookie crew member at 0 XP the next time you visit a space station.
I'm pleased to announce that we've just hit another major milestone with the first release of our awesome 3D ship designer tool. The tool has now been integrated into the game through the shipyard screen and allows players to design their own ships from the ground up using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Unlike most other ship designers that force the player to attach parts on specific join points or hardpoints, our designer lets you place ship parts literally anywhere on your ship for complete creative freedom. You can rotate parts around the X, Y and Z axis, change their sizes, make them invisible, and flip or mirror them on any axis. You can even copy and paste entire groups of parts if you want to duplicate something multiple times on a ship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4WuWvbBT04
We're extremely proud of the 3D ship designer and so excited to be able to finally start delivering it to backers. This release contains ship parts for the Renegades faction, which all races currently share. Our art director Steven Pollock is hard at work on the ship parts for the other races and we'll be deploying those in future updates along with a slew of new researchable ship weapons and modules and other promised features such as player-designed space stations and custom ship decals.
Patch Notes for General Feature Patch #1 (V0.8.5.9, Build ID 764172)
Patch Notes for General Feature Patch #1 (V0.8.5.9, Build ID 764172)
This week's update adds a few of the major features we wanted to get in before starting work on the 3D ship designer:
Note: This patch is out a day late because we found a large number of bugs in the new features and spent a lot of time fixing them. We also have to push back the Race Stats feature for a few days as we're going to add a little more gameplay for the Aquatic and Robotic archetypes than originally planned. The schedule for the 3D ship designer remains unchanged, and it should deploy as expected on September 18th.
Major Feature: Wormholes:
When creating the map, you can now select whether or not to add wormholes to the game map. These connect several random star systems within 60-120ly of a race's home star systems and have a minimum distance based on map size, so you'll find they naturally connect an empire to those on the other side of the map. Ships can instantly travel either way through a wormhole.
Major Feature: 2D Maps:
We've added the ability to select between 2D and 3D map on the galaxy generation screen! The stars will still be roughly the same distance from each other but spread over a wider area to accomodate the lack of a third dimension, so the game should play roughly the same. Sensor ranges are still represented as spheres at the moment, but in a future update we'll be switching them to circles when you're playing in a 2D map.
Major Feature: Planet/System Specials:
Last week's patch added Strategic Resources like Helium-3 and Coffee Beans to one planet in each nebula and others spread throughout the galaxy. This patch expanded on that by making each of these part of a new Planet/System Special mechanic. We've also added several other specials:
Gold Deposits: Gold Deposits have been detected on a planet. Each gold deposit harvested by an Ore Refinery will produce 1BC/turn and increases the revenue from Trade Pacts signed with other races by a further 0.5BC/turn. The gold is contained within existing seams of Ore.
Ancient Civilization: An ancient civilization once inhabited a planet, but has long since died off. The remnants of several structures remain on the planet and can be excavated for a bonus to research and a chance of discovering a rare piece of ancient infrastructure.
Crashed Warship: The remains of a massive ancient warship have been found on a planet. The wreckage covers several hexes, each of which can be excavated as a separate Crashed Ship to provide a bonus to research on the planet and a chance of discovering ancient ship modules and weapons.
Space Debris: Debris from the battle with the Revenants is floating in space throughout the star system, which is salvaged immediately for some money.
Future updates will add more planet and system specials as the need arises. For example, when we add planet leaders and ship captains we'll also add the Stranded Leader special where you can rescue one from a planet. And when we add Space Monsters and Revenant Attacks, there'll be a few more surprises hidden in there.
Major Feature: Random Events
We've rolled out our highly moddable random events system that loads events from images and a human-readable text file in the game directory. You can specify a number of requirements for an event to be able to occur, such as there being a certain number of a certain building, infrastructure or deposit on the planet, the planet being a particular environment type, the planet's owner having or not having a particular technology, and the planet having above or below certain stats. Each event has three options for resolving it, which can cost metal and money as well as implement effects like destroying infrastructure or deposits, changing planet environment type, adding deposits, changing planet stats, killing population etc.
We've implemented a few random events so far with this framework, and there are more to come. This is the first wave of random events we're implementing so right now they're all disasters. We'll be adding more positive events in the future that let you pick between rewards or have other beneficial effects such as adding deposits to a planet or unlocking a technology.
Population Rioting: This can trigger if a planet's Security rating is below 80%. You can resolve it diplomatically by spending money, with force by executing 200 citizens, or ignore it and build more police stations to solve the security problem manually.
Crop Blight: This can trigger on any planet with food deposits and more than one farm. The options to resolve it are to dedicate all your empire's research to developing a new pesticide for 5 turns, to shut down all your farms for 3 turns and burn the affected crops, or to ignore it and let it ruin your planet's fertile soil.
Disease Outbreak: This can trigger if a planet's Health rating is below 95% and population is above 4,000. Your options to solve it are to dedicate your empire's research to finding a cure for 5 turns, use your security forces to kill anyone with the disease (20% of planet's population), or ignore the outbreak and it'll start killing 50 population per turn until you build enough hospitals to get the planet's health rating to 100%.
Acid Rain: This can trigger if you have fossil fuel power plants and farms on the same planet and don't have the Atmospheric Filter technology. The options to resolve this are to spend 8 turns of research redesigning your farms to withstand the acid rain, spend 250 BC replanting dead crops after the acid rain subsides, or ignore the rain and it will shut down your farms for 3 turns and wipe out some fertile soil.
Nuclear Meltdown: This can happen very rarely if you have a nuclear power plant on the planet. The options to handle this are to spend 500 BC safely shutting down the plant and disposing of the waste, to seal the plant up and get rid of it (killing all 350 staff and destroying the infrastructure), or to ignore it and let it go meltdown (the planet becomes toxic). If you have the Uranium Handling technology (formerly "Nuclear Waste Management"), the first option costs only 250 BC and the second option allows you to evacuate the staff before destroying the plant.
Other changes:
<*> Your damaged ship has been changed from a building to an infrastructure, and is now removed from the planet when it's repaired on hitting the space age.
<*> Split the Options tab in the Menu Menu into Graphics and Gameplay menus. Added sliders for the Star Line opacity, Star Name Fade distance, and Star Name Size.
<*> Planet Specials can now be seen on the planet tooltip.
<*> Star Sizes have been normalised on the galaxy screen to help players get a better sense of depth. Stars still blink out of sequence, however.
<*> Farms no longer have a base food per turn, but they now generate 250 food for each terran hex in range to compensate. This was changed to accomodate the Nuclear Meltdown disaster, as farms left behind after the disaster will no longer be functional.
<*> Removed Splinter Colonies. These will be re-added as Planet Specials in the future in order to make sure there aren't too many of them out there and they aren't clumped together.
<*> You can now only find up to 1000 citizens stranded on a planet per anomaly found, down from 2000.
...
...
Read the full patch notes here.
Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer
New Development Schedule and General Feature Patch #1
If you've been following Predestination lately, you may have noticed that we released two Diplomacy patches in very quick succession following our trip to Gamescom 2015. You'll be glad to know that you can expect that fast pace of development on new features to continue from now on.
We’ve planned out the rest of the game’s development right up to the full version 1.0 release, and have broken it down into weekly sprints. What that means for you is that we’ll be releasing a new patch with some new gameplay or feature almost every single week from now on. The next patch is due this Friday and is named General Feature Patch #1 (more details below), and it will be followed up on September 18th by the integrated 3D Ship Designer patch with completed parts for the Renegades faction!
Our new development schedule has us working on new features from Monday to Friday, pushing the new patch live on Friday, and hunting bugs reported in the previous build on Saturday. Your crash reports are delivered directly to my phone in realtime and I read every single one of them, and critical bugs are typically fixed as a matter of urgency in hotfixes over the weekend. As long as people keep testing the patches, we’ll have a large enough set of testers to find any new bugs and crashes each week. We may also release smaller patches throughout the week if there’s something that we want to deploy early for testing or if there’s some content to add such as the upcoming finished text messages for diplomacy.
This Friday’s update is General Feature Patch #1, a collection of smaller features that we have wanted to implement for some time.
There’s a huge amount of work going into Predestination this week in General Feature Patch #1, so we’re going to get back to work! Thanks once again to everyone for your patience as we develop Predestination and for your ongoing support. As usual, if anyone reading this has pre-ordered the game or backed us at a pre-order tier or higher on Kickstarter and would like to get a Steam key for the Early Access alpha, please mail earlyaccessrequest@brainandnerd.com and we’ll send one over. For any other questions, please mail tina@brainandnerd.com and we’ll help in any way we can.
Cheers,
— Brendan, Lead Developer
Diplomacy Patch #2 released
Patch Notes for Diplomacy Patch #2 (V0.8.5.0, Build ID 754188)
This smaller diplomacy patch adds a new Strategic Resource system to the game, improved diplomacy AI, randomised race Leaders with personalities, a counter-offer AI system, and the Diplomatic Advisor technology!
Note: The Diplomacy response messages are still placeholders like "Made first contact by detecting colony ship 1" and "Diplomat Busy ANGRY message 1" for now. We had hoped to get the finished dialogue for each race into this patch, but we're taking a little extra time with it to add more responses and a bit more personality to each race. We'll roll this into the next patch after it's released and I think you'll be really happy with the results.
Major Feature: Strategic Resources:
Strategic Resources are deposits of an ultra-rare resource that give global bonuses across your entire empire when harvested. They are harvested with existing infrastructure and each deposit harvested gives the same bonus. Strategic Resources can be shared with other races so that both you and the other race both get access to them, and they're worth a lot in diplomatic negotiations. Each colour of nebula starts the game with a star containing a planet with one of these resources, and up to one more of each will be spread throughout the map.
Helium-3: A rare isotope of Helium that can be used to boost fusion rates. When harvested, a small amount will be added to all ship drives, increasing their speeds by +1 hex in combat and +2 ly/turn in warp.
Osmium-186: A rare isotope of Osmium with useful molecular compression properties. When harvested, small amount will be bonded to all ship armour, improving its effective density and increasing armour HP on all ships by 10%.
Neodymium-150: A rare isotope of Neodymium that can be used to create exceptionally efficient infra red laser focusing crystals. When harvested, the beam weapons on all of your ships will be given a regular supply of Neodymium crystals, increasing beam damage by 10%.
Coffee Beans: What's the point of building an interstellar empire if you can't get a good cup of coffee? Harvesting this rare plant will improve the efficiency of scientists across your empire, increasing all research output by 5%.
Major Feature: Additional Resources:
Fish: Fish is a special resource that spawns exclusively on random Ocean worlds and Ocean homeworlds. It gives +200 food/turn when harvested with a farm and a bonus to population growth rate. This actually isn't harvestable right now as all races are technically Humanoid and can only farm in Terran environments. When we add race stats, Aquatic races will be able to farm Fish with their Aquatic Farms, making this a unique resource for Aquatic races.
Land Animals: A special resource that spawns on random Terran planets and homeworlds. It provides +200 food/turn when harvested with a farm and a 1% morale boost per hex harvested. This is intended as a unique resource that only Humanoids can use.
Major Feature: Counter-Offer AI:
The first iteration of the diplomacy AI could only accept or reject a deal. This patch added the ability to make a counter-offer. The AI will first try adding something it wants from you to the deal (a strategic resource or up to 2 technologies) and if that doesn't make the deal more palatable to them then they'll attempt to remove an item from your list of demands. Counter-offers tend to work out a little worse than deals you could negotiate yourself, but since the other race offered it, there's a 100% chance of acceptance. You're free to change the proposed counter-offer and re-offer it as a new deal, and if you do this repeatedly then the AI will stop making counter-offers for the rest of the diplomacy session.
Major Feature: Diplomatic Advisors:
We've added two technologies to the end of the Sociology tree: Diplomatic Advisors and the Diplomacy Computer.
Diplomatic Advisors: This tech adds a team of three advisors to the diplomacy screen right next to the Propose Deal button: One Military Advisor, one Diplomatic, and one Scientific. You can click on them before proposing a deal and they'll tell you how likely they think it is that the other race will accept. Each one has his own bias, however, so the Military Advisor will tend to overvalue military items in the deal and the scientist will overvalue technology. If the other race makes a counter-offer, the advisors will also advise you on whether you should accept the deal or not.
Diplomacy Computer: This tech unlocks the Diplomacy Bot 4000, an advisor who gives an accurate and impartial estimate based on the other race's actual motivations.
Major Feature: Race Leaders & Government types:
Each race now starts with a randomly selected Government type and Leader, which can be seen on the Diplomacy screen. Each one has slightly different priorities in diplomacy, so if you're trading with a Technocracy then you'll see a scientist instead of a diplomat on the diplomacy screen and he'll over-value technologies and research treaties. Government types are:
<*> Council: All 3 characters are present in diplomacy; Balanced focus
<*> Republic: Diplomat character; Balanced focus
<*> Monarchy: Diplomat character; Balanced focus
<*> Democracy: Diplomat character; Balanced focus
<*> Dictatorship: Diplomat character; Balanced focus
<*> Commune: Diplomat character; Agricultural /expansion focus
<*> Cooperative: Diplomat character; Agricultural /expansion focus
<*> Corporatocracy: All characters; Industrial focus
<*> Social Union: All characters; Industrial Focus
<*> Military Collective: Soldier character; Military Focus
<*> Police State: Soldier character; Military Focus
<*> Hegemony: Diplomat character; Erratic focus (random factor added to all diplomacy)
<*> Theocracy: Diplomat character; Erratic focus (random factor added to all diplomacy)
<*> Sodality: Scientist character; Scientific Focus
<*> Technocracy: Scientist character; Scientific Focus
Bug-fixes and small changes:
<*> Fixed a bug with the starbase model disappearing on the planet screen
<*> Fixed a new bug where Research blueprints would build 3 research starbases
<*> Fixed tooltips not showing the effect of research bonuses on RP generated by a city.
<*> Fixed Genetic Enhancement: Intelligence not working
<*> Changed warp drive progression and gave each drive a bonus to combat speed for all ships.
<*> Fixed a bug where the ancient artifacts available in a game would reset when you load the game. These are now saved out as usual.
<*> Optimised the game startup routine slightly. The game will no longer generate homeworlds when changing the fgalaxy size from the New Game screen. It will now wait until we continue to actually generate the map for the game.
Next week's patch will contain a variety of promised features and an update on our development schedule. We will have an update out on Sunday with more information.
Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer
Full Diplomacy Patch #1 (V0.8.4.0) Released
Patch notes for Diplomacy Patch #1 (V0.8.4.0, Build ID: 744867)
We deployed part of the diplomacy feature in V0.8.3.7 on Tuesday, and I'm glad to report that the remainder of Diplomacy Patch #1 has now been deployed. This includes most of the UI and the core diplomacy systems. We're now jumping into Diplomacy Patch #2, which is scheduled for next Friday 28th August and will contain Strategic Resources, Diplomatic Advisors, Counter-Offer AI, and Race Leader Types. For more details see the Diplomacy plan blog post.
Major Features:
<*>Diplomacy Screen: The diplomacy screen has been overhauled with new visual effects and race music, which helps give each race its own unique style and lends immersion to our stylistic 2D artwork. We’ve also added the new visual effects and music to the New Game screen so you can check them all out when selecting your race.
<*>Diplomacy Dropdown: The drop-down menu for Diplomacy has been implemented. This gives you a list of all the races in the game (with those you haven't met grayed out) and a favour meter showing how much each one likes you. It also has a button to open diplomatic contact with that race. At the bottom is a reslationship web showing what each race thinks of the others, and whether they have a formal Peace Treaty, Alliance Pact, or are at War. Clicking on each of the race hexes will show only the lines for that race. You can also determine the aggressor in a war by clicking on each side -- One side will show the War line and the other will just show their favour.
<*>Better First Contact: The First Contact event is no longer just a popup notification. We've improved it with a more Master of Orion feel by opening the diplomacy screen and showing you the race’s first greeting. The tone of your first contact will depend on who made the contact; If one of your warships entered the other race’s sensor range, for example, they may greet with you with extreme caution. Having the First Contact Policy technology will improve your first contact, and having an ambassador ship in the fleet will give you a big bonus to initial impressions.
<*>Diplomacy AI / Favour System: The enemy races can now look at your offers and decide whether they’re worth taking using a simple AI. We've also built in a Favour scale that runs from 0 to 100 and goes up if you offer fair deals or down if you offer a poor deal (even if they begrudgingly accept it). We have placeholder text for all the various circumstances that will be fileld out in the next patch (next week). The AI will also tire of repeated contact and will cut off diplomatic contact for 3 turns if you constantly badger it with poor offers or demands.
<*>Treaty: Technology / Money Trading: You can offer money and technologies to a deal and request any technologies from the other race that you don't have.
<*>Treaty: Research: Research treaties grant each race bonus RP/turn equal to 1% of the other's total RP/turn, increasing by 1% every 25 turns up to a maximum of 6%.
<*>Treaty: Trade: Trade Pacts grant each race 0.5BC/turn for each star system owned by the other race, increasing by 0.5BC every 50 turns up to a maximum of 1.5BC. Star systems shared by both races grant double the money.
<*>Treaty: Alliance: Literally just a visual thing right now. This will be used by the War AI in a future patch.
<*>Treaty: Peace: A Peace treaty is an agreement for each race not to attack the other race, like the non-aggression pact in MOO2. It will also automatically end a war if accepted.
<*>Treaty: Sensors: Share your sensor data with the other race, opening their space for travel and vice versa. Also shows each race ships and temporal rifts (untested) in the other race's space.
Minor Features:
<*>Technology Changes: We've added the various treaties as Sociology technologies at the start of the first contact era. As a result, we've re-jiggled the trees around and made a few changes. We've removed the Commerce Station and Work Programme technologies and replaced them with a few new ones. Energy Freighters and Passenger Freighters allow you to use trade routes to send energy or colonists, which we think is a good strategic choice. We've also added two new technologies (Middle Management and Survival Pods) in anticipation of the addition of Planet Leaders and Ship Captains, and added Security Stations to the tech tree.
Bugs fixed / small changes:
<*> The Energy Market building now produces half the money. We intend to do a full balance pass on the market buildings and energy generation in a future update, but for now this was the most obvious change to be made.
<*> Crashed Ships and Ancient Ruins now only give their 100% bonus until excavated, and are then replaced with either a Research Museum or Research Scrapyard that provides a 50% bonus.
<*> Ancient Ruins that yield an Ancient building will also now continue to provide the 50% research boost in addition to their new function.
<*> If you demolish an ancient building, museum or scrapyard, you will no longer be able to rebuild an Artifact Excavation on top of the deposit again to get the 100% bonus back.
<*> The dropdown menu button graphics that disappeared in the last update have been fixed
<*> Fixed a cause of memory leaks and crashes caused by Quad objects.
<*> Fixed a cause of memory leaks and crashes involving the planet reloading graphics objects every time you switch planet to one with a different size. The graphics in question are now pre-cached for all planet sizes.
<*> Changed how scaffolding works under the hood to be more efficient. All small/large buildings now share the same scaffolding object.
<*> Removed Freighters from various parts of the game. This feature was cancelled but the ships could still sometimes show up in your design list.
<*> Molten and Toxic planets can no longer be instantly terraformed via the Services tab. This feature is meant to be reserved for organic planets, with the Genesis Device coming later in development for molten and toxic worlds.
<*> The city grid should no longer be pushed slightly offscreen when running in resolutions other than 1920x1080. Feedback on whether this has worked would be appreciated.
<*> Put in some of the ground work for our upcoming buildings model release. Tested a batch of the buildings successfully in the game engine!
<*> The AI will no longer consider non-combat ships to be threatening simply because they have shields and armour. Ships must have weapons to be considered a threat.
There may be other small changes and bug fixes that are not in the list above.
Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer
V0.8.3.7 Bugfixing and First Contact Patch
Patch Notes for V0.8.3.7 (Build ID: 737508)
While working on Diplomacy Patch #1, we took the time out to fix a number of critical and non-critical bugs and crashes. This patch deploys fixes for those bugs and we've rolled in the first part of the Diplomacy Patch with a new First Contact algorithm, music, and new race effects. The rest of Diplomacy Patch #1 is expected by Friday this week.
We've also timelined out the rest of the entire project and are now aiming to release weekly feature patches from now on as we work toward release. More information about our development schedule will be released in future announcements.
<*>Optimised image loading slightly
<*>Rebuilt the Music system so that all music is loaded on launch and stored in memory to reduce memory leaks during gameplay.
<*>The Planet, Diplomacy and Galaxy screen are all force-preloaded at the start to reduce memory leaks.
<*>The partially translucent race images on the New Game screen have been removed. This screen now uses the standard image and a shader to create the same effect but save memory.
<*>Created new shader effects for each race. These are now used on the diplomacy and New Game screens to give some immersion
<*>Updated all the background images to new high quality images
<*>Built a new Slider options system and added two new sliders for music volume and sound volume to the options menu
<*>Implemented the Better First Contact algorithm, which detects what type of ship made contact and adds or subtracts bonus favour based on whether it's a military ship, ambassador ship etc. This also opens the diplomacy screen with a message depending on how you made contact. (Placeholder messages for now)
<*>Added music to the main screen and diplomacy screens
<*>Implemented a music fade system so that music doesn't change abruptly but fades in or out.
<*>Fixed an aspect ratio bug on the New Game Screen
<*>GameOptions.playmusic no longer disables music. Instead, music volume being 0 achieves this.
<*>Fixed the position and scale of the various windows on the diplomacy screen, which broke when you changed resolution
<*>The position, scale, and shader effect of each of the race images can now be manually tweaked through a txt file for anyone who might want to mod the game.
<*>All diplomacy and first contact messages are now loaded from files in case modders want to change them.
<*>Created a new modular popup window with an optional image in the corner and optional input box, and converted most of the game's popups over to the new system.
<*>Fixed the bug where the resource window is closing when you colonise another planet
<*>Added info about the planet to the colonisation confirm window
<*>Fixed bug where the city tooltip could say "It has 0 research lab" for your capitol city
<*>Fixed bug that allowed soil Enrichment to be applied to the same hex multiple times within a farm
<*>Added text to the Artifact Excavated popup to explain that it will continue to give a 100% boost to RP/turn
<*>Fixed a bug where geothermal power plants always generate double energy as long as one on the planet is on a vent.
<*>Fixed a bug with placing multiple instances of the same building where only the first building of a certain type placed consumed metal.
<*>Fixed a bug where some starbases can only be built once per star system instead of once per planet
<*>Shipyard build queues will now persist through saving and loading the game.
<*>An amber population warning now tells you when you need more food for your population
Cheers,
-- Brendan
Quick Predestination update for the Gamescom 2015 period
Hey guys,
As we discussed in our latest update, Brain and Nerd will be at Gamescom this week thanks to financial support from NI Screen. If you're there, you may find Brendan at the UKIE stall along with other developers from the UK and Ireland and can also reach us at brendan@brainandnerd.com and tina@brainandnerd.com throughout the event.
We had hoped to release the first diplomacy patch before Gamescom, but some unexpected bugs in the diplomacy screen's UI and preparation for Gamescom slowed us down. Deployment of the patch will have to wait until I'm back in the office next week to roll out the update and tackle any new bugs and crashes promptly. We may also be a bit unresponsive this week as we'll be tied up with Gamescom events and business meetings. After that, it's full steam ahead!
I also just wanted to give a quick thanks to those of you picking the game up recently or older players returning for a fresh look since we added trade routes to the game. Getting fresh eyes on the game at this point is extremely helpful, and reading positive feedback or clear bug reports from fresh faces is very reassuring. With your help, we've found the causes of some really old and difficult to replicate bugs.
Cheers,
-- The Brain and Nerd Team
Dev Update: The full plan for Diplomacy in Predestination
Since our last dev update, we’ve released the Trade Routes and System UI overhaul we discussed in our last update and have fixed a truckload of crashes and bugs in other areas of the game. Anyone who’s been getting an OutOfMemoryException crash on saving the game will be happy to know that we’ve managed to solve this problem and tested it with a fully explored galaxy. The next patch will also add the highly requested sound and music volume sliders in the options panel, and we’ve added new graphical effects and race music to the New Game screen to add some much needed immersion.
The main focus of the next patch is on Diplomacy, so I wanted to take some time out to talk about our plans. Diplomacy is a huge part of any 4X game, and one that is often overlooked in favour of combat and economic mechanics, but we want it to be an important part of Predestination. Ideally, a clever player should be able to play a fully diplomatic game without ever being forced into war and combat if they don’t want to. We recently reached out to you for your feedback and ideas on Diplomacy, and in this article I’ll delve into our final design, which has been broken down into four smaller patches. Note that we may take a break between patch 2 and 3 or between patch 3 and 4 to work on other major gameplay systems.
Click on the images below to head over to the Predestination blog and get more details of what's in each of the Diplomacy patches, and check out the video below of each of the race's diplomacy screen with our new subtle visual effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6O2_xhTVYY
Thanks for checking out this month’s main dev update, and as always we really appreciate any feedback or ideas you would like to share with us. If you’re a $20 backer or above and would like a Steam key for the Early Access, please mail earlyaccessrequest@brainandnerd.com with the email address you used to pre-order or on Kickstarter and we’ll send you one. I’d also like to let people know that Tina and I will be at Gamescom next month to show Predestination to some press and other businesses, so we might see you there if you’ll be attending!
Cheers,
— Brendan Drain, Lead Developer
Patch notes for V 0.8.3.0
Patch notes for V 0.8.3.0 (Build ID: 671270)
This major update adds the Trade Route mechanics, overhauls the System UI, and adds a large number of bugfixes and small changes.
Major Feature: Trade Routes
We've added trade routes that allow you to send metal, food, population or energy transferred from one planet or star system to another each turn. You can set up a new trade route from the planet Services panel, select a destination planet, pick a material, and then decide how much of the material you want to send each turn.
<*>Trade Routes are drawn as lines on the galaxy map
<*>Trade route lines change colour based on the trade route's state
<*>Added Show Trade Routes checkbox in the options panel to toggle the trade route lines on and off
<*>Added Send Excess Population checkbox in the options panel. When enabled, trade routes sending population will only send excess population that isn't needed to run the planet's infrastructure.
<*>Replaced Diplomatic Frequencies technology with Trade Route technology and moved Elite Ship Crew up one tier
<*>Added a List of trade routes to the Services tab on the planet screen
<*>Added buttons for each trade route to cycle through resources: Food, Population, Metal, Energy
<*>Added Delete button to each trade route, and increment/decrement buttons
<*>Added a direction indicator arrow to each trade route, and clicking it swaps direction
<*>Implemented trade route mechanics that execute all imports and exports. If a planet is blockaded, don't process imports.
<*>Implemented different states for trade routes: Unsustainable, Expires in 5 turns, Expires in 1 turn, Blockaded, Empty, OK
<*>Added warning notification for trade routes that go offline
<*>Trade routes that are set up with invalid planets are automatically removed. This is good for if a planet is taken over or destroyed.
<*>Enemy ships now blockade planets, shutting down trade routes.
<*>Made it so that intra-system trade routes can't be blockaded
Major Feature: System UI & Fleets
The Star System UI has been overhauled to convey information about the entire star system divided into three tabs (Stats, Friendly Ships, and Other Ships). The Stats tab contains aggregated stats from all planets in this star system, the Friendly Ships tab contains a shortcut to the shipyard and a list of your ships stationed in the system, and the Other Ships tab contains a list of all enemy ships in the system. Fleets no longer overlap the star they're stationed at, and will now be automatically merged if they are going to the same destination.
<*>Added aggregated system stats to the Stats tab
<*>Added all trade routes involving the system to the bottom of the Stats tab
<*>Added Shipyard, Select All and Scrap Ships buttons to the Friendly Ships tab.
<*>Added a list of friendly ships to the friendly ships tab. Left click selects ships, right click shows more info.
<*>Ships are now marked off as sent to their destination and the fleet is only created when the End Turn button is pressed
<*>Fleets stationed at a planet no longer overlap the star and clicking on them now opens the star window at the ship panel instead of the fleet window.
<*>Fleets now automatically combine if they're both en route to the same location and are 0.5ly or less apart
<*>When you send a Fleet somewhere, its speed is now normalised so that the last turn isn't abnormally close to the target star.
<*>Added a list of Enemy Ships to the Other Ships tab, divided up by race
<*>The Planet tooltip now shows how explored the planet is in 10% increments
<*>The stats population/turn, food/turn, metal/turn and energy/turn are now drawn on the planet tooltip.
<*>Added an indicator of whether or not you can trade with a planet to the bottom of planet tooltip.
<*>Added an indicator of planet ownership to the Planet tooltip
<*>Added new Long Range Scans graphics
<*>The star's name is now drawn in system window
Minor Changes:
<*>Removed tooltips from some tabs on the UI that were really self-explanatory
<*>The Planet AI no longer builds farming cities on planets that are not suitable for farming.
<*>The Planet AI no longer builds a starbase on tiny planets with a limit of only one city.
<*>The player now starts with a Damaged Science Vessel again instead of a Damaged Colony Ship
<*>Splinter Colonies can occasionally fail to establish themselves for various reasons. If this happens, it now results in a different message.
<*>The Morale Penalty stat can now also give a planet a positive bonus to morale, which reduces back to 0 at 10 per turn.
<*>Added Show Sensor Range checkbox in the options panel to toggle the sensor sphere graphics
<*>Added Show Star Lines checkbox to toggle the star lines from the galactic plane
<*>Added Show Galaxy Plane checkbox to toggle the entire galaxy plane on and off
<*>Adjusted the size of star names and distance from the star so that they always draw at an appropriate size and position.
<*>Added fade to star names based on distance from the camera.
<*>Added Star Name Fade checkbox in the options panel to toggle the new star fade effect on and off
<*>Right clicking now cancels building placement, infrastructure placement, scouting, oil drilling, and soil enrichment.
<*>The radial menu will no longer appear when right clicking to cancel placement of stuff.
<*>Adjusted the zoom on cities to get closer to the buildings.
<*>Planet Tax now includes money made from Market buildings
<*>The notification for breaking into the Space Colonisation age now appears as an opened window instead of being added to the taskbar.
<*>Changed the Save and Load game code. This may fix the save game crashes some players were having.
<*>Added a Save and Load game retry limit of 3 with 1 second pauses between attempts.
Bugfixes:
<*>Fixed a Planet AI bug that caused it to sometimes (very rarely) forget to build farms and power (oops!)
<*>Fleets now always display the correct number of turns left to go
<*>Fixed a glitch that happened when a fleet that was already en route to one system was selected and pointed toward another
<*>Added the ground work code for a new Disaster system, which will be implemented in a future update.
<*>Fixed a bug where planets couldn't run infrastructure or buildings off imported energy if the planet's energy storage was zero..
<*>Fixed bug with population growth bonuses from breeding programme tech leading to huge growth
<*>Fixed a bug that prevented reusable Survey Ships from exiting the planet to be re-used
<*>Fixed a bug where survey ships weren't regenerated after loading the game if they were scanning a planet, causing a crash when they finished scanning
<*>The auto road algorithm should now correctly go to the nearest city even if it crosses the planetary seam.
<*>Fixed a bug where you couldn't build cities on the seam of planets, which becomes obvious on tiny planets.
<*>Soil Enrichment can now be done on hexes inside existing farms
<*>Right clicking while soil enriching no longer crashes the game, and instead cancels soil enrichment.
<*>Fixed a number of crashes related to clicking at the top left of the screen accidentally clicking on buttons that are disabled.
<*>Fixed a number of windows displaying at the wrong size on scaled down user interfaces
<*>Fixed a display bug that made buildings seem like they weren't built yet after loading the game
<*>Fixed some overlapping text on the planet graphs
<*>Fixed a bug where the taskbar would slide off screen on screen resolutions smaller than 1920x1080
<*>Fixed the position and scale close button on the ship info window when you right click on a ship in the ship window
<*>Fixed Energy Battery, Metal Silo and Food Silo buildings to no longer use power per turn so that they stay online when the power goes out.
