Ancient Ruins and other comments

[Acuaricornio]

Hey FreeOrion team,

Firstly, excellent work and playability on v0.4.4. I've been playing the freeorion builds off-and-on for a few years and this one shows the game's real potential and current enjoyment.

Here are just a few observations from some hours playing (Mac build):

Ancient Ruins - these are great (like the huts in Civilization), but they should be a separate option from monster frequency. I like to play larger maps with max AI (on Maniacal), and every-other-sitrep is an announcement that Death Ray 1, Multi-Spectral Shielding, Dragon's Tooth, Krill Spawner, or the Synthesizer has been found. The human player has to build up the tech and fleet ability to take down the guardian monster, so of course the AI will get more of these things - but it's gotten to the point that around 150-200 turns the AI have serious advantages that the human player can't compete with or has a really hard time to do so. Larger map = more ruins, but maybe the player can have the option to select none/some/many of these things? Or getting at them maybe requires more than just an outpost and xeno-archaeology, or the guardians are tougher. Even greater variance in the rewards might lessen the AI tsunami of death-ray-packing basic ships or asteroid ships by turn 100!

Cloud Spawns - this is just more a curiosity, but I have no idea what these are or how to make it so I can colonize a planet with them.

Production - it takes a bit before you can multi-produce (as in, be producing things simultaneously and on different planets), but I don't quite get why sometimes I have unused production BUT projects queued.

Galaxy creation - Let's say I want to restart a game, unless I change the number of systems I end up with the same map (it seems) as before, Even though I play with "random" galaxies. It'd be swell if the maps randomized more, not that there's a notable difference between 99 and 100, or 599 and 601.

That's it, so far as I can tell, and none of these are major game-killers. Even the Ruins - it does force the player to adopt an aggressive strategy of getting as many ruins as possible, which puts off other projects or pursuits, but that's part of the fun in figuring out how to win.

Looking forward to the next build!

[AndrewW]

Production - it takes a bit before you can multi-produce (as in, be producing things simultaneously and on different planets), but I don't quite get why sometimes I have unused production BUT projects queued.

Check the supply lines, they'll show you where supply may be blocked. An AI fleet somewhere may be causing this.

Galaxy creation - Let's say I want to restart a game, unless I change the number of systems I end up with the same map (it seems) as before, Even though I play with "random" galaxies. It'd be swell if the maps randomized more, not that there's a notable difference between 99 and 100, or 599 and 601.

That's normal. Change the Seed value to create a different map, without adjusting number of planets and such.

[Dilvish]

Ancient Ruins -... every-other-sitrep is an announcement that Death Ray 1, Multi-Spectral Shielding, Dragon's Tooth, Krill Spawner, or the Synthesizer has been found. The human player has to build up the tech and fleet ability to take down the guardian monster, so of course the AI will get more of these things -

Just so you know, since your comment seems to indicate otherwise, the AIs are given no advantages over you in any way whatsoever, and so generally need the same tech, ships, etc. to get and Ancient Ruins reward. Even on the settings that normally give the Ruins a guard though (i.e., not Beginner and not Monsters:None) there is a smallish chance (10% I believe) of them spawning without a guard, and if you're playing against 20 AIs one of them is more likely to find it than you. But they don't just get any access to it that you wouldn't also get if you were the one that found it.

If you want fewer of them you can go into specials.txt and adjust down the spawnrate and/or spawnlimit for "ANCIENT_RUINS_SPECIAL".

[MatGB]

Ancient Ruins - these are great (like the huts in Civilization), but they should be a separate option from monster frequency.

They are, if you want few or none of them, set Specials to Low or None, they're completely independent of Monsters.

But like Dilvish says, the AI gets no advantage on grabbing them, a fleet of Robotic Hull ships with marginal weapons and a bit of armour can take them down relatively early as long as you withdraw for repairs.

Looking forward to the next build!

If you've only been playing the 0.4.4 Release versions, try 0.4.5 Release Candidate 1, it's nearly ready, but we do need playtesting and bughunting before it can be declared the final release. A years work, with quite a lot of improvements, especially in the backend, the Objects Menu is now an incredibly useful tool.

[Vezzra]

...try 0.4.5 Release Candidate 1...

Um, just for the records, this is "just" a pre-release test build, not RC1. Hopefully next Monday builds will be, though.

[Antaran Empire]

I started testing FO latly and like it .

In anicient ruins I found some kind of Bug:
I could build Xenosurrection Lab two times and it appeared again on the building list .
Why is that happen I think it should only be builded one time right ?

[Vezzra]

I could build Xenosurrection Lab two times and it appeared again on the building list .
Why is that happen I think it should only be builded one time right ?

Right. Fixed.