Getting ready for 0.4.6

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defaultuser
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Getting ready for 0.4.6

#1 Post by defaultuser »

I scanned through the Change Log, as I will be starting with the new release once I finish the current game. Most of these I had see in the Test build I'm using, heard about, or could figure out. A few questions:
- Added the Accretion Disc special
- Added the new special Temporal Anomaly
What do these specials do?
- Reworked weapon part refinements, so that instead of multiple parts, techs increase the strength of parts (although getting the increase to take effect requires being in supply range)
I gather that's the new thing where you just build the ship with Mass Driver etc. and the 2, 3, 4 upgrades get applied to existing ships.
-- Drydocks require a ship to be stationary and only repair a proportion of ship structure of the bigger hulls
Does that mean no more moving into a system and getting repaired that same turn? How much of a proportion?
-- No damage control effects work on the turn a combat has taken place except for the Logistic Facilitator flagship, which is substantially reduced
I suppose that applies to Robotic hull and repair techs as drydocks already worked that way.

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MatGB
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#2 Post by MatGB »

defaultuser wrote:I scanned through the Change Log, as I will be starting with the new release once I finish the current game. Most of these I had see in the Test build I'm using, heard about, or could figure out. A few questions:
- Added the Accretion Disc special
- Added the new special Temporal Anomaly
What do these specials do?
The first decreases supply of planets in the system, it's normally found around Black Holes, but sometimes other places including nebula created stars. The latter is weird, when you find it you'll see, it's one of Sloths more, um, interesting additions.
- Reworked weapon part refinements, so that instead of multiple parts, techs increase the strength of parts (although getting the increase to take effect requires being in supply range)
I gather that's the new thing where you just build the ship with Mass Driver etc. and the 2, 3, 4 upgrades get applied to existing ships.
Yup
-- Drydocks require a ship to be stationary and only repair a proportion of ship structure of the bigger hulls
Does that mean no more moving into a system and getting repaired that same turn? How much of a proportion?
Yes, deliberately, and it's fairly high with a high minimum. 25% of current structure with a minimum gain of 30 is the current settings. So a Titan that nearly died will take a few turns to repair, but a Robotic Hull will be up and running the next turn normally. Using current structure was very intentional as it means heavily damaged ships are genuinely withdrawn for a bit.
-- No damage control effects work on the turn a combat has taken place except for the Logistic Facilitator flagship, which is substantially reduced
I suppose that applies to Robotic hull and repair techs as drydocks already worked that way.
[/quote]Yup. Everything except, it appears, the Organic line 2-per-turn self repair, which I completely forgot about. Nanorobotic and Bioadaptive hulls both don't repair in combat and repair 100% of current structure instead of to max, again meaning very nearly dead ships can be vulnerable for a turn or two.
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defaultuser
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#3 Post by defaultuser »

Thanks for the update. Not as big of a change as far as gameplay as I thought it might be. Some of the things obviously haven't made it in, like fighters and carriers.

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Vezzra
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#4 Post by Vezzra »

defaultuser wrote:Some of the things obviously haven't made it in, like fighters and carriers.
Yep, we decided not to include that into 0.4.6, because the AI adjustments for that are substantial and that would have meant a far bigger delay for 0.4.6 than we already had. But it's definitely planned to include it in the next release.

defaultuser
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#5 Post by defaultuser »

I noted that there's now a happiness requirement for drydock repairs. I'm not sure if that was in the change log and I didn't notice (I'll review later). That's another "slow the roll" on invasions.

I had one point where a bunch of ships were getting repaired. Some only received partial repairs so I split the fleet and left those for another turn. The next turn the sit rep showed some ships as having repairs completed and others with partials, but when I went to split again I found that all had been fully repaired. Not sure if that's a case of the robotic hulls finishing off the repairs or what exactly.

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MatGB
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#6 Post by MatGB »

defaultuser wrote:I noted that there's now a happiness requirement for drydock repairs. I'm not sure if that was in the change log and I didn't notice (I'll review later). That's another "slow the roll" on invasions.

I had one point where a bunch of ships were getting repaired. Some only received partial repairs so I split the fleet and left those for another turn. The next turn the sit rep showed some ships as having repairs completed and others with partials, but when I went to split again I found that all had been fully repaired. Not sure if that's a case of the robotic hulls finishing off the repairs or what exactly.
Bit of everything, the Sitreps are triggered in a very early pass through the Effects (when the engine decides which effects are going to do something but before it actually does them), but the actual repairs go later.

Drydock repair is deliberately prioritised to be relatively late in the process, but Fleet Field Repair, Advanced Damage Control and similar can fix things up. Because the sitrep triggering is backend/C++ stuff there's not much can be done by the scripting team but it has been logged as something we'd like to figure out and not have happen.

And yeah, the happiness requirement probably got missed in the changelog, we reworded that entry several times—it is, deliberately, to stop the steamroller of capture/advance/capture, more on that is in the works in various ways, one thing we need to finish is the 'troop pods consume troops' idea.
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defaultuser
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#7 Post by defaultuser »

Small complaint. With new weapons system, when you look at the advanced versions of the technology it only gives you the improvement factor. So like for Plasma Cannon 4:

Improves Plasma Cannon three levels increasing base strength by 9.

As there is no corresponding ship part to look at, you have to go back to Plasma Cannons and then check the upgrade to add those values to come up with the total. Not a huge deal, but why didn't it just say "total of 18" or whatever?

I was going to complain about Eaxaw attack not being right, but I see:

Great Pilots: Base damage per ship weapon increased by two levels.

Not the old 150% attack. PC 4 ends up attack 24 for Eaxaw, so the "two levels" total six. I guess you go back to the Research for the weapon and see that a "level" for PC is three, so they get a six add. The old system would have been attack 27 for each PC at level 4.

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MatGB
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#8 Post by MatGB »

It doesn't give the total because I wasn't sure how to word it (this is entirely my wording and Geoff did say it wasn't clear enough, I forgot to improve it, sorry) and great pilots, etc modifies it further.

The piloting trait was changed for balance reasons, if we're going to have things like the Misiorla with Ultimate Pilots, anything using a percentage increase has the potential to be very overpowered (which Great and Ultimate definitely were, especially with Death Rays, shields have been toned down as well, I forget when that happened).

Plus, added bonus, if you're using a species with a piloting trait, plasma3 isn't identical to DR1 anymore, there's more variety.

It definitely needs an improvement in wording though—but putting in a base total for the weapon strikes me as potentially a problem given the number of modifiers we currently have, let alone potential extras.
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Doc Tectonic
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#9 Post by Doc Tectonic »

I think just consistently calling it "base damage" would be clear. That implies that there are other effects that could change the total, but that the number listed in the pedia entry is where it's starting from. Which is an accurate reflection of what's going on in code.

So, for example, the description for Plasma Cannon 2 would say:
"Improves Plasma Cannon strength by one level, increasing base damage from 9 to 12."

I would also add the increase per level to the description for the basic tech, so Plasma Cannon 1 goes:
"base damage: 9
shots per attack: 1
damage per level: +3"

I think most players would end up with a good understanding of how things work from that phrasing.

---

Side note: the weapon damage progression goes:
MD: 3 4 5 6
L: 5 7 9 11
PC: 9 12 15 18
DR: 15 20 25 30

Which can be formulated as 1/2/3/5 points per level, with all of them starting at level 3.
...except for Lasers, which are 1 point less. Is that intentional, or an oversight?

defaultuser
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#10 Post by defaultuser »

Sounds good. It was a very minor point, there was no trouble figuring it out, just took a bit of extra clicking around. More feedback than anything.

So far the game is very similar to the test version I was using, as things like starlane bore and differential troops are already in that. Really the changes to the drydocks are the biggest to get used to at this point. One of the old favorite tricks of zipping out a world with drydock to ambush AI fleets and back in for instant repair doesn't work as well.

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mem359
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#11 Post by mem359 »

Maybe the weapon rewording can get done for 0.4.7.

I've attached a modified Resources/default/stringtables/en.txt file.
I figured I should get feedback if the wording is satisfactory, before putting in the effort to use Google translate to modify the other 11 language files (ugh).

(Then I can see if I actually understand the GitHub commit and pull request procedures.)
Attachments
en.txt
English scriptable file (Pedia weapon description changes)
(493.89 KiB) Downloaded 104 times

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MatGB
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#12 Post by MatGB »

I can't open that, I get told it's a BIN file and Okular then gives me a blank page.

But yeah, if you fancy rewording the mess I made of explaining the refinements this week is the perfect time: don't bother with translations, Ouaz does the French and the rest are rarely maintained (if anyone wants to volunteer to take a translation on there're lots of hints and tips available).

Also, wrong thread ;-)
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#13 Post by mem359 »

MatGB wrote:Also, wrong thread ;-)
The discussion link for issue 996 led here. https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/issues/996

I suppose the better option would have been to start a new thread, and link to the discussion here.
(I can see why Vezzra wants to prevent the 0.4.7 thread from spiraling out of control.)

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Vezzra
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Re: Getting ready for 0.4.6

#14 Post by Vezzra »

mem359 wrote:(I can see why Vezzra wants to prevent the 0.4.7 thread from spiraling out of control.)
:mrgreen:

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