Thoughts on latest release...

[ovarwa]

Hi,

I last tried out FreeOrion two years ago, and have been playing with the latest stable release. AI set to Aggressive. (Not sure Maniacal is harder, because suicidal aggression maybe isn't so awesome.)

Some thoughts about my experience...

* Periodically crashes on Windows 7. I even got a BSoD.

* Uses most of my cpu (2c/4t Sandy Bridge)

* The AI seems smarter, or the game more difficult. But it isn't consistently clever....

** Cluster map is easier than Random, and the topology more satisfying; Random seems to have many empty sectors.

** When the AI considers something a high priority, it will wisely congregate ships there. Yay! But then it sends out ships in onesy twosies to their deaths at lower priority targets, because it knows it needs to do *something* but has no idea either going big or not going at all.

** The AI seems to know not to send an inferior force to a sector that already has a greatly superior enemy force. But it has no sense of history, and makes no use of its ability to see my detection range: If I leave the sector empty, it will repeatedly send a ship or two there, and I can move a fleet to the sector to wipe it out.

** When I have a large fleet besieging an enemy system with heavy industry, it builds things like scouts and outposts rather than ships with weapons that can abrade my force. If I plunk a colony down on an unoccupied planet of that system, it also builds lots of troop ships, which are also immediately destroyed without inflicting any damage.

* I like the change to weapons tech: Mass Drivers become more interesting, and building ships early is much less of a penalty since Mass Driver 4 (or Laser 4, etc) will eventually apply to all of them.

* Asteroid Hulls are not nearly as awesome as they used to be. I don't know if something in the tech tree changed, or if I feel much more of a need to get some half-decent ships out before I can make my way up the tech tree and produce asteroid processors, etc. I'm no longer sure that asteroid ships are all that great anymore.

* I still don't see why anyone would bother with Organic Hulls.

* The entry level Robotic Hull is surprisingly good! It might have always been that way. The self-repair feature is particularly nice. Two years ago, I prioritized hulls over armor or weaponry (although the asteroid path provides very good armor along the way), but now I like the reverse: Building a fleet of lesser ships now and using research to improve my economy seems a better choice in a galaxy filled with marauding monsters and antagonistic AIs. There's always time to build better ships later.

* This was probably always true: Because each weapon is aimed randomly, a larger fleet of smaller ships isn't necessarily worse than a smaller fleet of bigger ships. There is a production penalty for the former, but there are also advantages: You can split the fleet more ways, for different missions; you can build up your fleet over time; Basic Damage Control heals more damage.

* You might as well restart if you begin with a Drone Factory too close to your home system.

* Fractal Hulls are very good. But Fleet Damage Control or system facilities are needed. Not quite as many slots as a Scattered Asteroid Hull but faster to research, more fuel and just plain twice as fast.

* Shields are too expensive. (If they were better, Fractal would be a much harder choice.)

* Trith are a surprisingly good race. I'm not saying they are awesome.

* Is it my imagination or has the Psionics+ tech tree been utterly nerfed? (No opinion about the merits.)

* Gyasche (sp?) get worse as the game progresses: Bad troops and bad pilots more than absorb their production and research advantages, and other species can eventually catch up on tech.

* Starting with great research continues to be great, since the tech tree offers much better static bonuses for Industry than for Research.

* Broad-based planet compatibility continues to feel meh: Converting two Hostile types to Poor? Meh. OTOH, Narrow is painful: Converting two Adequate to Hostile? Ouch.

* Still, species creation is not at all points-based, but obviously fine-tuned based on experience.

* I love the species description for Humans. The stats are totally bland, though. I suppose someone needs to be average.

* I haven't tried it yet, but suspect that the AI will be utterly helpless once a human player starts punching new starlines into the AI's undefended rear.

* It would be nice to have a tech that suppressed weak wandering monsters within supply range. Small krill patrol eventually because a boring waste of clicks.

* The production window should only show systems in which you can produce something. Cycling through systems that have nothing in them is worse than worthless in that context.

* I'd love a keyboard shortcut to close the civilopedia.

All for now. Other than the crashes, I'm enjoying the game. Far less chrome than Civ6, but most of that chrome is a big waste that keeps the game from running on my system, and the AI is bad, and it won't run on Intel graphics. Why spend $60 or more to beta test Firaxis' game when I can try out yours?

Thanks,

Ken

[UrshMost]

I use windows 7, and also used to get the occasional BSOD, but then I turned off ALL overclocking and it went away completely. Over a year later and no bluescreens in the game.

I was using a mild cpu (AMD) and ram speed overclocks that weren't causing issues with anything else. I suspect in my case it was the ram, but didn't test conclusively.

[defaultuser]

Also Win 7, and I usually don't get crashes. I do sometimes have a problem with trying to load a saved game or something when Firefox has been running a while and soaking up resources. Then I have to reboot and get FreeOrion loaded up first.

I've always been a fan of robotic hulls. If I have the research, I will move from them to self-grav and titanic.

With Gysache, you really need to capture some species, either native or AI, that's better.

[MatGB]

I last tried out FreeOrion two years ago, and have been playing with the latest stable release. AI set to Aggressive. (Not sure Maniacal is harder, because suicidal aggression maybe isn't so awesome.)

Some thoughts about my experience...

Cool: AI aggression level isn't meant to be a "difficulty" level apart from Beginner, but it can seem that way, and I sort of concur, I think I'd prefer to have some maniacal in a galaxy of mostly Aggressive or Typical, but it works for now. I'm going to clip points I can't respond to: for crashes &c please do open a Github issue with a zip of the log files, my Win7 laptop died but we definitely want the game to be playable there.

* Uses most of my cpu (2c/4t Sandy Bridge)

Yeah, it is/can be intensive, especially if you don't have a graphics card: try turning off some of the graphics options like the dust clouds and background stars, can help if it gets bad.

* The AI seems smarter, or the game more difficult. But it isn't consistently clever....

All true: if you last played two years ago IIRC the AI adaptive ship design rewrite is newer than this, and while that can be funny at times it is interesting to see them respond to different design choices you make.

** Cluster map is easier than Random, and the topology more satisfying; Random seems to have many empty sectors.

Random isn't actually a map type, it merely selects one of the other types at random so depending on what it selects you could be getting anything: personally I mostly play the Irregular layout (which is new, the old algorithm called Irregular is now "Box"). Some work was done to reduce large gaps for layouts, which also appears to have made Clusters a lot better.

-snipping AI stuff, I mostly agree with observations but I don't/can't write AI code-

* I like the change to weapons tech: Mass Drivers become more interesting, and building ships early is much less of a penalty since Mass Driver 4 (or Laser 4, etc) will eventually apply to all of them.

Yes, I think this is one of my favourite improvements of late, rushing to get a higher MD tech early is less important and you don't feel like you're wasting PP if you queue a warship in the first few turns, far superior.

* Asteroid Hulls are not nearly as awesome as they used to be. I don't know if something in the tech tree changed, or if I feel much more of a need to get some half-decent ships out before I can make my way up the tech tree and produce asteroid processors, etc. I'm no longer sure that asteroid ships are all that great anymore.

There have been some changes, they were one of the most overpowered lines and we introduced a series of nerfs to, hopefully, bring them into line. It's arguable they're currently slightly underpowered as a line, although the Heavy and Scattered hulls are still amongst the best, but that is/will be changing in the next Release (and test releases from very soon) as they have more internal slots and the new Fighters features use them more.

I plan/hope to rebalance ship costs after Fighters is bedded in, but that's a hope not a plan at the moment, it's not worth doing anything beforehand because, well, wasted work.

* I still don't see why anyone would bother with Organic Hulls.

Stealth.

My favourite games are always when I rush organics and run around hidden from the enemy. But stealth-as-a-strategy is currently underwhelming and a lot more work is needed to make it interesting/viable, so yeah, Organics are currently a big hit and miss. But stealth improves them, as will Fighters (all those lovely internal slots).

* The entry level Robotic Hull is surprisingly good! It might have always been that way. The self-repair feature is particularly nice. Two years ago, I prioritized hulls over armor or weaponry (although the asteroid path provides very good armor along the way), but now I like the reverse: Building a fleet of lesser ships now and using research to improve my economy seems a better choice in a galaxy filled with marauding monsters and antagonistic AIs. There's always time to build better ships later.

My first major patch was to rebalance hull costs, Robotics were always good but overcosted, now they're possibly a little bit too cheap (but not by much), it was about 2 years ago but not sure exactly when. They always had self repair though, that's actually been toned down a bit recently

* This was probably always true: Because each weapon is aimed randomly, a larger fleet of smaller ships isn't necessarily worse than a smaller fleet of bigger ships. There is a production penalty for the former, but there are also advantages: You can split the fleet more ways, for different missions; you can build up your fleet over time; Basic Damage Control heals more damage.

Agreed, but...

If I've got 200 structure in two ships and you've got 200 structure in 10 ships, my ships will likely both survive the first of the three rounds of combat, you start losing ships almost immediately. My firepower remains the same, yours is reduced.

I currently think the combat mechanics and the upkeep mechanics favour large hulls, but we have plans (Influence, not for next Release but the one after) to change this and I really look forward to it as I liked mixed fleets.

* You might as well restart if you begin with a Drone Factory too close to your home system.

I think we have different definitions of "too close" It currently can't spwan within 3 jumps of a player's start, arguably that could/should be increased, if you want to try it then editing this line
https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... ts.inf#L44
in your default folder will do the trick.

* Fractal Hulls are very good. But Fleet Damage Control or system facilities are needed. Not quite as many slots as a Scattered Asteroid Hull but faster to research, more fuel and just plain twice as fast.

Yup. Toned them down a bit before release and they're still OTT. But they lose power with Fighters significantly, as they also will as we expand the number of internal parts available. I may have to reduce their cost a bit at some point, especially when damage control parts are introduuced.

* Shields are too expensive. (If they were better, Fractal would be a much harder choice.)

Possibly: I reduced their effect and their cost fairly substantially in the last cycle, it's possible they're still overcosted but while most players, including the AI, think they're worth using then it's hard to be sure.

I like playing with shieldless ships, especially using engines instead.

* Trith are a surprisingly good race. I'm not saying they are awesome.

Telepathic Detection is another of my favourite additions. But yeah, if you use Camps effectively they can be awesome.

* Is it my imagination or has the Psionics+ tech tree been utterly nerfed? (No opinion about the merits.)

I don't recall any changes to it since Psychogenic Domination was made into a focus, might be wrong but I think you're imagining things: doing more with psionics is definitely a plan tho.

* Gyasche (sp?) get worse as the game progresses: Bad troops and bad pilots more than absorb their production and research advantages, and other species can eventually catch up on tech.

Yup. Bad troops in particular is a major nerf, for all species that have it, they absolutely need a good native to complement them early, or to pick their AI target very wisely.

Having said that, they still end up being my most populous species by the end of most games, their bonuses are so good, as long as you have other/better shipbuilders they colonise heavily.

* Starting with great research continues to be great, since the tech tree offers much better static bonuses for Industry than for Research.
* Broad-based planet compatibility continues to feel meh: Converting two Hostile types to Poor? Meh. OTOH, Narrow is painful: Converting two Adequate to Hostile? Ouch.

Agreed. Both need work.

* Still, species creation is not at all points-based, but obviously fine-tuned based on experience.

Yup, lots of input on here, more needs doing but it's a lot better than it was. So many different variables (which is good) means you can't just assign a value to them all, different combinations are very effective: Egassem for example are good because the combination of good supply, industry and attack troops is awesome, take any of them out they suffer, make the galaxy huge and sparsely populated and they're in real trouble.

* I love the species description for Humans. The stats are totally bland, though. I suppose someone needs to be average.

Thank you, I got the idea from a series of Tumblr posts but I am really proud of that chunk of text, it really captures a different take on things.

But yeah, Humans are deliberately exactly average, need a basepoint species. Some advantages tho: they start on and prefer research unlike, for example, Gysache, giving them a boost and they have no disadvantages. They also have the tag "STYLISH". This does nothing. Anywhere. But it's cool. Plus, no advantages means no disadvantages, currently having average attack troops is an advantage

* I haven't tried it yet, but suspect that the AI will be utterly helpless once a human player starts punching new starlines into the AI's undefended rear.

Yup, they have little to no idea about topography anyway, the Bore and Nexus probably need some more balancing at some point.

* It would be nice to have a tech that suppressed weak wandering monsters within supply range. Small krill patrol eventually because a boring waste of clicks.

Nah. We need to have more interesting things to need to supress within your empire.

Rebellions and Pirates as well as Krill

* The production window should only show systems in which you can produce something. Cycling through systems that have nothing in them is worse than worthless in that context.

It's been useless for so long I forgot you could even do it to be honest, so yeah, agreed, if in ProdWnd you should only cycle your systems.

* I'd love a keyboard shortcut to close the civilopedia.

Esc does it in the main window, but not in ProdWnd. Unfortunately Esc closes the Sitrep window first, which I always keep open, I'm guessing that can be changed.

Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated: once you've settled in, trying a recent Test release, especially once Fighters are in, will be fun, we'll need a LOT of feedback for Fighters as we get them right.

[defaultuser]

My decision for small (robotic hull) versus large (self-grav and titanic) often rests with my research capabilities. If I'm playing a bad research species and can't rectify that early, I don't want to waste the points. I'd rather keep boosting growth and production to keep churning those small ships out by the box-load.

[ovarwa]

Hi,

Random isn't actually a map type, it merely selects one of the other types at random so depending on what it selects you could be getting anything: personally I mostly play the Irregular layout (which is new, the old algorithm called Irregular is now "Box"). Some work was done to reduce large gaps for layouts, which also appears to have made Clusters a lot better.

Hmm. Maybe I just kept getting something other than clusters. The Random maps I got were all similar.

-snipping AI stuff, I mostly agree with observations but I don't/can't write AI code-

Someone probably is!

* Asteroid Hulls are not nearly as awesome as they used to be. I don't know if something in the tech tree changed, or if I feel much more of a need to get some half-decent ships out before I can make my way up the tech tree and produce asteroid processors, etc. I'm no longer sure that asteroid ships are all that great anymore.

There have been some changes, they were one of the most overpowered lines and we introduced a series of nerfs to, hopefully, bring them into line. It's arguable they're currently slightly underpowered as a line, although the Heavy and Scattered hulls are still amongst the best, but that is/will be changing in the next Release (and test releases from very soon) as they have more internal slots and the new Fighters features use them more.

They definitely were overpowered. Two years ago, I was happy to always ignore the other options.

Now, they are quite underpowered. This might change in the future, due to tweaks and the upcoming Fighter stuff. Nothing much I can say about that. But today, I don't think I agree that Heavy and Scattered are among the best. I'd rather invest those RPs in either the robotic or energy path. I'd feel differently if I only needed an ordinary Asteroid Processor, and the good armor tech cost much less than 1.6K rp. Or maybe if they weren't so *slow*.

* I still don't see why anyone would bother with Organic Hulls.

Stealth.

My favourite games are always when I rush organics and run around hidden from the enemy. But stealth-as-a-strategy is currently underwhelming and a lot more work is needed to make it interesting/viable, so yeah, Organics are currently a big hit and miss. But stealth improves them, as will Fighters (all those lovely internal slots)

*lol* I haven't played all that much, and I'm still learning about the need for Stealth and Detection. Especially the latter. Last game I played, I was all set to colonize a system and then a galactic storm thing made the planet undetectable for a long time. Later on that game, I wiped out an enemy fleet that couldn't fire back.

My first major patch was to rebalance hull costs, Robotics were always good but overcosted, now they're possibly a little bit too cheap (but not by much), it was about 2 years ago but not sure exactly when. They always had self repair though, that's actually been toned down a bit recently

I remember the self-repair. I just didn't care, because I loved the asteroids too much.

Agreed, but...

If I've got 200 structure in two ships and you've got 200 structure in 10 ships, my ships will likely both survive the first of the three rounds of combat, you start losing ships almost immediately. My firepower remains the same, yours is reduced.

Yes, the two ships are somewhat better in that regard. Of course, a bit of really bad luck is much more problematic for two ships (though obviously not one ), and even with only a little bad luck, losing one ship earlier than expected is a problem. The amount of damage these fleets do also comes into play, as does the amount of damage each weapon inflicts.

The two big ships definitely win when it comes to shields, since you only have to pay for them twice.

All things being equal, I'd probably prefer the 2 ships to the 10. But they aren't equal: Decent small ships are available almost immediately. No large ships are available without significant investment in RP and then DP for special facilities. The need to get ships out early, I find, overwhelms the desire to be a bit more efficient, and then my fleet has more stuff than my next door neighbor.

It's a tradeoff, one of the ones that actually matter.

I currently think the combat mechanics and the upkeep mechanics favour large hulls, but we have plans (Influence, not for next Release but the one after) to change this and I really look forward to it as I liked mixed fleets.

I like the idea of mixed fleets. I also think the game mechanics *should* favor ships that are further along the tech path, whether large or small. Because if not, why research them? Right now those ships tend to be bigger, so favoring these ships is fine by me. Attaching maintenance modifiers to each hull type would definitely help, though: It's currently weird that creating an invasion force of drop ships suddenly adds 10 or 20 hulls to the roster.

It would also be nifty to see more differentiation of the hull paths. Like, maybe asteroid ships get intrinsic damage reduction because pounding rock into more rock isn't as debilitating as wrecking sophisticated tech, but a robotic ship in a fleet has the ability to take a hit for some other ship that is less able to handle it, because a robot ship doesn't care about its own survival, per se. Or something, like different species getting benefits from different hull types, similar to Robotic Species with Robotic Hulls.

(BTW, a bit of chrome would help the game, I think. Just a bit, to make different things really feel different.)

* You might as well restart if you begin with a Drone Factory too close to your home system.

I think we have different definitions of "too close" It currently can't spwan within 3 jumps of a player's start, arguably that could/should be increased, if you want to try it then editing this line
https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... ts.inf#L44
in your default folder will do the trick.

I had one 5 or 6 away. It was totally spamming everything. Drones everywhere. Except where there were kraken, from the kraken nest 8 to 10 away.

* Fractal Hulls are very good. But Fleet Damage Control or system facilities are needed. Not quite as many slots as a Scattered Asteroid Hull but faster to research, more fuel and just plain twice as fast.

Yup. Toned them down a bit before release and they're still OTT. But they lose power with Fighters significantly, as they also will as we expand the number of internal parts available. I may have to reduce their cost a bit at some point, especially when damage control parts are introduuced.

Yes, a worthy selection of internal parts will definitely make the Fractal Hull less powerful. The trick, of course, is keeping it from becoming worthless. Even a single must-have internal part can utterly ruin the hull.

* Shields are too expensive. (If they were better, Fractal would be a much harder choice.)

Possibly: I reduced their effect and their cost fairly substantially in the last cycle, it's possible they're still overcosted but while most players, including the AI, think they're worth using then it's hard to be sure.

I like playing with shieldless ships, especially using engines instead.

Sure, because speed is great! I love the idea of shields, but the research path is expensive and could be used to research something else, armor is very cheap and shields are very expensive. A basic roboship costs around 100DP; with shields it costs around 150DP. Most of the time, I'd rather have the 3 than the 2.

Especially since I've noticed that shields sometimes don't work at all.

(Of course, if I send in a fleet of 20 of these things with Robotic Shields, as a Robotic species, we might have to revisit our conversation about the efficacy of small vs large hulls!)

* Trith are a surprisingly good race. I'm not saying they are awesome.

Telepathic Detection is another of my favourite additions. But yeah, if you use Camps effectively they can be awesome.

I think what makes them work is the big, immediate population boost from Self-Sustaining; they start the game running. (I didn't quite notice exactly what TD was doing.)

Yup. Bad troops in particular is a major nerf, for all species that have it, they absolutely need a good native to complement them early, or to pick their AI target very wisely.

Having said that, they still end up being my most populous species by the end of most games, their bonuses are so good, as long as you have other/better shipbuilders they colonise heavily.

I should mention that I turned off natives. One thing about the game that I did not like 2 years ago and still don't like is that once you have a new species, that species is every bit as much a part of your empire as your original species, resulting in eventual sameness. Unless, of course, you're Xenophobic. I really dislike this. I would prefer starting species to matter intensely throughout the game, with bonuses and penalties that stick to the empire no matter what. Or at least for species not your own to have penalties.

Egassem for example are good because the combination of good supply, industry and attack troops is awesome, take any of them out they suffer, make the galaxy huge and sparsely populated and they're in real trouble.

I notice they have been tweaked!

* It would be nice to have a tech that suppressed weak wandering monsters within supply range. Small krill patrol eventually because a boring waste of clicks.

Nah. We need to have more interesting things to need to supress within your empire.

Rebellions and Pirates as well as Krill

More interesting things is fine. The problem is that suppressing small krill eventually becomes clicking for its own sake. A mid-game tech or building that kept out the little stuff means that when a little red whatever does appear, it's because something interesting is happening rather than a tedious clickfest for pest control.

* The production window should only show systems in which you can produce something. Cycling through systems that have nothing in them is worse than worthless in that context.

It's been useless for so long I forgot you could even do it to be honest, so yeah, agreed, if in ProdWnd you should only cycle your systems.

* I'd love a keyboard shortcut to close the civilopedia.

Esc does it in the main window, but not in ProdWnd. Unfortunately Esc closes the Sitrep window first, which I always keep open, I'm guessing that can be changed.

I'm sensitive to clicks because I have clicked too much. I'd be very happy if I could build a ship from the ship screen, with a popup that then listed which systems I could build it in; or maybe as good, if the production screen allowed me to cycle through systems with shipyards. I'd be very happy if the production screen allowed me to cycle through my disjointed supply networks that were wasting production.

Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated: once you've settled in, trying a recent Test release, especially once Fighters are in, will be fun, we'll need a LOT of feedback for Fighters as we get them right.

Can't promise. My clicks really are limited. I admit suspicion regarding Fighters: In any game I have seen that have special 'fighter' units, they are either much better or much worse than normal units. Sometimes this is by design: In a WW2 game, aircraft carriers ought to be awesome, and air superiority (so therefore fighters) critical, with battleships relatively obsolete. But in a game where going with (space-) carriers is supposed to be just as good as going with (space-) battleships... trickier.

Thanks for the response! Everyone loves positive feedback but some folks take exception to anything less than gushing perfection.

Anyway,

Ken

[MatGB]

Oh, your caution re Fighters is a good concern and one we're aware of, we really want there to be some sort of rock/paper/scissors effect on ship designs—currently most fighters are low powered per shot but ignore shields, meaning that shields become less useful overall, one of my big projects next few months is basically going to be making fighters/carriers cool, but neither too powerful nor pointless.

Absolutely guarantee we'll get it wrong but it'll get lots of tweaking until it is right, definitely don't want them to be the dominant paradigm.

Self Sustaining is probably overpowered, I want to redo the whole growth tech line for balance and have different techs for different metabolisms, I like that self sustaining gives an early boost, I don't like that near the end it's basically three free growth special boosts and all other techs apply. But it's not a priority. Also, if playing with natives on, the Trith lose power, even having natives nearby causes them Pain! and you lost a lot of the bonus.

It's a design intent that empires should, in general, become multicultural, but I agree it currently isn't differentiated enough at various stages. Getting the balance right there is harder, the ability to turn off natives obviously helps for those that prefer the other way, I also hope at some point we can have some sort of government type system: plus, there are plans for Influence costs for multiple species, and we've already started using Happiness in a limited way to stop newly conquered planets being too helpful: we want more there but keeping the AI up to date can be a challenge.

And yeah, at one point last cycle Egassem got so much of a boost that they could be unstoppable, going from worst species pick to best, now I think they're one of the best but different to play in a fun way, more will happen...

One thing that might be useful to you: the Objects menu allows you to queue production from the main screen, right click on a planet you own and it gives you options, it's a limited (and new) feature and I mostly use it for terraforming/gaia decisions (I add columns), but it can massively reduce cycling through things.

And yeah, I don't get open source projects that get annoyed by very constructive feedback while they're in alpha or early beta, that's surely the point? My playstyle is massively different to many people, feedback from lots of players that's constructive is very helpful, always.

[defaultuser]

I don't know that I have tried Trith yet with 0.4.6. Did the tone down the self-sustaining aspect?

[ovarwa]

Hi,

Self-sustaining is really good, but the two things that mitigate against it are that a) Eventually, anyone can grab all the specials, and then be equal, and b) The only self-sustaining species is *also* saddled with Xenophobic and Narrow Range, which make the entire package balanced.

Anyway,

Ken

[ovarwa]

Hi,

Self Sustaining is probably overpowered, I want to redo the whole growth tech line for balance and have different techs for different metabolisms, I like that self sustaining gives an early boost, I don't like that near the end it's basically three free growth special boosts and all other techs apply. But it's not a priority. Also, if playing with natives on, the Trith lose power, even having natives nearby causes them Pain! and you lost a lot of the bonus.

Absolutely! If there are natives around, Trith need to convert them into production as fast as possible. Self-sustaining isn't overpowered in combination with Xenophobic and Narrow Range, I think.

It's a design intent that empires should, in general, become multicultural, but I agree it currently isn't differentiated enough at various stages.

I understand that it's intentional. I just think the intention is misplaced.

One feature of MOO2 is that the stock species were heavily flavored, and they played somewhat differently throughout the game. Klackons != Psilons != Elerians! Most species had attributes that pertained to the faction as a whole, so the distinction mattered even when players could start having mixed colonies, say, to take advantage of Subterranean.

FreeOrion is already short on chrome: Nothing about the Human play experience makes me feel like I'm playing a Relentless Pursuit Predator, for example; playing Cray in no way gives me a playful robot sensation. So anything that differentiates one faction from another is *good*. Trith are a win because Trith must be played as Trith throughout the game, and that play matches the species technical attributes: This is my idea of great design.

Even if a faction become multi-cultural, a human empire should feel *different* from a Gyashe empire even at the end of the game. If both empires eventually become mostly Gyasche for the bonuses with a bunch of Human worlds for decent pilots, I see this as a design failure.

That's just me though.

(Games like CivX for X < 5 tend to have relatively homogeneous faction types, but they get their flavor elsewhere. And probably the best game in the series, SMAC, is *strongly* factioned. Insert smac fan gushing here. )

Getting the balance right there is harder, the ability to turn off natives obviously helps for those that prefer the other way, I also hope at some point we can have some sort of government type system: plus, there are plans for Influence costs for multiple species, and we've already started using Happiness in a limited way to stop newly conquered planets being too helpful: we want more there but keeping the AI up to date can be a challenge.

*grin* Steady improvement and development is good. Every 5 years, the civ series utterly changes the mechanics and the AI starts once again from zero. :/

One thing that might be useful to you: the Objects menu allows you to queue production from the main screen, right click on a planet you own and it gives you options, it's a limited (and new) feature and I mostly use it for terraforming/gaia decisions (I add columns), but it can massively reduce cycling through things.

Hmm. I'll try it.


Thanks again,

Ken

[EricF]

I'm using WinXP Pro and I have never seen the game crash. No lock ups no BSoD.
Maybe I've just been lucky.

Even though a lot of work has been done to speed up the game there still remains room for improvement.
I have 3 Gigs of RAM plus a Gig of RAM on my video card.
I'm only on about turn 150 on my current game (200 stars, 4 AI) and I only have about 30 ships, but the turns take an average of about 2.5 minutes to process. That's from time I hit the 'Turn' button until the 'Turn' button is no longer greyed out. Not unbearable, but still a little annoying.

Not sure how fair the comparison is, but also currently in the middle of a SotS game (300 stars 7 AI). It is turn 250 and I have about 300 ships, not counting a couple hundred freighters, and turns only take about 30 seconds to process.

If any 'Chrome' is added to the game that increases the game turn times it may become unplayable for me.
So Chrome < Playability

Shields. Never use them until I get the very large hulls. However, if you play a Robotic race Robotic Shield Interface can be very good.

Scattered Asteroid hull still one of the best in my opinion. Slow, but has a lot of internal slots that you can fill with engines. And has a natural 3 shielding.

I've only tried the Fractal path a few times. Very efficient from a cost standpoint. Of course if you don't have any Blue stars around it makes them moot. And Blue stars tend to be rare.

[Geoff the Medio]

...turns take an average of about 2.5 minutes to process.

Could you post log files from immediately after starting the program, loading a save, pressing turn and having to wait ~2+ min for the update to complete?

[EricF]

...turns take an average of about 2.5 minutes to process.

Could you post log files from immediately after starting the program

Would you like a clean log file? I mean do you want me to upload the ones I have now or should I delete the ones that are there and then restart the game and play a turn and submit those logs?

loading a save, pressing turn and having to wait ~2+ min for the update to complete?

Yes, 2+ minutes from the time I hit the turn button until the turn button becomes available again.

[Geoff the Medio]

I mean do you want me to upload the ones I have now or should I delete the ones that are there and then restart the game and play a turn and submit those logs?

Please follow the instructions in the previous post, which were a request, not a question about what you previously did...

...post log files from immediately after starting the program, loading a save, pressing turn and having to wait ~2+ min...

If you start the program, it should erase the previous client / server log files, and any AI logs up to the number needed for the game you load.

[EricF]

OK, sorry, I misunderstood you.
Didn't know it made new logs.

Logs from just starting game.
This is the only log when just starting

freeorion.log

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