Notes on 5642

[qsswin]

The first hundred turns:

1. The "AI Aggression" drop-down menu should probably default to "typical" -- I almost started a game with maniacal AI :gulp:
2. It's something very minor, but the exclamation mark for unused research/production really does not fit in with the other icons on the bar in terms of art style
3. I don't know in what revision this started happening (I haven't actually started a game in a long while), but the Windows mouse cursor is now on top of the in-game one, which is nice except that it means the in-game one leaves "trails" behind it.
4. Things happen in the early game! I was rushing to conquer a snowflake nest when suddenly another empire rushed in and stole it from me, so I retaliated with more troops to bring in superior force.
(5. I really need to remember to disable Super Testers -- the empire that started with them had Mark VII before turn 20, I think.) -- solved in svn
6. I love that there is finally a way to look at the pedia entry for species from the sidebar!
7. I was kind of opposed at first to swapping the palette for in-progress techs/productions, but it is wonderful, especially for showing buildings being built on the sidebar.
8. The Robotic hull is very bad for its cost and size, IMO, especially since an organic hull has roughly similar RP costs.
9. Also, it seems that if the research time on a tech is too large, it jumps to "never" instead of the proper number.

The AI completely steamrolled me (and probably would have even if there had not been a Super Tester as a starting race. I played a 63-star 4-empire game, and that is probably a bit too cramped for a less aggressive strategy that I started with. I used the Gyisache, which helped really advance technologically but I neglected production -- that was a mistake! After the utter devastation of my empire, leaving me with two systems, I sent out an exobot colony ship that I had finished right before the invasion, set up a colony and got conquered. Oddly, one of my almost-undefended systems has not been attacked (after the invasion, I started following the AI's example and building base-type hulls with just shields inside them, which were remarkably good at slowing down attackers and letting my planetary defenses blast them, but I had nothing there earlier.) My other system was my home system and had two good EP planets. And that's where I'm holding at turn 100 -- with a planet with slowly expanding defenses and a system armed to the teeth with organic hulls.

More things:
10. The hyperspatial dam is unlocked by both n-dimensional assembly and zero-point generation, but NDA is a prerequisite of ZPG.

[eleazar]

I'm pretty happy to see the AI demolishing reasonably experienced players. Go Dilvish!

[Geoff the Medio]

3. I don't know in what revision this started happening (I haven't actually started a game in a long while), but the Windows mouse cursor is now on top of the in-game one, which is nice except that it means the in-game one leaves "trails" behind it.

About 4 years ago when the client switched from being based on SDL to Ogre3D.

Quoting a bug report:

If the double mouse pointer bothers you, you can try editing OISInput.cfg in the main FreeOrion directory to set
w32_mouse=DISCL_EXCLUSIVE
instead of
w32_mouse=DISCL_NONEXCLUSIVE

This may cause your mouse cursor to disappear, however.

[Vezzra]

I'm pretty happy to see the AI demolishing reasonably experienced players. Go Dilvish!

Now keep in mind that the AI is still kind of at alpha stage, and I shudder at the thought what it will be capable of once it gets really polished...

[qsswin]

3. I don't know in what revision this started happening (I haven't actually started a game in a long while), but the Windows mouse cursor is now on top of the in-game one, which is nice except that it means the in-game one leaves "trails" behind it.

About 4 years ago when the client switched from being based on SDL to Ogre3D.

Huh, I thought it the change must have been more recent. It must have been a change in my computer setup, then.

[qsswin]

Victory!

I just kept researching until I discovered Singularity of Transcendence at Turn 181. The fact that I discovered it so quickly probably means that tech costs in general need to be balanced, but that's probably a low-priority action right now.

Based on some of the annoyances I found in my playthrough, I made a patch. It fixes:
- Some weirdness with the way Hyperspatial Dam was unlocked
- Some tech descriptions
- Stealth ship parts descriptions
- Psychogenic Domination not working, and being incorrectly described.

EDIT: I should probably mention I submit my changes under the GPL 2 and CC-BY-SA 3.

[Dilvish]

Victory! !

congrats!

I just kept researching until I discovered Singularity of Transcendence at Turn 181. The fact that I discovered it so quickly probably means that tech costs in general need to be balanced, but that's probably a low-priority action right now.

Yes, we have discussed it a little but hadn't gotten around to actually figuring out how we wanted it; I've gone ahead and committed an interim adjustment increasing its cost to 25k RP pending the game being ready for a more complete review of all the victory conditions. That still could be accomplished in less than 50 turns in the late stage of a typical game & so most likely should wind up higher, but at least it's movement in the right direction.

As for the descriptions patch, I think I'd best leave that to eleazar to review.

[Bigjoe5]

Thought I'd take a bit of the load off of eleazar:

- Patch by qsswin
-- Updated several strings
-- Fixed Psychogenic Domination tech to not select ships owned by source owner, and modified it to work not only on Organic species.
-- Made Zero-Point Generation a theory, as it was previously duplicating the functionality of the Hyperspatial Dam tech.

[Sloth]

Based on some of the annoyances I found in my playthrough, I made a patch. It fixes:
- Some weirdness with the way Hyperspatial Dam was unlocked
- Some tech descriptions
- Stealth ship parts descriptions
- Psychogenic Domination not working, and being incorrectly described.

I've checked the patch and everything looks correct, only the fix for Psychogenic Domination looks problematic to me:

"Random .1" is still part of scope. I think this should be moved to activation (i.e. "activation = Random .1").

I'm not 100% sure, but i couldn't find any other instance of Random in scope.

[Geoff the Medio]

"Random .1" is still part of scope. I think this should be moved to activation (i.e. "activation = Random .1").

Why? In scope, "Random .1" will select about 10% of objects. In activation, it will select all scope-matching objects 10% of the time, and no objects 90% of the time.

[eleazar]

Thought I'd take a bit of the load off of eleazar:

If you want, take a look at these stealth patches by sloth, make recommendations, discuss, or commit, i haven't yet really wrapped my brain around how all the stealth-scripting works, or figured out exactly how i wish the mechanics worked.

Stealth & Detection Redo:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6959&start=25
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6959&start=28

[qsswin]

This is another patch for some minor fixes. It corrects some sitreps and adds one for psychogenic domination.

[qsswin]

OK, I hadn't tested the patch and it was broken: OwnerID was not the right thing to put there. I corrected it and added a few empire destination conditions, which should be useful in multiplayer. I'll make sure to test my patches from now on.