Hello everyone. Today we released a smaller update (1.0.6) that fixed several bugs and added a few balanced changes, namely stronger orbital stations and late game technologies are now more costly, among other tweaks. The update is available on Steam, Humble Bundle and itch.io. Compatibility note: The saves from 1.0.5 are fully compatible with this new version, so you can keep playing as usual and you will benefit from all the bug fixes and changes. Note that one of the changes requires new games to be created to take effect, as described in the release note below. That's it for now! Cheers The Dev Team Praxis Games ------------------------------- ---- VERSION 1.0.6 ---- ------------------------------- ------------------------ # BALANCE ------------------------ The higher level technologies are now more costly. The late game techs were too cheap causing research to end sooner than it should (requires new game to take effect). Orbital stations are now much tougher (they now equip maximum hull reinforcement, tripling their hit points in battle). Loot obtained from space monsters salvage was too strong. Now, super powerful technology drops are less likely when salvaging debris from space monsters. ------------------------ # GAMEPLAY ------------------------ The Ambassadors of empires who have just declared war will be unavailable for a few turns for any diplomatic request (when declared war it's not possible to request peace in the same turn or the few next ones). ------------------------ # BUGS ------------------------ Fixed a bug that was causing leader desires for certain buildings to be built to not trigger after loading a save game. Fixed an issue that was causing the wrong damage values to be shown for beam weapons when the player had the Beam Accelerators technology with available Helium-3 strategic resource. Fixed a bug that was causing wrong values to appear in the space battle report when some ships fled and others stayed behind. Hitting autoresolve from within space combat caused wrong captured / killed / fled numbers in the report. Fixed an issue that was causing offered or captured Titans from rivals to use the wrong Titan special abilities (the offered/captured Titans would use the player's Titan abilities instead of the original Titan's ability of the race who made them). Fixed an issue that was allowing ships with broken engines to flee when using the autoresolve from within space combat. Fixed a bug that was causing the wrong values for "POP Assimilation turns" to be shown in the empire overview screen's tooltip when the Xeno Tolerance space culture perk was picked (the value was being applied correctly but the wrong value was being shown in the tooltip). Fixed a bug with the Illusion Materializer special system which was causing the original (non-illusion) ship to not hit its target, when only its illusion ship is supposed to not inflict damage. [HOTFIX] Fixed a bug that was allowing colony events that had already triggered in the past to trigger again when loading a save game (events only fire once in each game session). [HOTFIX2] Fixed a bug in space combat when a Star Fortress was involved which would cause combat to freeze. --- Instructions on how to download the latest build can be found here.
This is two out of three with my preferences. Playing with a 50% tech rate... late game tech is anything but cheap. It is a pity that this couldn't have been addressed in non general fashion. I can see the reasoning when playing with a normal or accelerated tech rate, but at reduced levels this is not welcome. The stations and monsters are good changes.
I understand your point of view. I considered this, so I decided that the increase only applies to level 7 techs and beyond, and it's exponential, so the level 7 techs only cost around +15% more (which probably translates into 1 or 2 extra turns only). Tech level 8 a bit more, etc until tech level 10, which got a +60% increase in cost. We're talking about Photon Torpedoes, Class X shields and Expert Targeting algorithms here. Moreover, the increase is felt in an equal proportion relatively speaking, either you go with +50% tech speed or 125%. So, it's only very late tech. Makes the late game more interesting. It extends the late game a little bit more, but just for the extra spice of research, the rest is maintained. Again it's only Level 8 or more that get a significant increase. We're talking Disruptor Beams, Jump Gates, Plasma Torpedoes, Death Ray, etc.
I understand your reasoning, but if you will humor me for a minute, I want to analyze this. The issue of tech research ending too early is more pronounced in these cases The player takes a research bonus The player uses a huge map with fewer players and expands rapidly The AI at the more difficult levels The Game itself is designed to be played in an afternoon or two, and the reason I play with 50% tech and 75% production is that it makes it far more epic, usually adding at least another 150 turns before the issue is decided. As quite a lot of players favor faster research, it is only natural that the tech tree runs out. So how would I have handled it without creating a lot of work and minimizing the impact on players who favor slower research? one of two ways The first would have been to adjust the increased tech cost when someone is researching more than one tech in a particular field/level. Right now the first tech is normal cost, the second 2X, the third 3X etc. I would have considered switching this to the model used for colony maintenance, in that way the first 2 techs researched in a field/level would retain their current cost but anything after that would rise dramatically. The second would be to add two additional levels of tech each to weapons, shields and construction, (you’re not restricted to level X after all) These techs would have huge costs (5x the previous tech for the first and 10X for the second) The weapons techs (improved and advanced) would offer slight miniaturization to late tech weaponry and possibly slightly reduce penalties and/or cool down times for torpedoes. The shield techs would offer slight miniaturization to late shields and block 25% and 50% shield piercing damage The construction techs would give a slight reduction to the penalty for buildings on hostile worlds and allow for Armor to block armor piercing weapons 25% and 50% respectively Heck, you could even combine the two approaches and make the tech tree similar to cultural development, something that is almost impossible to complete fully. With version 1.05 and the settings I use, it can take me 30 turns to research Disruptor beams, it is quite enough of a struggle as it is.
Thanks for your suggestions. Those would be different ways to address this. Personally, I like how the 2nd tech is harder to research after you research the first one in that level. It makes choosing techs more interesting, in my view. This is envisaged, to offer end techs at each branch to offer bonuses to that particular research field. These will probably be infinite research techs that provide more bonuses each time you make breakthroughs on them. This should come in a future update. -50% research speed can be quite unforgiving but allows for a new and different way to play the game where you can savor the new research advancements for longer periods of time, which is a special and interesting way to play the game. With 1.0.6 your Disruptor Beam 30 turns will now take around 38, with your research conditions. Seems acceptable, in my view. At the end of the day you do what you can to improve the game to please as many people as you can while staying true to your vision and sensibility. This was just one more change that I felt was needed at this stage. We may revise the numbers at a later opportunity if we feel it's warranted.
Yes I like that too, I would keep that but increase the cost of the 3rd, 4th, etc tech. Lol! Well thank you Captain obvious! And here I was thinking you sat around and said to yourself "Gee, my game is getting great reviews, it's well received, and people seem to like it a lot... now what can I do to mess that up?" Just playing with you Adam, I know the constant flow of feedback, coming from so many different play styles can be overwhelming and cause a lot of headaches when trying to balance things out so as to please as many people as possible.
Well, I'm not immune to that possibility, of messing things up! That's why I need constant feedback from the community, to understand if things are working as intended. Of course, always realizing the old maxim that you cannot please everyone all the time every time you change something. Sometimes little sacrifices are needed to improve the whole. Other times, the effects of changes can be ameliorated with game options, depending on their magnitude.
I've just released a hotfix for this 1.0.6 update to fix the following single issue: - Fixed a bug in space combat when a Star Fortress was involved which would cause combat to freeze The fix is available on Steam, Humble and Itch.io.
