Hardcore Gamer Resource Kit/Hardcore Gamer Resource Kit - Disc 2.iso/Pc/S_T/ST26026B.ZIP/READ26B.TXT

Text File | 1996-10-13 | 15KB | 268 lines

October 13, 1996

Stars! V2.6b contains a set of bug fixes which have come from reports from
players like you as well as extensive additional internal testing.  There
are no new features in this release, this release is being made strictly
to solve the problems players are running into.

As I said in the release notes for V2.6a, I would have rather waited to
release that build for a few more weeks, but I wanted to keep my word and
release it as soon as I had solved the bug that hung a few player's
machines during turn generation.  Despite the talk about new bugs being
introduced with new versions, suprisingly enough more than half of the fixes
in this release have been in Stars! since BEFORE V2.6, many going back to
V2.0 and before.  What this means is that we're seeing an explosion in the
number of people playing Stars! and that number is now three or four orders
of magnitude greater than our team of testers and beta players.

I am pretty certain that this will be the last Stars! release in the 2.6
series, but I will continue to look at bug reports and if a bug warrants
a V2.60c, I will do it, but you can be sure that it will only be a bug fix
release, not a feature relase.

Please send me feedback at [e-mail] if you have any questions or
run across any bugs.

-- Jeff Johnson

Changes from V2.60a to V2.60b:

Fixed bug which causes IT races with RRS engines to kill colonists using
   stargates off.
Fixed bug which caused the damage done by incoming packet to the IT race to
   be incorrectly computed.
Fixed cloaking bug which caused all cloaking electrical parts to act as
   50% cloaks instead of their proper values.
Fixed bug which allowed the transport cloak to be placed on the Galleon
   hull.
Fixed NT crash when orphaned starbases made it to player data files.
The patrol task now pays better attention to your battle plan in deciding
   whether or not to target enemy fleets.
Fixed battle bug where fleeing ships would sometimes charge the enemy fleet.
Fixed battle bug where ships could go running off the battle board.
Fixed battle bug where fleets with Chicken orders would initiate a battle
   even against players marked as friends.
Fixed problems with the maximize net damage battle tactic.
Fixed battle problems with invincible ships that appear to be 100% damaged.
Fixed battle bug where ships would fail to close in on their targets
   occasionally when out of range.
Fixed bug in the battle plans dialog which could cause the who to attack
   dropdown to use the item above the one selected by the player.
Fixed the delete command in the battle plans dialog to properly update
   remaining plans.
Pressing Escape to dismiss the design sheet from the fleet composition
   dialog no longer disables clicking in the mineral summary.
Fixed Packet Physics bug where flinging large packets at worlds when you
   had no terraforming abilities whatsoever could cause corrupt game files.
Fixed message about ram scoops producing fuel to peg and not go negative for
   huge fleets.
Fixed the Help button from the score dialog to link correctly to help topic.
The n turns loaded alert is no longer shown when generating turns with
   inactive player.
Packet Physics races as of V2.60a can sense ALL mineral packets in the
   universe regardless of whether they are in their scanner coverage or not.
Improved dynamic updates of the fleet report when merging fleets.
Fixed hang in report window when two items had identical primary and
   secondary sorting characteristics.
Refined battle plans:  Maximize Damage Ratio, Maximize Net Damage, and
   Maximize Damage.
   a) Maximize Damage Ratio attempts to 1) Get in range of at least one
      ship of the target class with at least one of your ship's weapons
      then 2) Move in such a way to always do some damage while
      maximizing (Damage Done / Damage Taken).
   b) Maximize Net Damage attemps to 1) Get in range of at least one ship
      of the target class with ALL of your ship's weapons then 2) Move in
      such a way to always do some damage while maximizing
      (Damage Done / Damage Taken).
   c) Maximize Damage now attempts to 1) Get in range of at least one ship
      of the target class with ALL of your ship's weapons then 2) Moves
      to the square where it can dish out the most damage.
   Note that all three have an overriding constraint of getting to a place
   where they can do some damage.  This means that even if the score would
   be better to stay out of range and not be able to shoot, that place will
   not be considered.  Also note that a) will not necessarily close to
   the "best" square if there is a large differential in weapons systems
   on the ship.  For example if you design a Cruiser with a Range 6 missile
   and a Range 2 beam weapon, odds are you will never close beyond Range 6
   during the battle.  This is a plus when the short range weapon is used
   strictly as a deterent against fast ships trying to get in close to you
   and destroy you with close range weapons.  If you indeed want to close
   and bring all weapons to bear, choosing b) or c) will ensure you will
   try to do just that.


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September 26, 1996

Stars! V2.6a contains a number of changes and improvements, as well as bug
fixes which have come from feedback from players.  Stars! is continually
being improved, and this release should solidify a number of loose ends that
the previous versions have made apparent.

So why release now?  If I had my druthers, I'd rather wait another month or
so and make sure there aren't any more important bugs lurking out there.
However, doing that means that people currently playing games have to work
around existing bugs, I have to spend a lot of time answering mail with,
"Yes, I know that's broken, it'll be fixed in the next release", and most
importantly, I have told numerous people that as soon as I thought I had
a fix to the turn generation hanging bug I would post the patch immediately.

As of 4 hours ago, I got confirmation from 4 people who were experiencing
hangs that this patch solves their problems.  While this is far from proof
that the fix will solve everybody's problems, I feel it's important enough
to get this patch out.

In addition to the bug fixes outlined below I have totally gutted and
rewritten the battle engine.  The engine is what determines how tactics
are carried out, how ships fire, who they fire at, and where they move
to.  It doesn't change any of the available tactics, or the VCR display.

What's involved in the battle engine?  I've tried to make ships move in
smart ways.  Now when a ship considers where to move, it takes into account
how fast the enemy ship is, who will get the last move, what range the
enemy's weapons are and how much damage they will do.  When weapons are
fired, they are fired at the targets that will cost the enemy the most. This
is done by calculating the amount of damage that can be done and dividing
it by the sum of resources and boranium require to build the ship, which
corresponds nicely with how near and dear the ship is to the owner.

Does this mean that battle is now nirvana?  No way.  Ships will still make
occasional blunders.  However, you should be able to look at the battle in
the VCR and understand why the ship's captain may have done what he decided
to do.  The price to pay for this new accurate model, is speed.  Turn
generation when there are complex battles can take twice as long as it
did in previous version.  I am working on speed optimizations, but they
were not ready at the time I fixed the turn generation hang.

People write me frequently wanting to know what will be in the next version.
Will there be a Stars! V2.7, V2.8, etc?  When will V3.0 be out?

The answer is this:  There will be no major features added before version
3.0 comes out.  V3.0 is at least a year away.  There may well be a V2.60b
if additional bugs or imbalances are discovered.  That release will consist
only of bug fixes and perhaps some play balances if things are drastically
out of whack.  Will there be a V2.7?  The only way that would happen is if
we decided to do a boxed version of Stars! for distribution in stores and
added all the trappings that sell commercial games, but don't really add to
the strategic play value (soundtrack, sound effects, slicker graphics, etc).

The updated help file is not yet ready for V2.6a, but will be placed on
the web site when it is finished.

Please set me feedback at [e-mail] if you have any questions or
run across any bugs.

-- Jeff Johnson

Changes from V2.6 to V2.60a:

Bug Fixes:

Fixed the turn generation hanging bug that affected a small number of
   computers.  Hangs were related to the use of ship cloaks.
Fixed a mineral concentration bug which could cause many planets in the
   galaxy to randomly start out as homeworlds.
Fixed a hanging bug when the Alternate Reality race attempted to build
   a planetary scanner.
Fixed bug which caused Super Stealth races to get all spying proceeds
   dumped in their current field of research instead of the proper field
   reported in the message sent them.
Fixed bug which caused the Goto button for the Retro Bombing message to
   link to wierd places.
Removed Super Stealth ability to get multiple tech from battles and
   scrappings and fixed bug which could cause players to get excess tech
   when scrapping ships.
Fixed the bug which allows colonists to be given to IT players by using
   their stargates.
Fixed the goto button to do a better job when the message pertains to a
   mine field incident.


Play Balancing:
The Jack of All Trades races now possess built-in scanners on their Scouts,
   Frigates, and Destroyes with a range equal to 2x / x l.y. where
   x = 10 * Electronics Tech level.
Shield Sapper weapons now have a range of 3.
Shield Sapper weapons can no longer sweep mine fields.
The Trans-Galactic Mizer scoop is now available as long as you don't
   check the No Ramscoops LRT.  It is now a Warp-10 capable engine.
The LRT of Improved Fuel Efficiency now also increases your starting tech
   in propulsion by one level.
Decreased the mining rate of the Robo-Mini-Miner to a max of 4kT per year.
   This should make the Only Basic Remote Mining LRT less of an
   automatic choice.
Super Stealth race ships AND starbases now have built-in 75% cloaking.
The Ultra Cloak now cloaks at 85% and the Transport Cloak cloaks at 75%.
Gattling weapons now have a range of 2 and do not decay over distance.
Torpedo cost has be shuffled to use less boranium and more ironium.
Torpedo power has been readjusted to reflect the new battle model.
Capital ship missiles do twice as much damage to unshielded targets.
All weapons can now stream damage freely from square to square.
Massively overpopulating planets no long continues to give extra resources
   after you exceed the maximum population by a factor of 3.
Carbonic and Organic armor now require 1/2 as much Germanium to build.
Planetary defenses now cost only 15 resources per defense to build,
   9 resources for inner strength players.
Interstellar Traveller's mass drivers are only half as effective at catching
   minerals as their rating, are less efficient at flinging minerals, and
   all mineral packets flung decay, regardless of speed.
Mass Driver 7 and Ultra Driver 10 now cost twice as much to build.
Mine laying pods and mine laying hulls specific to the Space Demolition
   race have been reduced in cost and weight.
The Claim Adjuster race no longer can build the Ultra Driver 12.
Claim Adjuster mineral packets no longer have terraforming effects.
Packet Physics packets now terraform planets with the same odds as the
   Claim Adjusters used to be able to.
Claim Adjuster packets do the same amount of damage as every other race
   on impact now.
Claim Adjuster now have a 10% chance of permanently improving each owned
   planet's environment by 1% each year if the population is at least
   100,000 colonists (lower population have a proportionally lower chance
   of this happening).
Whenever a Claim Adjuster abandons a planet (either voluntarily or
   involuntarily) the environment will revert to the underlying "natural"
   stats.
Generalized research now applies 50% to the primary field and 15% to each
   of the other fields.
Ships in space are no longer allowed to jettison cargo if a mineral packet
   or battle salvage is at that location.
Space Demolition race have figured out an economy setting to detonating
   mine fields which only requires expending 1/4 of the mines in the field.
   Mine fields set to detonate will continue to do so each year until
   the field is finally depopulated.
The Mine Layer and Super Mine Layer hulls are not damaged by detonating
   mine fields controled by their owner.
Detonated mine fields which overlap can only damage a fleet once.  That is,
   a fleet in 5 overlapping mine fields which are detonated only gets hit
   once.
Space Demolition race mine layers can lay mines the year they reach their
   destination.  However, the number laid the first year is half their
   normal laying rate.


New Features:

Redid the battle engine.  Battle plans and ship movement are much more
   intelligent now.  Weapon firing and streaming now greatly discourage
   multiple token attacks.
The message informing you that a starbase will complete it's production
   queue next year will no longer be sent to planets with just orbital forts.
The Progress=1 line in the [Misc] section of stars.ini now will cause a
   progress gauge to appear even when generating from host mode.
Added 2 new columns to the battle report:  Our ships left and Their ships
   left, which indicate how many ships survived the battle.
The mineral popup window for planets you are remote mining now shows the
   expected amount to be mined next year.
Auto Terraforming no longer appears in the Claim Adjuster production
   queue list.
The message the Claim Adjuster gets when finding a new planet displays
   the planet value they can auto terraform it to.
Fleets doing mine sweeping pay attention to their battle plan in determining
   whether or not to sweep a minefield.  Starbases still sweep all
   non-friendly mine fields.