*** CLOSED BETA UPDATES & DISCUSSION/BUG REPORTS II ***

PS Marine commander is useless on a ship with no Marine Pods

 

Spending 4 rounds on a target only to have someone else land 1 hit and take all the reward is loads of fun...

 

I think that you get enough XP credit when you hit a ship for damage, someone has to get Xp for the kill unless you're just going to eliminate kill Xp entirely.

 

I think marine pods should demand less power consumption, it should be more like 2 power points.

 

Sorry Xeen, for the kill steal. Had to do it, otherwise it will hit me in the back.

I agree on the need to share loot/xp in a party. But i guess a party or guild system is far far away.

Also have reservations about the marine troop refill and ship capture system. Hard to execute goes well with good rewards, but it'll be hard to balance. Will have to wait and see!

 

15 XP for a hit, 900 for the kill?

I disagree on the 'enough' from hitting a target

Now making all XP damage-based is an idea (no kill bounty, more XP per hit), but that also has flaws (that exist either way), which cut out other beneficial acts of teammates, namely scouts. Information is just as important if not more important than doing damage, yet the game's reward system is entirely based upon damage and kills.

What encouragement is there to play a critically important, non-damage dealing role in a fleet if you get nothing for it? Moving 60 hex with a powered up radar or even maxed at 10 range (it's possible) and sweeping the board is something I would gladly reward a teammate for doing with half/a share of the kill bounty XP.

Kill bounty/greed encourages foolish competition within a team/faction and resentment towards the system and other players, making someone want to play solo in a 'MMO' RTS/TBS..?

For most purposes, I would rather play solo as the game is now. I'm faster, more decisive, able to predict AI behavior and location, more effective on the battlefield, and I prefer flying a light ship using tactics instead of participating in a shin-kicking contest. So if I'm just hunting AI for XP, why would I want someone else on my team slowing me down and taking the reward I'm working hard for?

PVP? Sure, I can always use some foolish cannon fodder on the front lines. When it comes down to purely winning the fight and XP is not the objective, then things are different.

 

@Vesuvius_SWIE

Would love to have a 'ping location' command and 'markers' that a player (or perhaps party/fleet leader) could place on the map to direct team members to certain locations/keep notes.

Also would like some method of standard orientation to the maps so we can describe things using objective terms instead of 'behind you', especially given that the person you are talking to may have already begun moving/changing direction and you don't see it yet. Instead, it would be much better to say "Search the 'Astral Northeast' by 'Moon III'"

Would be nice if celestial bodies/debris on the map were labelled.

Would also be nice if their center sat on the hex grid (or just above like ships do in the case of debris, rocks, clouds, other small entities) instead of the upper edge of the sphere just barely touching or going through the grid. Right now, it looks like we are simply flying above all the planets and such, which is totally possible in space. I know we are bending some 2D/3D logic here Really there is nothing to keep someone from flying over/under a planet, and if you can fly and see around/over/under/through player ships... why not planets, moons, rocks, etc. If each hex is 1000 km... those are some pretty small planets at 3-7 hex across at most. Even our Earth is nearly 13,000 km across.

 

Wow nice, seems like the game programmer can make changes without server reset..

Wanna report the latest bugs..
1. "Insufficient movement" and "Invalid node" button keeps poping up during battle even without insufficent movement points or clicking out of the hexes. Guess he forgot to turn off his debug messages.. and they are false detect..
And I think as part it, the faction chat also got spammed by debug messages:
"RequestMoveTo: Movement is disabled: ...."
During battle, after movement due to the first click, may make a 2nd involuntary move.
Sometimes my movement in free move mode seems to 'teleport'.

2. I have stayed inside sector G-1602 for some time. Its marked as 'not my faction's territory' but still says Genari defense line. The bug is that Sol has 6 points, drop to 0, and I(Genari) keep killing AI ships even at 50:0 for some time. Sector never switch hands, never get locked.

3. There seems to be a tab shift.. My laser weapon was on the 4th tab after fission weapons, became 2nd tab. My off-topic chat was on the 1st tab of chat box, became 2nd tab..

 

Yeah they can, depending on what code is being fixed, you may not even need to patch anything or its so small you don't notice.

I'll try to check out these bugs, I've been hoping the movement thing was really fixed. We still have problems with other things that were attempted to be fixed

The name of a territory is pre-set and remains as its original name even if captured. I don't know if there are any plans for names to reflect owners, but the first letter (not the word name, but the alphanumeric one) indicates the original faction owner and then the following numbers indicate x,y location of the sector.

I've seen weapons move around on the hotbar before, like the Colossus missiles and Plasma Beams on all 3 sides change numbers, still same weapons, just different hotkey assigned.



@Vesuvius_SWIE if Marine Pods cost 0 Energy, then I might start liking them a little if not for the fact that they can be used once and then require tedious re-arming.

 

Hmm, since when did someone from Sol actually challenge any territories this round

Indeed territories are at 50 Gen control but remain owned by Sol and unlocked.

I'll try flipping one of theirs.

I've noted bugs with faction inversion and control points being awarded to the other side after you lock a sector and then kill a remaining enemy defender (killing it progress the bar back towards the enemy side, lol).

I see some originally-Sol sectors at 50 Genari points and not flipped as well.

lmao, 'Vesuvius' Class X Sol Defense Station, the only reason I need to invest in a heavy ship is to take down fortifications.

 

Got Levitian to kill a star system defense, and then got killed by the incoming ships lol...

Anyway, found that the hot bar of it is too long. The chat is blocking the hot bar, on 1920x1020 resolution. Have to close the chat to play a big ship? Is it possible to make a long bar 2 rows instead?

 

something is very wrong with some skills lol...

I applied 2 ranks of dmg boost and all 4 into overload as well as range and accuracy on tac officer.

I CANNOT use overload again in a new battle in same sector, damages of weapons are reporting as base 2 (unmodified), range of weapons apparently base 6 (unmodified), firing arcs of weapons still problematic on sector border, and I'm 1-shotting things with a weapon that shouldn't be.

It's almost as if the damage bonuses are working and the overload is permanently applied to that weapon.

Rather amusing to have a bug work in my favor.

 

Seems the Director stopped sending higher class ship as capture progresses Major Boooo

 

Woah what, Overload just reset after like 10 battles and I was able to use it again! Sortof a good thing ~?

My hull appears to have gone invulnerable, staying at a red 12/12 status and disallowing repairs no matter what happens. Edit: Damn seems to have corrected itself after several turns.


Still 1-shotting the crap out of everything.

Getting ghost repeat movemnts quite often.

Sector did flip to Genari control and lock.

Overload lit up a second time during a 2-turn battle with 2 corvettes.

Killing lingering defenders progresses the bar back towards their faction once the zone is captured.

 

lol, you lost a Class X ?! The Levi is kinda sucky tho. Very low power output and HUUUUGE power demands to operate what looks like a well armed ship, but it is impossible to even come close to fully powering just weapons and being able to move. Forget shields and scanners.

The damage bonuses from officer skills and proximity to target are heavily weighted, so you have to put all your weapons to max yellow charge at most. The thing still barely moves and has terrible accuracy.... like wtf, supposed to play close in with this ship? Impossible to use it vs anything else [Edit: with a brain] that moves.

Pretty easy to avoid a levi when it can only move 8 hex (unless the power is actually 112.5 and shown rounded down, allowing 9 hex movement).

Theoretical maximum movement is 112.5 x 30% = 146.25 power (Colossus is a much better rounded ship and has a base 150 power, although 2x the cost of the Genari Levi, who gives a shit what the cost is when you just want the best thing in the game... sortof)

146.25 should round up to 147, then divide that by 12.5 for Class X movement = 11.7 movement points, 11

11 *1.6 maneuvering = 17.6 or 17 movement points max if next to nothing is powered.

I can run my favorite Montana III at 16 movement with no power boost and have weapons charged AND accurate long range weapons AND run 2 of them with fleet commander.

Genari ships are horribly underpowered/imbalanced for the equipment they are carrying. Pointless to have so much if it can't be used, even if ignoring all power to shields and scanners and minimal movement.

 

PS Just the 6 beams on front of the Levi are 9 charge, which I believe is 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 power per charge level or 20 power total to operate. That's 120 of 112 power for the front weapons only. Granted, the missiles are cheap, but they are horribly ineffective unless at point blank range, making them poor counter-fire weapons as I suspect they were intended to be.

Running it at yellow charge + all missiles on leaves 50 power for 4 movement on a base-officer Levi. Practically unusable.

Depending on the missile it has an 60 to 80% chance to hit at 2 range, anything beyond that is horrible.... so if you aren't point blank in a nearly IMMOBILE ship, they are worthless.

 

The Director seems to be taking its sweet time sending in defenders. Also only very boring and worthless Class III once again. Probably because I'm using a Class III.

 

It sometimes takes well over a minute, resulting in 5 CP transfer from sitting in the zone, before any reinforcements come.

Recently, I've only seen Class III's show up from -50 to +50 capture progress. I haven't brought a larger ship to see if the defenders become larger though, but it was sending higher class ships vs my class III before the update as capture of the sector progressed.