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

You should see full reports on bugs when I really have the whole thing covered

Thorough is good for bug reports!

My only regret is that there are bugs that while obvious to detect/observe, are not so obvious to establish a cause/effect pattern or duplication so that they can be hunted and fixed ><

Top 2 on my list are the client-server communication issues with sending radar scan updates and another engine bug:
-There's a problem with zoning in or other times during combat where something is in your field/area of view that is NOT displayed to you and will not update until you break max radar range or LOS and then re-scan it. The same can happen in reverse where you maintain vision of an entity on the map. This is a very serious problem to the quality of gameplay. In one of the above posts, I actually did lose a really good ship because I was riding a fine line to victory, only to be shot by a ship that 'decloaked' from space that I had widely scanned.... I should have seen it and then I would have made different choices, but nope, ate a ton of damage and Kablooey!
-The other problem is with your movement points sometimes being set to zero or negative for no apparent reason. The only link I've noticed is damaging the engines of your target can sometimes cause a temporary display anomaly. This one is also very bad for gameplay because you cant move, scan, evade, aim, etc. You cant move = you can just fire at what is in front of you, mostly a wasted turn.

-These two are the biggest gamebreakers right now, and I told the internal playtester to keep looking for these bugs, somehow to reproduce them -- we need them squashed. -Vesuvius

I don't really have the tools or information/insight to the inner workings at my disposal to hunt down those 2 bugs. Even if I did, I may not know how to use them or what to look for. I'm just a QA and gaming enthusiast

Other than those 2, there are piles of little things that need work, sure, but the remaining bugs aren't really blocking the game from progressing further/to a wider base of players testing. Space Wars has made tons of progress on new features, the expanded map, correcting existing minor and major problems, getting officer skills online, etc.

Examples of other things that should will be fixed or added:
-Maps, lots of invisible blockers, sometimes problems with sectors being unconquerable because of a bugged entity/drone, one map where there is even a single tile cut off from the rest of the play space hidden behind a couple of moons... lol that was funny to spawn there
-there are exactly 772 map bugs, which (wasn't my fault) but something to do with bugs in the map editor. The lead programmer is figuring out a way to 'auto-fix' them. -Vesuvius
-Officer and Ship skills, some are still not working (improved rotation passive/skill, sol medic officer recovery, bengbu heavy armor, etc.)
-Ship skills I can fix personally, but if there are any officer skills unfixed/pending go ahead and harass the programmers on Jira -Vesuvius
-Guilds! Gotta love a good guild and party system.
-This goes with the 'wolf pack commander' and 'hunter-killer' skills for captain, which allows that captain to open up a guild. Its been decided that it will be one of the first things to work on AFTER the game beta launch on steam. -Vesuvius
-Chat Gotta have chat for the above. There are problems with the chat labels (Sol Defense Faction/All ?? for both sides, off-topic being a global channel vs general faction being your side only) and the system in general.
-Hex Trace Algorithm, if you are at certain angles near the right (or wrong?) 2 edges of the map and facing the wrong way, you will not be able to scan or fire properly due to a flaw in the algorithm that checks which hexes you can see and fire at.

I don't think there are any true blocker type bugs remaining (server crashing events, client crashes/hangs without workaround, unable to create character, connect, or join, etc.) and many features have been implemented, so I'd say SW is now Beta stage. Though called Beta for awhile, I would have and did think this was an Alpha when I first started testing at the beginning of the year. About the worst I see is the very rare infinite load screen when trying to join a battle in progress, but maybe that's because joining a battle in progress is rare
-In theory, you should be seeing the ally ship in the battle map while you wait for your entrance, so if it shows the screensaver screen instead, its still buggy then. -Vesuvius

A few things off the top of my head at 1 AM after a long day ^^ Just my thoughts, not the official word.

 

Getting some other nasty desynch bugs in combat beyond not seeing things. Suddenly huge amounts of damage can be applied when it looked like there was no contact or weapons fired at all.

Also getting general errors and an invalid action when leaving the space station. Interdictor III from Gazah I or II, iirc.

-Jira + screenshot! -Vesuivus

 

Pretty F'in cool. The issue count and date info tracks are working now (at least some of them/for Genari). I was wondering what those placeholder tags were for.

The null issue date of 1/1/1970 needs to be fixed to say 'null' or none issued.

 

Something is wrong with the turn allocation bar not displaying ship info or captain when hovering over some of the icons.

Was it intentionally changed so that you can only get info on things that you have currently sighted?

-You should be able to, make a Jira report! -Vesuvius

 

Who is Seamus O'Donnell?

 

I have determined the Genari master ship. If ever I could fleet command direct control 3 of them.... geez.

-Which is? -Vesuvius

 

If you are going to harass me, at least don't alt-f4 quit out of the fight when you have no good reason to right when i get in range of you.

For repeated offenses, I will murder you with no remorse.

 

Sol defense drones are insanely powerful:
-Range
-Scanners
-Damage
-Accuracy

overall usefulness compared to Genari mines is beyond ridiculous

I have a beam drone that is 10 units away that has scanned me from that far and is firing on me to its rear. I just loaded into the map!

 

There's something wrong with Sol Baltimore II

They only have 36 base engine power and the AI doesn't know what to do with that (sits there)

--Ahh, that is an entry error on my end, I fixed it in the admin, will be good on the next update. Basically I had the ship with SIWID-6A instead of SIWIHD-6A (36 power instead of 75) -Vesuvius

Looks like it prioritizes some weapons and has no power for anything else.

I'd like to redo your AI power and combat routines

 

Genari Tutorial:

Prettymuch all the same flaws as reported for the Sol one.

Critical Flaw Detected:

It is possible to have active captain skills (or other if you have a firebolt crew already? I don't know, didn't test that) that cause problems when you begin certain phases of the tutorial that require specific power settings. Rally can rescind your power settings if used on the same turn that adjustments are made, leaving you with no powered weapons to proceed in the tutorial.

-Let me get it straight, you mean in the tutorial you somehow managed to have captain skills associated with your ship? Is it that you have that ship/firebolt and somehow its linked to your tutorial? -Vesuvius

Unable to continue/fire upon Sol Orchis

 

As you were doing that anyway, I shall harass away. It is funny to watch you chase me with my class 3 around with you in a class 7.

 

Hehehe, too bad I outshield your damage potential and you get zero XP

 

If AI had half a brain(pun intended), I could spot and let them gang up on you,lol

 

Yeah... normally, maybe.

Actually in that map/particular case, you couldn't.

I wonder how difficult it is to modify the AI.

Designing behavior algorithm isn't hard, but implementing it might be.

 

Oh that's neat! They would need to do more than 9 damage (1/2 of 18 engine) to offset their 1-off use then. Compared to weapon drones that can keep firing, missiles up to 6 range and beams out to 10+ range, for 5+ damage on either, mines still seem sucky. Even homing mines.

Quite, even if you just want to be an ass and sit there for 1 minute of allocation + 1 minute of combat then warp out instantly in a free corvette (over and over and over)

Kinda need a system to prevent this kind of abuse/trolling, because you know people will do it... even setup bots to do it, especially considering free accounts (or will they be?)

 

I need to know if that was an intended change or not before creating a report on it. I rather like that you can only see details on ships that you currently have sighted. Seems like a good change to me.

 

Interdictor III is a little boss. 3 of them under direct control of the player... wow Though unshielded (not worth spending power for 1x10 expect maybe frontal to protect from explosions), it has tremendous damage output and can rival or outmatch the movement of most corvettes at 55 engine power on a Class V (27.5 base movement/init before spending power, the best corvettes get 42/42 and that drops FAST from just spending ~6 power on weapons to 30/30). The Firestorm III is also very nice, but expensive (about equivalent to the Sol Montana III). Other than that, most Genari ships (I guess most Sol ones too), I find to be fairly weak and not a good balance of power, toughness, engine, etc.

The guardian seems neat for its rapid officer upgrade potential and it is still pretty cheap at this point, but the I3 wins because of its superior movement ratio and equivalent damage.

Warship III required for IX X, barred by Fleet I
Warship II required for VII VIII, barred by Fleet II

So you could have 3 ships of up to class VI, correct?

I3
3x 4 dmg beams 10 range 50 acc that do +2 at 1-2 hex +2 from officer and +2 from rally
1x 5 dmg warhead 7 range 40 acc +2 officer +2 rally

Assuming you get in close (well, because you can) to 1 or 2 tiles, you practically will not miss, and you can score
10x 3 + 1x9 dmg in your first round of a pass-turn alpha strike (first turn)
8x3 + 1x7 in your second round 'go first and run' alpha strike (second turn)

So 39 + 31 = 70 damage scored in a dual turn alpha strike... PER SHIP and you will out-init and out-move just about everything... so 210 damage put out between the 3 ships x 95% = roughly 200 damage.

Granted the missiles do consume 3 extra MP per turn to be able to use and you would want to spend another 3 to be facing forward (to beam, about face, missile, and run with maximum potential on the next turn), that shouldnt be an issue.

Oh, I forgot to add in a Rank 4 Overload, which I'm not sure how much it would apply to. At the very least, it would overload the 5+2 dmg warhead by 21 damage. If it stacks with rally, then that would be 5+2+2 plus 27 extra damage.

What Genari lack in their cheap ships, they make up for with their officers. Unfortunately, they have the exact same time constraints and even more battle counts to upgrade than Sol officers do... Doesn't make much sense for the Gen Tac officer, unless I'm not understanding something fully.

 

I was able to use rally during the tutorial, and there was some insufficient power error or other way that my allocation was changed and I was unable to fire on the target, thus roadblocking the tutorial for me.

My comments about the firebolt were speculation. I do not own one, but it would be a good idea to test an 'officered' firebolt of the same version used in the tutorial to see what happens.