Version 1.023 Full Change List

[Neutron]

Armada 2526 Version 1.023 Changes
Compared to v 1.01
17 Feb 2010

New Features
Automatic  Population Transport
This feature has been added to reduce the micromanagement involved transporting population around the galaxy

* Transports can be placed on automatic control. They will then automatically shuttle population between your colonies to maximize growth.
* A button has been added on the fleet review tab to allocate ships to automatic control.
* They can be placed under manual control either from the fleet review tab, or by explicitly given them an order to go somewhere.
* For each colony, you can set whether the automated ships can import or export population. There are separate settings for your own, and alien races.
* The automatically controlled ships attempt to maximize population growth. You may want to move population around manually to build up colonies quickly for strategic reasons.

Research And Bureaucracy Scaled To Game Size
These changes are primarily to support players who like to play large games

* Bureaucracy has been reduced, capped and related to map size.
* A game option has been added to further reduce or eliminate bureaucracy.
* By default the rate of technology research is scaled to map size and number of players
* The technology research rate can be set manually for custom games, and can be specified in scenario files.

Mod Support
These changes make it easy to apply mods to the game without changing the original files. You can have multiple different mods installed together, and even apply multiple mods together (for instance a mod that changes the UI appearance, with a mod that changes game play balance).  You can make shortcuts to play the game with different mods applied.

Mods can completely replace game files, or merely add new items. See the forums for more details on modding.

Balance Changes
The main thrust of these changes is to promote bigger, more interesting battles, greater use of ground units, and more research specialization.

* Adjusted Victory Conditions. Most notably for Walden and Hoon Yon.
* Low tax popularity bonus increased to 3
* Tech research time increased 50%
* Specialized labs level increased research level by 50% to cancel the above change. General labs are now less useful.
* Defense units defense value doubled.
* Ground unit strength increased 40%, both attack and defense.
* Ship upkeep costs reduced 30%. Some other ship factor modifications
* Reduced upkeep costs for Security Centers, Entertainment Centers, and Decontamination plants
* AI Expands less aggressively on easy level.


Minor Improvements
* Custom game settings now saved/
* Bureaucracy level game option   
* Special screen capture mode enabled for release builds.
* Improved AI for population management
* Improved AI for transport and assault ship construction
* AI now concentrates ground units at strategic points. Keeps assault ships with them to facilitate ground assaults.
* Fixed a problem that often caused the AI to abandon large attacks. Combined with the above changes, this makes the AI a more interesting opponent.
* Expanded range of techs that AI will not trade with players it dislikes, mistrusts, or is planning to attack.
* AI calls ships back from hovering over neutral colonies
* AI remembers tech and trade missions it has asked for or offered, and doesn’t keep repeating the same offers or demands.
* AI likes to make peace in inactive wars.
* Auto resolve improved for case of Corvettes vs Militia and other turkey shoot scenarios
* New Version of Slim DX.
* Use of precompiled shaders.
* Error logging for rendering errors, and more resistance to rendering errors.
* Higher right drag initiation threshold
* Battles don't end immediately after last ship dies
* Missile Cruisers stand off and fire. Shots more distributed
* Ship to ship engagement range depends on weapon range.
* Minimap visible area color improved.
* Greatly improved AI turn time on large maps.
* Added improved tooltips for fleets and buildings
* Colonies are named after stars when all colony names have been exhausted.
* Races that are more than the first level of Xenophobic won’t make defensive alliances with players of other races.
* Improved the default system for naming saved game files. Files sorted by date as default.

Bug Fixes
* Fixed crash deleting selected player in custom game creation screen      
* Fixed bug preventing counter offers to pease or non aggression proposals with altered terms.
* Fixed various memory leaks
* Fixed bug when loading a game from within a game.
* Fixed a bug that meant sometimes ships would not stop in range once in range of their target.   
* Improved pathing so that the system will find paths involving moving to a normal teleport, jumping to an open teleport, and thence to the destination.
* Fixed bug that caused invisible fleets to sometimes be shown during animation.
* Fixed bugs with detecting fleets of enemies with no stealth.
* Fixed bugs with hypersense.
* Fixed rounding bug with speed 6 ships
* Fixed bug that sometimes caused AI to massively overbuild assault ships.
* Fixed bug where “no workers” icon was not displayed on damaged buildings.
* Fixed bug where AI would persist in an attack, even though it had no ground attack ships. Fixed some rare internal AI bugs.
* Defensive alliances expire properly when non aggression pacts expire.
* Fixed typos and minor stat errors
* Custom game map sizes limited to 250 x 250 to prevent creation of large games that run out of memory.
* Fixed bug with movement areas.
* Set sensible default for length of non aggression pact

Mod Support
The following features have been added to support modders

* Militia remove population if modded to have a population cost.
* A new capability “Initial Population” allows Ark Ships to found colonies that start with more than one population.
* The root of the save game name, can be set from the command line using the –sr option
* Fixed bug that prevented buildings that only produce ground units.

[Wade]

Thankyou, sir Neutron, for your continuing support of Armada 2526 and for your participation in the forum.
I look forward to playing with the new update.

* Custom game map sizes limited to 250 x 250 to prevent creation of large games that run out of memory.

So, the future update after this one will focus on combat. Will that future update or the next have more fixed memory leaks to allow the return of 500 x 500 or 1000 x 1000 (etcetera) map sizes as playable and saveable?

[Neutron]

The issue with big maps isn't a memory leak issue, it's to do with the Microsoft serialization library taking a lot more memory than the size of the file it spits out.  I won't be looking at it again until after the next patch.

I should point out that a 250 by 250 map is plenty for a 100 player game. Have you actually played a game of this size, and found it to be insufficiently large. In terms of gameplay I don't really see what having 1000 colonies gives you that having 100 doesn't.

[trusteft]

In terms of gameplay I don't really see what having 1000 colonies gives you that having 100 doesn't.

Scope and feeling.  You can control 100 colonies and yet losing a war. etc etc.

I am very happy to see you are going to look into this after the next patch.  The game is simply amazing and has grabbed my attention like no other recent has.

[spacecruzer]

I can't imagine playing this game controlling hundreds of colonies. It would take months just to finish a single game. trusteft, you may be entirely alone among the user-base in your desire for this size game.

When evaluating what bugs to fix or features to add, one of the important ways to prioritize is by considering how much of the user base cares about that particular feature or bug. If the game is playable at 250x250, it may not be worth the effort to make it work for a 500x500 size game, rather than some work on something that more players care about.

Just sayin'

[Neutron]

I can't imagine playing this game controlling hundreds of colonies.

No neither can I. Neither the UI, AI, or game system are designed for it.

The idea behind allowing large maps, was to accommodate a large number of players with smaller empires, such that as you overcame one enemy, there was always another one beyond, and you would never be sure whether or not you were the biggest fish in the sea.

[trusteft]

I can't imagine playing this game controlling hundreds of colonies. It would take months just to finish a single game. trusteft, you may be entirely alone among the user-base in your desire for this size game.

When evaluating what bugs to fix or features to add, one of the important ways to prioritize is by considering how much of the user base cares about that particular feature or bug. If the game is playable at 250x250, it may not be worth the effort to make it work for a 500x500 size game, rather than some work on something that more players care about.

Just sayin'

You might be right about the percentage of players wanting to play at 500x500, but you might be wrong too.  You could just be saying this because  you want the developer to focus on things  you find more important and are worried that if he spends time on this he won't on the things you want.  Not surprising of course, we humans are selfish.
Also, you (don't take this personal) might not be able or willing to play at such level, but that doesn't mean others can't or the very least are unwilling to. (500x500 maps)

I have other games that take months to play.  For example PBEM Campaigns of WinSPMBT where each campaign can take a year or more (or of course less).  Empire Deluxe, and a  few other. 
I am not whining about the developer focusing first on other things, please don't do it for the developer saying he will look at this after 1-2 more patches...

One more thing, while I find the option for many AI players, very good to have, I prefer in my games to have a smaller number of unique races, like say 12 or so for this game.

[Wade]

No neither can I. Neither the UI, AI, or game system are designed for it.

The idea behind allowing large maps, was to accommodate a large number of players with smaller empires, such that as you overcame one enemy, there was always another one beyond, and you would never be sure whether or not you were the biggest fish in the sea.

Well, these large map games are the sorts of games that I like to play. I would prefer a Huge (500x500 or 1000x1000) map game with a maximum number of AI players(104 or for Armada 2526! Yeah!...or sometimes less)that takes months of casual time to play to an end game period.
Like Neutron states here, it allows you to always be uncertain what is beyond your neighbors. Huge maps allow my game to have an epic feel of existing in a dynamic galaxy. It's like Star Trek where you and your neighbors might be in one "quadrant" and eventually you might explore further...or events may come to you from areas beyond your knowledge...and assimilate you. I like to know that events and histories are taking place beyond my knowledge and reach of the map/galaxy that might have a "butterfly effect" on my neighborhood of the map/galaxy.

I believe that it is not just Trusteft and I that imagine and like to play a game of that size and time. I think there are many, many silent more that like to. That's why many games of this type have included massive/huge maps.

Neutron, your statement is curious though. You first state that the game is not designed for your largest maps(originally included). Then you mention that there is an idea behind originally including them. I suppose it simply means that the game has not yet been optimized to use the largest maps thus you are temporarily removing them.

I do like that the next update will focus on improving combat. I can wait awhile to play more huge maps. I look forward to the fixes for their saving issues(and turn processing times improvement, if required).

This is what Brad Wardell, the main creator, developer, and owner of Stardock for 'Galactic Civilizations 2', the second expansion, 'Twilight of the Arnor'  stated when introducing the expansion feature list:
(Also, Brad Wardell has stated that he believes that it is good to discuss and support other 4Ex strategy games because the success of any one game will help others in the genre.)

http://www.galciv2.com/twilight/

-New galaxy size: Immense. Due to the memory optimizations, Stardock was able to create a ridiculously large galaxy size called Immense.

Players and Their “Big” Galaxies
What is it with strategy game fans and the ridiculously large map sizes they want?

Twilight introduces a new map size that might as well be called “Yea, you bloody loon, I’ve got your crazy big map right here!” but marketing said we had to name it “Immense.”

So how big of a map is immense? In my best Sicilian (from Princess Bride) imitation: “Supreme Commander big maps? Sins of a Solar Empire big maps? Civilization? MOO? All wimps!”

An immense sized map in Twilight has 576 sectors. It takes 12 moves to get from one side of a sector to another. It’s just insanely, ridiculously big.

Supporting that sick map size meant Stardock had to go back and reengineer a lot of the memory management and performance algorithms. The net effect is that Twilight of the Arnor uses about half the memory of Dark Avatar and runs about 30% faster on the same hardware. So there were benefits.

Now for the screenshot of the immense size galaxy so you can get an idea of how ridiculous it is:

 

Figure 12: Immense sized galaxies. I mean, what the heck. That'll take months to play!

But people want these huge maps so it’s our job to give it to them. Another thing about having a map this size is that the AI had to be updated to support different strategies since what works on a small map falls apart on a big map. That meant different ship design algorithms, different construction algorithms, different economic management algorithms, even different diplomacy algorithms (why bother declaring war on someone it would take you 30 turns to reach?).

[Iceman]

Neutron, your statement is curious though. You first state that the game is not designed for your largest maps(originally included). Then you mention that there is an idea behind originally including them. I suppose it simply means that the game has not yet been optimized to use the largest maps thus you are temporarily removing them.

Larger maps with few stars and more spread out, maybe.

[Fishman]

I should point out that a 250 by 250 map is plenty for a 100 player game. Have you actually played a game of this size, and found it to be insufficiently large. In terms of gameplay I don't really see what having 1000 colonies gives you that having 100 doesn't.

I don't think it's so much the need to have a thousand colonies as it is the desire to avoid that initial sense of claustrophobia, that you are encountering people too early for your taste. This ties in with the fact that your early options are very strictly limited by the general worthlessness of low-level equipment, creating a desire to not encounter opponents until more things to actually do about them opens up. The sensation of claustrophobia can be counteracted in numerous ways, both on the player and the development side: If the player discovers new, more potent ways of employing the equipment he has available, his sense of claustrophobia will decrease as he is able to effectively respond to what he has encountered. Similarly, if developers make new or better equipment that is easily accessible, the player will be able to employ these new tools to deal with the early encounter, and the sense of claustrophobia will decrease. Alternatively, if the density of the map is increased, so that the player finds more resources in a smaller area of the map, this may also combat the desire for more space.

In the absence of either of these options, the player will react to the sense of claustrophobia by wanting more space. There's a catch to this, though: More space is invariably an extremely inefficient way of dealing with the problem, as far as resources go, and often fails to resolve the problem at all, as AIs tend to be more efficient at exploiting large volumes of space with lousy tools than humans are, leading to a continuing sense of claustrophobia and a desire for an even bigger map.

This is basically the psychology that drives the "bigger map" crowd. People like this invariably crave a bigger map if they get the impression that the AI is rushing them, and the tools they have for dealing with such a thing are ineffective or excessively costly. Sometimes this is an illusion produced by the fact that they are simply not good at the game, and their desire for enormous maps will decrease as their skill with the game improves, other times the tools really are simply ineffectual or overpriced. In Armada, for instance, trying to wage war with corvette-level technology is a royal pain in the ass. It can be slow, expensive, and clumsy, as corvettes are neither swift, cheap, nor effective, and many people tend to desire to avoid this. Building alternative options is even more costly, and can involve lengthy deviations in research targets. Many people tend not to enjoy the prospect of such things, and seek to delay such encounters with larger maps to achieve greater separation. As mentioned, this is extremely inefficient, because a quadrupling of the map size (doubling of all dimensions) produces only a 50% increase in mean separation, so the player quadruples the size of the map for an approximate gain of about 5 turns before the annoyance begins again.

Larger maps with few stars and more spread out, maybe.

This will actually exacerbate the sense of player claustrophobia: Defending more "spread out" space is many times more expensive, and the decrease in desirable territory will mean that the player needs to span even larger volumes of territory to achieve a comfortable rate of progress. When the nearest planet is always at least 5 turns away and you'll never get a warning better than 2 turns, every world essentially stands alone. You become less a galactic empire and more a collection of planetary rulers.

[trusteft]

I should point out that a 250 by 250 map is plenty for a 100 player game. Have you actually played a game of this size, and found it to be insufficiently large. In terms of gameplay I don't really see what having 1000 colonies gives you that having 100 doesn't.

I don't think it's so much the need to have a thousand colonies as it is the desire to avoid that initial sense of claustrophobia, that you are encountering people too early for your taste. This ties in with the fact that your early options are very strictly limited by the general worthlessness of low-level equipment, creating a desire to not encounter opponents until more things to actually do about them opens up. The sensation of claustrophobia can be counteracted in numerous ways, both on the player and the development side: If the player discovers new, more potent ways of employing the equipment he has available, his sense of claustrophobia will decrease as he is able to effectively respond to what he has encountered. Similarly, if developers make new or better equipment that is easily accessible, the player will be able to employ these new tools to deal with the early encounter, and the sense of claustrophobia will decrease. Alternatively, if the density of the map is increased, so that the player finds more resources in a smaller area of the map, this may also combat the desire for more space.

In the absence of either of these options, the player will react to the sense of claustrophobia by wanting more space. There's a catch to this, though: More space is invariably an extremely inefficient way of dealing with the problem, as far as resources go, and often fails to resolve the problem at all, as AIs tend to be more efficient at exploiting large volumes of space with lousy tools than humans are, leading to a continuing sense of claustrophobia and a desire for an even bigger map.

This is basically the psychology that drives the "bigger map" crowd. People like this invariably crave a bigger map if they get the impression that the AI is rushing them, and the tools they have for dealing with such a thing are ineffective or excessively costly. Sometimes this is an illusion produced by the fact that they are simply not good at the game, and their desire for enormous maps will decrease as their skill with the game improves, other times the tools really are simply ineffectual or overpriced. In Armada, for instance, trying to wage war with corvette-level technology is a royal pain in the ass. It can be slow, expensive, and clumsy, as corvettes are neither swift, cheap, nor effective, and many people tend to desire to avoid this. Building alternative options is even more costly, and can involve lengthy deviations in research targets. Many people tend not to enjoy the prospect of such things, and seek to delay such encounters with larger maps to achieve greater separation. As mentioned, this is extremely inefficient, because a quadrupling of the map size (doubling of all dimensions) produces only a 50% increase in mean separation, so the player quadruples the size of the map for an approximate gain of about 5 turns before the annoyance begins again.

Larger maps with few stars and more spread out, maybe.

This will actually exacerbate the sense of player claustrophobia: Defending more "spread out" space is many times more expensive, and the decrease in desirable territory will mean that the player needs to span even larger volumes of territory to achieve a comfortable rate of progress. When the nearest planet is always at least 5 turns away and you'll never get a warning better than 2 turns, every world essentially stands alone. You become less a galactic empire and more a collection of planetary rulers.

Very good thinking and great post.
Wrong though.
Why? Because while what you say about more breathing room is correct, it is not correct that it always means the people who want larger maps only want it for this reason.  As I (and one more already) mentioned, some people LIKE playing with huge numbers, having fleets of hundreds+ ships, etc.  I also like the breathing room and not early contact, but that doesn't mean it is my reason for asking for larger map.

[Wade]

Again, my reason for liking huge maps:

Well, these large map games are the sorts of games that I like to play. I would prefer a Huge (500x500 or 1000x1000) map game with a maximum number of AI players(104 or for Armada 2526! Yeah!...or sometimes less)that takes months of casual time to play to an end game period.
Like Neutron states here, it allows you to always be uncertain what is beyond your neighbors. Huge maps allow my game to have an epic feel of existing in a dynamic galaxy. It's like Star Trek where you and your neighbors might be in one "quadrant" and eventually you might explore further...or events may come to you from areas beyond your knowledge...and assimilate you. I like to know that events and histories are taking place beyond my knowledge and reach of the map/galaxy that might have a "butterfly effect" on my neighborhood of the map/galaxy.

[Iceman]

* Tech research time increased 50%

This affects the races differently. Those with research bonuses (general or specific) are beneffitted of course, those with penalties are penalized.
Those races that start in space are probably the more penalized ones.

[Iceman]

* The technology research rate can be set manually for custom games, and can be specified in scenario files.

IIRC, the Tutorial already had this? ResearchRate = 1.5
To add this to scenarios, is it done the same way as in the Toturial.xml file?

* A new capability “Initial Population” allows Ark Ships to found colonies that start with more than one population.

How do you use this? Tried setting a Capability = InitialPopulation for the Ark Ship but it didn't work.

* The root of the save game name, can be set from the command line using the –sr option

Where and how is this set? In the shortcut for the mod? After the -mods switch? Do you need to specify a folder, and if so any special folder name? Could you give an example?

[Neutron]

I'll post about this in the modding forum Iceman. Pretty sure you need a space in "Initial Population", and yes the tech rate is set the same as the tutorial.