Star Ruler Windows game

4 comments by FirgofUmbra on Feb 22nd, 2011

After one of our longest in-development times for released patches, we're proud to announce Star Ruler, v1062!  This latest set of patches introduces new tools to optimize micro and macro management of your Empire, deeper and more complex ship automation, a rebalanced economy that makes early-game expansion more difficult and rewarding, tweaks to various weapons and defenses, and a bunch more!

A brief overview of the major features of the patch starts after the jump!

A fleet encroaches upon a fertile world ripe for the taking

Patch 1062 introduces First Contact and Ranged Defend Orders to the game.  At game start, Empires can not contact each other through Diplomacy until they have encountered a ship or planet owned by that Empire.  This game setting is toggleable in the New Game window.

Ranged Defend Orders allow your ships to engage hostile systems within their guarding radius and return when the system has been cleared of threats.  This takes the burden of having to deal with Pirates and other minor threats yourself off your shoulders.  With the addition of deeper Carrier logic, you can now create roaming defense fleets that are completely self-sustaining.

Left: New additions to layout mode            Right: New AI Settings

New to the game in 1062 is a great deal of enhancements to AI Settings and some tweaks to the blueprint window.  For ease-of-use, we've made it so that any stat that you hover over in the Blueprints window's layout mode will highlight all subsystems that are affecting that stat.  This allows you to get at-a-glance balance information for power-draw/generation and so forth.  We've also set it up so that when you mouse over one of those stats you get a brief summary of what that stat is used for.

Over in AI Settings, we've added a bunch of configurable, ship-context-sensitive, options.  Ships that have Ship Bays will be given ship management specific options and menus and so forth.  What's totally new here is the ability to completely configure the Orders for any given ship, save those orders, and apply them to other designs.  The list is a priority list and supports drag and drop; orders at the top take priority over orders underneath them and so forth.

The Economy Report Window

The Economy Report window allows you to track global shifts in your Empire's economy in real time; just in the nick of time for the global economy alterations which make expansion slower and the early game more important than before.

Patch 1062 changes the Planet Capitals so that they no longer generate resources for the planet but instead draw directly from the Galactic Bank.  This makes colonies much more hungry and much more weak than before, making over-expansion even more of a potential economy crash.  With the assistance of the economy report window, however, you can easily track how things are faring in terms of how much you can safely expand and how much you're able to trade.

What's coming up?

Near-complete prototypes of the Terran shipset

Coming up in the next patch will be the new Terran shipset.  Three of its' ships are featured above (the Small, Medium, and Large).  We're also going to attempt to add new subsystems, new system types, some interface overhauling, and potentially an entirely new AI to the game by the next patch.  Maybe even a new gamemode!

Our thanks go out to everyone who has helped us out since launch, spreading the word and getting their friends to try out the game.  In recognition of the fact that the demo is now very out-of-date with the current base game, we're prepping a new demo built off of version 1062 and hope to be putting it out before the end of next week!  Keep an eye out!

Full Changelog

Fixed:

* Fixed floating point errors in cargo and ship bay spaces.
* Fixed a floating point error when deciding if a ship is disabled.
* Artillery was using the wrong effector.
* Some blueprints for the AIs were broken at early tech levels.
* Linked Subsystem glows now only show for sub systems that are actually linked.
* 'Metal Mandate' was acting like 'Metal Focus.'
* Missile racks weren't taking their clip size into account when predicting damage output, causing too many missile racks to target the same object.
* Fighter hulls and stealth systems would aid in dodging Flak and Shield Bomb damage.
* Ships actually take directional damage now!
* Fixed a crash in multiplayer related to objects being destroyed.
* Defend and Work orders on stationary objects will no longer give attack/use tool orders to objects that are too far away.
* Further improved the movement system, in particular when chasing fast objects.
* Changed power generation to reduce the likelihood of a ship shutting down at high tick rates.
* The default Fighter design wasn't very good at its job.
* Fighters automatically launched from carriers would not return to their carrier after attacking.
* Fixed a crash (PVFC) related to fleet icons.
* The repair bay is now properly classified as Support in sub system lists.
* AIs now perform many tasks at a time based on how many are present to be performed. Fixes the AIs getting 'stuck' late game. (Thanks Foraven)
* Many repair beams should spread out amongst different targets better.
* Effects on ships (e.g. damage events) weren't being saved.
* Carriers could try to dock into themselves by ordering the fleet they were in to dock in them.
* You may now click on the name of a constructed ship in the message to select/zoom to that ship.
* Fixed ship port logic; should now trade resources more effectively.
* Resolutions larger than your largest monitor (in either dimension) will no longer be listed, and your native resolution will be listed if it is not.
* AIs were managing their fleets in very poor ways, causing them to be scattered across the galaxy.
* Fixed comet tails and attack glow effects on some video cards.
* Fixed removing cargo storages causing significant problems.
* Sub system and ship explosions no longer play if you can't see the system.
* Some values for spin boxes would cause a crash.
* AIs considered Pirates and Remnants as warring opponents, making the AIs far less likely to wage war.
* Dragging some windows would be very laggy (e.g. race customization).

Changed:

* Planets that are under attack will experience rapid moral loss.
* 'Auto' governor now uses more economic worlds in the first 10 minutes of the game.
* Reduced galaxy gas density for dumbbell galaxies.
* Space Port now uses a split level: Trade rate comes from Economics, storage size comes from Cargo.
* In the right-click menu, "Use Tool...Tool" is now "Use Tool".
* In the right-click menu, tools can have a special "Use" name, like "Colonize Planet".
* Further reduced space damage.
* Flak will now only automatically attack when things get within 80% of its max range, to avoid only hitting a few targets when a large mass of units is approaching.
* Links in the in-game IRC window can now be clicked.
* Diplomacy cannot be conducted with empires before meeting one of their ships or planets. Can be disabled by toggling "Start in Full Contact" from the new game menu.
* Homeworld starts with 2 less farms, and instead starts with a space port and ship yard.
* Changed how fighter hull dodging works to make it easier for fighters to hit each other, and so a fast moving attacker doesn't suffer from its own speed.
* Changed base designs to be generally better, especially with regards to recent changes.
* Crew Quarters regenerate 1% of the crew per second.
* Planets without enough food will lose no more than 10% of their people per second.
* Running out of food now reduces mood of a planet, at worst at the same rate as lacking goods.
* Docked ships are now repaired by the carrier's repair bays and crew if the carrier is at full health.
* System Searches (used by the AI) are now batched. This significantly improves performance with many AIs, or many ships controlled by the AI.
* Updated the Aggressor AI (Thanks Superking).
* Deadend research links refund 10% of their cost to the tech, and repeated links (unlocking an already unlocked tech) refunds 20% of the cost of the link to the unlocked tech.
* Optimized engine flares.
* Effects can have up to 6 values.
* Economic structures now produce partial output when there are not enough workers to run all structures. This prevents a planet from dying off due to the single space port shutting down, for example.
* Revamped the blueprint import window for easier import of multiple designs and to add a delete button for designs in the profile.
* Star Ruler now keeps saves, mods, screenshots, etc. in "My Documents/My Games/Star Ruler". Files in the previous folder will be moved to the new folder when you launch Star Ruler.
* "Indebted" race trait now takes 50% of all resources exported to the bank for the first 20 minutes.

Balance:

* Repair tool repair rate reduced by 50%.
* Bussard Ramjet no longer takes up double the apparent size, and has increased thrust output (still much lower than thrusters).
* Significantly increased the range and average damage of flak.
* Bulkheads no longer get hit before other sub systems.
* Bulkheads on armor now provide a third less bonus hitpoints than on regular systems.
* Flak cannot be fitted on fighter hulls, and must be a minimum size of 1 (scale 1 on a scale 1).
* Boarding Parties now require power and air.
* Doubled labor cost of structures.
* Tripled labor cost of planet cannons, lasers, and shields (in addition to the previous increase).
* Reduced starting population of colonies - 1M/structure down from 6M
* Spamming minimum-size colony ships should no longer be effective, at all.
* "Fast Metabolism" trait now awards 1 point.
* "Natural Green Thumb" trait now grants 2 levels of biology (down from 5)
* Slightly increased goods generation.
* Upgrading structures multiple levels will now be significantly more expensive, but upgrading 1 level will be unchanged.

Added:

* Added a new version of the Civil Acts window to make total effects much more obvious.
* Costs of ships, ship systems, and structures are now displayed in their hover boxes.
* The subsystem damage window in the bottom right now has a "Layout" mode that displays the blueprint with damaged systems in red.
* Empire stats (e.g. Galactic Bank resources) now have rate-tracking to provide income, expenses, and demands at regular intervals.
* Added setStat/subStat functions to scripts to complement addStat, as well ass addDemand to alter the new demand component of stat tracking.
* The "makeShip" function now returns the id the constructed ship will eventually have. Useful to the AIs for tracking their build orders.
* Added "Balanced Start" option to maps. Forces players to start in systems with 3 or 4 planets, avoiding systems with too few or too many planets.
* Added support for multiple loading screen backgrounds. Default is Images/loading_background.png, and additional backgrounds are named loading_background1.png, loading_background2.png, etc.
* The Layout View Mode of the Blueprint Window now displays which subsystems are affecting whichever stat you mouse over.
* All global stats in the Blueprint Window now display tooltips that inform the player what each stat is used for when the player hovers over them.
* A default strike craft blueprint can be assigned for carriers in the blueprints window.
* Option in the blueprints window to build carriers filled with a full strike craft complement.
* Option in the blueprints window to let carriers automatically order nearby planets to build new strike craft if they lose any.
* Automation orders given to new ships can be edited on a per-blueprint basis in the blueprints window.
* Ship defend range: can be set between current system only (default), local area (x AU) and entire galaxy. Ships will move to other systems you can see enemies in within their defend range.
* ExtTexts can now use syntax by putting #html# at the beginning. To further aide readability, tags may have a '/' character at the beginning (e.g. Red Text White Text)
* Added new game options to limit maximum ship count, and minimum and maximum ship scale.

Removed:

* Removed unused earthbump.jpg and sunmap.jpg.
* Removed TemplateArg support for script functions, as it didn't work anyway.
* Removed "Currency-free Economy" trait as it does not work with the new economy.