Sword of the Stars 2: Trust ye not the space dolphin.

[medes]

F*ck yeah! Space Shotgun! Now if only I have the economy to built the prototype.


Edit: Also, turn 182 and only 2 crashes. Fate has been kind.

Edit 2:
New CnC Dreadnaught prototype, the GTDA Anubis


If guys are soldiering through the game too share some designs eh

[Ammon Ra]

how are you people loading saves? i just ctd or the game does nothing. :-|

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Ammon: It seems to be sluggish but eventually the save loads.

[medes]

I also notice better stability when using the 64bit exe

[Busby]

Those the alternate Human ships medes? They look quite bad ass. I'd use Steam to take pictures of my ships but I never manage to get past 40 turns before a crash and I have some graphics glitches.

[Paladin]

Also it seems odd that they gave the modules such silly names when Cargo Pod or ammunition magazine would have been much better than Camel and a lot more self explanatory too.

It's not a cargo pod or an ammunition magazine though. "Supply" is an abstraction that encompasses ammunition, food, and fuel.

So the camel pack is essentially what turns a ship into an Extended Range variant in this game, and in that context, the name camel makes a lot of sense.

[medes]

then why not just call them "extended range" module and "psionic warfare" module. Calling it professor x is kinda embarrassing.

@Busby: Nah they're the standard, I think the alternate Sol ships comes with the retail version.

Two more designs
GTD Horus Psionic Warfare Dreadnaught - The dread's armor section has a lot of module slots.


GTD Osiris Heavy Dreadnaught - Every inch filled with kinetic pain giver. Can't wait to see it in action.. That is if I can see it in action


I swear I'm spending more time in the ship designer than the actual game.

[Busby]

Bah, stupid crashes. I want to see some Dreds. The fanciest I can get is DE battle riders before crashes. The 3 different versions the Tarka have are the Interceptor, which has a pair of fixed heavy mounts and two medium turrets, an Escort, which has two medium turrets and some Ok looking PD spots, and a Patrol, which has 4 medium turrets. So you have either two or three on a Cruiser carrier... And that's a LOT of fire-power.

@Busby: Nah they're the standard, I think the alternate Sol ships comes with the retail version.

Ah, ok. They look really sleek, I've only seen the SolForce cruisers because of crashes but its nice to see the awesome is carried along with the classes.

[DrRansom]

Well, I must say that I'm glad I decided to wait to get this game. Thank you to those who took the plunge and warned the rest of us off.

Do you think that Kerberos will survive to get this game in a playable state? Or is the company finished? And, can people finally shut down Mecron's smug attitude?

It is sad that this game, which I was looking forward too, is on the brink of total failure. This is yet another lesson for game developers, nothing is worse than a buggy / disrupted launch. I remember when America's Army 2 came out, and flopped. Played the first one quite extensively, haven't missed the second.

[Paladin]

then why not just call them "extended range" module and "psionic warfare" module. Calling it professor x is kinda embarrassing.

Because it would be boring?

Also, the first game was always full of little pop culture references. So the Professor X thing is actually in keeping with SotS tradition.

[Black]

Is the lead developer mismanaging the project also in keeping with SotS tradition?

[Paladin]

Is the lead developer mismanaging the project also in keeping with SotS tradition?

Pretty sure I've already posted about how disappointed I am with this release in general, coming from Kerberos. Let me check. Yup, I have:

Man... I'm pretty saddened by this.

I've literally been waiting years for this game. This has pretty much destroyed my last shred of faith in the gaming industry.

That doesn't mean I'm going to get in a snit and shit all over everything about the game. The name of the psywar module is funny, and appropriate. Doesn't mean the game's not horribly buggy and unfinished.

[Lord_Calgar445]

So the game is still fubared? Or does steam download the official version now?

[medes]

still fubared, if you're interested in the game I recommend waiting a month or so to see if they kerberos can get it to stop crashing.

I like how the game has much more depth now in terms of station construction and fleet management, but with the amount of time it takes manage those things I can't imagine playing this in multiplayer like we did in SotS 1. I have mixed feelings about the mission menu too, it's really cool the way it works but I kinda feel the simple point click we had in the first was more convenient.

Also, you can't rename your colonies, you get to do it once when your colonists land but not after that. Being stuck with an imperial capital called Kaazadone1 really rustles my jimmies

[Busby]

Its still buggy and full of UI errors, yes. The version on Steam IS the official version, and we should have a big patch on Monday that will maybe fix a lot of issues.

Anyway, human battle rider DDs are much less impressive then the Tarka counter part (who only has medium turrets, no heavy woops). I really dig the PT boat thing they have going on but in terms of the pew pew the Escort has no medium turrets, the Interceptor only has one, and the Patrol only has two.

[medes]

Haven't used battleriders yet, I'm working through combat telekinesis in the current game after I read that higher psionic tech lets you TK in ship combat. I'm guessing that means psyops guys knocking cruisers around with their mind.

[Dark_Avenger]

This game has gotten me intersted. I've never played the first one and I'm looking around the internet to figure what this game is about. I thought I might ask some people who play it.

-How is Multiplayer (This is a big thing for me. Do the games take too long?)
-Is the game real time? Or turn based?

[Paladin]

Human DDs were always kind of... Crap.

Man, the audio dropping bug is bad... It actually killed audio on my system entirely. Even trying to play music through winamp now throws a "Failed to create directsound interface" error, or something like that.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The module names are kinda crap i agree. They come across as lame rather than clever.

especially since i still dont know what half of them do. reflux furnace?

Not that it matters, since my cruisers all use some random ass default module in combat instead of the one i told them to use.

Anyway, human battle rider DDs are much less impressive then the Tarka counter part (who only has medium turrets, no heavy woops). I really dig the PT boat thing they have going on but in terms of the pew pew the Escort has no medium turrets, the Interceptor only has one, and the Patrol only has two.

humans get node fighters, which inexplicably have a torpedo launcher by default.

Also once you tech up your guns a bit you are often more limited by supply/energy than by the turret layout.

****

I like the station infrastructure but the design is kinda bad. Maxing modules is mandatory and cheap enough to be strategically mandatory. So the only actual player choice (read: gameplay) involved in buying modules is for race habitats and science stations. Half the clicking i do in this game seems to be buying station modules and 90% of it is unnecessary. And stations are probably the most entertaining part of the game other than ship design. Lol. (And the human civilian stations crash is tres annoying.)

[Paladin]

Yeah, I have no idea what the reflux furnace is either, But Camel was obvious to me immediately. It's a very intuitive name, camels are mostly known for their capacity to take long treks through the desert because of big humps full of reserve fuel after all.

Plus I'm just used to looking at ship stats when switching things in and out to see what the effects are from SotS 1. So I was like, "Camel, I bet that's the new method of making ER ships. Yup, supply increases when I stick it on the ship."

[overmind2000]

Dark_Avenger - there is a demo for the original game, its on steam and also other game demo download hosts so it shouldn't be too hard to find. However the controls, whilst simple, are not fully intuitive and you'll miss out a lot of the depth to the game if you don't also read the manual and the wiki for advice.
That might make it sound complicated, but its not, its just that you need to read how the game works to understand how to play - and once done its a very simple setup indeed.


The original game also still has a strong multiplayer community, however whilst you can play smaller maps the game is aimed at being larger scale (think hours). Although you have drop in drop out support and multiplayer saving (ie the ai will take over if a player drops out or if you load up without everyone being present).

Its a turn based game overall, but battles between fleets take place in a real time(time limited - you can adjust how long all the way up to no limit - the default being around 5 mins) environment - similar to a 2D homeworld battle field.


Note that even a light reading of this thread should show that the new game is somewhat excessively bugged at present so I'd advise looking into the original; it might be older, but as I said above its still got a strong online community for the game.

[Busby]

Human DDs were always kind of... Crap.

Nooo.... It was just every one else's where better.

Yeah, I have no idea what the reflux furnace is either, But Camel was obvious to me immediately. It's a very intuitive name, camels are mostly known for their capacity to take long treks through the desert because of big humps full of reserve fuel after all.

Some of them are just like that, Sempi Fi, Camel, Caravan. They where pretty obvious. The escape pop threw me for a moment (and is useless on CRs anyway). I think the spare reactors are also pretty obvious but I haven't been able to see them in use, so I might be wrong in thinking they kick in if the ship's main reactor is knocked out. The Shiva Furnace has me thinking along the lines of Star Control II's Furnace upgrade, which increases your energy recharge rate, but I haven't seen a battle yet so I can't be sure. Still, having a tool tip tell you what each module does in the design screen would be nice rather then having to guess or go to the SotSpedia.

[Moe]

So... if you haven't played the beta, how does one go about this? There's no tutorial - how do I say move my colony ships out? How do I know which of my pre-existing ships are colony capable? Their names aren't helping "dark frost" - what? The ship builder just shows me a picture labeled "command section" "mission section" "engine section" without telling me what modules were put there. This is not intuitive at all... how did you guys figure it out?

[Methuselath]

Mine works by sending them on missions by, if I'm not mistaken, clicking on the target planet and choosing the objective. A manager will pop out where you can select which fleet you want to send. Haven't played it beyond a couple of turns yet so can't comment on the builder. So far the encyclopedia seems to give enough information of educated guesses for me.

[Weavern]

Could someone enlighten me how to do combat? Because they dont seem to shoot at one another and suddenly some of the ships have taken damage in the after action notice. There's no attack arrow either when I finally managed to get into range.

Missing features:
-being able to alter strategic / combat turns in game
-being able to change the # of stars and distance (seriously they cut this?)
-default ship names ffs
-an options panel

[Paladin]

You have to declare war on another faction or your ships won't fire on them in combats. Why it bothers to run a combat in that situation, I don't know.

[Weavern]

And how do I declare war? Because my ships seem to be taking damage from him and the diplomacy pane does not show any options except a large portrait.

[Paladin]

No idea. Just repeating what I've read on the kerberos forums. I haven't had an actual combat happen yet.

Your ships might be taking damage from running into each other/enemy ships/space debris though. That was fairly common in SotS. Just throwing ideas out, I have no real idea.

[Carl]

@Weavern: This could happen in 1 too, it seems the game assumes sombody slams into an asteroid or somthing post match.

[yetanotherplayer]

Use the left and right arrows at the top of the portrait. Not intuitive, I know. I haven't tried to declare war, but the other options don't seem to do anything. Maybe I just don't have the pre-reqs...

[Busby]

Every time I've tried to declare war using the diplomacy screen the game crashed, so beware of that. You MIGHT even need to get the first Xeno tech before you can even do that, I'm not sure.

Edit: OK, so I bypassed the declare war crash by making an unprovoked attack. Oh god. Its beautiful. And then the game crashed just after the first Hiver cruiser aspolded. So now I'm a sad but excited panda.

Haven't used battleriders yet, I'm working through combat telekinesis in the current game after I read that higher psionic tech lets you TK in ship combat. I'm guessing that means psyops guys knocking cruisers around with their mind.

Use battleriders. I had a cruiser carry some scout riders (pretty much a Deepscan with an engine and token guns) into my battle and they seemed quite useful, if a bit awkward to control. There seems to be a lack of the generic "Charge/shoot em from range/run away" orders which is a tad annoying ah nope, they are still there, but take some time to kick in and have some strange behaviour, and if you have cruisers and battle riders selected together the battle riders ignore you. But being able to send high speed Deepscans around the battlefield to find the other player is too good to give up. When the game is fully patched up I suspect I'll always have at least a CR carrier with some scouts on-board just because of how useful they are.

[Kushan_Pilot]

Medes, thank you for posting those human DN pictures.

I'm back to the "anticipation stage" for this game, haha. Funny, that.

[Paladin]

I think I'm gonna mod the tech tree, since I can't keep the game from crashing long enough to research much of anything, and the game slows down to a crawl when you're around 80 turns in... Just so I can see all the toys.

'cause right now the only real redeeming quality of the game is that it's purty.

[overmind2000]

Just to update a new official letter has gone out from the Kerberos team - I'm quoting it because their site is not loading up for me *copy paste from steam*

Hey folks! Helluva weekend eh?

Welcome to the perfect storm of ???? up made up of 40% Murphy's Law, 30% Chaos, 20% Overambition and 10% wishful thinking. And you have our deepest regrets for what it is worth as none of this was part of the plan.

I am tempted to go into full blown explanations but a) that starts to smack of making excuses and b) in reality I think the biggest things on people's minds right now judging from your posts is "Who's responsible?!!" and "What's going to be done?!!" And even when its time for explanations I am sure you would all rather hear about it in the context of "How this won't happen again".

That latter question is an easy one and best gotten out of the way quickly. "Who is responsible?"...I am. Half my job at Kerberos is to be the one that makes the hard call. What gets prioritized. What gets pulled. What gets released. What get accepted. And in many ways, what gets said. When push comes to shove, I am the one who makes the deal with the devil. When something is supposed to be watched, its me who has to know the answer. When the switch got thrown on the wrong build, costing many of you an extra big download and letting loose an extra buggy code base, I was in traffic instead of giving the yay or nay myself. That should not have been...hell I should have insisted nothing moved until the right code had been there and confirmed multiple times. Instead I blew it and bad things happened.

So lets set this straight here. When you are dealing with SotS2 this weekend and wondering quite rightly "Who is to blame for this?!!" The answer is me. NOT Paradox...NOT Steam and certainly NOT my team. All of those forces have been exemplary in helping deal with a bad situation. When it comes to who should be at the end of anyone's fingerpoint, it's just plain ol' me.


Ok...so now onto the real important thing...The Future of SotS2 and what you can count on.


First of all the bad news...Thanks to various factors we are now sitting on top of a pile of blown apart code and unstable features. The first thing you can expect though is stability. There will be an update tomorrow which will set right much of the chaos created friday in terms of crashing and keeping you from playing that game. What it WON'T do is magically add back in every piece of functionality. Gods know I wish that I had that magic wand but the reality is that path leads to more chaos and more broken gameplay sessions. Remember that part where I mentioned making the hard calls? This is another one of those. As much as the team wants to throw themselves at this like crazy people, I am not going to ok that. Instead we will go about this in a relatively sane and orderly fashion with regular updates that make sure everything that goes back in is as stable as possible before you see it. Oh I am sure some stuff will leak through, but at least that will be dealt with quickly and cleanly. Sorry to just put the hard facts to you straight without flowers but I think we are somewhat past the flowers make it all better stage of this relationship

What this means to you...

This plan means that you folks can expect at least 2 or 3 updates a week over the next month or so that will gradually make this game into what it should have been when the switch was pulled on friday. Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.
Ok fine...I am a lil shakey on the last half of the plan but what I can tell you is that by the end of this period you WILL have more additional content than you would have under more ideal circumstances. Every update will go out with some thank you for your patience...some badges, extra maps, new nose art, more background entries. Basically whatever can be done alongside the priority path will be put in as well. The people out there who know Kerberos know that we support our games not just for weeks or months but for years. For all of you people new to us, please let me assure you that despite how your purchase may look at the moment, you can look forward to years of support. I would ask that you consider not giving up on us because it will literally take the end of the world for Kerberos and Paradox to give up on SotS2.


What I would like to ask of you...


Oh I know that is hardly what you expected to hear right now, but before your temperature rises, please hear me out becuase this portion is in reaction to ALL the posts I have read which seem to subdivide into certain clear groups.


If you are a Kerberos and/or a SotS fan then please just enjoy the game as you can over the next few weeks. I know you want to help as much as possible but to be honest you should NOT be rewarded for your support with more work. Your feedback is appreciated but in no means are you expected to act as testers or hunt bugs. Literally your patience and continued support is more than enough.

If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay. I know this does not make it all right but at least it should make it clear that no one wants to use you as a beta tester nor was that ever the intent.

And finally, if you are in the camp that still feels robbed by the time you have reached this point of my post I can only offer what I can. We are fixing it and we need folks to either cheer, step aside or get out of the way cause vitriol is not going to help right now. If you demand a refund then I completely understand and you can be assured, the cost of that will make it directly to us. We will feel your "voting with your dollars", you can be sure about that and we accept that as fair play. On the other hand, if a free copy of the orginal SotS will help tide you over while we get this game shined from turnip to jewel, then please write to "contact@kerberos-productions.com" and we will set you up. If nothing else, if you are not familiar with how we support our products, you can play it and then ask the old-timers how much it changed over the years and that may reassure you.



So if you are still with me after this long post...let me summarize.

a) ???? up
b) my fault
c) will be Completely fixed
d) fun stuff in many updates
e) Understanding of your position
f) Apology again and underserved request for faith and patience from people who don't know us.


That's about it folks. I hope this helps in some way or another. If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Once again, Regrets and our deepest thanks for whatever patience each one of you can offer.
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions

Original link : http://www.kerberos-productions.com/...p?f=37&t=22033

Personally - if they can keep up with the weekly updates and make real proper progress I'll be happy

[Pocktio]

So I've forgotten how to play SotS it seems.

Tried to make a ship and...what the fuck does any of it mean? I added a 'Semper Fi' onto a cruiser design....a .. what??!

/confused

[Akranadas]

The problem for me isn't so much that we've been lumped with a beta, but the fact that I paid $40 for a beta. If it was $20 or something, I wouldn't have minded, but $40? I could buy a few games for that price which are less of a beta that SoTS2

I also hope the streamline the interface, a lot in these updates. The amount of time spent a turn just navigating the submenus is crazy.

[Kushan_Pilot]

All that because some idiots couldn't make use of the task-queue thingy in SotS :P .

On the other hand, the new colonizer mechanics call for a patrol route sort of behavior. Maybe we can see a hybrid control scheme.

[3DMARINE]

That apology post was written by Mecron, right? I don't think I've ever seen him write something so apologetic ever. I'll be watching this thread, you guys better let me know when this is actually playable. Until then, I now have Argos Naval Yard thanks to to the sale.

[Paladin]

Yes indeed Martin Cirulis is Mecron, Kerberos' CEO and lead. I'm as surprised as anyone else that he can be that completely tactful, tbh.

The people on the various fora saying that Kerberos needs to keep Mecron away from the forums always amuse me though. I mean, yeah, he's probably far too blunt to be handling the majority of direct communication with the fans, but he's the CEO, who do they think is going to tell him he can't post, exactly?

As far as the new structure of the UI when issuing orders... When you consider the fact that you literally can't just send a fleet somewhere without orders anymore, you realize that it's necessary. And the new restriction on only being able to station fleets where you have a station is kind of cool, actually. Lends some extra depth to the game.

Limited quantity of Admirals and therefore fleets also adds new concerns. There's a limit on how many things you can do in a single turn now.

[FriendlyFire]

If this incredible blunder can humble the guy, even just a bit, then at least maybe one good thing will have come out of it.

[Carl]

To update. Mecron made another post in that thread, apprently the vershion they had the day before release was not CTD'ing but still had a lot of non-functioning items. Some last minute attempts at quashing non-CTD bugs on that last day broke somthing however and they didn't catch it in time.

Also rather than re-type i'll just repost my reply from that thread:

@Mecron: Not allways apprecciated your style in several posts i've seen, and sadly due to IRL issues my planned pre-order never happened so i haven't experianced the issues everyone has as i don;t own it yet. But as a customer who has it on his wishlist i want to say i fuly appreciatte the apology. Equally i'm left with the impreshion that muich of what happened was down to a combination of trying to squeze too much in in too littile time and underestimating the required time due to, (as you put it), wishful thinking. Equally this then became magified by as you put it a perfect storm of factors that resulted in a beta build, then a release buld made CTD'y via a last minute bug fix that broke somthing, going out. Thus i appreciatte you holding your hand up and saying "this is my fualt".
But at the same time IMHO, your being too hard on yourself. Even if we assume for a moment you delibretly sent them a bad build underestimated completion time/cost e.t.c. the publisher has the final say on publish or not. If my understanding about the non-CTD'ing release candidate you had is accurrate, then they had a responsability to their customers to stop, say, "this isn't good enough to release" and get somthing hashed out till it's more passabble, (from a business PoV exopecting them to get you to perfect it would be too much i acknowlage). AT absolute worst, they still have to take half the blame here for agreeing to put out a game that was ultimatly not quite ready for release, (what i've heard about the non-CTD stuff seems to indacte a fair range of big issues, but not a totally unfinished game, ala Might and Magic IX for example).
That said i understand also why your saying this. Whilst i don;t have anything so serious to apply it to, i've tended to take a similar approach to certain things at various times and places. No mater how much somone else screwed up, even if the did so to the point of making my responsabilities impossibble to fuffil i allways took the failure as a personol failure. That i had to do better. Only in very extreme cases would i step away from that.
Again thank you though for this Mecron, just don't all go making yourselves i'll overdoing it, it may be your job to make games, but overdoing it like that is of no help to anyone, and from my own perspective on thsi, "it's just a game, not the end of the world and all human life as we know it".

[Weavern]

For anyne that has got further into the game, I assume you cannot stack reinforcements into fleets like you could in sots. I'm a bit displeased I cannot stack support/repair onto teh backend of the fleet and only have combat ships participate rather then be forced to outfit the fleet as is.

for those of you ahrvesting dev/producer posts, could you link the postid if you cant properly quote it?

[Paladin]

Nope, every ship in a fleet will enter combat. You have to actually figure out how to protect your support ships now instead of having them be magically indestructible.

----------

Ye gods... Futzing around with the tech tree and whatnot I've made a discovery. The Liir, and only the Liir, can build an LV that carries DNs as battle riders. Seriously.

[Kushan_Pilot]

I like the mission idea. I expect it'll really fit in when they finish restoring the features/functions/whatever they held off on. The fact you can't keep a fleet in the field to perform a queue of functions is a bit bothersome, but I'm sure if it's their intention, I'll adapt to it. But I won't complain if, at some point, they let us keep a fleet on station (and ready for orders) for the duration of the ships supplies. Towards the end of last nights game I was advancing my assets to border stations, crawling steadily outward. Probably as intended, really. It's only a problem if you let the fleets get ahead of your infrastructure.

[Langy]

A lot of what I hear about SOTS2 makes it sound so, so cool (especially the purty, purty pictures), but I'm really put-off by the non-workingness of it. Hopefully by the time the Steam holiday sale hits it'll be fixed a bit.

Also: I've been playing SOTS1, now that I broke down and bought the collection this weekend. Dreadnoughts are fun, but I think research becomes a bit *too* fast later in the game. Also, there should totally be a way to spread your research out among multiple techs:/

[Paladin]

Ah, I see. The Zuul ships in the Liir alliance are Rider only, no FTL drives. So the Liir-Zuul alliance gets Liir LVs that carry Zuul DNs. That's effing terrifying.

If I can figure out the screenshot key I'll have to show you a picture of one of these things.

----------

A lot of what I hear about SOTS2 makes it sound so, so cool (especially the purty, purty pictures), but I'm really put-off by the non-workingness of it. Hopefully by the time the Steam holiday sale hits it'll be fixed a bit.

Also: I've been playing SOTS1, now that I broke down and bought the collection this weekend. Dreadnoughts are fun, but I think research becomes a bit *too* fast later in the game. Also, there should totally be a way to spread your research out among multiple techs:/

You should have waited and bought SotSII, Kerberos is offering free copies of SotS 1 to the people who bought SotS II as compensation for the buggy release.

Towards the end of last nights game I was advancing my assets to border stations, crawling steadily outward. Probably as intended, really. It's only a problem if you let the fleets get ahead of your infrastructure.

Indeed. You also learn to build stations in systems you intend to colonize, and do it ASAP. Otherwise your new colonies get to be undefended.

[Yoshi]

Have had one problem in my attempts to play that annoyed me greatly, was as Zuul trying to colonize a nearby system I'd created a node to, and it kept telling me only my survey fleet was in range of the system, despite the colonization fleet being based in the same system and the fact that the new system was within my supply bubble.

Have no clue why it wouldn't go

[Akranadas]

Had the same issue Yoshi, couldn't move my fleets due to being out of range somehow. Might just be a luck thing when getting planets.

[Paladin]

Got screenshots

Giant pictures of Liir-Zuul Battleship

That thing is a Dreadnought sized Battle Rider. The four ginormous turrets on the middle section are tri barreled large weapons. So three heavy AM Cannons, three Pulsed Graviton Beams, etc. It looks like this when it fires:

[Kushan_Pilot]

I am in awe .

Tomorrow after class then, I'll see how much further I make it. Hopefully the save won't be killed by the patch, but if it is, oh well. I might start from scratch anyway and tweak the settings for more long term benefit.