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

[boolybooly]

Doesnt happen to me actually Weavern. I set zero both encounters and menaces. Which map ?

Is the patch a save breaker or not, anyone?

[Paladin]

At least one of the items on the fix list isn't.

- Changes have been made to the upgrade paths of stations to prevent certain issues where upgrades might never be possible.

They actually removed habitat modules from Liir and Morrigi science/civilian stations altogether, so they can never upgrade them :/

[Paladin]

Well, one undocumented change in today's patch. They added the model for the Heavy [Plasma/Fusion/Antimatter] Cannon turrets into the game, so my favorite weapon is now usable

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Also, the Liir Battleship Carrier LV class can have 6 kingfisher modules on it, which means it gets 18 DE sized battle riders in addition to the 3 DN sized ones.

Gonna try and get a carrier group built.

[Carl]

Any chance of putting together a spoilery vidio of the other lir Leviathan in action?

[Paladin]

I have no video capture software, so no.

[Carl]

ok . Thought i'd ry asking . Smone putna picture of i up earlir in the thread, but everyone was so busy freaking they din't cotten on .

[Kushan_Pilot]

Weavern, I haven't played the game with this patch yet, but I can vouch for that particular problem. I set it to zero, but I still get them. It hasn't crashed my game, but I do get the aborted combats on occasion; I see a grid when I load, but if I zoom way out I find myself looking at the solar system for a few seconds.

[Paladin]

I find that happens because it doesn't actually place your fleet. Click on the fleet on the screen before hitting ok to start the battle and it seems to solve that. Normally that window is for you to pick a fleet to deploy when you have more than one available, I think there's a bug in that where it's not automatically selecting the a fleet by default and deploys nothing.

[Kushan_Pilot]

I thought that too, so I did select the fleet about every other time to make comparisons :/ . That's one thing about the games current state: it's hard to tell when your testing/probing a feature that may or may not work, and possibly just wasting time. I'll keep trying then. I will probably crank it up today to test the patch, a couple of the "fixes" looked interesting if not in some way applicable.

[Bentguru]

Looks like they're giving away all the DLC free except for the human immersion pack

[overmind2000]

Yep any purchases of the game up to the 30th of November get all the DLC barring human for free. I suspect its aimed at appeasing those who have already purchased the game rather than trying to entice others into an early purchase. Myself though, I'll sit on the fence till nearer the date.
If they can keep rolling out 2-3 patches per week and make some significant progress toward making the game playable (as opposed to chasing errors and not getting very far) then I might well jump in and show my support.

[Langy]

Cool; that makes me much more likely to purchase the game prior to the holiday sales, though I'll have to decide whether the DLC are worth it. Hrm.

Could someone post a description of the various DLCs? Also: any idea whether they'll be actually sold, and for what price?

Meh. Not like I'll have much time to play SOTS2 prior to the holidays anyways, what with graduate school and Skyrim and all:/

[Paladin]

2 of the DLC packs are already for sale on GamersGate. They're $4 each.

Also, I'm really depressed now. I tried and tried and tried to get a Liir Battleship Carrier LV into play before unavoidable crashes killed my game. I did it a million different ways, but could never get them out without the game going "Nope! Yu can't haz nice things!". So finally I resorted to save game editing, haxed myself a sweet Battleship Carrier, 9 Battleships, and 36 DE Battle Riders (Which should be about the entire active and reserve capacity of an LV Battleship Carrier. Seriously, all that in one ship) only to find out that DN riders can't be assigned to the carrier properly.

*sobs*

It'll be an absolutely amazing thing to see... When it works :/

[Busby]

All gamers who have bought or will buy Sots II up until November 30th will receive the following DLCs/Immersion packs: Liir & Morrigi + Hiver & Tarka + Suulka.

The DLCs will show up on your account sometime between now and November 30th (please note - you do not need to take any type of action to receive them, you will see on your account when they have arrived). It will not matter where you have purchased your copy of Sword of the Stars II, it will be the same for all.

No need to buy the DLCs.

[Paladin]

He knows that. He was trying to figure out how much that was worth in monetary value, for which he needed to know how much the DLC packs cost.

[Caesar]

Can I trade the free DLC for having game features be tied to the UI? Or will I still need to use an SQL editor to edit my saves to use basic gameplay features if I use the DLC?

[Paladin]

Features that aren't in the UI yet are disabled on purpose because they crash the game. They're not going to start enabling that stuff until the stuff that's already in is all working properly. So don't hold your breath.

[Paladin]

Jesus wept!

I was looking through ship section files to see if I could figure out why Liir LV Carriers aren't working (And maybe enable the functionality), and I was comparing them to human LV section files to get an idea of what was different, since human LV carriers work properly.

So, you might not know this, but all battle rider carriers get not only their battle rider mounts but a "reserve" capacity to store battle riders in order to replace losses...

The Human LV Carrier has 36 Battle Rider mounts, so it has an active squadron of 36 battle riders at any given time. Which is cool. But damn, it's reserve... One hundred and twenty. It carries 156 battle riders in total.

[Langy]

You really want me to buy this game, don't you, Pally?

[Carl]

@Paladin: Wow...

Question, how does the reserve work then, i got a mention of it out of mecron a while back, but no details...

@Busby: he know's there free but he's trying to work out what he gets specificlly and what thats worth as to weather it's worth waiting.

Ironiclly it's probably meant to help everyone else through this rough spot. Everyones going to be so busy reading that stuff in game that the bugs will be forgoten for many long hours of play. it also generates good memmories of playing which encourges people to go back to more playing, bugs or not.

[FriendlyFire]

I have to say I'm now in a similar situation to overmind and Langy... I hope the game becomes good and the free DLC is rather enticing, but what exactly do they all offer? In other words, would I be missing out if I didn't get any DLC?

[Misiok]

Only lore and portraits with some music/alternative voices.

But if you'd be buying the game now, you'd be buying a hastily sewn bunch of code that doesn't work properly most of the times.

[overmind2000]

At the moment the DLC offers new skins, music, badges and I think avatars for the specific races. So you don't lose out on any critical game content as such. In addition if anyone else has the skins in MP you will see theirs even if you don't get the DLC yourself.

So at the moment its nice extras, but not game critical in any way - although the new battle music (I think its battle music ) is probably the most enticing part.


Misiok - agreed, but if they can show good solid commitment over the next month to fixing the game then I'd be willing to support them with some cash. Yeah they mucked up the release royally, but in the end I want this game to work so every little can only help them.

[Paladin]

@Paladin: Wow...

Question, how does the reserve work then, i got a mention of it out of mecron a while back, but no details...

I'm not 100% certain Carl. Either it allows for replacement of destroyed riders outside combat without having to return home (Even in SotS1 you couldn't replace battle riders without going to a colony, repair ships wouldn't do it) or it lets you replace destroyed riders in combat. Either way you only get 36 at a time per LV, but if the latter, even when you destroy one the LV will just pop out another one to replace it until you've burned through it's entire reserve.

I like to think that's how it works

I have to say I'm now in a similar situation to overmind and Langy... I hope the game becomes good and the free DLC is rather enticing, but what exactly do they all offer? In other words, would I be missing out if I didn't get any DLC?

Additional ship texture sets, extra avatars and badges for those factions (About doubles the number of each).

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PS: I should also note that Riders don't count towards your command point limits. So you can squeeze like 3 or 4 (Not sure exactly) Leviathans into a fleet, with their entire complement of riders.

[Weavern]

Assuming their DLC deal stands, you have until the end of the month to decide if you want to take them up on their ~$12 DLC offer. By then we should hopefully have a mostly stable working platform.

Might have to try this tech mod pally to enjoy some of this stuff, but i've sworn off the game until the sound bug is fixed.

[Ammon Ra]

wee patch. I'm also getting random encounters when they're set to 0%.

unless proteans, morrigi bases, and spectres aren't random.

[Weavern]

See I'm not crazy

You can set that to 0 in the configuration file by editing the .xml random encounter turn limit from the default ~25 to something with more zeros.

Well... found something interesting this patch. Some researches crash the game. Suggest you stay away from 'mining' as it seems to automatically crash my game.

That aside has anyone recieved their 'free dlc' ? Particularly those with steam? Or was this another paradox promise that has yet to materalize.

[Ammon Ra]

they said it could take time.

[boolybooly]

No you are not crazy Weavern, I found proteans today too, actually they seemed more fun when I was fighting them, had to retreat though!

[Pocktio]

Turns are taking foreveeeeeeeeeeeer now

[Bentguru]

that's because AI vs AI combat is now hidden. They really should put up something that shows why it's hanging.

[medes]

I think they should just bring back the old autoresolve. It may have some retarded calculations but it didn't take forever to resolve

[overmind2000]

The problem is battles are now supposed to be far more major events; with them lasting several turns and also with the chance that you'll pull your fleet away rather than just charge in and find out if you win or not. So auto-resolve in its old form would be totally counter productive to this new type of combat.

I can see why they've gone for this approach, though I worry that it might be a bit of a bullet in the foot situation; esp once things are more stable and you've far larger games where there could be many long and complex battles per turn.

[Kushan_Pilot]

This patch fixed the sound, as far as I can tell, but it introduced a new issue for me. About half the time I click the menu button while in the strategic map, it darkens the screen and nothing comes up. This made saving the game periodically a roll of the dice at a time when saving often can get you around other problems. It was otherwise a good run, I cleared some 20 turns in about as many minutes without any other issues. Going to give it another break, I think.

[Infidelicious]

Awesome new bug. Putting PD on Human ships makes them make pew pew laser sounds, forever.


Also, the all techs mod thing would be sweet.

[Paladin]

The PD sound bug isn't new, I was getting it every time I mounted a PD laser/phaser or even Gauss PD even before the monday patch.

I've had my nose buried in the save game files for a couple days. I've been developing query sets to strip randoms and VNs and crap out of a save game, and I made a hilarious query set that automatically takes every planet in a system you have a colony in and makes it size 10 (Unless it was already bigger), and sets everything to a colonizable type with mega resources and biosphere. Was entertaining to develop.

Once I get the query set that delete randoms done, I'll probably work up a set that unsticks stations that are stuck and can't be upgraded.

Oh, and I figured out that you can set your faction to a DLC faction, even one you don't own, by save haxing. I'm playing with human DLC stuff in my current game

PS: The query for setting your empire to the DLC version of the faction you picked is trivial.

UPDATE players
SET subfaction_index=1
WHERE id=1;

[[Vertigo]]

I can confirm that the random encounter slider does nothing. Set it to zero when starting a new game and got asteroids hitting me around turn 25.

[A7K]

So since I'm left waiting for SotS II I found myself digging out the old gem that i first cut my 4x teeth on.

Imperium Galactica II: Alliances

Getting it to work with vista: PitA

Worth it? - Fuck yes

Anyone else digging out some classic 4x awesomeness to tide them over?

MoO2 anyone?

[Paladin]

I've actually found the game relatively playable since the Friday patch, so I've been playing it, and immersing myself in sqlite to tweak the save files a bit.

[yetanotherplayer]

It's actually more crash-y for me now... I didn't get any random encounters before Friday, but since then they show up fairly often, and a crash always follows. Von Neumanns, Morrigi Derelicts, and Proteans have all caused a crash-to-desktop at the end of combat.

[Paladin]

Yeah, the game shouldn't be played without disabling randoms in the files.

[Moe]

I managed to get into combat, sorta. I have no idea wtf is going on. Are they going to include a tutorial at some point? There are so many indicators and I have no idea what they're showing me. My point defense was hitting missiles, which just kept flying on and apparently damaging my ships, or so I think - green thingies were turning red. Then the game CTDed. I think I'll give this a rest and wait for them to properly fix it.

What exactly went wrong, anyways? They had a final and a beta version and uploaded the beta by accident, if I understand this correctly. So what's preventing them from removing the beta and replacing it with the full version on Steam?

[Langy]

They already did that, Moe. The problem is that the game wasn't ready for release, and is full of bugs.

[overmind2000]

Moe - go back one page (page 11 as I view the forums) to A7K's first post on that page and read down from there. He outlines what, sounds to me, like the most plausible answer for the massive amount of instability that the game has in addition to its greatly unfinished state - heck far as I know the manual isn't even fully written yet.

[Weavern]

For those interestedin combat something I spotted on paradox combat 101

The sectors that turn colours when in combat signify your owned or controlled territory. If it was working properly you are able to deploy fleets and whatnot to sectors you control to reduce travel time. Your ships also travel faster in controlled space during the speedup window.

[Yankov]

eh.. will the retail version be released at the stated time?
though oddly they have different dates...

eg.. from paradox site links - amazon uk has release date of 18/11 (and at £25)
whereas shopto (whatever the hell that is!) has release date of 10/11

... the paradox site says all the retail ones have human dlc.. but the sites doesn't actually mention anything about it, aside from calling it limited edition.

[Jonny]

*sigh* Reached turn 50 this time before the CTDs started, I also can't figure out if ships in a reserve fleet at a system with a naval station will deploy to defend, I keep getting VNs (in my 0% random game) so I've prototyped and built a DN carrier with riders, but I can't seem to deploy it on the system defence manager and the VNs now seem to be ignoring that system in favour of hitting others. The mission system is growing on me, the UI could be larger and clearer for the fleet tab to make it easier to drag and drop ships into and out of the fleet, but otherwise it's a reasonably good system. Still can't see why it was necessary over the system in Prime though, seems like an extra layer of code to complicate matters in order to do the same job.

Nice to see the nauseating passive/aggressive community is out in full force on the Kerby boards now though, I think only a weeks worth of activity before deleting the bookmark is a new record for me. Guess I'll be relying on Steam for update news.

[Paladin]

Reserve fleets aren't used for system defense AFAIK, and the system defense fleet feature isn't currently working. Best thing to do is create a garrison fleet at every system using admirals with crappy stats or bad traits that you wouldn't have used for anything else anyway. Considering how many admirals the game gives you, it's not really a hardship.

Also not really sure what you're talking about with the kerberos forums... The steam forums are a horrible horrible place full of doomsayers and rage and pointless ranting, low IQ misfits and junk. The paradox forum for it is slightly better, but the Kerb forum is actually readable without having to roll my eyes at all the idiots.

[Jonny]

There's a lower frequency of idiots, but it seems to have a higher frequency of smug passive-aggressives that trigger off my stupidly over the top PTSD response. One set me off this morning over something monumentally inconsequential and I'm only just calming down from it. I was about to delete my comment about the Kerberos forums before anyone replied, sorry about that.

Anyway, thanks for the advice Pally, I'll give it a go.

[Paladin]

I guess that makes sense. Personally my tolerance for stupid people is microscopic, so I avoid the steam forums like the plague.