Upcoming items!

Hey all,

So we are working to get a build to PTE today that will have a lot of bug fixes and polish items in place (see below). The idea is to get this out there and live faster than our normal release schedule and then come back to new balance changes, so that the polish/bug fix isn't delayed while we fine tune balance. @tvinita has some good stuff in place to try out, the first of which should be hitting PTE early next week! We are also working on one other bigger item I hope to get out this month as well, but still not 100% sure we'll be able to get it done in time, so will save it for a surprise once I know more

The upcoming PTE build (hopefully today) will include the following:
Leaderboards (this won't be in effect visually until this goes live, but adding it to PTE notes so you see it's coming)
- If player is inactive for 7 or more days, you will no longer show up on Leaderboards

Bugfix/Polish
- Current game list should have improved responsiveness (changed games list to make use of compression to reduce bandwidth requirements).
- Improved server browser behavior (sorting is now by time arrived instead of by game name)
- Adjusted start position for Unit Cannon so it looks right
- Umbrella adjusted for visual improvements
- New icons for nuke and anti-nuke ammo to reflect current color scheme
- Naval Umbrella redesigned to better match visuals of land version
- Art pass for Holkins (land and naval)
- New build bar icon for Holkins to match new look
- Server backend perf tweaks
- Improved support for non English alphabets in directory names
- Improvements on path handling overall
- Crash logging improvements
- Fixed a bug on player surrender
- AI fabbers will now try to avoid building where they are standing (should fix long delay for AI to start doing stuff at start of game)
- Neural net data updated
- AI will prioritize areas where a commander is present
- Nav crash fix
- AI fix for building too many fabbers
- AI now anticipates upcoming economy income for area builds
- AI should expand faster
- AI will no longer believe Dox can attack while underwater
- Minor changes on how AI prioritizes planets
- Added stuck detection fro AI platoons attempting to use a teleporter
- AI now will use "Feeder Planets" when available to safely store units and feed them into more dangerous zones of battle
- Layout polish on Kickstarter dialog
- Recent contacts in chat list are now sortable

You are evil.

So many tasty AI updates. Can't wait.

I was wondering why the AI would never build things at the start. Well that's that fixed.
Also, #hype

I want to test balance!!! @ZaphodX we better have some PTE tests today!

Balance changes will be next week @KillerKiwiJuice

I'm hoping this is a stop gap measure rather than a long-term solution. It's both simultaneously too short and too long a period.

To someone at the top of Uber it's no effort at all to play one game a week to maintain position. To a casual player it's incredibly harsh to lose your rank just because you didn't play. It also means rankings become unstable and less meaningful because you're constantly bobbing about as other players get caught in the filter. Will people get promoted and demoted off the back of this to maintain distribution? That would really ruin the significance of the leagues. Furthermore it makes the leagues look smaller and the multiplayer community less healthy, decreasing new player interest.

At the end of the day it doesn't resolve the issue. Indeed, by providing a timeframe you tell a player exactly how little effort they need to put in to hold #1 once they get there. Players really need a reason to play as often as possible, this leads to a healthier community and helps drive the long-term lifespan of the game.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, just want to give my frank feedback in case someone thinks this is a good long-term solution to the issue.

Asteroids comformed!

You can already make asteroids. Tiny moon or ice planet on an elliptical orbit, job done.

'save game ' is coming. YAY!

PTE build is now up.

Holkins looks awesome, very happy to see old models getting updated !
New umbrella model too, nice !
The PTE update is not available through steam yet so I went to download the launcher, noticed the download page still said "alpha"



Some other niggles.
AI keeps investing in nukes to throw at me while he knows his first nuke was countered by antinuke.
AI sends his commander towards my overwhelming attack force in stead of away from them.
Units being built by the orbital factory kinda drift out of the factory a bit while still under construction.
Orbital launcher model does not properly move the missile thing while building.
Antinuke has a weird thing where one or more of it's missiles are invisible if you look at the model, the icon is there when you zoom out, but this gives you false info on your enemy's antinuke status.
This usually happens after it fills it's 3 missile slots, fires one, and builds it back but displays the missile in the wrong slot, the build arms do move to the right slot.
Also nuke and antinuke missiles are built from left to right in stead of bottom to top like everything else in the game, makes it harder to see visually how far along the are.
Basic bot and basic behicle factories are too close together when you line-build them, units can barely move through the line, could you space them out a teeny tiny bit ?

Other other niggles, area attack has a different behaviour than attackmove, while attackmove has units engage the enemy at max range which makes your guys fight far more effectively, could you do this to area attack too ?

And eh, something more controversial, I really would like to have more and longer range base defence options against ground units.
In TA and Supcom the base defences were so much more effective against ground armies, things like the TA Annihilator are unmatched in PA, is this a design decision ?

Awesome!! Can't wait to try these fixes

Up on Steam now as well. oops.

So does it skip ranks to do so, or will you have like a ghost "uber" rank that allows you to jump back into the previous league?

I mean they've lost it as in they no longer hold it, not that their rating has been reset.

Nice to see Uber's back at it straight away and keeping us in the loop after the break

So bigger item hey. How big? Would it be MEGA big? As in MEGA -bot

@jables

one thing i like to ask you guys
if you can put into the unitinfo from the buildmenu how much units drain power when active or reloading, how much extrastorage storage buildings provide, how much pgens and mexxes generate and how much hp units have ...