Hi everyone, this is my first post.

I've downloaded the most recent update and have been playing it over the weekend and have to say i'm finding it hugely enjoyable to play, much more so than the original BOTF, even despite current the lack of battles or competition.

A few minor things I've noticed:

- From an astronomical perspective, there are the wrong number of moons in Sol. Venus is same size as Earth, Mars is much smaller. So shouldn't the max populations reflect that ? Also, couldn't Jupiter and Saturn's moons etc be colonised ?
- The main menu flickers when right-clicking on the galaxy screen (is this just me?). After each turn, the events messages also flicker.
- I like the fact you can name ships, however they get erased after each turn
- If you try to colonise more than one system in a single turn, it gets stuck when processing the turn

Thanks for your bug testing. I am sure Mstobel can use this input. We have 3D battle engines near completion and a large library of ships well on there way to a fleet. It would not be as much fun without a few 3D battles would it?

Hey spg, welcome to the forums!

- There isn't actually anything "wrong" with the moons - the game generates moons randomly in the game. There is no way to set the number of moons a planet has, or even the size of the moons (They DO vary in size). The number of moons - and their positions - will therefore be different in every game that you play. The ability to colonise moons is in the game though, although i'm not sure if the specific structure to do so has been implemented; the last I heard of it, there was a bug that prevented the structure from working correctly, so the building was temporarily removed. I'll need to test that when I have the time. If it is working though, it's quite a late-game structure; somewhere around tech 7 off the top of my head.

- The flickering menu animation is something that has happened to myself. I found completely reinstalling .Net 3.5 AND the SP1 Beta update fixed the problem. Simply repairing the installation wasn't enough; I had to physically uninstall it then reinstall it. You might want to try doing the same yourself. Mike would also find it useful if you could test this and let us know whether it solved your problem or not.

- The lost names of ships is a known bug. Mike is working on it.

- I just tested colonising two systems at the same time and I found the same thing. The game stopped processing at "Processing Pre-turn Operations". I'll let Mike know about it.


Thanks for posting your thoughts regarding the game, feedback is really useful to Mike and lets him know his hard work is appreciated. If you have any other thoughts, then go right ahead and post.

There is a bug in the current version that will cause the game to crash when you issue the same order to different fleets. The bug primarily affects the Colonize and Build Station orders. The standard "Engage" and "Avoid" orders (and any orders without parameters) should not be affected. I've fixed this bug in the source code, and it will be included in the next update. Thanks for the feedback , and I'm glad you're enjoying the game .

I wouldn't worry about the flickering--the technique I'm using to draw the menu menu and summary screen will be replaced by something better in the future (hopefully the near future).