I am really liking it. Would definatly like to see the next version. I would really like to see more pictures of ships and start to see some combat. I would recommend troop building like in Masters of Orion, as a part of colony defenses. ie, how could you defend a planet without troops to repell and invasion. You would probably need to add a barraks and factory ( armored units would be nice.)

Hello mburrell1979, and welcome to the forums! While most people are understandably eager to see combat implemented, that won't happen for quite a while (see my reply to your other post in the Supremacy Chat forum). However, I hope to have an automated combat system added for the next version of the demo, which will be the equivalent of hitting the "Auto" button in BotF. Ground combat is something that I had not given much consideration yet, so we'll have to wait and see .

They have a ground combat system in X-Wars...but it was never implemented and has now been scrapped coz it was causing tons of bugs.

Still, it's a good idea and it's great to see new people making suggestions. That's something we need to see more of on the forums!

This seems as good of a place as any to post some of the things that I have noticed so far. The game looks great, and the basic feeling of the play is awesome. When I downloaded the pre-release a few months ago, I noticed a huge lag when during the turn sequence. I've noticed that performance has increased considerably in this regard. Excellent.

One of my biggest gripes so far (given that it's a pre-release, I really want combat too hehe) is that the font is very fuzzy on the left side. While you can read the info given, it's hard to make out. For instance I thought I had run out of dilithium when in fact I had 9 units left, but it looked like a 0. Not a huge issue, just visually unappealing.

Second, is that in the queues, there isn't an easy way to adjust orders up or down (not that I can find anyway). While it isn't a big deal to delete the order, it seems unnecessarily tedious. I also noticed that hitting the Home key leads the screen to the far left, while maintaining its y position. To me, it seems that the home key should lead to the player's home system.

So far though, everything is looking great, and I'll continue to play and see if there's anything I can add. I hope this was useful.

We are slowly building and collecting the hundreds of ship and station models the game calls for. The combat engine is being programmed. It will take time though and I am sorry about the wait also. The turn delay is being corrected. There are one or more bottle necks that mike hopes to eliminate in the code.

Raldikuk, if you downloaded the game several months ago, then your version is seriously out of date. Go to This Post and download the latest version of Supremacy from the download link; read the associated information post as well because Supremacy has several new requirements that MUST be installed before the game will work. The game will simply crash when you try to load it if even one of the requirements is missing.

DELETE every trace of Supremacy from your computer before you download the new version; old versions may cause conflicts due to updated files trying to access older versions etc. Alternatively put the new version of Supremacy in a different folder, and call it "Supremacy 2" or "Supremacy Speed Test" or whatever. Either way will help to avoid conflicts.

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The speed issue is something that we are well aware of; the absolute latest version of Supremacy (Which ISN'T the one in the download link) features new - but unstable - code that dramatically speeds up the performance of the game. I noted a five HUNDRED percent performance increase over previous versions when I tested it, although it crashes rather more frequently than the older versions. If you want to test the unstable Supremacy Speed Test, the download link is Here. As I said before; put it in a completely different folder to any other version of Supremacy you may have.

I think I actually updated the link in the Pre-Release Download Thread to point to that same performance test release, Matress. Actually, I know I did, because I remember updating the "Changes Since Last Release" section to include a note about it being a highly experimental build that may be too unstable for proper gameplay . I didn't want to leave the old release there because the performance was absolutely abysmal.

Thanks for the constructive feedback, Raldikuk. Build queue reordering is already a planned feature, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm debating a proper way of handling entries with a quantity greater than one. I was thinking maybe something like this:

• Drag a multi-item entry (e.g. 5 Farms) to a new position to move just one item to that position (leaving you with an entry for 1 Farm in the new position, and 4 farms in the previous position). Then coalesce the queue and merge all adjacent entries of the same type (so if you dragged the farm to another entry for farm(s), then those would get merged together).
• Hold <SHIFT> and drag a multi-item entry to move the entire entry to a new position (e.g. moving all 5 Farms to a new position). Coalesce queue.

Does that seem sensible to you?

I'm aware of the text readability issue, and I'm planning on addressing it at some point.

Oh, ok then...so when is the next stability update due?

Lol nah, I know you're moving house so focus on that for the time being. We don't want you mislaying your computer or anything to do with Supremacy, do we?

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I like the second bullet best; it sounds slightly more user friendly to me. What do other people think?

Those aren't two separate options, they're a single option with two modes of operation. It just behaves differently when you drag while holding Shift down. Shift is pretty universal for dealing with multiple items. Alternatively, you could drag an entire multi-item entry by default and hold Alt to drag just ony item from a multi-item entry. Which seems more natural to you? I vote for the first option (shift).

Hehe, I did download the newest version today. I was just commenting on how I was impressed with the performance increase. Before I remember dozing off a few times waiting for it to process.

I would have to say that shift would be more natural. Maybe even make the queue sort of like the file directory operations? Click and drag moves one (so like you said, if you have 4 farms queued a normal click and drag moves one), shift drag moves the whole group. Maybe also include the control feature as well? So you can click multiple queue items that aren't consecutive, but you would be able to move them all up if need be. That might be too much to code, I'm not sure, but I would definitely choose shift over alt.

As for the fuzzy text, couldn't you just adjust the leading alittle bit? It seems like the font isn't really fuzzy in of itself, just that the letters are too close together. I guess this depends on how those text items are rendered.

Glad to hear it! Any chance you can give me some rough numbers on how long your turn processing time was before vs. how it is now?

Those are pretty good ideas, and not too much work either. I think I'll go for it.

Unfortunately not. Typographical settings like leading are dynamically calculated on a per-glyph basis with OpenType fonts, and WPF does not provide any mechanism for either modifying them directly or modifying them across the board (e.g. 120% of normal). Pity. I'd have to edit the font manually or find a replacement.

The processing time was easily in the minutes prior and now it has been slimed down to about 5 seconds.

I have had the chance to play a little bit more and I have a few more suggestions/ideas.

First, the asteroid belt in the Sol system is neat, but I'm curious if they do anything? I noticed that they get randomly generated in systems, which is cool. I assume there will be random events like in BOTF, so if the belt currently doesn't do anything, maybe it could offer some sort of protection against asteroids and whatnot, kinda like our belt does for us.

I'm sure you already have an idea for it, but an overview map will be critical. I remember reading a suggestion for a tactical alert thing, and I think if you added an overview map you could integrate many things into it. It could be used to toggle between showing ship movements, economic things, resources, etc. That way you can look at the overview map and see right away what is going on with enemy ships and even your own ships. Granted, I realize such a feature is down the road. Although this could be integrated into the zoom out too. Once you zoom out all of the way it could change into the tactical overview. Currently when zoomed out you cannot tell where ships are (at least on the huge galaxy).

I also noticed that Federation ships can cloak. While I love Star Trek canon, I don't necessarily have a problem with the Federation acquiring the ability to cloak. But I think it should be just that (although you probably only included it to appease Romulan fanboys hehe), a researchable or aquirable technology. I also think that diplomacy could include stipulations for the use of cloaking (and other tactical) features. Much like after the Romulan War, the Federation agreed not to develop cloaking technology. I think if a game is started with all civilizations in their early stages that cloaking should be researchable unlockable. Which i think the tech tree could be made a little bit more diverse, maybe a couple main research trunks, and as you develop along, branches are unlocked, and you can pursue to develop things further. So say the Roumlans research Weapons Level 2, then branches could be opened up to start researching cloaking technology.

I also noticed what seems to be a bug. I'm not 100% sure, but when you're viewing a system, the left pane is the net resources stats for that system, correct? Well it seems I have plenty of surplus energy, but dilithium and deuterium plants refuse to stay active. After every turn the deactivate. Just to emphasize, I did a manual count and I have charge collectors and wind turbines for +135 energy. And then I have a shipyard, dilithium and deutrium refinaries, and a free market. The total energy cost is 95. So there is about 40 units left over with everything activated. And it also seems like it won't let me activate both of them at the same time either unless i move production to some fusion reactors. Even though the production pane shows a surplus that is more than enough to activate it.

This is a known issue with the present build of Supremacy. Mike is currently working on improving the speed in between turns, so he will definitely address this issue once that's done. Welcome to the forums!

Actually, it's already fixed in the current source code, so it will be included in the next release. When I notice a blatant, showstopper bug like that, I usually fix it right away, or risk forgetting about it . Unfortunately, the next release may be several weeks out, as I'll be quite busy this month preparing to close on my new home, and then I have to deal with moving all my crap. But don't worry, I won't disappear after moving like certain other BotF2 developers in the past...

Raldikuk, the Asteroids DO do something. Some of the structures that you can build increase the amount of raw materials that a system produces - and one of these buildings is the Asteroid Sweeper. Raw materials are a new resource that is needed to build ships, and eventually even some of the buildings, so they are an important resource for your war effort.

The moons also have a use - there will be buildings that will eventually make them habitable, increasing the population maximum depending on the size and number of Moons. Different races will be better at doing this than others though, and some races - especially the Federation - will have multiple habitation levels, allowing for ever more population. The Moons themselves will not be terraformable though. The exact details haven't been worked out yet, and the buildings that allowed the Moons to be made habitable had to be removed because of a programming glitch. They will be re-added at a later time though.

I think Mike has been thinking about an overview map, so your comments will be valuable to him. You're certainly not the first person to mention this, so it'll be definitely given some thought.

As for the extra diplomcy options, I think Mike said he wouldn't include stuff like the treaty of Algeron (Thats the treaty that stopped the Federation developing Cloaks) but he's scrapping the existing diplomcy system is is rebuilding it, so more complex stuff like this may be on the cards. Then again, if such a treaty never happened, we would need to create a whole new tech tree that included cloakable ships, which would mean a hell of a lot of extra game info, and slower development times. That doesn't mean there won't be some kind of mod or expansion one day in the future to include it though.



Such developers shall of course remain nameless. *cough*gavin*cough*