Hi everyone!
I started playing the online game with Kenneth and we experienced a crash when we entered into fight mode. More specifically, in the message popup before the fight. In ENGAGE mode, everything worked fine and Kenneth found it a good day to die, but in HAIL mode, the game crashed suddenly on us.
Here is the error message :



Ken also noted this:



It is now noted my friend. It was fun playing the game with you.

Yes, Happy did not have the 20130203 installed so we played the 20130131b. This may be fixed in the newer version but we will have to check that online.

It should also be noted that we both had declared war on each other but both took Hail in the combat window. We were looking for any unusual conditions that might have a different out come like the crash we did find.

Also we found that indeed a Federation scout ship will defeat a Klingon scout ship. The Klingons were not happy about this.


We did have to work through the port 4455 issue again. We found that in addition to forwarding in our routers we needed a firewall rule for the port 4455 address. In our security programs we took advanced network setting and each created a rule to communicate into and out from on port 4455 using TCP and UDP protocols. The specifics of how to do this depends on your internet security program.

In Norton's Internet Security take setting, network settings, Smart Firewall Advanced Settings - Configure, General Rule - Configure, and add a new rule for to and from communication on the specific port 4455. I took both TCP and UDP.

Doesn't the Federation always win?

Seriously though, ships are still a WiP, and I'm not even sure if and how Refire Rate is working, and how it is actually supposed to work. The enviosioned way doesn't make sense, so I actually used values that would relate to recharging time - hence the Klingons having a lower value than the Feds, as their weapons are supposed to recharge quickly. The enviosioned way was kind of the opposite.
Then there's the fact that in Supremacy, we have Scouts and Science Ships as separate ship types. The Federation was supposed to have their ships tend more towards the science type, and the Klingons to the scout type.

I'm a bit leary of changing things too much right now without knowing exactly how combat will actually work. If weapon swill always hit for example.
I'm going to look into 2 things: adding another disruptor to the Klingon Scout, or decreasing the Fed Scout's shield (and in either case, propagate the change to the whole shipset).

Having a Fed scout defeat a Klingon is not necessarily a bad thing. It could work into a more complex set of differences and variation in game play.

I agree.
It could depend on: having more planets= more population= evolving more rapidly because of more points attributed to science studies. I had many minors member-ed and many more doing trade with me. Science discoveries were, though, completed faster than your empire, thus maybe having stronger ships. We played at a faster pace because we wanted to test how attack worked first.

I must admit that I concentrated more on having minors/new planets join me, to have more money/more points to attribute to my science or else instead of only making my way to start a fighting. Maybe if I would have only kept my planets and situation as is, the fighting/power would have been different. By the time we reached each other, I had discovered a few components and ships which may have changed the balance of power.

Yes, we did fight with scouts but I had a few ships already discovered and ready to fight, like Frigates and Cruisers, wouldn't have been that they reach less far than my scouts, it would sure have changed things even more (with more time, I would even have subjugated your Empire). I also had a few new discoveries like higher class farms/ reactors, etc...

Could that have changed something in that matter?

How did you know my level of technology, number of member minors and fleet strenght? Did you see my Battle Cruisers headed your way?

You are right, I didn't know anything, sorry. I was teasing . I might as well take my worst defeat in the galaxy. Or not...
But this game was left unfinished yet. I will take the challenge to find out.

Meet me when you can my friend.


EDIT: This damn auto-refresh thing is slowly getting on my nerves.

I wish I knew what is causing the autorefesh problem for you. No one else seams to have it.

I am hoping we will test the newer build on Sunday. Sorry but that will mean we could not take the saved game. In fact I am not sure Supremacy can reload a mulitplayer the way BOTF did. It is great fun playing the game with you in any case. It will be more interesting with more players in the mix.

It would be interesting if espionage would give you all that information.

I do hope someone will find and repair this auto-refreshing problem because it's really annoying. I read somewhere that it could be a Java problem, but I'm not sure it really is.

I understand that this game could not be played further because we will be using the newest built for our other tests. I also had fun playing this test with you.

I guess if espionage is implemented, it will appear more in a later game, after a few science upgrades but it sure would be fun.

Well, it does already. Ships are predesigned in the game, and unlocked by research. So if you have more research output, you unlock them faster, and will thus be at an advantage. I know this is what you said, I just didn't understand why it was presented as sort of an alternative.

I tweaked a few more things last night, Fed shields were far too high, but there's still much work to do. Stations need their shields to be beefed up, like Bloodwurm mentioned, and I need to work on the sensor ranges too.

Well I was sure you would understand that I meant: more planets equals more population, equals evolving more rapidly, equals etc...

Do the ships upgrade within the same level, like in Galactic Civilizations II (level I, M1, M2, M3, etc...) or rather does it change with the number (level I, level II stronger, etc...)? Hope you understand what I mean...

So say you turn up research on weapons while turning down biotech. Could you end up with a bigger gun or is the quality of your ships tied to the tech level and is that improved only by all the areas of research together?

I hadn't thought of that but it's a good example Kenneth!

Again, ships are pre-designed. They have certain tech pre-reqs. Once you've met those pre-reqs, you unlock that ship type. Each ship type has its own set of stats that doesn't change with your current tech levels(s). As you progress in tech levels, you unlock more powerful versions of your ships.
It's the same as in BotF.

So is there any value in going into Sciences and changing the research setting? That it exists implies there is some reason to change these settings.

Research works exactly like in BotF.
Notice that ships require different tech levels in each tech area, according to their type; colony ships require higher Biotech and lower Weapons, etc. In the end, if you want to unlock a specific ship type, you should look at its tech pre-reqs and set research accordingly.
Same thing for Buildings. Especially in the early game, there is some advantage in optimizing research.