We have finally made our first release!!!! You may download it here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=77547
AATRade Release Features August 1, 2003
======================================
NOTE: This change log doesn't represent ALL of the changed from NGS .54 to AATrade .10 but it does emcompass most of them.
Ships being Towed
-----------------
Well, there is going to be a change in how your ship can get towed from Federation Space.
We knew about this but didn't really think it through completely until someone brought it up. You can change to a Pioneer and store your other ship and go hide in sector 0 and never get kicked out.
The change will do two checks. It will still check to see if your ships average tech level is over 8 to see if you should be kicked.
And it will also check to see if you have a ship in storage. If you will get kicked from Federation Space no matter what. So storing your powerful ship and buying a pioneer will not let you hide in fed space. There will also be a check to see if you died while offline to prevent you from being kicked out.
Expect this change in the beta game sometime this weekend. You have been warned.
If you are killed while offline your ship will stay in sector 0 even if you have ships in storage. But as soon as you log back in your pioneer will become activated so it can be moved from sector 0.
So remember...
If you have ANY ships in storage your current ship will be towed from federation space no matter what the average tech level happens to be. You could be in a pioneer with everything set to 0 and you will still get towed if you have even one ship in storage.
This was added to prevent bigger players from being able to hide in sector 0 just by changing to a pioneer. Not cool as the bigger players need to atleast be at risk. The No Tow option was mainly created to protect new players.
So beware. You would hate it if you changed to a pioneer, stored the ship you had and forgot to buy an escape pod. You would be ejected into another sector where someone might kill you and remove you completely from the game. So if you have a ship in storage stay away from pioneers and sector 0 when you logoff.
IGB Bank Changes
==================
There is now an IGB Bank Account limit that can be set by the game admin.
This limit is the maximum amount of cash you can have in your bank account. Once your account hits that limit you cannot depost anymore cash but you can still earn interest on what is there.
Right now the setting is at 100,000,000,000 credits.
Sorry Bankers you have to put your money at risk on your planets or ship but this allows a player to have a store of cash if they get down on their luck.
Ship Price changes
====================
There has been a big change to the Shipyards.
Each time you buy a certain ship class the price of the next ship you buy in that class will go up.
As an example if you bought a Columbus and then it was destroyed in some manner the NEXT Columbus you buy will be higher in price. The increase in price is by ship class so the price increase on the Columbus doesn't affect the price of any other ship.
Basically the more ships you lose the more they will cost you. Ship builders are a greedy sort and they see someone needing the same type of ship over and over again and just HAVE to raise the prices. Law of supply and demand.
Warp Editor Changes
===================
We have made a change to how warp editors work.
When you decide to use a warp editor to either delete or create a new warp link the distance between the two sectors is calculated.
Then the distance is used to figure the cost and energy needed to form or disperse a warp link. The longer the distance the more energy and money is needed to create a warp link. So make sure you have enough energy and money for createing/deleteing warp links.
SG Sector Changes
=================
SG sectors have changed. You can now have more than one SG branch iun an SG sector. Before you could have only two warps coming in and out. You can now have three warps. The number of warps can be set by the admin.
Scan error
=============
There has been a new change to the main display. This is where it shows all of the planets in a sector.
In the past the planet size reflected the average of the techlevels and colonists on the planet.
Well, now the planet size works the same way but the planets jammer level and your ships sensor level is taken into account. So the planet size might not truely reflect the size of the planet. If your scanners are above the planets jammers you will see the right size but the futher below the planets jammer level your sensors are the more likely you will see the wrong planet size.
Oh and this also affects the long range scan.
Changes to the planet transfer
==============================
You will notice that the transfer dignitary to planet button is missing from the planet display screen. This is because you can now transfer dignitaries to and from a planet using the planet transfer screen. Also, the ability to put more dignitaries on a planet than the limit has been fixed as well.
Plus there is another really BIG change in the transfer screen.
When you click the ALL checkbox you would usually error out when trying to transfer items to your ship when you didn't have enough room for them.
Well, this has now changed. The ALL checkbox works both ways to and from the planet. If you try to transfer more than what your ship can carry the excess amount will be ignored and only what you can carry will be moved to your ship. This makes things alot easier.
Attacking ships and ships on a planet
======================================
I have finally installed the updated combat routines.
When you attack a planet and there are ships on the planet the EXACT same routine for ship to ship attack in space is used for ship to ship attack on a planet. The displays are exactly the same.
This will cause a SIGNIFICANT change for ships landed on a planet when the planet is attacked.
1. If any ship on the planet has an Emergency Warp device installed it may be used when the planet is defeated and your ship is attacked. This means if you run away from the planet then the attacker WILL take it. So you might want to use your EWD before you land on the planet.
2. If a landed ships cloaking device is high enough to cloak the ship the attacker will miss it. This will mean the planet isn't captured. They will have to attack the planet again until they actually defeat the player landed on the planet. The planets atmosphere will reduce the ships cloaking ability by 25%.
If the above are all passed then the ship to ship combat will happen just as if the ships were in space.
I haven't tested this as much as I would like so everyone go on an attacking spree and let me know how things work out.
Quoting in Messages
===================
I have just added the ability to quote messages in the quick message system.
When you read your normal messages you will notice a new button called QUOTE. When you click on it the message will be included as a quote in your reply.
Colonist limit change for planets
=================================
I have just added a new change for colonists.
The old method gave all planets the same maximum number of colonists you could have on the planet and the same number of colonists for an apocolypse to happen. It was set for 50 million colonists max and 45 million colonists to be eligible for an apocolypse.
The new change is based upon your planets average tech level. The base colonist max is still 50 million colonists. The apocolypse valuse is now based upon a percentage of the colonist max. That percentage is currently at 90% of colonist max.
For each average tech level of a planet it can hold an additional 1 million colonists. So if the average tech level of a planet is 20 it can hold an extra 20 million colonists. This gives that planet a colonist limit of 70 million. And the apocolypse total will be 63 million.
So the higher the tech level the more colonists you can have and the more they can produce.
Autoroutes
==========
Rick had a good idea about changing the Autoroutes to show only the routes you had access to on the main screen. You can still see all of them on the Nav Computer screen.
But on the main screen you will only see the autoroutes that will actually work from where you are. This will help clean up the main screen a bit.
Expanding Universe
==================
Well, it has been reported that the Federation has started funding exploration of the galaxy in and effort to open more areas for the growing population of the Federation!
What this means is that over time new sectors will be added to the universe as the Federation finds them. The federation will send out automatic updates to all ship captains that will be reflected in their map screens.
Just when you thought you have seen all of the universe the Federation shows you more!
----------------------------------------------------
There will be a random number of sectors added every 24 hours.
These sectors are added the same way they are added when the universe is first created. What this means is new warp links are created to and from those new sectors, they all have their own distances, random stars, ports and planets are added also.
After a week there could be 7 new sectors added or 200, or 600, or... You get the idea. This is completely changable by the admin of the game. We will start with 1-100 sectors every day. This will be the best setting. You could have 3000 sectors added in one months play.
Instant Messages
===================
Everyone probably knows about the instant messages in the game. They are accessed using the Send Mail and Read Mail command.
When you receive new ones an alert is opened on the main screen and it tells you how many you have waiting. Well, I thought it was a little limiting only having that alert happen there. I just made a little change so the alert can appear anywhere you happen to be. So you instantly get notified wherever you happen to be in the game.
Expect this to get expanded to many other alerts while online. An example would be instant reporting in an alert when someone is nova bombing a planet if you have a probe in the sector.
Spies and Dignitaries.
============================
Only the planet owner can place Dignitaries on their planets. Teammates are nolonger allowed to place dignitaries on teamed planets that they do not own. Before everyone on a team could place dignitaries on every teamed planet. A team of 4 players couild have 40 dignitaries on every planet their team owned. This allowed teamed players a HUGE advantage over non-teamed players. Very unbalanced.
Teammates can nolonger place spies on a planet that is owned by another teammate. This also allowed planets owned by a team to be almost impossible to place enemy spies on the planet. It gave a team a HUGE advantage over non-teamed players. There are still ways for a team to place more spies on a planet than they should. But extra spies are all killed off every 5 minutes so don't even waste your money trying.
Planets Selling commodities.
============================
Most people never enabled their planets ability to sell commodities because energy could be sold. With energy being sold an enemy player could buy all of the energy so the planet couldn't use beams or shields. It made it very easy to attack the planet.
When a planet is set to selling it nolonger sells energy. It sells Ore, Goods and Organics. That is it.
Buying direct from a planet is CHEAPER than buying from a port and you should be able to setup trade routes between those planets and ports. So you can make even HIGHER profits on trades while the enemy player gets a little money as well.
BTW, a planet cannot sell a commodity if the trade would reduce the amount on the planet below 10,000.
So a player cannot damage a planets armor or colonists by stripping off all of those commodities.
New Presets
==============
You have the ability to add as many presets as you want. In addition to setting up quick realspace links in your presets you can now put in a 15 character description of the preset. This is just enough information so you can keep track of what each link does. You will also see a number in parenthisis beside that link; this is how many turns it will take you to reach that link via realspace using the curent ship you have.
Rankings
=================
Some of you may have noticed that paging has been added to the rank list.
I decided to add this so people can see everyone who might be playing the game instead of a top group. You can page through all of the player rankings or view every single player in one long list.
Also you will notice it has been rearranged and a few things added. We now calculate Kills, Deaths and captures on the ranking page as well. Will help you see who the really aggressive players are Note: Capture of team and indy planets are not counted on the captures.
Avatars
=====================
You can now select a graphic avatar to represnt you in the game. Just click on the Options button and you will see a new item called Avatar. Clcik on the SET button besice the default avatar and you will be presented with a screen full of avatars.
If you want to change avatar directories just select the one you want to view on the drop down and click the Change Directory button.
When you find the avatar you like click on the button below the image to select it and then click on the Select Avatar button. And you are finished!
Your avatar will start showing up on many places. Right now it only shows in the Shoutbox. But you will see a players avatar when you scan their ship, view your ship, messages, team lists, ect.
Oh, we haven't forgotten people on teams either. We will be adding Team Icons. These are special icons that will represent your team and only your team. The team icons will show up in messages and all team listings.
Just a little something extra so you can personalize your game even more.
Avataars are now EXCLUSIVE to the player that picks it. Once an avatar is picked only that person will ever be able to use it. The avatar is then removed from the list of avatars shown.
You can now upload your own avatars. You are not stuck with whatever the server has installed. The avatar must be a gif, jpg or png file. And it cannot be any larger than 64 x 64 pixels in size.
Also, do not upload any avatars with objectionable content. You could get banned from the game if you do.
I have just added player avatars to both the Team Forums and the Read Mail. Nice to see a face with the name there as well.
Team Icon Support added!
=========================
Each team can now have it's own team icon. This icon can only be selected or uploaded by the player who created the team. You will start to notice that team icons start appearing in many of the screens.
Team Icons are now EXCLUSIVE to the player that picks it. Once an icon is picked only that team will ever be able to use it. The icon is then removed from the list of icons shown.
You can also upload your own team icons. You are not stuck with whatever the server has installed. The icon must be a gif, jpg or png file. And it cannot be any larger than 64 x 64 pixels in size.
Also, do not upload any icons with objectionable content. You could get banned from the game if you do.
MAJOR CHANGE ON BOUNTIES
=========================
Everyone should read this so make sure everyone on your team reads this message.
There has been a major change in how a player can get a Federation Bounty on themselves so listen up.
If you or your team own a sector and a lower ranked player enters the sector you can attack them AND NOT RECEIVE A FEDERATION BOUNTY.
If you or your team own the sector and a lower ranked player takes a planet in the sector you can attack the planet and take it back WITHOUT GETTING A FEDERATION BOUNTY.
But if the lower ranked player takes enough of your planets in the sector to change ownership of the sector then you may get a bounty if you attack the planets or their ship.
Any player entering a sector you control is considered a hostile by the Federation and they give you complete control to defend yourself and your sector without incuring a Federation bounty.
If a sector is classified as a "War Zone" you may or may not be in control of the sector. The fact that a sector is classified as a "War Zone" doesn't mean anything when it comes to Federation Bounties on attacks.
A person or team controls a sector when they OWN over half of the planets in the sector.
If the sector can support four planets and you make only two planets in the sector you are not in control of the sector. You will have to create a third planet to control the sector.
If you or your team control exactly half of the planets in a sector then NO ONE controls the sector and normal Federation Bounties apply.
This change applies for Ship to Ship, Ship to Planet and ALL Nova Bomb attacks.
Big Changes to the Dignitaries
===============================
There have been BIG changes in the dignitaries and you will only see them on the beta server when it opens up this weekend.
Interest makers are now a little more reasonable and won't run away making money like the last game but they DO help alot still. Interest digs still have a chance of changing to imbezzlers but the chance is very rare.
Production digs influence goods, organics, ore, energy, fighter and torp production. Nothing else. They used to increase colonist and credit production and that was a mistake. It basically invalidated the use of birthrate and interest digs. Production digs will not change to imbezzlers anymore. They stay production at all times since they nolonger increase interest.
Birthrate increaser digs are now a significant addition for building a population quickly.
Birthrate reducer digs are really mean suckers now. They basically will start killing off your population. Birth rate reducers CAN be twice as powerful as birth rate increasers. Basically two maxed out birth increasers equal one maxed birth reducer. Now don't fear that they will wipe your population out completely. They will never reduce your population below a fixed amount. That amount is currently set at 100,000 colonists.
Also if you have spy's on your planet they will help hunt embezzlers.
The Embezzlers will nolonger give people negative money.
These changes should help balance things out greatly
Quickie Server List
====================
You may have noticed that at the bottom of the login screen there is a list of servers running the game. This is a select list of servers from our master server list that we are running ourselves. Other peoples servers are not listed.
You can click on the game name to go directly to that games login screen.
The shows the number of sectors, current players and top player with their score for each server listed. The server you are currently on isn't shown in the list.
Email Check
==============
I just added a new way to check for a valid email address when you are signing up. The old method would exclude certain characters. This new method checks for validity and if it is invalid it will tell you and abort the sign up.
This is also good for the admins because it prevents some useless accounts from being created.
New Template System
========================
Well, I have placed a new template up called Console . If you want to select the template change your template in the options. Just click on the options button.
The normal template is default. There is another selection called console. Select it to see the new main screen template. Other screens will be changing for the Console template. I just haven't had the time to do all of them yet.
The new template system will allow many different layouts for every page in the game to be created and used by any server.
Automatic Drop Downs Template
=============================
I have just added two new template selections which are just minor changes of the default and console template.
The major change is on the main screen. Instead of having a LONG list of warp links, auto routes, trade routes and presets they are now setup as dropdown menus. This way your screen doesn't expand vertically when you have alot of selections. The dropdowns are auto executing. Once you select an item on a dropdown it is automatically executed. No need to click a button after selecting an item.
Check it out. I think some of you who create sectors with a huge number of one way warp links to spy on others will really like this.
Planetary Independence
======================
In the last game planets could go independant and become unowned so ANYONE could take them. This was too easily exploited by players who were online all of the time waiting for the Independence to run. They would then scan all of the sectors they knew about that had planets and immediately snag them.
Well, it won't be so easy this time around. When a planet goes independent it will DEFEND itself just like any other player owned planet. You will have to attack the planet to gain control of it. Since the sensors in a sector are more sensitive players will think twice about going into a defended sector to quickly snatch an independant planet without any risk.
MAP
===
Maps now are divided in to 1000 sector segments allowing it to load much faster. Also as you move through sectors maps will track who owned the sector when you were last there and will be color coded if a team owned that sector.
Bank Interest
=============
I wanted to completely eliminate banking interest, however PJ was whining so it will be 1/2%. Your not going to make much money in the bank. Your going to have to have it on your planet if you expect to make much interest. Your money will have to be at risk if you expect to make anything.
Federation Bounties Changes
===========================
In previous games once someone had a federation bounty you had to pay it off to be able to do anything. We have given people with federation bounties a small out where they can continue to build but at a considerable price increase. They will have to trade in Kabal Space. Don't feel too safe though. There are a limited number of kabal space ports and they do allow attacking in their sector, so beware of bounty hunters.
Another change is you can now get the bounties that the federation puts on these rogues. However the federation will charge you a tax up to 40% of the total bounty if you are a good player. If you are evil the amount of cash you procure is taxed from about 40% to 90%.
Sector Genesis
==============
Sector genesis works very similarly to regular genesis however they create a completely new sector in unknown space. They will randomly generate ports and suns for that sector. SG sectors have some limitations; you cannot realspace to or from them, or warp edit to and from them. You can create more SG sectors from within a SG sector however the limit is 2 links per sector. Once in an SG sector you can SG back to know space creating a SG Sector loop.
Nova Bomb
=========
The Lexx Device has changed it's name to Nova Bomb.
The Nova Bomb has undergone a HUGE change. The bomb can be used two ways now.
The first way is trying to destroy a planet. When fired you have a 15% chance it will destroy the planet AND ALL SHIPS DOCKED on the planet. If the Nova Bomb doesn't destroy the planet it will damage everything on the planet up to 25%. This means everything, tech levels, credits, colonists, energy, fighters, torps, ect. There is also a 5% chance the Nova Bomb will explode on launch. If your ship has an average tech level below 15 it destroys the ship. If your ships average tech level is over 15 then your ship will be damaged between 50% and 75% on all tech levels, credits, energy, torps, fighter, ect.
The second way if firing the Nova Bomb across a warp link. If you have a Nova Bomb on your ship your Long Rang Scan will add a Use Nova Bomb selection. When you fire the Nova Bomb across a warp link it will destroy 50%-100% of the sector defenses and then damage all planets and ships off planet 0%-5%. This means everything, tech levels, credits, colonists, energy, fighters, torps, ect. There is also a 5% chance the Nova Bomb will explode on launch. If your ship has an average tech level below 15 it destroys the ship. If your ships average tech level is over 15 then your ship will be damaged between 50% and 75% on all tech levels, credits, energy, torps, fighter, ect. This is a great way to clear out a sector that is defended so no ship can normally enter.
As you can see there are alot of new changes to the Nova Bomb and it should be interesting to see what happens.
Also, there have been huge changes that make trading just as profitable if not more profitable in many cases than attacking planets. So you can either be a trader and get high rankings or be an attacker and get high rankings, This is different from the last game where attackers were the ones who made the top ranks.
Space Probes
============
There are 5 types of probes that can be purchased from the devices port. Once you have a probe and you drop it in a sector you can upgrade its sensors,cloak and engines. Information obtained by probes are put in your log files.
You can change the probe type and give it orders:
Stationary Probe - This is a probe that you drop in a sector and it will detect incoming ships and attempt to scan them.
Sentry Probe - This probe works just like a stationary probe however if you bump its sensors to 20 and a ship enters the sector, it will announce the entry in the team shout box.
Warp Probe - These probes wander through warps and when it gets stuck will real space to a different part of the universe and search again.
Realspace Probe - This probe allows you to send it via real space to a specific sector.
Sequential Realspace Probe - This probe will move through real space sequentially until it gets to the target sector.
Note: All probes take a players turns so if you are any probes that move, better upgrade its engines or you will find yourself turn less.
Multiple Ships
==============
You no longer have to trade in that ship you just built up. You can now put it in storage for later use. There will be a storage fee attached to that ship, so don't think you can swap ships back and forth at a whim with no rent. If you have a bounty you cannot switch ships. You are stuck with that ship till your ship is destroyed or the bounty is gone.
Auto Trade Routes
=================
You can now setup Auto Trade Routes between your planets and Trade Ports. This will allow your planet to trade a single excess item (Ore, Goods, Organics or Energy) with a trade port to gain extra money.
Trade Routes
============
Trading has been changed significantly this time around. In the old game the prices at trade ports basically stayed the same. If you had a trade port that was being used by everyone it would offer the same prices as a port that hand't been used for weeks.
In this game Port Prices will increase the longer a port isn't traded with. If the base port prices for Goods is 22 credits each and you find a port that hasn't been traded with for a week they could be offing to buy good for over 100 credits each.
If you have a port that is constantly traded by everyone the prices could drop so low that it COSTS money to trade at the port.
Once a port isn't traded with for a set period of time the prices offered will slowly start going up again.
In this game Trading will be just as profitable as attacking rich planets. And I expect some people will be guaring any rich trading ports as well as they guard their bank planets.
Planetary Combat
================
We have added Jammers, Armor and Armor Points to planetary combat. Jammers will cause scan error to occur when scanning a planet. They will scan error low depending on the difference of the scanning ships sensors and the planets jammers and will scan up to 15% above a planets actual level as well. Armor is automatic, you do not have to buy it however it is based on the overall average tech level of the planet. Armor points are generated over time and will deplete some goods and ore. Armor points will not generate unless you have at least a based planet and 10,000 Ore and Goods in reserve, if ore and goods drop below 10,000 your armor points will start depleting.
There is now a planet pre-combat computer. If you hit the attack button once it will bring up a preliminary combat screen showing what you have and what the planet has. But it is subject to scan error just like planet scanning so it may not read perfectly either.
Attacking planets may also get you a bounty. If you attack a planet and your net worth is 40% above the owner of the planets net worth you will find your self with a federation bounty. Be sure to scan the planet and see if you will get a bounty or not. This feature will keep the game a little more balance and keep the big players from stomping the little players out of existence.
Sector Defence
==============
Sector defence is now tougher to cloak across. Sector sensors are now based on the highest sensors you have on the planets or your ship. If you have the same level cloak as the sectors sensors there is only a 25% chance of making it into the sector.
Team Forums
===========
These are private forums that only people on your team have automatic access. The creator of the team is the Admin for the forums.
The admin can make Sticky messages, lock messages, delete messages and edit messages.
Teammates can edit only messages they posted.
When you log into the game the Team Forum selection on the main screen will tell you how many new messages have been added since you were las online.
When you enter the forum all of the topics are listed. Any topics with new posts will have the number of new posts right beside the topic title. If you have posted to the topic the number of new messages will be in yellow so you know what threads you have been posting.
This doesn't replace the instant messaging but compliments it so you can have your own private forums for conducting team business without clutting up your instant messages.
Shout Box
=========
You will notice the new shoutbox can be quickly used from the main window now. Team Messages show up in the new shoutbox area and regular shouts will appear at the top of the screen just like before. This will be useful for coordinated attacks.
We hope we have worked out all the bugs, but I'm sure we have missed a few. Please make us aware of any problems you see as you play the game. We have added a whole lot to this game so I'm sure we might have missed something.
Alien Assault Traders is based off of the original BlackNova Traders and Nova Gaming System code (specifically the .54 release of NGS). Their
CHANGELOG information can be found in their project files.
