We have opened the Beta Game for public play. The Beta Game contains new combat code and templates that will be in the Main Game when it resets on October 1st. Every one should join the game and test out the new combat so you are familiar with it when the game resets.

Starting player settings:

Default/Starting Ship: Voyager
Starting Credits: 100,000,000,000
Starting/Max Turns: 1,000

The game starts with only 2,000 sectors for up close and personal combat. Almost EVERY SECTOR has a planet that can be captured..

There are a number of goals we are looking to achieve though this Beta.

1. Testing of Ship to Ship Combat
2. Testing of Ship to Planet Combat
3. Testing of Planet Nova Bomb
4. Testing of Sofa Bombing
5. Testing of Attack & Run
6. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Fighters (not A&R)
7. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against only Mines (not A&R)
8. Testing of Straight attack of Sector Defense against Fighters and Mines combined (not A&R)
9. Testing of Sector Nova

All of these attacks have been changed in some way. Some were small and some were big. The Ship to Ship and Ship to planet had the biggest changes in how the attacks work.

During a S2S/S2P combat there will be new combat exchanges and orders. The failure of weapons is now calculated well before each combat exchange. The old combat system would calculate failure for the attacker, then attack and then target would calculate failure and then attack. Both attacker and defender during the defense portion of the attacks would be defending as if there were no failures even if there were. An example is the attacker has a fighter launch failure and only launches 50% of their fighters. With the old combat the target would be attacked by 50% of the enemy fighters but when they attacked the enemy fighters back all 100% of the fighters would defend just as if they had launched instead of failed.

In the old code when you had failures of any weapon you LOST all of the failed items. If 50% of your fighters didn't launch you lost them. Now they stay on your ship.

There have been many other changes to fix odd logic failures so the combat results may be different from what you are expecting. Please test everything so we can see how the changes are working out.

Thanks,
PJ and Tarnus

PJ, Love the nice looping when trying to travel to a different sector.

Can't move via warp links or RS, but you do get booted from SOL.

cheers

Opps, left in a debug statement in the move code. Fixed in a second.

Cool I can move now but when attacking a planet, just a blank white screen after clicking on attack.

Alf, you know better. We need more information like what template is used and the planet and sector.

I keep getting this message when using an sg "More than 3 links in SG Sectors are not permitted."

sorry PJ. Too keen to try out the new code. It does seem to be attacking any ówned' planets, IE Indies.
Drop down classic, sector: Q51V0DB and any of the planets.
You can scan and get a report, do the next attack sequence, when you get the new attack preview screen then click attack, you just get a blank screen.
http://beta.aatraders.com/planet.php?pl ... and=attack

I have tried other sectors and planets and have the same problem.
Windowed mode has the same issue.

cheers

I fixed that problem. Not uploaded yet. But a couple of others I never experienced during testing cropped up. One reason for a beta. I will try and get it up tonight.

You would not believe how screwed up the combat system is in our game or maybe you would.

I am basically doing a complete rewrite of all the core combat functions. This will necessitate making some more major changes to how ALL combat functions in the game operate.

In a way this is a good thing because these new combat functions are written as if we were coding for 1.00 and the new unit numbers. The only things that will need to be changed for use with 1.00 are the damage and hitpoint variables for everything. That will be easy to do compared to a rewrite of the combat system.

So what does this mean?

When the game resets on Oct 1st it will NOT be using the game code from the Beta Game. It will be the same code the Main is using now. This also means there won't be a 0.41 release when the Main resets.

I am sorry for the delay but things were so screwed up with the combat code it is ridiculous. With the new changes only the number of beams needed to destroy shields or armor will be used. It will keep using energy up to the point the enemy shields or armor fail and then stop. With the current combat code whatever energy is allocated for beams is usually completely used up. Like if enemy shields take 1 million units of damage and your beams fire off 100 million units you almost always lose those 100 million units. Now only the units of energy it takes to destroy 1 million units of shields will be used.

These same calculations will be used for beams, fighters, torps, mines and any other weapon when used offensively. This is really what we intended for the combat a long time ago. Most people stop shooting when they destroy something and don't continue shooting when they destroyed something until they run out of ammo.

These changes are going to take 2-3 days before they are ready to place on the Beta Game. Longer if something comes up in the meantime. Hopefully that won't happen.

Just look at it this way...

It just another step closer to 1.00. This was on my 1.00 list of things to do anyway.

If your inside an SG all you can create are 3 SGs, this is normal.

I was happening in all sectors. not sure if it still is or not. but I have not been able to create an sg at all.

I cant attack planets all I get is a blanks white screen. I am using the low bandwidth drop down template.

Alf has one of the planet in my sector so i cant trade at the colonist port in that sector. I can not attack the planet because i get a blank white screen. when I press back it says i am using a lag cheat and makes me wait 30 seconds.
Also, when I try to use a trade route to put colonists on the planet I get a message saying I can not trade at the port. but I do not get the message inside my template I get it on a blank white background with a bunch of garbled stuff after it. I am using the low bandwidth drop down template. Here is the message I get with a white screen.

Ok I used a real space trade route to move colonists to the planet instead when I ran out of turn I got the following message on a blank white screen.



I apologizes for so many messages here, but am trying to report any bugs i find in the beta.
I used to play years ago under the name 86U and have just recently came back into the fold as it where, and am practicing in the beta for the main reset. I like the direction you guys have taken things by the way!

If you read my posts you will see there are problems that we are working on in relation to attacks on planets and ships. The only difference in the code between the main game and the Beta are all attacks. Everything else is working as it should because it hasn't been modified.