Version 1.009 is now out, and overall it is individually a small release. But this is the first official update to include all the goodies from 1.005 onwards. So for those not playing the beta branch, this new version is HUGE
For those who were playing the beta branch, this one mainly brings improvements to the NPC vs NPC battles getting stalemated in late game with the honorable races were the attackers. We've gotten a bit derailed today, so no new features today, but I'll make it up to you as the week progresses. ;)
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has
had. This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely
grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to
the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After
this week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature
every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new
weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it
up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even
further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very
fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the
things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope
and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive
but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This
is a standard update that you can download through the in-game
updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you.
To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do
so.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
TLF Version 1.007-1008 Beta Released (Solar Map Balance And Auto-Resolve Polish)
Version 1.007 Beta
is now out, and focuses on moving things towards merging the beta branch with the official one. This one is still just in the beta branch (which you can optionally download inside the game itself from the updater) rather than as a full version that everyone gets automatically updated to. So you can update or not for this one, at your discretion. When the beta branch is fully tested out, we'll push it out in the normal way -- hopefully either tonight or tomorrow morning, as I really want for everyone to be able to get these new goodies.
This version has a number of important bugfixes, and some rules changes to do things like make assassins less of a constant harassment, to remove the tax breaks and repeated false evidence exploits, trade route value reductions, and things like that.
This also includes a new Thoraxian-specific tech and building type pair, which makes them more unique (underground tunnels), and a bunch of revisions to orbital bombardment to slow that down in the early game but then let it speed up progressively via 5 new techs for that purpose. There are also 3 new Peltian-only orbital bombing techs, which replace the previous invisible multiplier they had.
In general I spent a lot of time today running observer mode games and tuning based on the results. For the past while, but in particular in the last release, the Acutians were just outstripping the entire solar system. The Thoraxians were also remarkably ineffective lately. With the changes in this version, I'm seeing vastly more variance in who comes out on top in a given game, and the Acutians no longer seem to have an overtly unusual advantage.
Beyond that, I finally got to circle back around to the auto-resolve stuff and clean up the variety of things that were still wrong with it. There may be more, and I need to keep testing on that myself. But the major cases that were just way off or throwing errors or whatever all seem to be fixed now. Let us know if you see anything else!
UPDATE: 1.008 is now out with a few hotfixes that I wanted to get in tonight. I forgot I had a podcast scheduled, so there was a limit to how much more I could do before that.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow, or possibly later tonight if I have enough that it's worth pushing out. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
This version has a number of important bugfixes, and some rules changes to do things like make assassins less of a constant harassment, to remove the tax breaks and repeated false evidence exploits, trade route value reductions, and things like that.
This also includes a new Thoraxian-specific tech and building type pair, which makes them more unique (underground tunnels), and a bunch of revisions to orbital bombardment to slow that down in the early game but then let it speed up progressively via 5 new techs for that purpose. There are also 3 new Peltian-only orbital bombing techs, which replace the previous invisible multiplier they had.
In general I spent a lot of time today running observer mode games and tuning based on the results. For the past while, but in particular in the last release, the Acutians were just outstripping the entire solar system. The Thoraxians were also remarkably ineffective lately. With the changes in this version, I'm seeing vastly more variance in who comes out on top in a given game, and the Acutians no longer seem to have an overtly unusual advantage.
Beyond that, I finally got to circle back around to the auto-resolve stuff and clean up the variety of things that were still wrong with it. There may be more, and I need to keep testing on that myself. But the major cases that were just way off or throwing errors or whatever all seem to be fixed now. Let us know if you see anything else!
UPDATE: 1.008 is now out with a few hotfixes that I wanted to get in tonight. I forgot I had a podcast scheduled, so there was a limit to how much more I could do before that.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow, or possibly later tonight if I have enough that it's worth pushing out. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
AI War Beta 7.021-7.022 "Champion Alter-Ego" Released!
This one is fairly hefty, compared to other recent patches. After the April 18th release of The Last Federation and a week of heavy post-release support for that game (which is still very much ongoing, but not quite 100% of our time now) I finally had time to get 7.021 ready.
The most important thing here is definitely the new alternate-champion-progress lobby option, in response to "Revising Champions" winning the #2 spot in the Big Items For 8.0 poll.
Basically if you want to play with Champions but don't want to mess with nebulae (and their scenarios) just turn this on and your champions will gain their XP alongside your normal Knowledge gathering, and will gain new unlocks when you capture or hack Advanced Research Stations, Advanced Factories, etc.
I'm sure this needs further balancing and polish and perhaps isn't even the right tree to bark up, but recent discussion indicated it was worth a try. And even if this option is worked out perfectly there's probably other revisions needed for champions. Anyway, more feedback is very welcome :)
Other high points from the release:
There's also quite a few other bugfixes and balance changes.
Update: 7.022 hotfix for a memory leak (that could cause out-of-mem situations) and a rare null-pointer exception (which isn't at all new, just now reported where I saw it).
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
The most important thing here is definitely the new alternate-champion-progress lobby option, in response to "Revising Champions" winning the #2 spot in the Big Items For 8.0 poll.
Basically if you want to play with Champions but don't want to mess with nebulae (and their scenarios) just turn this on and your champions will gain their XP alongside your normal Knowledge gathering, and will gain new unlocks when you capture or hack Advanced Research Stations, Advanced Factories, etc.
I'm sure this needs further balancing and polish and perhaps isn't even the right tree to bark up, but recent discussion indicated it was worth a try. And even if this option is worked out perfectly there's probably other revisions needed for champions. Anyway, more feedback is very welcome :)
Other high points from the release:
- The AI (on Diff 7+) now has "overrun" logic to recognize when its normal-threat forces are way more than needed at a specific planet (even when there's still some human presence). It then leaves a goodly chunk to mop up and sends the excess after another target.
- Most of the Golems have been buffed to better fit their balance targets, so they should be more interesting to play with. Unless it's the AI with the golems. Then it's more interesting to play with.
- The Spirecraft Siege Tower and Spirecraft Ion Blaster have been reimagined as much more combat-effective ships.
- Fixed a couple of bugs that were causing Desyncs in multiplayer. Always a relief to nail some of those.
- The AI's Implosion Guardians (including the Dires) have been nerfed. And there was much rejoicing.
There's also quite a few other bugfixes and balance changes.
Update: 7.022 hotfix for a memory leak (that could cause out-of-mem situations) and a rare null-pointer exception (which isn't at all new, just now reported where I saw it).
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Monday, April 28, 2014
TLF Version 1.006 Beta Released (Besieging And Federating)
Version 1.006 Beta
is now out, and is another wonderfully vast one. This one is still just in the beta branch (which you can optionally download inside the game itself from the updater) rather than as a full version that everyone gets automatically updated to. So you can update or not for this one, at your discretion. When the beta branch is fully tested out, we'll push it out in the normal way -- hopefully tomorrow or the next day, as I really want for everyone to be able to get these new goodies.
This version includes a whole lot of changes to how NPC vs NPC battles take place at planets, when one is besieging another. This should result in much more pleasing results, but let us know what you think. There are also some changes to where races will sometimes capture outposts rather than destroying them, which is also a nice (player suggested) touch.
Golly, there's also a bunch of new stuff relating to attitude shifts and influence shifts in various specific circumstances relating to certain hostiles alliances in particular. Members of some hostile alliances can get disgusted with other members of their alliance and break away, which means that -- if you manipulate the attitudes to make this happen -- you can engineer the fall of an enemy alliance without having to resort to genocidal violence. That's a nice new option. ;)
---------------Federating ---------------
The Federation Points system that I tried out last version were a fiasco, and a great example of why I wanted to do it as a beta branch. Those have been removed, and a whole mess of other changes have been added relating to federating:
1. The general influence and credit costs for the standard routes of convincing races to join existing federations have gone up pretty much 10x. You can't just speed through that anymore. But! Before you cry foul, keep reading.
2. Depending on what races are already in the federation, the influence requirements go either up or down. So it can be either utterly ridiculous requirements for you to directly add them, making that impossible, or it can be something that goes back down to previous values, depending on the makeup of your federation. That's pretty nifty. But it's still not enough, so again keep reading.
3. There are now two new ways to get races into the federation.
3.a. If a race is getting beaten to a pulp by a non-federation race, then they suddenly become really open to the idea of the federation. The credit costs are a lot lower, as are the influence requirements. So you can opportunistically get races in this way.
3.b. If a race has an RCI value of -2000 or worse (the specific RCI category that is required varies for each race), then they will absolutely have the lowest possible thresholds for credit to join a federation, and they only require -200 influence from you, which is obviously pathetically low. So! This makes a non-influence, non-attitude way of getting races into the federation: if you can figure out a way to make their key RCI value go all the way down to Scarytown levels without them catching on that it is you (and thus hating you more than -200), then you can get them into the federation in a very dubious fashion.
4. But wait, there is still more! Previously, the only real ways to get races to have attitudes that are better towards one another were through trade routes and gifting of techs. Trade routes are cool, but they are basically risk-free (there is practically no opportunity cost to them), and they are also extremely finite, so not something that you can stack at all).
This release adds FIFTEEN new buildings that are all aimed at passive attitude shifts from other races toward the race that owns the building. The races will not build these on their own, it's all at your discretion via Property Development. My favorite bit about these new buildings is that they all have pros and cons -- some races are happy with each building to varying degrees, and others are unhappy with them to varying degrees. Because of that interesting opportunity cost, you can stack these a lot more than you can the trade routes and it still works out well (in my testing so far).
5. And this is the last thing: previously, there were reports of essentially an exploit where you could federate and then just snap up non-spacefaring races as soon as they became spacefaring. First of all, on hard strategic difficulty, time-until-spacefaring was getting longer instead of shorter, which is now fixed. Facepalm. But even more key, the races that are non-spacefaring start getting pretty miffed when you federate without even bothering to help them get spacefaring tech first. Their attitude toward the federation races steadily drops, as does your influence with them. I like this because it is absolutely sensible as a reaction from them, and it neatly nips that particular exploit off.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
This version includes a whole lot of changes to how NPC vs NPC battles take place at planets, when one is besieging another. This should result in much more pleasing results, but let us know what you think. There are also some changes to where races will sometimes capture outposts rather than destroying them, which is also a nice (player suggested) touch.
Golly, there's also a bunch of new stuff relating to attitude shifts and influence shifts in various specific circumstances relating to certain hostiles alliances in particular. Members of some hostile alliances can get disgusted with other members of their alliance and break away, which means that -- if you manipulate the attitudes to make this happen -- you can engineer the fall of an enemy alliance without having to resort to genocidal violence. That's a nice new option. ;)
---------------Federating ---------------
The Federation Points system that I tried out last version were a fiasco, and a great example of why I wanted to do it as a beta branch. Those have been removed, and a whole mess of other changes have been added relating to federating:
1. The general influence and credit costs for the standard routes of convincing races to join existing federations have gone up pretty much 10x. You can't just speed through that anymore. But! Before you cry foul, keep reading.
2. Depending on what races are already in the federation, the influence requirements go either up or down. So it can be either utterly ridiculous requirements for you to directly add them, making that impossible, or it can be something that goes back down to previous values, depending on the makeup of your federation. That's pretty nifty. But it's still not enough, so again keep reading.
3. There are now two new ways to get races into the federation.
3.a. If a race is getting beaten to a pulp by a non-federation race, then they suddenly become really open to the idea of the federation. The credit costs are a lot lower, as are the influence requirements. So you can opportunistically get races in this way.
3.b. If a race has an RCI value of -2000 or worse (the specific RCI category that is required varies for each race), then they will absolutely have the lowest possible thresholds for credit to join a federation, and they only require -200 influence from you, which is obviously pathetically low. So! This makes a non-influence, non-attitude way of getting races into the federation: if you can figure out a way to make their key RCI value go all the way down to Scarytown levels without them catching on that it is you (and thus hating you more than -200), then you can get them into the federation in a very dubious fashion.
4. But wait, there is still more! Previously, the only real ways to get races to have attitudes that are better towards one another were through trade routes and gifting of techs. Trade routes are cool, but they are basically risk-free (there is practically no opportunity cost to them), and they are also extremely finite, so not something that you can stack at all).
This release adds FIFTEEN new buildings that are all aimed at passive attitude shifts from other races toward the race that owns the building. The races will not build these on their own, it's all at your discretion via Property Development. My favorite bit about these new buildings is that they all have pros and cons -- some races are happy with each building to varying degrees, and others are unhappy with them to varying degrees. Because of that interesting opportunity cost, you can stack these a lot more than you can the trade routes and it still works out well (in my testing so far).
5. And this is the last thing: previously, there were reports of essentially an exploit where you could federate and then just snap up non-spacefaring races as soon as they became spacefaring. First of all, on hard strategic difficulty, time-until-spacefaring was getting longer instead of shorter, which is now fixed. Facepalm. But even more key, the races that are non-spacefaring start getting pretty miffed when you federate without even bothering to help them get spacefaring tech first. Their attitude toward the federation races steadily drops, as does your influence with them. I like this because it is absolutely sensible as a reaction from them, and it neatly nips that particular exploit off.
--------------- Ongoing Updates ---------------
All through this week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll see -- at minimum, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
Friday, April 25, 2014
TLF Version 1.005 Beta Released (Holy Smokes It's Big )
Version 1.005 Beta
is now out, and is monstrously, wonderfully huge. This one changes so many things that we're releasing it only as a beta version (which you can optionally download inside the game itself from the updater) rather than as a full version that everyone gets automatically updated to. So you can update or not for this one, at your discretion. When it's fully tested out, we'll push it out in the normal way.
This version has auto-resolve for battles, as described a couple of days ago. However, it is hot off the presses and I have not yet had a chance to do much testing with it in enough varied situations, so that's a big part of why this is a beta build.
Other notable stuff:
* The least-popular mission types have all been heavily revised in ways we think you'll like.
* Solar map performance is vastly better in the late game.
* There is a new "Federation Points" system, which again I've not had sufficient time to test the balance or clarity of, because auto-resolve was taking so long. This new feature is huge, and helps to give games a more natural arc. Federation Points basically keep track of how much a race likes the idea of the federation.
* There are also some important bugfixes.
All through next week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had (tonight there's a bunch of stuff at once in one day because several of the features were THAT large, but normally that won't be the case). This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After next week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
This version has auto-resolve for battles, as described a couple of days ago. However, it is hot off the presses and I have not yet had a chance to do much testing with it in enough varied situations, so that's a big part of why this is a beta build.
Other notable stuff:
* The least-popular mission types have all been heavily revised in ways we think you'll like.
* Solar map performance is vastly better in the late game.
* There is a new "Federation Points" system, which again I've not had sufficient time to test the balance or clarity of, because auto-resolve was taking so long. This new feature is huge, and helps to give games a more natural arc. Federation Points basically keep track of how much a race likes the idea of the federation.
* There are also some important bugfixes.
All through next week we will continue releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had (tonight there's a bunch of stuff at once in one day because several of the features were THAT large, but normally that won't be the case). This is far and away our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After next week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a beta update that you can optionally download through the in-game updater. Steam will not automatically update it for you yet, as we don't think everyone wants that inflicted on them. ;)
The Last Federation 'Second Chance Sale' on Bundle Stars
The Last Federation's release week has officially concluded, but those who missed out on the 25% off discount still have a chance to pick up the game at its reduced launch price of $14.99.
We were a little late to the party in regards to getting TLF up on Bundle Stars, and our delay is the latecomer's gain. The store is essentially offering a second chance sale that doesn't end until May 2nd -- a launch discount so nice, they ran it twice.
Here's what the press is saying about the game:
"For fans of space-faring simulation games, it's more or less a must."
8/10 – Richard Nolan, Strategy Informer
"Arcen Games nailed it with this game."
TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit
“A revolutionary twist on the 4X legends of yore.”
8/10 (Editor's Choice) – Jonathan Lester, Dealspwn
"A true masterpiece to behold."
8/10 – Callum Shephard, Starburst Magazine
"An exceptional game and quite possibly the best one Arcen Games has released to date."
9/10 – Vincent Paone, Dad's Gaming Addiction
The strong launch means a lot more to come for the game moving forward (beyond what Chris has already detailed). We'll have new details to share very soon. Thanks again to everyone who has made this such a successful release for us!
We were a little late to the party in regards to getting TLF up on Bundle Stars, and our delay is the latecomer's gain. The store is essentially offering a second chance sale that doesn't end until May 2nd -- a launch discount so nice, they ran it twice.
Here's what the press is saying about the game:
"For fans of space-faring simulation games, it's more or less a must."
8/10 – Richard Nolan, Strategy Informer
"Arcen Games nailed it with this game."
TotalBiscuit, The Cynical Brit
“A revolutionary twist on the 4X legends of yore.”
8/10 (Editor's Choice) – Jonathan Lester, Dealspwn
"A true masterpiece to behold."
8/10 – Callum Shephard, Starburst Magazine
"An exceptional game and quite possibly the best one Arcen Games has released to date."
9/10 – Vincent Paone, Dad's Gaming Addiction
The strong launch means a lot more to come for the game moving forward (beyond what Chris has already detailed). We'll have new details to share very soon. Thanks again to everyone who has made this such a successful release for us!
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
TLF Auto-Resolve Coming Tomorrow
I promised a second release today, but I was a little overly optimistic. ;) One of the top features that people have been requesting is an auto-resolve feature for battles, and that's something I've been working on today. I'd thought I'd have it ready in time for a release tonight, but alas not; it will definitely be ready tomorrow, though (and better-tested for the extra time, too).
Why is auto-resolve important?
* As fun as the tactical battles are, sometimes you simply overmatch your enemy and you just want to get on with things.
* If you're in the middle of a bunch of stuff on the solar map, sometimes you want the results of combat without having the interruption of combat.
* If you've been playing a marathon session, maybe combat is starting to feel repetitive simply by virtue of "too much of a good thing."
* Maybe you just don't like the turn-based tactical combat. Either the genre in general, or our specific implementation of it. But if you love the solar map stuff, should you either be forced to play something you dislike, or just pushed away from playing the game at all?
I actually fall into that last category when it comes to the Total War games, which blend a kind of board-gamey grand strategy model with an RTS tactical battle simulator. I love the grand strategy in that series, but for whatever reason the RTS tactical stuff just never clicked with me. It's not the fault of the series -- most fans of that series love the combat there, just as most fans of TLF seem to really like the combat here. I can appreciate that it's really well thought out, really well executed, etc... and yet it just isn't for me.
But the fact of the matter is, I love the strategic portion of Total War all the same. It's possible to be a fan of the larger context and not a fan of the smaller bits, and it's really a shame to have to have all-or-nothing. I actually talked about that almost exactly a month ago, but then changed my mind. From a designer's perspectives, I fell into the trap of thinking two things:
1. If there's a problem with the combat, we should focus on improving that rather than just "papering over it" with an auto-resolve.
2. Combat is an integral part of the game, and we don't want to split the playerbase or get people with a halfhearted experience because they just don't give combat a chance and find out that they like it.
In regards to point 1, this doesn't really "paper over" anything, despite my recent thinking. Will we continue to make combat better and better? Yes, absolutely -- with the help of those players who already like or love it. Adding auto-resolve doesn't obviate us from focusing on combat any more than it caused Total War to just abandon combat in their games. And Total War is far from the only series of strategy games with an auto-resolve option, it's just my favorite one and so the one I'm most comfortable using as an example (if anyone who works on those games reads this, please rest assured I love your work).
In regards to point 2, for the ones who just don't care for the sort of tactical combat on offer here, they can give feedback if they feel like it, or just happily play the solar map stuff. Just like I do with the grand strategy component in Total War. For me as a designer, that's not a "cop out," as I'd been kind of thinking of it, it's just a way of giving more people what they want, more of the time. Some people would argue that by avoiding the RTS combat in Total War, I'm getting a "watered down" version of that series. And from a literal sense... sure. The scope of those games is reduced for me as a player. But so what? I have a blast with the parts that I do play, and it's easily worth the price of admission for me just for the grand strategy part.
The point is to let players approach a game on their own terms, and a certain subset of our players have made it clear that this is what they want. So! That was to be the big surprise feature for today, but instead it's going to be kind of a combo feature for today and tomorrow, and I'm telling you about it early. It's a biggun, so I think you'll forgive me for making that a two-day feature. ;)
How, precisely, are we implementing it? Well, I'll get into a lot of the details tomorrow, but the coolest bits are:
1. Once you are in a combat battle, there is a little "Auto Resolve" button in the bottom left corner. You can click that at any time during the battle (unless you have perma-death turned on, in which case you can't use it at all) and it will auto-resolve the rest of the battle for you. To repeat: you can do that at any time during combat.
2. Auto-resolution uses a formula based on the number of abilities you have unlocked, your tech upgrades, and so forth, to get your space power (as seen on the racial power grid, although the formula there will be updated some to account for things better for you -- the races are already represented fine, but your number is not quite right yet).
3. Auto-resolution also uses a value based on your combat difficulty level, so the different difficulty levels there have meaning even if you are auto-resolving everything. The combat an the strategic difficulties both kind of feed into one another, so this makes a fair amount of intuitive sense -- when the combat difficulty is higher, you need to worry about personal ship tech upgrades more, for instance, regardless of whether you are auto-resolving or not.
4. Depending on the objectives of the scenario, the outcome of the auto-resolve will come out a couple of different ways. However, you will never be killed as a result of auto-resolve (again, note that this is only usable at all when permadeath is turned off).
4.a. If you are trying to just "kill all the enemies or flagships or whatever," then it will do auto-resolve combat until you are basically redlined, and then will withdraw you. If you win before that, then great, you won. If withdrawing was a loss condition, then you'll lose that battle. If withdrawing was not a loss condition (by far the most common case), then it's an "indeterminate" result, but of course your results feed back into the main solar map just like always.
4.b. If you are supposed to be doing something specific, like capturing a science outpost to get a tech or whatever, then you will always succeed in this. However, based on your relative power and some other factors of the actual ships and turrets and whatnot that get seeded, you may either "succeed well" or "succeed poorly." The poorer you succeed, the more solar map months it costs you to do the auto-resolve. This is significant in terms of in-game resource costs, since solar map months are a major resource. But again, by making sure that you have a ship that is outfitted well, you reduce the risk of incurring such costs in any substantial way.
5. You'll still get Credits for ship kills, and pick up pilots and so forth, as part of auto-resolve. So that avenue of things is not shut off to you, which is really nice.
6. Any optional or side objectives -- civilian or military buildings to destroy, etc -- will be completely ignored during auto-resolve. At first glance you might think this a major handicap, but actually not. If you want to destroy some of those things, usually it doesn't take many turns to do so. You can easily play a few turns manually, destroy the thing in question, and then auto-resolve the rest of the battle and have done with it. Easy peasy. This is a big part of the reason for the "you can auto-resolve at any point in a battle."
7. The other part of the "you can auto-resolve at any time" bit is if a battle is dragging on and you are clearly going to win, and you don't feel like going through the motions of mopping up properly. Generally the design of the battles avoids putting you in that position in general, and in any cases where this happens too frequently we're going to be updating the battle definitions to begin with. But there's always edge cases, and this lets you deal with them gracefully even if you love the combat.
So. This thing needs a TLDR, because boy was that long. If you read the whole thing, thanks for taking the time! The TLDR is that some of you guys asked for an auto-resolve feature, I was opposed to it for a while on really fallacious grounds after initially being all for it, and now I've come to my senses and the feature is coming tomorrow. I'm glad that you guys that wanted it pushed the issue, because it's definitely a great thing for the game to have.
You'll be able to check it out sometime tomorrow!
Why is auto-resolve important?
* As fun as the tactical battles are, sometimes you simply overmatch your enemy and you just want to get on with things.
* If you're in the middle of a bunch of stuff on the solar map, sometimes you want the results of combat without having the interruption of combat.
* If you've been playing a marathon session, maybe combat is starting to feel repetitive simply by virtue of "too much of a good thing."
* Maybe you just don't like the turn-based tactical combat. Either the genre in general, or our specific implementation of it. But if you love the solar map stuff, should you either be forced to play something you dislike, or just pushed away from playing the game at all?
I actually fall into that last category when it comes to the Total War games, which blend a kind of board-gamey grand strategy model with an RTS tactical battle simulator. I love the grand strategy in that series, but for whatever reason the RTS tactical stuff just never clicked with me. It's not the fault of the series -- most fans of that series love the combat there, just as most fans of TLF seem to really like the combat here. I can appreciate that it's really well thought out, really well executed, etc... and yet it just isn't for me.
But the fact of the matter is, I love the strategic portion of Total War all the same. It's possible to be a fan of the larger context and not a fan of the smaller bits, and it's really a shame to have to have all-or-nothing. I actually talked about that almost exactly a month ago, but then changed my mind. From a designer's perspectives, I fell into the trap of thinking two things:
1. If there's a problem with the combat, we should focus on improving that rather than just "papering over it" with an auto-resolve.
2. Combat is an integral part of the game, and we don't want to split the playerbase or get people with a halfhearted experience because they just don't give combat a chance and find out that they like it.
In regards to point 1, this doesn't really "paper over" anything, despite my recent thinking. Will we continue to make combat better and better? Yes, absolutely -- with the help of those players who already like or love it. Adding auto-resolve doesn't obviate us from focusing on combat any more than it caused Total War to just abandon combat in their games. And Total War is far from the only series of strategy games with an auto-resolve option, it's just my favorite one and so the one I'm most comfortable using as an example (if anyone who works on those games reads this, please rest assured I love your work).
In regards to point 2, for the ones who just don't care for the sort of tactical combat on offer here, they can give feedback if they feel like it, or just happily play the solar map stuff. Just like I do with the grand strategy component in Total War. For me as a designer, that's not a "cop out," as I'd been kind of thinking of it, it's just a way of giving more people what they want, more of the time. Some people would argue that by avoiding the RTS combat in Total War, I'm getting a "watered down" version of that series. And from a literal sense... sure. The scope of those games is reduced for me as a player. But so what? I have a blast with the parts that I do play, and it's easily worth the price of admission for me just for the grand strategy part.
The point is to let players approach a game on their own terms, and a certain subset of our players have made it clear that this is what they want. So! That was to be the big surprise feature for today, but instead it's going to be kind of a combo feature for today and tomorrow, and I'm telling you about it early. It's a biggun, so I think you'll forgive me for making that a two-day feature. ;)
How, precisely, are we implementing it? Well, I'll get into a lot of the details tomorrow, but the coolest bits are:
1. Once you are in a combat battle, there is a little "Auto Resolve" button in the bottom left corner. You can click that at any time during the battle (unless you have perma-death turned on, in which case you can't use it at all) and it will auto-resolve the rest of the battle for you. To repeat: you can do that at any time during combat.
2. Auto-resolution uses a formula based on the number of abilities you have unlocked, your tech upgrades, and so forth, to get your space power (as seen on the racial power grid, although the formula there will be updated some to account for things better for you -- the races are already represented fine, but your number is not quite right yet).
3. Auto-resolution also uses a value based on your combat difficulty level, so the different difficulty levels there have meaning even if you are auto-resolving everything. The combat an the strategic difficulties both kind of feed into one another, so this makes a fair amount of intuitive sense -- when the combat difficulty is higher, you need to worry about personal ship tech upgrades more, for instance, regardless of whether you are auto-resolving or not.
4. Depending on the objectives of the scenario, the outcome of the auto-resolve will come out a couple of different ways. However, you will never be killed as a result of auto-resolve (again, note that this is only usable at all when permadeath is turned off).
4.a. If you are trying to just "kill all the enemies or flagships or whatever," then it will do auto-resolve combat until you are basically redlined, and then will withdraw you. If you win before that, then great, you won. If withdrawing was a loss condition, then you'll lose that battle. If withdrawing was not a loss condition (by far the most common case), then it's an "indeterminate" result, but of course your results feed back into the main solar map just like always.
4.b. If you are supposed to be doing something specific, like capturing a science outpost to get a tech or whatever, then you will always succeed in this. However, based on your relative power and some other factors of the actual ships and turrets and whatnot that get seeded, you may either "succeed well" or "succeed poorly." The poorer you succeed, the more solar map months it costs you to do the auto-resolve. This is significant in terms of in-game resource costs, since solar map months are a major resource. But again, by making sure that you have a ship that is outfitted well, you reduce the risk of incurring such costs in any substantial way.
5. You'll still get Credits for ship kills, and pick up pilots and so forth, as part of auto-resolve. So that avenue of things is not shut off to you, which is really nice.
6. Any optional or side objectives -- civilian or military buildings to destroy, etc -- will be completely ignored during auto-resolve. At first glance you might think this a major handicap, but actually not. If you want to destroy some of those things, usually it doesn't take many turns to do so. You can easily play a few turns manually, destroy the thing in question, and then auto-resolve the rest of the battle and have done with it. Easy peasy. This is a big part of the reason for the "you can auto-resolve at any point in a battle."
7. The other part of the "you can auto-resolve at any time" bit is if a battle is dragging on and you are clearly going to win, and you don't feel like going through the motions of mopping up properly. Generally the design of the battles avoids putting you in that position in general, and in any cases where this happens too frequently we're going to be updating the battle definitions to begin with. But there's always edge cases, and this lets you deal with them gracefully even if you love the combat.
So. This thing needs a TLDR, because boy was that long. If you read the whole thing, thanks for taking the time! The TLDR is that some of you guys asked for an auto-resolve feature, I was opposed to it for a while on really fallacious grounds after initially being all for it, and now I've come to my senses and the feature is coming tomorrow. I'm glad that you guys that wanted it pushed the issue, because it's definitely a great thing for the game to have.
You'll be able to check it out sometime tomorrow!
TLF Version 1.004 Released (x64 Linux Build)
Version 1.004
is now out, and is just a quickie. Another release is coming later tonight.
This version now has an x64 Linux build, so that people on x64 linux builds no longer have to have the 32 libs installed or run as root (whoah!) to make the 32 bit version of X Server run.
The game also now has a prettier icon, more forgiving rules with the docking changes introduced last night, toned down speeds on a couple of the racial flagships, and a couple of improvements/fixes to the player-funded creation of certain planetary buildings.
Tonight will continue our releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week (none of the above counts), thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tonight. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
This version now has an x64 Linux build, so that people on x64 linux builds no longer have to have the 32 libs installed or run as root (whoah!) to make the 32 bit version of X Server run.
The game also now has a prettier icon, more forgiving rules with the docking changes introduced last night, toned down speeds on a couple of the racial flagships, and a couple of improvements/fixes to the player-funded creation of certain planetary buildings.
Tonight will continue our releasing at least one new free feature every day of the work week (none of the above counts), thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tonight. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
TLF Version 1.003 Released (Permadeath Becomes Optional )
Version 1.003
is now out, and is another biggie. There are a couple of new features today, instead of just one:
1. Permadeath is now optional, and off by default. Instead you "narrowly escape" from battles that you would otherwise die in, and it gives you a time penalty in solar map months. This is a nontrivial penalty, in that things on the solar map may get out of hand -- so just fighting until you die still isn't the best idea; withdrawing is better. However, if you do wind up making a mistake that gets you killed, it's not just something that encourages savescumming by putting its boot in your face. This was a common request.
2. Being "kited" by the Velociter flagships was a huge complaint, and something that has been addressed. But while we were at it, we also split the Velociter into Type A and Type B models, with different attack patterns that are interesting to deal with.
3. The (arguably) most common remaining combat exploits are now dealt with, although there's still more to do. The big thing is that you can't cheese docking missions anymore, and you can't grind burlust duels. Burlust duels themselves still need work for the actual battles themselves, but either way the results of their battles are now more interesting and also non-cheeseable.
Then there's a bunch of other fixes and improvements, including but not limited to:
* Holy smokes there was a bug that was causing your health and shields to be way lowered in combat at various times, mainly when loading a savegame taken in the middle of combat.
* When a race takes over a planet, the RCI values are now closer to a clean slate rather than something that gets increasingly war-torn like in the last version. That didn't work so well.
* The everpresent complaint about the missing Boarine federation deals is now addressed; thanks for your patience on that one!
* Races were -- sigh -- not unlocking any new hull types that they didn't start the game with. No racial flagships, no expanded turrets, no expanded hydral tech, nothing. That's now fixed. So in effect there are now a bunch of "new" ships for players (at least those that were not in earlier versions of the alpha).
* You can now see what is going on with the ground troop numbers attacking and defending planets right on the solar map, which is kind of a big deal!
Today continues our releasing at least one new free feature (or in this case three) everyday of the work week , thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
1. Permadeath is now optional, and off by default. Instead you "narrowly escape" from battles that you would otherwise die in, and it gives you a time penalty in solar map months. This is a nontrivial penalty, in that things on the solar map may get out of hand -- so just fighting until you die still isn't the best idea; withdrawing is better. However, if you do wind up making a mistake that gets you killed, it's not just something that encourages savescumming by putting its boot in your face. This was a common request.
2. Being "kited" by the Velociter flagships was a huge complaint, and something that has been addressed. But while we were at it, we also split the Velociter into Type A and Type B models, with different attack patterns that are interesting to deal with.
3. The (arguably) most common remaining combat exploits are now dealt with, although there's still more to do. The big thing is that you can't cheese docking missions anymore, and you can't grind burlust duels. Burlust duels themselves still need work for the actual battles themselves, but either way the results of their battles are now more interesting and also non-cheeseable.
Then there's a bunch of other fixes and improvements, including but not limited to:
* Holy smokes there was a bug that was causing your health and shields to be way lowered in combat at various times, mainly when loading a savegame taken in the middle of combat.
* When a race takes over a planet, the RCI values are now closer to a clean slate rather than something that gets increasingly war-torn like in the last version. That didn't work so well.
* The everpresent complaint about the missing Boarine federation deals is now addressed; thanks for your patience on that one!
* Races were -- sigh -- not unlocking any new hull types that they didn't start the game with. No racial flagships, no expanded turrets, no expanded hydral tech, nothing. That's now fixed. So in effect there are now a bunch of "new" ships for players (at least those that were not in earlier versions of the alpha).
* You can now see what is going on with the ground troop numbers attacking and defending planets right on the solar map, which is kind of a big deal!
Today continues our releasing at least one new free feature (or in this case three) everyday of the work week , thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and that gap keeps widening by surprising degrees. We're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff. You guys are all awesome!
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Monday, April 21, 2014
TLF Version 1.002 Released (Tech Acquisitions And Planetary Attacks)
Version 1.002
is now out, and includes lots of goodies. One of the top-requested
features was a way to get techs from races that already have them, and
so that's today's "feature of the day."
Beyond that, there are a ton of fixes and improvements all over the place:
* A few GUIs are now quicker to navigate through (those small-action "after action report" popups, primarily).
* A lot of racial attitudes now shift in reaction to bad things that you do to other races.
* Fixed three exploits that clever players found. It's always fun to see what an increasingly-larger audience thinks of that a smaller one did not. And then of course do something about it. :)
* We also fixed some really unfortunate errors in the planetary ground and bombing attacks that were making those basically... well, borked. Incredibly sorry about that. It was a small change that we had made right prior to the weekend that caused it, and the fact that it was happening was not immediately obvious.
* And then some other, smaller bugfixes as well.
Today is the first day of us releasing at least one new free feature every DAY at this point, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and we're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff.
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Beyond that, there are a ton of fixes and improvements all over the place:
* A few GUIs are now quicker to navigate through (those small-action "after action report" popups, primarily).
* A lot of racial attitudes now shift in reaction to bad things that you do to other races.
* Fixed three exploits that clever players found. It's always fun to see what an increasingly-larger audience thinks of that a smaller one did not. And then of course do something about it. :)
* We also fixed some really unfortunate errors in the planetary ground and bombing attacks that were making those basically... well, borked. Incredibly sorry about that. It was a small change that we had made right prior to the weekend that caused it, and the fact that it was happening was not immediately obvious.
* And then some other, smaller bugfixes as well.
Today is the first day of us releasing at least one new free feature every DAY at this point, thanks to the overwhelming support this game has had. Seriously, this is now our best launch ever, and we're extremely grateful to our ever-growing community for their support, as well as to the press for taking the time out to look at our stuff.
After this week, we'll continue putting out at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is. Right now we're doing that very fast in response to all the huge numbers of new players and all the things that a larger audience is bound to dig up in a game of this scope and complexity; once that settles down, we'll make it less intensive but still ongoing.
More to come tomorrow. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
TLF Version 1.001 Released (Bugfixes, Large Screen Resolution Support)
Version 1.001 is a small release that fixes a few bugs that slipped past all 165ish of us who were testing (hey, it's a huge game) and which adds support for screen resolutions larger than 1920x1080.
Starting next week we're going to be releasing at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is.
Support for the game has been overwhelming so far -- as you can probably guess by the Steam top sellers charts -- and we're really grateful for that. We're mostly trying to rest and recuperate this weekend (particularly tomorrow, that being Easter), but wanted to go ahead and get these key things out to you sooner than later.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Starting next week we're going to be releasing at least one new free feature every week for at least a few months, if not longer. A quest, a new weapon or ability, a new ship, a new action... something. We'll vary it up, and make it fun. I'm really excited about expanding the game even further, as large as it already is.
Support for the game has been overwhelming so far -- as you can probably guess by the Steam top sellers charts -- and we're really grateful for that. We're mostly trying to rest and recuperate this weekend (particularly tomorrow, that being Easter), but wanted to go ahead and get these key things out to you sooner than later.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.
Friday, April 18, 2014
The Last Federation Out Today, 25% Off During Launch Week
UPDATE: The Last Federation is now available on Steam, GOG.com, Humble Store, and GamersGate!
--
Journalists and video channel owners interested in a copy of the game, please email arcengames[at]gmail[dot]com.
Arcen Games is proud to announce The Last Federation launches today for Windows PC, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.
From the creators of AI War: Fleet Command comes an all-new grand strategy title with turn-based tactical combat, set in a deep simulation of an entire solar system and its billions of inhabitants. You are the last of a murdered race, determined to unify or destroy the 8 others. But you must work from the shadows, using superior technology -- bring your cape and cowl.
TLF will be available today on Steam, Humble Store, and GOG; and will arrive soon on GamersGate, Green Man Gaming, as well as direct from ArcenGames.com. Carrying a $19.99 standard tag, the game will be offered at 25% off for the first week -- bringing the price down to just $14.99 until April 25th.
Features
- Turn-based tactical combat, with up to 5 factions competing at once.
- Extremely deep simulation of an entire solar system and its billions of inhabitants. Even just watching everything unfold in Observer mode is entertaining, as nations rise and fall.
- New-player-friendly ramp-up of complexity as you play, which you can disable if you're already a veteran.
- Eight races each have very distinct personalities and attributes. Each one even has its own completely unique political system.
- Difficulty levels split between the grand strategy and turn-based combat portions of the game, both ranging from quite casual to incredibly hardcore.
- Save and reload your game with ease any time, or tough it out in ironman mode.
- Composer Pablo Vega's best soundtrack to date, featuring 54 minutes of music and the vocal finale "Lay Down Your Arms."
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
First TLF Let's Play Videos Surface
Wanted to quickly post and share the first trio of TLF Let's Play videos from Pewpewchewchew, Kailvin, and th_pion. They popped up over the past day or so, and all three are generally positive (exciting!):
Friday, April 11, 2014
AI War Beta 7.019-7.020 "Oops MkII" Released!
This one is partly a hotfix to deal with a fairly serious AI bug I introduced in the previous version, but there was a fair bit of other work in the hopper ready to go out as well.
Not a huge release, overall, because we're basically in the last week before the April 18th official release of The Last Federation. The AI thinks you should go take a look. It'll watch your defenses while you're gone.
Speaking of the AI, some background on the main bug this release fixes:
Whenever AI threat ships (unlike guard ships, threat ships are free to attack you wherever and whenever they please) are on a planet there's a basic decision tree that gets checked repeatedly on the AI thread:
I) Is there an interesting human presence here? Basically this means anything over a token force, or the presence of a human command station, or the presence of a human irreplaceable (fab, etc).
I.A) If so, are we seriously overmatched by the local forces, and have we been here long enough to run away?
I.A.1) If so, pick a random planet an run for it.
I.B) If we're not overmatched, do we seriously overmatch the local human forces?
I.B.1) If so, generally focus on knocking out any irreplaceable units and the command station (if any).
I.C) If we're pretty evenly matched, then let each ship pick the targets it's best against in an effort to win the fight.
II) But if there is no interesting human presence here:
II.A) If we're Special Forces:
II.A.1) Go to the currently designated Special Forces rally point (which could be its "waiting area" a few hops deep into AI Territory if there's nothing suitable, or it could be a sufficiently-important AI planet with human forces it wants to crush).
II.B) If we're Threatfleet (not just normal threat, but threat that got stuck waiting somewhere for over half an hour and thus joins the coherent Threatfleet)
II.B.1) Go to the currently designated Threatfleet rally point (which could be its "waiting area" a few hops deep into AI Territory, or it could be an AI planet under attack by human forces the Threatfleet thinks it can take, or it could be a neutral/human planet it thinks it can take)
II.C) If we're just normal threat, look at all the planets and sort them by a combination of Desirability (command stations and irreplaceables have various values of this) and Difficulty (based on the local forces there and the forces in the way from here to there), then get on the road to the best looking target. Later on, at each wormhole, each ship will check whether it should wait before proceeding due to an unfavorable local strength balance.
And normally all this works pretty well. Except when a certain boneheaded programmer (yours truly) is renovating the AI code and accidentally makes it so it thinks the answer to the question marked "I)" above is ALWAYS "no".
So the AI threat would get to the target planet, surrounded by hideously powerful human defenses protecting a pile of irreplaceables, and ask itself "is there an interesting human presence here?" ... "Nah. Where to next, Bob?".
If I ever add that behavior back to the game as a legitimate AI Type, I'll probably call it "Inebriated". Three sheets to the wind. Yet strangely still effective in many circumstances.
In other news, the AI is now much smarter (theoretically, see above) about factoring in your mobile forces: specifically, when looking at a planet to see if it can win a fight there, it considers not just the local mobile and static human strength but also human mobile strength within 3 hops. This makes it much more difficult to lure into attacking a planet with relatively light static defenses by just pulling your mobile stuff back to the other side of a wormhole, only to bring it back in immediately after the AI takes the bait. There are a few nuances to when mobile human strength counts in this way, and some other new rules about how it evaluates "can I take that planet?" to help embolden the AI to attack on multiple fronts once it's in a serious fight with you anywhere.
There's also a few other changes in there, like MkV Spirecraft Jumpships becoming immune to Black Hole Machines, the Core Guard Post on-death exos now always spawn on the post's planet (making it less mandatory to split your fleet during a high-difficulty AI Homeworld assualt), and Remains Rebuilders are a bit better about prioritizing Energy Collectors and stuff currently in their range, etc.
Update: 7.020 hotfix for some performance problems (i.e. 10 second freezes, in some cases on some machines) recently introduced into the reinforcement logic.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
Not a huge release, overall, because we're basically in the last week before the April 18th official release of The Last Federation. The AI thinks you should go take a look. It'll watch your defenses while you're gone.
Speaking of the AI, some background on the main bug this release fixes:
Whenever AI threat ships (unlike guard ships, threat ships are free to attack you wherever and whenever they please) are on a planet there's a basic decision tree that gets checked repeatedly on the AI thread:
I) Is there an interesting human presence here? Basically this means anything over a token force, or the presence of a human command station, or the presence of a human irreplaceable (fab, etc).
I.A) If so, are we seriously overmatched by the local forces, and have we been here long enough to run away?
I.A.1) If so, pick a random planet an run for it.
I.B) If we're not overmatched, do we seriously overmatch the local human forces?
I.B.1) If so, generally focus on knocking out any irreplaceable units and the command station (if any).
I.C) If we're pretty evenly matched, then let each ship pick the targets it's best against in an effort to win the fight.
II) But if there is no interesting human presence here:
II.A) If we're Special Forces:
II.A.1) Go to the currently designated Special Forces rally point (which could be its "waiting area" a few hops deep into AI Territory if there's nothing suitable, or it could be a sufficiently-important AI planet with human forces it wants to crush).
II.B) If we're Threatfleet (not just normal threat, but threat that got stuck waiting somewhere for over half an hour and thus joins the coherent Threatfleet)
II.B.1) Go to the currently designated Threatfleet rally point (which could be its "waiting area" a few hops deep into AI Territory, or it could be an AI planet under attack by human forces the Threatfleet thinks it can take, or it could be a neutral/human planet it thinks it can take)
II.C) If we're just normal threat, look at all the planets and sort them by a combination of Desirability (command stations and irreplaceables have various values of this) and Difficulty (based on the local forces there and the forces in the way from here to there), then get on the road to the best looking target. Later on, at each wormhole, each ship will check whether it should wait before proceeding due to an unfavorable local strength balance.
And normally all this works pretty well. Except when a certain boneheaded programmer (yours truly) is renovating the AI code and accidentally makes it so it thinks the answer to the question marked "I)" above is ALWAYS "no".
So the AI threat would get to the target planet, surrounded by hideously powerful human defenses protecting a pile of irreplaceables, and ask itself "is there an interesting human presence here?" ... "Nah. Where to next, Bob?".
If I ever add that behavior back to the game as a legitimate AI Type, I'll probably call it "Inebriated". Three sheets to the wind. Yet strangely still effective in many circumstances.
In other news, the AI is now much smarter (theoretically, see above) about factoring in your mobile forces: specifically, when looking at a planet to see if it can win a fight there, it considers not just the local mobile and static human strength but also human mobile strength within 3 hops. This makes it much more difficult to lure into attacking a planet with relatively light static defenses by just pulling your mobile stuff back to the other side of a wormhole, only to bring it back in immediately after the AI takes the bait. There are a few nuances to when mobile human strength counts in this way, and some other new rules about how it evaluates "can I take that planet?" to help embolden the AI to attack on multiple fronts once it's in a serious fight with you anywhere.
There's also a few other changes in there, like MkV Spirecraft Jumpships becoming immune to Black Hole Machines, the Core Guard Post on-death exos now always spawn on the post's planet (making it less mandatory to split your fleet during a high-difficulty AI Homeworld assualt), and Remains Rebuilders are a bit better about prioritizing Energy Collectors and stuff currently in their range, etc.
Update: 7.020 hotfix for some performance problems (i.e. 10 second freezes, in some cases on some machines) recently introduced into the reinforcement logic.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
The Last Federation Launches April 18th
TLF is a grand strategy campaign with turn-based tactical combat, and like all of our games -- you won't find anything else out there quite like it! The game marks Arcen's return to the space strategy genre, where we first made a name for ourselves with AI War: Fleet Command.
Features:
- Turn-based tactical combat, with up to 5 factions competing at once.
- Extremely deep simulation of an entire solar system and its billions of inhabitants. Even just watching everything unfold in Observer mode is entertaining, as nations rise and fall.
- New-player-friendly ramp-up of complexity as you play, which you can disable if you're already a veteran.
- Eight races each have very distinct personalities and attributes. Each one even has its own completely unique political system.
- Difficulty levels split between the grand strategy and turn-based combat portions of the game, both ranging from quite casual to incredibly hardcore.
- Save and reload your game with ease any time, or tough it out in ironman mode.
- Composer Pablo Vega's best soundtrack to date, featuring 54 minutes of music and the vocal finale "Lay Down Your Arms."
Monday, April 7, 2014
AI War Beta 7.018 "Troubleshooters" Released!
This one is another fairly small release while we're focused on the last few weeks before releasing The Last Federation,
So we shot some troublesome bugs. Some old, like some missing art assets for non-steam installs. Some new, like the Heroic AI using its newfound ability to buy more champions for its waves... a little too enthusiastically.
But the AI's also gotten better at shooting troublemakers. In the kneecaps (or suitably analogous regions). Mainly as a quality-of-life improvement, we've removed the AIP-on-death from Special Forces Guard Posts, so they're now autotargeted and won't clutter up your backfield with enemy units that trigger various "ah! There's an enemy on the planet!" logic in sub-optimal ways. Since that AIP (or increased special forces size, if left alive previously) was a significant (albeit small) part of the overall balance, however, a corresponding buff was made to the SF. Specifically, they now spend a portion of their strength on Riot Control Starships. Some of you may not be familiar with how much havoc Riots can cause. You'll probably know soon.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.
So we shot some troublesome bugs. Some old, like some missing art assets for non-steam installs. Some new, like the Heroic AI using its newfound ability to buy more champions for its waves... a little too enthusiastically.
But the AI's also gotten better at shooting troublemakers. In the kneecaps (or suitably analogous regions). Mainly as a quality-of-life improvement, we've removed the AIP-on-death from Special Forces Guard Posts, so they're now autotargeted and won't clutter up your backfield with enemy units that trigger various "ah! There's an enemy on the planet!" logic in sub-optimal ways. Since that AIP (or increased special forces size, if left alive previously) was a significant (albeit small) part of the overall balance, however, a corresponding buff was made to the SF. Specifically, they now spend a portion of their strength on Riot Control Starships. Some of you may not be familiar with how much havoc Riots can cause. You'll probably know soon.
Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.