The Last Federation:Post-2.0 Release Notes

Version 2.015

(This isn't done yet, we're still working on it.)

• Fixed an issue where the font headers would sometimes show up as really small and illegible.
  • Thanks to retnuH for reporting.

• Fixed a strange issue on OSX computers where for some reason it would not properly read certain explosion files despite them actually being there.
  • The solution to this was quite nonobvious and it's not even obvious why this solution works. So if the problem recurs, please do let us know.
  • Thanks to zalrus9 and kmunoz for reporting, and for their patience in waiting far longer than they should have had to for this fix.

Version 2.014

(Released March 25th, 2015)

• Conflagrate Large Ship no longer works on targets that never move (outposts, goodies, etc) or on civilian ships (non-smuggler freighters)
  • Thanks to atomicinf for inspiring this change.

• The following weapon types (all from the non-Obscura expansion ships) have had their attack power reduced by 70% in an effort to find a non-universe-murdering balance:
  • Aegis
  • VDeck
  • Parasite
  • RamLance
  • Sacrifice
  • PirateBullhead
  • PirateFractal
  • Hurler
  • Further feedback on how this balance feels is, of course, welcome.
  • Thanks to samnainocard for inspiring this change.

• The mega-claymore was previously very un-mega (not really being different from the normal claymore, and having lower stats in some circumstances), and not really performing its anti-figther role, so:
  • Hull strength doubled
  • Burst shot:
    • Shots per burst from 10 => ... rather more. Still bad at concentrating damage due to the spread (and individual shot damage hasn't been touched), but it's unlikely that a fighter will be able to get anywhere near without getting hit by _something_.
    • Now fires 4 times as often.
    • The shots themselves now fly 5 times as fast (the distance from the firing ship at which it bursts is still pretty much the same)
  • Further feedback is welcome, it's possible the buffs are overzealous. But testing sure was fun!
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for inspiring this change.

• Added a new optional-when-starting-new-game conduct: Independent Betrayal Minions
  • Only has meaning in Betrayal Mode (first expansion), and allows your controlled race to choose its own research and construction goals.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a longstanding bug where the Stickybomb weapon was... um, apparently too sticky. As in, sticks to anything. Including the launcher. And since a gunner must first _survive_ to complain of system malfunction...
  • Anyway, it launches again, and is now better at actually sticking to a fast-moving target once it gets close enough (though bear in mind they don't stick to shields, they just explode on contact if the target is still shielded).
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for the report.

• Made a change so that during the "what you missed while in combat" playback, you no longer have the AFA or Assassins massing to attack you again. Previously it was still doing that, just at 1/3 speed.

Version 2.013

(Released January 6, 2014)

• Our recently-added ArcenAsyncFile was causing some crashes in cases of extreme numbers of threads being used over a short period of time.
  • It appears that the version of Mono included in Unity 3D does not handle thread disposal quite like normal .NET does—and peculiarly, always reports the number of threads as 0 rather than whatever the real count is. So that was... problematic to say the least, when we wanted to instantiate a lot of threads and then destroy them. Instantiating them and then reusing them was what we had tried to begin with, but there were some unexpected hangups there as well.
  • What we're now using, which seems to work great, is the ThreadPool class, which is part of Mono/.NET that is specifically aimed at doing this sort of thread reuse in the first place. It seems to work exactly as advertised, fingers crossed. ;)
  • Thanks to pxld1, Kraiz, Vinco, and Spiderseam for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in the relatively-recently-added logic where "an attacker attacking a fleet near a hostile outpost/planet is also considered to be attacking that outpost/planet" was not counting those attackers in in the outpost/planet's tooltip for enemy strength.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for reporting.

• Normally when a fleet is near enough to a friendly outpost/planet it "disappears" into that outpost/planet's swarm of small-icon defenders and generally counts as a defender even if not actually absorbed into it. But it's still eligible to be attacked by other fleets, which can lead to those attackers circling around and firing at an empty spot on the map.
  • Now in such a case the fleet being attacked will be drawn on the map in their real location to make it clearer what's going on.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for inspiring this change.

• Added another rule to make sure the betrayal-controlled race is forced to be friendly to the player in combat, as previously it would be hostile to you when you tried to defend your own outpost.
  • Thanks to atomicinf for inspiring this change.

• The wandering hydral sentinels that the player could activate to assist them will no longer be seeded in future combats, since they weren't working right.
  • Any mid-combat saves that already had these will still have them, but future combats (even in the same save) won't.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for reporting

• Fixed a bug where the death-rate-multiplier and death-rate-additive rules of events were being applied twice.
  • The multiplier was being checked twice for > 1, and is now checked once for > 1 and once for < 1.
  • The additive one was being checked twice for != 0, and is now checked once for < 0 and once for > 0.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for reporting.

• The rule "if the player is docking with something in combat, automatically uncloak the player" was breaking the shadow-facility's capture bonus, so now that rule doesn't apply to shadow-cloaking.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for reporting.

• Added rules to prevent the player's betrayal-controlled race from researching technologies or constructing buildings in the normal fashion.
  • Thanks to atomicinf for inspiring this change.

Version 2.012

(Released January 4, 2015)

• A number of changes to ArcenAsyncFile to make it work more smoothly, and hopefully to fix an issue that was happening on some Macs with it.

• The WWW class is no longer used for checking for game updates, but instead the new ArcenAsyncFile is now used.
  • This _should_ provide more fault tolerance when programs like AVAST want to kill the ability of the game to check for updates. Knock on wood!

Version 2.011

(Released December 30, 2014)

• Since 2010 when we switched to the Unity 3D engine, we've been using their WWW class to load images from the disk asynchronously. However, in more recent versions of unity it's been a case where for a small number of people, if they had multiple network adapters on their machine, then the WWW loads from their own disk would load incredibly slowly. We didn't know until now what exactly caused that.
  • We've now created a new internal ArcenAsyncFile class that is our own implementation of the asynchronous disk calls (and will later be extended for network calls as well). This has been tested on windows, osx, and ubuntu, and it not only works, but seems to load noticeably faster than before. This should also bypass the issue that the WWW class had with getting oddly slow (if it doesn't, then something _seriously_ strange is going on, as they have almost no code in common).
  • The only two of our games that presently use this new capability are Stars Beyond Reach (internally, and unreleased) and The Last Federation. If all goes well with these, then once the feature set is complete then we will push these changes out to our other games.
  • Thanks to Vanreis for the latest report, and figuring out that this was related to the number of network adapters.

Version 2.010

(Released December 30, 2014)

• Fixed a bug where military outposts were not properly benefiting your own race in betrayal mode.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for reporting.

• Fixed an exploit where you could buy excess bribe items even when you did not have enough credits in some cases.
  • Thanks to Admiral Obvious for reporting.

Version 2.009 Hotfix

(Released December 22, 2014)

• Fixed an issue with reading in configuration files for particle effects on systems with language settings that use the comma for decimal places rather than the period.
  • Thanks to Amateur and whoozle for reporting.

• Fixed a typo in the name of "send peacekeepers."
  • Thanks to pumpkin for reporting.

Version 2.008 (Cumulative Hotfixes)

(Released December 2, 2014)

• Added new settings toggle: NPC Attack Notifications During Dispatch.
  • Normally while you're on dispatch the game will display notifications of another race attacking a player-held planet/outpost. If this toggle is on, similar notifications will also be displayed for attacks against a non-player planet/outpost.
  • Thanks to nas1m for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a bug where the recently added prediction/result text for duel-prime-warlord about the burlusts now being willing to consider joining the federation was not prevented on invasion or betrayal mode.
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for reporting.

• The "Federation" political-deal-category button on the politics window is now hidden in Betrayal and Invasion mode.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• Sell Raw Resources is no longer prevented in Betrayal mode, but instead yields 200x less credits than normal.
  • Thanks to Fleet Unity and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a longstanding bug where a race having an ongoing event on any of its planets would often effectively force its "race status" to be normal even if other factors would have made it Internal-War, Crowded, Warlike, Truce, etc.
  • Thanks to Backgroundc for the report and save leading to this discovery.

• The construction of personnel (troop) transports has been moved from happening every month to happening every sim-frame (just in much smaller chunks, obviously), to avoid situations where it seemed there should be a ground invasion but none was happening because the parent race had no transports to send the troops with.
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for inspiring this change.

• New games started in Betrayal or Invasion mode will not consider the Andor Federationists as eligible for the randomly picked andor parties.
  • This won't impact old saves that already picked the Federationists.
  • Thanks to nas1m for inspiring this change.

• The quest that's an alternate way of bringing spacefaring tech to a race now counts towards the Prometheus achievement (give spacefaring to 7 races).
  • This should impact old saves just fine, but we didn't have one on hand for testing at the time.
  • Thanks to giftgruen for inspiring this change.

Version 2.007

(Released November 20, 2014)

• Acutian planets no longer run their acutian-industry-building build queues if they've been taken over by the Hydral (betrayal mode) or the Obscura (invasion mode).
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for reporting.

• The "Sell Resources" black market action is now unavailable in betrayal mode.
  • Thanks to Thasero and Backgroundc for inspiring this change.

• The combat-side-allegiance-rule for "if an included armada is in npc-combat with the combat's parent location, that armada's side and the location's side will be hostile towards each other" has been broadened to include armadas that are actually in scheduled-autoresolve against something other than the location but are considered to be attacking the location due to proximity and racial relations.
  • The upshot is that this closes a few loopholes where you could be trying to defend a planet via combat but the attacker side was flagged as neutral towards the planet (and thus you), causing an automatic end to combat if no other hostiles were present.
  • Thanks to badgerbane and CaptainFatty for reporting.

• Obscura discs now have a "seed at most one per combat" rule similar to the one used for bosses (you can still have one boss and one disc in the same combat).
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

Version 2.006

(Released November 17, 2014)

• Fixed a bug in prior versions where the betrayal mode ending was playing for invasion mode.
  • Thanks to crushcommando for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where apparently the "original inherent dislike/like" between races wasn't actually being applied in recent versions.

• Added combat-generation rules so that if the obscura are involved at all then the combat is always "everyone not obscura allied" vs "everyone obscura allied".
  • Thanks to giftgruen for inspiring this change.

• Put in some extra checks to prevent the game from popping up the "About the federation" tutorial stuff in invasion or betrayal mode.
  • Thanks to giftgruen for reporting.

• Now, when a negative influence amount is added during a combat near a player-owned planet or outpost, that additional negative amount is halved.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• Now when you're on a dispatch and one of your planets or outposts comes under attack it will do a notification stating what is going on like what we do when the UIS or whatever forms.
  • It will only repeat this alert for a specific planet/outpost if you've either started a different dispatch or a solar year has elapsed since the last alert for that target.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

The Pendulum Swings Back A Bit On Betrayal Mode Balance

• Given that now it was pretty darn hard to make inroads on betrayal mode, here are some changes to not put the player at quite such a starting disadvantage.

• Previously in betrayal mode, all of the races started out hating you from shock at your murder of the first race.
  • Now 4 of the races continue to feel that way, but 2 will actually be happy instead (for a variety of reasons explained in-game) and like you better for it.
  • The 7th race, at random, will have only slightly negative feelings toward you based on the general "hydral oppression" influence type that standard mode uses.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, the player was starting out with no techs. Now they start out with the normal number.
  • Also in this mode, previously all of the alien races were starting with 2x their normal number of techs. Now only half of them do.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, since it's starting in a later year, the feelings of the races toward one another are now more complex.
  • Those that have original inherent like toward one another now have between 0.8x and 6x as much like for the race in question.
  • Those that have original inherent dislike toward one another now have between 1.2x and 3x as much dislike for the race in question.
  • This makes immediate alliances and feuds a lot more likely, giving the player more to exploit in various ways.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, the boarines and evucks now get care a lot less about you taking planets (-8 influence instead of -25).
  • Plus, you now gain 5, 10, and 20 influence with the Acutians, Thoraxians, and Burlusts respectively when you do take planets (they are impressed by it).
  • However, any time you capture a planet from a specific race, you lose 200 influence with that race now. They really react much more strongly to when you attack them personally.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• In Betrayal-mode planets you directly control now give you 1 credit per month per 500 units of population on that planet, up to a maximum of 1000 per month.
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for inspiring this change.

Version 2.005

(Released November 14, 2014)

• Assassins now are only a standard-mode mechanic. They would come to early in betrayal since the game starts in 3010 rather than 3000, and they also are something that logically the hydral armadas could swat off, anyhow. And in invasion mode, with the threat of the Obscura I think at least the assassins could be put on hold in the minds of these races.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for reporting the issue here.

Version 2.004

(Released November 14, 2014)

• For all the races that start out non-spacefaring in betrayal mode, they now take 2x longer than in other game modes to gain spacefaring technology, rather than 4x faster than the other modes. So this is 8x slower than in the prior version.
  • This gives you more time to get on your feet at the start of the game and consolidate your forces. Even make some friends. However, if you start raiding tons of planets and taking them, then these guys will rapidly gain spacefaring technology and you're in trouble.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring this change.

• The baseline max flagships per race in a battle has returned from 12 to 18, which is what it was at 2.0 and prior.
  • Additionally, the "normal" number of flagships per power level in an an armada has been returned to 10 from 4, making it so that the balance of your flagship vs enemies is the same _most of the time_.
  • However, now if you are attacking an outpost or planet with help, it's back to the 4 number, and if you do it on your own it is now _2_, which is even tougher. This really does make frontal assaults on your own a lot more difficult, like the flavor text says should be the case.
  • This way you get the new "extra tough defenders" at enemy planets when you are raiding, basically giving them a home field advantage, but when they are attacking YOU or you are finding them in other situations, it's not so simple.
  • Note that these changes apply to all combatants in a battle, not just the owner of the planet. So if you have allies attacking with you, they will come in more force based on the same armada power, too.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• When deciding whether or not to attack your planets in betrayal mode, the races will now overestimate the strength of your forces (and thus hold their forces back) based on how many planets you have ever held at once.
  • If you've only ever had 1 planet, they will overestimate your power by 20x, thus really holding them at bay for a while.
  • Once you have had 2 planets, they will only overestimate your power by 10x, so they are a lot more likely to attack.
  • Once you have had 3 planets, they will only overestimate by 3x, making them much more likely to attack.
  • After that, they evaluate you properly, no longer overestimating you at all.
  • Thanks to Eternaly_Lost for suggesting.

Version 2.003

(Released November 13, 2014)

• The max flagships per side has been dropped from 24 down to 12. This does mean more combats are required to take out the same portion of an armada, but at the same time it means that you don't have such huge chunks of inactivity from the really long battles causing lag time after.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• The time lag per turns spent in combat is now 1/6 what it was last release, aka the same as it was prior to last release.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting this change.

Version 2.002

(Released November 13, 2014)

Beating Back The Betrayal Bumrushers, Round 2

• As luck (hmm) would have it, we have had a couple of players who have figured out a way to absolutely dominate Betrayal mode if they are able to get their foes in just a few months. If the war lasts longer than that, then things are off to a great extended campaign like they are supposed to be (and like myself and other players were experiencing). But these clever folks figured out a way around that, and so some last-minute balancing is something we are cooking up with their help in order to respond to that newly-surfaced tactic. The timing could have been better (on the day before release—really!?), but we love when players figure out such clever things, and it's always a pleasure to work with them to make the game more balanced to deal with their ideas.
  • So that's what is going on with 2.001 and 2.002, and may continue for another few versions, we'll see.

• When starting a new game in betrayal mode, there are now 3x as many pirate bases as usual at the start.
  • Pirates all now are friendly to all races except the player, as well. A solar system devoid of life is not good for the pirates any more than it is for anyone else.
  • This creates another source of distraction for the player in the very early game in particular, keeping them from bumrushing the enemy. BUT it also creates a great way for the player to gain some income and some trust from other races when they go take out those bases, so there is a silver lining there.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting this change.

• Games in betrayal mode now start in the year 3010, rather than the year 3000, to represent the time it has taken the Hydral to take over their first planet.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for suggesting this change.

• When starting a new game in betrayal mode, all of the other races now have 3x as many starting technologies as usual.
  • And on the flip side, the player now starts with NO techs at the start of betrayal mode, since they instead spent their energies subjugating an enemy race.
  • This gives you a more consistent start as the player, and also gives the AI a head start in terms of what techs they have. You can catch up much easier than the AI can, because you have many more tools for gaining techs than they do.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• The Mire no longer seeds for anyone in betrayal mode.
  • This was just basically a death sentence for one race at random, and not needed in this mode.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• In betrayal mode, the population of planets other than the hydral is now 10-30 times higher than normal.
  • This represents the time that has passed, as well as making these planets harder targets for early bombing.
  • You are pretty much going to be forced to get some of the other races to attack one another to take out that much population... surely...
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• In betrayal mode, there are now three races that are spacefaring from the start, and the time until spacefaring for the other races is all slid down even further.
  • This is again in keeping with the "10 years into the future" theme, and it also creates a more adversarial starting scenario.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

Tactical Combat Relationship To Strategic Situation Balance

• This stuff applies to all game modes, but was particularly inspired by the need for some better balance on this stuff in Betrayal mode. In Invasion and Standard modes these numbers weren't really an issue per se, although looking at them now the numbers were a bit on the wimpy side and this will be more thematically appropriate.
  • But for betrayal mode, these are key balance changes that make is so that you can't Evil-Batman your way through an entire race's armadas in a few seconds of solar map time. That was just nuts in that game mode.

• Auto-resolving combat in general now takes about 2x as many turns as before. It was being optimistically quick about things before, leading to turn counts that were artificially low and thus solar map elapsed times that were also artificially low.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this discovery.

• The amount of solar map time that passes for each turn taken in combat (auto-resolve or otherwise) is now 6x higher than it was before. Before it was really quite excessively low, and thus your flagship could be used as a time-pausing bludgeon of sorts.
  • We actually introduced the entire concept of time passing on the solar map while you were in combat a while back to combat just this sort of thing. But the actual amounts of time taken have turned out to be too tame.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this discovery.

• The ratio of flagships to armada power level is now 4 to 1 rather than 10 to 1. With the Obscura, it was already 2 to 1.
  • This makes the fights between a player and a bunch of armadas at a planet a much more, ahem, lively affair. You can't just kill 4 ships and have it wipe out a mid-power armada, that was just bonkers.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• The maximum flagships seeded per side in a fight has changed from 18 to 24.
  • This keeps the player from having to do too many repeat fights if they are attacking a lot of armadas at once; that was a problem we had long ago, and expanding this prevents it from resurfacing.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring this change.

Version 2.001

(Released November 13, 2014)

• Updated the "What's New" link to point to this page rather than to the prior release notes page.

Betrayal Mode Balance (Responding To The Bumrush Tactic)

• In betrayal mode, every time you capture a planet that is not your original planet, a variety of consequences now kick in:
  • You lose 25 influence with all other surviving races (that number shifts up or down some by difficulty level).
  • All planets belonging to other surviving races start working extra hard for 80 months, tripling the speed at which they produce armadas.
  • All non-spacefaring races drop their time-to-spacefaring to 2/3 of what it previously was. But not lower than 4 months remaining. Again, out of fear.
  • All surviving races gain a substantial combat bonus to their space forces based on the maximum number of planets you have ever simultaneously held. It shows up as fear of the growing hydral empire.
    • They also gain a much smaller (1/8th as much) bonus to their ground forces based off that same fear.
  • All other surviving races get a fear-based boost to their science production for 80 months after the player captures a planet. The boost amount varies by difficulty level.
  • A message pops up explaining these things the first time you take a planet in betrayal mode.
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, once you hold 4+ planets, you start losing some influence each month with the other races, similarly to what happens in the main game with races who gain a fear empire (which you now basically have).
  • Thanks to chemical_art for inspiring these changes.

• The races now use their "fear of federation" buildings properly in betrayal and invasion modes, based on the number of planets controlled by the aggressors in those modes.

• The resource costs of creating and upgrading armadas have been reduced substantially (the credit costs remain the same except for upgrades, however).
  • The idea here is that now the player armadas are vastly more viable, particularly if the player puts time into upgrading them.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• The player now has a starting cap of armadas of 5, rather than 3, although they still start with 3. The XI and XII armada cap tech upgrades have been removed from the game. They were so ludicrously so far out that they were unlikely to show up in most games, anyhow.
  • With the ability to have more armadas, players are now able to project force to more locations early in the game.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, the player now starts out with a substantial amount of credit, depending on the difficulty level chosen.
  • This gives you a lot of flexible options right from the start, ranging from more armadas to better armadas to other things.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

• In betrayal mode, player armada construction and upgrades now happens 10x as fast as before.
  • This makes them significantly more viable for defense and offense, without making it so that you can insta-create them at will.
  • Thanks to chemical_art and Eternaly_Lost for inspiring these changes.

Previous Release Notes

The Last Federation Post-1.0 Release Notes