Stars Beyond Reach Beta Phase 3 Release Notes

Version 0.911

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

• Now when one race attacks another during acts 1-3, and it doesn't involve rogues, and it doesn't involve any hostile saucers, and it involves a territory not owned by the initiator, and the initiator actually does damage to something, then the planet will spawn an underground monster in the initiator's city during the next interturn.

• All the bottom bar icons now have tooltips, and they consistently show up next to the mouse cursor rather than in the bottom-right corner.

• The International Relations screen has had its right column removed, and instead of having 7 boxes in the left column and 7 in the middle column it now has 5, 4, and 5.
  • If you're at war with a race, that race's block now just says "WAR".
  • The victory percentages have been removed (both on the interface, and in the mechanics)
  • The number above the relations button will show the number of races you're at war with.

• The Events button no longer goes to the International Relations screen but rather a new Events window, which is basically just the right column that screen used to have, and just the All Events tab.
  • The number above the button shows the number that used to show on the All Events tab.

• The Effects button no longer goes to the International Relations screen but rather a new Effects window, which is basically just the right column that screen used to have, and just the Effects tab.
  • The number above the button shows the number that used to show on the Effects tab.

• Put in yet, yet, yet more logic to try to constrain the notifications right-sidebar to be below the top HUD and above the bottom HUD.

• Fixed a bug where none of the sliders for the city management screen have been working since budget committees were removed.
  • Thanks to gnosis and crazyroosterman for reporting.

• Twenty more icons are now in place for the various event notices. Still 24 left on our backlog to get the art done for, out of the overall 162 (at present) defined icons for events.

• The tooltips were saying that the default settings for the sharpness clamp and the brightness were some other value than their actual defaults. We changed the defaults but not the tooltips a while in the past after looking at things in detail with our artists.
  • Thanks to mrhanman for reporting.

• The cost of repairs has been dropped to 1/5th its prior value. It seems to have been hitting a lot harder than intended. Having a cost is good, but not one that is so darn unpleasantly high.
  • Thanks to Taikei no Yuurei and others for inspiring this change.

• New disease infections should actually be on a sensible amount of population now; previously there were some math errors that made it so that they could hit way more population than intended.
  • Thanks to Taikei no Yuurei for reporing.

• The infectiousness of diseases was previously being floored to always infect around 10 citizens no matter what, which was a problem in that it made things spread overly virulently when populations were low. At high populations this wouldn't be something even noticed, but at a low population it could make a disease way more powerful than it was supposed to be.
  • Thanks to Taikei no Yuurei for reporting.

• All diseases now have a minimum mortality of 1%, and a minimum infectiousness of 2%. Anything with 0% of either of those values will tend to die out way too fast or never burn out.
  • Thanks to Taikei no Yuurei for inspiring this change.

• The AI now cannot build on or adjacent to territories owned by the player during Act 1.
  • Thanks to zebeast45, ptarth, and gnosis for inspiring this change.

• Now when a territory is claimed post-mapgen, it doesn't change the name of the territory. The player is still asked to name the territory, but the suggestion is no longer a changed name.
  • Except the territory claimed by the lander; there the player is given a changed name as the suggestion.

• Entering attack-consideration mode by double-clicking an attack building now selects that building's territory as the first territory for the battle.

• Fixed a bug in the rogue wave logic where it didn't check for a particular way the data said "don't put this on land"

• Fixed yet another the-shortlist-textbox-broke-the-tech-tree bug, this time it was the "left-click-and-drag => scroll tech tree" functionality, because the key-bind on the left mouse button for that didn't have the even-with-a-textbox-visible flag.
  • Thanks to wwwhhattt for reporting.

• The Enable/Disable button on the Tile Details window has been made about half as tall, and moved to be just to the right of the show advanced info toggle.

• Field study camps now note any bonuses they grant against monsters on their details window.

• Fixed a bug where turbo-hammering the enter key or spacebar could lead to the AI logic being run multiple times before the actual interturn logic itself, slowing things down.

• Fixed a bug where the left-click-to-close-overlay-listbox logic was not actually fully clearing the listbox mode, so it would close and then immediately re-open.

• Previously there was a "trash per worker" value that was being set on races, and which was causing lots of extra trash for some races (like the Krolin). This was separate from the racial theming, so for the Krolin in particular this hit extra hard.
  • Based on this, the trash production should now be more normalized for the races in general, although still high if you're actually seeing in advance that it will be high (via the racial theming info).
  • Thanks to ptarth, gnosis, Taikei no Yuurei, and zebeast45 for reporting.

Version 0.910

(Released September 24th, 2015)

• The game now actually explains what EXP and levels do in tooltips on those stats, AND it explains how the starting levels on them are increased, and by extension how market items work.
  • Thanks to kasnavada for reminding us of this oversight.

• The precondition/goal suffixes no longer say "current: x, target: y" at the end of them. Now it just tells you what the current value is, because the actual other text already told you the target (and in a few cases it was telling you the wrong target anyhow).
  • Thanks to nas1m for reporting.

• Fixed a "Unlogged death from source: None" message that was showing up from event-based deaths.

• Fixed an issue where the amount of littered trash was not properly being shown in the top bar for problems, thus making it look like a teeny problem when really it was huuuuge.
  • Thanks to nas1m and ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed a Missing Localization:Reports_Inventory error.
  • Thanks to Aklyon and ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed a variety of formatting errors on the monster events on the map, as well as making the formatting of a lot of on-map events/afflictions clearer.
  • Thanks to Cinth and ptarth for reporting.

• Changed the logic for getting a textual summary of a persisting event effect to just saving the result string from when the generating command was executed, rather than trying to recompute the string whenever it was requested.
  • This was causing fatal errors because the string formats had been changed last night to include references to the race affected and the execute logic had been updated to provide those extra format parameters, but the persisting-effect case had not been thus updated.
  • Thanks to Cinth and ptarth for the reports and saves.

• Fixed a bug where the logic for parsing out command and precondition parameters did not actually assign the results of parsing an enum value (like a building type), leading to things like "you must have 5 rural farms" saying "you must have 5 (blank)", and those commands/preconditions thus not actually functioning since they just referred to the None building type.
  • Old saves with these should probably just be discarded as they won't work if these preconditions were for finishing out an Act, etc, and we can't update the data of events in old saves due to how it's stored with the save rather than linked up with the current spreadsheet state on load.
  • Thanks to Watashiwa and ptarth for the reports and saves.

• The building details window now repopulates when it detects that the turn has changed since it last populated.
  • Thanks to Watashiwa for suggesting.

• During building placement mode, the building construction number and health bar is never obscured by the building you're trying to place, or by the little green building placement icon.
  • Thanks to Watashiwa for reporting.

• You can now click on the service shortage icons on the top bar and have it show a version of the services window that is just for the service in question.
  • Thanks to Vinco for suggesting.

• The notifications sidebar no longer blinks on and off between turns.

• When new notifications are added to the sidebar, it does a little halo sort of effect around them to draw your eye. Different types of additions have different colors for making you notice more or less.
  • This was what we had in mind instead of the large obtrusive center-screen messages that we used to use. Those were TOO distracting.

• Fixed up a number of images not showing up for the tile types on the tile type details page.
  • Thanks to Watashiwa for reporting.

Balance

• The costs of fire and police and parks have been adjusted downwards substantially. On the flip side, the costs of the higher-tier housing has gone up.
  • Thanks to kasnavada for suggesting.

• The service needs on hazmat have gone down dramatically, and the rest of the waste category stuff. Same with the hospital. It's just a lot clearer this way.
  • Thanks to nas1m for and kasnavada for inspiring this change.

• Planet worship is no longer something your Fenyn need until act 3, when the shrine actually becomes available.
  • Thanks to crazyroosterman for reporting.

• Fixed a number of issues where the effectiveness of buildings was really being over-applied when above 1.
  • In a few cases it should not have been applied at all (negative things like needs or trash production going up when efficiency is better, oops).
  • In other cases it was too unbalanced to have that be applied (EXP gains -- that was really not balanced around that).
  • And in other cases it does need to be applied when above 1, but it needs to tone things down a bit (like the bonuses to market item production, crown production, and power production -- from resources, etc).
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Scout stations now use about half as much power; it was excessive before.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where Small Shops were not producing any crowns!! They now produce 400, and shopping malls produce 600 rather than 1200.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this discovery.

Pollution

• Chemical plants now provide a territory-wide buff to hazmat, making them an excellent combo rather than a required service.
  • Thanks to nas1m for and kasnavada for inspiring this change.

• Hazmat strength is now over 3x what it previously was.
  • Thanks to nas1m for and kasnavada and ptarth for reporting.

• The amount of extra pollution that gets output from buildings in a territory based on littered trash and dead bodies is now scaled down linearly for buildings with a base output less than 100.
  • Thanks to nas1m and ptarth for inspiring this change.

• The more polluters you stack in one territory, the more of a (very small) multiplier they now get on themselves.
  • This helps to combat the ultra-strong hazmat squads now. Basically you eventually do need to build up your hazmat more, but it's not something that you have to build so much of in the early game.
  • So far balance on this feels pretty natural, but we shall see.

Prior Beta Notes

It's unusual that we'd split a beta period into THREE sets of release notes, but this has gone on far longer than expected. In particular after the last release in the prior release notes, it's a whole new game. So it was time to start with a fresh release notes page, too.

Stars Beyond Reach Beta Phase 2 Release Notes