The Last Federation:Post-1.0 Release Notes

Version 1.005

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

• Squadrons deployed mid-combat now cannot fire that turn, they must wait until the next turn to fire. Avoids insta-death from Lancer squadrons that didn't even exist when you were planning your move, etc.
  • Thanks to zharmad for the suggestion.

• Fixed a bug where Burlust Turmoil was preventing Stop Attacking deals with other races towards the Burlusts, rather than with the Burlusts towards another race.
  • Thanks to Cire for the report and save.

• Previously, when a side in combat had no friendly spawners (flagships, or invisible spawn points for certain battles where a race has squadrons but no flagships) remaining all ships on that side would switch to Attacker mode to just get it over with. Now, for the Andors, Evucks, Peltians, and Skylaxians, those ships will instead go into the existing "Cowardly Flight" behavior mode and try to get away.
  • Thanks to Hyfrydle for inspiring this change.

• Now when you mouseover the attacker-armadas or attacker-armada-power figures of a planet/outpost's metamap overlay, the tooltip includes a list of each attacking force (for example, "Burlust Armadas", "Boarine Armadas", "Boarine Pirate Armadas", etc) and the total power of that force.
  • Thanks to Hyfrydle for inspiring this change.

• The Federation Progress screen now specifies when a race is dead, and no longer shows deals which could (hypothetically) be used to get them into the Federation, or deals (under other races) where the dead race could be used to get that other race into the Federation.
  • Thanks to Faulty Logic and topper for reporting.

• When NPC fleets are engaged in combat in deep space, instead of drawing the icons stationary on top of each other it now draws:
  • One of the fleets (generally the defender) stationary, with a pulsing red glow. Also has a tooltip that mentions the fleet is engaged in combat.
  • The other fleets (the attackers) moving around it as smaller icons (same deal as float around the planets during combat there).
  • This should make it clearer that the fleets are not "stuck", per se, they're just shooting at each other.
  • Thanks to topper, Aklyon, Misery, and others for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a bug where Andors were still doing ground-invasion checks. they would not actually invade, but the "if the planet is down to 1 population unit just land some of the fleet crews to take it over" alternate rule was still firing for them.
  • Thanks to SNAFU for the report.

• The attack-planet-defenders-on-your-own action is now just you vs the planet defenders, no one else. The attack-planet-defenders-with-help action is as before, pulling in whoever's there (plus some help from your chosen ally).

• Fixed the description of one of the help-defend-planet sorts of actions that was implying the planet's race was at war with the race of the attacker. This was not the case if the attackers were pirates.
  • Thanks to jonasan for the report.

• Now, when you're cloaked, enemy ships and homing missiles stop chasing you.
  • Thanks to topper and nas1m for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a bug with the planetcracker targeting logic (used whenever one is built "naturally", or if one you pay them to fire has to "retarget" for whatever reason) where Mono was rejecting the compiled code as invalid... at runtime (sigh). Didn't so much fix it as rewrite the code to be simpler and thus to not confuse the runtime.
  • Thanks to dbfoxtw for the report.

• Previously Acutian planetcrackers that hit a now-friendly target would actually "bounce" and retarget something else. They will now always hit the planet they're aimed at (unless it's no longer a planet). Even if that planet is now friendly to the Acutians. Even if that planet is now _owned_ by the Acutians. Once fired, that planet's going down. Orders ARE Orders, after all.
  • Thanks to Orelius and Draco18s for inspiring this change.

• "Metamap AOE" (Acutian planetcrackers cause a small radius of this, Evuck Gas Giant Ignition causes a LARGE radius of this) no longer destroys (other) Acutian planetcrackers. Just in case, y'know, you're launching them in _salvos_ (develoepr shakes head).
  • Thanks to dbfoxtw for inspiring this change.

• The way that races calculate their relationships between one another during battles is now far superior compared to what it used to be, when it comes to things like pirates and assassins and AFA members and whatnot.

• When you use Mercenary Hotline, only races that main government factions in a battle will give you the negative influence from that. Pirates and whatnot don't care.
  • The same when you break neutrality on a side, or betray a side during combat.
  • Also, while the game was already trying to prevent influence losses from you shooting enemy ships that are not actually from a planetary government, it now does a better job of that.

• The number of attack squadrons that races commit (as opposed to guard or other functions) now varies by race during battles. The Andors and Peltians are more cautious than before, whereas the Thoraxians are more aggressive and the Burlusts are just unbridled aggression. The others are mostly not shifted much, although the Acutians are a little more aggressive.

Heavily Revised "Clean Up AFA" Missions

• The "Clean Up AFA" missions:
  • Now no longer refer to getting ally help in their description, nor ask you to pick an ally to have come help you (that wasn't generally working, anyway).
  • Now spawn considerably fewer enemy flagships in most cases.
  • Now no longer have the objective "kill all enemy ships", but rather "kill all AFA barracks"
    • One barracks is seeded for each 10m AFA Insurgents on the planet (max 20 barracks), and destroying one kills that many of that planet's insurgents.

"Smuggle In Resistance Fighter" Overhaul

• Thanks to GC13, Raide, and others for inspiring these changes.

• Now instead of the troop ships following you in pairs (with the others basically doing nothing until the previous pair either makes it through or dies), all 10 troop ships will be active from the start.

• Rather than following you, the troop ships beeline towards the drop zone. They use a sort of "follow the leader" movement so they don't all clump up to make one big target.

• Fixed some bugs where the "if a side is in situation X, all that side's ships should go on the attack" logic was interfering with the troop transports.

• Fixed a bug where you could not select a technically-dead race (no planets left) for the mission, even if that race had pirate bases to supply the troops.

• Fixed a bug where some "attack target offset" logic added way after the smuggle-resistance contract was making the troop transports go very strange places.

Version 1.004 (x64 Linux Build)

(Released April 23rd, 2014)

• Taking shield damage no longer causes your docking timer to increase -- just hull damage or the usage of abilities do.
  • Thanks to Ewan, Zulgaines, lesslucid, Coppermantis, GC13, Maverick, chainlinc3, PumaPagan, Habadacus, Fiohnel, Mk1, Raide, Kalpa, Kingpin23, and tubasteve for reporting the difficulties in the prior version.

• Fixed an issue where the Max Per Planet on some buildings was 0, when really it was meant to be infinite. Now it's set to a more-reasonable 400 in general.
  • Thanks to Kalpa for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where Terraforming Kits were costing only 18 months for player construction. They now cost 150.
  • Thanks to Kalpa for reporting.

• Fixed the descriptions on the prototype flagships of players that were incorrectly stating they had various different stats as well as things like being untrackable by missiles in some cases. As of late alpha, based on player feedback, the only things differentiating the various flagships are what kinds of weapon slots the flagship starts with, and what passive weapons (if any) the flagship has.
  • Thanks to Lancefighter and ptarth for reporting.

• Thoraxian Exterminators, Acutian Executors, and Boarine Tuskers have had their ship speeds reduced to avoid kiting players.
  • Thanks to Ljas for reporting.

• The game has a wonderful new icon courtesy of our friends at GOG.com.

• A 64bit linux build is now available so that linux users do not have to install the 32bit libs if they are on a 64bit version of their OS.

Version 1.003 Permadeath Becomes Optional

(Released April 22nd, 2014)

Solar Map Balance / Updates / Fixes

• When planets are taken over in the solar map, recent rule shifts had made it so that they would be increasingly bad off on RCI values. However, this was something that really could make those planets unrecoverably bad off. Now the RCI values are all reset to between -10 and 0 when a planet changes hands (except via resistance fighters, where it doesn't change at all).
  • Thanks to Gwan Solo, Geldon, and Raide for reporting.

• The "while a planet is under bombardment/invasion, birth rate = 0" has been reverted back to its previous "while a planet is under bombardment/invasion, birth rate is capped at the natural death rate", as it proved far too harsh especially for the Thoraxians.
  • Thanks to eRe4s3r for inspiring this change.

• Fixed a bug where the planetary sidebar was reporting the raw budget percentages for a planet rather than the effective budget percentages (specifically, when under overwhelming attack the effective budget ignores the raw decisions and pumps it into armadas).

• Fixed a bug where a planet under overwhelming attack would set its effective budgets for Armada Construction and Armada Improvement to BOTH be 100%. While the sentiment behind "I'm gonna give it 200% of all I can!" is commendable determination, it is poor math. Now it sets them to 50% each.

• Now, even when the building budget is 0%, a planet will at least check to see if its current building project(s) are valid to continue, and if not pick something else to build.
  • Previously it was possible for it to look like it was stuck building, say, a 6th Ion Cannon (max 5 per planet) because it happened to be building one before it came under overwhelming attack (thus freezing the building budget) and then got its 5th ion cannon in some other way (buying with excess raw resources, etc).
  • Thanks to alocritani for the report and save.

• The direct "player is asking a race to join the federation" deals now are only available if the player has >= -25 influence with that race.
  • Thanks to Konqq for inspiring this change.

• When you steal the tech of a race, they are now upset by 20 instead of 10.
  • However, other races are only upset by 12 instead of 24.
  • Additionally, races at war with the race you are stealing from no longer care at all.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.

• Raiding a trader convoy now angers the race by 14 instead of 10.
  • However, other races are only upset by 9 instead of 21.
  • Additionally, races at war with the race you are stealing from no longer care at all.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug where the Attacking Splinter Factions event could be triggered on a planet, despite there being no actually-eligible races to draw the "splinter attackers" from.
  • If you attempted to do the defend-from-splinter-attackers contract when this happened, the combat would immediately end due to no hostiles having been spawned.
  • This change will also cause splinter-faction events currently running but now invalid (from an old save, or some very strange confluence of events in a newer game) to be removed. Though if you load an old save with one it will still be there until you unpause and let it check.
  • Thanks to Ljas for the report and save.

• Fixed a bug where the Boarine Vote-to-join-federation deal would not show up under Interplanetary Relations (because it was trying to show up under Federation Deals, which category the Boarines don't have).
  • Thanks to GC13, Smithgift, and many others for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where many "why this building cannot be built on this planet at this time" checks were simply not being made when populating the "buildings you can pick for a Property Development dispatch" dropdown.
  • Notably, this allowed building more than the maximum allowed number of a particular type of building on a planet, when that planet could not build more itself.
  • Thanks to Raide for the report.

• Fixed a bug where the Property Development dispatch was only letting you pick from building types that the planet already had at least 1 of.

• Now, when a planet is trying to put budget into Armada Improvement (squadrons), but there are no armadas to improve, that budget is automatically funneled into Armada Construction instead.

• Put in a fix to where some of the racial actions were not showing their name properly formatted with actual values inserted.

• Put in an update so that races will now actually properly unlock new ship types as they become available! This includes things like the Model T, the Sine Turret, the Taser Turret, the Racial Special Flagships, etc. Those were all generally not appearing before.

• Fixed a bug where the effective power of armadas was being incorrectly reported on the solar map overlay.

• When you escape from forced combat, it now tries to take you to the destroyed hydral planet rather than the black market (and then defaults to the black market after that). This is partially because the black market is not even visible in the early game, but it also makes a certain amount of thematic sense.

Clarity / Tutorials

• For the "Broker Truce" Andor deal, the following clarifying note has been added to the description:
  • THAT said, there is a cost. Depending on how much the races hate one another, and how they feel about the Andors, AND your personal influence with the Andors, the Credit cost of this may be so insanely high that nobody could ever afford it. Or it could be quite cheap. If it's too costly, we need to spend time improving the factors that we can in order to bring the cost down, or find another way to achieve our ends.
  • Thanks to domday for inspiring this change.

• The solar map overlay now always shows the effective ground power of the defensive troops stationed at a given planet.
  • Additionally, when there are attacking armadas, it now shows the effective ground power of the troops that they have brought along with them.
  • Thanks to TotalBiscuit for pointing out how opaque the ground battles were without numbers like this, and the associated tooltips for their icons.

Burlust Turmoil

• Now when a Burlust Warlord is killed, the entire Burlust race enters a period of turmoil:
  • If by assassination, 4 years.
  • If by dueling, 3 years.
  • Otherwise (generally because a planet is taken), 1 year.
  • For non-prime warlords, the amount is halved.

• While in turmoil, all Burlust metamap space power and ground power is doubled.

• While in turmoil, all Burlust ships hit twice as hard in normal combat.

• While in turmoil, no Burlust Warlords can be duelled.

• While in turmoil, all influence (but not leverage) gains with Burlusts are halved.

• While in turmoil, all Burlust defensive structures (ion cannons, regional defense shields, bomb shelters) stop working.

• While in turmoil, the Burlusts will pick the weakest other race (that is not literally allied with them, or non-spacefaring) and immediately attack them with pretty much whatever they have.

• While in turmoil, the Burlusts will not accept a brokered truce from you (either directly or via the Andors).

Combat Balance / Updates / Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the beginning-of-combat logic that creates the player's ship object was using sometimes using stale precalculated values. In tests today this resulted in hull/shield strength maybe 15% too low. It now recalculates those values just before that operation.

• Fixed a major bug where the "when loading a game, regenerate the player ship's stats to account for any balance changes in updates since the game was saved" logic was actually using radically different stat-computation logic than what is normally used whenever a new ship design is created.
  • This was causing massive drops in hull/shield health when saving and loading mid-combat.
  • Thanks to Kalpa, dasystm8, Dredrick, windgen, mattbornski, pepboy, Hawk52, and others for reporting.

New Enemy Flagship And Rebalanced Velociter

• Velociter flagships are no longer so fast, no longer have such a long strafing time, now fire more bullets, and now have bullets that are slightly stronger. They also no longer have shields at all.
  • Thanks to Misery for suggesting.

• The Velociter Flagship line has now been split into two: Type A and Type B.
  • Type A is basically what existed before, but with the new modifications.
  • Type B is a new variant that uses concussive sniper-style shots, which is quite interesting -- these destroy your shots if they touch them, and they can fire them from super far away, but they don't move that fast.

Docking Improvements / Exploit Fixes

• When you are cloaked, you cannot dock with ships until your cloaking fades. Too much power used on maintaining the cloaking, you know. This was supposed to already be the case, actually, but something was preventing it in some but not all cases.
  • Thanks to TotalBiscuit for pointing the related exploit out.

• While you are docking with something, if you take damage or use an ability, it now adds a turn back to your time-remaining-to-dock. So you can't just camp on a dockable and spam abilities, or just sit there and tank shots if you have a lot of health.
  • Thanks to TotalBiscuit for pointing the related exploit out.

• The time remaining for docking is now expressed in turns rather than seconds.

Permadeath Is Now Optional

• There is now a new option in Advanced Start called "Permadeath." With that option on, things work like they have been up until now. That now defaults to off, however. Without permadeath toggled on (and it is automatically off in all older savegames, now):
  • When you are on the very brink of death in battle, you'll always warp out just in the nick of time, instead. This then takes you to the hydral planet, or the black market.
  • Depending on your strategic difficulty, you will lose either 6, 12, or 20 months of time to fast-forwarding while you retreat and repair your ship. 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.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor, MaxAstro, Azurian, tbrass, GC13, NichG, Professor Paul1290 and others for inspiring this.

Version 1.002 (Tech Acquisitions And Planetary Attacks)

(Released April 21st, 2014)

Balance Updates And Fixes

• Fixed an exploit where some ability counts would reset back to the values they started out at, leading to a save/reload exploit.
  • Thanks to Azurian and alocritani for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the Shortwave Virus's range was being displayed as much larger than the 1000 units specified in its description (and unit definition).
  • Thanks to topper, Faulty Logic, Mick, and pepboy for the reports and saves.

• Fixed a bug where the Shortwave Virus would only affect about half of the targets in its actual range (due to how the data was stored internally; if we later _want_ it to be only partly effective we can add that back in a non-buggy manner).
  • Thanks to topper, Faulty Logic, Mick, and pepboy for the reports and saves.

• For the sake of narrative consistency, the Acutians no longer care at all if you sell slaves.

• The races now react with proper pleasure or alarm at the following things that you can do:
  • Undermine Rival Economy (10 pos, 30 neg).
  • Dump Toxic Waste On Planet (50 pos, 150 neg).
  • Are there others you notice? If so, please let us know!
  • Thanks to TotalBiscuit for pointing this out.

• Races which are not yet spacefaring no longer know about your selling of slaves, or acts of extreme brutality, etc.
  • Thanks to TotalBiscuit for pointing this out.

• Made the alliances follow the rule of "if it's a hostile-to-player alliance, they cannot join the federation" that was being assumed in various descriptions, etc.
  • Incidentally, all non-Federation alliances are hostile to the player. Thankfully they all begin in a non-aligned state.
  • Thanks to Konqq for the report and save.

• Raiding races for technology or for resources now pisses everyone off to some degree.
  • However, if some race other than the thoraxians, acutians, or burlusts is raided who is NOT in an alliance with the above, then they don't care. This helps to clean up an exploit where you could repeatedly raid for resources with very little consequence.
  • Thanks to Surfer for reporting.

• Withdrawing is now something that is instant, if you are able to do it. No more waiting around for 5 turns to do so. This lets you push things to the brink a bit more, which ultimately is fine. We aren't trying to encourage save-scumming via the permadeath mechanic, and this particular aspect really did play up the tendency of players to do that.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor and others for inspiring this change.

Planetary Attack Balance and Fixes

• Fixed a bug from recent versions where the orbital-bombardment and ground-attack checks would only ever happen at all for an attacking fleet if the defending planet had _exactly_ 1 defending armada (so if it had zero, no bombardment or invasion).
  • As a result, planets under cripplingly overwhemling attack previously appeared invulnerable.
  • Thanks to alocritani, Kingpin23, ShiroIchida and others for the reports and save.

• Fixed a bug where sometimes a planet was so well defended that each attacking fleet's "shot" at the population during bombardment was so small that it was treated as zero. Increased the precision of that math to compensate.

• Now, for each 1 million population that dies in a bombardment or invasion, a planet has a 10% chance (per million population lost) of losing 1 point in an RCI category (econ, environmental, medical, order) that is currently greater than zero. This helps the attackers make some kind of progress even when being held off by a very large population, etc.
  • Thanks to alocritani, Kingpin23, ShiroIchida, GC13, Orelius, Azurian, Ryusacerdos, kasnavada, DeBunny, Feragore, AcidWeb, Ljas, Hyfrydle, Ramarren, rocmat1, zespri, and others for inspiring this change.

• The rule that "while a planet is under bombardment or ground attack, its birth rate is capped at its natural birth" has been strengthened to "while a planet is under bombardment or ground attack, its birth rate is zero".

Technology Acquisition Improvements

• Whenever you raid a race for technology, it now permanently increases the future credit cost of raiding them for further technology by an amount that is specific to the race. This prevents continual spamming of this sort of raid, and makes a nontrivial opportunity cost to who you decide to raid for what.
  • Acutians: +200 Credit per raid.
  • Boarines: +200 Credit per raid.
  • Burlusts: +300 Credit per raid.
  • Evucks: +400 Credit per raid.
  • Peltians: +100 Credit per raid.
  • Skylaxians: +300 Credit per raid.
  • Thanks to Shrugging Khan for inspiring this change.

• Now you can research techs with races even when they already know it. This is something we viewed as superior to being able to buy it from them, as determining credit worths of them would be extremely tricky and would really penalize you in the late game. So, instead:
  • If a race already knows a tech but you do not, the time to research it with them is thirded.
  • However, you gain no credits or influence with them for taking this action, unlike if they are learning it too.
  • Thanks to a lot of players for suggesting that they really wanted a way to get techs from friendly races, including but not limited to Hyfrydle, GC13, Raide, indarien, Azurian

GUI Enhancements

• After completing an instant action (buying or selling something, political deals, whatever), it now just does a smaller popup rather than the full "contract complete" screen. This popup also is just over the normal actions list screen rather than taking you out of it, so you can do multiple political deals or actions repeatedly with ease.
  • Thanks to 6xsnake6x and others for suggesting.

• The "you've been attacked by the AFA" and "you've been attacked by Assassins" combats now start with a popup to more prominently display the scenario description that also shows in the bottom-left-hand-corner of the screen, since there's generally no preceding context for the player to realize what's going on.
  • Thanks to Tridus and chemical_art for inspiring this change.

• When switching between message log modes, it now logs which mode you are switching into, so that for instance the "disappears after a big" message log doesn't confusingly just not show at all when you enter it.
  • Thanks to jerith for suggesting.

Misc Fixes

• Put in an adjustment so that the textbox when you are first selecting your profile name should be selected automatically when you first come into the game, if it was not before. This is in an effort to help compatibility with tablet PCs, although honestly whether or not the game will work with them is a BIG question mark, as it isn't designed for games without a physical mouse and keyboard by nature.
  • Thanks to Madmarcus for suggesting.

• Additionally, the starting name for your profile now defaults to Hydral, just in case the above does not work.
  • Thanks to Azurian for suggesting.

• For races that are at war with one another or in an alliance with one another, but both have neutral-range attitudes to one another, previously the war or alliance lines were not showing on the race relations screen. Fixed.
  • Thanks to Misery, alocritani, and pepboy for reporting.

• The Burlust Duels no longer start out with a voiceover comment about having been hunted down.
  • Thanks to topper for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the Help Research Vaccine action was forgetting which tech it was supposed to research before it actually ended, resulting in no tech for anyone.
  • Thanks to wyvern83 for the report and save.

• Fixed a bug in the Contract-results text logic was giving an error message when trying to tell you about a negative RCI trend ending.
  • Thanks to BobTheJanitor and Phlarr for the reports and saves.

• Tooltips no longer show when there is a popup or a confirmation popup showing, to prevent visual clutter/confusion.
  • Thanks to topper for reporting.

• If popups are so tall that they need to scroll, they now will do so.

• Fixed a bug where the evuck credit cost increases from prior meddling were being applied to the current deal that you were doing with them, and not just future deals.

• Fixed an issue where if a race discovered a technology before you were finished co-researching it with them, you would not get a copy of it.
  • Thanks to YoukaiCountry for reporting.

Version 1.001 - Bugfixes, Large Screen Resolution Support

(Released April 19th, 2014)

• Fixed a bug that could cause an exception when trying to launch a planetcracker at another planet.
  • Thanks to Techmech, WhiteSeraph, shrikey, Orelius, MaxAstro, and ussdefiant for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where looking at the options to give blackmail to the burlust warlords would give you the leverage immediately.
  • Thanks to SNAFU for reporting.

• Fixed an exception that could happen when trying to do a random number that has a negative max range.
  • Thanks to Feragore for reporting.

• Put in an extra bit of code that should make sure that the "Valuable Learning Experience" achievement properly triggers. In some cases apparently it was not doing so before.
  • Thanks to Chthon for reporting.

• When a planet only has a single armada at it, ground combat is now allowed to still happen. This way planets can't avoid ground combat simply by virtue of being able to crank out a single armada too quickly.
  • Thanks to Histidine for inspiring this change.

• The game now allows you to select screen resolutions larger than 1920x1080.
  • Thanks to Volkira, Azurian, havlentia, Dav, Zero, LintMan, Penumbra, and MattyMuc for suggesting.

• Put in an update so that if steamworks fails to initialize for whatever reason on the steam versions of the game, it will not stop the application from loading.
  • Thanks to Red_Machine for reporting.

Previous Release Notes

The Last Federation Alpha Release Notes