The Last Federation:Post-1.0 Release Notes

Version 1.003

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

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.

Solar Map Balance / Updates

• 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.

Combat Balance / Updates

• 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.

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