Birth of the Federation

Awesome work, Iceman. I love how the game continues to get better and better. Keep it up and happy holidays! :-)

Thanks Weyoun! And happy holidays to you too, and everyone else.

Not sure where to report this, but I found a bug. Playing as the Federation, I assigned Archer as the envoy to the Deltans (I know agents don't do anything yet, but figured what the hell). When the Deltans joined the Federation and I ended the turn, the game crashed. I checked out the error log, saw "DiplomaticEnvoyMission" in the first line or two. So, I reloaded the saved game and tried to recall Archer before ending the turn and the game crashed then, as well. I'll just play without assigning envoys, but maybe this could get fixed in a future build. Thanks!

Thanks. I thought I had fixed that already, quite some time ago... I will check it when I get home.
I have agents do something, just not what I want... I will have another go at them.
BTW, was Archer en route or already stationed?

That crash should only happen if membership happens in the same turn the envoy arrives at the minors homesystem. Can you verify please?
Theres something fishy about how the regard and trust meters are updated from the counterpartys side, Ill have to check that again.
BTW, Ive implemented a survey order for science ships to get research points from anomalies. Some more diplo, AI and UI improvements.

Agents are now increasing their stats when waiting assignment (training) and when stationed at another civ's homesystem, as an envoy. They'll also improve relations with that civ, in the latter case. There's a few more improvements in relations, like Regard being decreased during ship combat when not at war, Trust being decreased when you can't pay an ongoing treaty, Trust affecting the outcome of treaty proposals, some civs DoW based on Regard level, etc.

I'm working on agents retirement, and maybe even death.

That sounds very cool, Iceman. Very elegant.

Thanks Martok!
The effect on relations is not working correctly, it's really weird the way the meters are affected... Anyways, things are feeling more alive now.

I haven't released the new build yet because I'm struggling with a few topics, namely agent retirement/death, envoys affecting relations (it's working when relations are "positive", but for some reason they plummet when "negative"), and a few more things which I'll leave for the next release.
The Survey order is working but not fully - I need to rework the map data to prevent anomalies from being surveyed over and over again. Touching that code might have unforeseen consequences, so I'll leave that for the next release too. In the future I'd like to have Survey also provide information about a star system, like existence/amount of Duranium and Dilithium, food/energy bonuses, system specials.
Orbital batteries have been improved, they're now more efficient. They always fire before ships do, now.
As soon as I fix one last issue with the AI building farms, I'll release a new build.

Ive finally fixed the relations issue,envoys are now working properly. They just need a smallish balance pass.
The Dominion "inherited" the Ferengi ability to set TRs without an OB treaty. Ill probably restrict it to positive Trust though? Any opinions?
I fixed bombardment, and Im working on combat, to make it more interesting. Stations will have first strike capability like OBs.

Iceman wrote:That last issue, you mean that annoying bug where only in the 1st turn or when you load a savegame, the system panel doesnt show the system info? Its in the issue tracker, Ive tried fixing it a few timex already but cant locate the problem...

Sorry for the late reply, had a busy couple of months.. tbh I'm not sure, I came across it when checking those other things I was wondering about and didn't really do an "in-depth study" of it. Sorry, you're probably busy enough without me nagging you about stuff. In the future I'll wait until I've been able to do a decent run of games before commenting on such things. That's the least this great game merits! Whoo, I see that there's a new release? Can't wait to check it out! Thanks for the hard work!!!

You can nag me all you want, dont worry. ;-) I tend to attack issues that people post about right away if they are easy to fix. Keep it coming, really.
Ill probably release a new version either tomorrow (will do some testing tonight) or next week.

A new update is available.
Any feedback on resources (or anything else ofc) would be much appreciated,given the changes in this build.

Hi, Iceman - Nice work, as usual. Sorry for not replying on your last question about the agent/crash situation. I'm honestly not sure the circumstances, but I haven't had any problems with this release. I do have a question about how the game determines the system industry bonus for shipyard production. Do you happen to know what the ratio of industry to population needs to be?

Hi. Thanks! Cant recall the exact formula, but I can check. Can you tell me if you think it is adequate or needs to be improved?