SE:V v1.18 Changelog

so not many serious changes (alliance bug fixed ... and my favorite 3 - ships were moving through combat ;p)
no new features tho

release date ?

I was wondering when we would see this appear. I cant see anything as yet which is major thought I have not had any major issues since 1.13 that weren’t fixed in 1.17 I understand some people apear to be having them. The alliance chambers fix is particularly welcome as any thing which encourages me not to be a xenocidal maniac is good

I will be very glad to see scrap and analyze fixed

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It's not what you know...
It's not who you know...
It's what you know about who you know.

I hope the patch will fix the annoying MP problem of players having their player file fecked. My son and I tried to play over LAN and every turn all his research was changed and other problems. This would seem to be simple messiness that should be fixable.

Also, the AI is pathetic. I've lost all interest in the game because my son and I have played many games, and not had a single planet attacked by the AI. If they never attack your planets, you cannot lose, and there is no drama in the game. Ho hum.

Since you can't lose in SP (boring) and can't play MP (file bug), what is the point of this game?

I hope those two things are fixed, beacuse I like the game otherwise and do really want to enjoy it.

I thought that supplies and ordnance weren't required for weapons platforms anyway...

Otherwise, I like the updates, especially the combat clipping bug. Seeing ships move through planets and each other was... odd

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Give me atmopshperic manipulation cannons, or give me death!

What about the bug of sats, drones and mines being left on a planet after it has been captured and causing you to "refight" the battle every turn until you manually destroyed them.

I'm waiting for the fire on ship command to get fixed in na next patch. Right now all your derelicts still sap resources every turn, while they're useless.

I was hoping for more fixes to the alliance features, and there's still that annoying bug/feature with drone supply. Otherwise, the last patch fixed all MY problems

This is good news indeed it will make my modding much easier, I had been avoiding alliance testing because of the bugs.

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

Papa Frepoll,
Have you tried jacking up the AI to Hard and giving it the max Bonus? I find the problem with the AI is that it does too much attacking of my planets and just ends up losing lots of ships so that when I send in my fleets to trash it's planets it's all too easy. I've found a big difference in the AI's when I jack them up to Hard and the Max Bonus. Oh and if you do be sure to jack up your intel or the AI's will raise all kinds of heck with your stuff.
Omnius

Well the fixes in the 1.18 changelog look nice but I do not see where it fixes the crash and burn bug in my 1.17 game where it hung up near the end of combat on one AI player's turn. I wrote a complaint about it and offered my saved game files but I didn't get any requests from MM to have me send them along.

I could care less about new features right now. I want to see the next patch fix all of these annoying crash bugs. Until the crash bugs are all fixed this game is not worth wasting time with. I managed to get about 245 turns into games with 1.08 and 1.13. I only got to turn 71 with 1.17 so in my estimation 1.17 was totally disappointing.

Please do not puke out any more half-baked patches that do not fix the crash and burn problems. Please wait and do a good job of ensuring the crash and burn bugs are all squashed before releasing the next patch. Make sure the beta testers have time to do a proper job of really testing the patch to ensure crash and burn bug elimination.

There's nothing more annoying than to give us false hope this game is playable by puking out numerous half-baked patches that do not fix the worst gameplay problem. All I want to do is be able to enjoy playing this game without having to worry when the game will crash and burn on me.
Omnius

Personally I found 1.13 to be completely unplayable, and have yet to come across any game killers in 1.17....

cordas,
You're lucky you haven't had your fun killed in 1.17 yet but I got hung up a lot faster in 1.17 than in either 1.08 or 1.13 so to me 1.17 was a step backwards. I'm not sure if jacking up the AI to Hard and with the Max Bonus got me in trouble faster this time around. Yep I liked seeing solar sails get fixed but never got close to being able to get them.
Omnius

1.18 is no the next patch any more than build 1.14 was the last one. The next patch is likely to be well into the 1.2x's before it is released.
If you report bugs via the issues forum or by e-mail to se5 at MM they will get fixed, in time however some bugs harder to fix than others and some are unique to your set up and those are the ones only you can fix

This game is still on my shelf because of the bugs you guys describe. I played about 100 rounds on the origingal boxed version and decided to never play SE5 until all crashing bugs are fixed. Yes, like many I was little mad about buying a half-baked game, but I just put it on my shelf and reinstalled Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri and Alien crossfire, and thats still keeping me entertained. Space Empires 4 I beat so many times on hard and all AI vs human, its really not too fun no more. If I was to ask of anything for this Christmas from Aaron Hall, it would be a bug-free version of SE5 that I could just sit down, play, and have no worries about a game I paid for crashing again.

Great.

I always play on Hard with full bonus. The AI consistently has large fleets with much better tech than I early in the game, and I will watch their fleets float right on by my defenseless planets. I've never lost a planet to an AI opponent. They've never even tried.

That just seems so WRONG to me..... I would rather surrender and start a new game than let that happen to me.....

Was playing SE5 V 1.17, after many turns of play no serious challenge from the AI and then everyting I try and use a specific warp pointException Access Violation 0047DDC5 module 'SE5.exe'

Seriously, I don't expect perfect and I can see the huge potential here and I like to support small set-ups, but this has been bug city, a few more weeks month wouldn't have hurt.

Anyhow found you guys while searching for a fix for this issue.

Post a Save Game if you have one on the Issues forum here with as much detail as possible also E-Mail it to SE5 at MM. check the MM website. It will be fixed given time most of the crash bugs have been

I just hope for a better AI added this next patch, otherwise it will just be less bugs and still no fun to play. Any ETA yet?

Unfortunatly, better AI has generally been left to modders to do. Aaron MIGHT steal some modders work... but since no modders have come up with the "definitive" AI yet, I wouldn't bet on it happening yet. Closest thing to a definitivly good AI is Kwoks... and it ain't ready yet.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Thanks evilginger for the reply and the help.

Found what seems to work for this on the SE5 Wiki, clear the orders for the ship you want to move through the warp point (the place/time when the crash occurs) first then try again. Anyhow, doing this I managed to progress to the next turn without a crash.

The game is going in the right direction.

I agree not to mention the turn length gets ridiculously long after about 10 turns even on small galaxies.......

SP is sooooo boring lets work on MP games

yeah, i think the "dirty AI work" might be left in the hands of the community, but i do not like that idea. I mean, its great that we can mod AI but somehow it bugs me that the developer might not get a good "official" AI patch-released. Anyway, lets hope for some improvement soon.

Yeah, the AI will be up holding the game back. Why so many cool features if the AI cant use them or wont put up a good fight.

AI work is fairly difficult, and I, for one, would rather have Aaron work on the code that only he can do rather than the AI others are working on.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Has Aaron said anything about AI improvements once the bugs are out of the way?

Because MP can use 'em.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

No offence to Captain Kwok who does a terrific job with the Balance Mod. But don’t you think Aaron would (logically) be the best suited person to do the AI improvements ? He designed the game, did he ? I understand he should concentrate first on solving bugs, but once the job is done, the stock version should not be left without a competitive AI.
Asking customers to do Aaron’s job seems a bit strange to me.

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Feel lucky earthling ?

The AI's in SEIV were fairly average, much like they could be in SEV with few minor tweaks, yet SEIV was a very successful game and the developed AI's were extremely popular.

When I load up SEV for instance, I don't see the problem with filling a game I start with good custom AI's people have done. No matter what standard Aaron gets them too people are going to make better ones using his code, thats the nature of moding, to improve.

So logically Aaron would be the better person to do the basic tweaks needed to give a solid base but not develop, develop and develop... AI's as he could be here forever more trying to keep up with the work thats been done. Not to mention he'll just be covering ground other people have already coded.

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

I think that regarding the AI, there are things that only Aaron can provide - like providing a fix so that explored sectors with colonies have a "last seen view" still active on the map, that the AI could use to formulate attacks rather than forgetting a turn later. Also, making the various ministers perform as they should are in his domain too IMO.

When it comes to the optimisation of AI research paths, planet build queues and ship designs, any work provided by Malfador is of course appreciated, but if this is left to the community while higher priority things are worked on (CTDs, UI improvements etc) I wouldn't consider it negligent.

I have to agree with others in that I hope there is a set of "offical" AI improvements for the stock game. I really am not that bothered where they come from (either Aaron or modders) I just hope they get added into the stock game.

I know Kwok has done a lot of work making his Balance Mod and it is much appreicated by those who like the BM (and no lets not have another lame flame war about the BM), and others are talking about modding work based on the AI such as maran and all power to them.

My question is will this work and scripting feed back to the core game and improve it? Or will excellent work only be available from mods and if so will it be "mod tied" (such as the BM is)?

Im not familiar with the inner works of this game but i wonder how much of the AI can be modded and how much can only be altered by hard coding. Even if the AI mod part was completely scriptable to a point of not needing patches, id still be bothered with the idea of leting the scripting to the comunity. Maybe im just being dificult but i really dont like it. BTW, any 1.19 logs yet?

It would certainly prevent it from sending waves after waves of unarmed and unescorted colonization ships thru a guarded warp point.

I can accept a bugged / (somewhat) incomplete game (stupid me) considering SE-V has the potential to become a great game (it’s already quite a good game) once the bugs get fixed and the AI improved, but to have the customers doing the designers’ job is a different story.

Just imagine : You buy a car, and then the manufacturer tells you « sorry but she cannot run faster than 20 mph ». If you want to drive faster you’ll have to build you own engine. What would be your reaction ?

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Feel lucky earthling ?

I'm not entirely sure Aaron IS the best person to code new AI for us.

No offense to the man, but what he is -- and should be -- intimitly familiar with is the code of the game. If he's intimitly familiar with the strategy as well, I'd love it, but at the same time I strongly suspect that if dug into the AI himself rather than have others do it, we'd end up with scripting code that did the stock game well, but lacks the tools to handle non-stock. As things stand, with Kwok and others running amok in the code and finding what they need to get a good AI for ALL mods, we'll end up with a much more flexible system than otherwise.

Besides, to judge by the AI's behaviour even in "final" SEIV, it wouldn't surprise me if Aaron didn't play his own game very well... (Due to lack of time, maybe? )
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

No update on (for me ) Steam ?

The update is not out yet. It's a change log.

As usual, thank you Kwok for keeping us up to date. You are a river to your people

I think when people have more knowledge and something to work with you'll see more AI's for stock as well as more mods. Perhaps not as many as SEIV, much more diverse however and just as many ships sets. We just need to attract some artists, or I do anyway

All my AI's are, at present, built for the core stock game. I could do ports to mods at some stage but I wanted something released with a good readme that other modders could use to build on.

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

Yay! I can now vote in the Alliance without a major meltdown.

1. CTD when clicking empire report. In this game I chose to view all races vs. only allies/treatied.
2. Fleet formations. I gave up trying to decide if these work.
3. Sent message to the News. The message read "Message sent to the", followed by the message. Shouldn't this read "Message sent to the news"?
4. Did someone mention this? In the Research Panel for the Heavy Hull reasearch, the Heavy Carrier icon is not displayed.
5. Fleet was split retreating; splits cannot be rejoined; individual ships cannot accessed, moved, or removed from fleet. Each split fleet when viewed indicates no ships are present although the icon indicates the number of ships in the split. Ship drives are NOT damaged. After Saving, Quitting, and reloading the ships were able to be moved and the fleet was disolved.
6. I think someone mentioned this as well. Espionage/Sabotage; in one turn I was inundated (sp?) with the following:

• Plague Outbreak: planet 1, 2, 4
• Unit Destroyed: planet 2
• Planet Riot: planet 3, 2, 2 again, 4
• Planet Conditions Damaged: planet 3, 5
• Orders Changed: ship 1, 1 again
• Ship Lost Movement: ship 2, 3, 4, 5

Aaron at MM the e-mail is se5 at mm dot com but checks the MM site & posts it in the issues forum on this site

Oops. OK I found the issues tab for searching and then submitting new issues. Thanks.

-my "Ministers are more sinister than Ministers. But who cares?"