SE5 Beta 1.72

Where's the 1.71 buglist forum?

I have one. Since upgrading, I am getting the pegged CPU problem again when a large empire is processing it's turn. You'd think I could leave the game to crunch the turn for 1/2 an hour, but no, it never comes back. This went away in the previous version I was running but it's back again with a vengeance. It locks the game and ruins it, have to give the 3 finger salute (CTL+ALT+DEL) to get out.

Suggest also - setting for saving Combat Replays - of ZERO. I have no desire to watch replays, and large long combats seem to take forever to save at the end of combat.

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Ed, there's a number of other issues at hand so I think there will be at least one or two more betas before the patch.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Some small bugs (simultaneous games):
- On their last movement point ships don't launch units.

- You can't see the ship names anymore when selecting an enemy fleet, except if you right click on each ship. Either remove the name completely, or show it again in the previous menu.

- When you ask a ship to load specific units, and condensed view is on, the units loaded are always the same - so if you try to load 1 unit A, 2 units B and 5 units C with several ships one after the other on the same turn, only the first ship will be loaded.

- The fighter launch limit was a bad idea.

- PLEASE, let players to "obsolete" enemy ship designs, or at least to search the ship list. Also, if you have already seen a ship class, there's no reason you couldn't see it when looking at one of those ships report from the main screen. (Don't show ship damage, obviously).

Actually, I'd also like to 'obsolete/hide' some components during ship design that I usually don't use.

Crossing fingers that MM nailed these right. I think it's still too soon to venture into change requests while there's still some nasty bugs open.

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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

Great to see fixes still in the pipeline!

Let's cross our fingers that we see some alliance fixes as well before the next patch goes live

I wish he would put a Star or Large Circle around the Home Planet that starts the game, but I do not think we will ever see that. And before you mention, I do not go to the other website to post since I see one as the official website for the game. I think he should come here and poke around once in awhile.

The game has a serious memory devouring leak, I can only get about 4 turns done right now before it locks up on a large player.

Can anyone suggest anything to mitigate this? I'm trying a cool tool called Tweak XP Pro to get the most out of my memory, page files, ect.. but this game soon devours all resources in sight. Maybe there's a REAL black hole in there somewhere

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

What version do you run? Any mods? What you describe indeed used to be a problem until a number of patches back, but that got fixed as far as I know. Then again, ever since I started playing PBW I've not bothered to play AI's anymore, so I wouldn't notice if it's back in 1.71.

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See my PBW game stories on http://users.pandora.be/banzaiboy/sevpbw/.

Oh, also we need a new Long Range setting - maybe call it Max Range? With the current one, you can outrange other player's ships, it wont help you, since your ships will place themselves just at the range they can be fired at...

Make sure to email all bug reports (with savegames if possible) and feature suggestions directly to se5 at malfador.com. Aaron does not read the forums.

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I'm compiling a big list to send... Also I thought that if this was a list made by the community (use the wiki, for instance SEV known bugs), it would have more weight than sent by one player alone.

1.71 with Kap'n Kwok's balance mod.

I'm playing medium sized galaxy, and trying breathable atmosphere only for the first time. I like it, makes planets MUCH more valuable, you actually bother to NAME them!

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Succinct descriptions with saved games are the most effective means of getting bugs addressed.

Requests benefit from more voices, but if clear reason is used with a good description of how a feature could be implemented, then that helps MM.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Ok I made a post under another topic where I stated that my ship strategies is not working. One guy came back and said his strategies is working fine and the post was basically ignored further on. I thought ok so maybe the fault is only on my side so I whacked my game and reinstalled, patched everything back to SE 1.71 BM 1.14A and got the same problem again then I put my Missile frigates strategy on don’t get hurt and the ship keeps on attacking and if I put the strategy on Maximum weapons range it does exactly the same. I think the strategy automatically goes to optimal firing range. Oh and the first thing that told me the mistake is not on my pc was the fact that even the combat replays I get from the PBW server does exactly the same thing.

Ok so I thought maybe the problem came in with BM 1.14A so I whacked my balance Mod folder and only used the 1.14 ver. Got the same problem.

Then I decided to test just the core game SE 1.71 and also got the error. I whacked my whole game again and reinstalled only the core game SE 1.00 and there the strategies worked fine. So my estimate is that somebody screwed up somewhere in the core part of the game. My guess would be SE 1.71 patch. Can someone please test this two so that I can know if I am way off here?

With this problem a Uranium Cannon Frigate will do a lot of damage to a Missile frigate in the BALANCE MOD where normally a missile frigate with strategy "do not get hurt" would destroy a Cannon Frigate without one point of damage.

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it /is/ a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

Thanks I checked it out but dont realy understand what I am looking at. Is there a place where I can read up on how to change the strategies for optimal use?

I am disappointed that nothing is being done to speed up A.I turns times and the overall speed of the game.It is just soooo slow compared to SEIV and all other 4x games I can think off.

Actually, two or three of the previous patches included speed ups to the turn processing. It is much faster than it used to be. The speed of the processing is not bad considering how complex this game is. Maybe you need a faster computer?

I agree with Ashberry, the movement phase could probably be better optimized and cut down on a lot of the turn to turn lag for the AI.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Man.. i was 210 turns into that huge game.. and then that happened to me too. totally ruined my game.

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Without ammo, nice guns are just sophisticated clubs.

I can't point you to, or write in this context, a "strategies guide". Maybe one exists, I don't know.

In any event, since one of the patches some time back where the retreat system was changed, all of the retreat settings have defaulted to "Retreat when 80% of ships are lost" or something like that. You need to manually go in to the "Don't Get Hurt" strategy and change this.

Here's how to do it. I am describing this from memory, so some of the details I am giving may be off, but the general idea is accurate:

1. Select the "Empire Options" menu (the icon at top of screen with a pic of a crown).

2. Find the "Don't Get Hurt" strategy and click on it.

3. In the middle window, scroll down until you get to the retreat settings (fairly close to the top).

4. You'll see a series of situations, such as "Attacking", "Defending", "Warp Point Attack", "Colony Defense", etc. Select one of those.

5. Then you'll see the button in the top of the right hand pane, "Change Setting" or some such. Click on that. Scroll down until you can select "Retreat Immediately" and choose it.

6. Repeat for all retreat settings.

Basically, with these steps you are programing this strategy so that in these combat situations, you want it to use the selected criterion for how to decide to retreat. "Don't Get Hurt" ought to be an unconditional retreat, so that's basically what you've told it.

Another setting in the strategy that you should look for is located near the retreat settings, I can't recall how it's labeled. It is basically the option to remain in the sector until defeated, and you can set it to true or false. Basically, when your retreating ship reaches the edge of the combat area, should it cross over the line into the next sector into (possible) safety, or should it stay in the sector and just try to keep max distance from the enemy? The benefit of hanging around and not leaving is that if your ships are travelling in a fleet, they will remain in a fleet. If you set it to leave the sector, your fleet could get dispersed if individual ships flee in different directions. On the other hand, if they hang around, faster enemy ships may be able to catch them.

Decisions, decisions...

I hope this helps.

Thanks you are a great help. Just one more question though... If I change these strategies is it then changed for the AI aswell cause their Missile frigates also move in to close and their strategy is also not on maximum weapon range. I practice alot against the AI witch is much better of late but still not to hot though because of these startegies. Then just another thing that I wonderd about is it possible to set up a game where no tech trading is alowed. I know there is a setting in the game setup but that only stops an empire to trade one tech for another it does not stop races to make research treaties. I want each race to do its own research. My reason for this is I have to put the bonus setting for the AI on high so the AI is worth something but then with the bonus their doing ok with research but then they ally with other AI players and then it is impossible to keep up with research leaving the only option to me and that is to ally with a AI player so That I can keep up. It just would be nice to have all research their own stuff.

Can anyone tell me how much free RAM I really need to run this game? I've got about 170 on a good day, that sometimes drops to 100, is this game too rich for my blood? That's really sad, considering this game was written on the low tech side and is blown away by big budget commerical games that rock on my machine, like Diablo 2 and Starcraft (Blizzard is the greatest gaming company in the history of the planet, btw)

My medium map game is currently locked, will not process player 9, pegs the cpu and goes zombie.

All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

SE5 does not use very much ram, usually around 100-150 MB.

You are aware that RAM costs almost nothing these days, and there is little stopping you from sticking in a few GBs? For example, 2x1 GB sticks of DDR2 for $35 after rebate. Even SO-DIMM (laptop) RAM is dirt-cheap, such as 2x2 GB sticks of DDR2 for $48 after rebate. Older types of RAM can be had for even cheaper, if its an old machine.

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