Yarlen Yarlen

Sins: Diplomacy Beta 3 Notes

▼

Sins: Diplomacy Beta 3 Notes

from Sins Forums

Today we plan to release Beta 3 (v0.95) of Sins of a Solar Empire - Diplomacy to pre-order customers. During the changeover to the new beta, the ICO server will be taken offline while the files are updated.

Beta 3 adds a number of refinements to Diplomacy based on feedback, along with bug fixes and some new features. Details are below. :)

As always, if you don't want to deal with bugs, balance issues or providing feedback to improve the game please wait for the final release.

Gameplay Changes:

  • Pirate Missions have been added.  After the proper research, players may now offer the Pirate faction missions to attack specific gravity wells. This is accessed via the Pirate tab in the Criminal Underground screen. There is a 5 minute cooldown between Pirate missions and they will become progressively more expensive as the game plays out.
  • Added new Bomb Planet mission type.
  • Added new Advent envoy ability - Quell Unrest.
  • The Vasari Phase Drive Pact has been slightly buffed.
  • The Vasari Armament Pact has been buffed.
  • AI players will now declare war at a much lower relationship level.
  • Positive military actions no longer give as large of a relationship bonus.
  • Giving metal/crystal to a faction will now result in a higher relationship gain.
  • Fleet Strength relationship factors will now be -1, 0 or 1.
  • Added several new maps (Nemesis, Secrets, Triad, Whirlwind, Domination).
  • The Humanity relationship bonus is now known as the AI bonus, it only applies to relations between humans and AI players.
  • Relationship bonuses granted by research should now work.
  • Changed most of the Pacts to make them more substantial.
  • Pact requirements (relationship level) have been lowered.
  • Shifted diplomacy techs across each race's tree to make early game diplomacy more accessible.
  • You can no longer target your own allies for attack missions in Locked Team games.
  • Several price adjustments to various research subjects.
  • The extraction rate on Mutual Threat has been lowered (Vasari).
  • AI players will now more reliably research Pacts.
  • Hotfix - The AI is now more intelligent about choosing which planets to target for missions.
  • Hotfix - Modifiers on the two hardest AI settings have been increased.
  • Hotfix - Envoys now have more realistic shield and HP regen rates.
  • Hotfix - Worthy Cause can now only be used around enemy or allied planets.
  • Hotfix - Relationship bonus techs are now split accross three stages in all research trees.
  • Hotfix - Modified the AI gangup behavior slightly.
  • Hotfix - Cultural Relations techs should now reward their relationship bonuses at the proper time.
  • Hotfix - There is now a new research tech to remove racial relationship penalties.

Interface:

  • The game should no longer tell the player they're under attack by an ally.
  • InfoCards have been added for the Create Mission screen buttons.
  • Flavor text has been added to the relationship levels to better describe status at a glance.
  • Military Strength is now called Fleet Strength.
  • The Manage Pacts button will no longer be enabled after a player has lost.
  • Relationship is now displayed as regular values ranging from 0 to 20, with 10 being the "normal" limit, and 11 to 20 being available via envoy bonuses.
  • Tweaked the Manage Pacts screen to be less confusing (hopefully).
  • When a player rejects your Mission, the proper message should now be displayed.
  • The Create Mission screen should now display how much relationship is required.
  • Abilities that generate income should now be displayed in the Income InfoCard.
  • Hotfix - Fixed a bug related to the rendering of credit from envoy abilities on infocards.

Graphics:

  • Made a few texture adjustments to the Advent and TEC envoys.
  • Fixed bug with Voruntak envoy where it was using TEC particle fx for its exhaust trail.
  • TEC Module Constructor should now display the correct unit picture.
  • Voice of the Unity now has a unique icon.
  • Fixed an issue with mipmaps on textures related to envoys.

Misc.:

  • Fixed small bug with the Phase Drive Pact.
  • Fixed small bug in the Pirate base upgrade system.
  • Fixed bug in how bonus relationship is formed in regards to Fleet Strength.
  • Envoys using Diplomatic Immunity should no longer trigger mines.
  • Fixed bug with Vasari envoy's Mutual Threat ability.
  • Fixed bug with Arbitrate Tariff so it now gives a positive income boost.
  • Fixed bug where positive boosts to trade income where show as negatives on the InfoCards.
  • Fixed Sacrifice ability on Advent envoys.
  • Hotfix - Fixed a crash related to AI players research envoy abilities.

 

58,260 views 72 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top

I encounter a bug since the update, at least I think so. Re-Installing does not help.

 

Any pact (like ressource pact, culture pact) is instantly terminated again after the agreement. Relation is more than high enough. Does anyone else have the same problem?

 

 

Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting DerSenf, reply 51
Any pact (like ressource pact, culture pact) is instantly terminated again after the agreement. Relation is more than high enough. Does anyone else have the same problem?

Found that exact same bug, myself.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top

Twice I offered the pirates an obscene amount of credits (25k 1st, then 53k) to go and have some fun at an AI player's planet, but nothing happens...

Could it be because I smashed their base on the star where the targeted planet is?

Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top

There's a bug that allows you to give pirates missions when pirates are dead. So those won't do anything :p For multistar maps I imagine the mission requires a functioning base at the target star, since pirates can't star-jump.

Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top

I also see this happening. Perfectly good relations and all pacts are accepted and instantly broken.

 

Maybe the breakTreatyHappinessThreshold values are not being applied properly?

Kind of breaks the whole pact system.  Hotfix status?

Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top

For any of you Linux lovers out there: save for a small font issue (it uses Arial, rather than the standard Sins font; haven't figured out how to fix this yet), Diplomacy runs rather smoothly on Wine 1.1.35, with no library overrides other than msxml3.

Getting Impulse to run on Wine would make everything perfect since I wouldn't have to switch to Windows 7 for updates. Any ideas?

Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top

Any beta player that can say if diplomacy in Sins is (already) better than in Galciv2?

Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top

I wouldn't call it better, I'd say it's done differently. Instead of confining diplomacy to a window where negotiations with adversaries are undertaken, it is melded with standard play: besides avoiding harming a prospective ally's ships and colonies and making trade and cease-fire pacts with him, you actually have to send diplomatic cruisers to his worlds to improve your relationship with him. It takes a long time to build up, but it pays off handsomely. Don't expect an ally to give up on techs, ships or worlds, though.

Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top

Are the starting home planet upgrade levels intentional on Nemesis? 3 population upgrades, everything else maxed?

Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top

Each time a ship belonging to a faction with whom you have agreed on a cease fire arrives at one of your planets, you get a 'hostile forces have arrived at Xxxxxx' warning. Bug?

Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top

Hello i do not know if this is the place to respond to or about the beta of any issues. But here it goes

I recently pre ordered the diplomacy game and got the beta. I had no issues getting it. By the way this is the best sci-fi space game I ever played it out does the star wars games by a huge margin but back to my statement.

My computer is a AMD quad core 9600 2.4 GHz

ATI Radaon HD 2600 xt 512mb

4 gigs of ram

22 inch widescreen monitor setting 1650- 1500.

The game works fine on highest settings but I do get a anti-lasting issue that I see sparkers on some objects.  I played about a hour on 4x speed to 6x and had no issues on graphics or performance. The game is missing one thing that has been bothering g me in all three sins. No resource collectors for the advent it is cool that the trade can collect metal and crystal but if possible add on resource collectors for advent other than that I love the new options but I had to quit playing for some time but I will see the new options in the advent and vessuri because I been having to much fun with tec. Good job to star dock and iron clad crew hope to see more.

 

Long live the emperor

 

Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top

After a couple of tries, it would seem that the AIs like to become your friend and you eventually win via alliance victory. I'll see if I can twist the AI into doing my bidding.

Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top

I just played this beta 3 (bought it yesterday :))  and wanted to report that:

 

 

  •  I also have the Pact problem, every pact I make is destroyed instantly.
  • Giving missions to allies seems to lack a bit of feedback, I could not see if he did or did not do it.
  • Also its kind of hard/impossible to see what bonuses the envoys from my "allies" give as benefit to me. 
  • Oh yea, I also have the "You can't save XXX now" messages when my "allies" fly to a planet of mine, but they never attack.
On the other hand, playing with the new cruisers is fun. In one game (FFA 7 AI and me) I made 6 allies. And I kept one as enemy just because I wanted someone to fight.  This made it a bit easy though, I played against 3 Unfair and 4 hard AI. An other feature I found really cool was the pirate missions. I had a big economy so I placed a pirate mission of 120k. Well it resulted in an pirate army noone in the map could beat... I start to wonder what would happen if I placed a pirate mission of 1 mil credits :) But I don't think its overpowered though, it still costs a lot of money, and if I would spend that on an army it would be stronger for the same amount of money probably. 
Well I hope they fix the pact problem, and then we shall see what Diplomacy brings us.

 

Reply #65 from Sins Forums Top

Why hasn't the AI been updated to build starbases at stars? Does it throw the balance off in the game?

Reply #66 from Sins Forums Top

will there be a beta 4 of diplomacy on the new sins/entrenchment patch?

harpo

Reply #67 from Sins Forums Top

I found a bug, Starbases at stars with the trade upgrade do not give any money. Or atleast say they don't.

Reply #68 from Sins Forums Top

I just got the pre-order and here is my first impression.

  • A ship going to your planet from a faction you have a cease fire with is now accompanied with death threats and warnings.
  • I am at peace with all of the living factions but not the dead ones and I get no alliance victory. Bug or do I have to somehow become friends with the dead ones too?
  • AI no longer spam you with missions, but you are lucky to get one or two missions from them now.
  • You can finally see who is friends with whom, but it would be even better if you could see who owns the ranking for culture, fleet, etc.
  • I can't seem to get pacts or missions going with others no matter what my diplomatic ranking with them is.
  • Racial relation points good or bad go away after a while in the game.

Otherwise great work, can't wait for the finished product.!

Reply #69 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting cyme3, reply 68
I can't seem to get pacts or missions going with others no matter what my diplomatic ranking with them is.

Read the Pacts closely, you need a 11.50 rank w/ the other player to start the first pact.  And the value will increase with each pact.

The only way I can see my own rank towards another player to increase is to assign enough missions for the rank to reach 20.  Against an AI, well once you reach 10, just throw money at them, but during my unlocked match, I have not once been asked to do a mission by them.  Well it's only beta, I can't wait till the next update and see how the AI will twist my arm.

Thanks Blair.

Reply #70 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting naynayz, reply 65
Why hasn't the AI been updated to build starbases at stars? Does it throw the balance off in the game?
Sometimes it's not a necessity.  If you add an option for the AI to do something, then it ends up being a requirement sometimes.  The AI will build them when they shouldn't, resulting in a scattered or undefended system.  There's too many variables to consider if the AI were to build on a star when there is only 1 star match or multiple stars.

Reply #71 from Sins Forums Top

[quote who="MaarekStele" reply="69" id="2520329"]


Quoting cyme3,
reply 68
I can't seem to get pacts or missions going with others no matter what my diplomatic ranking with them is.


Read the Pacts closely, you need a 11.50 rank w/ the other player to start the first pact.  And the value will increase with each pact.

I saw that too, and I had much more than an 11.50 rank with them.

 

*Oops, quote fail

Reply #72 from Sins Forums Top

one problem ive found that no one else seems to have mentioned is that there is no option to create fleets for the envoy cruiser