[Feedback] One full play through... Here are my notes. UPDATED 7th MARCH @ 7:40pm
Sins Forums
During this play through, I played as the TEC Rebels on a Huge Random (Multi) map. Here are my notes:
System Specs:
Intel Core i7 2600k @ 3.4Ghz
MSI Z68a-GD65 Motherboard
16Gb Corsair Vengeance PC-14400+ Memory @ 1866mhz
Installed on separate 2Tb Dedicated Western Digital high performance SATA III FAEX model hard drive connected to a full SATAIII controller.
2Gb AMD Radeon HD5970 (Dual GPU) Graphics Card.
Asus Xonar D2 PCI Sound Card
Graphics Bugs:
1: During the late game I was playing with the Cinematic mode button. I noticed that when in cinematic mode, not only do the icons disappear (yes I know this is the idea behind cinematic mode), but also the ship thrust trails. In other words, the ship thruster flames also disappear when in cinematic mode. Now this I suspect was unintended. I first noticed it when I saw that my Titan was moving, but had no flame animations. Checked the other ships and confirmed theirs were also missing. After playing around found that it was the cinematic mode. Turn it on, icons, gravity wells and thruster trails all disappeared. Turn it back off and everything came back on, including the thuster trails. Figured you might want to know about that one as I doubt you intended the thruster trails to disappear as well.
2: When zooming out fully to the galaxies view, all "discovered" planets systems dots completely vanish. You have to zoom in 1-2 clicks to get them to be visible again. In previous games these dots were fully visible even at the furthest zoom range and I preferred it that way. It would be nice if this was fixed.
3: I noticed considerable game hangs/freezes during the video playback trailer during initial game startup.
Gameplay:
I haven't noticed any significant game bugs yet in the gameplay area, but I do have few thoughts regarding the gameplay.
1: There are an awful lot of Novalith cannons now. I know it's given earlier now for the TEC Loyalists, but I was still surprised just how early I was having to deal with them watching my planets pop. And not only that, but the sheer number of them that were coming in. I managed to counter them.... well not really, I should say, I managed to find way to reduce/limit their toll on my planets. But basically, even though the Novalith guns are now all in a different galaxy from my own, there's a constant steady stream of endless shots heading for my galaxy. Now I understand that this could be regulated during single player games with some balancing, but as it stands, I can easily see this as becoming a spam tactic during multiplayer games. Could this be looked into for balancing, considering just how effective these cannons are.
2: While playing as the Rebels I found that once I researched to a certain diplomacy level, I started getting free pirates... At first I was like "cool" then I started to find it annoying. I was no longer able to set up my fleets the way I wanted to, because I was constantly getting new pirate ships that I didn't ask for. I was constantly having to scuttle pirate ships just so I could build the ships I actually wanted. I like the idea of being allied with the pirates. And I like the idea of being able to get and use pirate ships in my fleet. But I don't like how they just consistently and randomly appear in systems in sizable numbers literally taking up all of my fleet capacity preventing me from setting up my fleet the way I want to because I've received pirate ships I didn't ask for. As I said, I like the idea, but I would prefer if it worked more like the way the Dark Armada works for the Vasari. Having something in there that can be used to call for pirate reinforcements when and where I actually require them as opposed to the way it's set up now. Put simply, I would really like a little more control over this aspect of playing the TEC Rebels.
3. I've had a few instances in game where the Titan was not moving even after giving it an order. It was mainly if the Titan was at the edge of the gravity well, at an odd angle and I gave it an order to move to another system. It would just sit there. I was forced to tell it to move in a specific direction within the system before it would actually start turning. Once I manually aligned it to the direction of the system I wanted it to jump to, I then gave the order to jump system and that's when it would finally go. I don't necessarily think this is a bug. It's only happened a few times where the Titan was in a certain position. I think this mainly has something to do the with the new path finding system. If anything it's a tweaking thing. I don't think it's anything I can replicate for submission, but thought I should mention it for the record that it has occurred and tweaking would probably be required.
4: I have noticed some significant lag in single player in late game with lots of ships. I know it's not my system, because I've got more that enough resources to push this game. I know it's beta, so I don't expect it to be silky smooth. Just thought I should note it down for the record.
5: One question regarding moons. I've noticed that on all planets and asteroids, the maximum number of mines that can be deployed is 150. But on moons and moons alone, it's only 70 mines I can deploy. Is this intentional?
6: I also had one game crash. It seems to have been a one off crash and has not happened again and I don't know the circumstances that caused the crash, so I can't recreate it. But it doesn't seem to have created a minidump. I've checked the file location as noted in the sticky thread in this forum. And there are dumps there, but they are all for diplomacy. None of the them were for Rebellion. I even double checked the dates. No minidump seems to have been created by the crash, so I can't submit it here for review as the sticky asks.
This is everything I have so far. I will leave further posts for anything more find or think of.
UPDATES FROM MARCH 2nd:
Bug:
1: After conquering quite a bit of territory, I've noticed that on a couple of my planets, they are showing units that supposedly exist as according to when you zoom out of the planet with the left and right panels showing friendly and enemy units and when in system on the left hand unit break down list. But when you zoom into system, these supposed units are nowhere to be found. I have one system showing enemy units that show enemy units in the right panel zoomed out but I don't see them in system and can't attack these supposed units. But the zoomed out system is now locked in a perpetual state of being attacked when no attack is taking place. I also have 2 systems that have a couple of my units, as can be zoomed out on the left planet panel. And when zoomed in, I can see the 2 supposed units in the left hand unit breakdown list. But I can't see them in system. I can select them in the left hand panel, but can't give them orders. They're permanently stuck. But again, I can see them nor select them on the map, even when dragging a selection box across the whole system. Where are they? Are they stuck "inside" a planet? Thought I should bring this up. It's one thing if it's happened only once. But this is now 3 different systems I'm seeing this in.
Gameplay:
1: The new ships don't seem to be getting the correct priorities in the left hand breakdown list. Such as the breakdown priorities should break down as follows.
Titan -> Cap Ships -> Cruisers -> Frigates -> Bombers -> Intercepters
But instead it's going like this.
Cap Ships -> Cruisers -> Frigates -> Titan -> New Cap Ship -> etc.
As you can imagine, it makes using the left hand unit breakdown panel considerably more difficult to use, because the logical layout is no longer functioning as intended. It would be appreciated if this was fixed.
2: AI players often seem very fickle as to whether or not they want to commit to a battle. I've often found them jumping the cap ships constantly in and out of system from my fleet. They warp in, get shot at, jump out. And they keep repeating this constantly until their caps get popped by my ships. Seems like a crap ineffective tactic by the AI.
I should note that all these details are for the same match against normal AI
UPDATES FROM MARCH 3rd:
Performance:
1: Ok, I've now completed the full match, but I'm still not happy with the late game lag. It's like a constant stutter in the game. Zooming in and out. Rotating the camera. Watching anything move. It's like this constant stutter. It's not long hangs unless in really big battles. I should also note that this stutter is non-existent in early game. But in late game, it's very apparent and extremely annoying. I know it's not my system, because as you can see above with my system specs, my system has more than enough to push this game. I also have a readout on my keyboard that gives me a continuous listing of my current CPU and Memory usage. My memory never shows more than 27% usage (A quick check in Task Manager shows game uses about 1.5Gb of memory) and my CPU usage never seems to go above 17% usage. Except when loading game where I've seen it hit 27% usage. Here's what I've done to try to narrow down the source.
Graphics settings.
I've played with every setting. Shadows, AA, AF, Resolution, everything in the effects page. Nothing has any effect what-so-ever. I even used ATI Tray Tools to force Crossfire off (disable one of my GPU's), which did resolve the intro video hangs, but had absolutely no effect in late game stutter issues. So it's not my graphics card nor graphics related.
Memory.
I used NT-Core to force the game to use more than 2Gb of memory if needed. That did not resolve it. Game seems to run pretty consistently at 1.5Gb. So I've restored the default executable.
CPU.
This is the only thing I can think of that can cause this issue. It seems to be a CPU bottleneck of some sort, somewhere. Although I have no way of modifying how the CPU handles the game. I can't change affinities, nor priorities as the executable denies me access. But I really do think this issue is stemming from something CPU processing related.
Normal game performance troubleshooting process is: Play with Graphics settings to increase performace -> If ineffectual to any extent then it's not graphics related. Next thing to check is memory as there may not be enough (I have 16Gb) or game may not be utilizing enough (I have tested for that as shown above, and yes I know that even with unlocking it, because it's a 32 bit application it can only use a max of 4Gb, but that's still more than 2Gb) -> If still ineffectual, then CPU is the next logical step. CPU either may not be fast enough to handle game (As you can see, my CPU is more than capable), or there CPU bottleneck may be source of problem. (A troubleshooting avenue of testing that's a little outside my pay grade), So the only thing I can do is report it to you for investigation.
I have included a link for you dev's to download. It's the save game data for my late game. As mentioned, I get considerable stutter when zooming in and out, rotating camera, watching battles, and pretty much everything else. It does not exist early game, but becomes very apparent mid to late game. I hope you can use this save to help find the source of the issue. Also, you will see a couple systems the supposedly have enemies in them. There are not. Zoomed out shows they are there, left break-down panel shows what type of ship they are, but there are no ships to be found in system. You will see that I've already described this issue in more depth in one of my previous posts. So you should be able to see both the Late Game Stutter and the Vanishing ships issues in this save. Kill 2 birds with one stone.
Download Link:
https://rapidshare.com/files/72273604/BigNick277_Lag.zip
Gameplay:
1: As mentioned before, I've been playing the TEC Rebels. I've continued to play with the Titan and have been noticing that when there's many targets on screen, the Titan is often prioritizing the fighters/bombers over other structures and more dangerous ships, such as Caps, Cruisers and Frigs. So the Titan often ends up sitting back trying to deal with fighters from the back line instead of moving up and getting into the fight. The Titan's target priority is going need some tweaking, because at the moment I'm having to constantly manually tell the Titan where to go and who to target, because if I don't, the Titan seems more than happy to just sit back and target fighters/bombers.
tehe) the only way you could lose was if you were completely negligent about it's location. I mean, as loyalist, there's no reason I have to move my Kol out from between my two fortified starbases and the pair of dunovs I have on it...
