V1.1 Beta Change Log

[oldstatesman]

WOW!!!!!

V1.1 BETA Change-Log (March 24, 2006)

+ New Option: No tech Trading. Players can prevent any tech trading by anyone.
+ New Option: Blind Exploration. Players can now start out not knowing where the other civilizations are located.
+ New Option: Disable Minor races. No minor races.
+ New Option: Randomize player intelligence. This will scramble opponent intelligence by around +/- 10 points to have more variance.
+ New Option: Randomly pick opponents. Players can simply choose to play against N opponents and it will pick them out.
+ Ship Design Screen re-designed to allow far more visible space for designing.
+ Ship Design Screen supports panning with left-mouse button held down.
+ Ship Design Screen displays installed components in a grid list. Right click to remove a component.
+ Ship Design Screen supports rotation of components. See options screen to control how much you can rotate them.
+ Ship Design Screen supports copy/pasting behavior with ship size/rotation. If you select an existing component and then select a new component, the new component will automatically take on the size and rotation of the installed component you had just selected.
+ Ship Design Screen supports symmetry in rotation. Select an existing component, then select a new component to add on and then RIGHT-CLICK on the appropriate rotation dial and it will mirror the rotation automatically.
+ Ship level doesn't add as much to max HP.
+ Option now to display an animated dotted line showing where your selected ship is going.

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(snipped 20,000+ characters - StarDock has worked their butts off on this one!!! )

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+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a ship, you will now get the “ship intelligence report” on that specific ship, instead of a generalized ship type information popup.
+ Trade Screen, if you right-click a starbase, it will now show the correct data based on what modules your starbase has.
+ Fixed a typo in conversations
+ Fixed a “false positive” message in debug.err. It would display “Could not find texture” when PictureFrame images were being set to NULL (to clear the image). This is ok.
+ If population after an invasion is less than 1, it will be set to 1
+ Fixed incorrect data being displayed in Ship Upgrade window
+ Fixed colors in a few end game summary screens to use race color instead of interface color
More to come...

I am impressed - I am glad I got this game and supported a company that really seems to care about the product they turn out - and their customers. The log mentions an expansion pack sometime in the future too... with this level of developer support I will not mind paying for that when it comes out.

[tetley]

The beta is fun. I have gotten crashes and some play imbalances, though. Also if you get the beta don't get too comfortable, because the population growth/tax economy is going to change again quite a bit. Personally I don't mind that too much--when the economy changes, it's a new game. Increases the replay value.

[The Rusty Gamer]

+ New Option: Randomly pick opponents. Players can simply choose to play against N opponents and it will pick them out.

Another option on top of that would be to select a random number of opponents so you don't even know how many you may encounter.

An option to specify the minimum class planet to appear would be good too. By specifying "1", for instance, you would never get a class 0 planet.

[Tuberski]

I'm using Beta 4 and it has an option to randomize the number of AI civs.

ACK!