Author Topic: Change Log for v5.40  (Read 4935 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Change Log for v5.40
« on: February 06, 2011, 06:00:01 PM »
I am going to keep all changes for v5.40 in this thread so it will be easier for players to figure out what will be in the new version.

Change Log
-----------

Reduced Height Windows (Resolution of 1280x800 required) - see post below
New Interrupt Override option (see post below)
New Multiple Targets option for the Battle Control window (see below)
Added a Refit Cost check to the Class Window (see below)
Fire Delay is no longer an interrupt event.
New event of reloading complete for missile launchers of parasites in hangar bay.
On landing, parasites are automatically assigned new missiles from their mothership's magazine based on their class loadout
Hostile ground unit names are displayed when an an enemy unit is destroyed or suffers casualties.
Populations are checked for incoming mineral packets if you attempt to pick up the last mass driver on the surface.

Bug Fixes
---------

Fixed problem where parasites were not being refuelled properly when using the new landing orders
Damage from ramming is now included in the danger rating for a system
When moving to the nearest trade location, freighters now check if the current system should be excluded due to its danger rating
When clearing orders for commercial shipping, the ships will correctly set standard transits through jump points rather than squadron transits.
Removed incorrect shield recharge messages for alien ships that don't even have shields.
Fixed incorrect reporting of absorption shield recharge rate for tactical intelligence
Prevented NPRs from launching missiles/PT at colony targets from outside the range of their missiles.
Corrected bug that applied collateral damage against populations when a ship in orbit was damaged.
Fixed bug that prevented ships from launching anti-missiles in certain circumstances.
Fixed bug that sometimes caused colony ships to deliver colonists to unsuitable planets with orbital habitats already at max capacity
Fixed bug that repeated number of fighters built if multiple fighters of the same type were constructed during the same 5-day increment
Ships transferred from Empire A to Empire B and then back to Empire A no longer create a duplicate class for Empire A.
Fixed salvage bug that resulted in '0x Component' being recovered.
Fixed bug where the number of components on a planet is not reduced if only a fraction of a component is loaded by a freighter
Ship and fighter commanders are unassigned when their ship/fighter is scrapped or deleted. If the ship is in orbit of a population, they are placed at that population.
Commanders of expended replacement battalions are now unassigned.
Various bugs involving ground units and populations that result from the defeat of robotic guardians should be fixed

Steve
« Last Edit: March 14, 2011, 08:49:25 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Change Log for v5.40
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2011, 12:59:42 AM »
This is a significant change so I'll create an individual post and add a summary line to the first post.

Interrupt Override

Sometimes, the interrupts can be a pain if they are stopping the game when you know you are just going to press the increment button again. This situation usually occurs in a battle when you are launching large numbers of missiles or its a close range energy engagement where you don't need to change targets very often. Therefore there is now a new text field above the Auto Turns checkbox called Min Inc (for 'minimum number of increments'). If you are using automated turns and enter a number in this checkbox, the game will run for that number of increments before stopping for any interrupt events. In other words, you are overriding all interrupts for a specified period. The Shift-F8 combo will still work to stop automated turns but, apart from that, no matter what happens the game will keep running increments until it reaches the minimum number of increments.

WARNING! Using this option will take away your ability to react instantly to potentially important events so use with great caution. This is an experiment to see how useful this functionality will be so I will appreciate feedback once v5.40 is out.

Steve
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Change Log for v5.40
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2011, 07:26:48 AM »
Multiple Targets on the Battle Control Window (F8)

The battle control window currently allows you to lock a fire control on to a contact and then copy that target to all other ships of the same class. The new Multiple Targets option allows you to select a target for a fire control on a single unit and use the location of that target as the basis for selecting different targets for every other ship of the same class in the current task group. When you press the Multiple Targets button, each unit of the same class in the same task group will use the selected fire control against a different ship target of the same enemy race in the same location as the target of this fire control. Only untargeted ships will be assigned as targets. In this context, untargeted means no fire control assigned against that target and no missiles inbound against that target.

For example, you have a strikegroup of forty fighters of the same type in the same task group and you are faced with an incoming wave of sixty small FACs. You assign one fighter against one FAC and then press the multiple target button. Every other fighter in the task group will automatically select a different FAC to target. If you have a second task group of eighteen fighters you can assign one of them against one of the untargeted FACs and press the same button. The seventeen other fighters will target one of the remaining untargeted FACs.

As a second example, you have a force of six cruisers. You can use the above method to select six untargeted FACs, fire a salvo and then easily change the targets of all six cruisers to different untargeted FACs and fire again. Repeat as required.

This should drastically reduce micromanagement of combat against large numbers of hostile fighters and FACs.

Steve
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Change Log for v5.40
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2011, 11:13:05 AM »
Reduced Height Windows

A couple of people have mentioned over the past year or two that they wouldn't mind being able to play Aurora in a lower resolution. The problem seems to be the height of the windows rather than the width, primarily because the resolution of Aurora is based on my old secondary monitor, which happened to be 1280 x 1024. With the move to widescreen monitors and laptops, resolution width has increased over the last few years but height has stayed still, or in the case of laptops, even decreased a little. Over the years I have looked at several possible solutions to the resolution issue without much success, mainly due to the severe limitations of VB6 compared to modern languages. However, I recently had a brainwave and I have been playing around with it. Eventually, I decided to work my way through every screen that was over about 800 in height, all twelve of them, and try and find a way to optionally reduce their height without losing functionality. The result is the creation of a new 'Reduced Height' mode, which you can activate from the main menu bar.

When you enter one of these windows in this mode, the program reduces the height of various grids and lists within those windows, removes an occasional minor control and shunts everything below them upwards, or in some cases upwards and sideways. In almost every case the top third or so of the window remains the same. This has been done on a case by case basis rather than through some clever programming trick and it's been a grind as I have had to manually figure out the new position of every control (or parent frame) on those windows and hard code the relative change in position. Yuck! However, it's done now so Aurora has a new optional minimum resolution of about 1280 x 800.

To activate the reduced height mode, use the 'Reduced Height Windows' option on the Game Parameters menu on the main menu bar.

The updated windows include:

Economics
Class Design
Ships
Fleets
Commanders
System View
Events
Combat Overview
Strikegroups
Tactical Intelligence
Shipping Lines
Task Forces

Attached are examples of the normal class window and the reduced height version

Steve
« Last Edit: March 14, 2011, 07:09:25 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Change Log for v5.40
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2011, 07:00:43 PM »
Refit Cost Check

On the DAC / Rank / Information tab of the F5 Class window, underneath the Eligible Additional Classes section, there is a new dropdown called Refit Cost From. If you select a class in this dropdown, it will show you the cost to refit from the class you just selected to the class currently selected in the class window. In other words, if you are designing an upgraded class and you want to know how much it would cost to refit from your existing design to this new design, select the new design in the Class window and the old design in the Refit Cost From dropdown. The text box next to the dropdown will display the refit cost from old to new.

Steve