Patch Notes q4x

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 168

- Improved pathing and search related processing times by about 3x.  This reduced the 5 day turn time in my game from 9.0 seconds to 7.3 seconds.
- When issuing orders to load or unload installations, the specified maximum cargo amount can now be fractional
- A maximum amount to unload can now be specified when assigning orders to unload cargo at populations

- Fleet Orders window: The new 'No Repeat' and 'Any Amount' settings will now be preserved in Order Templates as well
- Ships (F6) window: The Range displayed in the Maintenance panel will now show how far the ship can go based on its current fuel level.  It previously matched a bugged formula used by VB6.
- Galaxy map auto-positioning will now apply to games with known stars enabled
- Fixed: Game Details: Removed erroneous message in the tooltips for NPR Generation Chance that it wasn't implemented
- Fixed: Galaxy Map: auto-positioning wasn't working for the 9th and higher systems linked to the homeworld system
- Fixed: Manually added waypoints weren't being displayed on the F3 window, broken a couple versions ago
- Fixed: The conditional order to resupply from a fleet wasn't working for fleets in the same system
- Fixed: The 'Overhaul' conditional order had the wrong formula for determining whether a pop had enough maintenance facilities
- Fixed: Some NPR warship types weren't raiding hostile systems due to a typo
- Fixed: The 'Begin TF Training' default order was sometimes not triggering when it was supposed to
- Fixed: Shipping Lines window: the Recent Deliveries report would break if a recent delivery was from a ship that no longer exists
- Fixed: Fleet Orders window: The Remove, Remove All, and Repeat buttons weren't updating the displayed estimated time and distance
- Fixed: When adding a Refit Ship task, the ship would first be overhauled even if the ship was commercial, and in No Overhaul games as well.
- Fixed: Fleet Orders window: The new 'Any Amount' setting wasn't preserved for orders created with the Repeat button

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 169

- Fixed: a bug that was preventing NPRs from designing or building a few ship types
- Fixed: NPRs weren't adjusting their population terraforming settings due to a typo
- Fixed: fleets with cycled orders would sometimes show a "Time Required" while in flight to the next order
- Fixed: "Survey data from" was printed twice in event messages when geo data was shared with other empires
- Fixed: Fleet orders window, locations list: out-of-system populations on asteroids and comets weren't using racial names
- Fixed: NPR empire species were generated with bad values for allowable oxygen deviation. (Fix is retroactive)
- Fixed: obtaining data for the final grav survey location in a system via espionage or treaty wasn't marking the system jump point survey as completed
- Fixed: Galaxy Map, System Notes tab: the Save Notes button wasn't working
- Fixed: the Breathable Atmosphere event would appear every cycle rather than the just the first time
- Updated 6 popups related to renaming things to be pre-filled with the already given name and pre-selected
- NPR "Defence Bases" will now be classed as PDCs (in VB6 they are engineless non-PDC ships)

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 170

- The F3 window can now be made 115 px narrower.  The "Auto Turns" checkbox will be automatically repositioned so that it stays visible
- Fixed: the racial tracking speed and ship speed weren't being considered when determining effective weapon tracking speed in summaries and combat.
- Fixed: the higher of the effective weapon tracking speed and the fire control tracking speed was being used in summaries and combat. it's now correctly the lower of the two.
- Fixed: Abandoning ship was cloning crew members
- Fixed: The context menu on the Galaxy Map was revealing the populations of other races
- Fixed: F2 window: The populations list was showing orbital miners present at body types where orbital mining isn't possible

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 171

- Event types on the System Map can now be colorized according to the custom colors set on the Events window
- Added a checkbox on the Quasar4x Settings window to enable System Map event coloring, disabled by default
- Civilian harvester fleets with identical locations and speeds will merge into a single fleet
- Added a new 'Civilian Fleets Merged' event type
- Refitting a ship or PDC will now refuel from the population if possible
- Refitting a ship or PDC will now return unused and scrappable components to the population stockpile
- Class Design window: Unchecking 'Keep Excess Q' will now immediately remove any excess crew quarters

- Objects positioned within 4 centimeters of each other are now considered to be in the same location. Fixes a few rare floating point error bugs.
- Fixed: F3 window: Auto re-positioning of the auto-turns checkbox wasn't working correctly when the Scroll/Zoom map panels were visible
- Fixed: Class Design: After clicking 'Add', it was necessary to reselect the component if you wanted to click 'Add' again
- Fixed: Class Design window: the Keep Excess Q checkbox wasn't working with fighter sized Crew Quarters
- Fixed: groups of 4 fighter size crew quarters were being auto-substituted with 1 tiny size (which is bad math)
- Fixed: Floating point rounding errors that were occasionally causing 1 more crew quarters to be added than necessary
- Fixed: F2 window, list of populations: The displayed # of Orbital Mines present was sometimes incorrect
- Fixed: NPRs werent treating their spoiler ships as spoiler ships when making certain decisions

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 172

- Moved retirement messages into a new "Officer Retirement" event category
- Since the Officer Surplus messages come in giant batches they've been moved into a new event category of their own
- All officer bonus increases have been moved into event categories of their own based on bonus type
- F2 Research tab: Added an 'x10' checkbox to right of 'Add RL' and 'Remove RL'. Labs are added or removed 10 at a time when checked.
- F2 Industry tab: "(Inactive)" will now appear next to the # of refineries when the refining industry is shut down
- Geological Report: The Asteroids Only checkbox will now also show Comets
- Fleet Orders window: Civilian harvester fleets will now show how much fuel they have and how full their tanks are as a percentage

- Fixed: Manned mines were still operating while the population's mining industry was shut down
- Fixed: Event Filtering and Event Interrupts windows: a couple event types weren't being shown
- Fixed: a bug from v168: an internal error caused by civ trade in systems with an apostrophe in their names
- Fixed: a bug from v164: trying to load cargo of a type already present in the fleet's cargo holds was deleting it

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 173

- Infrastructure supply contracts now have lower priority than other supply contracts in the same system
- Added a new event type 'Industry Reactivated'.  By default this event type will trigger an interrupt
- Added missing feature: Class Design window: Obso Comp button can now also be used to unmark an obsolete component
- Added reactivation of industrial sectors to the new Production Overview window
- Ships window: specific names for components in a ship's cargo will be displayed rather than the generic "Ship Component"
- Ships window: transfer msp/fuel to/from ship/pop: decimals displayed will now be rounded down
- Fixed: a couple bugs in star swarm (not related to combat)
- Fixed: F3 window: Couldn't zoom the map in or out with the scroll wheel while hovering over an event
- Fixed: F3 window: Couldn't drag the map around if trying to start the drag while hovering over an event
- Fixed: xeno-arch teams would never finish identifying a ruins civilization if another empire had previously exploited all the abandoned installations
- Fixed: a couple bugs in calculating required cargo space that were sometimes causing ship component load orders to fail
- Fixed: when orbital habitat construction completed, new "Orbital Habitats: xxx" task groups were being generated rather than reusing any that already existed
- Fixed: when a PDC Assembly completed successfully, there would sometimes be an additional erroneous message that there weren't enough prefab components
- Fixed: configuring a pop to subtract/add a gas and setting the desired atm higher/lower (respectively) than the current atm was setting the new atm to the desired value immediately during the terraforming phase. now, nothing will happen.

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 174

- Made numerous optimizations.  These reduced the processing time of the same 5 day turn in my game from from 13.6 seconds to 8.5

- For better performance, contacts lost more than a year in the past will be deleted
- To conserve disk space, fleet history older than 10 years will be deleted
- Dropped an unnecessary index in the db. These changes reduced the size of my save file by about 7%
- An auto backup will not be taken if a file with the same name already exists (so, no more frequently than once per game minute)

- Fixed: At program start, the F3 window wasn't returning to the last system viewed if the left side started collapsed
- Fixed: a couple situations where detecting jump points by observation of transit wasn't working correctly
- Fixed: The jump point layout in the System View and Galactic Map windows was rotated 90 degrees
- Fixed: the New Contact events were being duplicated if more than one race had ever detected the contact
- Fixed: beam fire control chance-to-hit was sometimes wrongly calculated as 0
- Fixed: Intel window: weapon intel wasn't being displayed
- Fixed: a couple situations where the Same Loc button on the Combat window wasn't working

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 175

- Added a new default order: "Fulfil a Contract". Freighters with this default order will process any supply and demand contracts that your civilian shipping lines aren't already handling.

- Civ freighters will no longer trade infrastructure with other empires
- Made a few improvements to civilian contract fulfilment logic
- The auto-refueling policy will now additionally refuel ships that load or unload cargo or colonists at the colony
- It is no longer possible to prototype a species
- Class design window: auto-fill of crew quarters will no longer allow the required crew HS to slightly exceed the HS available

- Fixed: officer experience from teams was logged under Officer Update instead of the appropriate bonus event type
- Fixed: Ships window, Combat Settings tab: the Activate Sensors/Shields buttons weren't working
- Fixed: The Potential Colonies window was revealing alien colonies
- Fixed: The potential colonies window was categorizing systems not controlled by any empire as systems controlled by an alien empire
- Fixed: bug from a recent version: Couldn't create ship repair tasks

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 176

- Ships orbiting multiple populations of the same race will now use their Assigned Population to determine which colony they're affecting, in order to prevent duplicate bonuses.
- Fixed: The "Modify Shipyard" dialog-overlay that can be activated by the "SM SY Mod" button doesn't disappear when you switch off the SpaceMaster mode
- Fixed: Orbit comparison of "Pluto" appears to show the same distance as 10x Pluto
- Fixed: Couldn't rename missiles in the technology report

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 177

- Fixed: Galactic Map: in certain circumstances, not all display checkboxes would appear
- Fixed: System Map, Minerals Tab: duplicate rows would appear on bodies that were surveyed by more than one race
- Fixed: System Map, Minerals Tab: the 'minerals text' view wasn't auto-refreshing when the selected system changed

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 178

- Fixed: NPR empires were allowed to spawn on worlds with a dangerous gas
- Fixed: the 'Deliver Message' fleet order stopped working when the order was cycled
- Fixed: nothing happened when trying to add a repair task at a shipyard that had no mineral cost
- Fixed: F2 window, populated systems list: colonies on bodies shared with other colonies were showing orbital miners that weren't assigned to them

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 179

- Fixed: F9 window, options tab: When you select "Minerals" moons are never shown even if they have minerals on them. The container for this checkbox has been renamed from Minerals to Planets.
- Fixed: the warning message that there are unused research facilities keeps being given even if you have disabled research facilities in the civilian tab.
- Fixed: When a fleet transits into another the speed is reset to maximum. (it now only happens when transitioning from nebula to non-nebula)
- Fixed: When you already have a move command in a fleet to jump between two LPs and you next want to move to another location the automation adds another jump command between the LPs if the fleet is still on the far side of the LPs.
- Fixed: In the "Individual Unit Display" there are some 000 missing in the fuel display of the population

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 180

- Fixed: If 'release tractored ships' was used on a task group the released ship wasn't automatically added to the task group
- Fixed: The order "unload ordnance to colony" deleted ordnance unless the vessel has the "collier" tag.
- Fixed: Construction Brigades weren't working on uninhabited colonies
- Fixed: Ships window - manual ordnance transfer (double click on missiles) between two ships wasn’t working.
- Fixed: Fighter Squadrons window - Launch button wasn't splitting launched parasites into their own fleet
- Fixed: The "Overhaul" conditional order wasn't adding transit moves for out-of-system destinations
- Fixed: Combat overview window: Raise and Lower Shields buttons weren't working when a fleet was selected
- Fixed: Fleet orders window, cargo summary: pdc components and fighters weren't displayed correctly when multiple types were present
- Fixed: Excess fuel wasn't lost when fuel tanks were damaged
- Fixed: Combat window: the displayed Current/Max speed values were swapped
- Fixed: Required power was calculated incorrectly on damaged ships due to wrongly including shield recharge rates
- Fixed: Loading a database older than 2021-Sep-15 would potentially wipe fleet orders
- Fixed: Missile salvo contacts weren't having their missile counts updated when some of the missiles were destroyed
- Fixed: error in the new Production Overview window when a shipyard's modrate was 0

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 181

- Added missing feature: Civ Mining Colonies have a built-in mass driver with infinite capacity for purchased civ minerals.  This mass driver will only ship minerals as they are mined.  Existing minerals in stockpiles will need to be transported with traditional methods.
- Added missing feature: Final Defensive Fire now offers protection for Populations, Shipyards, and Ground Units
- Fixed: Combat window: it was possible to assign missiles to beam weapons (fix is retroactive)
- Fixed: Tech Report window: the 'Missiles in Service' column wasn't counting planetary stockpiles
- Fixed: PDC-Only components were getting PDC-Only benefits but not actually flagged as PDC-Only (fix not retroactive)
- Fixed: the Clear Fleet button cleared all target assignments for all fleets in the database instead of only the selected fleet
- Fixed: F2 window: Annual Growth Rates for populations on habitats orbiting unsuitable planets were not displayed
- Fixed: Populations smaller than orbital habitat capacity weren't growing (Edit: Forgot to list this one)
- Fixed: Effective industrial population was capped at 0 on unsuitable planets even though they had orbital habitats

[Kyle (OP)]

Version 182

- added setting to have more informative descriptions of current fleet orders
- F3 window: ability to popout time buttons, popout icon bar, and/or compact the subpulse buttons
- new checkbox in game details: unassigned diplo teams gain exp
- settings window, make backups checkbox now has a dropdown for desired backup interval

- npr fleets in firing range now have a limit to how many times they can shorten increments without making meaningful progress
- other causes of increment shortening are also limited, and slightly more relaxed, in systems with no player presence
- added missing feature: all ships have a minimum damage control rating of 1
- to significantly improve performance, the relative safety of a system is only determined once per increment
- to significantly improve performance, npr's no longer explore/survey way more systems than is necessary
- npr exploration rate is slightly affected by the Expansionism trait (a maximum of 10% variation)

- fixed: NPRs were spamming duplicate waypoints, causing slowdowns
- fixed: npr carriers and SM-added carriers weren't being populated with fighters on creation
- fixed: a few bugs in NPR code
- fixed: error when an overkill amount of missiles hits a ground forces contact
- fixed: only 1 race could ban a particular system
- fixed: an error in the F3 window when no player race exists
- fixed: parasites couldn't land on a moving mothership via fleet order
- fixed: parasite magazines weren't auto-reloaded when landing on a mothership


Version 183

- fixed: When refueling, all maintenance supplies vanish.  Conversely when the resupplying, all fuel reserves vanish. (Occurred when courtesy refuel/resupply policies were disabled)