Alpha War 2 Feedback

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Yoda
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Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Yoda »

Dear Caleb,
Not sure if an item can be too trivial to comment on, (this is quite trivial), but saw community needed a new topic for AW2 anyway, and there will probably be more.

In the Teams and Scores menu, number 7 is Team Management. When expanding to full screen from reduced screen, the top bar of the number 7 disappears, and the number in the menu appear like / . The 7 reappears when going back to reduced screen size. The functionality of the Teams and Scores menu seems to be excellent. This is, as I said, an extremely trivial, slightly cosmetic item which seems barely worth mentioning. Perhaps it is simply my recalcitrant computer, which refuses to accept SE updates. Yoda
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Cossid
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

This is an issue with the shadow behind the text. I'll disable it on buttons as it really isn't necessary there, but it still may crop up in other areas at times.
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Hetulik
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Hetulik »

I encountered two items during scouting last Friday that I wished to report.

1) I noticed some weirdness while utilizing a probe, and flying my ship into systems at the same time in terms of trying to do libraries on the system my probe is in (not using the command line). I found if I just operated the probe things worked fine. clicking on systems then during libraries. But if my ship entered a system, and I tried to click on the system my probe is located in in the province map, it will still show the correct words to do a library in the system my probe is in, but when I click it, it only does a library for the system my ship is in. I'd expect the game in all circumstances to give me the library for the system that I most recently clicked. I might not have documented this correctly, since i'm going from memory from last Friday. If you don't know what i'm talking about i'll give you the exact methodology to reproduce this when I have a bit of time in the game.

2) Not a bug, but something i'd like to see tweaked. Both on the province map, and on the regular map where the ship is flying I click on a star where I want my ship to fly to (or that I want to send a probe to). I know I've clicked exactly on the start i'm interested in, but a popup comes with 2 or 3 other systems that I need to choose between. I'd either like to do away with this popup, or make it much less sensitive because it really slows things down and adds to a bit of frustration when scouting. I wouldn't even mind it if the algorithm you use to place stars on the map widened the distance between stars a little. But when I click on a star that doesn't have another star that close to it, i'd like to not be getting popups at the very least. Is this sensitivity something you can tweak?

Other than that, things went very smoothly.
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Cossid
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

#1) I'm aware of the issue, I need to think about it for a while. It's one of those cases where if you're doing 2 things, it just doesn't work well. My ultimate goal will probably be to have a separate menu within the prov map.

#2) This one is quite tricky. I'm actually using the same star spread that SE used on Kesmai/Gamestorm, which was a minimum of 1LY apart (I have the original star location list to prove this). The popup menu must remain there for cases where stars just are too close, and this is exactly how SE handled it. I can't really do away with the popup, and I really can't change the sensitivity very much, but I can change the order of the items in the popup. At some point I'll probably make the star closest to where you clicked show first. Also note that your prov map is resizable, which will also help remedy this situation a bit, in that less stars will come up in the menu when it does come up.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Hetulik »

Caleb can you check what happens if a planet with .99 hydro then later gets say 1.5 agri assigned? I would have thought food would immediately start to accumulate. And I would have thought that the percent capacity of hydro would start to decrease downward from .99 over. I just must not be understanding something... ?
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

This is very complicated, but it is working correctly.

If you have a 0.99 hydro cap, and 1.5 assigned to ag, it will always fill the hydro first, and use the remaining in ag. However, keep in mind that that is then only 0.5 ag, which is not very much, and is probably being out-weighed by your planet's actual population growth. So what happens is, if that 0.5 is enough to feed the rest of the people, it will stockpile the extra, but if it is not, it will use 0.99 hydro, use the food from the other 0.5 ag, then build more hydro for any remaining unfed civilians or troops.

It is quite complex, but it is all correct. Hydro is always used first because it is more efficient, but it only builds more capacity when there are unfed civilians or troops.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Yoda »

Dear Caleb,
Wanted to change my SE password this afternoon. So, clicked "Forgotten your Password' in the SE login screen, and also, shortly thereafter, in the website "Initiate Password Reset". Not sure how long it should take, but did not receive e-mail(s) to update my password, at least as of yet. Of course, I have NOT forgotten my password, and am still using the password I initially set up. Indeed, I will NEVER forget my SE password, but if someone were to, and this is an issue... As info-, Yoda
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

Yeah, I think my server is still blocked at a few places from a relatively recent email incident.

You can change your password on the website if you are logged in without the need to rely on email. Just log into the website, click on My Account on the left menu, and at the bottom is a Change Password option.
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Hetulik
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Hetulik »

What do you think about an "apply setting to all planets option"? Say if I wanted to set all planets at 90% guns 10% fighters, or set eng allocations a certain way on all planets. Or set armaments across all planets?

As a FYI I find I exclusively use the Web PM. If you could clean up the Web mail functionality as well that would be nice as I find I am actively using it. For example the buttons don't display so i'm not sure which one i'm clicking. I can take some time to provide some more feedback, but its an area that i'm actively using but isn't intuitive. The mail system within the game is much nicer.

Het
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Hetulik »

I'd also like to see a way to list teams and all players on the teams without having to select each team.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

Yeah, the mail on the web was one of the last things I did, and never really finished it. I never even made any buttons, which I can do easily enough. I'm not sure the web version of mail will be quite as fully featured as the client version, as I'm not sure if I want to handle team management messages there or not depending on difficulty. I'll try and give it an update this weekend.

The full team roster for all teams I will probably add to the Teams scoreboard below the sorted team list like it is on the final scoreboards. Also queued up for this weekend.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Yoda »

Greetings, Caleb,

Ran into an interesting situation in my Commodity Stockpiles this AM. The following is a typical example from one of my planets:
on hand limit
Probes 3 1
Missiles 63 60
Torpedoes 72 120

Yet when I entered Commodity Stockpiles screens, it indicated the proper 1 probe, 60 missiles, and approx. 72 torpedoes, etc. After usual review and PMing activities, the Economic Report for all Planets was back to normal, with the on-hand and the limits coinciding. I pass this on simply as info- not sure if it has any significance, as all seems normal now.

Also, I am attempting to change my Master Title in "My Account" on the Web SE - perhaps I am doing something wrong, but when I make the change and hit Save it reverts to the old title and does not update.

Yours, Yoda
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

The stockpile issue is I'm showing stock and not the current limit on that screen.
I will show both and label them appropriately in the next release.

As for Master Handle, it might be because you are in the client as well, and that overrides it, or it could be an issue of caching. I will look into it. Please try changing your master handle in the client from the global menu, I'm pretty certain that is working correctly.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Cossid »

Hetulik wrote:What do you think about an "apply setting to all planets option"? Say if I wanted to set all planets at 90% guns 10% fighters, or set eng allocations a certain way on all planets. Or set armaments across all planets?
While there are times this could be useful, I don't like how dangerous it could be.
Hetulik wrote:As a FYI I find I exclusively use the Web PM. If you could clean up the Web mail functionality as well that would be nice as I find I am actively using it. For example the buttons don't display so i'm not sure which one i'm clicking. I can take some time to provide some more feedback, but its an area that i'm actively using but isn't intuitive. The mail system within the game is much nicer.
I have added buttons and fixed the auto-complete for new messages. I still have not added handling for team invites in web mail yet. The issue of buttons not showing is an interesting one. I knowingly did not have working images, but did have accessibility text, which browsers should use as a fallback. It appears Chrome fails to do this, whereas Firefox does. Chrome hides broken images with no fallback, IE shows a broken image placeholder and uses the tooltip for the fallback text. If there are any major shortcomings aside from team management in web mail, please let me know what I might not be seeing.
Hetulik wrote:I'd also like to see a way to list teams and all players on the teams without having to select each team.
This will be updated in the client on the next server patch, probably sometime within the next day or two for the viewing from the client. I will look at doing something similar on the website over the weekend.
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Re: Alpha War 2 Feedback

Post by Yoda »

Greetings, Caleb

Some recent thoughts as I continue to thoroughly enjoy your revival of SE.

An observation: The Trade Surplus Rate appears in the Modify Planetary Operations screen. The trade surplus rate you set most influences the Commodity Stockpiles Screen. Perhaps it should be there?

As I shuttled troops, guns and fighters around my planets in my lightly shielded totally defenseless Transport, I thought about the convoys of merchant ships early in World War Two, beset by U-Boats and Fw200 Condors. Those transport ships and tankers were generally lightly armed, not so much because a 50 caliber machine gun could actually effectively defend them from the wolf packs or bombers, but for the morale of the crew, so they didn't feel like sitting ducks without being able to hit back in some small fashion.
What about a limited rear directed only weapon on transports (let's face it - transports are going to be running from danger) to perhaps intercept incoming missiles and/or torpedoes? Just a thought.

Also, it would be nice to be able to get back into a scout at whatever planet you left it to enter another class of ship (especially a transport) on returning to that same planet. The "Ship only available at Imperial Bases" message is disheartening - means a player has to fly his transport (or other ship) to an Imp to get back into the speedy scout. Or, although I realize scouts are available "free" from the Imperial planets, how about the ability to build your own scouts in your shipyards?

These are just thoughts - have no idea how difficult it would be to incorporate these musings into SE, or even if anyone else other than myself thinks they are interesting ideas. I still enjoy SE the way it is; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yoda
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