first impressions

[jack1974]

Ehm, ok maybe wait until tomorrow before downloading that beta

edit: here works, maybe means it isn't compatible with old saved games. If I start a new game from scratch and save in middle of the battle, I can reload it fine.

[Jude]

That's what I did: started a new game from scratch. I was using the demo version of the new beta, if that makes a difference.

Power Mac G4 1.25 GHz DP
OS X 10.3.9
NVidia GeForce 4 Ti graphics card
1 GB RAM
160 GB ATA hard drive

Jude

EDIT: Still happening. It seems to be a bug when you load a game after saving without clicking on a specific game slot (even though the slot is already highlighted).

[kaiser]

Played the 1.0.2 on my Mac. Load / Save during fight works now. I notice now you go back to the previous screen after saving, I think it's good. Also you added a confirmation box when exiting, and that's really good too. I don't like much the "overwriting previous savegame warning, since I do lot of action before saving, I mean if I click on a save slot, type/change the name, then click on save, means I'm sure

[jack1974]

Good to hear it works now
I've added another feature today, in the ship placement phase now you can see a small display of the current ship name, class, and statistics (the same you see in the Military Screen). So now is easier to distinguish between your ships in the list, during the preparations for the battle.

If no more bugs are found in next 2 days I'm going to release this officially as version 1.0.2, it was a very big update. Still more to come in next weeks, of course

[Jude]

Played the 1.0.2 on my Mac. Load / Save during fight works now. I notice now you go back to the previous screen after saving, I think it's good. Also you added a confirmation box when exiting, and that's really good too. I don't like much the "overwriting previous savegame warning, since I do lot of action before saving, I mean if I click on a save slot, type/change the name, then click on save, means I'm sure

The warning was necessary for those of use who are used to clicking the save button first to bring up a change name, select slot, etc. option. If the save button was clicked without first specifying a slot, often there was no way to tell where the game had been saved and no option to change the name.

Jude

[wolfdaddy2002]

Bought Supernova 2 yesterday. Love it, but i also love Magic Stones. After reading slugthehog's complaints I just want to put my thoughts out there.

1. I don't care about saves during battles, i could take it or leave it. It's not a feature I would use. And i do have a life, and have yet to have a three hour battle. Mind, i might be playing on a lower dificulty as well. That and i tend to go for overwhelming force.
2. I don't mind taking a lot of time before building my first starship. I like being able to look at the research cost and think "ok what do i need ot research before i build a cruiser" FYI i've conquered a seven planet system with four scouts and four transports. in an hour. (The key point was getting my scouts behind the cruisers and keeping them behind them. The cruisers couldn't shoot back, and four scouts concentrating their fire on one ship every other turn will kill anything after a while. Once the crew was down to a few people i'd have my transport come in and take over the ship.)
3. I admit i don't read game manuals. The quick tips and pop ups work just fine for me.
4. I like the manuvering for Supernova 2. Sure it's not as "realistic" as a lot of space games out there. But honestly, I admit, i get confused (and would make a horrible space fighter pilot!) with 3-d free fall space fighting.

Now my ONLY complaint.
I like how research works. But i would like SOME control over ship design. I don't expect you to come up with a hundred extra ship icons. But i would like to be able to say, research armor 2 and equip my scouts with it. Or build a new type of scout once i've researched some weapons. Possibly come up with some combos that aren't in the game.

[jack1974]

Thanks for the comments. In version 1.0.2 which is on testing right now (available to download, see the beta forums) I've added anyway some of the features requested by slugthog and Jude.
About your request, I have in mind of creating yet another screen "Build your custom ship", so I'll add that feature in a future upgrade. initially, each device had a "energy" value, so that you could basically put on any ship, any device you wanted, creating lot of combos (the only limitation was the total energy consumed by devices, that must not exceed the energy production of the ship).
Later in the game found out that by doing this player could easily discover deadly combos that is almost like "cheats". So I would have to test it carefully and maybe also add another parameter like size (so that you couldn't put a huge mega cannon on a scout, for example!). So, in the end I decided not to implement it in the initial release, but the code is there, and is a feature that can be "easily" added.
I just need to find the time to program the new screen and implement all the features.

For now can only tell you that I have planned to add that feature, but not very soon: first I want to add also the skirmish mode within 1-2 months, then probably next big update will be this one.

[wolfdaddy2002]

Thanks for the response!!
I've thought of a solution to ship building. It's kinda simplistic, but I think it will work. (unlike some games where you can spend an hour on ship design whenever you get a new tech) Each ship Class (Scout, I would put Crusier/transport/interceptor in the same weight Class, Battleship, and Mother ship, those would be the Classes of ships.) would have a certain number of slots in Attack, Defense and Other. (I would restrict Defense to one armor and one shield btw.)
2. Special weapons (Shadow weapons for this example) would require a power source. (Shadow generator for example) These would fit into Other.
3. Tenatively certain grades of weapons would take up more slots if put on a smaller ship. (Shadow bolt would take one slot on a battle ship, but say, three on a Scout.)
4. Slots NOT used would grant a speed and/ or turning bonus. Thus a heavily armed Scout would be slower and less manuverable than a lightly armed one.
5. New research items: Power sources for the special weapons, these could be upgradable to become smaller. Same with the different special weapons. (Shadow energy , then shadow power 1 to say 5. And then Shadow laser 1 to 5. ) Each upgrade would cause an increase in either damage, range, or make it smaller.
6. Example: A Scout would have three slots for attack, defense, and other. The standard scout has three attacks (2 lasers and an SRM), one defense (Armor 1) and one other (Improved turning). With this system it would also recieve a bonus of 4 due to empty slots. I'd have the computer divide that equally between speed and turning, resulting in a plus two to each. So, using the same idea, we could arm the Shadow Scout with: 2 Shadow Lasers and an SRM (i'd have MRM's take two slots on a Scout), Shadow Armor 1, Shadow Field 1, for Defense. Then in Other: Improved Turning, and Shadow Power Source 1. This results in a powerful scout that only gets a bonus of 2, one for speed and one for turning. Shadow Bolts would take two slots since i think its a Cruiser class weapon.
7. new tech: improved sensors. Prerequisites : Spectral manipulation, spectral anlysis, then improved sensors 1 to 3. Which basicaly let a ship see further OR show exactly what weapons etc the opponets have and how long they take to recharge. This would have to be installed in Other catgory.

Anyway those are my tenative thoughts. Feel free to use them or not.

[jack1974]

This "slot" idea is cool, in practice it join my idea of energy+size. Indeed is a good system and probably could use it. I could make the slots like squares, and for example a big weapon like the bolt would fit into 2 squares (horizontal or vertical) so that maybe in a scout wouldn't fit or would fill all the attack slot (I imagine it like a sort of tetris so you see exactly how much space left you have to put extra devices).
Then I like also the idea of adding speed/turning bonus if you equip the ship lightly.
I would probably limit the standard ships to have only "standard" weapon (so you can't fit a shadow laser or rainbow cannon on a standard cruiser) and also I'd need the CPU to make some different combination (otherwise they would always fight using the default configurations).

Thanks for the post though, some very good ideas that I'm surely going to use, when I'll program this part of the game :p

[slugthog]

I have been pulling together a board game design for the last couple weeks so haven't had much time to play S2:S and I am employing an idea there that you might find interesting.

...sluggy