On 2008-03-11 13:43, DMC-13 wrote:
I was reading the other posts to make sure I didn't go over the same things that others before me had brought up when I realized that I was going to forget my own experience in the test. So I'll just take it from the top and go from there. Please excuse me if I get off track while making this report and if it

Nothing below is sarcastic and or in any way intended as a insult.
Just trying to explain and or give my personal comments, explanations and or confirming bugs..

First of all, I had decided to go in with an ICC engineer and do some building like I've been doing in Admiral. Right off the bat, problem's with getting into the test. First with my firewall, then with my antivirus protection. After about 10 min of reset, I get into the test. Now I had read the rules for beta testing before I started but after the 10 min reset to my computer, I forgot about not disbanding Infintry for population which kicked me out again a few more times, my fault. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Firewall? Anti virus? First of these are all problems that vary for every player.
The more you want to protect your computer the harder it will be to do anything with that computer.
Its true that Game CQ Beta could use at least a script that adds it to the xp/vista firewall exclusions.
But for all other software this will be up to the player to get it working.

First I used the troop transport and a couple of planets I couldn't unload troops on them. Maybe because they were next to a jumpgate? I don't know. Why would a troop transport be spawned with only two units. Are these Army Reserves? How about a full load of troops to go with the transports? The jump sound was a little loud and short but cool, a nice surprise. Now I'm not sure but It seemed like the Flash circle when exiting the jump wasn't centered around the ship but was off to the right . I can't remember exactly.

Troop transports, yes you can never carry enough infantry on them. And spawning them from the home gate with only two on them is a little awkward if the can support ten.
But i think you played on the ICC side. because the dev's already have been playing around with it.
A UGTO ST-201 ligh transport holds two infantry, while the UGTO ST-211 Heavy transport holds Four.
And not to forget the K'Luth Advanced carrier holds three. and this is beta so everything can still change.

Jump sound that is something where all currently surprised with, it sounds nice but timing is a little off.
Dev's are currently playing around with it trying to make it fit or trying other sounds.
And about the exit flash, yes that is a confirmed bug.

When plotting a jump course and pressing "J", the jump timer would count down and then stop at 0.0 and do nothing, no jump. Press J again, server said jump aborted, then the ship would realign itself to jump and be back at 0.0. Had to turn the ship right after jump abort to regain control. E-jump worked, and so did orbit jumping from planet to planet, during the last part of orbit jump the collision warning would sound which kinda freaked me out. Also I tried to orbit jump to another planet about 1200 gu away and it wouldn't do it, it just powered up the Ion drives instead. What is the cut off distance for auto orbit jump drive anyway? I think it should be 1000gu's or more for auto orbit j-drive and anything under that should be sublight. I could be wrong. No one else was inside with me so I don't know what the alarm is like when an enemy gets into sensor range. I hope it's more than just a bleep.

Jump bug is confirmed, i don't know that the problem is but I think its related to the sensor sharing bug.

O you never watched a other player exit the jump. it looks like the ship is bungying around at the end of the jump.
If you manual jump close enough to the planet, it can even look like your bungying in the planet and back.
However due to some sync problems you might even crash in the planet because of this.
Consider this work in progress. and yes the crashing part should not happen and it is a bug.

I don't know if it is or if it isn't but i think there is only one enemy threat level classification.
And i don't think you want o hear some voice over and over calling "Enemy signature detected" especially when you have incoming enemy missile fire.
It would be nice if there where two kinds of classifications and there warnings; one for ships and one for fighters/missiles.

How about eng and extractors having an early warning system, sorta like an increased range since they're usually way busy with building and mining. The warning system could be like the red alert siren on star trek or something like that which you have to manually turn off. Also, how about making it so they don't have to be facing the planets while mining and putting some lite armor on extractors to give them a chance to escape. Just thought I'd throw a couple of ideas in with this report.

We could give the extractors a scanner but that wouldn't help. But extractors should never be close to or inside enemy territory unless part of really big fleet. And this brings me back to the Warning classifications.

O and Armor on something that mines for minerals? waste of construction funds if you ask me.
I would even like to suggest not putting IE drives on them anymore. but using the old AFE engine's who are in theorie cheaper to produce and robuster for preforming tasks like mining.

Maybe it's just me but while building one planet, I scraped a barracks and couldn't seem to get the diamond on the planet to register under the troops and the stacking of troops, didn't like that. As I said earlier, I'm just going over everything. Liked the Idea of needing certain tech lvl's to upgrade the ship and the fact that the items are there posted, no confusion.

Troops on a empty space take up a building slot, confirmed bug.
And about the tech level for upgrades i totaly agree. lets finally remove the confusing factor.

Will ships be able to mod another factions items? Two frigates meet in battle, one gets destroyed, in the remains is a special weapon or equipment item. Since the ships are of the same class, the items could be adapted but only by a qualified engineer, for instance a Rear Admiral Engineer would not be able to mod a station, etc. Think of it as buried treasure or the spoils of war which comes around once in a while which will get players to search the debris field a little more. If not, a high ranking engineer should be able to adapt different items to his ship and also the extractor's ship who gets him the materials he needs to build. With higher rank, more items can be adapted. These two ships are a team that create the infra structure of each faction and with time and rank, enginer's should be able to work with anything.

Looking at it as a idea its nice feature, little concerned about exploit but nothing further.
But i think there trying to get rid of devices as cargo. and doing so removing al lot of stuff the database server needs to keep track of.
However spoils of war should be a nice feature maybe at a later stage commodities might be added to the game, witch can become the spoils of war. who knows?[/b]

I'm not sure but when in f2 and scanning planets, I believe they all said the same thing, like 10,000 resources or something. Will they be split up into classes? Like low, medium, high and rich? Low for metals alone, high for having three or more types and rich for the exotic metals? Need to know which planet to go to first for materials needed. I did like the idea of having factory's increase mining production.

[i]The 10,000 resources is a starting pool. of would you like to mine a planet before you can even build a hub.
But thinking about it, maybe 10,000 is a little to much.

But yes different planet types will become very important. especially with the introduction of a Super-terran type, the only planet type that can support shipyards.
Take for example to build a shield generator it requires Hypermatter to be present on the planet. but not all planets have Hypermatter. Same for other buildings.

Well, I'm getting tired and starting to get off track. I can't remember anything else right now and would like to test it out again sometime in the future, now that I've downloaded beta into my computer. Oh yeah, I don't recall seeing Fighter bases level 2 or 3. Are those removed now, I hope not. Planets need those for a half way chance of protecting themselves.
I believe thats it for now.

The Fighterbases have been incorporated in to one base. to reduce the complexity of it all.
And the planets will be able to protect them selves more effective than in the current release.
Read the Development Log's, loads of changes have been made and the are all listed there.
If something is missing check the bug thread and post a reply in it if something is not right and not listed in either.

DMC-13