#1 Post by eleazar » Fri Feb 22, 2013 4:28 pm

Download:

Key Changes:

Very much improved, non-cheating AI. Sometimes experienced 4X players loose.

Many GUI enhancements and shortcuts.

Galactopedia expanded with game mechanics articles and many cross-links.

Batch production of ships now possible.

Improved sitrep notifications

Reworked stealth and detection

Almost everything has been enhanced, reworked, and better balanced.

Change Log

This is the version of FreeOrion you should choose if just want to play, and don't care about participating in game development, at the cost of dealing with bugs and changes. If you are new to FreeOrion this is probably the place to start as well.FreeOrion is still very much in the middle of development. There are still major features to be added, and much work left to be done. However, i think this project has reached the point where most 4X players will get enjoyment out of it, not only those interested in game development.I'd like to thank Vezzra and Dilvish, Sloth, yandonman, and unjashfan who have put in a lot of work on this release, in testing, scripting, and coding, and have seriously improved the speed of development. Many other community members have taken part as well. Follow FreeOrion on Twitter if you want to receive related news, especially announcements of releases.since v0.4.1 July of 2012.~ Very much improved AI.~ ~ Added an AI aggression setting during game setup.~ Keyboard presses should now account for the operating system language setting, and it should be possible to type non-Latin characters in-game as long as the appropriate character set is used in the selected stringtable file.~ Added an objects list window, with collapsable rows showing objects containing other objects~ ~ Objects list has an incomplete filtering function to control what objects are shown.~ ~ Right clicking an object in the objects list give a command to data dump about that object to the messages window. (For debug purposes)~ Added ion storms moving around the map. Ships and planets in storms have reduced stealth and detection.~ Improved Sitrep~ ~ Added type filters.~ ~ Old sitrep entries are kept on later turns, and may be reviewed.~ ~ Different icons for different event types~ Added droplists to items on production queue to produce multiple items before being removed from the queue.~ All ships produced by an empire on a single turn are now put into a single fleet, rather than a separate fleet for each ship.~ Added a happiness meter to planets.~ Disabled production of duplicate buildings when one already has been produced.~ Various turn-processing and GUI speed improvements.~ Added a Protection Focus~ Reworked combat:~ ~ An attacking ship will fire each of its weapons separately at independently-selected targets.~ ~ A ship that is not visible on the map to an empire cannot be fired at by that empire's ships in battle until the ship fires on one of that empire's ships.~ Reworked autosaving~ ~ Autosaves are in a separate directory from regular saves~ ~ There is a customizable limit on the number of autosaves to keep~ Unified resource and fleet supply into a single meter: the Supply meter. Infrastructure is not involved.~ ~ Outpost now provide 0 jump supply, and colonies 1 jump supply. Techs and buildings can extend that.~ Removed infrastructure from having any effect on producing Industry or Research.~ Greatly reduced the number of Theory techs that have no direct effect.~ Adjusted price and research time of many techs.~ Recallibrated Stealth & Detection Strength numbers~ ~ to max around 100~ ~ to work with the new mechanics~ ~ Reduced detection ranges for ships and planets by roughly half.~ Loosened requirements for Asteroid hulls/parts~ ~ Asteroid processors are no longer shipyards, but must be built on a belt for a shipyard anywhere in the system to build asteroid hulls.~ ~ Rock/Crystallized Armor Plating now requires an Asteroid Reformation Processor somewhere in the empire.~ Rebalancing of weapons, ship hulls, armour, and shield parts.~ Made Terraforming more expensive, and made it get more expensive for repeatedly terraforming the same planet.~ Made colony ships more expensive.~ Disable production of shipyards at outposts.~ Adjusted Microgravity Industry to "Increases Industry by +5 on all Industry-focused colonies in system with an asteroid belt outposts. Additional asteriod outposts do not provide additional benefit."~ Removed loophole that made Exobot Origin buildings cheaper than building Exobot colony ships on Exobot worlds.~ Some rough species balancing:~ ~ Weakened Trith with Narrow EP~ ~ Strengthened Egassem with Ultimate Industry~ ~ Strengthened Laenfa with Average Industry~ ~ Strengthened Gyisache with Great Research~ ~ Species with a starting weapons bonus now also start with more ships~ Major Redo of Ground Troops:~ ~ Protection focus now increases max troops to 200%~ ~ Species Bonus/Malus is now multiplied~ ~ Native planets and homeworlds now have a bonus to troops~ ~ Outposts have weaker defenses~ ~ Increased cost of Garrison Techs, and decreased capacity of Troop Pods~ Increased penalties to population on poor and hostile planets.~ Planet meters, such as population, can now be negative, which can lead to faster loss of population on uninhabitable planets.~ Redstricted production of imperial palaces if an empire already has one that it produced.~ Some buildings deduct from their planet's infrastructure, reducing benefits from having high infrastructure on those planets.~ Added increasing cost to some ship hulls depending on the number of ships an empire owns.~ Incrased amount of information players are sent about other empires, including capitals and their supply network.~ More Game Concepts 'pedia entries.~ Russian & French translation update.~ Added Dampening Cloud monster~ Added Planetary Evacuation~ New ultimate detection strenght tech "Omni-scanners"~ New detction strength booster special, Panopticon Complex~ Added Philosopher Planet special~ Added Furthest species~ Added a ship speed boost effect to lighthouses~ New engine ship parts~ Added planetary shield and defense boosting techs.~ Reworked stargate mechanics.~ Made three of the indigenous species telepathic~ New Focus & Planet meter icons with matching chart colors.~ Sitrep icons.~ More unique icons, especially fo ship parts.~ Added scanlines to more places in GUI to indicate objects the player previously saw but can't see on the current turn.~ Added multi-turn expanding ring effect for supernovae.~ Added one-click colonize and invade buttons to sidepanel. Selecting ships in the FleetWnd will override the default selection of ships to use for these actions.~ Added cumulative weapon, structure, and sheild, information to fleets so it is easy to gauge a fleet's chance of winning.~ Numpad keypresses now enter numbers when numlock is on, and act as arrow navigation keys in text edit widgets.~ Added option to swap left and right mouse buttons, for left-handed players.~ Added line to producible item tooltips to indicate that items must be unlocked.~ Added key remapping function for hotkeys, via the file keymaps.txt~ Recoloured most planet meters.~ Added right-click popup menu commands to:~ ~ set map / misc options (enabled in options screen).~ ~ split damaged ships from a fleet.~ ~ split unfueled ships from a fleet.~ ~ scrap a whole fleet.~ ~ have a fleet automatically explore.~ ~ look up special icons in the 'pedia.~ ~ look up ship designs in the 'pedia.~ ~ generate planet-species suitability report~ New Census tootlip that shows the species breakdown of the player's empire's population~ Other empire resource icons have simple tooltips.~ Adjusted contrast of progress bars.~ Hid some details of projects on production queue when there is insufficient screen space.~ Added red/green colour coding of colony predicted target populations on colonize button.~ Added ! indicators on top of screen to indicate if PP or RP are going unspent.~ ~ These indicators may be clicked to open the appropriate production / research screen.~ Added thick starlane indicators in empire colour to show connected systems that can share production.~ ~ The colour of these indicators is altered conspicuously when the group of systems has unspent PP available.~ Alphabetized entries in most encyclopedia lists.~ Added fleet summary statistics (number of ships, weapon strength, etc.) to fleet data panels in fleets window.~ Added somewhat unsightly text indicator of star colour to system sidepanel.~ Made popup menus less transparent by default.~ Changed how names are shown for enemy ships and fleets.~ Added Can Produce Ships and Can Colonize conditions to popups for ship designs in the production screen, to better indicate why they can / can't be produced at a location.~ Added links to techs that can unlock buildings, ship hulls, and ship parts in their 'pedia entries.~ Added empire summary icons for empire detection and a count of ships owned.~ ~ Removed mineral and trade icons.~ Added a plain-text stealth indicator to the building tooltip.~ Disabled building shipyards at outposts.~ Disabled the construction of any duplicate buildings at the same location. It is still possible to double-queue a building and get multiples.~ Fixed longstanding font corruption with non-Latin text.~ Partial fix for a crash with font text colours wrapping over line ending in the encyclopedia window. May still result in glitchy text colouring, but hopefully won't crash.~ Fixed issue where some producible items would be replaced by empty space on their list.~ Fixed issue where in-game options taking text would be saved as "1" instad of blank text.~ Hopefully fixed crashes when manipulating fleets.~ Fixed miscalculation of number of production projects in progress.~ Fixed building indicator progress bar~ Prevented ships from engaging in combat with planets of which they have only basic visibility.