Bay 12 Games Forum

That's weird, as one of the patch notes is that a segfault in ubuntu was fixed.  I guess not the one you're having though...

Have you asked at the official forum?

The defense stations I build at each planet without a starbase are basically the AI designed defense base, with a medical and recreation facility slapped on. In the portion of the game where I tend to be in the red, these stations are costing me about 12k to build and 3k of maint, if I recall correctly.  Not cheap, but cheaper than a defense fleet, or worse yet, eating tons of pirate raids.  Those raids can cost a LOT of money and materials.  I have seen those defense bases take a good size pirate fleet with no trouble at all, so perhaps I could downsize the default one a bit to get some savings there.

I have been bad about upgrading my command and commerce techs, so I'm sure that's something I should focus on earlier. 

I've noticed an odd quirk that I have to assume is a bug, even if it kinda makes a little sense:  When I build a civilian mining station, I pay for it.  When I upgrade a civilian mining station, I must have enough money to pay for the cost of the retrofit.  However, and this is the weird part, when I actually order the retrofit, the civilians pay ME the retrofit cost. 
I try not to take advantage of that, because it seems wrong, especially given that the game makes sure I have enough money to pay for the upgrade in the first place.  But honestly given how much cash the civilians usually have, I could just slap a bunch of crap on their designs and force them to upgrade whenever I want more cash. 

It's funny how many seemingly obvious bugs like that there are, given how long the game's been out.  This game could really use an unofficial bug-fix patch, but it seems like the community is really tiny, so I'm not holding out hope.  There are some cool looking mods I plan to try out after I get a good handle on the base game.

One thing I really wish was that the financial information window actually reflected reality.  The cash flow number is meaningless, the bonus income is meaningless, I'll be running in the red sometimes for cash flow, and yet my actual cash on hand is skyrocketing.  Other times I have a nice healthy cash flow and bonus income, yet my cash on hand is dropping!  The non-bonus income should be easy to predict, since it's based on taxes of a fairly constant population, and maintenance once again is completely predictable, so the cash flow number ought to be a lot more reliable.  Bonus income is based off the doings of individual civilian ships, so I can see why that's basically impossible to predict.


Nevaris:
The constuctors when not in automated mode will still pick up queued construction jobs, which is how I handle them.  I have all my constructors off automated mode, then I'll go into the expansion planner and queue up jobs for them individually, or go into the resort locations window and queue a resort, etc.  This way they only build what I tell them to build, but i don't have to actually ever select a constructor (unless I am trying to repair ships in a debris field, or something like that.)  They seem to usually stay fueled, I believe they fill up their tank whenever they pick up construction materials, so unless you have a fuel shortage at that location you shouldn't have to tell them to refuel, but the game is nice enough to give you a warning when a ship's fuel is low anyway.

I've been having some fun with this game, I broke down and bought it for full price, I missed the 60% off sale by like a day...

It's an awesome game, I have to say.  Terrible tutorials, laughable help files, incredibly outdated wiki, a weird mix of great and terrible UI, but I'm a DF player damn it, no fancy graphical game is going to get the better of me!

But yeah, it's a lot of fun.  I'm on my third game now, after the first two went rather poorly.

Game 1: What am I, a wimp? I don't need no stinkin' tutorial.  Oh, and I read the AI isn't that great, so I'll start on hard mode, cuz I'm a pro at everything!  (Builds a crappy spaceport and like 1 research lab, and a couple ships) Ok, my advisors think we should stop paying these pirates, sounds good to me! Hey wait, all my stuff is asplode... 

(Do some internet reading, try the laughably useless tutorials)

Game 2: Ok, let's go with normal difficulty.  (Does stuff, gets a decently sized empire) Ok, now to crush some of these puny weaklings around me. HAHAHAH!!! (Takes over some weaker races) Hmm, those new refugee guys are really doing well.. oh well, they're on the other side of the galaxy, I'll deal with them later. (Continues a fruitless war against a neighbor)  Wow, the AI sure is bad at running wars for me... I guess I'll handle that in the future... (Story stuff happens) Hmm, well I have an alliance with most of the other races and those ancient robot guys, it should be fine, besides this is a story encounter, I'm sure it'll be easy to win. (More stuff happens) Well... those guys seem to be kicking everyone's ass... oh well, I'm sure some scripted event will happen and turn it around. (More stuff) Well! I'm sure dead!

Game 3: Well, screw that story mode noise, I want to just play in the galaxy!  And the AI did such an atrocious job, I'll just handle everything my damn self.  (Does the things) Hahahah, stupid dinosaurs, your puny colonies will be mine (Blows up the stuff) Hey, what the hell, why are all my colonies rebelling.  Oh... I have dinosaurs in my empire too... oh right, that independent world, apparently I colonized a few more worlds with them... now they're all mad because I'm attacking the empire of their race. (Continues with the war, planets continue revolting and re-joining the dino empire)  Damn it!  (Pirates take advantage of all ships in the warfront, build bases all up in my territory) No! More raids?!? Why is my money so red, anyway?!? ARGHGHGHGH!!!! Fine, no more war, as long as you dinosaurs will be my subjugated slaves. (Ends the dinosaur war, having ended up with 1 of the 3 planets originally conquered)

So that's where I am now, trying to build the infrastructure I should have had in place before I started this war.  Also, my stuff periodically just blows up because a nearby empire is really mad at me and apparently has really good intelligence agents.  I also now realize the error of my ways when I just went to the expansion planner screen and just colonized every available world.  As a result, my empire has a few distant outliers and it takes forever to build a defensive base.  My awesome warships turned out to be a little light in the fuel tank department, so now they need to be retrofit...

I'm really liking this game.  The usual 4X strategy of wild expansion is punished just like in real life, with logistical problems, rather than artificial silly penalties.  The fact that my fleets are way more powerful than an enemies does me no good if I can't keep those fleets well supplied.  My explosive expansion looked like it was working really well, until it became obvious that I had stretched myself too thin.

I do wish someone could do a mod to make the UI better.  I know there are mods to make it better looking, but I need more functionality.  It annoys me to no end that there is no way (that I could find) to quickly check if each colony has a defensive base, I had to actually zoom into each planet and click to see if there's a base.  Really?!? They couldn't put a tab under the colony view for space structures?!?  I can't be the only person who's run into this.

The galaxy map in general could afford to show a bit more in terms of what's going on in each system as well.  At least whether or not there are independent colonies there! That's important and useful info that would be good to have at a glance.

The fact that fleet stances don't work at all against pirates is also really annoying.  I know it's because technically you're not at war, but that's a stupid cop out.  Yes, fine, that's the technical reason, but obviously if a player tells a fleet to defend a certain region, he means against enemy empires and pirates that he's not in a protection agreement with.  If a player commands a fleet to attack bases in a certain region of space, it's a safe bet he wants to kill the pirate bases there too.  It's a shame they left this feature half finished (And from what I've read, even in the circumstances where it works it does not work well).  If automation is a big selling point of your game, it's a good idea to make sure it actually works...

So, like many games, I really like it, and I'm really disappointed in the devs in some respects.  It's just weird they went to the effort to make such a great game, but left so many things in a state of half-assedness.  The fact that they advertised that universe would be discounted for people who owned previous titles, then retroactively made that advertised offer a limited time one, really rubs me the wrong way, although I personally wasn't affected, it's just plain bad ethics.  In fact, it might qualify as downright fraudulent...  So I will be quite unlikely to buy another matrix published game, at least, it would have to be really good, because on top of shady marketing practice, you know it'll be wildly overpriced.

So my review? Great game under the hood, quite bad UI, not much in terms of resources to help learn the game.  If you're not willing to put in a bit of a frustrating slog to learn the game, don't bother with this.  If you don't mind deplorably awful UIs and shady ass marketing, I'd recommend it. 

I squeezed in a win at the last minute with a GrSk, not worth many points but it was fast.  Bay 12 champs got number 19, not bad at all!

I lost a very promising FoAk in a very stupid way. I escaped a bad flayed ghost situation in the depths, but a storm dragon followed me up the stairs, and I figured I was safe to just walk away at 25 hp.  Well the lightning breath the dragon shot at me did 27 damage, so that was the end of that.  That loss was extremely demoralizing, and all I've done since is play weird combos with low high scores to try to at least accomplish something, but most of those combos are really terrible (There's a reason they have low high scores).  I only have 2 wins this tourney, so hopefully I can snap out of my DCSS funk.  Losing a character in the depths just sucks though... at that point I really should have won.

Quote from: Xgamer4 on May 16, 2016, 09:48:13 am

I've been gifted Gloves of Archery (Great! If I wasn't heavily invested in maces/flails and shields, and haven't touched ranged weapons) and Steam Dragon Armor (Great! If it was almost literally any other kind of dragon).

I think we should just replace Oka with Xom. He keeps giving me shadow dragon armor (err.... thanks?) and incredible daggers. And once a quicksilver dragon armor, which would've been pretty cool, if I wasn't already rocking MR+(9) because that's all the resistances I ever got that run...

MR(+9) isn't a thing, it was probably MP +9.  MR would show up as MR+ or MR++ or something like that.  Not that it sounds terribly relevant at this point.

OK, Aelig is on the miners! More blood for Armok! Err.. Xom...

Hooray, I got a win!

My vaults 5 entrance was a hilarious comedy of errors.  I fast traveled to vault 4, went and got a glass of water, then went on autopilot and took the stairs down without buffing up.  Suddenly I realized I had screwed up, but oh well, I quaffed a haste potion and started walking down a corridor.  Well I pretty quickly ended up totally surrounded, so it was teleport like an idiot time!  Luckily the first teleport landed me in a quadrant with a good layout for picking enemies off, and it wasn't too crowded. It also had the rune!

After clearing that quadrant I was about to move on to the next one, when suddenly I see Mennas!  Well, I wasn't about to lose this close to the finish line, so I did my best Sir Robin impression and passage of golubria'd my way to the stairs and got the hell out of there.  I left 3/4 of the vault treasure behind, but that's a fair price for not dying.

I guess due to a lack of enchant armor scrolls I felt much squishier than a melee orc character should, my victory involved a lot of bravely running away.  Boots of running and passage of golubria really helped my running away skills though. 

In zot I killed 9 OOFs, which is... a lot.  I was able to kill 3 or 4 with portal projectiles from behind something not as scary in several cases, but the rest just got beat up with an axe.  I used finesse a lot more than I usually do.  Managed to get some nasty muts, including teleportitis that fired off in zot, sending me into a (luckily mostly cleared) lung. 

The orb run was mostly OK, until the very end where this happened:
Uscheymu gestures.
There is a passage of Golubria here.
Uscheymu gestures at you.
You suddenly lose the ability to move!
The ice encasing you melts away.
Uscheymu gestures at you.
You easily resist.
You can move again.
I got glaciated then paralyzed by a pan lord on D1, if I hadn't used a passage of golubria I would have been paralyzed right next to him.  But, luckily I did, so I didn't die.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup version 0.18.1-5-g4a78601 (webtiles) character file.

1464948 damiac the Slayer (level 27, 203/237 HPs)
             Began as a Hill Orc Warper on May 9, 2016.
             Was a High Priest of Okawaru.
             Escaped with the Orb
             ... and 3 runes on May 12, 2016!
             
             The game lasted 09:59:16 (100877 turns).

damiac the Slayer (Hill Orc Warper)               Turns: 100877, Time: 09:59:16

Health: 203/237    AC: 41    Str: 24    XL:     27
Magic:  29/29      EV: 18    Int: 13    God:    Okawaru [*****.]
Gold:   2280       SH:  4    Dex: 16    Spells: 11 memorised, 10 levels left

rFire  + + .      SeeInvis .    a - +8 battleaxe "Moitat" {freeze, rC+}
rCold  + . .      Gourm    .    V - +2 plate armour {rF+}
rNeg   + . .      Faith    .    (shield currently unavailable)
rPois  .          Spirit   .    P - +1 hat of Qibuq {rElec rN+ MR+}
rElec  +          Dismiss  .    U - +2 cloak
rCorr  .          Reflect  +    y - +2 pair of gloves {Str+3}
SustAt .          Harm     .    G - +2 pair of boots {run}
MR     +++..                    s - +4 amulet of reflection
Stlth  ..........               x - ring of protection from fire
                                c - +6 ring of protection

@: very slightly contaminated, hasted, repel missiles, very quick, extremely
resistant to hostile enchantments, extremely unstealthy
A: frail 1, low mp 1
a: Heroism, Finesse, Renounce Religion
0: Orb of Zot
}: 3/15 runes: serpentine, barnacled, silver


You escaped.
You worshipped Okawaru.
Okawaru was extremely pleased with you.
You were not hungry.

You visited 9 branches of the dungeon, and saw 49 of its levels.
You visited the Abyss 1 time.
You visited 1 bazaar.
You also visited: Labyrinth.

You collected 6880 gold pieces.
You spent 4600 gold pieces at shops.

Inventory:

Hand Weapons
 a - the +8 battleaxe "Moitat" (weapon) {freeze, rC+}
   (Okawaru gifted it to you on level 2 of the Orcish Mines)   
   
   It has been specially enchanted to freeze those struck by it, causing extra
   injury to most foes and up to half again as much damage against particularly
   susceptible opponents. It can also slow down cold-blooded creatures.
   
   It protects you from cold.
 b - a +0 blowgun
 Z - a +7 executioner's axe of flaming
Missiles
 e - 32 needles of confusion
 u - 25 poisoned javelins
 J - 16 javelins of penetration
 M - 21 silver javelins
 O - 8 curare-tipped needles
 Q - 19 needles of paralysis
 S - 67 javelins (quivered)
 T - 10 throwing nets
 W - 23 javelins of returning
Armour
 k - the +0 pair of boots "Cufazus" {rPois rF+ rN+}
   (Okawaru gifted it to you on level 4 of the Realm of Zot)   
   
   It protects you from fire.
   It protects you from poison.
   It protects you from negative energy.
 y - a +2 pair of gloves of strength (worn)
 G - a +2 pair of boots of running (worn)
 P - the +1 hat of Qibuq (worn) {rElec rN+ MR+}
   (Okawaru gifted it to you on level 10 of the Dungeon)   
   
   It insulates you from electricity.
   It protects you from negative energy.
   It affects your resistance to hostile enchantments.
 U - a +2 cloak (worn)
 V - a +2 plate armour of fire resistance (worn)
Jewellery
 c - a +6 ring of protection (left hand)
 i - an uncursed ring of resist corrosion
 s - a +4 amulet of reflection (around neck)
 x - a ring of protection from fire (right hand)
 B - an uncursed ring of see invisible
 F - an uncursed ring of protection from cold
 H - an uncursed ring of poison resistance
 Y - an uncursed ring of protection from magic
Wands
 h - a wand of teleportation (7/9)
 t - a wand of heal wounds (4/9)
 w - a wand of digging (5/24)
 I - a wand of digging (14/24)
 N - a wand of teleportation (5/9)
Scrolls
 d - 2 scrolls of summoning
 l - 4 scrolls of recharging
 m - 5 scrolls of blinking
 n - 16 scrolls of teleportation
 q - 2 scrolls of identify
 v - 25 scrolls of remove curse
 A - 7 scrolls of fear
 X - 6 scrolls of fog
Potions
 g - a potion of brilliance
 o - 9 potions of agility
 z - 2 potions of resistance
 C - a potion of cancellation
 D - 8 potions of heal wounds
 K - 17 potions of curing
 L - 7 potions of might
Comestibles
 f - 16 bread rations
 j - 15 beef jerkies
 p - 4 fruits


   Skills:
 + Level 24.8 Fighting
 - Level 20.4 Axes
 + Level 19.7 Throwing
 + Level 22.9 Armour
 + Level 18.3 Dodging
 - Level 6.7 Spellcasting
 - Level 8.0 Charms
 - Level 14.3 Necromancy
 - Level 11.0 Translocations
 - Level 7.0 Invocations


You had 10 spell levels left.
You knew the following spells:

 Your Spells              Type           Power        Failure   Level  Hunger
a - Apportation           Tloc           ####......   1%          1    None
b - Blink                 Tloc           N/A          1%          2    #......
c - Shroud of Golubria    Chrm/Tloc      ####......   1%          2    #......
d - Repel Missiles        Chrm/Air       ##....       21%         2    #......
e - Portal Projectile     Tloc           ####..       2%          3    ###....
f - Regeneration          Chrm/Necr      ####......   2%          3    ###....
g - Animate Skeleton      Necr           N/A          1%          1    None
h - Passage of Golubria   Tloc           N/A          10%         4    ####...
i - Animate Dead          Necr           N/A          2%          4    ####...
j - Control Undead        Necr           #####.....   2%          4    ####...
k - Vampiric Draining     Necr           #####.....   1%          3    ###....


Dungeon Overview and Level Annotations

Branches:
Dungeon (15/15)            Temple (1/1) D:5            Lair (8/8) D:10
 Shoals (4/4) Lair:5        Snake (4/4) Lair:3        Slime (0/6) Lair:8
    Orc (2/2) D:12            Elf (0/3) Orc:2        Vaults (5/5) D:14
  Crypt (0/3) Vaults:2     Depths (5/5) D:15            Zot (5/5) Depths:5

Altars:
Ashenzari
Cheibriados
Dithmenos
Elyvilon
Fedhas
Kikubaaqudgha
Makhleb
Nemelex Xobeh
Okawaru
Pakellas
Qazlal
Sif Muna
Trog
Vehumet
Xom
Yredelemnul
Zin
The Shining One

Shops:
D:4 [   D:7 %   D:10 ([   D:11 ?   Orc:2 }[[(?   Shoals:3 =   Vaults:4 !
Depths:3 [

Portals:
Hell: Depths:1 Depths:2 Depths:3 Depths:4 Depths:5
Abyss: Depths:2 Depths:4 Depths:5
Pandemonium: Depths:2 Depths:3
Ziggurat: Depths:4

Annotations:
Lair:1 exclusion: ice statue
Vaults:5 Mennas


Innate Abilities, Weirdness & Mutations

You are frail (-10% HP).
Your magical capacity is low (-10% MP).


Message History

Uscheymu gestures.
There is a passage of Golubria here.
Uscheymu gestures at you.
You suddenly lose the ability to move!
The ice encasing you melts away.
Uscheymu gestures at you.
You easily resist.
You can move again.
Unknown command.
Unknown command.
Unknown command.
Unknown command.
Uscheymu is engulfed in freezing vapours.
Unknown command.
Evoke which item? (* to show all) (? for menu, Esc to quit)
Zapping: w - a wand of digging (6/24)
Press: ? - help, Shift-Dir - straight line, f - you
The rock shatters into small pieces. This wand has 5 charges left.
There is a staircase leading out of the dungeon here.
You have escaped!
Full morgue here: http://crawl.berotato.org/crawl/morgue/damiac/morgue-damiac-20160512-015717.txt

Hah, I guess that's the best case scenario.  Sometimes you get a quadrant with a good diagonal chokepoint, but even then this character can't go 1v1 against too many enemies in a row, so I suspect there's gonna be a bit of teleporting like an idiot.  I've got two wands and a number of scrolls, so I can do quite a bit of teleporting.

Luckily, I do have boots of running, as well as passage of golubria, so I'll be a fast moving idiot if nothing else.
I don't have any stealth, so I'd rather avoid abyss.
I do have rCorr, so slime is an option, but I think vault 5 is typically easier.