Navigator Fail
Ship still sits and wiggles when following a travel direct to solar system order.

Fixed.

Hold and Fuel Cell Repairs
Someone asked how to manually fix damage to the hold or the fuel cell.

Hull, hold and fuel cell are all considered to be parts of the same "Hull" system. Manual repairs to the hull system are applied to the hull portion until it is fixed, then repairs are applied to the fuel cell, and finally to the hold.

I made a slight change in this update. When you are standing in a room with access to the fuel coupling, manual repairs are applied to the fuel cell first. When you are standing in a room with cargo hold access, manual repairs are applied ot the hold first.

Launch and Recovery Systems
Launch and recovery system of a ship should be split up like other systems with subsystems, so damage to the system doesn't disable all launchers and landers at once.

Launch and recovery systems are now split into separate individual systems.

Launch and recovery systems now appear on the damage report window. No module is associated with them. Each is represented by a different spare part, for part removal and replacement.

The launcher uses a Mechanical Part. A torque wrench is used to remove/replace parts and to repair hit points on a vehicle launcher. Each launcher has only one removable part.

The recovery system uses an Electronic Part. A soldering iron is used to remove/replace parts and to repair hit points on a vehicle recovery system. Each recovery system has only one removable part.

Electronic parts and mechanical parts are now included in the category of Spare Parts.

Manual repairs to a launcher are performed at the launch pad, which is the large icon placed in the blueprint at the beginning of the launch tube. It is not visible in the final model. A visual cue must be designed into the blueprint if one is desired.

Manual repairs to landing systems are performed at space vehicle parking spots. It is impractical to use the landing system icon itself because it is usually invisible outside the space ship. However, the landing system requires space vehicle parking spots for recovered vehicles. Those parking spots are the points of access for repairs to the landing system(s).

When a ship has multiple landing systems, a specific landing system cannot be targeted for manual part removal or repair. Repairs are applied to each of them in turn and parts are removed from each of them in turn.

Launch and recovery systems now fail to operate when they are broken. Previously they never stopped working regardless of damage.

Launch and recovery systems now appear on the power relay station. They can be disabled there. They can also be fixed there, by routing power from a different system.

Delete Manufacturing Process
When a manufacturing process is deleted, it should return the parts to inventory.

When a manufacturing process is deleted, it now returns its parts and money to the inventory of the building. Spacecraft processes already did this but others did not.

Magmium Heat Sink Patent
Magmium heat sink patent should require the cryo heat sink patent as a prerequisite.

Added cryo heat sink patent as a prerequisite to developing the magmium heat sink patent. The magmium heat sink patent was already a prerequisite to developing the vulcium heat sink patent.

Jurisdiction Overlap
New capital and police jurisdiction allowed to overlap existing police jurisdiction.

Fixed jurisdiction overlap test.

Add Patent Process
When adding a patent process, init the values on the dialog to one workshop and limit the output to one.

This is the normal configuration when I set up patent developments and I got tired of always setting them. If this is a bother to anyone, I'll put it back the way it was.

Tool tips were updated to explain how patent processes are affected by the number of workshops and the output limit.

Add Process Confusing
Add production line dialog is confusing when no more can be added. Asks for number of shops and stuff but says I can't do it.

Unneeded controls are now hidden when a process cannot be added.

NPCs Staring at Ceiling
NPCs spend too much time looking at the ceiling or the floor.

NPCs now straighten their head tilt sometimes.

I feel like doors are a laborious task that could be programmatically simplified for the users without limiting creativity.

My (limited) use of the designer finds me always creating the same type of door - a simple room to room via a small space in the hull or an external to internal door.  I always create the jig, cut the door, create the voids of about the same size, create the navs, associating everything and then doing any customizing like creating custom switches, states, tweaking voids, etc.


One way that would simplify door creation is to create all the necessary pieces and associations by default and let designers modify the auto-generated pieces.  For example:

• Given a valid selected door jig
  
• And two rooms are selected selected
  
• And the option for default part creation is ticked
  
• When the jig is cut
  
• Then the door direction is inferred by locations of the two rooms selected with the jig
  
• And a default path object is placed from one side of the jig through to the other extending slightly beyond the jig's bounds in the inferred direction of the door
  
• And a new room void is created for the door that encompasses the jig shape
  
• And the room void and path parts are associated with the new door's proper state
  
• And optionally the user chooses the thickness of the door much like the end of an extrusion, but using stretching mechanics
  

• Given a valid selected door jig
  
• And a selected room and a hull
  
• And the option for default part creation is ticked
  
• When the jig is cut
  
• Then the door direction is inferred by locations of the room and the opposite end of the jig volume from the room
  
• And a default path object is placed from one side of the jig through to the other extending slightly beyond the jig's bounds in the inferred direction of the door
  
• And a new room void is created for the door that encompasses 80% of the jig shape from the room side of the jig
  
• And a new hull void is created for the door that encompasses 25% of the jig shape from the opposite side of the jig from the room
  
• And the room void, hull void, and path parts are associated with the new door's proper state
  
• And optionally the user chooses the thickness of the door much like the end of an extrusion, but using stretching mechanics
  

I think seeing the amount of people who want a simpler designer again might help move things along. Post your name here as a pseudo-petition if you stopped playing entirely or almost entirely because of how janky or complicated or pain-in-the-ass-y the new features are, like the new designer, the new city system, ect.

I'll start!

Minty.

Navigator Fail
If I issue a travel direct to solar system order, sometimes the ship just sits and wiggles.

Navigator now plots course correctly to all destination solar systems.

Travel direct to system coordinates menu option removed from an otherwise crowded menu. That item was there to work around this problem, as it let you order the ship to the precise galaxy coords of the desired solar system. It is no longer needed because the coordinate is embedded in the travel direct to system order.

Warp Signature
I detected a warp signature near my homeworld! I traveled there, only to find an abandoned decaying city that still had an airport.

Warp signatures are emitted by airports and base air terminals that belong to empires with warp technology. The assumption is that warp ships of their empire would be traveling between their own space ports.

I changed this slightly. Warp signatures are no longer emitted if the airport or air base has no workers.

Event Log Icons
A bug report included a screen shot of the event log in some in-game mail. The icons next to the events were incorrect.

Fixed offset error in a table of icon names used for events.

Autoclose Visor
It would be very handy if my helmet visor was automatically closed for me if my ship is destroyed.

Helmet visor now closes automatically if the ship you are aboard is destroyed.

You must already be wearing an EV helmet with an unbroken seal.

Smelting Metal from Bullion
The process of smelting metal from bullion does not consume any bullion.

Processes that smelt metal from bullion now consume the bullion. Bullion consumed in this way is reported in the bank transactions report as "Smelted Metal".

Previously the only processes that consumed money were patent developments. Money was consumed as RnD funds and paid to local citizens as salary, for a net 0 gain or loss to the local banking system. This logic did not apply when smelting because the funds are literally converted into something else, units of metal.

Manual System Upgrade
Still can't seem to manually upgrade my ship sadly >_

Fixed bugs and made improvements:

• Removal of last system component now reports that it was the last component to be removed.
  
• Fixed hit points overflow error that caused big strange numbers after removing a few modules.
  
• Fixed a bug that broke the module type when upgrading a module by hand.
  
• Damage report now shows No Module when all system modules are removed.
  
• Damage report status icon is now grey when all system modules are removed.
  
• First new module installed into a system with no modules changes the module type for the system. That is how you manually change a wormhole drive into a warp drive.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the system module type to change by manually installing any new module, even if all previous modules were not removed first. You could remove one module and install a different one to change the type of any system, though the system was hopelessly broken after that.
  
• If the damage report for your ship shows a requirement for more than one kind of module for an FTL drive, you may not be able to fix it. Tell me the name of the ship and I will fix it.
  

Close Titan
A planet can have a titan in an orbit so close that the gravitational zone of the titan grabs people off the surface of the planet.

Fixed gravity zone radius error.

Trash Limit
The server is still imposing a limit of 100 units when trashing stuff at a building.

Something didn't propagate properly in the last server build last night.

I did a fresh clean build today. Should be fine now.

System Map Update
On the solar system map, the position of my guy seems to be updated live but the position of the planets is not. My guy ends up out in space when I should be on my planet.

Position of suns and planets on the solar system map are now updated in real time.

Star Map Scan
I scanned a solar system and the star map doesn't show it as scanned.

Fixed an error that caused solar systems to stop being flagged as explored by an empire.

Observatory Report
Star map observatory report sometimes works; sometimes responds with nothing at all.

Fixed a data error when sending info about solar systems that were only observed, not explored or scanned.

Building Trash Limit
Building has an option to trash inventory but it imposes a limit of 100 units at a time. This is impractical when trying to trash hundreds of thousands of units of something.

Eliminated trash limit at buildings.

Server Deadlock
A server deadlocked.

Fixed the error that caused the server deadlock.

Server Monitor
Server monitor program needs to check for more deadlock situations. Etherium changes make it possible for some deadlocks to go undetected by current server monitor query.

Added checks to the server monitor program to test for deadlocks on some globally accessed data.

New players are having issues foraging from plants when they are just starting out because their inventory gets filled with seeds. When you don't have a backpack yet, it can be really annoying to constantly get seeds when foraging.

Seeds currently has no use, apart from flower pots. Bur even if they had a use, we still won't need them when just starting out.

Current workaround is to just not forage by left-clicking plants, instead use the action buttons on the right side of the screen to forage just the plant product.
However this is hard to example to a new player, not to mention the fact that it isn't being explained currently.

Simple solution, don't give seeds when left-clicking a plant. Simply leave seeds only available via the action buttons on the right side of the screen.

Radar Sensor Station
Trying to get in sensor console chair at military radar station by pressing E button wont let me why

Fixed room designation on sensor station in the Radar Station 1000 model. Existing buildings using that design will remain broken. You would have to rebuild the building using the latest published version of the Radar Station to use the console.

Pirate Cantina
Encountered two 2.5bn health pirate cantinas but im sure you are aware

Updated pirate building designs. Cantina was not valid.

Rocket Top Down View
The fact that top-down view is only altered while landed in the rocket space ship design is really nice too, any chance you can propergate that to the vehicle space rocket? or are you leaving that until you mess with the vehicle designer?

Change camera angle in rocket to check for the rocket being on the ground.

System Name Reveal
I ordered my crew to travel direct to an unexplored system, where a warp signature was detected. The crewman called out the real name of the system when announcing the FTL drive engaged. He should not have know the name.

Fixed crewman to use the name known to the empire who owns the ship.

Titan Orbit Zone
Hey Haxus, have you've been made aware of the shenanigans that can happen when a regular planet has a titan?

Reduced the size of the gravity zone of titans.

Turbo Lift Snafu
Could not call turbo lift. It said a door was blocked open. Examination of the ship showed no doors open at all.

Fixed an error in the code that checked for obstructed turbo lift doors.

Pregnant Townspeople
Townspeople can get pregnant but I never see the baby.

Townspeople are transient, removed when no longer needed. This meant that they would rarely exist long enough to bear a child. Pregnant townspeople will now persist in the universe, until after the baby is born.

Startup Mail Flood
It is annoying to log in and get flooded with mail messages right away.

The mail thread will now wait a minute before making the first request for mail from the server.

Comm Channel Range
The channel range buttons take up too much room. Too many buttons.

Comm channel range is now a single button that opens a popup menu of range choices. The button shows the current range. The tool tip describes the range.

The emoji button moved there.

Cargo Transfer Numbers
Cargo transfer windows show little stacks of numbers for cargo and fuel. This should have a bar or something more visual.

Cargo and fuel quantity are now displayed as progress bars on the cargo transfer windows.

Axis Indicators
It would be nice to see an axis indicator on worlds.

When orbit rings are visible, an axis indicator now appears as a line through worlds and companion stars.

Planetoids only show their primary axis though they usually spin on two axes.

I'm the type of player that played a Hauler in EVE and I enjoy running cargo from one location to another in SoH.  I like that I can do these activities while I attend to real life.

Behavior Suggestions

• Add a mission order to pickup all broker containers going to a given destination - This would allow automation of broker delivery routes with officers or make life easier for those of us that like to ship a high number of various commodities between systems.
  
• Add a mission order to pickup all broker containers from a given city - The opposite of the above mission order.
  
• Add a load time for containers - As a balance for allowing players to issue orders to take all containers, the process of loading containers could take an amount of time.  Optionally this could depend on whether there is a teleporter available, whether the ship is at a station, or at an airport, etc.
  

• Add cargo mounting points to the space ship designer - These points would be visually filled with cargo containers as the hold space fills. This would be a cool way to visualize the load in the hold or even externally for that modular space hauler feel.
  
• Add a cargo-master crew member and console - A console for managing cargo holds that if manned could reduce loading times if that feature were implemented and/or allow players to find good prices for goods in the hold in known systems.
  

Haxus, this is a big message for you that took ages to write, so we could give our view of the current state of the game. I guess it's kinda a mirror of Yetimal's post 5 years ago on the gravity well forums, that brought back the game (I hope you remember!).  :P

Like 5 years ago, first a disclaimer: as english isn't our native language, it's possible we may sound arrogant or insulting, but keep in mind that's not the idea behind this post. On the contrary, the idea, like 5 years ago, is to tell you the shocking truth, so things may improve. So yes this post won't be pleasant, of that we can guarantee you. But keep in mind while reading this that all hope is >not< lost, do not drop everything now. Because indeed, we're not happy at all about what is happening and becoming of this game, but we want your success above all. It's still your game obviously, so you can completly ignore what's following, we won't really care. Also that may only be our truth and maybe it's not shared by the community, but our guess is it's mainly shared... edit: This appeared soon after this post, I guess it's no coïncidence.

Also keep in mind we, the French Empire, are the last big empire that played through 9 years (though most of us came in 2013, a few like me are from 2011). (We are playing as "Galactic Republic of Champagne" this universe). We have seen many things and we keep exploring part of the gameplay that one-man empires don't. We'll start with an advice about just that: be wary of yes-men that agree with everything you say and do. You need critics. You need people telling you that you do shit when it happens. Of course those people need to do that properly without insults and in a constructive way. But I fear that's one of the main reasons the game is at its current state: people wanting to help, wanting to be nice, but actually destroying everything that made this game.. fun.

Community

So first, let's talk about the community, because I'm sure it's the best indicator of what's happening. Look at how many people are currently playing these days.. Only 2 months and a half after restart! And look at how many came back for the reset of U6 : roughly 30 to 40 actives (with by the way, more than 10 solely in FE might I point out). I heard back then some new people from U5 saying "wow that's epic, 30 people online!". When I clearly remember more than 80 actives on U4 restart, and I guess around 50-60 in U5 restart when the game required to pay. That's a shame. But that's also a good indicator of what's happening: this game is breaking apart and loosing everyone's interest. This, is the hard truth part. You can also compare that with the number of people that are registered in these forums. Or with the fact we're still first on the ranking when none of us has played seriously for at least 7 weeks. This game is a MMO. And a special MMO at that: everything is built by players. Without players there's nothing. Indeed, there's no PvE to speak of (unless you count killing other players empire's troops.. But they're still created by players). So the community shrinking means the game is basically.. disapearing.

There are a few reasons for that we think. For starters, the main problem is that there's no new players really, this thread may be a good start to know why.. Another, big one: you have a certain tendancy to refactor everything that worked previously, and quite a few times implement the new functionalities poorly with massive bugs. I guess what happened this last 2 months is also a good example. I mean, I'm also a developer so I know a bit of these things, but we can mostly inspire ourselves from success stories of one-man games, like Minecraft or RimWorld. True those games aren't MMOs. But that isn't the excuse for everything.

Development quality & testing

For starters, you have to really get better at testing, and the first thing to do right now may be to create yourself a real testing environement, like everyone else does on "state of the art" development nowadays. Why? Because we're not beta testers. We agree to test and report bugs for a bit, but not while paying and above all not when we can't play at all for more than an entire month, because that's what happened. First massive limbos, then your breaking of the game with Etherium. Yes you have absolutely the right to make bugs. Yes, those can pass through your testing and get to production, that happens to everyone. But there is a point when too many bugs destroys your user's faith in you. And your users are your customers... If you make big, huge changes to the codebase, you have to test those, for a month if need be, before even thinking of putting this online.

I don't understand what is the problem with creating a test server, a real one where everythings works as in SoH. You should be able to copy data from the game when you want. You could make this available for everyone to use for free if you really want us to help test everything, and I'm sure many here would love to do that. Keep in mind your community is mostly composed of hardcore gamers, because that's what it takes to play SoH, and it has its advantages: people want to help.

And please, please dammit, put HTTPS on your website... HTTP nowadays is lame, people are getting warnings everywhere that this website is not secure. The website is lame as a whole and it does everything it can to drive away potential new players. Your website is your "first door", it's where you should put your best efforts.. Hire someone if you're not comfortable with HTML or ask the community for help I don't know, just do something! When you know what you're doing, enabling HTTPS takes 5 minutes and for free, this should tell you if you should put your hands on that or not. Again, your community is composed of many developers who will love to help you in anyway they can. The only thing you need is to trust us, because if I remember correctly that was the main concern keeping us from helping you. I mean, we're actually wondering there if you should not create a private Github repository of your codebase so every volonteer could give a hand!...

Another point on limbo. (Yes Deantwo we know it's server crashes and not the old limbo but we keep calling it that way because it's simplier, please don't take this debate elsewhere like you often do). We don't understand, at all, why you're not restarting servers when they're in a frozen state or if they crash. I mean, it's not like one of the first computer science thing you learn is "If it doesn't work, try rebooting". State of the art software developement nowadays uses this everywhere. I don't know for games for sure because I don't work on that domain, but I don't see at all why it couldn't be applied there too. When a freeze or a crash happens, you save the logs and you restart, that's all. It can be automated. Or you could move stuck avatars into a working server, without second guess. No problem if there's a sort of a rollback of a few minutes or hours (more is a problem though). No, the bug won't spread and won't take down all servers each time - and btw this actually already happens sometimes so what's the issue anyway?... If it needs to crash it will and that's all. Keep in mind there's nothing worse than being unable to login to a multiplayer game while others can, especially when there are no protections at all for your stuff while you're offline. And remember angry people means less subscriptions (and less free advertisement done by the community for you game), you should make a simple calculation as to how much giving all those free days costed vs cost of creating a real testing environement and restarting servers. I guess it should be obvious.


Gameplay and implementing functionalities

That brings me to a second thing: gameplay and "product ownership". It's your game. You have a dream. That's completly fine. But you have sucked to implement it for the last 6 years at least. Yes we mean it. Look at Minecraft or Rimworld: they first made sure every functionality worked before implementing new ones. And they didn't refactor huge functionalities midway, like you did for colonizing twice within 5-6 years, or for designing ships (twice the try again). Those things were working nicely before, they are mostly broken now or at least harder to grasp, that's not helping new players to join. Another good example is the restart: when we came back, it was impossible to play correctly. Why? Because there lacked many buildings blueprints to create cities, we had to get our hands on the more-complex-than-needed-designer even before going on the moon. That obviously would have scared off new players! And that's a really good example of the state of the game, you don't seem to take into account the gameplay and the "user experience" as a whole. You want to change something that works? That's okay, but wait before you're stable testing-wise and community-wise first, ie: money-wise. That sole rule would have prevented the 2014 shutdown, which did huge damage to this game and its community. And in a MMO, community is everything, more so on Shores of Hazeron where everything is built by players.

About that, it seems your decay rules are getting harder and harder with each year passing. If I remember correctly, one of your first change about that caused the Toucan Empire and a huge portion of the community to leave (I'm not completly sure about that though, it happened when I wasn't really following the drama on the forums). Now cities decays within 3 days without land, and like a week after their land's avatar account stopped paying, that's lame (and an avatar can have very few systems in his land, lame again). I remember back when I started this game when I found another empire city's ruins, that's one of the things that made me love this game. Remember everything is built by players as I said. PvE gameplay is nearly absent, pirates are but a mere nuisance (they were more fun before too, back in 2012). If you don't allow people to play for a bit, go play something else for a month then come back and still find their stuff (or in the hand of another player at least) with this kind of subscription, you're going right into a wall. A huge, hard and impenetrable wall. Especially when you broke the game during a month or two... If you force them to pay to keep their stuff, most of them will play maybe 2 months and leave to return in a year or two, I'm not sure that's what you want.

Actually, we're not sure to understand why you're putting those kind of rules with such a low amount of time. Are you that limited on server resources? That's not normal. If this page is still correct and up to date, it's a huge problem that you have such an hardware monstruosity at your disposal and performances problems. Fixing this should be one of your (many now) top priorities. I mean, what do your servers do? They should just manage players and ships/vehicles positions, store systems/planets seed, store and compute cities production and send those to clients, that's all. You don't need 12 * quad core CPUs + 4 * 16 core CPUs for that... That's more than 3 CPU cores per active player at the U6 restart! Do you have a way to get your hardware usage? Also we've always wondered how much all of that costs you. Maybe we missed when you gave those numbers but you never really were open about it, not sure why. Is the game costing you more than we are paying ? We are guessing it is, based on your hardware, but we may be wrong, and that may changes everything.

Balance and size of the universe

So let's get back on "destroying things that work" (that's volontarily exagerated). Can you look back and know how many efforts you've put in refactoring the way cities work, and worse, the way designing ship work? Why refactoring all this when it was working perfectly? Personally I sometimes miss old block cities. And old block ships that's for sure. Now it takes at least a GTX 960 to load a planet in a correct time (a little example here), while eating 100% of CPU, and it takes a massive amount of time to learn to design a ship. All those things drive away new players (and actually old ones too). You have the right to implement that obviously, but wait when other parts of the gameplay are done and working, and balanced! Balance is important. I mostly think of ship combat and empire wars etc, as I said it's people that make other people play, otherwise the game is just empty and it's just a city builder. Interactions between these players are everything, and interactions often means conflict.

Why the hell the 20 galaxies? One is already too much for the current player base, and has been for as long as we've played. Emptyness isn't fun. This isn't the first time we say that, indeed the box, which was one of our suggestion back then, was especially created in that purpose. But back then it was too small for the number of players, and it mainly showed (again) the huge balancing problems that eventually make people quit when they are fighting each other. I saw an enourmous amount of suggestions to improve war gameplay, and all of them are better than the current system which existed since 2011 at least: people can come when you sleep and take/destroy your things, and you can't do anything about that. It's even worse now with orbital bombardment and the suppression of loyalty! And I won't talk about the TL system and those kind of things that doesn't put skill above gametime (the quality/patent system doesn't change that at all, it actually worsens it because you now mostly need to wait for researches to be done, and the patents for warp takes far too long to get, I mean 1 month for warp 4 wtf ? And 2 months for warp 8? While costing peanuts like 10k credits? What should we do while we wait for that?...). And last but not least you made high quality planets easier to find, another interest in the game lost. Instead we should all be limited in the SoH galaxy at maximum and Q250+ resources (and ringworlds) should be so hard to find that they would create conflicts over them.

The future: all hope is not lost!

So yes I guess, we're really saying this game is going backwards and has been for 6 years at the very least. The thing that's the most representative is maybe the Gen IV characters. Again, the Gen III seems fine when the Gen IV are ugly and seems to use far more hardware resources. And they're also quite unusable currently, you said yourself they're not finished. So why are they available with just a small warning when creating an avatar?.. Remember, you should make sure your functionalities are done and working before shipping them to users.

The only thing that was really nice and needed? The lag fix, which came far too late. It should have been your top priority even before 2010 (but I wasn't playing at that time so I dunno really). Of course there were also minor improvements, but minors sadly, like reproduction. I'll stop with one last example: the free period to try the game should have been done as soon as 2015 when the game came back, that's the other nice thing you (finally) implemented. A free test period is the best thing to drive in new players, indeed nearly no one in 2020 would try this game by paying head on with its current "presentation" and graphics. (It was like our 2nd or 3rd suggestion when we asked the game to be brought back 5 years ago btw).

I think it's enough. If you agree (partly is enough) to what have been said here, we can dive in and all give advices in every part of the game that need rework. Keep in mind all hope is not lost. We feared publishing this because we fear your reaction, do not drop everything now! Take a few days to sit back first if this is hard :( . But we had to say this anyway, it might do good!

But yeah, if you take this message seriously like our last one from 2015, I think it's not a bad idea to wonder if restarting anew wouldn't be envisageable at all, if a change of game engine couldn't be done. I mean look at what's possible now technically...:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLIOiAZ6NHU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18kwxP4BNQ

And remember again we're many here that wants to help you, you're not alone.

TLDR (kinda)