Development Tracker Thread

[Nyphur]

Hey guys,

We're going to use this thread to keep everyone updated on the development of Predestination. Below is a list of major and minor features that we would like to implement before the end of Beta and full release, and information on what we're working on right now! If you have any thoughts on development or what features you think should take priority over others, make a post and let us know. Please also let us know if you think there are features we've forgotten to include in this list.

Current Major Version: v1.1.0.X

Currently In Development: v1.2.0:

Below is a summary of what we're working on right now in addition to our normal bugfixing and iteration based on your feedback: Last updated 16 Jan 2019.


Singleplayer Story Mission Tools:
Currently the game has a single storyline mission, telling the story of the Kazzir's race to space and first meeting with the United Colonies. We're now working on missions 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6! These tell the stories of the other races and the awakening of the Revenant War, the events that lead up to where the sandbox mode takes up from. Developing these has required additional tools and tweaks to the game.
Status: Complete (████████░░ 80%)


Story Mission: The Zloq Emerge:
The Z'loq Emerge tells the story of the emergence of the Z'loq as the dominant force on their home planet, the struggles they go through as they attempt to expand by colonising other planets, and the tense diplomatic wall they find themselves facing when they meet the colossal and ancient Saurosian empire.
Status: Complete (████████░░ 80%) (Complete, tested, dialogue in progress)


Story Mission: The Colonies Unite:
The Colonies Unite tells the story of the United Colonies and their encounters with Revenant technology. After finding ancient ruins on Earth and uncovering encrypted data blocks from an ancient civilisation, the United Colonies of Earth take to the stars in search of similar energy signatures.
Status: Complete (████████░░ 80%) (Complete, tested, dialogue in progress)


Story Mission: Renegade Republic:
Renegade Republic tells the story of the Renegades, a faction that breaks away from the United Colonies in an effort to reject the UC's aggressive pursuit of technology. As events unfold, planet after planet will question its allegiance to the United Colonies and the questionable decisions of its leaders.
Status: Complete (████░░░░░░ 40%) (Partially complete)


Story Mission: We Are Starforged:
We Are Starforged tells the story of the Starforged, a group of advanced AI combat robots abandoned by the United Colonies following an experimental disaster with excavated Revenant technology. The Starforged are forced to adapt themselves to survive on an icy world and are emerging into sentience as they learn to reproduce, build cities, and exploit their planet's resources. They now seek to reach the stars and find their creators.
Status: Complete (██░░░░░░░░ 20%) (Story and mission designed)


Story Mission: The Ancient Sauros:
The Ancient Sauros tells the story of the Sauros, a reptilian race with a vast network of planets under its control and whose way of life has been unchallenged for millennia. New races such as the Kazzir, Z'loq, and humans of the United Colonies have begun emerging from their homeworlds and becoming space-faring societies, and their pace of development far exceeds the static Sauros. They will need to adapt, and deal with the consequences of these child races as they expand into its galaxy and unearth the troubling history of the Revenants.
Status: Complete (██░░░░░░░░ 20%) (Story and mission designed)


Diplomacy Audio:
Some time ago, we posted that we were recording audio dialogue for the core alien races in Predestination. We completed three of the races at that time, but held off on adding that audio until we had the opportunity to record the others. Now we have finished all six races and are ready to begin integrating them into the diplomacy system, adding some much-needed polish to the game.
Status: Complete (███████░░░ 70%) (Recorded, in editing)


Tech Tweaks:
As we've developed the singleplayer missions and taken feedback on board, we've re-evaluated some of the tech trees and made a few tweaks. These are things such as moving Troop Pods and the Ambassador Module to the start of the Space Exploration era, and removing or improving some other techs.
Status: Complete (██████████░░ 80%)


Performance Improvement: Planet Cache:
One of our biggest challenges with Predestination has been keeping map generation and planet generation delays to a minimum. To improve this, we've implemented a cache system for planets where the game can load pre-generated planets from disk. The V1.2 download will be quite large as the game will download literally hundreds of pre-generated planets of every type and size, but map generation times will be significantly reduced and the delay from entering a planet for the first time will be removed. Pre-generated homeworlds for each race will also significantly reduce map generation times.
Status: Complete (█████████░ 90%) (Some bugfixes needed)


Performance Improvement: Multithreaded Planets:
Planets under the player's control or that are being actively developed can take considerable processing time on some turns, so after making that more efficient we put together a multi-threading process to take advantage of modern processors. This drastically reduces the time required to process the End Turn, so you can have much bigger empires while still taking only a second or two per turn.
Status: Complete (█████████░ 90%) (Some bugfixes needed)


Performance Improvement: AI:
The current AI is a very CPU-heavy process, so we don't run it every turn and some turns can take a long time for the AI. We've overhauled how the AI does this process so that every AI can take actions every turn and the time used to calculate it has been reduced by up to 95%.
Status: Complete (█████████░ 90%) (Final testing)


Ancient Ruins Improvement:
The Ancient Ruins and Crashed Ships are the main way that you generate research in Predestination as they give you a stacking 100% boost to the research in any connected city. They also excavate over time and will eventually complete, either spawning a functional piece of ancient infrastructure or giving you a ship technology. This never seemed to work beyond the homeworld. We've solved this issue and added a number of new technologies to make them more appealing. Better technology will be available if the planet is further from any homeworlds.
Status: Complete (██████████ 100%)


Backer Content:
Many of our Kickstarter backers are contributing ideas and content as part of creative rewards. Some of these are already in, but the larger rewards have had to wait until the game was feature-finished. We're reaching out to any outstanding ones now and working hard to get these in for the official launch.
Status: In Progress (███░░░░░░░ 30%) (Star names, nebulae, ship crew, weapons, modules, and missiles complete)

Ship Models:
The ship models for the Kazzir, Starforged, Sauros and Revenants are still in development. We're working hard on getting those complete for launch.
Status: In Progress (████░░░░░░ 40%)

Sound Effect Improvements:
Some elements of the game don't have sound effects or don't have finalised effects. We'll do a pass on this and improve the sound effects for launch.
Status: In Progress (████░░░░░░ 40%)

Content still to complete during Beta:

• Backer Missile Designs (Complete)
  
• Backer Ship Weapons/Modules (Complete)
  
• Backer Star Names (Complete)
  
• Diplomacy Audio lines (Partially Complete)
  
• Story Missions ( 1 / 12 Complete)
  
• Challenge Maps ( 1 / ? Complete)
  
• Backer Crew Names
  
• Backer Nebula Names
  
• Backer Ship Captains / Planet Leaders
  
• Backer Races
  
• Backer Level Designs
  
• Ship Models: Kazzir
  
• Ship Models: Starforged
  
• Ship Models: Revenant (Backer Reward)
  
• Ship Models: Sauros
  
• Final Standalone 3D ship designer (once all models are complete)
  
• Backer Default Ship Designs (once standalone ship designer is complete)
  
  
  
  

  Major features we would like to add by v1.0*:

  (All completed!)
  
• Tax settings
  
• Ground combat & planet capturing
  
• Empire Age options
  
• Low morale and loyalty planet events
  
• Trade Routes
  
• Freighters (Feature cancelled, rolled into trade routes)
  
• Diplomacy (Coercions, Threats, and Memory system still to come)
  
• Race Stats & finished race screen
  
• 3D Ship Designer & racial ship part models
  
• Ship captains and colony leaders
  
• Fully directed tutorial for 4X newcomers
  
• Wormholes
  
• Planet specials
  
• Warp-capable missiles
  
• Temporal Rifts and Revenant attacks (random events)
  
• Finished building and infrastructure models (final batch in progress)
  
• More technologies in Tech Era 3: First Contact
  
• Tech Era 4: Galactic Domination
  
• Tech Tree: Synergies
  
• Victory conditions
  
• Spying (Moved from after release to main release due to high demand)
  
• First episodic story mode mission
  
• User interface dropdown menus
  
• Main Menu screen overhaul
  
• Challenge maps
  
• Fleet Combat in space (not at planets)
  
  
  

  Features we'd like to add after release*:

  The following is a list of major features that we'd like to get into the final release of Predestination or to add later in a free update.
  
• Multiplayer gameplay (online & LAN)
  
• Detailed modding support
  
• Space Monsters
  
  
  
  *Note: As per the Steam Early Access guidelines, please be aware that our development plans are always subject to change, and we are not promising that specific features will definitely be added in the future. This thread is intended to keep track of what we're working on right now, and what features we'd like to add before release.
  
  Cheers,
  -- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V 0.8.0.15

• Activated game music (Main Galaxy Theme)
  
• Fixed Bug: Nvidia GPU transparency issue with galaxy map scan range
  
• Fixed Bug: Building in cities on other planets immediately after colonisation reportedly causes a crash
  
• Fixed Bug: The Ship Info Window opening transition is slow and causes alpha of the system window to change

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V 0.8.0.20

• Implemented potential fix for crash in Turkish region versions of Windows
  
• Implemented potential fix for common Predestination.RoadHandler.RegenerateQuads crash

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V 0.8.0.21

• The Energy Market building now functions correctly.
  
• Small buildings can no longer be built inside the outer area of large buildings.
  
• Deleting a building in a city with a blueprint now correctly always disables the blueprint, so your changes won't be undone.
  
• You can now only have one starbase of any kind per planet.
  
• The Up and Down arrows on the research tree have been reversed, so up now correctly scrolls up.
  
• The Scroll notch on the research tree has been fixed and can now be used to scroll.
  
• Research times displayed on the research screen are no longer out by one turn.
  
• The Mining Barge now correctly gets an Asteroid Miner module and the design isn't unlocked until you research that tech.
  
• Mining barges no longer add metal to a planet in a separate step during EndTurn but instead now add to the planet's metal/turn rating, making their effects much more visible.
  
• The Research Screen double click speed has now been reduced (you can have up to 600ms between clicks) and a new doubleClickTime option was added to the ini file for this. The Research Screen also required a tech to be selected before doubleclicking so it sometimes essentially needed to be triple-clicked and seemed to react unreliably. This has now been fixed.
  
• Infrastructure placement with Advanced Roads enabled now works correctly.
  
• The Long Range Scans tech now works again, and now provides vague details about star systems that are out of scan range too.

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V 0.8.1.0

Please note: This update will render your old save game files incompatible with the game.

Major features:

• Adjustable Tax: You can now set your own tax rate by clicking on the Treasury button in the top right. The tax rate is between 0 and 5 BC per thousand population and can be set in increments of 0.5 BC. Increasing the tax rate will reduce morale across all planets by a percentage, any having less than 100% morale on a planet will reduce metal production. This lets you essentially trade off metal production for money production during the game, similar to how MOO2 worked. All empires start with a 5 BC / turn base to get you started.
  
  
• Empire Age Option: When creating a new game, you can now specify whether you want to start in the Pre-Warp or Space Exploration eras. If you pick Space Exploration, you gain all the technologies from the first era (including all mutually exclusive choices) and your homeworld will be fully colonised by an AI. This can take some time to load.
  
  
• Research System Tweaks: Based on your feedback, we've redesigned the look and feel of the research screen. Picking a technology now requires a single click, and based on your feedback we've added strategic choices. At any point which the tech tree splits into multiple options, you can now only select one choice. The research trees had to be restructured to fit the new design.
  
  
• Morale Changes: For consistency, morale now starts at 100% just like Loyalty, Health and Security. It can go as low as 0% and as high as 200%. Metal production is multiplied by morale, so having lower than 100% morale on a planet will decrease metal production while higher than 100% will increase it. You'll start experiencing problems like strikes when below 50% morale. Once we add the spying system, ground combat, and more random events, morale will be a factor in that too.
  
  Minor features:
  
• New Technology - Crystalline Carbonide: All cities with a fossil fuel power plant gain +10% metal/turn.
  
• New Technology - Carbonide Drills: All ore deposits have an additional +50 units of ore before depleting.
  
• New Technology - Battle Armour: +10 ground combat bonus
  
• New Technology - Tax Policies: -20% morale hit from setting a high tax rate.
  
• New Technology - Resource Identifier: Unknown deposits can be identified before you have the tech to use them. This will be more useful as we add more rare deposits.
  
• New Technology - Scout Remote Control: Removes the 5BC cost for sending scouts manually on survey missions
  
• New Technology - Scout Transceiver: A building that launches and controls an extra scout drone. This replaces the previous technology that simply added one extra scout.
  
• New Technology - Seismic Penetrators: Using dangerous mining techniques, you can reach ore deep underground. Ore deposits on Barren planets will never become depleted.
  
• New Technology - Psychiatry: Specialises your Hospitals to deal with mental health issues. If all cities on your planet have at least one hospital, planetary morale is raised by 20%.
  
• New Technology - Laser Rifle: Increases combat rating by +10. Only the best rifle technology is used.
  
• Save Game files now record their version numbers. The number shows up in red if it's an old version, which indicates that it may not load correctly any more. Saves created before this version will show up as "Old version" in red.
  
• Added capability in the planet engine to alter planet sizes, so we will add this as a galaxy creation option in a future update. This will allow players to pick small galaxies with larger planets, for example, or you could pick smaller planets if you prefer to play less with the planet gameplay. Playing large galaxies with smaller planets may also be a useful optimisation strategy for lower end PCs.
  
  Other Changes:
  
• Biosphere techs have been split apart. There are now separate technologies for Barren, Molten, and Toxic biospheres.
  
• Breeding Programme technology now applies +10% growth rate per city with a hospital.
  
• Railways now reduce energy usage of infrastructure by 5/turn instead of reducing maintenance costs bt 0.5BC/turn, as using BC produced unfavourable results with the new tax equation.
  
• The Geothermal Power Plant technology now correctly unlocks geothermal vents on your planet.
  
• The Wind Power Plant now unlocks the Energy map.
  
• The Environment Sensors and Wind / Wave map overlays now show hexes that are not yet explored.
  
• All technologies now take twice as many research points to acquire.
  
• Food Processors now have a built time of 0 so that starvation doesn't occur when upgrading the building to a higher tier.
  
• Tooltips will no longer appear when a tutorial window is open, and all tooltips will close when a tutorial popup appears.
  
• New Game window left and right selectors now gray out when you're at the furthest left or right option.
  
• Many of the starting buildings (Hospitals, Police Stations, Factories etc) are now researched technologies.
  
  Bug-fixes:
  
• The Research pane now correctly scales to different resolutions.
  
• Fixed several miscellaneous reported crashes
  
• The Natural Gas technology should now be working correctly.
  
• Fixed various bugs with the planet user interface not displaying in the correct location.
  

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V 0.8.1.2 (Build ID 540781):

• Fixed a crash that happens when you complete a research project while on the planet screen but there's no city on the planet. This was a very obscure bug, thanks for everyone sending in crash reports as it was the screenshots in those that gave me clues!
  
• Geothermal power plants will correctly generate 60 energy/turn when not on a geothermal vent or molten hex.
  
• Fixed a frequent crash caused by tiny planets being Size Class 0 instead of Size Class 1.
  
• Fixed a bug with the research trees disappearing when you load the game.
  

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V 0.8.1.3 (Build ID: 540910):

• Fixed crash when you right click while soil enriching or oil drilling
  
• Fixed several crashes that can occur when the last city on a planet is destroyed
  
• Fixed display bugs relating to the planetary seam. Orbital station models still seem to break at the seam, but the map, icons and models are all now correct.
  
• Fixed zooming bugs relating to the planetary seam
  
• Cities on the planetary seam now correctly draw and can be built on.
  
• Removed placeholder models for deposits, which weren't displaying correctly anyway.
  
• Fixed a crash with learning ship artifact technologies.

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V 0.8.1.5 (Build ID: 541454):

• Optimised planet loading. You or an alien race colonising/exploring a new planet will now cause less loading delay on that turn.
  
• Replaced the abrasive End Turn noise with a quieter boop. These sounds are not the final ones, but this should be nicer in the mean time.
  
• Fixed a bug with fleets containing only a single colony ship hanging around as an empty fleet for 1 turn after the colony ship is used
  
• Refactored a lot of Colony and Planet code to prevent potential causes of some reported crashes. Please watch out for new bugs and keep submitting those crash reports!
  
• Fixed a crash with planet.RefreshMap
  
• Fixed a crash with placing deposits
  
• Fixed a crash on the blueprint window
  
• Fixed several janky animations caused by loading throwing off the frame rate calculations
  
• Fixed an extremely rare crash with the AI colonising worlds that have only a single colonisable hex at the edge of the map.
  
• Fixed description box size on New Game Screen
  
• Fixed a crash with the colony window
  
• Added in some pre-condition code to stop null pointer and index exceptions from happening in various non-critical parts of the game code.

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V 0.8.1.6 (Build ID: 542531)

• Implemented a fix for the recent display bug that causes red lines to be drawn all over the planets. Fix is untested so far.

[Nyphur]

Version 0.8.1.7 (Build ID: 551925):

• Fixed long-standing bug with System DPI over 100%.
  
• The Graviton Sensors technology now only works with orbital telescopes.
  
• Games will no longer generate with duplicate races.
  
• Altered galaxy generation algorithm to help avoid deadlocking scenario in which you can't reach the other races. As a result, galaxy types have been temporarily disabled while we work some kinks out of them.
  
• Players will no longer be able to demolish enemy cities, roads and infrastructure via the right click menu (lol).
  
• Removed Build Queue on the colony interface, replaced it with a City Stats window showing the connected infrastructure and some stats on that particular city.
  
• Re-implemented Smart AI for missiles as I was able to fix the bugs with it.
  
• The sensor sphere option now activates automatically when you have the ship window open so you can see what stars are in range.
  
• Fleets no longer cover up the star under any circumstances. They now occupy a space around the star on the galaxy map even if the fleet is in motion. The line is no longer exactly representative of the ship's true path, but that will be fixed soon.
  
  
• Fixed a crash that happens in fleet combat when you manually activate weapons and fire them.
  
• The activated sensor sphere visuals have been improved and a few graphical glitches with it have been repaired.
  
• Fixed a crash that happens when non-unicode characters are used in the save game filenames (no idea how that was happening, but I got a crash report of it).
  
• Fixed a bug with the Stats window city buttons being clickable even when they're outside the window area or inadvertantly activating when you click on the Stats button.
  
• Fixed bug that prevented Biofuel Reactors from being placed on fertile soil deposits.
  
• Fixed a bug where setting the tax rate or opening the tax UI would cause all planets to gain several turns worth of metal, energy and food.
  
• Fixed a crash that happens when you demolish an infrastructure on a planet after the cities have been destroyed
  
• Fixed a display bug with the planet stats window, it was leaving a big gap when there were 3 cities. Also fixed the same bug with the hostile planet window.
  
• Fixed bug that made the city building list appear instead of the global infrastructure window when you colonise a new planet.
  
• Fixed camera bug that made the galaxy camera move when you enter and exit the shipyard screen.
  
• Stars no longr flash when hitting End Turn with the sensor sphere mode activated.
  
• Fixed a bug where the wrong colony ship was sent to colonise a planet, often ignoring one in the same system. Now one in the same system is selected if available, otherwise the closest one is sent.

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V0.8.1.8 (Build ID: 553111)

• Fixed a Fleet Combat crash that happened if any ship somehow has no weapons.
  
• Anti-Missile Beams are no longer accidentally classified as a standard beam weapon
  
• All Battleships and Battlestations now have a free Anti-Missile Beam installed in their default designs.
  
• Fixed a crash that can happen on starting the game.
  
• Fixed a fleet combat crash
  
• May have fixed an unreplicatable crash with DrawInfrastructureQuads
  
• Splinter Colonies can no longer generate on the very upper or lower edge of the planetary poles.
  

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V0.8.2.0 (Build ID: 605045)

Please Note: This update will make your old save game files incompatible, so they will fail to load after this update. Please

Major Features:

• Ground Combat: Ground Combat has been added to Predestination! This takes place from the bombing interface, which is available once you've defeated any ships and stations defending the planet. We've now implemented the ground combat and planetary conquest systems and overhauled the interface so that you can see all the relevant stats for each city right on top of it. For more information on how Ground Combat works, please see our latest dev blog[predestinationgame.com].
  
  
• Bombing changes: The bombing gameplay has been completely overhauled! Beam and Projectile weapons now deal 1-2x their rated damage and recharge once per turn, but you can now fire all remaining missiles and bombs in one turn. Missiles and bombs now have limited ammunition and refuel when the ship visits a friendly starbase. A new overhauled bombing UI shows city hitpoints, shields, how many ground combat troops are defending each city, and the defender's combat rating. Please see our latest dev blog[predestinationgame.com] for more information.
  
  
• Fleet Combat overhaul: We've significantly overhauled the Fleet Combat portion of the game, with a variety of bug fixes and improvements. Planetary defenses are now correctly represented as a ship in the combat scenario, and all ground-based weapons can fire at the cost of energy from the planet's reserves, and ground based lasers now have unlimited range. Missiles now indicate how many are stacked in one spot and are now coloured based on the race that fired them. Missile paths are now calculated correctly and efficiently while avoiding your own ships, so you don't have to worry about your own ships being blow up by them any more. Planets and space stations will also no longer fly around the battlefield. We promise this time!
  
  
• Tech Era changes: Our original plan was to lock each tech era until a landmark event happens to unlock the era. In the Pre-Warp era, you have to research four key technologies to repair and launch your damaged spaceship into orbit, which then unlocks the Space Colonisation era. The next era was called First Contact and was locked until you made contact with another race, but sometimes that didn't happen in a timely manner (or at all). The pre-warp era will remain as it is, but we've now removed the lock on the First Contact era. When you reach the end of a technology tree (e.g. Physics) in the Space Exploration era, you'll now unlock the next era in that tree. The first time you do this, you'll get a signal from deep space indicating that other races are out there.
  
  
  

  Minor Features:

• Troop Transports: A new default ship design, the Troop Transport is a non-combat ship with two Troop Pod modules, each carrying 4 squads of marines that can be dropped on an enemy city to capture it.
  
  
• Slavery: When you conquer a planet, it's still inhabited by the original race. The original race is used when determining things like whether biospheres are necessary, and when we add racial variation and stats, the original race's stats will be used. You could conquer a science-heavy race's planet to use as a research base, for example.
  
  
• Contested Planet System: Planets now become contested when any of their cities are conquered. A contested planet still belongs to the empire that last owned it, but nobody can build on the planet or modify it until they own 100% of it.
  
  
• Planetary Rebellion: While a planet is contested, the native population will periodically rebel and kill troops in their cities. If they successfully kill all troops, they can retake the city. This rebellion ends 10 turns after the whole planet is conquered, and until then the rebels can potentially retake the planet.
  
  
• Bombs: Bombs have now been added, which deal hundreds of damage but can only be fired against a planet.
  
  
• Bomber Frigate: A new default ship design, the Bomber Frigate is a frigate class hull with two of your best bombs strapped to it.
  
  
• Retreating Ships: Ships retreated from Fleet Combat now automatically move one turn toward home, preventing you from returning them to the planet for one turn. This means if you want to bring bombers or troop transports to bomb the enemy planet, you have to either defend them throughout the fleet combat scenario or intentionally delay them by 1 turn behind your main assault fleet.
  
  
• Missile Armour: Armour technologies are now applied to Drones and Missiles, which start with 25hp and 10hp respectively and are then improved by the armour tech. The Bytanium Missile Armour technology now adds a single Bytanium Armor Plating module to every missile, giving it 25 bonus hitpoints.
  
  
• Deadly Space Stations: Space stations now have a built-in Structural Mount module, which gives all beam and projectile weapons circular arcs and gives them double the usual range.
  
  
• Damaged Ships: There are now four types of crashed ships, each of which gives a different ship when you reach the space exploration era: Science Vessel is a reusable orbital scanner, Mining Barge is an asteroid mining frigate that produces 25 metal/turn, the Colony Ship is a free colony ship, and the Warship is a frigate with a Laser Cannon and Class I shield. All of these ships automatically grant you the associated technologies when you reach the Space Exploration era. Right now, all races start with the Science Vessel. This will be an option in a future update.
  
  
• City Shields: Only the best city shield is now used in defending a city, so you don't need to waste more than 1 large building slot on shields.
  
  
• Military Barracks: Each city now trains 1 troop per 10 turns, up to a maximum of 1 per 1000 population in the city. Military Barracks now train an additional 0.1 troops every turn (works out to 1 troop every 10 turns) and increases troop storage by 4.
  
  
• Morale Improvements: Morale now runs from 0% to 200%, with problems like strikes occuring once it drops below 50%. Morale percentage now factors into ground combat rating when cities are being taken over.
  
  
  

  Bugs fixed:

• Orbital Telescopes now work when no starbase is present! This bug was causing players to get deadlocked in most generated maps.
  
• Fleet Combat explosions now display correctly again
  
• The AI will no longer accidentally duplicate ships when deploying ships to defensive positions on the galaxy map.
  
• The game will now recognise when you change screen resolution and override the value in your .ini file.
  
• Weapons will no longer incorrectly disable themselves in fleet combat.
  
• The AI will no longer confuse its colony ships for scout ships.
  
• Fixed bugs with hex grids throughout the game
  
• The Fleet Combat AI should no longer use excessive force and continue firing on the same ship even though it's already dead.
  
• The Fleet Combat AI will no longer fire disabled weapons or weapons that are out of ammo at the player.
  
• Missiles will no longer get +6 speed. Their speed is now a function of their size class.
  
• Drones now look like little ships instead of missiles (small graphical update)
  
• Cities now break from their blueprint when conquered, so you'll no longer be using the enemy's blueprints.
  
• Each race's shipyards are now separate, so two races sharing a star system will no longer accidentally share a single shipyard.
  
• Missiles will no longer teleport about the map.
  
• Planets and space stations will no longer fly around the map (for real this time :p)
  
• The Planet AI will no longer manage planets when they're contested.
  
• The ships in the Fleet Combat summary window will now be drawn with the correct size.
  
• Roads inside a city's territory can no longer be bombed. The bomb is redirected to the city instead.
  
• Reinforcements can now be dropped through your own city's shields, but troops will be destroyed when dropped onto an enemy shield.
  
• The AI should now deploy ships defensively when your ships are en-route to their planet. But they won't send help if it won't arrive in time.
  
• Fleet Combat will no longer stall when the Space Station takes its turn.
  
• Missiles will no longer fly through your own ships and blow them up.
  
• Bombs can no longer fire against or damage ships.
  
• Anti-missile beams will no longer damage ships.
  
  

  Misc Minor Updates:

• Buildings now have standardised hitpoints: 25 for a small building, 50 for a large building, 125 for the central city.
  
• Ships may now contain a separate supply of Marines in addition to Crew if they have one or more Troop Pods fitted. Marines function as extra crew in the case of defense against a boarding action.
  
• Ships with dead crew members or marines will now refill their rosters when at a friendly starbase.
  
• Hyperspace Gate technology will now increase FTL speed between your colonies by 25% instead of a flat 2ly/turn.
  
• Combat rating is now working. Each armour tech you have increases it by +5 cumulatively, and only the best rifle bonus is used. Another +10 can be obtained from Combat Boosters, another +10 from Battle Suits to arrive at the base value. More can be obtained from the Training Facility building and Security Stations ship module.
  
• Some images used in the UI have been updated.
  
• Some important messages now open automatically instead of going into the notification taskbar.
  
• The selected race on the race screen now flashes blue
  
• Removed "Cheating" AI difficulty. The game doesn't actually have AI difficulties yet, but this was misleading.
  
• Selected troops and bombs are now highlighted
  
• Missiles whose targets have been destroyed now automatically self-destruct.
  
• Drones now look like little ships instead of missiles (small graphical update)
  
• The hex grid beneath ships moving in fleet combat now smoothly morphs from one colour to the other as the ship moves into or out of a hex.
  
• Added Drone and Heavy Drone weapon types: Heavy Drone gets an armour plate. These are not accessible in-game just yet.
  
• City Shields now block more damage, making bombs significantly more important for taking them out.
  
• Various UI elements have been improved.
  
• All remaining missiles and bomb ammo can now be fired in the bombing phase in one turn.
  
• Weapon ammo no longer refills automatically between combat. It now refills when you go to a system with a friendly space station.
  
• Planetary Infrastructure and roads are now hidden when bombing a planet unless you've explored the planet or previously conquered it.
  
• Conquering a planet grants you full access to the previous owner's exploration maps.
  
  
  There may be other changes and bug fixes that are not in the list above.
  
  Cheers,
  -- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V0.8.2.1 (Build ID: 608202)

This was a micro patch to fix a very rare crash one player had on starting the game. I've been working on this problem for this player today, and came up with a fix. Previously, the game tried to put the save game files and settings ini file in %appdata%/Predestination, but it turns out that on some computer setups this location is not available. Now the game tries to put the Predestination settings and save file folder in your Appdata, then tries Local Appdata if that fails, and then if all else fails it puts the data in your My Documents folder. A test was carried out on a system experiencing the crash, and it was resolved.

Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Nyphur]

Patch Notes for V0.8.2.2 (Build ID: 612450)

• Fixed a rounding error with tax calculations that rounded the base 5BC/turn up to 6BC/turn. Changed the base to 6BC/turn to compensate.
  
• The base tax rate of 6BC/turn was erroneaously applying to all planets. It now only applies to the Homeworld.
  
• All races now start with 1BC per thousand population free tax. The Tax slider now starts from 1BC instead of 0.
  
• When you place an infrastructure, the map will now update so that roads and new infrastructure can no longer overlap with newly placed infrastructure.
  
• Infrastructure can no longer be seen through the planet
  
• If you activate and then deactivate advanced roads, the road buttons can no longer still be clicked on.
  
• Technologies you can't reach in the tech tree are now correctly blocked off and no longer look like they're available. E.g. Carbonide Drills if you don't choose Crystalline Carbonide.
  
• All power plants can now be placed in all environments. Farms are now the only environment-restricted infrastructure.
  
• The scout service icons now show up immediately when research the relevant technology.
  
• The building list now automatically updates when you complete a research project that gives you a new building.
  
• Several technologies that didn't seem to unlock until the turn after they're discovered now correctly unlock.
  
• Moving a building and right clicking now salvages the building as if you've destroyed it, refunding part of its build cost. It also now correctly disables the city's blueprint.
  
• Added new graphicsAdapter setting to the game options and ini file, determines which screen to use.
  
• The game now automatically obtains the screen width and height from the selected graphics adapter, and defaults to your primary monitor. 99% of users will see no difference, but this fixes a few rare glitches.
  
• Added experimental "borderless" option to game options and ini file, sets whether the game window should be borderless. Default is True.
  
• Doubled effect of negative morale on Metal production. All production now halts at -50% planetary morale. The industrial union can still strike below 50%, and the strike could last for several turns after morale is fixed.
  
• Administrative Union strikes now only halve taxes rather than cutting them to 0, which was a devestating financial hit.
  
• The building list now updates immediately when you demolish a building. Buildings that are limited to one per city/planet/system will now be re-added to the list when one is demolished. Previously, this lsit only updated when you built a new building.
  
• Tax offices are now limited to one per city as stacking them could produce massive taxation.
  
• Fixed a crash when generating a Space Exploration age map. The crash report error message is "Could not find a part of the path '<appdata>\Predestination\Saves\Save9\Ships\Renegades'.
  
  Cheers,
  -- Brendan, Lead Developer

[Nyphur]

Path notes for V0.8.2.3 (Build ID: 621600)

This patch and tackled several persistent memory leaks that happened due to Buildings, Modules, Weapons and Nebulae being loaded on the fly and never cleared from memory. As a result the game's memory footprint is now lower and many OutOfMemoryException crashes will have been resolved.

• Buildings now all pre-load when the game is launched and are added to a pool in memory. The building and infrastructure code throughout the game now looks up this pool instead of re-loading a new copy of the building each time.
  
• When a level is loaded, the graphics for buildings etc need to be reloaded. The level regeneration code now uses the building pool instead. As a result, changes made to a building or infrastructure's stats will occur immediately on loading a game. Previously, the changes would only apply to newly placed buildings or new games.
  
• The Module and Weapon code now both pre-load the entire list of all weapons and modules into pools in memory at the start of the game.
  
• Many references to Weapon or Module instances have been updated to reference their respective pools. As a result, they will function similarly to how buildings are described above
  
• Fixed a number of errors with building names being incorrect.
  
• Fixed a few errors with missile Weapons loading before their warheads, causing the game to crash.
  
  We fixed a number of major bugs with this patch, including a few tricky ones we haven't been able to figure out until now. The UI artist has also made a few small changes to the UI.
  
• Fixed a bug where some animations etc didn't happen while the mouse was over the right hand panel on the planet screen.
  
• Fixed a longstanding issue where deleting infrastructures would delete the wrong road.
  
• Fixed a bug where moving or deleting a building didn't break the blueprint
  
• Fixed a bug where setting a blueprint on a city would reset all the other cities in your empire using that blueprint and force them to rebuild their buildings.
  
• Fixed a bug where the validity test for placement of infrastructure would sometimes use the previous hex's validity, giving incorrect results. May have been the cause of placement problems on tiny planet.
  
• Added new graphics for the planet screen resource hexes
  
• Made MainUI line stop at the edge of the left money hex
  
• Moved the Cluster image draw code so that it gets blurred behind the UI
  
  With this patch complete, we can now begin working on the major features for V0.8.3.0

[Nyphur]

Patch notes for V0.8.2.4 (Build ID: 626664)

This tiny patch added a backup system for the save game files to prevent save games getting lost if something goes wrong during saving. The game will also now generate a crash report if the game fails to save or or if a game saved with the current version fails to load.