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UC Updated to Version 1.07 20 March 2005
About the update
Server changed to Game speed
To avoid confusion, game servers (normal, fast, rt) will be called game speed from ver 1.07 onwards
Normal = Daily
Fast = Hourly
Real-Time = Real-time
Partial Reset
All infrastructure, projects, technology and ships will be deleted. The following will not be reset: Infrastructure technology, planets, resources (credits/food), minerals, artifacts
Update in stages
Due to the massive amount of new features, the update will be done in several stages as such:
Stage 1 (6/3/05) : Game Engine, Act 1 Missions, Core Projects (Important ones)
Stage 2 (13/3/05)* : Ministers
Stage 3 (20/3/05)* : Easier to explore for planets (update postponed due to datacenter issues)
Stage 4 ( 3/4/05)* : Act 2 Missions, Act 3 Missions, Non-Core Projects, Artifacts, Act 4 Missions, Graphics
Note:* Estimated dateline
What to expect
Everyone will be given special DP when update occurs. Whenever we do a massive Game Engine update, server instability is expected along with some errors or bug may have been left undiscovered during our 4 weeks plus of testing. Generally everything will stabilized after a couple of days (applies to Game Engine update).
What is new ?
Ministers
Allows you to hire ministers to run your systems. Ministers will have good and bad points, some may increase your commercial income, decrease it, or even increase your attacking from or defense of the system. Ministers can gain levels as time passes by, and gain special abilities.
Redesign of all public pages (pages before logging in)
Make it easier for newbies to navigate
Feature reorganized
To make the game easier to play and less cluttered, features will be unlocked once your empire reaches a certain level. For example, new accounts does not need to have the feature to attack. The attacking feature will be unlocked only when the empire is ready or able to use it. Missions will be used to judge if you are ready or not to use a particular feature.
Buildship renamed to shipyard
Disband ship renamed to manage fleet
Shipyard, Explore, Attack have been placed under manage fleet (ex: select which fleet, then attack)
Reorganized most of the links, combining some and removing some unused ones.
Manual revamp
We are re-doing the entire manual, to make it easier to navigate and printable (black text on white background). Also with an auto text-html converter, this makes it much easier for admin or any volunteers to update manual in normal text without any knowledge in programming or HTML
Multiple Server & Mirror Server support
All servers currently (ex: normal, fast, real-time) will be renamed as Game Speed instead of server.
Game architecture has been completely re-written (yep again for the 14th time), moving global to session memory accessing. This will reduces timeout and server busy error messages, reduces problem caused by server memory problems (if any memory problems occurs it will only effect 1 person rather than all or a group of players), reduces chances of problems occuring
Allows Mirror Server support (ex: login from Game Server 1 or Game Server 2). So its 100% that you can still login to another server and continue playing normally if you are facing lag or problems with your current server.
Non-dependant Inter-Parellel processing allows multiple servers to work together on 1 single game (UC), and 1 single game speed. This will ensure much faster page loading and increase our server capacity to almost unlimited.
Inter-Dependanable control
Allows Mirror Servers to talk to each other. This is used for certain global Projects (ex: Projects which effects everyone else in the entire game).
Player logoff
Allows admins to log players off (in case of bugs or server problems)
Resource delay
To ensure 100% no problems and increase of efficiency, all 3rd party effects to your resources (ex: resource from market or artifacts) will be delayed up to 5 minutes before being added into your empire.
Multiple Planet System
Currently in UC you have only 1 system or group of planets. Similar to GC, you can now have multiple Systems. You can create new system with each System having its own set of bonuses (ex: food system, military). There is a limit of the maximum number of systems each race can control, as well as maximum number of planets you can explore for each System.
Each system will have its own fleet to protect it.
Minerals/ore change : You are now required to spend turns to mine for ores or minerals in your System
Population growth : You are now required to spent turns to acquire new population
System Defense
Each system have its own defense bonuses. The deeper the system is the more defense the system will have. I tis assuming that it is harder to attack systems deeper inside an empire rather than systems on the border.
Various projects is available to increase the defense capability of your systems. The higher the defense of a system, the more bonus the defenders will receive.
Fleet / ships
Each system will have its own fleet of ships. You can command your ships to attack other empires and if you win, the planets will go to the system where your ships are used to attack from.
You can move ships from one system to another.
Several other types of attacks have been added which includes: Invasion, Raid, Recon, Suicide and others.
Income
Totally revamped the income page, showing supply of food, raw material and goods, as well as balance sheet of income and costs. Finally got it to display 100% accurate information. The income for each System is also shown.
Attacking
In current GC/UC we are using 3 DP Token. We have increased this to 10 DP Token. This means you can get hit 5-10 times before dropping into DP compared to GC/UC which is 1-3 times. The total number of planets captured before dropping into DP has been reduced from 15% (current) to 1-10%.
Ship losses have been reduced to cater for more attacks.
Attacking will use 10 turns instead of 5.
If no surviving ships is left then the detailed battle will not be displayed (no one is left to report how the battle went)
Expect more attacks with the new system.
Lord/Vassal (previously known as Master/Slave empire)
Vassals can allocate ships in `outpost` which will be sent to defend their lord (up to 4 random stacks). Each vassal can only build 2 stacks in this outpost fleet.
Projects
Project architecture have been updated. The new system will be able to support way more projects, and would make it much easier to insert in new projects compared to now.
Many new projects have been added
Note
Due to space restriction not all new features or changes is listed.
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