September 9, 1996

Stars! V2.6 is the result of a number of games I have recently been
involved in.  I have added a number of features I found myself really
wanting either for additional information or to reduce tedious management
tasks.  Along the way I have also fixed a number of bugs and introduced some
cool new twists to the game.

Current V2.5 and V2.5a game can be upgraded to V2.6 in progress.  The way
this needs to be done is that every player takes their turn with their old
V2.5 .exe, then the host upgrades to V2.6 and generates a new turn.  Then
the players open the new turn with V2.6.  Once you upgrade, you cannot go
back to V2.5.  All players must upgrade to V2.6 simultaneously.  If you do
not follow these upgrade directions, unpredictable things may happen.

Unfortunately, one thing I hoped to do was fix a hang in turn generation that
has plauged a handful of users.  None of our 100+ beta testers has this
problem and the files people have sent me invariably have not reproduced the
hang.  The current thinking is that the bug is either system or video
driver related.  I really want to fix this bug, and will be putting out a
V2.6a as soon as someone gives me the missing puzzle piece to track the
bug down.  If your machine exihibits this behavior, add the Progress=1 line
to the [Misc] section of your Stars.ini file in your windows directory.
This will cause a digital status count to appear in the progress gauge,
allowing you to report the last updated number before a hang.  If you send
this information to me at stars@webmap.com, I will be more than happy to
build a special build to home in on the problem on your machine.

Let me know if you like the changes, what you find useful, what races you
find most powerful, etc.  We like to get feedback from you.  It's what
allows me to make Stars! a better game.

-- Jeff Johnson


Changes from V2.5a to V2.6:

New Features:
You can now give other players your ships.  Pick the Transfer Fleet task
   and the other player gets your fleet assuming they have enough free design
   slots in their ship builder.  You can't build designs you get from other
   players unless you have all the necessary techs.
Mineral packets now display their destination to all players.
Packets targeting your worlds now send you a warning message if your scanners
   spot them in time.
The race creation wizard now lets players specify the plural form of their
   race name.
The race creation wizard now asks you to verify your password before saving
   the race file.
The fleet composition listbox now displays damage by using a red bar
   background to indicate the total amount of damage.  Exact damage percent
   is still available by clicking on the design and viewing the popup with
   resolutions >= 800x600.
Added an enemy fleet report which allows easy access to enemy intelligence.
   Report can be sorted by any of the fields.  Enemy ships can be scrolled
   through in sort order by using the '[' and ']' keys while the report is
   active.
Players are now sent a message the year BEFORE a starbase totally finishes
   everything in its production queue.
Added a scanner mode that displays the count of ships at every location above
   the fleet symbol.  The number takes into account any filters you currently
   have active.  For example, if you have a filter to only show enemy
   warships, only fleets containing warships will be visible, and the count
   above those fleets will be the count of just the warships, not the
   total number in the fleet.  A toolbar button to turn this mode on and off
   has been added as well. The keyboard shortcut for the mode is Shift-0 or
   ')'.
Added File / Print Map option which prints a universe map to a given size.
   Takes into account whether planet names is turned on and whether you've
   selected No Visible Info setting or not.
The mine field toolbar button now pops up a menu allowing you to specify
   by player relation which mine fields you wish to view:  Yours, Friends,
   Neutrals, and/or Enemies.  The button will only appear down if the scanner
   is showing all known minefields.
A history graph has been added to the report dialog.  The Switch button now
   cycles from the Score report to the Victory Conditions report to the
   new history graph.  The graph show up to the last 100 years of data
   for each of the items in the score dialog.  You will only see your own
   data if Public Player Scores is not turned on.  Click on the blue diamond
   in the upper left of the dialog to change from graph to graph.  Score
   history information is saved in your history file (game.h#), so if you
   delete it, you will lose any score information you have accumulated.
Super Stealth players are more likely to learn tech from battles and may
   learn multiple things in a single year.
Changed minerals on home worlds to decrease as normal, but planetary mining
   (as opposed to remote mining) on home worlds will use a concentration of
   max(30, indicated conc).
The Claim Adjuster race now terraforms for FREE.  Every year all planets are
   automatically terraformed to the best your race is capable of.
Claim Adjuster Orbital Adjuster now always work when orbiting an occupied
   planet.  If the planet is owned by a friend, you will terraform the planet
   to their specifications, otherwise you will do your best to ruin the
   planet.  Destructive terraforming will not work on planets with a
   starbase in orbit.  The Remote Terraforming task has been removed.
Added a Battle Summary report as well as a message indicating the total
   number of battles you've been sent each year.  This message allows you to
   filter out all the other messages and just use the summary message to
   take you to the report to view all the battles.  The report has columns
   for the battle Location, Starbase Involved (O = ours, T = theirs), number
   of sides involved in the battle, total number of units, number of our
   units and their units.  Number of unarmed, scout, warship, bomber, and
   utility ships involved, the number of our ships that died, and the number
   of theirs that died.  Clicking on a battle selects the battle site in the
   scanner.  Clicking again brings up the battle VCR for that battle.
Added Player Colors to the View menu.  When turned on, both planet names and
   the fleet count numbers will be colored to reflect the player that owns
   them.  The color used is the same as the color that represents the player
   in the History Report.
The ship builder displays the enemy cloaking effectiveness when a ship
   has Tachyon detectors on the scanner info line.  Cloaking effectiveness is
   now calculated when more than one detector is on a design by the following
   formula:  95% ^ (sqrt(# of detectors)).
Report sorting is now 2 level stable.  That is, if you sort by field a,
   then sort by field b.  This will be in order by field b, then be sorted by
   field a for blocks of identical b's.

Added an ini variable 'Progress' if set to 1 will display the turn gen
   progress as a number in the progress gauge.  This line goes in the
   [misc] section.

Universes may now be created from the command line:

stars.exe -a game.def

The game.def file has the following format:
Game Name
Universe size (0-4) Density (0-3) Starting Distance (0-3)
Maximum minerals (0/1) Slow Tech (0/1) BBS Play (0/1) ... (other checkboxes)
Number of players, only humans allowed (1-16)
c:\stars\game\game.r1
...
c:\stars\game\game.rn
VC # of planets (0/1) Percent of planets (20-100)
VC Tech (0/1) Level (8-26) Fields (2-6)
VC Score (0/1) Score (1000-20000)
VC Exceeds nearest (0/1) Percent (20-300)
VC Production (0/1) Capacity (10-500)
VC Capital Ships (0/1) Number (10-300)
VC Turns (0/1) Years (30-900)
VC Must meet (0-7) Minimum Years (30-500)
New universe file name

The following is a sample game.def:

Tour of Duty
3 2 2
0 0 0 0 1 1 1
4
c:\stars\play\game.r1
c:\stars\play\game.r2
c:\stars\play\game.r3
c:\stars\play\game.r4
1 60
1 26 4
0
1 150
0
1 100
0
2 150
c:\stars\play\game.xy


Tweaks and Improvements:
Filtering out a battle message now filters out the related group of battle
   messages.
Fleets with an even number of fuel transports and other ships now make up
   a default name of the non-fuel transport ship.
You don't get a production queue is empty message now if the auto build
   items haven't finished.
Changed the ultimate recycling message to reflect more accurately the number
   of resources received.
Fleets in the Merge Fleets listbox will now have a '*' after their name if
   the fleet has at least one waypoint.  This makes it easier to select
   all the fleets not doing anything at a location.
We now also display planet names at 75% zoom.
Players are no longer allowed to give colonists to other players.
The 'v' key, which flashes the current selection location now works much
   better on Windows NT systems.
The cost of all planetary scanners is fixed now.  Once you build a scanner,
   it will automatically be upgraded when your research allows you to build
   a better scanner.
Mine fields are now truely 75% cloaked if you haven't seen them before.  If
   a ship can penetrating scan the center of the field, it will see the
   field.
If you achieve maximum tech in a field and forget to change fields, the
   lowest remaining field will automatically be selected for you.
Patrol now takes battle plans into account when deciding who to intercept.
   Your primary target will be matched on a HULL basis.  That is, if you
   target Unarmed ships, your fleet will only target fleets guaranteed to
   be unarmed.  You will not target, for example, a battleship, even if
   you've fought it before and know it doesn't have any weapons on board.
Shield sappers only contribute 1/3 as much to a ship's ratings.
Capital ships contribution to score is now calculated as:
   8 * # cap ships * # of planets / (# cap ships + # planets)
Ultimate recycling resources are now not strictly additive.  The number a
   planet gets are determined by the formula:
   (current planetary production * extra resources) /
   (current planetary production + extra resources).
   This formula is true whether a planet has a starbase or not.
Inner Strength fleets will now beam down excess babies if they are orbiting
   a planet they own.
The galaxy scoop will now default to Warp 10 if the distance makes sense.
Rebalanced the cost and power of torpedoes and capital ship missiles.
Hyper-Expansion races can no longer build Stargates of any kind.
Weapons now cost Inner Strength races 25% more (beams, torps and bombs).
Interstellar Travellers may now transport minerals and colonists in fleets
   through stargates.  Their weight doesn't count to the gate's limits.
Cost to build a factory is now 4kT of Germanium (no other minerals).  The
   race wizard 'Costs one less' checkbox now reduces the cost to 3kT of
   Germanium per factory.
Each player's home world's mineral concentrations will never drop below 30.
   Even if the player loses their home world, it will still retain this
   advantage.
Super Stealth races now gain research from spying and combining it with
   their own research.  They gain resouces in each field equal to half the
   average spent in that field by all races (including themselves) as long
   as at least one other race is in existance.


Bug Fixes:
Fixed bug in research dialog when you clicked on a new research field and
   dragged off, not selecting it, then clicked in the future research group
   box, it would appear to change the field anyway.
VCR now displays shots where all torps miss correctly.
Fixed bug where two planets could end up being named 007.
Fixed messages you receive when scrapping fleets at other player's planets.
Fixed bug which caused multiple salvage packets at a location and caused
   packets created by mine field detonations to occur at the wrong location.
Fixed the battle bug where a shot does negative damage.
Fixed the battle bug where tokens would lose accumulated damage.
Fixed a variety of battle bugs.