Lord of Rigel News

Hello Lords of Rigel,

First, we have to start by acknowledging that it has been 9 days since our last hotfix. The good news is that we weren’t idle and there were a lot systems being worked on. Unfortunately, these systems were complex and required extensive refactors, however, we are happy to say that this has sped up turn, improved AI research selection and completion, and introduced a multitude of other optimizations that continue to move the game forward for players and as well as improving our ability to more quickly fix issues as they arise. Check out the notes for Hotfix #21 for more details on updates we have been working on. Please note that due to these changes, some saved games may show odd behavior.



As we approach a new year, we are also thinking about what is ahead for Lord of Rigel and how we want to proceed with our next Early Access stage. So far in the immediate future we want to continue fixing player bugs and also focus on:

• Fleet Combat Auto Resolve System
  
• Generalized Code Clean up i.e., removing deprecated code and clean up data
  
• Refactoring and centralizing ship designer and auto ship design
  
• Fleet and Fleet Movement Refactor/Optimization
  
• Economy refactor and optimization in 3 phases – Population, Colony Level, Empire Level
  

After this we want to set our sights on other systems but we haven’t determined a sequence yet. We will have a better roadmap moving towards the holidays so that you know what to expect in the coming year. Additionally, there are some additional quality of life features suggested by players that we want to work with you all to prioritize.

We know that many of you are excited to move onto new features in the Early Access roadmap and we are as well. However, we want to make sure that the core game is performing so that new features are released into a stable environment, and that players are happy with the initial results rather than spending a long period patching. For instance, elder races would use the same AI as the main species with some minor changes. If the current species aren’t acting in a way players want, we don’t want to add more complexity by adding more AI into the mix.

As always, we really appreciate the feedback and support from all of you. We will keep putting out fixes on a regular basis and we look forward to hearing from all of you about how those are working for you and what else you are wanting to see in Lord of Rigel as well as some priority items you have for us. It will greatly help us in our conversation as we revisit our roadmap.

Last but not least, Lord of Rigel is 15% off until December 12th! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your intergalactic allies 🌠

https://store.steampowered.com/app/437440/Lord_of_Rigel

Until next time!

• Ticket #1292 Quick save in tutorial soft lock fix
  
• Ticket #1278 QOL - After colonize cutscene, game transition to colony view of new colony
  
• Ticket #1279 QOL – Attack ally prompt implemented
  
• Ticket #1291 All Hyper Advanced tech fields unlocking at the same time fix
  
• Ticket #1283 Multiple Dyson spheres constructed on turn causing endless loop fix
  
• Ticket #1258 Dyson spheres not clearing out old system data fix
  
• Ticket #1208 Terraformers on Terran worlds and aquatic terraforming fixes
  
• Ticket #1214 Gaia transformation occurs instantly fix
  
• Ticket #1122 Extermination fix
  
• Ticket #1295 Low G and High G maintenance fix
  
• Ticket #1259 Subterranean population fix for Dyson spheres
  
• Ticket #1288 Lost Colony Soft Lock fix
  
• Ticket #1299 Tooltips remain when “Demand Surrender” and “Declare War” selected fix
  
• Ticket #1289 Research menu scroll to tech fix
  
• Ticket #1296 Softlock in ship designer if exiting from empire or build queue menu fix
  

Additional Notes:
Research system fixes and optimizations including AI selection
Gas Giant and Orbital Generation Fix
UI mouse hover fixes
Import/Export Food system optimization
Omniscient trait explore and expansion optimization
Forward and reverse colony/star system button logic fix
Sabotage Building Fix
Building maintenance optimization
Prior saved games may NOT work with latest fix

Hello Lords of Rigel,

This has been a fun and busy week. For us at Rhombus Studios we enjoyed a little holiday time with our families and got quite a bit of coding done with our extra vacation time. We released an update on the 20th that included some small fixes and a massive refactor of the Uncreative research system along with fixes/optimizations to the research system.

Players should see these things in the form of consistent Uncreative tech trees throughout the game and tech choices that are better filtered for unification, mechanoid, and lithovore species traits. This should give players more relevant tech options such as lithovore species not being able to research to farming techs. This is especially helpful in uncreative games if the only choice provided for that tech level was farming. This also will help the AI make some better decisions if any of the above traits are relevant to them. Additionally, the research menu should load up more quickly using less resources and allow for non-Creative species to see tech they have acquired beyond the tech tree.

We have also been working on refactoring ship designer, skirmish species research selection, and auto ship designing, UI inconsistencies, planet enculturation, and other reported bugs. In the next hotfix, players should start to see changes to ship designer which will begin the transition we discussed earlier into Early Access that will remove automatically designed ships at the end of research tech for anything relating to a ship. Players will be able to have an initial fleet auto generated and subsequently go into ship design and click the “Auto” button to automatically generate a design based on the selected class. Also, at player request, we are implementing “range” data into the ship designer. This should give players more useful information on relative effective range. This takes into account the weapon’s firing range and range penalties. This should help players better understand the range capabilities of their designs.



As always we really appreciate the feedback and support from all of you. This past week we had a lot of players purchase Lord of Rigel and we are excited to see the community grow and hope to hear more from you all. Until next week!

Hello Lords of Rigel,

The Steam Autumn Sale begins today, and Lord of Rigel is 15% off! If you've been waiting to build your fleet and explore the galaxy, today's a good day to begin your journey!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/437440/Lord_of_Rigel/

Earlier this week we released a substantial patch that included many fixes to key systems in the game such as ground combat, orbital bombardment, and economy. There are also many visual improvements in tactical that offer more special effects and collider code for weapon hits on ground units. Units should also be operating in a more randomized manner in terms of the damage done and how the units are visualized.

Moving into this week we will be focusing on...

Integrating the AI and player code for orbital bombardment, improving ship designer, updating the research system for additional optimization, and fixes for the uncreative species trait.

All of these should provide improvements in speed and consistency. Importantly, it will also assist us with continuing to figure out where the AI state is.

What we are noticing as we get feedback and bugs is that many functions were not generating correct data. For the player, this results in a bug fix report. For the AI, this results in poor or unexpected behavior despite the AI logic being sound. It goes back to the concept of “garbage in, garbage out.” With some of the recent updates to research we are seeing improved AI expansion habits. We know there are other issues being reported around diplomacy and this recent fix should help the AI to expand.

Please continue to reach out to us with odd experiences and be sure to have saved games for us to analyze, replicate, and test fixes with.

We really appreciate the continued feedback regarding what is working and not working in Lord of Rigel. As time and opportunity allow, we have been implementing additional convenience features as we are fixing various systems. We have not heard much feedback regarding these updates which is usually a good sign of a happy user. If something isn’t working for you or an update isn’t meeting your needs please let us know. We are seeing saved games sent to us from users hitting 300 to 400 turns which is great to see and happening with more frequency than in prior builds.

We are looking to getting out our next planned hotfix which should improve additional systems and we look forward to hearing more comments. Until next week!

And if you have any ideas for future devlogs, please share them with us in our Discord: