Lord of Rigel News

Hello Lords of Rigel,

We’ve continued work on refactoring the ship designer and economy systems, adding performance optimizations as we move through Early Access.

The 26th of February is a bit of a special day, as the 4x game we’ve aimed to make a spiritual successor of came out in 1998. Its sequels came out in 2003 and 2016 on that day as well. One big area we wanted to change in Lord of Rigel compared to those later games was having an engaging tactical combat system. Early Access gives us an opportunity to engage with the community on what they want to see and not see in areas like tactical combat and the user interface.

We’ll be working more in tactical during EA2, but what are the main things you want to see in tactical combat out of a 4x game?



Switching over to another area we want to hear more back from you on, more UI improvements, we will be adding a post combat UI screen in this phase of EA that will provide a better summary of tactical combat. Being able to save and load build queues is another request we’re working on. We’re also working on some additional quality of life tweaks with hotkeys and behavior adjustments to make sure they consistently work for all users.

But what do you want to see most in UI improvements? We’ve added in the ship info indicator, auto build, tactical combat log, diplomacy personality breakdowns, and tactical autofire toggle based on your feedback. Additionally, another request auto ship designs will be coming with our last pass on ship designer. With other UI improvements are there color scheme adjustments or options you would like to see? What other changes do you want to see and how?

Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email: [email protected] Saved games and clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.

As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you!

Hello Lords of Rigel,

A new week and a new patch. We are getting lower on reported bugs which is letting us focus on continued refactoring, feature implementation, and planning that we have around Early Access 1. This patch brings numerous fixes and a final wave of revisions to Ship Designer. Additionally, a lot of back-end work has been done to streamline fleet movement and research code, improve tooltips, and other general bug fixes.



That being said, code refactoring can introduce unexpected results, and as such we look forward to feedback from players about bugs, quirks, and overall gameplay. This coming week will bring changes to automated ship design creation, which completes the refactor of this significant system. With that completed, we will have updated the system to include several pieces of player feedback including relative weapon range data, ability to access multiple designs in the designer, and the addition of automated ship design generation from within the designer (should be coming in the next week or so).

We also wanted to use this developer update to address a few negative reviews we have received recently on the Steam page. We recognize that A) Lord of Rigel isn’t for everyone even in a future finished state, and B) the game in its current form has numerous bugs that we are addressing. This leads to players being frustrated and angry. We encourage players to provide us with actionable feedback – things they don’t like such as features that don’t work, bugs that need to be fixed, UI elements that aren’t intuitive, etc. This feedback can come in many forms including a list, a rant, or a single suggestion and can be submitted to us via Steam, Discord, or email. Our skins are pretty thick, so we are OK with getting critical feedback. Actionable feedback gives us an opportunity to make changes. As a development team we strive to listen, discuss, and work with the community to build a better product. Since October we have closed 450 tickets including bug fixes and numerous quality of life improvements suggested by players. Feedback and conversation about gameplay is what will lead to a better experience for everyone.

Please post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email to [email protected]. With these reports a saved game or clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.

As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you. Until next time!

• Ticket #1412 Clearing orbit data on Dyson sphere construction fix
  
• Ticket #1410 Ship designer weapon count addition fix
  
• Ticket #1168 Destroying faction not triggering event fix
  
• Ticket #1126 Multiple fleet attack fixes
  
• Ticket #1413 Weapon cooldown fix
  
• Ticket #1409 Support ship production calculation fix
  
• Ticket #1411 Colony view buy button fix
  

Additional Notes:

• Fleet movement code cleanup
  
• Research code cleanup
  
• Tooltip fixes and text centralization/cleanup
  
• Ship designer has been refactored should be working for custom designed ships. Auto generated ships may have issues with weapon sorting due to refactored code being incomplete for ship generation.
  
• Prior saved games with player as Tharrn may cause errors.
  
• Build queue menu current production/selection area does will not display correct production/cost/maintenance data in new UI area. Players can use existing data location in current building image.
  

Hello Lords of Rigel,

We were a little off on when a patch was going to get out this week past week. The good news is that it is bigger than we expected. Players should be seeing improved diplomacy calculations and ship designer now has a range calculation for weapons that will give you a general sense of weapon range for each weapon applied. Additionally, be on the lookout for other bug and UI fixes.



This week we are going to try and finally get to what we discussed last week, which finishing up the last of ship designer fixes and moving into automated ship design refactoring, fleet movement refactor, and hooking up the elements of savable build queues. This will let players create and save build queues which should allow for easier colony management. Players should see an updated build queue menu that now has these elements in place along with some improvements to the overall UI in build queue.

As always, we want to be sure to address everyone’s bug in the timeliest way possible. In order to help us do that we ask you to please either post on the forums, reach out to us via Discord or send an email to [email protected]. With these reports a saved game or clear steps to reproduce the bug are critical. It helps us more quickly track down the bug and get it fixed. Additional information on bug reporting tips can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/437440/discussions/.

Last week we shared some plans for the immediate future for patches. We also have a general timeline for what to expect for us to close out Early Access 1, 2 and 3. For Early Access 1 players can expect the following:

• Ship Designer refactor
• Build Queue load/save
• Hot Key refactor
• Tutorial system refactor
• Economy refactor
• Turn management refactor
• Galaxy menu refactor

These systems will pave the way for our work in Early Access 2 around the AI and other systems. More things may pop up in Early Access 2 as we continue to get more player feedback. We encourage players to share with us quality of life or features that you would like to see in the game as we can begin working to scheduling these into Early Access phases as time allows.

As always, we appreciate the feedback, conversations, and support from all of you. Until next time!

• Ticket #1389 Enculturate does not trigger end game victory fix
  
• Ticket #919 Military victory cutscene narration muffled fix
  
• Ticket #1395 Existing ship systems check in System Designer fix
  
• Ticket #1394 Planets list updating after protomatter device fix
  
• Ticket #1391 Gaia transformation fix
  
• Ticket #1397 Point Defense weapons firing arc in Ship Designer fix
  
• Ticket #1398 Planet shield building upgrade fix
  
• Ticket #1396 Advanced terraformer climate change fix
  
• Ticket #1353 Blank GNN Event fix
  
• Ticket #1121 & #1153 Leaving Build Queue does to return to previous place in Empire Screen fix
  
• Ticket #1269 Yalkai GNN events show all species names regardless of contact
  
• Ticket #1390 Outpost ships sent from Planet Menu not being used after an outpost is built fix
  
• Ticket #1388 “Close Opened Menus” tooltip fix
  
• Ticket #1403 QOL - Added AI personality tooltip to Diplomacy Menu and Info Screen
  
• Ticket #1399 Cultural Renaissance event start and end in same turn fix
  
• Ticket #1386 Stargate build filter fix
  
• Ticket #1392 Research complete and GNN event soft lock fix
  
• Ticket #1338 Diplomacy calculations fix
  
• Ticket #1404 Order of Operations fix for First Contact/Audience pop up and Research Screen fix
  
• Ticket #1402 New Game menu UI alignment
  
• Ticket #1293 Starvation alert for importing colonies fix
  
• Ticket #1046 Fleet arrival on movement cancellation fix
  
• Ticket #1407 Derelict ship GNN fix
  
• Ticket #1408 Research completion blank fix
  
• Ticket #1400 War effect on diplomacy score fix
  
• Ticket #1393 Colony base appearing for destroyed worlds with protomatter device used fix
  
• Ticket #1028 Planet/Star System spawn for space amoeba and lost colonies fix
  

Known issues:

• Prior saved games with player as Tharrn may cause errors.
  
• Build queue menu current production/selection area does will not display correct production/cost/maintenance data in new UI area. Players can use existing data location in current building image.
  
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