1.5.5 BETA Change log

[Numdydar]

For those that are wonder what the latest beta changes are to the game. Here they are The change log can be located here as the default location

Steam version of the game
Steam\steamapps\common\Pandora\Documents\<Language> folder

Non-Steam
<Drive path>\Pandora\Documents\<Language> folder

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Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira
Change Log
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Version 1.5.5 (January, 2015)
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Added:
* Added number of turns each pact has been in effect to the diplomacy screen.
* Added custom mouse cursor graphic.
* Added video setting for choosing the title screen.
* Added support for unicode characters up to and including the Cyrillic script (0x4FF), allowing those characters to work correctly with the Plain (DejaVu Sans) font as well as any other custom unicode font that has the corresponding glyphs.
* Added AI ability to dynamically alter their tax-rate.
* Added ability to raze cities to the AI if their morale gets too bad.

Changed:
* Moved Planetary Market to one subtier earlier in the research tree.
* Improved mouse wheel scrolling of GUI components.
* Made terrain-colors on the minimap much darker to make it easier to tell it apart from cities and units.
* AI now is more aggressive about dealing with aliens.
* AI now chooses technologies to research in a similar fashion of how experienced players choose technologies.
* AI now will, in average, commit more scientists to research.
* AI now will expand much slower and focus more on improving its existing cities instead.
* AI now considers quality more important than quantity when it comes to building units.
* AI will now prefer late-game-devices over early-game-devices.
* AI now has an emergency behaviour to resolve economical crisis.
* Reworked how AI determines it's tile-improvements. It should now be much closer to what an experienced player chooses.

Fixed:
* Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a save game in a specific state.
* Fixed operations not replacing durations when deployed on territories.
* Fixed Scites and Carcharodons turning aggressive before Xenomorphs.
* Fixed water suburbs and water purifiers costing 2 credits instead of 3.
* Fixed Fungus Mutagenesis and Fungal Hormones not providing bonuses for water fungus.
* Fixed army panel sometimes showing units that are no longer in the territory.
* Fixed mouse wheel sometimes not scrolling drop lists.
* Fixed errors in German translation-files.
* Fixed AI not building advancements unlocked by killing sea-monsters.
* Fixed a rare case where the AI would waste some of it's mineral income each turn.

[ErissN6]

Thanks devs.

[dmantione]

That is an impressive update! Time to start playing again

[Sawelios]

Holy Gods of Fungi, a patch!? Guys, you are the best!

[SephiRok]

The AI changes are all really thanks to Xilmi's work. Big thanks go to him.

[Xilmi]

The AI changes are all really thanks to Xilmi's work. Big thanks go to him.

Well, big thanks to you too, for putting your trust in me and allowing me to do it!

What do you think would be a good approach for scheduling further updates?

The first set of changes had a lot of inter-dependencies so I had to commit them as a big chunk.
Now that this is done and I'm also better at navigating the code, it's easier to tackle one issue at a time, which I then usually commit right away.
So my advancements are quite gradual and it's also harder for me to decide when I have reached the next checkpoint.

So how about once a week unless I feel I didn't accomplish enough to make it worthwhile?

[SephiRok]

Up to once a week could work.

I suggest we stick to a fixed day (Friday would be good), so players also know when to look forward to updates. You should send me a mail before Thursday morning requesting a review if you think it's worth updating, allowing you to fix things by Friday, and if everything works out, I can update on Friday.

But it really does depend on how much you think you will get done each week. It would be smart to post Steam announcements along with the beta updates, and it would be better if the changes aren't too small. It might be better to relax the schedule to every two weeks than struggle and skip almost every second week.

[Numdydar]

There are several volunteer people doing similar work on War in the Pacific AE, War in the East, etc. over at Matrix's site and they typically update once a month unless some major fixes are needed.

From a user point of view, I think short term every two weeks would be a good start. Do that for 4-6 weeks depending on the changes needed/made, then revert to monthly. You just want to make sure there is enough to matter for everyone to want to update to the beta and see how the changes are working.

Just some suggestions

[ErissN6]

Ah, this is still beta? this thread is misplaced.
Last version is 1.5.4, or there's a bug?
or Slitherine prefer Steam customers than its own?
EDIT: Okay, thank for adding 'BETA' in title of this thead.

[Numdydar]

Fixed

Steam users can opt in for beta patches by right clicking on the program name, go to Prosperities and click on the Beta tab

[Xilmi]

Non-Steam-Users also can opt-in to the beta simply by starting "PandoraUpdater.exe" and selecting "Eclips of Nashira - Beta" from the dropdown-menu on the upper-right.

[Zak0r]

And the updater can be found in the binaries folder in the game folder.