Page last updated 27 Aug 2001


V4 BETA HISTORY 

 

 June 29th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.084

 Fixed: Intercepting ships burn too much fuel
 

 Host.exe v4.000.083

 Fixed: Energy drain bug, all ships that are able to cloak have a 150 unit energy drain every charge cycle. (Some called this the Combat ORD Bug) Bug showed up with the release of the Aczanny.

 New: Crystal X field DOES NOT steal fuel anymore

 New: No ship with 100 or more points of hull damage can have their hull repaired. (Over damaged parts can still be repaired.)
 

 June 28th, 2001

Host.exe v4.000.082

 Fixed: Ships and wings burning the entire amount of fuel they would burn if they traveled their full speed even if they are just traveling to a waypoint that is much closer.

 Fixed: Ill Wind weapon large weapon charge bonus toned way down.

 Fixed: Cyborg crew levels reset to 10% on all bases even if Shukazul pulse is active

 Fixed: Wings unable to trigger a fight with another wing.

 Fixed: Wings not always entering combat

 New: A ship under tow can not scan

 New: Crystal X field steals 10 units of fuel from all ships within 50ly

 New: Crystals immune to enemy crystal X field device

 New: Crystals get a ship long message when they steal from and enemy ship with the X field device

 New: Crystal X field causes mobile ord factories to explode, if they are on

 New: Crystal X field causes mobile repair plants to explode, if they are on
 

 June 24th, 2001

Host.exe v4.000.081

 Fixed: Nightmare! RST files that are 25meg in size!
 What happened? Every object was allowed to START a fight on movement phase 200, even if they already have been in a fight on movement phase 200. If you have 100 ships, pods and wings with weak weapons that never manage to kill one another for one reason or another you will end up with each of the 100 objects making a new VCR event and you will end up with 100 VCR events and 25meg RST files. This new host does not let anything start a new fight at phase 200, if it has already been in a fight on movement phase 200.

 Fixed: Tiny little combat bug. Ships are locking onto shielded bases as their primary target by mistake, while they do not waste ord and energy on the base target and can still fire are secondary targets that come into range they make movement mistakes that can keep the ship from firing at secondary targets due to enemy targets being out of weapons range.

 New: The Stormer Ill Wind Class Battlecruiser been upgraded:

      Mark VII Negative Improbability Targeting Computer (Hits the otherwise impossible to hit) 
      Armored large weapons mounts (Large weapons immune to weapons damage) 
      Large weapon super chargers (Large weapons charge faster than normal) 
      Ship slogon changed from "It is always a good day to die!" to "Evade this!"
 

 June 12th, 2001

 V4HOSTX.DLL v4.000.080a

 Fixed: Load error during a ship to ship combat events using new high hull types ( types 501 to 2000 )

 VCR.EXE v4.000.013

 Fixed: Unable to display high hull types ( types 501 to 2000 ) (Aczanny, Centaur. . . )
 

 June 8th, 2001

 Massive change in data format the number of hulls that the programs will support has been upped from 500 different types to 2000 different hull types. Most 3rd party programs will need to be updated to use v4face2.dll before they can load the data from the Aczanny race packs. There are so many 3rd party race packs being worked on that I would have run out of hull numbers if I had not expanded to hulls number range to 2000 hulls.

Host.exe v4.000.080

 Fixed: Glory device using ship not immune to combat

 Fixed: Auto pilot fails to move money

 Fixed: Too many mine hit messages from a destroyed ship

 Fixed: Wings do not follow their escort target

 Fixed: Prisoners die when not in a labor mine or labor camp

 Fixed: False tow over power messages

 Fixed: Bad life pod to ship transfer messages

 Fixed: The Kill Target of captured ships are failing to clear

 Fixed: Hisser unit does not reduce the happiness of high happiness bases

 New: Jump gate builder turns off after making a gate

 New: Plasmatron units generate a log message

 New: Cyborg are no loose happiness when mining for metals

 New: Cyborg no longer get destress messages from natives

 New: Command code JOE ( Jump only escort ) ships will only jump with their escort target ship if it jump point jumps or chunnels

 New: Pods undock before hyperjumps

 New: Fuel refinery ships can use RFD RFT RFM RFS command codes to control what goods will be used to make fuel

 New: Aczanny ships have an extra evasive bonus of (Engine_Type * 5) / ((1 + Mass / 200) ^2)

 New: Aczanny Sparrow class (hull 600) is immune to grav mines, barbitic mines, and grav wells

 New: Aczanny ships and wings are resistant to nemesis torpedoes, light ships take only 5% damage. Wings loose only 30% to 70% of their numbers.

 New: Aczanny bonus: avian natives are 200% more likely to join them

 New: Aczanny ghipsoldals make transwarp engines

 New: Aczanny are not eaten by amorphous natives

 New: Amorphous natives leave Aczanny bases

 New: Aczanny ships have passive hyperscanners that detect the use of chunnel ships and hyperjumping ships, the device has a 500 LY range

 New: Aczanny security device uses 5kt of fuel, stops boarding lasers from killing crew members. Gives the Aczanny crew a 500% kill bonus.

 New: Aczanny cargo desk loads all metals on the ship into a pod and stores the pod in a cargo bay

 New: Aczanny ECM jammer device. Unit draws 150 power units a second and reduces the accuracy of enemy weapons by 30%, accuracy of enemy wings are reduced by 15%. A maximum of one can be active at a time.

 New: Aczanny mass driver weapon is enhanced with a 42% accuracy and a +10 armor drain

 New: Aczanny assault pods explode after a successful docking with an enemy ship.The pod has a 400 armor drain, 100 armor arc and does 500 blast damage. The pod explodes after the troops on the pod has boarded the enemy ship.

 New: Aczanny ground assault units take 1/2 damage from enemy laser cannons

 New: If the Aczanny have at least one working scout ground assault unit all enemy fighter craft do only 1/2 damage to all other Aczanny ground assault units

 New: Aczanny are attacked on sight by the insectoids
 

 June 8th, 2001

 Planets4.exe v4.000.038

 New: Support for hull numbers 501 to 2000 added. Before this release the program would only support hull types 1 to 500

 Fixed: Quick build window is not showing ships that are able to build ships

 Fixed: When closing the program with the [X] box in the upper right corner the close file code does not fire, all new notes
 are lost and there may be other side effects like failure to build ships or launch pods.

 Fixed: Ship data screen gets max crew confused with max guests

 Fixed: The hot keys V and M fail to work when screens other than the ship and base overview screens have focus.
 

 May 28th, 2001

Host.exe v4.000.079

 Fixed: Fighters are not able to travel their rated travel distance

  New: Scavenger Crawlers now produces these amounts per 100,000 natives. You need 1 crawler per 100,000 to gather your maximum levels of goods. It works on all natives on the planet, on your base, or on someone else's base.
                                         Chupanoid-Nothing
                                      Humanoid-1 type 1 fighter
                                        Reptillian-100 Armor
                                      Ghipsoldal-20 MedPacks
                                         Siliconoid-300 Ord
                                     Amphibian-200 Repair Parts
                                       Bovinoid-100 Supplies
                                         Insectoid-10 Food 
                                        Amorphous-Nothing
                                    Avian-30 random contrabands

 New: Scavenger Q ships can order their ID number changed with the command code "NID"

 New: Scavenger ships are immune to Barbitic and Gravitonic mines. Gravitonic mines will still knock them out of hyperspace.

 New: Scavengers get 200% galactic bank income from transfers from govenment centers as long as they keep their hull tech at 6 or under, engine tech at 10 or under and large weapon tech at 6 or under. As soon as they go over those techs their transfers drop to 50%. Only half of what you transfer gets to the galactic bank.
 

 May 21st, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.078

 Fixed: Ship minefield movement vector error. You can only avoid hitting a mine at "safe" speed if you are going straight up and down, or , straight right and left. At 45 degrees "safe" speed is only 70% of the listed "safe" speed.

 Fixed: Exploding glory device ships take 500% damage and live!

 Fixed: Dustoff device not working

 Fixed: Ship to resupply pod fails to work, using the ship's transporter controls

 Fixed: Ships are fighting the same little base over and over and over again. I just got a RST file with 50 VCR files that were all the same! A few ships fighting the same ground base. The RST file is a griant 3 meg file! 
 What was done: A ground base can only fight in 2 battle's per turn at most.

 Fixed: I am escorting a ship, but I am ending many turns just a light year from my fleet leader.

 Fixed: I can not tow my friend's ship because I keep loosing scanner lock!

 Changed: The rate that you collect contraband from a planet has been increased. You will collect at maximum rate if you have 400,000 or more colonists on the base. The rate that you collect is 150% of what it used to be in older versions of host (before revision 4.000.074), but only if you have at least 400,000 colonists on the base.

 New: Base command code: "GBA" Give Base Away. Your base will be given to any other race with a base on the planet. It will go to any friends you have first, if you have no friends it will be given to your enemy. All your assault units, fighters, special race buildings and high guard will vanish. 

 New: A pod docking event has been added that takes place before hyper jumps

 New: Dustoff device works before and after movement

 New: Dustoff device has the power to make super massive assault pods with masses far above 1000kt., this is by design.

 New: Ships, bases and wings send out one extra scanner pulse before movement starts

 New: Birdmen have highly stealth fighter wings

 New: Your shared data is sent to your friends before movement and well as after movement

 New: Birdmen highly resistant to Probe Launchers detecting their baes

 New: The order that ships take actions are based on the ship's skill, experience, and high guard on the ship. Ships with more skill, experience and high guard will take their actions last. They will sweep mines last, they will lay mines last. The order is no longer random.

 New: Boarding laser ships transport attempts take place before ships that do not have boarding lasers if they both are at transporter range at the same time.
 

 May 8th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.077

 Fixed: New games have planets with no names (Master problem)

 Fixed: Cloaked Barbitic minefields are being swept by mine sweepers

 Fixed: I am able to transfer more ord and repart units from junk pods than my ship can hold

 New: A landing life pod forming a new base gathers up 10% of any food on the planet's surface. 
 

 May 6th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.076

 Fixed: Fighters still firing on bases when ground attack is nt turned on!

 Fixed: Contraband buy message is sometimes wrong when there is a limited amount of contraband 

 Fixed: Resource points messages is not ending up getting to the players

 New: The Birdmen Nanovirus weapon kills the Cyborg King

 New: The Evil Empire Crawler ground unit produces 15 battle bots each per turn. They can also sometimes produce a Battle Tank. A group of 100 or more Crawlers can produce a max of 10 new Battle Tanks in a turn.

 New: Hitting a grav mine during normal space movement damages the ship's hyperdrive.

 New: Empire ships have a +50% shield bonus incombat (Must be owned by the Evil Empire and be of Evil Empire Design)

 New: The Super Gorbi has a +100% shield bonus

 New: Ships of Evil Empire design in the hands of another race have a -75% shield weakness, have a 300% better chance of taking a critical hit from eemy fighter craft, and Heavy Laser weapons pass through both the shields and armor and can cause a critical hit.

 New: Evil Empire Sand Casters are very weak against enemy fighter craft
 New: The Shields of Evil Empire ships can be fired through by enemy fighters with 10% of the hits passing through the armor and has a chance of causing a critical hit. Fighter missile have a much better chance of causing a critical hit.

 New: Heavy Lasers can fire through Evil Empire shields and 10% of the damage passes through the ship's armor. If the ship is owned by the evil empire there is no danger of a critical hit. But you might take out important systems that will render the ship helpless.

 New: The power of exploding barbitic mines increased to double what it was before. (These are mines that have been ordered to explode by the wner) Normal barbitic mine hit power has not been changed.

 New: The Super Star Cruiser's Bullistic Targeting computer now active. This system gives and automatic +100 accuracy bonus to 500mm Guns and Antimatter Gns. It gives no bonus to any other weapon system.

 New: "BDP" Command code now moves troops, colonists, highguard and money to the planet's surface

 New: The H Ross Class Ship (Evil Empire) is highly resistant to minefield damage. The ship only takes around 10% normal damage for a ship of its size when hitting a mine.

 New: Scavenger ship designs, owned by a scavenger player are immune to barbitic and gravitonic minefields during normal movement.

 New: Damage to hyperdrives keeps them from working

 New: Cyborg troops on ships are converted back into colonists

 New: Master now gives the Evil Empire 4 Mig Shuttles as their starting ships.
 

 April 30th, 2001

Planets4.exe v4.000.037

 Fixed: Quick build window is not loading alien plans when I first open the window. I have the plans and metal to build the ships in question.

 Fixed: If I open the data grid and uncheck "enemy" the program crashes

 Fixed: Draconian government centers are listed as giving the wrong amounts of bonus income (Correct amount is 45mc)

 Fixed: If I have the command screen closed and I hit the "T" hot key the ship transport command screen opens, but the top command tab buttons are not updating.

 Fixed: Cyborg Palaces' income to the central bank is not being listed on the tech upgrade screen.

 Fixed: Base minister active light is showing minister active when they are off and off when they are active

 New: Hotkey "C" opens the command screen of the currently selected object, if you have the power to command the object.
 

 April 29th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.075

 Fixed: A false message keeps being sent out saying empire 1 is using the Shokazal Pulse! 

 Fixed: Prisoner death rate is all wrong! I am loosing 4 prisoners per camp per turn! It is not 2% like it should be

 Fixed: Super weapons not switching from old part to new part in outfit pods

 Changed: Ion Cannon (Ground base weapon) accuracy increased. The best odds of hitting is 30%, the worst possible odds is 9% (at max range, holodecoys active and a high evasive bonus ship) The weapon has a 12 point shield drain power.

 Changed: Glory device now destroys all space mines within 50 LY (was 100LY). It destroys both cloaked and non-active mines. It distroys all types, including web mines

 Removed: Ion Cannon generates an extra 30mc per cannon per turn in bonus income

 Removed: Population growth decreases by up to 40% if more than 100 supplies are produced by the planet's factory
 

April 28th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.074

 Fixed: Ships with over 100% hull damage are ending up in combat

 Fixed: I am getting the logs from enemy fighter wings!

 Fixed: The game is at the object limit and I tried to build a jumpgate, no jump gate was built but all the metals and money were lost!

 Fixed: The game is at the object limit, but there are only 15000 objects in the game! Dead slots are not being used!

 Fixed: Transfers from construction pods to ships causes metals to be copied, not transfered.

 Fixed: I keep getting a hyperdrive repair messages and my hyperdrive never had any damage!

 Fixed: I am unable to board an enemy ship that has hull damage using a ship that does not have a boarding laser

 Fixed: High Guard are appearing from nowhere when a lifepod is launched

 Fixed: Recycling ships gives you double duranium and no molybdenum

 Fixed: Old parts are not switching to new parts on ship outfitting pods (hyperdrives and engines)

 New: Producing more than 100 supplies a turn using factories can reduce the colonist growth rate by as much as 40%.

 New: On bases with more than 1000000 colonists Ion Cannons produce a 30mc bonus per turn each.

 New: Cyborg prisoners refuse to work in labor camps and labor mines

 New: Using a labor camps causes 2% death rate prisoner death rate

 New: Using a labor mines causes 2% death rate prisoner death rate

 New: Contraband Blockade device, no contraband transactions within 200ly of the ship that has this device on

 New: Superlaser can not fire on a planet in combat until tick 4000

 New: Superlaser can not fire on a planet after all movement unless the ATTACK switch is on

 New: Cloaked ships will attack the enemy from cloak if the ATTACK switch is on. If you wish to avoid combat you will have to turn off the ATTACK switch.

 New: If a ship is captured its ATTACK switch is turned off and its kill target is cleared

 New: Host log does not list old REG number of a player if they have switched to using the shareware version of the game

 New: Labor mines and Labor camps can cause problems for you 50% of the time

 New: Ship devices, wing device, base events all take place in random order. Things like minelaying and sweeping are now all in random order, not by ship id number

 New: Ship command code "BUS" Beam up supplies

 New: Ship command code "BDP" Bema down people and money (Requested by the Cyborg lobby)

 New: New wings have more random friendly codes

 New: If you have under 1,000,000 colonists on a planet the rate that you collect contraband from the planet's surface is reduced.

 New: If you have under 1,000,000 colonists on a planet the income from any natives on the planet will be limited.

 New: The Empire can see all the enemy ship's weapons and crew. (Dark Sense)

 New: Resource points. The more colonists you have the more resource points your empire will have, the more resource points you have the more bases, ships, pods, wings and minefields your race can build. You will get a message letting you know your current status.

 New: If a wing takes up 2 or more fighter bays on a ship and the wing is small enough to fit in a single bay then the extra bays are cleared

 New: The amount of megacredits the Enforcers get from training has been reduced. The money will decrease as a factor of (1/(100 + N^(1.3))) where N is the number of newly trained crew, troops and highguard.

 New: If the price of contraband is under 24mc the contraband traders will limit how much they sell to you. If the price of contraband has been under 5mc the last 5 turns they will sell you up to the limit of 10000 units.

 New: POW's have a stronger effect on your enemy's happiness levels

 New: Stormer Glory device destroys all mines in a 100LY radius

 New: Resupply pods can refuel fighters

 New: Antimatter Maul can destroy jump gates (Set it as your ship's kill target) The ship gets loaded up with the molybdenum from the gate.

 New: All central bank transfers are limited to 10000mc by host

 Unable To Find Error: Omega pulse fails to work

 Unable To Find Error: Jumppoint hitch hikers ships travel full distance after the jumping ship was stopped by grav mines or grav wells.
 

April 23rd, 2001

 Planets4.exe v4.000.036

 Fixed: Quick build new plans button replaces and existing plan

 Fixed: I try to make a new quick build plan and it is sometimes not added to the list of plans!

 Fixed: When I edit a quick build plan the armor number is always 0

 Fixed: The Quick build armor level for ships plans is not being saved

 Fixed: The Quick build energy drain number is incorrect 

 Fixed: On space command screen a 0 LY can be seen overlaping the words NEAR

 Fixed: Ministers building farms over shoot the maximum farms that the planet can support by the planet

 Fixed: Lifepod launch keeps turning off carbon freeze

 Fixed: Base industry screen reports too many supplies being made by hyperlathe

 Fixed: The blue box that shows a TRN file has been emailed does not clear from turn to turn

 Fixed: Hyperjump travel time estimates are wrong

 Fixed: Base switch screen fails to save switch and slider setting for ord plants

 Fixed: Outfit pod command buttons not working

 Fixed: Program fails to open RST file

 New: The hot key numpad "0" bulls eye size increased to 1200 LY of map rings around the current hammer object

 New: Parts pick screen will allow you to select up to 40 engines

 New: Base reserve screen now has UNIV buttons, if you press the button the reserve levels of all bases will be set to the current setting of the one item to the left. 

 New: Build structure screen lists the climate and soil of the planet when the farm structure is selected

 New: Program is aware of Crystal hyperlathes making food

 New: Minister can turn off all super weapons

 New: Unknown contacts will NOT replace a old copy of ship data that is in the map memory data base

 Remember: The ministers only work on ships or bases that that have a "M" indicator lite up in green. Ministers ignore any ships or bases that have the "M" greyed out.

 New: Ship overview and Base overview screen has a view indicator, it will show up as a "V" in a box. You can click on it or use the "V" hot key. When the "V" is on the ship or base will act normal, but when it is turned off the ship or base will not show up when you use the up and down arror button or pageup or pagedown buttons to switch to the next base or ship.

 New: Fuel burn estimates are aware of exotic techs that save fuel

 New: Program is aware of Draconian government centers getting and extra 50mc a turn

 New: Minefields list density level on minefield display. A minesweeper can only remove one density level a turn. A density 2 minefield acts like two overlapping minefield.

 Removed: The MSFLXGRD.OCX control. The control was used to display a grid of data on the data grid screen. It has been replaced with a pure source code grid display.

 Failed to reproduce / find error: Alien plans on a base are NOT listed in the parts list for gold pod launches

 Failed to reproduce / find error: False red bars on ship overview fuel gauge

 Failed to reproduce / find error: Find switches: my stuff, friend, and enemy objects not working for bases

 Failed to reproduce / find error: Notepad key input really slow
 

 April 10th, 2001

Planets4.exe v4.000.035 

 Fixed: Base overview income wrong by income from cities when HQ screen is up

 Fixed: Hyperdrives launched on pods not subtracted from the base storeage

 Fixed: Wreckage data sometimes crashes the program

 Fixed: Error 75 path error when you start the program and exit right away

 Fixed: Pod launches crash when there is negative fuel on the base

 Fixed: ETA of 0 for a ship that is 1 LY from its goal

 Fixed: Reply to messages from others fails to send messages

 Fixed: Pod controls, cloak, transfer, on gold and assault pods not saving their settings. No commands passed to host.

 Fixed: Can't scroll to next ship or base if the space command screen is closed

 Fixed: Hyp jump ETA not taking into account the max hull jump speed

 Fixed: If you build a new ship with a hyperdrive and go back and view the parts loadout again the hyperdrive vanishes

 Fixed: Quick build ship metal and cost estimates wrong

 Fixed: Help! I hit the delete key and deleted my ship!

 Fixed: Datapads are showing metals instead of ore numbers under the ore listings for bases

 Fixed: When changing a ships speed on the overview screen I sometimes slip my mouse out onto the mini nav map and set a new waypoint by mistake

 Fixed: My notes get garbled or lost

 Fixed: Fleet command not updating when a fleet leader switch is switched

 Fixed: Fleet command screen will not show fleet number 6

 Fixed: Quick build screen loads all the plans for all existing ships every time I open the screen

 Fixed: Quick build screen sometimes fails to show ships that can build ships as builders

 Fixed: Changing the scanner power of a Ranger Class ship causes a overflow crash

 New: Jumpgate.bmp file (place in your BMP directory)

 New: Your friends can no longer give build ship orders to your bases and ships

 New: You can make new Quick Build plans using the quick build screen

 New: You can edit Quick Build plans from the quick build screen

 New: Sensor image reflects the fact that mine sweepers make 50 points of noise

 New: Outfit pods can hold up to 50 engines

 New: Outfit pods can now push parts onto ships, adding parts, but removing nothing

 New: Planets4.exe ignores half downloaded RST files

 New: Base metals screen shows the planet's core metals

 New: Ministers will only launch a maximum of 5 pods of colonists per base when you launch populations on planets of more than X million

 New: Base overview screen estimates reflect goods and income from hyperlathes

 New: Scan ranges reflect that the exotic tech scan range boosts are only good for ships that have their active scanners on

 New: Sensor images reflect new birdmen sensor image updates, half engine noise and double scanner noise

 New: File / game slots screen shows a blue ring around the empire number when the TRN file has been emailed

 New: Race's music played when the gane file is opened

 New: Map option, no hammer anvil line

 New: New minister powers

 New: Base overview: Agros food production reflected in the new food estimate

 New: Base overview: Labor camps and mines money production reflected in the new cash estimate

 New: Fleet screen has a fleet whole order pop up command screen that allows you to give orders to the whol fleet at the same time, including matching of the leader's vector and attack orders.

 New: Gold pod, cloak battery display removed

 New: Overview, forbidden buildings are marked as forbidden

 New: Space command list, a right click on the list loads the item as an anvil object

 New: Pod launch screen shows the exotic tech speed boost bonus

 New: Ship sensor image displayed on HUD

 New: New ship device names added

 New: Cargo transfers can use use arrow keys

 New: Ord units loaded into pods in 100X units

 New: Sensor image on nav and mission screens

 New: Wing patrol range renamed to auto intercept range

 New: Base overview screen displays (COLD) and (HOT) if the climate of the planet is below or above your race's favorite climate.

 New: Base overview displays star heat next to star type as a white number

 New: Filtering out minefields also causes them to not be shown on the ship overview mini nav map

 New: Ships and bases have a minister ignore switch, if it is checked the ministers will IGNORE this object. It is a small white box with an "M" inside it.

 New: Reserve levels on bases have an active switch, reserve levels only work if active is switched on.

 New: Base overview screen displays "Reserve" in green if reserve is active, grey if not active. Clicking on reserve box will bring up the reserve screen. Clicking on the little box left of the reserve box turns the reserve levels on and off from the overview screen.

 New: Ship overview: The fuel gauge displays how much fuel the ship is going to have after it transfers fuel as a red outline box.

 New: Datapads: The whole datapad form can be dragged, not just the title bar

 New: Ship command screen also show ship name under the picture and id number

 New: Many new minefield map filters, type, clocked, active, other races, my mines. . .

 New: Space command object list is sorted by type or name

 New: Minefields of friendly empires shown in blue

 New: Minister pod launch metals within X ly of anvil to the anvil

 New: Minister pod launchs respect reserve levels

 New: Ministers activate all minefields

 New: Ministers cloak all minefields

 New: Ministers disable all minefields

 New: Ministers disable all gravitonic minefields

 New: Ministers activate all gravitonic minefields

 New: Option to not show minefield icons on map, just minefield circles

 New: Fighter switch: Do not fire on disabled ships

 New: Pod launch, carbon freeze is on by default
 

March 27th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.073

 Fixed: Fighter type 1's can only fire at enemy fighter type 1

 Fixed: Super weapons ignoring base shields during combat

 Fixed: Junk pods from dead ships have bad shield types, it causes a crash in planets4.exe

 New: All ships can move through minefields safely at speed 13 or less (Laser, Barbitic and Gravitonic)

 New: All ships can move through web minefields at speed 6 or less

 New: Ships with a speed of 25 or less have 1/3 the normal chance of hitting a minefield (Except web)

 New: Darkwing G's weapons have a double armor drain bonus on all targets

 New: Darwing G's have a 1000 armor arc bonus against all enemy birdmen owned targets

 New: All Lizard design ships have a plus 100 parts (hull) damage mod when not owned by a Lizard player

 New: Minefield destablizer no longer works on web mines or cloaked barbitic mines.

 New: Minefield destablizer reports ID number of minefield destroyed

 New: Minesweepers do not work on cloaked barbitic mines

 New: The power of sandcasters to counter holodecoys increased by 50%. A shot from a sandcaster will destory 15 decoys.
 

 March 18th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.072

 Fixed: Large weapons in slots 11 to 20 never fire in ship to ship combat.

 Fixed: Ships intercepting or escorting another ship never hit mines

 Fixed: Hull plan exchanges fail when there are 3 or more ships exchanging ship plans in the same area of space

 Fixed: When a ship is captured the enemy can read my ship's private log!
 What was done: The host replaces the ship's private log with meaningless text

 Fixed: Hyperjumping ships have a log message claiming that they hitting grav minefields that they will not reach until next turn. The ship jumps its full jump distance anyway.

 New: Birdmen assault pods now have a sensor image of 100, instead of 250.

 New: When a base is sabotaged the ID number of the damaged base is included in the message

 New: The exotic tech that boost scanner range only works when a ship's active scanners are turned on.
 Ships get a full boost when long range scanners are on, a half boost when mid range scanners are on, and a one quarter boost when short range scanners are on.

 Checked: When an enemy base surrenders POWs are never captured! 
 Finding: A 100000 colonist vs 30000 colonist ground war combat was tested. The winner took 19000 prisoners. It works.
 

 March 8th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.071

 Fixed: Ship that have a waypoint set and an intercept target set can take off and travel a great distance using very little fuel if the intercept target is destoyed in combat. Ships have been observed traveling thousands of light years in a single turn.

 Fixed: Scavenger bases and ships failing to gather junk pods after a combat event.

 Fixed: Combat events failing to produce junk pods.

 Fixed: Pods and wings docked to a ship failing to show up on the other side of a jump gate until one turn after the jump.

 Fixed: Command codes 2 and 3 failing to activate jump gates. Only command code 1 works

 New: A check added for pods. If a pod claims to be docked with a ship, but the ship does not have a record of the the pod being docked the pod's docking lock is cleared.

 Changed: The exotic tech Bribe Natives now does the following:
 If you use it your natives gain 12 points of happiness and all other races' native happiness drops 2.
 If two races use it they will both get a plus 10 gain in native happiness and all other races will get a minus 4 drop. If many races are using it the minimum gain is 2 points. The maximum loss in happiness any race can have is minus 10.
 

 March 7th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.070

 Fixed: Fighters docked with carriers are not fighting.
 Cause: Docked fighters can not be seen on scanners, object that are invisible on scanners do not fight. 
 What Was Done: All docked wings will join fights unless the DO NOT LAUNCH wing switch is on.

 Fixed: Horrible energy sucking combat bug. When a combat takes place next to an enemy shielded base the ship will target the enemy base (incase the shield fails). The ship tries to fire at the base, but just before the shot leaves the ship the shot is aborted because it will not do anything. The ord and energy that was used to charge the weapon is lost and the ship does not bother to target any other enemies in the area. The result is the ship just floats around wasting energy and ord not firing at anything while enemy ships peck it to death. Large, small and super weapons are all hit with this problem.
 What Was Done: Energy and ord is ONLY used if a shot leaves the ship. If a shot is aborted the ship will try to take a shot at the next object on its top ten target list. 
 

 March 4th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.069

 New: Contraband market price changes made much more complex

 New: A ship leaving a jump point will travel to it's waypoint 1 and not just travel in the pre-jump waypoint 1 vector

 New: Gambling Deck has a 1000mc normal income maximum

 New: Gambling Deck makes 300mc per million colonists on a base under the ship if it is the only gambling deck ship around. A ship can make up to 15,000mc a turn. A gambling deck ship will make this income over bases that do not belong to you as well as all your base are belong to us. You can park a gambling deck ship over a friend's homeworld and rake in the megacredits. Having more than 1 gambling ship near a planet will greatly reduce the ship's production. It is best to have no more than 1 per planet.

 New: Show Lounge makes 100mc per million colonists on a base under the ship if it is the only show lounge ship around. Ship can make up to 5,000mc a turn. Ship will make this income over bases that do not belong to you!

 New: Large weapon mass damper. Large weapons with a mass greater than 200kt have a mass damper that reduces the mass of the ship to just 200kt in order to save fuel.

 New: Mine hit messages report the ship damage of the victim ship

 New: The Hissssser device on a Lizard design ship will not work if another race tries to use them on a captured Lizard ship.

 New: Allies are no longer allowed to upload plans to a friend's ship memory bank

 New: Allies are no longer allowed to give commands to a friends ground base to build a ship.
 ( WHY?!? Because it is way too confusing for both players and is generating far too many false bug reports.)

 Fixed: The Cyborg can warp chunnel JUMPGATES!!! Whoa momma!

 Fixed: Quick build allows tech 10 ships to be built when my race only has tech 7 hull tech. . .

 Fixed: Beaming crew from a ground base allows the over crewing of a ship. Up to double crew can be placed on a ship.

 Fixed: Life Pods docked with ships that are ordered to dock with a friend's base art very odd. They seem to vanish and leave a ghost pod docked to the ship.

 Fixed: Ship building on a ship can send the host program into an endless loop, if the ship being built is an alien planet that has been deleted.
 

 Feb 25th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.068

 Fixed: Pods not staying docked with ships

 Fixed: Crystal X Field device fails to captures enemy ships with high engine damage if the Crystal ship has a 100% full repair hold

 Fixed: If a ship tries to board an enemy ship with high guard and fails to win the fight the high guard vanish after NOT being killed. (They now return to their own ship.)

 New: Cyborg colonists are transformed into troops when sent over to an enemy ship for a boarding action.

 Restored: Ships are again allowed to move after exiting a hyper jump point or warp chunnel

 Unable to find problem: Fighters do not destroy enemy fighters.
.

 Feb 24th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.067

 Fixed: Ship log for hyper jumping ships lists the waypoint distance instead of the jumped distance

 Fixed: Enemy races could read a wing's log and even give the wing orders

 Fixed: Darkwing G failing to fire through Cyborg shields!

 Fixed: Small programming error that may have stopped many race based traits from working, it is likely
 the cyborg king, enforcers, and scavengers were troubled with this error

 Fixed: Ship nav targeting defect causing warning messages to pop up in the host log.

 Fixed: Pods docked with two DIFFERENT ships at the same time. 

 Fixed: Incarceration beam failure (v4host was trying to place new pods in the FIGHTER bays. . . DUH!)

 Fixed: Ship firing on SELF!

 Fixed: Assault pods not capturing ships in combat. (This has been fixed, tested and tuned)

 Fixed: Newly captured ship (in combat) continues to fire on old targets. If one of the old targets is one of
 my guys I fire on my own ships and declare war on myself!

 Fixed: Crash! V4HOSTX.DLL movsx eax, word ptr [eax + 42] ( During a combat event )

 Fixed: Destroyed ship message lists the wrong ship owner race!

 Fixed: Pods not hyperjumping with the ship they are docked to!

 Fixed: Negative repair unit on a ship.

 Fixed: I am excorting a ship I am towing.

 Fixed: I am intercepting a ship I am towing

 Fixed: Pods are not staying at the same point in space as their mother ship that they are docked to.

 Fixed: I boarded an enemy ship and ended up capturing it and the ship had more guests
 on board than it is allowed to hold!

 Fixed: Cyborg King failing to assimilate groups of natives in the 1 to 99999 population range.

 Fixed: I have attack ground targets off, but my ship is still firing on the ground base!

 Fixed: Host allows me to make free clones of hyperdrives using pods

 Fixed: Even though I am fobidden from building farms, I am building them!

 New: Host uses c:\temp\ or c:\windows\temp\ or c:\winnt\temp\ directories for a temp directory instead of c:\

 New: Ship command codes "ORD" or "BUO" orders the ship to beam up ord units from any base under
 the ship that you own or has a matching friendly code.

 New: Metal levels on newly made planets (protomatter cannon) have less metals than before
 (1 to 1000kt range)

 New: New ships start with attack ground targets turned on.

 New: A ship that enters a warp chunnel or jump point comes to a full stop at the exit point.
 ( removed)

 New: A boarded and captured ship stops moving.

 New: Energy Mines (Large Weapon) that hit the inside of an enemy ship destroy 100 to 200 repair units

 New: Force Beams (Large Weapon) that hit the inside of an enemy ship destroy 200 to 400 ord units

 New: The 35mm Vucan, Auto Blaster, and Flake Cannon point defense systems can all fire at incoming small weapons fire

 New: 35mm Vulcan point defense is good at stopping Streak Missiles

 New: The Auto Blaster point defense has 3X the fire rate against small weapons. The Auto Blaster gets a +20% chance of intercepting incoming Ord firing weapon shots.

 New: The Quad Laser gets a +40% chance of intercepting incoming Ord firing weapon shots. 

 New: The Turbo Laser can kill up to 3 fighters in a single shot.

 New: Mine hit odds increased. Stealth is less of a factor in avoiding mine hits. Ship speed is more of a factor. The odds of hitting a mine increase as a power of 3 instead of a power of 2.

 New: Assault pods are armored and are much harder to destroy

 New: Assault pods colonists attack enemy ships with 0.1X normal attack power

 New: Assault pods high guard attack enemy ships with 20X normal attack power

 New: High blast weapons do a better job of destroying assault pods

 New: The Phaser (small weapon) is extra good at destroying assault pods

 New: The only point defense weapon that can shoot down a Sandcaster shot is a Concussion Rocket

 New: A ship with no system or hull damage can only be boarded by:

      An enemy ship with a Boarding laser 
      A ship belonging to a Fed 
      A ship belonging to a Stormer 

 New: If more than 100 shots are fired in combat the VCR file is displayed, even if no
 ships are destroyed or captured.

 New: Holding enemy prisoners causes riots and unrest on enemy planets.

 New: UEA (Enforcers) get 2.5X more income then normal from natives

 New: UEA (Enforcers) get income from training centers (Reported in the base log)

 New: Fighters firing on an Evil Empire ship fire through the shields of the ship! 10% of the fighter fire gets
 past the armor and does internal damage. They MAY hit the critical hit area of the ship.

 New: Sandcasters on Evil Empire ships are very poor against enemy fighters.

 New: Evil Empire ships have shields protect at 150% of the normal level. 

 New: The heavy laser can fire through Evil Empire shields, 10% of the damage gets through the armor.
 The laser can not hit the critical hit area of the ship.

 New: Boarding lasers do not work on Crystal owned ships

 New: Boarding lasers only kill a max of 10% of the enemy crew and troops. For every 10 enemy killed at least 1 attacker must be transported to the target ship.

 New: Only the Privateers may build a base on a exploded planet (Asteroid field)

 New: Boarding laser does not work if the attacker has over 50% system damage

 New: Transport to enemy ship does not work if system damage is over 90%

 New: When you begin towing a ship that you are intercepting the intercept target is cleared

 New: Ship log lists the use of repair units to repair damage

 New: Larger mass ships move slower in combat

 New: Birdman ship engines make half normal scanner noise

 New: Birdman ship scanners make double normal scanner noise

 New: Birdman minesweeper device makes no scanner noise at all

 New: All fighters in a defeated ground base are destroyed

 New: Tachyon scanner (The Loki device) no longer lights up planets or bases.

 New: UEA Building: Material Redistribution Center turns contraband into: 1 mc, 1 supply, 3 food and 100 ord

 New: Fighters on ground bases will form "home guard" fighter wings automatically and defend the planet
 from attacking ships. Fighters return to base after combat.

 New: Sandcaster (large ship weapon) 50% weaker against fighters

 New: Fighters have 30% more firepower

 New: Fighters move faster (In combat)

 New: Fighers generator problem fixed, fighters should fire more in combat.

 New: Chupanoids eat your food! The more unhappy they are the more they eat!

 New: If a native pod full of Chupanoids is destroyed the Chupanoids will fly through space
 and land on many planets within 300 ly of the exploded pod.

 New: Ship crew defending a ship from a boarding action get a 10X kill bonus and 10X defense bonus.
 Ship guests have normal defense powers.

 New: Colonists attacking an enemy ship by boarding it have 0.1X attack power. (WEAK!)

 New: Wings start with "attack enemy" on as a default

 New: Top ten score list shows the change in score from last turn

 New: HTML score board shows the change in score from last turn

 Little known fact Any object in an exploding Laser minefield has a sensor image of around 100000, making it visible to everyone
 

 Feb 3rd, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.066

 Changed: The power of mines increased. A Barbitic mine will destroy a ship with a hull mass of under 100kt.

 Changed: Boarding laser damage changed to (100 / ( hull_mass + 1 ) ) * 30 + Rnd * 4

 Changed: Victory point message also lists -1 point for being at war and bonus points for having friends to avoid confusion.

 Changed: The power of colonist to destroy enemy ground units, fighter craft and laser cannons massively reduced. It now takes 10000 colonists to destroy a ground unit or fighter. The power of crew and troops to destroy ground units and fighters reduced by 50%.

 New: If a pod is set to dock with another empire's ground base the pod will change ownership to the base's empire and turn off its orbital thrusters (land). Note: The assault pod will NOT dock with another empire's base, all other pods will.

 New: If a ship is towed its movement is turned off. (Before this a ship could tow a ship to a new waypoint and if movement was not yet finished the towed ship would take off moving again.)

 Fixed: Web mines not stopping ships

 Fixed: (Half fixed) Gold pod cloak and other pod secondary commands not latching. 
 Note: There is also a planets4.exe problem that needs to be fixed before these switches will work correctly. The problem was the planets4.exe was not sending the secondary pod commands and host was not able to understand them. Now host understands the newly added secondary pod commands, but the current planets4.exe does not send the commands, the next planets4.exe will.

 Fixed: Hyperjump space ships not resetting its waypoint movement orders to its new waypoints after a jump

 Fixed: Mobile ord factory makes more ord than the ship can hold

 Fixed: Hull plans on a ship "Deleted by order of the leader" on all ships that have an ID number greater than a Crystal ground base, but less then the ID of a base belonging to a non-Crystal player

 Fixed: Anti matter maul failing to gather metals from victim ships

 Fixed: Ships with over 100% system damage are allowed to fire weapons

 Fixed: Attacking ships wrongly mistake ships with just 10% system damage as being disabled and stop firing on them.

 Fixed: Holo Jammer (scanner confuser) confuses my own scanners

 Fixed: My ships are set to RAM! but they are not ramming the enemy during combat.
 Note: Ships with high attack are better at ramming. High attack bonus ships can avoid ramming ships.

 Unable to find an error: Anti matter maul fails to fire (Tested it and it does work)

 Unable to find an error: Amorphous natives not leaving dead bases
 

 Jan 11th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.065

 Fixed: Bug in host that can allow cheating. . . Player could turn off the transporter limits produce colonists by beaming down to a planet non existant colonists.

 Fixed: Fighter wings not being refueled by nearby ships
 

Release Notes:

 Ministers: 

 All actions that ministers take are instant and universal. A actions take place player side the instant the player clicks the minister button.

 Actions:
 Build Cities: Cities are built on planets that have at least 100,000 colonists that are currently not in a city

 Build Mines: Mines are built on bases that have enough colonists (100 per mine). This function will not use your last remaining 10 supply units

 Build Smelters: Builds smelters on every planet that it is possible to do so

 Pods Send Metal to Yards: A ship yard planet is any planet that has a ship yard (Military Space Port) . The base sending the pod must have over 100mc cash can over 300kt of metals before a pod will be launched. The maximum distance that a pod will be launched to is 300ly.

 Pods Send Ore to Yards: A ship yard planet is any planet that has a ship yard (Military Space Port) . The base sending the pod must have over 100mc cash can over 300kt of metal ore before a pod will be launched. The maximum distance that a pod will be launched to is 300ly.

 Launch Pods From Planets With More Than 1 Million Colonists: Any base with at least 1010000 colonists and over 100mc will send colonists to the closest bases within 300ly that have under 1000000 colonists.

 Dock Wings With Carriers: Any fighter wing that is currently not docked with a ship will set its intercept and dock target to the nearest carrier ship within 10ly that has room for it
 

 Exotic Techs:

 All Exotics are additive. You can turn on a plus 10, and a plus 20, and a plus 30 bonus, and get a plus 60 total bonus.

 If you can not pay the maintance cost for an exotic tech you will have to pay the full starting value all over again to get that tech bonus again.

 The exotic tech that causes the growth rate of all colonists and natives to be zero (Shokazul Pulse) overides the growth rate bonus.

 Money is first spent on maintaining exotic techs that you already have.

 Any left over money in the central bank will be used to buy new exotics.

 The exotic tech spending is after all taxes are collected and before money is spent on normal ship and planet techs. Exotic tech speding takes place before money is transfered from government centers to the central bank.
 

Jan 7th, 2001 

 Planets4.exe v4.000.034

 Fixed: Crash! Base overview screen, when you right click on Government center and you have more than 10000 mc cash on the base.

 Fixed: Government Center transfer amount resets to 10 after using the base overview right click popup slider to set a transfer amount for the base

 Fixed: Power switches for special race buildings not remembering their on/off setting when turned off and on from the base overview screen with a left click
 

Jan 5th, 2001 

 Planets4.exe v4.000.033

 Fixed: Factory control slider bars' arrow mouse clickable hot spots are not centered on the arrow buttons

 Fixed: Factory and Government center's slider bar values way too big and coarse to be useful

 Fixed: When typing in a new friendly code or command code the hot keys are active on the last letter

 Fixed: Crash! Click outfit pod -> template (Crash happens if there are more than 40 diferent ship hull types in the game)

 Fixed: Crash! Open data grid maximize the data grid and close it with the x box (windows close button)

 Fixed: Crash! Launch a pod and click the file button right away and the program crashes

 Fixed: Farms on maximum climate worlds not showing that they will be making food

 Fixed: Display of resort and palace sometimes mixed up

 Fixed: When you are allows to give orders for another race it the build ship screen shows your own ship hull list instead of your allies' hull list.

 Fixed: Overview screen's popup slider window can crash if too high a value is typed in

 Fixed: The quick pick object targeting window is too narrow in size, it makes it hard to read the near object list

 Fixed: Climate 100 worlds are reported as too cold

 Fixed: Worlds with climates that are right on the edge of what climate my race likes are reported to be too cold

 Fixed: Race ownership numbers for object not appearing on space command screen sometimes there is not enough room for them to show up

 Fixed: Ship hull select screen tells me that I do not have enough metals when really I just do not have enough money

 Fixed: Sometimes the tech increase buttons do not save their settings and no tech upgrade happens

 Fixed: A hyper engine can not be placed in an outfit pod alone

 Fixed: Crash! Unchecking enemy, friendly and neutral on the data grid and clicking the sort method drop down box causes a crash

 Fixed: Income estimates are wrong do to the changes in the tax rates made in host

 Fixed: Terraformer usage numbers are wrong in the base stat screen

 Fixed: The build new ship screen is not clearing when switching from player to player

 Fixed: I build a new ship using the quick build screen and no metals are removed from the base or ship

 Fixed: The resupply pod controls fuel and ord are not labeled

 Fixed: The molybdenum reserve level is not being saved

 Fixed: Quick build ship screen lists PD tech level instead of small weapon tech

 Fixed: Quick build ship screen does not list the correct generators that are in the plans

 Fixed: Pod launch pad does not display the correct pod power level

 New: Ship switch that allows ships to repeat their mine laying turn after turn until they are out of ord units

 New: Planets4.exe now knows that transporting stuff between a ship and any object that I own makes no sensor image noise

 New: Race map highlite if you select any map object belonging to another race all other objects belonging to that race are also highlited in orange to help you see all other objects belonging to that race quickly

 New: Ships have a switch that allows them to auto intercept pods and wings

 New: Ships have a switch that allows them to auto intercept ships

 New: Race stats screen lists fighter craft stats and ground assault unit stats

 New: Cancel ship build button added to build ship screen

 New: The reserve resource settings for a base are only active when they are turned on. The switch to turn on the reserve levels is on the reserve setting screen. Any base that has that switch off will be ignored by auto pilot ships.

 New: The reserve level settings can be saved into and loaded from one of the 4 memory banks

 New: The quick build screen will not list alien plans, if you do not have a base or ship that is able to build that alien hull

 New: Star systems with detroyed planets are plotted in blue on the star map

 New: Data pads show a scanned ship's speed and heading if it has a waypoint

 New: ID numbers of scanned systems (planet not yet seen) are displayed on the map

 New: Ship data screen lists ship stats like cloak fuel burn and combat bonus ratings of the hull

 New: Armor costs 1 mc each and uses 0.01 Duranium each and has a mass of 0.01 kt

 New: The transporter limits can be turned off to allow a ship to be ordered to beam on or off more stuff than it can currently hold or has

 New: Spy screen displays the estimated new spy mana that will be gained next turn

 New: Tech upgrade screen displays a total of all incoming government center transfers of cash

 New: Data pad now shows the number of enemy lifeforms on a base (colonists, troops, crew, and high guard

 New: Option: do not show movible objects as map memory object (wings, ships, and pods)

 New: Ships can fix their armor with repair units ( 5 repair units fixes 1 armor unit )

 New: Ships can replenish their armor by ending movement over a base they own or a friends base with a friendly code that matches the ship's friendly code. The replenish switch must be on and the base must have armor plating in stock

 New: Hot key F7 Clear hammer object

 New: Hot key F8 Clear anvil object

 New: Hot key Delete remove map memory object

 New: Hot key Home next ship of same hull type

 New: Hot key Prev ship of same hull type

 New: Exotic tech. Costs a fixed amount to get the tech and a maintance cost that must be paid every turn to keep the tech.

 New: When viewing logs that belong to another race the texted of the log will be dispalyed as blue text

 New: Base overview screen, the build new building boxes are color coded grey when you do not have enough tech to build the structure

 New: Program does a better job of clearing map memory data from dead object

 New: Minister AI helper screen (Under the HQ screen)

 Unable To Find: Canceling a construction pod launch from pending orders is not returning to me my molybdenum and tritanium

 Looked At: Notepad can be drag to the side of the screen and lost. 
 (Problem was caused by the data grid screen, when the data grid is maximized the main screen of planets4.exe looses its child window scroll bars and windows outside the visible area are lost. The problem appears to be a windows / grid control related problem. The only fix I can find is to not allow the data grid to maximize. )
 

Jan 4th, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.064

 Fixed: Ships with super lasers that are turned on kill any base under the ship, including your own base. No message is sent when the bases are killed. The ship does not even have a log message about the event.  ( Now bases are only killed when the planet is the kill target and the planet is destroyed by the super laser.)

 Confirmed To Not Be A Bug: Soil sterilizer kills bases  (The soil sterilizer does not kill bases)
 

  Jan 1st, 2001

 Host.exe v4.000.063

 Fixed: Jump point device ships not taking nearby ships with it when it hyper jumps

 Fixed: Weak spy not working, it does not seem to do anything at all

 Fixed: Bases sometimes end up with negative amounts of fuel after transfers

 Fixed: New ships are getting 30 fuel units out of thin air

 Fixed: Unable to exchange hull plans between two ships that each have a plan loaded in memory

 New: Any time you form a new base on a planet by beaming down race members from your ship the new base will have the attack mode KILL KILL KILL

 New: Any time a new base is formed with an assault pod the base will have the attack mode KILL KILL KILL

 Same: Any time a new base is formed with a life pod the new base will have the attack mode PEACEFUL

 New: Fighter weapons are a little more powerful when used against ships

 New: Fighters can fire through base shields

 New: All fighters have a chance of taking out the base shield generator. Per shot there is a 1 in 100 chance for missiles and a 1 in 1000 chance for a beam weapon to take it out. The Enforcers have better odds of taking out the base shield. They have a have a 3 in 100 chance for missiles and a 5 in 1000 chance for beams.

 New: If a base is lost due to Amorphous Worms you get a message

 New: If a base is lost due to an attack from space you get a message

 New: Having your mine sweeper device turned on makes 50 units of sensor image noise and reduces your scan range by 50%

 New: All homeworld planets have a minimum soil rating of 100

 New: Command code "NCH": Any ship with this code will not enter a warp chunnel or jump point

 New: If a ship's intercept target is lost the ship will switch to following the escort target

 New: If a ship's escort target is lost the ship will switch to moving to its waypoint

 New: The jumpgate builder can see the new jump gate as soon as it is made

 Unable to find: If you fire a super weapon in battle all battles from then on send a super weapon was fired message even if there was no super weapon in the fight.

 Unable to find: Soil sterilizer kills bases

 Unable to find: New ships autoload fuel leaving the base with negative fuel levels
 

 Dec 15th, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.062

 Fixed: Host sometimes slows down and makes almost no progress when a combat event takes place with a cloaked ship in the area. . . 

 Fixed: The 3 Birdmen masters are sending confusing messages when they did nothing at all

 Fixed: Small weapons mistakenly have the shield and armor drain ratings of large weapons
 (This caused ships with many small weapons to be way too powerful)

 New: Full support of exotic tech added (Requires planets4.exe version 4.000.033 to use)

 New: Transporter commands commands canceled after a boarding attempt.

 New: Transporters only make extra sensor noise when transporting cargo to another race's base or ship
 

 Nov 19th, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.061 (Epsilon)

 No Changes to Host 

 New: Master 4.000.029 uses the new Epsilon Galaxy

 New: The Epsilon Galaxy has 688 planets and is 3000 light years across, just slightly bigger than the echo cluster. The Zeta Galaxy was just too big.
 

Nov 18th, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.061

 Fixed: Crash in v4hosty.dll
 The failure in doing an oppcode F3 A5, that is a rep movsd in assembly language
 Register ECX = 000001F4
 Register ESI = 00000898 

 Fixed: Crash in v4host.exe while making new RST files when there are more than 100 VCR files for a single player

 Fixed: Buoys starting dull combat events!

 Fixed: Ships towing other ships sometime drop ship being towed near waypoint course changes

 Fixed: Ships firing large and small weapons at ground base shields

 Fixed: Outfit pods launched into orbit around the base's planet did not have its thrusters on, they just fall back down onto the base the same turn they are launched.

 Fixed: Default Minefield maximum radius changed from is only 20 (Changed to 55)

 Fixed: Default Minefield lifetime is 50 (set back to 20)

 Fixed: If a fighter wing's mother ship is killed in combat the wing sometimes ends up at (0 , 0)

 Fixed: Second combat wave not working

 Fixed: I get a log messages saying natives have joined the base by way of the space port, but they never show up

 Fixed: If a ship that has docked pods is destroyed in combat the pods do not seem to undock with the dead ship

 Fixed: Persistent tech upgrades cuts off when a turn is missed

 Fixed: The Dust off device and Incarceration beam were making pods and placing them in the ship's FIGHTER BAYS , (it is unknow what effect that was having)

 Fixed: Unable to undock one wing and dock another wing in the same turn

 New: Minimium fighter wing limit upped to 100 wings per player (was 20). If you have a total of 200000 crew in your whole empire you can have up to a 300 fighter wings. (One extra wing per 1000 crew)

 New: When a fighter factory on a ship fails to make a new wing due to the wing limit you get a log message telling you why the device failed to work

 New: You can no longer see pods and wings that are docked to a ship, including cloaked ships

 New: Ship: Cargo can be transfered to and from a ground base belonging to another player if their friendly codes match.

 New: Ship: Cargo can be transfered to and from a ship belonging to another race if their friendly codes match

 New: Ship: Cargo can be transfered from base or other ship if the ships doing the transfer has a friendly code that matches the target's universal friendly code

 New: After laying one minefield the minefield layer device cuts off
 

 Nov 4th, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.060

 V4host.exe rewritten to bypass a compiler defeat that can cause a random page fault in kernal32.dll. Ground combat code was moved from v4host.exe to v4hostx.dll. 
 

 Nov 2nd, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.059

 New: More complex contraband pricing system

 New: Command code BDA no longer beams down ord units

 New: Gold pods are launched with cloak switch on

 New: Ghipsodals take contraband when they are attacted to a base (1000 Ghipsoldals take 1 kt Kerria Crystal Contraband)

 Fixed: A ship laying a minefield uses too much ord when laying a minefield that is bigger than the max minefield radius

 Fixed: Base shields still being shot at by ships that can not do any damage to them

 Fixed: All natives vanishing from planet when a base is destroyed by amorphous natives

 Fixed: Ships ending up with negative crew after a boarding action

 Fixed: Ship ending up with negative damage after combat

 Fixed: Ground bases ending up with more troops after combat (Neg units killed)
 

 Oct 27th, 2000

 Host.exe v4.000.058

 Fixed: All Cyborg ships and bases capturing nearby enemy Cyborg ships! (All ships and bases acting like they had a king!) Some players are losing contact with up to 20 ships a turn!

 Fixed: Warp chunnel ships loosing their chunnel device after using it (If you lost the device host will restore it)

 Fixed: Fleet fuel sharing reset to max setting every turn

 Fixed: Fleet ord sharing reset to max setting every turn

 Fixed: Bases with no colonists sending the no food log message

 Fixed: Non-moving ships hitting mines (Ships have an escort or intercept target)

 Tested: Cyborg Cube ships assimilating enemy bases with the assimilation beam
 Results: Works great, as long as "Attack Ground Targets" is off. Otherwise the base gets blown up in combat.

 New: Super Laser safety, When the super laser is used outside of combat to destory a planet, the planet MUST be the ship's kill target and the laser must be turned on.

 New: Tax rate bonus and penalities based on racial traits removed from host. (Colonist tax rate happy bonus and penalities based on racial traits still in place. The tax rates have been changed

 Income Rates

 40% Ultra Conservative
 45% Conservative
 50% Liberal
 65% Enslavement
 55% Complex
 

 Happiness Effects
 
 

Ultra Conservative
 
  •             Colonists +1 to 10 Happy 
  •             All Natives +1 to 5 Happy 
  • Conservative
     
  •             Colonists +1 to 4 Happy 
  •             All Natives +1 to 2 Happy
  • Liberal

    Light Powers > 80
     

  •             Colonists -1 To -20 Happy 
  •             Humanoids -1 To -15 Happy 
  •             Amphibian -1 To -10 Happy 

  •  

     
     
     

    Law < 50
     

  •             Colonists -1 To -20 Happy 
  •             Humanoids -1 To -15 Happy 

  •  

     

    PC Factor > 90
     

  •             Colonists +1 To +20 Happy 

  •  
    Enslavement

     Light Powers > 80 
     

  •             Colonists -1 To -40 Happy 
  •             Humanoids -1 To -40 Happy 
  •             Amphibian -1 To -30 Happy 

  •  

     

    Law < 60
     

  •             Colonists -1 To -30 Happy 
  •             Humanoids -1 To -25 Happy 

  •  

     

    PC Factor > 90 And Happiness_Of_Colonists_At_The_Base > 20
     

  •             Colonists +1 To +40 Happy 
  • Complex
     
  •             Happiness tends to move to 90 points for Colonists and all natives except the Chupanoids and Amorphous 
  •             Income 0.5X Normal on happiness 100 worlds 
  •             Income 2.5X Normal on happiness 300 worlds 
  •  Income From Natives:
     

    Humanoid 1X
    Bovinoid 2X
    Reptilian 0.25X
    Avian 2X
    Amorphous 0X
    Insectoid 3X
    Amphibian 1X
    Ghipsoldal 0.1X
    Siliconoid 0.08X
    Chupanoid 0X

     

     Natives Joining Bases
     
     

    Humanoid
    Join Rate = ((PR / 200) * 100)%
    Chance they will join 20%
    Bovinoid
    Join Rate = 0 To 100%
    Chance they will join ((((Light_Powers) - (Dark_Powers)) / 200) * 100)%
    (With a special minimum odds of 5%)
    Reptilian
    Join Rate = 0 to 30%
    Chance they will join (((Leadership / 300) + .05) * 100)%
    Lizards Chance they will join ((Leadership / 150) * 100)%
    Avian
    Join Rate = 100%
    Chance they will join (((Spy_Powers / 400 + .05)) * 100)%
    Birdmen Chance they will join ((Spy_Powers / 300) * 100)%
    Amorphous
    Join Rate = 10% + 300
    Chance they will join ((Spice / 1000) * 100)%
    Insectoid
    Join Rate 0 to 100%
    Chance they will join ((((300 - PC - PR - Leadership - Law) / 400) + .05) * 100)%
    Amphibian
    Join Rate 0 to 100%
    Chance they will join (((Dark_Powers + PSI ) / 400 + .05) * 100)%
    Ghipsoldal
    Join Rate 0 to 50%
    Chance they will join (((Kerria_Crystals) / 1000) * 100)%
    Siliconoid
    Join Rate 0 to 20%
    Chance they will join ((((PSI) / 500 + .05)) * 100)% 
    Crystals: Chance they will join (((PSI * 3) / 500) * 100)%
    Chupanoid
    Join Rate 0 To 20%
    Chance they will join 30%

     If anyone is wondering what the format of the QSP file is, here it is:
     


     '// Visual Basic 5.0 Code:
     Type QShipType
     nm As String * 40 '// Name of the ship plan 
     Hull As Long '// Number from 1 to 500 hull ID
     cost As Long '// Total cost of EVERYTHING, hull, weapons parts . . . 
     eleD As Long '// Total usage for everything, armor, weapons, engine and hull
     eleM As Long '// Total usage for everything
     eleT As Long '// Total usage for everything
     HullCost As Long '// Cost of just the hull
     HulleleD As Long '// Duranium used just to build the hull
     HulleleM As Long
     HulleleT As Long
     maxArmor As Long '// The max armor the ship can have
     hullMass As Long '// mass of just the hull alone
     EngCount As Long '// Number of engines the ship has
     Tally As Long '// Unused Ignore //
     EDrain As Long '// Sum of the charge rates of all weapons
     OrdDrain As Long '// Sum of the ord usage of all weapons
     Ord As Long '// Max ord that the ship can carry
     E As Long '// Total energy output from engine and generators
     part(1 To 69) As Byte '// A list of all the ship parts the ship has
     '// 1 to 10 PD 
     '// 11 to 30 Large
     '// 31 to 60 Small
     '// 61 to 65 Generator
     '// 66 Eng
     '// 67 Hyp
     '// 68 Shield
     '// 69 Super
     techSuper As Byte '// The Highest Super Weapon Tech used on this ship //
     techGen As Byte '// The Highest Generator Tech used on this ship //
     techShield As Byte '// The Highest Shield Tech used on this ship //
     techHull As Byte '// The Hull Tech of this ship //
     techPD As Byte
     techSmall As Byte
     techLarge As Byte
     techEngine As Byte
     techHyp As Byte
     techIsGood As Boolean '// Unused Ignore //
     IsAlien As Boolean '// Unused Ignore //
     FileName As String * 12 '// Unused Ignore //
     End Type


     
    Hot keys
    Ctrl While ctrl is being held down the star map is cleared of all waypoint lines and markings, so that you can get a better view of what might be hidden.
    l Log File
    o Order new ship parts (if base screen is active)
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Set a new speed for a ship or wing. 1 = slowest 9 = fastest
    Keypad 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 Move the map view
    Keypad 5 Center map on the selected object
    Keypad - Zoom map out
    Keypad + Zoom map in
    Keypad 0 200 LY Bulls eye around the selected object, with rings every 10 LY
    i Intecept current anvil object
    I Clear intercept
    e Escort current anvil object
    E Clear escort
    t Transporter screen, if the current selected object is a ship
    < Scroll up one on the space command screen if multible objects are listed
    > Scroll down one on the space command screen if multible objects are listed
    Page Up
    Page Down
    Go to the next/previous object of the same type as the selected object
    F3 Mini map
    F4 Space command screen
    F5 Weapon specs
    b Select the next near by base if one exists
    s Select the next near by ship if one exists
    w Select the next near by wing if one exists
    Esc G D Close window

     
     

     Oct 26th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.057

     Fixed: Web mines not doing 10% engine damage to ships parked in a minefield

     Fixed: Cyborg King not assimilating any native race other than the humanoids

     New: New bases have their new scanner and factories on by default

     New: When a native amorphous worm attack kills a base all the amorphous natives are placed on the planet instead of being destroyed

     New: The Birdmen plasmatron assault craft acts like a mine and smelter and have no negative side effects on colonists and natives

     New: The Birdmen plasmatron decreases the enemies ground assault attack powers against Birdmen assault craft by 0.5% each with a limit of 50%. They only effect enemy assault mechs and fighters.

     New: If the Birdmen have over 10 million colonists, total, in their empire, they have a chance of stealing enemy universal friendly codes

     New: The Birdmen are not hindered by enemy high guard on enemy ships when attempting to steal ship plans

     New: Birdmen bases have a stealth rating of 20, normally bases have a stealth rating of 800

     New: Birdmen Anti-Cyborg nanovirus device

     New: Mind crusher device makes scanner noise

     New: World crusher makes scanner noise

     New: Darkwings and Resolute Class ships are immune to tachyon scanners

     New: The Super Laser can destroy any planet just by setting the planet as the kill target and parking over it, other empires will detect the weapon being fired

     New: Cyborg assimilators collect 0.1 mc per enemy colonist taken (Except: Birdmen)

     New: Ships with a super weapon will not target a shielded ground base with anything except its super weapon and will only do so if the base is a kill target or the attack ground target switch is on

     Master.exe v4.000.027

     New: Birdmen starting ships ( 3 Transwarp Skyfires )
     

     Oct 20th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.056

     Fixed: CRASH! V4HOST caused an invalid page fault in module V4HOSTY.DLL 

     Fixed: Crystals not getting their +5 HD Stress delta on their homeworld

     Fixed: Silicoids not making ord for Crystals (1 ord per 100 natives)
     

     Oct 18th, 2000

     What is new in Stormer Update:

     Changed: Victorious Battleship Shield limit increased to 1000

     Changed: Stormer income rating increased to 130

     Changed: Stormer growth rate increased to 115

      Host.exe v4.000.055

     Changed: Combat power boost at battle tick 141 removed. 

     Changed: The combat power boost that cloaker ships get at tick 26 does not pump power into the super weapon

     Changed: The Cyborg assimilation beam now works through base shields again.

     Changed: Gimpsoldal engine production changed. They will make one of each engine type if happiness is over 75 and there are more than 50000 of them. Engine production maxes out at 16 of each engine type with a population of more than 2 million and a happiness of over 110. If Gimpsoldal happiness if over 110 and you have 200000 Ghipsoldals you get 16 type 1 and 16 type 2 engines and 1 of everything else. At 300000 Ghipsoldals you will get 16 of type 1, 2, and 3 and one of every other type.

     Changed: Cyborg assimilation powers increased. 1 to 20000 cyborg colonists can assimilate one native each. The number that they can assimilate each decreases at a constant rate from 1 to 0.2 as the Cyborg population inceases from 20000 to 100000.

     Changed: The Cyborg King increases the cash on a planet by 8% (Was 5%)

     New: Enforcers are not attacked by Insectoids untill after turn 6. No Insectoids will be on their homeworld

     Removed: If a player misses 15 turns the race is given to another player. (Overwhimingly unpopular)
     

     Oct 17th, 2000

     What is new in Cyborg Update:

     Changed: Cyborg growth rate dropped to 15

     Changed: Cyborg Cube ships costs raised to 6800 mc (Carrier) and 7500 mc (Battleship) each.

     Changed: Cyborg Firestorm ship cost raised to 4250 mc

     What is new in Federation Update:

     Changed: Race leader picture updated

      Host.exe v4.000.054

     Fixed: World crusher not working when kill target is a base and not a planet. No log message telling the shooter what happened.

     Fixed: Fire at ground targets off, but the ship still fires at ground targets

     Changed: Cyborg get NO money from assimilation

     Changed: The Cyborg King causes a 800% increase in colonist growth rate on the planet he is on. (Was 400%)

     Changed: The Cyborg King increases the cash on a planet by 5% (Was 10%)

     Changed: If a ship is captured in battle it is no longer considered a minor conflict

     Changed: Combat randomize movement code removed

     Changed: Combat vectors more important, ship starts in a path along the attack vector

     Changed: Amorphous produce less spice and have a cap of 5000 per turn max

     Changed: To produce spice the Amorpous must be well feed (Colonists)

     Changed: Cyborg Assimilation Beam can take a max of 250000 enemy colonists a turn 

     Changed: Cyborg Assimilation Beam will NOT work through a base shield

     Changed: Chupanoids and Amorphous natives are NOT allowed on your homeworld for the first 4 turns

     New: Enforcer Hawking retraining centers convert up to 300 enemy prisoners into troops a turn, when working they use 5 food 1 supply and 1 med each. They use nothing if on and there are no prisoners.

     New: The Enforcer Bomber can target one building type using the base command code "b01" to "b30" The codes corraspond with the order of the buildings listed on the base overview screen. Each bomber destroys 1 building. Thirdy bombers destroy 30 cities or 30 farms. Bombing happens when the base is in attack mode deep ground patrols or better.

     New: Enforcer small and large ship weapons do 4X system damage and kill only half the normal number of crew members.

     New: Enforcer super weapon "Laser - Taser" does NO hull damage to target ship.

     New: Enforcers can NOT sell contraband, they can buy it, but not sell it.

     New: Enforcer arrester unit captures 500 colonists, 350 crew and 5 troops a turn, each.

     New: Victims of a Enforcer ground war attack are 3 times more likely to surrender. Normally surrender takes place if the victim is outnumbered 3 to 1 after first phase of fighting. All races surrender if they are simply out numbered by the Enforcers.

     New: Cyborg King can take over ONE enemy Cyborg ship that is within 10LY of the base he is at or 25LY of the ship he is in, if the enemy's King is more than 300 LY away.

     New: Enforcers are eaten alive by Insectoid natives. One Insectoid will kill 100 colonists before being killed. One Insectoid will kill 50 crew before being killed. One Insectoid will kill One trooper before being killed

     New: When a super weapon is fired in battle all empires will detect it and the know location of the blast

     New: New natives can appear at public space ports where there are zero of their type on the base or planet

     New: Cyborg get +1 engine tech if their king assimilates a population of 100000 Ghipsoldals (Or more)

     New: If a Humanoid or Ghipsoldal see any ship of Cyborg design, belonging to any race, there is a 50% chance they will send a distress call to all empires requesting help.

     New: In a ground war between the Cyborg and any other race besides the Lizards, Crystals or another Cyborg; 30% of the defeated Cyborg colonists will be reclaimed as colonists. The Birdmen can reclaim 50%.. Cyborg killed by Assault units or fighters will NOT be recovered.

     New: If you have more than 50000 Ghipsoldals that have a happy rating of at least 75 they will make 4 of each type of ship engine. If you have over 150000 with a happiness rating of over 110 they will make 16 of each type of engine (the maximum).

     New: If a player misses 15 or more turns their ships, wings, and bases will be given to another race. The race with the with the highest happy index gets the bases, wings, and ships. Happy Index = a sum of the happiness of all colonists on all worlds with a population of more than 100000. You get 4X happy index if your race is of the same type as the one that is surrendering.

     New: ASCII score file, keeps a running total of points for all 30 players. Not sorted. ( nameofyig.asc )

     New: Grouping code added to combat movement, ships on the same attack vector tend to group if they
     have simular stand off ranged, will tend to attack same target

     New: Ships start moving in a straight line to the center of the combat map, will decide on the best target and do a quick break to leap at the target at around tick 140. Ships start with a slower rate of movement.

     New: Cloaking ships get to fire first (Only if in range) Get power bank energy at tick 25, 141, 310 and 4000

     New: Power banks dump energy into all the weapons at tick 141, 310 and 4000. Before the extra power was only being dump injected at 310 and 4000

     Unable To Find Problem: Hyperlathes not turning off

     Master.exe v4.000.026

     New: Starting Enforcer Ships

     Changed: Starting amounts of food and med units on planet surfaces greatly reduced.
     

     Oct 1st, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.053

     Fixed: Native scoring error, native votes going to the wrong empire

     Fixed: Default max size of minefields is only 20LY radius!
     (Changed back to 50LY)

     New: Ship Device: Draconian Solar Gamma Ray: The device kills half of all Carbon based and Robotic life on all bases under the ship including natives. Device works through base shields. Gamma rays destory
     all food, farms and medical units on the bases. (Planets4.exe release 32 will list it as Device 9)

     Master.exe v4.000.025

     New: Starting Draconian Ships
     

     Sept 29th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.052

     Fixed: Host crash!
     Cause: When a player used the Reticulian Light Beam with no empty pod bays the host could sometimes crash, found by: Don Friesen, Robo's faithful human.

     Sept 28th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.051

     New: Siliconoids produce ord for crystal players. 100 Natives produce 1 Ord per turn. Max of 10000 Ord per planet.

     New: Hyper Lathe heats planets by 1 climate point per stress unit.

     New: Infernerators heat planets by 20 points per stress unit used. If climate is above 90 the unit will heat the planet to 100 for free, no stress needed.

     New: Crystal homeworlds have a +5 HD stress delta

     New: The Crystal X field can steal a max of 500 repair units per enemy ship per turn

     New: The minefield destablizer can one destroy one mine per turn. Works 80% of the time.

     New: Host Configure Program ( HCONFIG ) added. It can be accessed from HOST.EXE. The FIG file that it produces is a plain text file. You can edit game settings ( FIG file ) with a text editor and host will be a able to read the updated values.

     New: Scoring System added. Scoring system produces a HTML score file as well as sending scoring messages to the players in game. Scoring system can be turned off. Score can be made non-public.  You can pick the score needed to win 

     Points you can score: 

          -1 If you are at war with anyone after turn 25 
          +1 For every active empire that you are not at war with after turn 25 
          +1 For each planet with a population of more than 1 million 
          +1 For each planet with a population of more than 5 million 
          +1 For each planet with a population of more than 10 million 
          +1 For each native that votes for you 
          +? For special race based bonus points (None active at this time) 
          +7 For being the "King Of The Hill" You must have the only ship at a special planet after turn 25 

     Any of the above can be turned off in hconfig. The king of the hill planet is any planet the host names. The number of king of hill victory points can be changed in hconfig.

     Master.exe v4.000.023

     New: Planets have slightly more stress

     New: Crystals starting stockpiles of ord increased

     New: The University Alliance gets starting ships of 3 Watchman, 1 Pathfinder, and 1 XL-5

     New: Starting Cyborg firestorm engines improved
     

     Sept 22nd, 2000

    Host.exe v4.000.050

     Fixed: Ship plans at bases being deleted with the message that "Crystal ship plans vanished!"

     Fixed: Pods not landing when there are large numbers of pods over the planet.
     (Note: This fix should also fix odd intermittent failures of minefields, ship devices, towing, transfers, race traits that interact with nearby objects, and only some ships ending up in a fight when there is a large number of ships that want to fight. The error was in some very important code that allowed objects to find nearby objects for interaction.)
     

     Crystal Highlights:

          Can not build: Farms, scanners, repair plant, ord plant, or terraformer. 
          High growth rate (can only grow on climate 100 planets) 
          Cheap assault craft 
          Cheap fighters 
          Can lay all 4 types of minefields 
          Take 3 times normal shield drain from ord weapons 
          Take half shield drain from non-ord weapons 
          Can absord energy from enemy non-ord weapons and use it to charge weapons 
          Hyper Lathe (Building): Converts HD stress into megacredits, ord, food and metals 
          Infernerator (Building): Heats planet to climate 100 using HD stress 
          Ground Sweeper: (Building) Sweeps all minefields in the area and converts them to ord. 
          X Field: Can steal repair units from nearby enemy ships and bases (50 LY range) 
          X Field: Erases ship plans on enemy bases, ships, and pods (150 LY range) 
          Crystal Light Ship has a super laser and can hyper jump 400 LY 

     Help File Correction / Update:

     Web Mines:

     The web mines do not drain fuel.

     A ship hitting a web mine takes at least 20 of engine damage. A 100 kt mass hull can take between 20 and 40 points of engine damage.

     Any ship that is in a web minefield that explodes takes 10 points of engine damage and stops the ship.

     Use web mines to stop your enemy then fly in ships with a X Field device to within 50 LY of the victim to steal all the victim's repair units so that they can not repair their ship. You can drop and blow up web mines to take the victim's engine damage over 99% and the X Field device will capture the victim ship. Remember exploding web mines DO NOT destroy other minefields, so you can layer the web mines. Ten blowing web minefields will do 100% engine damage to all ships in the field.}

    Host.exe v4.000.049

     New: Output of Crystal Hyper Lathe's molybdenum increased 

     Each HD Stress point is turned into:
     200 Ord
     10 Food
     3 Megacredits
     1 Supply
     8 Duranium
     2 Tritanium
     5 Molybdenum
     3 Neutronium 

     Master.exe v4.000.022

     New: Home worlds get their starting 50 terraformers

    Host.exe v4.000.048

     New: Stormer ships (any ship a stormer owns) have special shields that are highly resistant to photon torpedoes. A hit from a photon torpedo only drains 5 shield points from a stormer ship (normal drain is 90). All other weapons cause a normal shield drain.

     New: Crystals can not own ship plans from other races.

     New: Any Crystal ship plan that another race ends up with will vanish

     New: Boring fights have been replaced with a message. (Any fight that does not have at least one object blowing up)

     New: The message file (*.MSS) is repacked to save space once every 10 turns.

     New: Ships that enter combat are automatically detected and scanned by the other ships entering combat

     New: Traveling through a web minefield causes a ship to become more and more visible to enemy scanners.

     New: Any ship owned by a Crystal player can travel through a web minefield without any danger of hitting a web mine.

     New: Any ship built by a Crystal player can travel through a web minefield without any danger of hitting a web mine even if owned by a non-crystal race.

     New: Crystal shields take 3 times normal shield drain when hit by ord firing weapons (Any ship owned by a Crystal player)

     New: Crystal shields take half normal shield drain when hit by non-ord firing weapons (Any ship owned by a Crystal player)

     New: When a Crystal shield is hit by a non-ord weapon half the energy that it took to fire the weapon is absorbed into the Crystal ship's weapons.

     New: Crystals require a climate 100 planet for maximum growth rate.

     New: Crystals can not be assimilated by the Cyborg

     New: Crystal X Field ( planets4.exe sees it as: Device 8 )
     Steals repair units from all ships, bases and pods within 50 LY.
     Can steal a maxium of what the ship's repair hold size is. 
     If the repair hold is full it will still take a full measure of enemy repair units and destroy them.
     It will take from all other empires, including ones that you are not at war with. 
     The device will capture any enemy ship within 50 LY that has more than 99% engine damage.
     Device will erase all ship plans in ships, pods, and bases within 150 LY.

     Fixed: Ion cannon range was set to 40 by mistake, it should he been range 200.

     Fixed: Cyborgs turn enemy ground units and fighters into their own

     Master.exe v4.000.020

     New: Master knows about the Lizards and Crystals. Gives Crystals correct starting buildings at home base.

     New: Master defaults most building power switches on
     

     Sept 14th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.047

     New: Contraband market price system adjusted. Less downward pressure on prices. More upward pressure on prices by high colonist populations.

     New: Much harder to get spy mana points. (Feds produce a maximum of 12 spy mana points a turn.)

     New: If a ship has at least 1 high guard range onboard and an enemy trys to steal your ship plans there is a 75% chance the attempt will fail.

     New: Lizard boulder attack! During a ground attack Lizards kill enemy colonists, troops, and crew at a rate of 30 times normal. This DOES NOT apply to boarding actions in space. (No boulderssssssss in sssspacccce.)

     New: Lizard boulder defense. During a ground combat attack colonists, troops and crew kill Lizards at 1/2 the normal rate. (Lizards shield themselves behind boulders) Assault craft and fighters kill Lizards at the normal rate. 

     New: Cyborg can now assimilate humanoid populations of less than 100,000 with their cyborg king in a single turn.  Before they needed at least 100,000.

     Fixed: Pod docking problem. This bug causes pods to not dock with ships that fly by the pod. Because of this bug a ship must start movement next to the pod to be able to dock with it. 

     Fixed: New ships getting repair units and ord out of thin air

     Checked: Only Cyborg can use an Assimilation Beam: Yes, that is already the case.
     

     Sept 7th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.046

     New: Another base structure building phase added before movement / auto pilot functions

     New: Fighter energy charging rate increased to twice what it was before. Fighters more active.

     New: Point defense power against fighters increased by 25%

     New: Fighter damage against large ship hulls improved. Fighters are always able to do some damage to enemy ship hulls.

     New: 40% of the time a high guard ranger can stop an enemy spy attack on a base that would have otherwise caused damage

     New: Cyborg get megacredits from the total assimilation of humanoids by the cyborg king

     New: If natives leave your base by way of the space port you will get a log message about it

     New: Reticulian Light Beam now makes free floating life pods, if the ship does not have a empty pod bay

     New: Pods made by the Reticulian Beam have thier orbital thrusters on.

     New: Wings can start fights. You can have fights with just wings against wings

     New: Any combat that takes place during turn 0 is now included with the first RST files

     New: All super weapons take out the shields of enemy ships

     New: New ships have orders to not attack disabled ships

     New: Auto intercept does not intercept enemy minefields

     New: Fighter wings can chunnel

     New: Ship attack bonus of more than 100 begins to overwhelm enemy point defense systems

     New: All new ships have all damage controls switches turned on

     New: Ships scanning of planets closer than 3 ly improved

     New: Labor mines and Labor camps produce 10 mc each

     New: Lizard PSI-Op Hissser has a 40 point happy boost and can only boost the happiness to a maximum of 100

     New: Cyborg auto convert colonists to crew for new ships. Keeps the crew ratio limits from blocking large numbers of new quick builds

     New: Enemy can no longer see your ship's weapons on scanners

     New: Super weapons kill ground base shields

     New: All stormer large weapons get a +3 blast bonus

     New: All stormer large weapons get a 300 point shield arc bonus

     New: Ship command codes: BDF BDM BDA

  •  BDF: Beam down fuel (All but 60kt)
  •  BDM: Beam down metals and money
  •  BDA: Unload all cargo and guests

  •  Transfer takes place after movement. The transfer is from a ship to a base that you own.
     The codes only works for a ship that ends its movement over a base.

     Fixed: My ship is firing large weapons into an enemy ship and the shields are not falling!
     (Cause: Display error, shield drop message not sent to VCR for large weapons)

     Fixed: I see fighters blowing up in the VCR but the numbers in the wing are not going down

     Fixed: Lack of crew can sometimes prevent quick builds

     Fixed: Tech centers are turning into cyborg palaces!

     Fixed: New minefields do not show up right away on the map

     Fixed: Host interfaces crashes if it starts an auto host run with the players screen open

     Fixed: The climate of planets is always drifting to 1 or 100

     Fixed: Horrible distance calculation error in combat system, short ranged weapons firing  across the screen!  Movement is confused.

     Fixed: My cloaked ships are ending up in fights

     Fixed: I have a ship with no pod bays, but it has a pod docked with it

     Fixed: Tech upgrade command does not switch off after the maximum level is reached

     Fixed: Tranfering ship plans from ship to another race's ship not working

     Fixed: Cyborg base chunnel allows too many farms and palaces on the merged base

     Fixed: Too great a number of farms allowed on bases that on a planet that had soil go bad

     Fixed: Hours till next run is sometimes wrong on some German systems. It is a very large negative. It
     appears the day and month are mixed up.

     Fixed: Host interface looks bad on systems running in large font mode

     Fixed: Tech centers are producing way too much contraband

     Fixed: A ship reached a waypoint, but the waypoint was not deleted

     Fixed: Super weapons always fire at the same time!

     Fixed: Boarding by just high guard fails to capture the enemy ship

     Fixed: Defending fighters at a ground base are not attacking incoming assault units

     Fixed: Attacking colonists not getting a chance to destroy laser cannons

     Question: Can I transfer cargo to another race?
     Answer: Yes, you can send cargo, but you can not grab their cargo.

     Unable to find: Supplies not being produced (Maybe planet had no megacredits)

     Unable to find: Jettisoning cargo causes planets in the area to vanish (Not very likely)

     Unabled to find: Landing pods cause the amount of unmined Duranium to greatly increase!
     (If you see this happen, send me the YG1 and TN1 files at once!)

     Checked: The randomness of enemy ship plans that are stolen. (Good!)

     Checked: Ships that have not been ordered to attack enemy ships but attack enemy bases do not fire back when attacked by enemy ships. (Yes, those are the ship's orders. This is normal.)

     Checked: Players that dead ship messages go to. (All players that take part in the fight get the message)

     Note: Point defense systems do not work against small ship weapons fire

     Note: Decoys do not work agianst large ship weapons
     

     Sept 3rd, 2000

     Planets4.exe v 4.000.032

     Fixed : The quick ship build pops up when you select an object. Happens after the quick build screen has been opened and closed.

     Fixed : The quick ship build screen displays super weapons on ships that have none when the ship in question has a shield type 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. (Harmless display error)
     

    Sept 2nd, 2000

     Planets4.exe v4.000.031

     Note: This release is to fix one really big irritation. The vanishing planet problem. Planets4.exe has a few problems left to fix, but they are very minor compared to the vanishing planet problem.

     Fixed : The map memory error. When you scan a planet and it is loaded into map memory and then fly a ship with its scanners off within 25ly of the planet, the planet vanishes without a trace. Move the ship away and it comes back!

     New: When you delete a quick build ship plan, it does not come back. You can import the plan of the currently selected ship or all ships.
     

    July 28th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.045

     Fixed : Host sometimes crashes during a combat event if there are minefields in the area.
     Found by: Don Friesen and robomaster.com
     

     July 26th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.044

     Fixed (Again) : New bases visible to enemies.
     

     July 22nd, 2000

     Planets4.exe v4.000.030

     Host 4.000.043 or better required to read TRN files made by this version of planets4.exe, older versions of host will not understand the quick build commands. This version of planets4.exe can read RST files from older versions of host fine.

     New: Quick Ship Build Screen This screen lists all the different ship designs that you currently have in the game plus all the ship plans that are stored in the \plans\ sub directory as a 202 byte QSP file. The QSP files can be copied from computer to computer and can be renamed to any short file name ( *.qsp ). Every time you load the quick build screen all your currently existing ships are imported into this screen's list of ships. When you close this screen all the ship plans will be saved as qsp files in the \plans\ sub directory.

     No prebuilding required, no parts in storeage required. No parts in storeage are used. A quick build command turns metals and money directly into a ship.

     The quick ship build screen lists all the ships that you can have built now in green, ships that you can not build due to lack of metals or money will be listed in yellow text. Ships that you do not have the tech level or hull plans for are listed in red.

     On the right side of the screen is a list of the all the ground bases and ships that are able to build the ship. You can use the map button or hammer select button to see the builder's location on the map or access the builder's command screen.

     You can build 1, 5, 10, or 20 copies of the ship at once. You can delete the ship build order by accessing the builder's pending order screen.

     If the builder is a ground base and the ship being built has weapons the ground base must have a weapons plant to be able to build the ship. If the ground base has enough crew, the new ship will be fully staffed with a full crew.

     Ships building new ships can produce any part required on their own, including any weapon or engine required. Ground bases will do the same, but do require the proper buildings. (engine plant, weapons plant)

     New ships get a full load of repair units and combat ord.

     Ships building new ships will send 10 of their own crew over to the new ship to act as a skeleton crew.

     Improved: Map redraw rates

     Fixed: Hot keys that are active when you are trying to enter text

     Fixed: Fleet screen crashes when there is a Terra Class in the fleet

     Fixed: Base overview screen, prev and next arrows are switched.

     Fixed: Sell contraband, clear the sell and you end up with a large negative amount of money

     Tweeked: I changed some things having to do with outfit pod templates. This might fix the template crash problem. If the template button still causes a crash please email me at cocomax@sierratel.com and we will work on finding the exact cause of the error. It appears to be a very odd interaction problem between the run time files and the planets4.exe program. The goal will be to find what exactly the interaction is and work around it.

     Removed: Message transmitters and telling other players the X,Y of where the message came from

     New: Anonymous message switch. Note: When you send an anonymous message host will place them last in the list of messages to the target player with all the other anonymous messages. This makes it very hard to guess who sent the anonymous message.

     July 22nd, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.043

     New: Messages from player to player no longer show the source of the message.

     New: Support for anonymous messages (Sent by planets4.exe 4.000.030)

     New: Support for quick build ship commands (Orders from planets4.exe 4.000.030)

     New: Updated version of v4face.dll included (Version 101)

     Fixed: Host interface now looks correct on systems running large fonts

     Fixed: The generation of contraband by Tech Centers have been toned down.

     Fixed: Cyborg get megacredits when assimulating humanoids using the High Guard King.
     

     June 29th, 2000

     Planets4.exe v4.000.029

     Fixed: Crash happens when you maximize the starmap, maximize the grid screen, select a grid item and click the map button on the grid screen

     New: The program now knows about destroyed planets. When you view a destroyed planet it will now show up as a destroyed planet in the space command screen and data pads.

     New: If you click on a ship's overview screen minimap to set a waypoint to a planet and the planet has objects in orbit, the minimap will display the planet as the waypoint instead of an orbiting object

     New: When you left click on the main star map to select a "hammer object" the space command list of objects will be cleared and filled with all object next to the new hammer object. This should be less confusing.

     New: Ships can now send ship plans to a transfer target object or receive plans from the target using a set of switches on the ship's building/plans screen. 
     

     June 28th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.042

     Fixed: When a minefield self-destructed taking an enemy object out a page fault will sometimes take place if there was more than 2 ships intercepting a target within the minefield.

     Fixed: Host interface preferance setting Auto Email RST files after host run is not being saved

     Fixed: Host interface preferance setting No Countdown is not being saved

     Fixed: Super weapon charging and firing

     Fixed: New bases visible to all other races!

     Fixed: Cloaked ships are being attacked!

     Fixed: Large weapons are "over charging" causing insane rates of fire for low power weapons (Photon Torps have an unfair bonus becuase of this. )

     Fixed: Protomatter cannon not rebuilding planets. (Turn on the weapon and park over a dead planet.)

     Fixed: Laser weapon not killing planets. (Set planet as your KILL TARGET and turn on your super laser.)

     Fixed: Lifesupport fail message from a planet or other random object with an ID from 1 to 30

     Fixed: Glory device not killing amorphous natives on bases

     Fixed: Mobile fighter factories sometimes builds ENEMY fighters or does not work at all!

     Fixed: Ships captured in combat vanish and sometimes reappear at random!

     New: Your ships will no longer auto intercept enemy bases or buoys

     New: Glory device also yeilds Lectin Spices when exploded over an amorphous planet

     New: Planets with amorphous natives yeild 1 spice unit per 600 amorphous natives

     New: Bases with amorphous natives yeild 1 spice unit per 100 amorphous natives

     New: Weapon charging system improved

     New: Second wave of ships now enter combat at tick 300

     New: Second wave of fighters and all pods enter combat at tick 400

     New:: Speed of fighters slowed down.

     New: Ship do not begin firing weapons until VCR tick 50

     New: Ships start combat stopped at the edge of the map.
     

     June 22nd, 2000

     Planets4.exe v4.000.028

     New: Map memory. It stores all the data on object that you do not own in a *.mem file in the game slot directory. If you see the object again the data is overwritten. The data will continue to exist until you have a base, ship or wing within 25LY of the saved object. If you scan a planet and get full data on the planet it will replace any star only scans you get in future turns. In other words, a current star system only scan will be replaced with old full scan of planet data.

     The remembered data shows up on the map in purple. The listings of old data objects in the space command screen is also purple.
     The picture of the object on the space command screen will have in large print "OLD DATA" along the bottom of the picture.

     New: Ship and wing overview screens redesigned.

     New: Ship and wing overview screens have a small map. The ship / wing is always in the center. Waypoint 1 is displayed as a line.  If the object at waypoint one is a pod, ship or planet a picture of the object will be displayed. If you are over a planet a picture of the planet will be displayed under you. Clicking on the map will set waypoint 1 for the ship or wing. The waypoint will lock onto the nearest object. Holding down the SHIFT key will allow you to set the waypoint anywhere you click. The Intercept, Escort, Tow, Kill, and Capture cursors all will work on the small map. A right click on an object on will bring up a data pad on the object.

     New: The damage controls have been removed from the shipoverview screen and replaced with a small damage bar graph in the lower right corner.

     New: The speed setting window has been removed. You can now change ship and wing speeds using a scroll control on the overview screen.

     New: Fleet command screen added. Fleet command lists all the ships that are marked as fleet leaders. Selecting a fleet leader brings up a list of all ships that are escorting it. Clicking on any of the displayed escort ships will make the escort ship the currently selected ship. Clicking on the large picture of the fleet leader will make it the currently selected ship.

     New: The map now only places blue boxes around object that have important log messaging. This option can be turned off using the options screen.

     Fixed: When you sell all contraband, maketurn, run host, unpack RST file and sell all contraband again the program crashes with a COPP BRANCH EMPTY error.

     Fixed: Buoy message screen has active hotkeys.

     Fixed: Ships display wrong waypoint lines. The map wrongly shows the waypoint one of the last selected ship to be waypoint 1 of the current ship.

     Fixed: Pressing the ESC key sometimes results in a crash.
     

      June 7th, 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.041

     Fixed: A very bad error found with the help of Don Friesen that can cause host to crash during the generation of VCR files.  The error could also cause corruption of the data files without a crash.

     Planets4.exe v4.000.027

     Fixed: Versioning problem that strikes when you switch the names of your race files, master a game, and then switch the race file names back to the old names. 

     Fixed: Error that causes the newest ship device swicthes to not show up on the ship device screen

     Fixed: Error that caused the key board hot keys to sometimes not work.
     I like to move ships by dragging the ship icon on the map and using the hotkey "9" to set the ship speed to the highest possible speed. When the only screens up were the map and space command the hot keys were being ignored.

     New: The debug startup message screen has been removed

     June 5th, 2000

     Vcr.exe v4.000.011

     New: Redesigned Interface

     New: Smoother animation method for large weapons fire.

     New: Look of photon torpedoes improved

     New: Program no longer requires directX sound to run

     New: wavmix32.dll is now being used for sound. The settings for wavmix32.dll can be tweeked by editing the wavmix32.ini file.

     New: Option of showing ship status bars above each ship. Green is shields, yellow armor and white is hull

     New: Option of showing the empire numbers of the ships on the battle screen

     New: Option of showing the ship names on the battle screen

     New: If a ship is captured in battle you will get a message

     New: XY of battle is shown on upper right drag bar

     New: The area around the buttons on the control panel can be used to drag the screen around

     New: Fast moves you forward 100 ticks

     New: Rewind button moved you backwards 100 ticks

     New: Time counter shows you current tick and total ticks

     New: Reports load much faster

     New: VCR.EXE no longer uses THREED20.OCX, COMDLG32.OCX, or COMCTL32.OCX. (These are in your windows system directory, do not delete them, many other programs use them.)

     New: VCR.EXE requires the VCRSUP.DLL file it belongs in the same directory as VCR.EXE. It gives VCR.EXE its extra speed loading data and does the work of rewinding and fast forwarding through the data.

     Fixed: Ending hull levels in report screen shows the wrong number

     Fixed: The about screen now shows you the wrong version number for VCR.EXE

     Fixed: Pause Button slows but does not stop the VCR

     Fixed: Point defense explosions of intercepted weapons are in the wrong spot

     Host.exe v4.000.040

     Fixed: Problem with "Technology Institute" (University Race V102) that caused a massive over production of Stim Bright pills.

     Host.exe v4.000.039

     Fixed: Major combat math defect (bad distance measurement), that caused ships to not correctly target the enemy or close to point blank.  The error was the cause of most of the VCR problems, including long combats, drifting ships. . .

     New: Many combat tweeks, speed of ships and fighters improved. Combat logic tweeked and tuned.

     New: Support for ground building "Technology Institute" added. (University Race V102)

     New Support for ship device "Transport Inhibitor" added (Blocks boarding action of an enemy and costs 10kt of fuel a turn to use.) (University Race V102)

     Master.exe v4.000.019

     Fixed: Versioning problem that caused master to load different race pack versions at the same time. (It should have only loaded the highest version number)

     New: 20% more likely to have natives

     New: 20% more likely to have contraband on a planet

     New: No planet will start with more than 500 HD Stress

     New: Cyborg start the game with a pair of Fire Storms

     Planets4.exe v4.000.026

     Fixed: Race Pack Versioning problem that caused wrong race data to be loaded and displayed

     New: Planets4.exe logs start events to a p4boot.log file

     Fixed: Versioning problem that caused wrong ship and race packs to load when more than one version of a file exists.

     Fixed: Alchemy switches not saving setting

     Fixed: Super weapon switch broken

     Fixed: Program crashed if the HD stress of a planet is negitive (Base / Name screen)

     Fixed: Your TRN Upload path can no longer to set to your WAR sub directory

     New: Program is aware of all the newer ship devices

     New: Red colored text turned a shade of Redish-Orange to help the red color blind players.
     

    May 26th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.038

     Fixed: Players are able to build ship parts that are beyond their current tech levels.

     New: If a base has a shield, the shield can absorb 90% of the blast from a super weapon as it is being destroyed.

     Checked: Make sure only cyborg players can use the assimilation beams (Yes that was the case.)

     New: Full support of the Scanvenger Tribes race added

     New: Ship device: Warp Bubble

     New: Ship device: Holojammer
     

     May 20th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.037

     Fixed: Fuel sharing not working, message is correct, but no fuel is being transfered.

     New: All special ship devices now work

     New: A ship with an active transporter target produces 25 units of extra sensor noise.

     New: Amorphous produce Lerchin Spices. Every 100 Amorphous natives produce 1 kt of Spice.

     New: More advanced auto pilot cargo assignment. It should stop sending more than one ship to pick up the same cargo.

     New: Ships that have a friendly code that matches an enemy's universal friendly code will not start a fight. However, if they are in an area that a fight breaks out in they will get drawn into the fight.

     New: Docked pods do not burn up their energy.

     New: A planet can now sometimes form around stars that have no planet on their own. Every dead star has a 0.1% chance per turn of forming a new planet.

     New: Planets with a high hyper-dimensional stress and a positive hyper-dimensional base frequency produce new minerals.
     S = Stress Level
     New Duranium = ( S / 100 ) ^ 2 * 110
     New Tritanium = ( S / 100 ) ^ 2 * 80
     New Molybdenum = ( S / 100 ) ^ 2 * 50

     New: If a fighter wing is in orbit over a ground base that has at least 5 high guard, one of the high guard will join the wing.

     New: All super weapons destroy ground base shields.

     New: Natives migrate to and from bases that have a functioning public space port.
     If your base has natives with a happiness of over 70 then natives of the matching type from all planets within a 300ly radius will travel to your base. Between 5% and 10% of the natives or all the natives if there are less than 300 natives will move to your base.
     If there are two bases that are within 300 ly of one another and both have functioning public space ports, and both have matching native types, natives will migrate to the happiest base at a rate of between 5% and 10%. 

     New: Messages from the host. Host now sends *.HMS files it finds in the same directory as the YIG file to all the players as a message from the host. Host will send each *.HMS file it finds as a separate message. The HMS file will be deleted as soon as it is sent. Only the first 800 bytes of the file will be sent any data in excess of 800 bytes will not be sent. The subject of the message will always be "Message from host"

     Optimized For Speed: VCR Combat functions in host

     Unable to find problem: Reserve level does not work for player 1 (Need mor data on the problem)
     

     May 12th 2000

     What is new in Cyborg Race Pack Update "C"

     New: Iron slave has a guest size of 2000 instead of 200
     

    May 5th 

     Host.exe v4.000.036 (Also included Master 4.000.018)

     Fixed: HD Stress not working

     Fixed: Terraformers heating planet using -10 power units!

     Fixed: Fighters not loading ord units.

     Fixed: Tax report not sent unless turn is missed

     Fixed: Merging ground bases destroy shields, medlab, fighter plant, and other buildings.

     Fixed: Auto pilot setting speeds beyond what the ship hull can handle

     Fixed: Auto pilot over crewing ships

     Fixed: Cyborg ships not at normal 100% happy rating

     Fixed: Cyborg contraband orders not being cancled

     Fixed: Food to supply converter not working

     Fixed: Cyborg probe not making armor from duranium

     Fixed: Recycle not giving back the parts from the ship

      Fixed: Fighter wings undocking after battles and not redocking with their carrier.

     Fixed: Buoy not self destructing

     Fixed: Buoys keep being produced turn after turn

     New: Chupanoids no longer steal your money

     New: Wing combat (VCR) attack movement code turned on.  (It was turned off by mistake!)

     New: If a ship to base transfer takes place the transfer command is cleared

     New: Ships with 0 crew are automatically captured during combat

     New: Alchemy controls now supported D T or M only, auto unload metals to base

     New: Presistent tech upgrade supported. If on and you upgrade a tech level the upgrade command WILL NOT be reset after a successful tech upgrade.

     New: Heat from HD Stress makes heat that can change a planet's climate

     New: Complex tax system supported

     New: Fighter wings can dock with a ground base and add its fighters to the ground base's fighters

     New: Ships stop firing on an enemy ship when it no longer has a crew.

     New: Ships with heavy system damage can not use their scanners

     New: Ship crew dies if life support is very damaged

     New: Ships with heavy system damage can not move

      New: Cyborg highguard (The King) can assimilate an entire humanoid population in a single turn.
    If there are more than 100,000 humanoids on the planet the Cyborg get a free hull tech upgrade.

     Question: Can wings dock before movement?
     Answer: Yes.

     Unable to find error: Building too many shields, build shield command stuck
     

    March 22nd 2000

     Master.exe v4.000.017a

     Special version of Master.exe with extra debug code.
     

     March 21st 2000

     Vcr.exe v4.000.009

     Fixed: Bug in vcr causes a crash (File not found error) When viewing some VCR files.
     

     March 20th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.035

     Fixed: Warp chunnel not moving any ships with it.

     Planets.exe v4.000.023

     Fixed: Bouys not forming

     Fixed: Mystery garbled messages

     Fixed: Invalid Picture error on startup after master has been run

     New: More debug code
     

    March 19th 2000

     The first third party race-pack "The Peoples Army" by Martin Pederson has been released, (race801)

     Help Files.

     Second Draft finished, only available on-line at present at  Tim's help pages.
     

    March 16th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.034

     Fixed: A planet has a soil rating of 120 and I have 119 farms. I told it to build 5 more farms. . . and it did!

     Fixed: I have a global warmer ship over a planet with a climate of 49, it fails to raise the climate to 50.

     Fixed: I have a global icer ship over a planet with a climate of 51, it fails to lower the climate to 50.

     Fixed: My laser drill does not seem to be working!
     (Note: Due to a programming error it was drilling the ore on the planet's surface, instead of the ore in the ground)

     New: The glory device is now working

          A ship with its glory device on can not be attacked. 
          The ship explodes after all movement and combat is finished. 
          All wings and pods that are not docked within 10LY of the glory device will be destroyed. 
          Docked objects are safe. 
          Ships with a hull mass of 100kt or less are destroyed at range 0 
          Damage decreases by a linear 10% less every LY out from the center of the blast 
          An amorphous native within the blast radius on a planet or base will be turned into 1kt of food and 
         1kt of supplies 
          A ship belong to the same player as the glory device ship will take 1/4 the normal damage 

     New: You get to read messages from ENEMY ships and bases that have been destroyed!

     New: If a ship is fired on it has permission to go into ATTACK MODE! It was setting attackers as enemies, but up to now was failing to switch to attack mode when fired on.

     New: Test run button added to GUI

     New: Legend button added to GUI

     New: Preference NO COUNTDOWN (If checked there is no 20 second countdown)

     Adjusted: Ships RAMMING ships should be a little easier. (Needs more testing)
     

    March 11th, 2000

     New Race: Stormers Released, (race104)
     

    March 7th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.033

     Fixed: Cyborg base happiness is falling to very low levels.

     Fixed: Ships that have a pod or wing docked to it do not show up in fights. 
    What was going on: When a ship enters a fight any pods or fighter wings that happen to be docked with the
    ship are protected from the fight by the ship. They are not suppose to show up in the fight at all. Object A protects object B from attack. A programming mistake got object A switched with object B. So what was really happening  was if a ship entered combat with a pod docked with it the ship was hidden inside of the pod. That is why you would see pods and wings in a combat event, but not the ships!

     New: New host interface, (see below).

     New Host Interface - release notes

     The new host interface was designed to look like the new master program interface and the planets4.exe's files interface. It also provides for easy hosting of games by any player. For people that want to host many games there is the third party PHCc interface which does a better job with hosting games on a much larger scale.

     The host interface as the option of using the v4mail.dll to send RST files to the players. The v4mail.dll sends mail using SMTP mail protocol. The host interface needs to know your email address and the SMTP mail server that you want to connect to. My email address is cocomax@sierratel.com and the mail server that I use to send mail is mail.sierratel.com. 

     The interface DOES NOT receive incoming email, it can ONLY send mail.

     Mailgrab.exe
     The host interface uses a mailgrab.exe plugin program to interface with your machine's mail reader.
     The mailgrab.exe that comes with this release was designed to work with Microsoft Outlook 2000. It might work with Outlook 97 and 98 as well, they have not yet been tested with those versions of Outlook, I would like to hear from anybody running those older versions of Outlook if it works or not.
    NOTE!  This version of mailgrab will NOT work with Outlook Express.
    If you are not running the Microsoft Outlook mail reader it would be best to simply delete mailgrab.exe. 

     The reason the mailgrab.exe plugin exists is because popular mail clients like Microsoft Outlook 2000 store attached files in a database and not as files in a download directory like most mail readers have done in the past. I hope other programmers will write new mailgrab.exe plugins for other popular mail readers that also store attachments in a data base and as files in a download directory. If your mail reader has a download directory that it stores attachments in you can simple delete the mailgrab.exe program and set the path to the game's trinary TRN directory to the mail reader's download directory.

     mailgrab.exe does the following:

          Copies all TRN files from the mail reader that are attached to incoming email from the last seven days and stores them in the UNIV sub directory .
          If there are more than one incoming TRN files from one player, from the same game and current turn, the oldest TRN files are deleted 
          The program renames the incoming TRN file to a new name when placing it into the UNIV directory.Making sure to never overwrite any TRN files in the UNIV directory.
          The name of the TRN file does not matter. 
          If the command switch /a is given to the mailgrab.exe program it will automatically run and exit

     The source code to mailgrab.exe is available: Download mailgrab.exe source code (Visual Basic 5)
     

    Feb 24th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.032

     Fixed: Agrovators not working.

     Fixed: When gathering my own mines I get the full amount back and not the reduced amount based of the percentage of remaining energy.

     Fixed: Auto pilot not moving colonists

     Fixed: Contraband buy function is not working.

     Fixed: Armor making DOES NOT use any duranium at all.

     Fixed: Orbital thrusters of pods are not always turning off and on as they should.

     Fixed: I dropped my pod off at a planet at my waypoint one, but the ship still thinks the pod is docked with it  even through the ship is now 200 ly from the pod now.

     New: The fleet leader also has fleet membership status. It now shares fuel and ord with the fleet.

     New: Improved contraband black market math model.

     New: Alchemey ships now gather supplies from the base last. The planet and pod supplies are taken first.

     New: Order of events changed.
     1. Build Ships, Launch pods, Buy and Sell Contraband
     2. Taxes collected
     3. Movement, transfers, and pod landings
     4. New building built on planets
     5. Ground bases produce supplies, metals, ord, med, food, and build new ship parts
     6. Tech levels upgraded

     New: Mines are active when dropped, unless you use the cloak option.

     New: Command line switch /f 
     (Fastest host run possible, no movement takes place, most functions disabled, no RST files are made. 
     VCR files are made.. This was added for people that just want to generate VCR files as quickly as possible.)

     New: Tax report message.

     New: Cyborg ships automatically convert 1 kt of duranium into 100 units of ship armor

     New: Armor now has a mass of 0.01 kt per unit.

     New: Armor now takes 1 kt of Duranium to make 100 units of armor.

     New: Ore pods will land directly on a planet without a base. (New base will not be formed)

     New: Native pods will land directly on a planet without a base. (New base will not be formed)

     New: Debug code added (log messages) to help pinpoint the line of code that causes host to sometimes crash on Windows NT 4.0 machines at the point that RST files are being made.

     Found: The source of the garbled messages, they are new buoys. Planets4.exe is sending the command to make a new buoy with a incorrect command that the buoy data is really a player to player messaage. The buoy does not get made and a garbled message is sent instead. The fix for all this will be released in the next planets4.exe.

     Unable To Find Any Problem: Mine drop amounts all wrong.

     Unable To Find Any Problem: Pods will not dock with ships.

     Unable To Find Any Problem: Global icer ship device does not work if there are more than one icer in orbit.
    (Note: A global icer can not cool a planet to a climate level below 50.)

     Feb 21st 2000

     Master.exe v4.000.015

     Fixed: RST name must be 6 letters or less, but the text input accepts longer names

     Fixed: There are natives on EVERY PLANET!

     Fixed: There is way too much contraband in the game!

     (The sub that randomly generating planet starting levels had a flaw that what not clearing the last rolled
     planet levels for contraband and natives. Sub is now working as it should. )

    Feb 14th 2000

     Host.exe v4.000.031

     Not all the problems have been fixed yet, but the most important ones have been.

     Fixed: Overflow errors in the ground combat sub causing huge increases in population numbers.

     Fixed: Base merge failure causing very strange things to happen when an enemy base is captured.

     Fixed: A ship with no crew keeps moving (wrong!)

     Fixed: Host crash if there are more than 100 *.VCR files while trying to delete them.

     New: Cyborg Assimilators (Ground Assault Craft) now work. They will assimilate 1000 enemy colonists or natives per turn, each.

     New: Cyborg get extra money for assimilating prisoners ( 1 / 10 ) mc per personer and ( 1 / 20 ) mc for assimilating natives.

     Tested: Ship device Assimilation Beam: It worked. An annihilation class was parked over an enemy base. The beam was turned on, the next turn the base was captured and the enemy colonisted were all on the ship.

     Tested: Ore pods landing on a base. An ore pod over a base landed when the orbital thrusters were turned off. Most likely the reported problem was an ore pod over a planet without a base, ore pods do not currenly land on planets that do not have a base. A change will be made shortly to allow ore pods to land on a planet without a base.
     

     Master.exe v4.000.014

     New: Total rework of the interface

     New: Super easy to use "Wizard" interface.

     New: Support for Zeta Galaxy map and all custom maps

     New: Support for 12 host games in the univ sub directory

     New: Auto links the games in the the hosting slots to the player slots in the war sub directory
     

     New Map Completed.

     The Zeta Galaxy is 6000 light years in diameter and has around 1400 planets. The center of the Zeta Galaxy is located at space coordinate (5000 , 5000).
     
     

     New v4mail.dll (Email DLL for Planets4.exe)
     
     

     vcr.exe v4.000.008

     Fixed: Bug in vcr causes a crash if you try to view some fighter wings. Error is an INVALID IMAGE.
     
     

     vcr.exe v4.000.007

     Fixed: Bug in vcr causes a crash if there are more than 40 ships in a fight and one of the ships above 20 on the list fires the first shot.  The crash is a GPF error.

     Fixed: Blaster and some other weapons not displayed correctly. Black dot shown instead of energy ball.

     New: Odd ball floating drag bar thing removed. 
     

     Master.exe V4.000.013

     Fixed: Problem with scripts not correctly assigning races.
     

     Host.exe v4.000.030

     Fixed: Ground combat errors, the numbers are all wrong! I am getting negative numbers!

     Fixed: Attack craft not attacking or getting killed in ground combat.

     Fixed: I attacked an enemy base and it says that they surrendered, but they are STILL THERE!

     Fixed: I win a ground war but half my guys are missing and it looks like the enemy has them!

     Fixed: The ground combat prisoner numbers are all wrong, they seem to be mixed up with other numbers.

     Fixed: I ordered 10 type two fighters and I ended up with 65,000 type one fighters!

     Fixed: I ordered 10 type two ground attack units and I ended up with 65,000 type one units!

     Fixed: Assimilation of natives by my base is not working.

     Fixed: Assimilation of enemy base members by my base is not working.

     Fixed: Assimilation of prisoners by my base is not working.

     Fixed: Ship device: Food to supply converter not working.

     Fixed: Report on all bases that the Cyborg king is increasing taxes by 300% when he is NOT there. 

     Fixed: Hyper jump ship log is reporting the ship's max jump distance instead of the actual distance jumped.

     Fixed: Pods with a boost target that loose track of the boost target take a wildly random course.

     Fixed: Attack vectors are always on the right side of the VCR no matter what my vector setting is.

     Fixed: I can not see the enemy base that is on the same planet that I am on.

     New: Autopilot will move a ship's speed up to max speed, if it is not too big of a differance between cruise speed and max speed.

     New: The Cyborg King has a new power. If he is on a base that has 5000 or more megacredits and no King's palace he will build a King's palace regardless of what your current planet tech level is. It will still cost 5000 megacredits.

     New: Ships VCR battle tactics improved. Ships are less likely to pile up over a planet.

     Unable to find any problem: Can not go from tech 11 to tech 12 in planet tech.
     (Tested and passed my test)

     Unable to find any problem: Can not go from tech 11 to tech 12 in large weapon tech.
     (Tested and passed my test)

     Unable to find any problem: Assault pod will not undock.
     (Tested and passed my test, undocked using pod control panel.)

     Unable to find any problem: Wing will not dock.
     (Tested and passed my test, make sure the wing is not too big)
     

    Host.exe v4.000.029

     Fixed: Host crashes with a GPF error while making new RST files if ship to ship combat takes place.
     Cause: Programmer error. In the combat sub I tried to place a 20 by 10 matrix of ship weapons (Large ship weapons) into a buffer sized to hold only a 3 by 10 matric of data. The extra data corrupted the program's data segment causing a GPF error later on, when the RST files were being made. Error was found using the Robo Game 620 YIG file.
     

    Host.exe v4.000.028

     New: The HOST.EXE interface program was made larger.

     New: During combat phases the host interface now has a phase counter to let you know host is still running

     New: Huge rewrite of source code to avoid a major bug in the compiler program involving arrays.

     Fixed: A poor piece of source code found in base jobs / ground combat sub that was causing a huge slow down of host. 

     Fixed: Recycling a ship causes all higher ID ships to vanish.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.027

     New: A ship in orbit around a planet and not moving is 5 times harder to detect on enemy scanners

     New: A ship in orbit around a planet has 50% normal scanner power

     New: A ground base's sensor image has been reduced from 1600 down to 800.

     New: Cyborg can have only one high guard unit. (The Cyborg king)

     New: The Cyborg king at a base will give the base a 300% increase in income

     New: The Cyborg king at a base will give the base a 400% increase in population growth

     New: When a ship reaches a waypoint and the waypoint was over a planet the name of the planet will appear in the ship log

     New: Agrovator doubles food production

     New: 100 Cyborg colonists can assimilate 5 enemy and 5 natives per turn

     New: If a base has more highguard than the Cyborg can assimilate in a turn the highguard will NOT be assimilated and the base will NOT be taken.

     New: Assimilation beam now works.

     New: Speed of host program improved slightly during the movement phase of the host run.

     New: 20 or more high guard on a ship will block a spy attack on the ship

     New: If (Random number from 1 to 200) < your race's Force Good rating and you have one high guard on a ship the spy attack on the ship is blocked.

     New: If (Random number from 1 to 600) is less that your ship's happyness rating the spy attack is blocked.

     New: There is a 5% chance that a spy attack on a ship will get around all the above listed blocks

     New: Mines now produce 75% metals and 25% ore. (No longer 100% ore)

     New: Public Spaceports attract more existing natives and improves native happiness

     New: Native pods can land on a target planet without forming a base.

     New: All ships must stay in the combat for at least 1500 ticks before running

     New: Ships that are set to run away will try to excape combat as soon as possible

     New: If pod boost target X,Y is the same as the base launching the base the orbital thrusters are turned on

     New: When colonists are beamed up onto a Cyborg ship they will be automatically converted to crew,
     if the ship is not already fully crewed.

     New: Cyborg maintain a 10% crew population on every ground base

     New: Ships can be recycled

     New: 100% hull damage destroys ships

     New: Contraband price math all changed, should end contraband price explosion

     New: Cyborg can not buy or sell contraband

     New: Ore processing ship device places extra metal on ground base if one exists

     New: You can only chunnel to ships belonging to your own race

     New: Firestorm Ground chunnel now works

     Fixed: Chunnel and HYP ships with no waypoint end up at 0,0

     Fixed: Tritanium and Neutronium not being processed by ship ore processing device

     Fixed: You can only minesweep your friends minefields

     Fixed: Wings with zero fighters

     Fixed: Wings not undocking from ships

     Fixed: Garbled pod names when a player changes a pod' s name.

     Fixed: Hyper drive ships jumping to waypoint 1 Y,Y instead of waypoint 1 X,Y

     Fixed: Tow mass limit not working

     Fixed: Tow not working

     Fixed: Minefields that are turned off are still damaging enemy ships

     Fixed: Soft destruct of minefields do not work

     Fixed: Repair of ships do not use repair units

     Fixed: Auto pilot ships dropping all fuel onto planets instead of picking up fuel.

     Fixed: Beaming down one troop causes a huge colonist population to appear out of thin air

     Unable to find error: Player one can not get messages from other players

     Unable to find error: Combat messages are garbled

     Unable to find error: Building a ship in a ship's dry dock causes a host crash

     Unable to find error: YIG's made with scripts cause host to crash

     Unable to find error: Outfit pod not working on Nocturnes.

     Unable to find error: Building two or more wings causes a crash of host and/or bad data

     Unable to find error: Minefields not damaging ships

     Unable to find error: Building large weapons causes a crash of host

     Unable to find error: Lifepods end up with negative crew and negative troops
     

     Host.exe V4.000.026

     Fixed: Transporter failures
     (While moving the transporter code from the main V4HOST.EXE to the V4HOSTY.DLL to get around a bug in the compiler, I made the bonehead mistake of using a 4 byte pointer to an array of 2 byte integers. Causing all tranporters to fail.   The mistake did not cause any data corruption.)

     Fixed: Ship that were NOT moving were hitting mines.

     New: Ships with more than 99% hull damage are converted to wreckage

     New:: Population limit of 500,000,000 at all bases.

     Checked: Wreckage capturing works. If you end your movement next to it and have it set as a capture target.

     Checked: Mine sweeping of enemy mines work. You can only sweep the mines belonging to enemies that you are set to attack.
     

      Host.exe V4.000.025

     Fixed: Disappearing YIG files after a host run.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.024

     Fixed: Can not build new fighter wings
     New: Resupply pod stealth changed to be just slightly harder to scan than an assault pod
     

     Host.exe V 4.000.023

     Fixed: Ships never hit minefields!

     New: RST bytes 272-275 hold a long integer that indicates which race pack ID number this player is using (101 = feds)
     

     Host.exe V4.000.022

     Fixed: Ship load error.
     Error was found in the movement section of the host, in the part of movement that figures the mass of objects to be towed. Error would only take place when there were more than 1000 objects in the game. Problem was found in host files sent to me by Paul Honigmann. The error did not cause any corruption of  the game files.
     Fixed: Tow error
     Error was found in the movement section that was causing the tow targeting to not be set correctly.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.021

     Fixed: No population growth
     Fixed: Towing of ships not working.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.020

     Fixed: V4HOST caused an invalid page fault in module V4HOST.EXE
     Bytes at CS:EIP 0f bf 80 7c 54 62 81 2b c1 2b 05 80 19 4f 00 c1
     Error happened during the pod hiding phase of the host run.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.019

     Fixed: Error in ship towing causes a SHIP LOAD ERROR that stops host from finishing its run.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.018

     Fixed: Building laser cannons causes host to not be able to complete its run. Exit with unknown opp 248.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.017

     More changes made to shop and help track down GPF errors or Forbidden Permission (Germany). 
     Fixed: Programming error that causes the amounts of minerals in a ground base to be corrupted and a page fault in the global taxes section on the program.
     

     Host.exe V4.000.016

     More changes made to shop and help track down GPF errors or Forbidden Permission (Germany). 
     Fixed: Form new wing command was being corrupted by the following command, resulting in a corrupted HPL file and danger of crashes
     Fixed: Ship auto intercept intercepting enemy bases by mistake.
     Fixed: You could only minesweep mines belonging to your friends
     Fixed: Minefield hit odds were always 0 do to an error in calculating ship vector.
     Fixed: Tow beam mass limit not working.
     Fixed: Compacting HPL code resulted in corrupted HPL file.
     New: Code added that removes all dead objects every 20 turns from the YIG file to save space.
     New: Host makes a backup file (ZIP file) named *.TN1 of all the TRN files from the last turn. This file is made even if there were no TRN present during the host run. The TN1 will always go with the YG1 backup file.  (TN2 goes with YG2. . . etc )
     

     Host.exe V4.000.015

     Changes made to shop and help track down GPF errors or Forbidden Permission (Germany). 
     

     Host.exe V4.000.014

    Every known bug reported to me so far has been fixed. Every known problem has been worked on. All devices  should be working now.

     Fixed: Any fighter or ground unit sent to another planet in a pod is lost
     Fixed: Ground combat casualty reports are always blank.
     Fixed: Ground combat not working
     Fixed: Too large of large weapons being placed on new ships
     Fixed: Outfitting pods not adding weapons to ships
     Fixed: Fighters burn fuel
     Fixed: Fueless fighters can not move
     Fixed: Ship to ship transfers
     Fixed: Cargo can not be picked up from a planet that does not have a base
     Fixed: Divide by zero error sends ship to -32,767 , -32,767
     Fixed: No resorts being built
     Fixed: Build base shield is always on
     Fixed: Can not buy or sell contraband
     Fixed: Contraband prices not changing
     Fixed: Contraband (in the market) not being used up or produced
     Fixed: Ship and base happiness levels not changing
     Fixed: Allied data sharing not changing
     Fixed: Fleet fuel sharing and ord sharing not working
     Fixed: Ships not firing in defence 
     Fixed: Transfer from ship to planet not working
     Fixed: Ships not firing beams after the ship runs out of ORD
     Fixed: Bases not gathering items from the planet surface
     Fixed: Jettison cargo not working
     Fixed: Host reporting wrong version and date wrong
     Fixed: Spy not working (Note: Fed spy power is very very weak )
     Fixed: Ship dry dock not working

     Changed: Planets show up a little better on planet and ship scanners
     Changed: Population growth curves
     Changed: The power of the training center has been toned down

     New: Completed transfer orders are deleted
     New: Bases refuel fighter wings
     New: Ships refuel fighter wings
     New: A fighter wing's dock target will refuel a wing if the ship flies past the wing during movement
     New: Old TRN files are zipped up in a file named *.TN1
     New: Pods boosted to unseen objects will have a nav failure
     New: Boarding laser, used for hostile ship to ship transfers. Kill half the enemy's crew and damages the enemy's ship hull
     New: TRN files deleted after they are used
     New: If you end up with more than one base on a planet they will all merge into one base
     New: Any pod will fit any ship pod bay. Pod bay size limits removed from game.
     New: Pods can not merge with other pods
     New: Base natives grow in numbers
     New: Chupanoids resist being placed in a native pod
     New: Alchemy working
     New: Bio scanner working
     New: Ore processing working
     New: Fuel converter working
     New: Laser drill working
     New: Holodeck working
     New: Long range mine detector working
     New: Auto pilot works (Ships move cargo based on the base reserve levels.) 

     Unable to find error: Base reverts back to peaceful every turn
     Unable to find error: Building 3 ships at one base causes and error that results in no ships being built
     Unable to find error: No ord units are being made by bases
     Unable to find error: No repair units are being made by bases
     Unable to find error: Ship 1ly from a planet can not reach the planet
     Unable to find error: Med lab and ship repair plant turning on by themselves


     Master.exe V4.000.012

     New: When making a new univserse in "use map" mode all the players are placed in a 700 LY circle centered around X,Y 2000, 2000. Each race's homeworld will be an adverage of 12 degrees apart in the circle. The order that the races are placed in the circle is random. If there are less than 30 players random gaps in the circle will be intermixed with the race homeworlds. 

     New: You now have an option of setting the amounts of contraband that will be found on planets.

     New: You have the option of giving the players a set of starting ships.
     

    Master.exe V4.000.011

     New: Command line options added
     Master scriptfile.vps yigfile.yig /OX
     /O = Overwrite
     /X = Auto exit master

     This was added to support 3rd party programs that write scripts and want to auto generate a yig file.


    Planets.exe v4.000.021

     Fixed: Opening a saved game opens the wrong war file

     Fixed: When the space command is in "hammer select mode" and one of the anvil buttons on the grid, hot sheet, or read message screen is clicked the select object is made the anvil object, but then the space command screen switches to "anvil select mode" and stays there. It should stay in "hammer select mode".

     Fixed: Building power switches on the base overview screen are not working

     Fixed: Dragging and dropping on the map from a ship icon to a waypoint icon causes a crash.

     Fixed: The waypoint icons are still on the starmap when the control key is held down

     Fixed: When the starmap is in "maximum size mode" and planets4.exe is minimized the program crashes

     Change: WAR and TRK files in the main WAR directory will no longer be deleted. 

     New: Disabled buttons on the files windows are now displayed as grey outlines.

     New: V4mail.dll has added error messages, in the event of an error, you will get an exact error message as to why sending the TRN by email failed.

     Note: If you have a War file or Trn file in one of the slots from a game with the same game ID number with a higher turn number they will NOT be deleted. They will hang around and confuse you. It is very bad to have two different games using the same game ID number.
     

    Planets.exe v4.000.020

     New: gug32.dll rewritten to avoid the compiler bug. This may solve starup problems.

     New: v4email.dll Handles the converting of TRN files to base 64 mime and emailing to TRN to your game host.

     Fixed: The bug that was keeping the Cyborg from placing hyperdrives on new ships fixed.

     Changed: File menu removed, open war screen removed, unpack RST screen removed, maketurn screen removed.

     Fixed: Changing wing speed from overview speed slider not working (Data not saved)

     New: Advanced File screen added.
     

    Planets4.exe V4.000.019

     New: More debug code added help track down startup errors on NT machines.

     New: Tabs control removed from the options screen, some machines were unable to correctly display
     check boxes on a tab control.

     Fixed: A display size errors on space command, data pad and overview command screens that only
     happen on machines using the LARGE FONTS option.
     

    Planets4.exe V4.000.018

     Fixed: Pressing ESC many times causes a crash

     Fixed: Close space command with the ESC key causes a crash

     Fixed: Ship repair shop can not be turned off from the base command screen

     Fixed: Program ERROR! Base not on a known planet, happens when an enemy base is on a grey planet

     Fixed: Grid screen does not show correct delta stress value

     Fixed: Resort screen does not round adverage native happiness correctly

     Fixed: Ground base overview screen's slider for government money transfer does not remember its settings

     Fixed: Pending order ship parts graphics are not based on the hall's max

     Fixed: Parts pick screen is off by one when picking from a list of large weapons with weapons that are over the max size

     Fixed: Shield power level listed in ship data screen is always 0

     Fixed: Ground base reserve levels, MAX and MINIMUM levels not saved

     Fixed: Ground base reserve Fuel and Molybdenum levels are getting mixed up

     Fixed: Ground base attack settings not saved

     Fixed: Explain screen always claims that the ground base attack setting is "PEACEFUL"

     Fixed: Notepad and Log screens are not closed by ESC

     Fixed: Hot sheet and send message screens do not surface when their tool bar icon is clicked

     Fixed: Grid screen is 20 pixels too wide for a 800 X 600 screen setting

     Fixed: Using the F3 key to open the minimap can sometimes cause a crash

     Fixed: The minimap jumps around when the main starmap is used

     Fixed: Main starmap disappears when set to "always at max"

     Fixed: Data pad base picture was the old style and not the new planet plus base square

     Fixed: Ship parts order screen's active order indicators have a 1 pixel overlap

     Fixed: Pageup and Pagedown not working for the minefield command screen

     Fixed: Hotkey "." active when renaming an object

     Fixed: Population overflow error when there are more than 2,100,000,000 colonists

     New: Hotkey F9: Hammer Datapad

     New: Hotkey F10: Anvil Datapad

     New: Soil (Horticultural) rating on the ground base overview screen next to climate

     New: Ground base overview screen's stucture buttons now have button frames, to help show that they are buttons.

     New: All the ship command screens have next and previous buttons and have a picture of the ship and id number.

     New: The space command screen con now be drag around using any part that is not a button

     New: Space command screen has a new button that removes the anvil object displays the whole interface, including the space command screen.

     New: Ship mission screen now has a recycle (at base) switch. This is new function has not yet programmed into host.  This was added because the Cyborg will need it, due to their lack of ship outfitting pods.

     New: Race pick screen's grey buttons follow the clicking of the race select buttons

     New: Startup Debug window added to find the point in the program that planets4.exe crashes during startup on a few NT computers. If your system crashes during the startup of planets4.exe please send me the message in the debug window.

     Unable To Find: Armor not always shown on pending ship order screen
     

     Planets.exe V4.000.015

     Only minor changes to the TRN generator so that all command codes are sent to the host.
     

     Planets.exe V4.000.012

     Fixed: Open RST file screen position opens off screen
     Fixed: Fuel estimate error when viewing ships with no engines
     Fixed: Fighters not subtracted when a new wing is formed
     Fixed: Unable to form new wing
     Fixed: New wings have very odd named (Undefined)
     Fixed: Player handle not displayed on the open RST screen
     Fixed: Set starbase speed causes a crash
     Fixed: Setting ship speed from the ship overview screen not being saved
     Fixed: The quick pick list of near objects not showing all objects
     Fixed: Player handles garbled on the prisoner report screen
     Fixed: Base overview: Building on/off not updating the detailed screen's switch display
     Fixed: Ship overview screen looses focus when arrows are used to switch ships and details is up.
     Fixed: Base: Details: Industrial: Shows the wrong terraformer usage of mega credits and supplies
     Fixed: Minelaying screen acts wierd when there are less than 500 ord units
     Fixed: Ship waypoint lines are not being displayed

     New: Hot keys: Esc, d and g now close the current window
     New: Objects listed in the Quick Pick sceen are now color coded
     New: Set Transporter target to anvil object removed from ship nav pad
     New: Transporter button removed from ship overview
     New: Clicking on the word "Transporter" on the ship overview screen brings up the transporter screen
     New: Transporter target list now includes the planet you are currently over
     New: Transporter target list now includes the planet at the next waypoint
     New: If a base is the currently selected object the hot key o brings up the parts order screen on the detail display
     New: Hot keys 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 set a ship's or wing's speed 1 = STOP 9 = FULL
     New: No mimimum pod launch mass
     New: Base overview: Right click on building name brings up a mini slider that lets you adjust settings
     New: Base overview: Buildings with a slider setting now has a bar display giving you an idea of the current setting
     New: Base overview: Buildings: Left click in the little blue box adds one to the build building queue
     New: Base overview: Buildings: Left click plus SHIFT in the little blue box adds ten to the build building queue
     New: Base overview: Buildings: Left click plus Ctrl in the little blue box zero's the build building queue
     New: Base overview: Buildings: Right click in the little blue box subtracts one from the build building queue
     New: Base overview: Buildings: Right click plus SHIFT in the little blue box subtracts ten from the build building queue
     New: Pod boost screen uses the Quick Pick for boost, drop and dock
     New: Title bar removed from main starmap screen
     New: Popup object pick list box is now color coded. Green = yours, red = enemy, planet = yellow
     New: Hotkey b jumps to the nearest base within 10 ly of the currently selected object
     New: Hotkey w jumps to the next wing within 10 ly of the currently selected object
     New: Hotkey s jumps to the next ship withing 10 ly of the currently selected object ( typing s over and over again cycles the selected object through the nearby ships )
     New: Active from all windows: Hotkey i caused the currently selected ship or wing to intercept the secondary object (anvil object)
     New: Active from all windows: Hotkey e caused the currently selected ship or wing to escort the secondary object (anvil object)
     New: Active from all windows: Hotkey t jumps to the transporter screen if the currently selected object is a ship
     New: Option to display ships as dots instead of crosses on the main starmap
     New: Option to display planet ID numbers next to planets on the main starmap
     New: "0 ly" not displayed when you do a quick click on the main starmap
     New: On the main starmap holding down the SHIFT key allows you to drop a waypoint in deep space without it locking onto the nearest object
     New: Holding down the CTRL key causes the waypoint drag icons to disappear from the main starmap if the currently selected object is a ship or wing and has waypoints set, the drag icons return as soon as the key is released
     New: Dragging waypoint 1 back to the ship or wing postion on the main starmap deletes the waypoint.
     New: Dragging any other waypoint ( 2 through 6 ) back to the position does not delete any waypoints
     New: "Join Base" removed from pod detailed command screen (Not needed)
     New: On ship nav pad, clicking on a waypoint set button with a green light deletes the waypoint
     New: On wing nav pad, clicking on a waypoint set button with a green light deletes the waypoint
     New: Option to disable the automatic popping up of the space command screen when a new object is selected from the main starmap


    The Fed race pack has been updated with new buldings, and a new script file.

    I will try to keep this page as updated as often as possible, which is usually every 2 weeks.

     

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