Than I open ship info screen of (any) Destroyer it (always) offers me an Exploration Vessel as a default refit template. Quite annoying and confusing, had to use Undo (once) after a wrong mass refit.

Chasm wrote:Please see game 2012. Carriers with multiple assault shuttle bays (and fully loaded) are only getting additional crew for 1 bays worth (2 bays should be + 100 crew, not 50).

Oops. Should be fixed in r19496.

Chasm wrote:In addition, shuttles are only allowing boarding at boarding module range, not range 8. See carrier group over Gemma.

I think this could just be an issue with the UIs being unclear. If you have a single ship selected, and that ship has assault shuttles, and you open the boarding sub-menu, and click either 'CAPTURE' or 'RAID', you should get an 8-title range template that shows possible boarding targets. It's not as clear as it could be, but I believe it does work. (At least, it did so in your game, when I sent some of those Carriers out to bother the Phidi at Tyl.)

I was actually being shown the template, but only able to capture if I was directly adjacent. It was coming up as red though. I was using it against pirates.

Chasm wrote:I was actually being shown the template, but only able to capture if I was directly adjacent. It was coming up as red though. I was using it against pirates.

Did they have shields active? (Could you upload the battle, the next time this happens?)

They did have shields active, there is nothing that says anything about shields stopping shuttles. And if they do, I should not have been able to board at point blank. The game I uploaded, 2012, go back 1 turn ant watch the battle over gemma against pirates. You will see what I mean.

Chasm wrote:They did have shields active, there is nothing that says anything about shields stopping shuttles. And if they do, I should not have been able to board at point blank. The game I uploaded, 2012, go back 1 turn ant watch the battle over gemma against pirates. You will see what I mean.

Yes, the shields-stop-boarding mechanic is a balance change I made at the last second, and it really needs to be better documented. That you could board at point blank is a bug.

Especially if it effects all 3 (boarding modules, transporters and assault shuttles) since none of them mention it at all.

Chasm wrote:Especially if it effects all 3 (boarding modules, transporters and assault shuttles) since none of them mention it at all.

Yes. I agree. Undocumented mechanics are bad. Umm... I think letting shields block boarding is probably a good balance adjustment, but, until I have more hints explaining whats going on in the UIs and game text, including the mechanic in game is going to feel like a bug.

So, for now, I've turned this off. Assault shuttles will just need to be OP for a bit

Aren't assault shuttles well, shuttles? Since they are small craft, point defense should be able to tear them out of the sky. They should likely have the same range as any small craft, just be fairly slow (speed 8). Destroy the shuttles and the boarding is negated ( and the crew aboard lost. And perhaps, only at battle shields and up should boarding be blocked. After all that's when you start blocking kinetics (a case could be made for force fields and up).

Chasm wrote:Aren't assault shuttles well, shuttles? Since they are small craft, point defense should be able to tear them out of the sky. They should likely have the same range as any small craft, just be fairly slow (speed 8). Destroy the shuttles and the boarding is negated ( and the crew aboard lost. And perhaps, only at battle shields and up should boarding be blocked. After all that's when you start blocking kinetics (a case could be made for force fields and up).

Point defense should already work like this (though the AI is rarely smart enough to save some to use against your shuttles). The core problem, in my mind, is that assault shuttles are a tier 1 weapon, and if they're not blockable with shields, then they're a tier 1 weapon that can effectively 1-shot a tier-3 cruiser, provided that they can just deal with it's point defense somehow.

Refitted original Human Heavy Cruiser. Spawns in lower left hand corner of combat map, unable to do anything with it. I can end the turn and it will have PD react to Star Harpies, but can't take offensive action. Trying to auto-complete consistently causes fatal crash. Attempting to upload logs via main page, but it seems to be timing out. Any other way I can upload the saved game file for you?

Edit: Sent contents of saved game file to Sven directly.

In r19500 Human Assault Marines were able to raid and capture some slaves. Game upload_2044. Slaves and Marines are on an assault Transporter en route to Minalei from Gienah.

Not sure if it is a bug exactly, or if anything can be done about it from the developer side...

When I play the game on my laptop that has integrated intel HD graphics and a geforce, the game runs on the intel HD by default. I need to manually change the preferences and force the game to run on the geforce. The performance on the intel HD is way, way worse - the turns go slower, map scrolling is much less smooth... If possible, the game should be set to run on the more powerful hardware by default. I am sure that there will be people that do not know how to switch graphics modes manually and they might be disappointed with the performance of the game as a result.

In the StarsInShadowManual.pdf, on page 4 under 'Starting a new game - Faction Selection' the Human faction is not mentioned at all.

Intervention
When you happen to have a fleet in a system where your ally and your enemy battle it out, you are offered the option to intervene. The unexpected thing is that you are then attacked by both, your enemy and your ally. If you happen to win, your ally acts as if this never happened. Shouldn't those battles be you and your ally against the enemy?

Example: Game #2111 in system Iadris