meh, sorry sounded like a flame, but the boost DID need to be turned down a lot, if you've ever heard it out of a set of good 5.1's, you'd know exactly what we were all complaining about.

The stations are absolutely gorgeous! I know you've already heard that a lot, but I don't think enough can be said about 'em. Waylon clearly put a lot of work into details to make 'em look cool and functional at the same time. The new holographic advertisements add to the atmosphere also. Thanks for this much needed graphical overhaul.

I have mixed feelings about the new sounds though. First the weapons. I love the new gatling sound as it is now, but I can see how it needs to be "beefed up." Nevertheless it's a welcome change from the same old laser sounds. I've been asking for a better gatling sound since 3.2, and this update fulfills my fantasy of wielding such a fearsome sounding weapon. Thank you! And hopefully each weapon will have a more distinct sound as we progress with more updates.

As far as the boosters go, I'm not too happy about 'em. I personally miss the bass of the old boosters, because it gave you a sense that your ship was hurling through space at incredibly high speeds. But now... they sound WEAK. I always find myself trying to pop my ears thinking that my headphones are messed up. I mean c'mon guys, boosting in a spaceship isn't supposed to sound like a symphony orchestra. It's supposed to be loud and annoying, because well... you're in a spaceship with bigass engines!

While it's not absolutely necessary or important at the moment, I'd like to see a checkbox or something to somehow tweak the bass of those sounds back up again, for people who prefer the added realism. Please guys, realize that most of the game revolves around space combat and fast spaceships. Quietness and smooth sounds are sort of contradictory with the type of environment that's trying to be acheived. Just my opinion.

The dynamic economy I can't say much about, except that I haven't tried it yet. I'll reserve comments about this until later. Some bugs have been fixed, I guess. I noticed fewer m_waiting=4 messages and my connection being more stable overall. FPS rates seemed to have improved as well. So there's some additional good news right there.

All in all I think this was an excellent and much needed update. The new stations and dynamic economy should keep us occupied for a while as more bugs and balance issues are ironed out to make gameplay fun again.

The stations are really cool. My favorite stations are s7, s14 and s18. also they have new docks which are really neat. they have a entry dock and a exit dock (which is the one with the blue screen type things in it) I also like the new signs in the station (mostly the new ones). :)

Is it me, or is it literally impossible to make so much as a credit trading?

It aien't just you Genin...

Devs: Is it a bug.. or a strange sort of "feature" that you actually
lose money on most trade routes?

ay,

I invest in top materials and the only profit I receive is 10 credits :( if I receive profit at all.

I mostly have a loss of 30% :(.

Unless if you bring every tradegood to your homesector, it is the only way to achieve a little profit.

cheers

Heh, the dynamic economy may be a bit.. broken, at present. We didn't even really mean to release it, it was a side affect of doing some server-side updates (sometimes it's hard to do a partial-release that reflects some of the development changes, but not others). Anyway, it's probably for the best, now we can tweak it a bit and have it more workable by the time it really begins to matter and we reset everyone's characters.

People (especially a1k0n) had been bugging me about the turbo noise being too bassy for awhile. I have a relatively nice speaker system, and it did make my floor shake and my windows rattle.. I just didn't happen to mind. Others did, however, so I reduced it. I want to redo that sound effect entirely (from scratch), at which point I may give it a little more bass than it has right now, but less than it did originally.

What if you made the amount of bass selectable? That'd satisfy everyone...

Most businesses are pretty happy with 4% net profit. If you are making over 30% profit, I'd say the dynamic economy was busted the other way. Downloading now and I'll tell you what I think. :)

(Board is broken and unable to edit messages)

Also, the dynamic economy may have begun at the base state of 'all demand filled' and as time goes by and deliveries are not made to the sector, the demand might rise along with the price the merchant is willing to pay for the good. But you'd have to ask inc about that.

The nice thing about a test game is that you have people giving opinions and sometimes lending a hand in development. Perhaps the bass of the boosting was a bit much (my headphones blew out because of the amount of bass, also the station wheel had WAY too much bass also). Perhaps we (the testers) could come up with some sounds to make the boosting noise somehow sound fullfilling w/o rattling stuff off the walls. I was thinking of something like off of Star Trek before they hit warp speed. Or maybe a jet engine on take-off. I'll start sampling and mixing myself and see what I can come up with. It will be interesting to see what we can come up with if we all try.

I always thought that the engines powering up would be higher pitched, like a jet. But that's jsut me. (yes, I know there isn't any air.)

i use a cheap but fairly nice pair of headphones. excellent bang for the buck since they sound so good. anyway, i've never had a problem with the bass produced by the turbo. i thought it was realistic and sounded beefy.

celebrim:

In invested 1800 money and I received 10 credits profit, I dont consider that 4% :D

I did however loose 30% on most traderuns: I bought it for 1800 and sold it for either 1000, 1100, 1096 , ... In my opinion that is a little bit to much loss, especially considering you have to make a living and rebuy ships from time to time.

I dont mind it having a profit of 400 - 500 money for such a wedget and maybe some of the nation special wedgets receiving a 500-1000% profit if you can get hold of any and sell them in any other nationshomesector.

Would be the basics of smuggling :D.

And maybe a little marketicon in the dock so you can see the +- price of the cargo you are hauling will deliver in every other station.

So for instance, you buy widgets for 1800 in sector 14 and go to the market and see that the price that you can get in sector 17 is 2800. Now you make the traderun to sec 17 and receive 2500 a wedget. Mostly because other people figured out the same and did the same run :D

It would be a nice idea, wouldnt it :D

About the bass: yes it was a little bit over the top, I like it a lot more now, but it could hazve a slight intensity increase. so a little lower, not much. But im not that picky ;).

For the rest, if we have missions, can you please please please please please please please please please put as a backgroundsound the music of mission impossible, that would be cool :D

eheh.

And for the final project, radiostations like in GTA3, would be cool to ;). But hey, thats just a xmaslist. And not needed at all, But it could become an extra mode of income as it is for GTA3. People are buying the soundtrack of all those stations seperately :D

I bought 16 2100c nano-tubes in 18 and hauled them to 14. When I got there, they would have sold for 1800. I left em sitting in the dock, disgusted.

What about a basic bass/treble slider set for the sound control panel?

The bass on the old ones was a little overdoing it. I have a 4.2 system (two subwoofers), and the windows DID rattle with the turbo, but that was kewl.

I bought and sold many things at profits between 200-300% most of them 2-3 sector runs.

I love the new one-way docks and the new signs are awesome.

The stations are excellent btw.

For you people with speakers, why can't you just turn the bass down manually? Is it really that much work to get up and turn a dial? Why change the sounds for something that can be correct so simply? I mean not all of us have the luxury of owning such wonderful speakers. I just use regular Sony earbuds with vendetta, and without any bass control it really sucks how the rest of us are missing out on the cool engine rattling.

In all fairness I'll reserve further criticism until more complete sounds are implemented. But I do hope they won't be as weak sounding as they are now. One other thing I should mention is that the graviton sounds have been immensely muffled by the update. I don't know if this was intentional or not. It just sounds like it went from being 16-bit quality to 8-bit quality. You may want to look into this.

I kept buying the high-end minerals from s15 for 1,500 or so, and then selling them at 5 for 16,000 a piece.

yes, i demand more bass!!! My iSub made boosters rule!! bass! bass bass!!!!