Game version 0.95.124 released

Notable changes:

• Tanks now try to get closer to their targets in ground battles. If you give them an explicit attack order, they will approach the target, fire one round, then move one cell closer if possible. If you give a move or stop order, they go into a form of guard mode and won't try to get closer to their target (i.e., they will hold formation). In attack-move this behavior is not enabled. You can disable this in the open-ig-config.xml under aiGroundAttackGetCloser.
• Showing the bar and diplomacy room is now dependent on the walks.xml definition of the current level's ship design, not the level number. In addition, diplomacy was moved to the level 5 ship.
• Aliens have now a separate police station (in the data files) which is cheaper and provides morale boost. This should improve their numbers and economy.
• Campaign editor improvements. You can now create a copy of the existing campaign and adjust a few properties. However, I suggest using the copy feature only and make changes by the old fashioned  XML editing.
• Aliens now produce their special units.
• Fixed AI static defense planning for races who don't have banks and trader spaceports.
• Aliens are now able to colonize any number of planets after 2 weeks into rank 4.

Launcher version 0.42 released

Added a quick verification step to check the SHA1 of the jar and upgrade files since sometimes I don't update the version number or file date on the project page. This may happen if a critical bug is discovered right after a release, but only few downloads happened till then.

Note to modders that this new launcher behavior might constantly complain about incorrectness if you modified the main open-ig-upgrade-XYZ.zip file.

Game version 0.95.123 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed case when mission objectives were not properly triggered when the computer audio notification was turned off [Issue #705].
• The planet management AI now won't produce Orbital Factory if there is none in the empire [Issue #705].
• Modified the save system to use XML+GZIP instead of plaintext XML. Existing saves will be automatically converted to the new format.
• Population loss on planets where the owner's race is different from the population race is now 3 times as fast.

Game version 0.95.122 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed fleet and shield regeneration not working properly.
• Fixed some UI errors in case of main menu language change (CTRL+1...CTRL+5)
• Modified skirmish initial planet count minimum to 1 to avoid crashes [Issue #705] due zero total lab required. I will extend the skirmish to handle 0 initial planets later on where the player's fleet is just deployed somewhere and may colonize a planet he/she wishes at start.

Game version 0.95.121 released

Notable changes:

• During spacewar, switching to chat on one panel while the other already shows chat will switch that chat panel to something else. [Issue #543]
• Fixed chat when shooting at traders in the middle of a peaceful conversation not switching to flee text. [Issue #660, Issue #546, Issue #696]. (Luckily, it was just a missing case in the chat def)
• Changed tank speeds, light tanks go faster and each newer tank gets slower. [Issue #589]
• Fixed vehicle movement getting interrupted at each cell if the movement is linear (i.e., if the current target can be reached under 0.5 step, the remaining 0.5 worth of movement is deferred till the next step).
• Changed the AI to build as many military spaceports as the player can afford with 50% money excess relative to the spaceport cost and autobuild limit. The equation is: spaceport_count = money / (spaceport_cost * 1.5 + autobuild_limit) + 1  [Issue #509]
• You can make alliance with the Dargslan if you are extremely lucky. The war threshold has been lovered to 90. [Issue #561]
• Changed vehicle firepower and HP. [Issue #574]
• Added nicknames to ships [Issue #572]. These nicknames are listed in the players.xml file for each player. The nicknames/nickname entries reference a label.
• Ships now register kill counts and kill values. Kill counts are visible in the ship information subpanel during spacewar, in the hp/dps box of an individual ship in equipment, and the total kills in the equipment screen totals area.
• Moved the Sell button on the equipment screen further to the left to avoid accidental sell instead of remove. [Issue #621]
• Added difficulty dependent ECM vs Anti-ECM hit probabilities along with probabilities that the scrambled rocket will target the same fleet it was fired from. (Note that the battle.xml structure changed, see battle.xsd for details). [Issue #607]
• Fixed incorrect Hungarian subtitle. [Issue #634]
• Added options to hide various panels on the starmap screen. [Issue #641]
• Updated the Free Play version of the main campaign:
• enabled Colony Ships for all parties
• removed colonization limits from all parties
• the human player now starts with a fleet with all ships and vehicles granted in the original through levels 1-5 (including Thorin).
• Fixed missing parameters from diplomacy in Russian translation [Issue #704]
• Added Orbital Factory as available tech to all non-human races in the Main campaign.
• Added the ability to colonize a planet by clicking on the Colonize button, now shown when the planet is suitable (known to be empty). The AI assistance will produce military spaceport, orbital factory and the colony ships if necessary, deploys into new fleets and sends them to the targets. [Issue #296]
• A few missing French button graphics added.
• French graphics cleanup.

Game version 0.95.120 released

Notable changes:

• Added attack-move to ground battles. In classic mode, hold CTRL and click on the ground. In modern mode, hold CTRL+SHIFT. If the command debug is enabled via CTRL+C, the attack-move paths are shown in red.
• Fixed subtitle for Wife #1 message. Fixed title and subtitle for escort mission messages. [Issue #674]
• Updated skirmish to accept radically different galaxy and technology models. [Issue #690]
• Reduced frequency of thunder audio effects.

Game version 0.95.119 released

Notable changes:

• Improved pathfinding performance for larger battles and when selecting buildings as targets. [Issue #702]
• Modified AI to attack its enemies even before it finishes the galaxy exploration.

Game version 0.95.118 released

Notable changes:

• Factories now show their production output in the Building Info panel. [Issue #699]
• Equipment management did not work properly [Issue #700]. Several issues were identified and fixed:
• If the reequip tanks or rockets were selected, these were constantly re-equipped, and didn't let the user change the values. Now, these items will be reequipped only once the fleet moves into range of a planet with military spaceport.
• Removing battleships and/or vehicle storage units left the vehicles in the fleet. Now, the excess vehicles are moved back into the inventory.
• Global unit limits (3, 25, 30) were still hardcoded at some locations. (The definition.xml contains the option to change various limits.)

Trading screen concept

Here is the plan for the upcoming Trading screen.

The player can filter the available item list via the category buttons (toggleable). Selecting a row will bring up the item details onto the right part. Apart from the image and description, the list of equipment types and quantities are listed. The player can instantly buy items by clicking on the Buy buttons.

Due to the way the inventory works in Open-IG, equippable ships and stations won't be added to the inventory but deployed near the specified planet. If the target planet is full of stations, the purchase is rejected with a warning. The "deliver to" choicebox will be populated with all the player's planets or just the ones with military spaceport (?). Buying fighters and tanks will be deployed onto the target planet if the capacities permit (excess will go into the global inventory), or can be sent into the inventory directly with "deliver to". Buying other weapons and equipment will always go to the global inventory.

Buying units affects their market price, which is updated frequently. To buy multiple units with the same price, the game should be paused.

Launcher 0.41 released

Notable changes:

Fixed issues with the working directory of the Launcher and Game. Linux usually sets the working directory to the user home instead of the directory where the actual program was run from.

The fix unfortunately won't work by itself, you should delete the open-ig-launcher.jar, open-ig-launcher-config.xml and open-ig-update.xml from the home directory. Then, go to the install directory via the Terminal and run the Launcher:

java -jar open-ig-launcher.jar

Chose the Update Launcher button or Other > Repair Launcher option from the menu.

Related issues: Issue #682, Issue #694

Game version 0.95.117 released

Notable changes:

• Balance: reduced Garthog force strength on Mission 5: Escort Admiral Tullen for easy and normal players. [Issue #691]
• Admiral Tullen's battleship should now show up with 100% health, although its hitpoints are far less than the regular Thorin.
• Added Spy Center graphics and is buildable, although not doing anything and AI is ignoring it.

Spying concept

Since spying was not part of the original game, I (we) plan to add this as an orthogonal feature with limited effect on diplomacy (e.g., if spies get captured and killed, the relation points will decrease somewhat).

The design and attributes are not final yet, nor are the mechanics behind mission successes and capture-turn logic.

The spy screen will be assigned to F11 (the trading will be assigned to F12). I haven't decided about the new Achievements/Statistics screen keys.

I've picked the Church and Mechanical dev center images and combined them into the new Spy Center. For now, all races use the same building.

Each spy center provides one slot for a spy. You can only build one per planet.

The spying screen has two main views: your spies and captured spies. We might use the IG2's standing figures or use a cropped version of the diplomacy pictures of IG1's races. In the latter case, the layout might change a bit.

(Some assignments will show different controls.)

The second view is for the captured spies which uses most of the infrastructure.

The new "Interrogate" action can be used multiple times to fill in the ??? properties (at some credit cost perhaps). Several outcomes are possible: the enemy spy escapes, dies or survives without harm, depending on its skill set.

Game version 0.95.116 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed crash in case of certain skirmish game setups. (Issue #690).

Game version 0.95.115 released

Notable changes:

• Added rain and snow effects to most planet types. They are randomized in terms of frequency and duration, but usually last 2-3 ingame hours. The rendering is not final yet. Development by Bajor "Danyetz" Dániel.
• More Russian translation by Grigoriev Kirill.

Game version 0.95.114 released

Notable changes:

• More Russian labels translated and fixed. Thanks to Grigoriev Kirill!
• Fixed assertion error in Mission 13 (Defend Benson) in case when the player attacked the incoming Garthogs before they reached Benson. (Issue #688)
• Fixed mislabeling in the shipwalk (Issue #687)

Game version 0.95.113 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed russian labels causing crashes (The %s parameters were somehow stripped). [Issue #685]
• Fixed rendering of a scaled Achievements/Statistics screen. [Issue #662, Issue #686]

Game version 0.95.112 released

Notable changes:

• Partial fixes for Issue #684. Playing in skirmish with non-human races now enables a few technologies even when their level is above the specified initial level. These technologies were forcibly enabled in the main campaign (e.g., PhoodFactory). Note, however, that alien ships have fixed weapons and equipment, which can't be changed by the player at the moment. Later developments will make them as customizable as the human ships now.

Campaign editor: Technologies panel specification

Game version 0.95.111 released

Russian language related changes.

Many labels have been extracted from the original version in addition to Kirill Grigoriev's diligent work in translating the new labels.

Note that due the automated nature of the extraction, labels might be off.

Launcher version 0.40 released

Notable changes:

• Added support for Russian version.

Game version 0.95.110 released

Notable changes

• Russian language support. Russian audio has been integrated, although some of them might not be properly synchronized to the videos.
• Fixed some missing labels across languages.

Game version 0.95.109 released

Notable changes:

• The Skirmish / Galaxy screen features an extra field where you can set up the maximum technology level. This was formerly the only level settings. The current initial tech level now specifies the availability of technologies right from the start. For example, setting the first value to 3 will make everything up to level 3 available for production or construction. The scale goes from 0 to 6, where 0 means there could be level 1 researches to be done. (Issue #683)
• Replaced the French audio and video files with the proper versions, however, they could be still incorreclty timed.

Game version 0.95.108 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed cases where a game save could not properly incorporate pending operations, such as the announcement of an objective or mission completion rewards. Usually, these where cases where the player saved in the middle of some audio announcement (for example, when the first trader is attacked in M2 and you saved while the computer told you about an incoming message, the mission was not showing up in the reload) (Issue #681).

Java security update

Java security has been improved again. I strongly recommend updating your Java to 7u9. In addition, if you have Java 6 installed as well, update it to 6u37.

Game version 0.95.107 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed save corruption when chosing traits for skirmish. (Issue #678)
• Fixed crash if planet surfaces were randomized in skirmish. (Issue #678)
• Fixed crash when clicking Send on a skirmish bridge (Issue #679)

Game version 0.95.106 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed another label formatting related crash. (Issue #677)

Game version 0.95.105a released

Notable changes:

• Fixed crash due wrong label on the fleet info panel. (Issue #646)

Recent Java vulnerabilities

It seems Java is under more scrutiny than before. Several critical vulnerabilities have been identified in the last few months. Since Open-IG requires Java, these events may concern you.

You may want to disable Java browser plugins until the situation is resolved. I expect Firefox to release a killbit for up to versions 1.7u7 soon. Chrome usually asks for your permission, therefore, don't let any untrusted site run any Applets.

Launcher version 0.39 released

Notable changes:

• Added Java version check and warning dialog.

• Campaign Editor button added, the Map Editor and Video Player buttons have been moved into a popup menu:

• Added DLCs button, which currently does nothing.
• Added PID and Java version numbers to the window title.

Game version 0.95.105 released

Notable changes:

• Java version displayed in the game window's title.
• Fixed a label (Issue #670)
• Fixed crash when the user quickly cancels a video about to play (Issue #671)

Launcher version 0.38 released

Notable changes:

• The installed total size is now correctly displayed in the packages screen when opened from the menu.
• The first time launch screen is now resizable, since some Java versions or operating systems do not properly size the window.

Game version 0.95.104 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed AI planet evaluation and ordering crash.
• Modified AI behavior: fleets with no firepower (e.g., all rockets fired, all weapons destroyed or missing) will retreat.

Game version 0.95.103 released

Notable changes:

• Bridge screen's send/receive status is now remembered across screens and saves. (Issue #664)
• Fixed initial orbital factory not deployed to the initial planets.
• Fixed planet inventory deployment starting off with zero HP in some cases.
• Fixed AI not rebuilding its orbital factory.

Game version 0.95.102 released

Notable changes:

• The diplomacy panel on the information screen no longer lists aliens as allies if the relation is above 90. The new logic considers only players whom which the player has active alliance agains another player.
• Fixed the initial stance settings for the skirmish screen. Alliances and enemies are now correctly established.

Game version 0.95.101 released

Sorry about such a frequent update, but it seems issues pop out one by one today...

Notable changes:

• Fixed music not playing.
• Fixed Garthog fleet labels in the main campaign.

Game version 0.95.100 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed missing labels for AI fleet names in skirmish mode.

Game version 0.95.099 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed AI colonization not working in skirmish.
• Fixed AI colonization in general: if the AI has colony ships in inventory or deployed, it will colonize a planet if available.
• Fixed skirmish screen mod and label related errors.

Game version 0.95.098 released

A few changes have been made in the game files and directory-lookup logic to accomodate the modding community.

One notable change is the way buildings.xml references image resources. In previous versions, the buildings/building/graphics/@base attribute hosted a pattern to locate the image resource based on the tech/@id attribute value. This setting made the reusing of graphics for other races complicated: you had to copy the actual image to a different directory. In the new version, the image is directly references by the tech/@image attribute. See an example here.

--

The second notable change is the introduction of the dlc directory under the game's directory, where you can place your mods nicely and separated from other mods (previously, you had to dump everything into data).

You can have subdirectories denoting mods or zip files stored here. Each directory or zip file acts as a resource root similarly to the main zip files in the install directory, e.g., if you have a local resource generic/database/newrace.png, the file will be located under dlc/mymod/generic/database/newrace.png.

Note that the mod name doesn't provide a separate namespace, e.g., having multiple mods specifying the same local resource will overwrite each-other. This is especially true for skirmish/campaign like plugins: if you have a skirmish/human2/definition.xml, it might overshadow someone else's skirmish game. Therefore, I recommend using unique directory names below the language levels to avoid confusion:

generic/skirmish/myfirstmod-0.1/definition.xml
en/skirmish/myfirstmod-0.1/labels.xml
generic/myfirstmod-0.1/images/newrace.png

etc.

See an example structure here.

Game version 0.95.097 released

Notable changes:

• AI now executes unlimited actions on all difficulties. Fleet strength limits still apply on EASY and NORMAL.
• Fixed cases where the AI paused all its actions until the colonization completed on a planet.
• Fixed skirmish not letting the AI attack or colonize before the player colonized at least one planet.
• Fixed Trader AI related crash.
• Fixed case when the skirmish settings doesn't contain a player ("You"). You'll get assigned to a random AI faction. You can just observe or give commands, however, the AI might overrule you in some situations.

Game version 0.95.096 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed mission objective representation and behavior issue during M12: New Caroline Virus. (Issue #661)

Game version 0.95.095 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed crash in the Achievements screen when showing/hiding achievements in the list. (Issue #659)
• Error logging into file open-ig.log in the game's main directory.

Game version 0.95.094 released

Notable changes:

• Buildings list on the info panel now get a light-red color when the player doesn't have enough money to build them.
• Quick research now displays the research cost under the description.
• Fixed cases where the money can go below zero.
• AI will now explicitly build Water Vaporator even when the morale is above 50.
• Some German translation fixes (external contributor).
• Fixed virus bomb missing battle parameters. (Issue #655)

Game version 0.95.093 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed quick-research panel button visible in levels 1-2 in some cases.
• Fixed cases where the AI could attack strong allies.
• Added trade agreement management: trader AI starts to visit the other planets as well. Updated the diplomacy screen to allow trade agreement to be established only once. Going to war with the other will clear the trade agreement.
• Added more traits. (Issue #642)
• Fixed traits not working in skirmish mode.
• Fixed victory condition checking.
• Fixed initial fleet not equipped properly.
• Added mouse scroll and keyboard navigation to information/inventions screen (Issue #651)

Game version 0.95.092 released

Notable changes:

• Fixed NPE crash in space battle (Issue #654)
• Fixed Technology victory checking to ignore Pirate and Trader AI players.

Game version 0.95.091 released

Notable changes:

• Added logic for shared-radar for campaign and skirmish. You need to have a relation of 80 with the aliens along with an alliance against someone else. The settings can be changed in the definition.xml.
• Modified AI diplomatic reaction to consider the current relation with you (and the third party in ally case), therefore, if you are good friends with the alien, they will accept money in P = relation %.
• Starmap modified do disallow attacking fleets and planets of the same group in skirmish.
• The game now can play external OGG music. Place your music under /audio/generic/music and name your files Music4.ogg, Music5.ogg etc. You don't need to padd the numbers. (Issue #639)
• Fixed case where the new trait system did not properly load old saves. (Issue #643)
• Fixed a no-progression bug. (Issue #644)
• Fixed NPE crash due the new message-history behavior on the bridge (Issue #647)
• Added new failsafe cases for level 3 when you manage to desert a Garthog planet, a colony ship will automatically recolonize it for you. (Issue #649)
• Skirmish victory conditions fully implemented. The new win screen, loading and saving a skirmish definition will be handled later (Issue #638, Issue #259, Issue #637)

• Added AI logic that pushes colonization in case its enemies own more planets.
• Added custom planet image for equipment and space battles. Each image should resemble the surface type of the actual planet.
• Changed Load/Save screen to highlight skirmish saves in Orange/White.

Game version 0.95.090 released

Version 0.95.090 is just released.

The skirmish is almost complete, you can now create a game, but victory conditions are not checked yet, and some advanced features (such as shared radar, non-attackable allies, pirate behavior) are not implemented yet. But still, you should be able to play, save and load the skirmish game.

Note that many labels are still not translated into German and French.


For documentation on the new Skirmish screen, please refer to these blog posts: Galaxy, Economy and Victory tabs and Players tab.

If your Launcher doesn't seem to recognize that new version is available, please be patient. Sometimes the Google Code web access lags behind the SVN, which is out of my control.

Enjoy.

Skirmish documentation: player selection

One of the missing panels from the previous post was the Players tab. Here, you can specify the various player settings for your skirmish game.

You start with an empty list. Press the Add player button to add the first line, which will be always the same player you play in the selected campaign. Click the button several times to add more players. It will randomly add the other players from the campaign, each uniquely. Once all players from the campaign was added, the subsequent players will be randomly chosen.

You may click on the Name checkbox to select or deselect all lines. Individual lines can be selected via the checkboxes under the Name column. Use the Remove players to delete unnecessary lines.

You can customize the race by clicking on the labels under the Race column. It will bring up the following dialog:

The radio button list shows the available players and their race from the selected campaign.

If you click on the small ship icon, the icon selection panel will show up:

Here, you can change the ship icon of the player. The player's color will then be determined from the average color of the ship-pixels. These icons are taken from /starmap/fleets/ resource directory. If you want to use your own ship icon, create a set of directories as /images/generic/starmap/fleets under the game directory, and place a relatively small PNG image. The PNG may be transparent and translucent.

The next option is to set the AI the player will use, clicking on the abbreviated label, the following selection panel will be shown:

You can select the difficulty level where each AI player will operate. The Trader AI is treated specially here: the player won't receive planets and its ships will move between your and your allies' planets. AI's other than Pirate will ignore such ships in the galaxy. The other special AI is the Pirate. Revolting planets may join them instead of the neighboring empire if they are present in the skirmish, additionally, other than maintaining the well-fare of its planets, they occasionally attack traders (within radar ranges of course). You usually have 1 day to rescue the trader, who will grant you random amounts of money or random equipment as reward.

You can also customize the player's Traits:

Currently, only 7 basic traits are developed and functional. See Issu #642 for ideas about upcoming traits.

The final option is to specify the group number by clicking the number under the Group column:

Here you can assign a group value to the player. By default, the Add player button creates separate groups for each player. The group logic dictates that you are in constant alliance with the other players, which means you can't attack them, can't declare war on them, diplomatic negotiations will play out favorable, and you share the line-of-sight with their radar and vice-versa.

The last remaining GUI features on the Skirmish page are the Load and Save buttons and dialogs. My best estimate is that I'll be able to implement them tomorrow along with the modifications required to play a skirmish game and save/load a skirmish game.

Some skirmish documentation

Skirmish is coming along well. Here are the things to know about it:

In order to access the skirmish settings, I have added a button in the main menu instead of forcing the player to go through the former "Single player" screen:

Clicking on the new "Skirmish" button will bring up the new screen. This screen has four tabs (at the moment) which let you specifiy the conditions and circumstances of your preferred gameplay. The first page is the Galaxy settings:

Note the "Load skirmish..." and "Save skirmish..." buttons at the bottom. They will allow you to load and save the definition of a skirmish game settings. Let's see the explanations of the other controls on this tab.

• Galaxy template will let you choose the basic definition of the galaxy you'll be playing in, this includes the galaxy map, definition of the surface tiles and surface maps with their variants. The spin box will list all available campaigns as the potential source for these information. In the future, when the Campaign Editor is functional, you'll be able to see your own campaigns here as well. Hover over the spin box to see a tooltip containing the campaign description.
• Randomize surfaces. Given a predefined number and type of planets, this option will let you randomize around its surface type and variant, e.g., Earth might become a Neptoplasm-3 planet.
• Randomize layout. [Will be implemented later once I figure out a good layout algorithm] This will move planets around a bit.
• Custom number of planets. [Will be implemented later once I figure out a good layout algorithm] It lets you specify the number of planets. If you selected "Random surfaces" and "Random layout", this behaves like a random map generator. Otherwise, this acts as a limiter on existing planets, For example. The Main Campaign has 106 planets. A restriction of 100 planets will randomly remove 6.
• Race template. Yet another list of campaigns which will determine the player and race definitions to be used as templates. This will affect the available races for players in the upcoming "Players" tab.
• Technology template is a  list of campaigns. Chose one as the basis of technologies and buildings.
• Technology level will let you specify the upper bound of the research. Note that level 2+ lets you produce, level 3+ lets you research and level 4+ will let you do diplomacy.
• Initial relation. This will let you choose the initial diplomatic relations between the players. You can have it on "Template defaults" which takes the relation values from the "Race template". Alternatively, you can force an initial "Peace" or "War" condition.
• Difficulty will affect the general parameters of the environmental simulation, e.g., tax generation, disasters, etc., but not the difficulty of the AI co-players. You can set the AI difficulty levels per player in the "Players" tab.

The Economy page details the economic starting conditions:

• Initial money is given to every player participating in the skirmish game. Hold the SHIFT key to change values by the 10s.
• Initial planets per player will let you specify how many planets to start with. Hold the SHIFT key to change values by the 10s. If the player count and initial planet count exceeds the available planet count, you'll be granted the requested amount, but the other AI players will get the rest of the planets distributed almost equally.
• Initial population: you can specify your starting population, more population means more taxes, but you'll need to build houses very quickly to keep them.
• Place Colony Hubs: If not selected, you get the planets you own empty and you have to manually place each Colony Hub. This counts as a regular construction, so be careful how many "Initial money" you select. (For reference, Colony Hub costs 40,000 cr in the Main campaign.). If selected, the Colony Hubs will be pre-built for you, free of charge, but will always be placed map-center, similar to regular colonization.
• Grant Colony ship technology. The "Main campaign" lets you research and build Colony ships on level 4 and with 10 planets worth of laboratories. Click this checkbox to receive the technology from the beginning. Note that this affects all players.
• Initial Colony ships. Many 4X games start you with 1 Colony Ship available, so Open-IG will let you adjust that as well. You can give yourself and all other players any number of Colony ships. However, you'll only get one deployed into a fleet initially and the rest will be kept in inventory. To deploy the rest, you'll need to build a Military spaceport (80,000 cr in the Main campaign) to avoid uwanted exploitation. 
• Grant Orbital factory technology. Larger ship construction requires Orbital factory to be deployed,(except when a race has the "Fully ground-based factories" trait, which lifts this limit). Orbital factory research requires 5 planets worth of labs in the Main Campaign, but selecting this option will grant the technology to every player.
• Initial Orbital factories will grant you the requested number of factories in your inventory, where you can deploy them at your will. Note, however, that orbital factories counts towards the value of your planets, making them a fine target for attacks. If you don't provide additional defense, you'll lose them fairly quickly. To overcome this, you can grant everyone a few more items.

The Players screen is not ready at the moment, so let's skip to the last page, the Victory conditions screen.

• Conquest victory is the usual way of winning: take over all other players, that aren't in your group.
• Occupation victory: hold at least the given percentage of planets for the specified duration. If you happen to fall below the given percentage, the time limit will start over.
• Economic victory: that group wins who reach the specified amount of total money the first. You may combine this with the "Initial relation: Peaceful".
• Technological victory: that group wins who researches its full technology tree. Note however, that the original Main campaign is not balanced in this manner and non-human races have either none or practically unreachable technologies.
• Social victory: the one wins who reaches the given morale level on the specified amount of planets.

You may combine these victory conditions, then you'll win if you succeed in any of them, or lose if the enemy reaches any of them. 

Note that the current AI does not consider any of the victory conditions as targets to pursue, but merely plays a limited offensive gameplay. Upcoming AI refinements may improve the situation. However, I'm aware that these settings and conditions become much more interesting in a Multiplayer environment. The upcoming Multiplayer feature will most likely feature the same GUI, with the addition of network-related settings.

Game version 0.95.048 released

A new, bugfix version has been released: 0.95.048

Changes:

• Fixed crashes caused by missing video references in forced messages (such as fired) (Issue #647)
• Fixed missing bridge message panel when the Psychologist test is completed
• Fixed crash when user clicks on the Game over screen, and the bridge screen still interprets this click as in-game.
• Fixed test questionare state when reloading a save.

Game version 0.95.047 released

I have released a new version of the game: 0.95.047.

The changes focus on the french language support related changes, a quick fix for a crash and mission no-progression bug (Issue #644).

The next feature will be the implementation of the Skirmish screen. You can find some ideas about it in Issue #638.

Launcher 0.37 released

Now that we want to support French language, the Launcher had to be updated in order to manage a long awaited scenario: selecting the languages you want to install and maintain.

When you install the game the first time, the following dialog will be presented to you:

If you have the game installed already, you can manage the installed language packages via the Other options  > Select language packs... menu item:

In this case, the dialog receives two additional options:

• You can start the installation of new packages once you click "OK". If you did not check this option, you can run the Verify installation command, which will take care of the now missing files.
• You can ask the launcher to remove unnecessary language files, freeing some disk space.

The package sizes and total amount of download is displayed for your convenience.

The final convenience feature is the ability to force-repair the Launcher itself. Just click on the Repair Launcher menu option.