First, love the game. Second, here's some things that need to be fixed.


Dead Ends (Text Adventures that lead to windows with no exit):

Howling Winds (Land's End) Only on second attempt to "explore planet"
Mars (Sol)
Kim III (Kimberly)
Glenshire (Glenshire)

Other Bugs:

1. Text for Spy Computer is incorrect.

2. Multiple instances of mission targets on radar screen (i.e., duplicates of Jester when hunting him, but not limited to that particular mission).

3. Shield display does not match up with percentage of shields remaining.

4. Target icons and text do not match (i.e. when doing escort missions, the text says go one place, the marker says go to another. The marker is correct. Extremely common)

5. After destroying a Pirate Hideout, still unable to use sensors.

6. Convoy frequently misspelled as "convoi".

7. Orca class ships use skills associated with weapons fire, despite not actually having any weapons.

8. Holuria (Hyraxan) planetary description is incomplete.


Other Issues/Questions:

1. EMP Storm event can be very, very frustrating.

2. Shields seem to regenerate at same rate, as opposed to a percentage, so large ships can take months to repair. Not much fun.

3. Shouldn't there be a "wait" button somewhere? See above.

4. Desperately needs an autosave.

5. Enemies never attempt to board.

6. Please stop resizing my desktop.

7. Because of the turn structure, computer opponent seems to get an extra turn to disable incoming missiles.

8. Syndicate intro on character creation screen has some grammatical problems.

9. The beginning of the Outer Rims Alliance campaign can be very frustrating. Text adventure leads to either a fight with a ship that outclasses the starting player, or insta-death. Kinda frustrating.

Finally:

I would dearly love to rewrite portions of the manual.


Hope this helps,

Jacob

Also not sure if a bug or not but for missions that you have to kidnap people if you blow up the ship you still get the money and still get the good message until the game says you failed it but again you still get the money. Would rather see the money lost if you fail the mission.

MIght be worth re-posting your observations on the Steam Greenlight forum which seems to be the de facto official forum (it links from the developers site) and has active input from the dev.

You can access via http://www.nielsbauergames.com/smugglers5.html

Yeaaaah, about that. I've been trying to post there for 2 days now. Please feel free to repost, as I don't see myself being able to do so any time soon.

Done

Thanks, I really appreciate that!

Jacob

Recharge skill - description is completely wrong
It says that it recharges all your other abilities at once, useful for for combining different abilities - when in reality, it recharges your APs (once per battle).

The missile timing is definitely off. Twice today, an enemy launched a missile that started at 1, then immediately went to 0 after his turn was done.

Edit: Also, the damage for Nuclear Mines is incorrect. It's about half what is listed.

@MrJke: A game turn consists of the player move and the enemy move. After the enemy move, the turn ends and a new turn starts. This is why the impact time of the enemy missile changes from 3 to 2 AT THE BEGINNING of the next turn. Same happens with your missiles.

I checked it and the damage for nuclear mines is like displayed. However the actual damage dealed can vary depending on the active enemy skills. If in doubt, make a screenshot of your ship status screen, the enemy ship status screen and copy & paste the text of the battle log.

/// Bugs (original list at top):

@1: Fixed
@2: Do you have a savegame or way to reproduce this?
@3: Sorry, I checked but cannot confirm this. I need more info on that and how to reproduce it.
@4: Sorry, I checked but cannot confirm this. I need more info on that and how to reproduce it.
@5: Yes, because ... uhm ... pirate could come back! (Seriously there is a technical issue why you cannot
use them at this location; this is unchangeable. But really, the pirates could come back!).
@6: Fixed in the non-event game text. I cannot automatically browse the event text. Have you foud it in any events?
@7: I have to see if this can make it in the next update or the one after that.
@8: On which screen? I checked it and the text isn´t cut either on planet info and when landing on it.

/// Other issues (original list at top):

@1: What does anybody else think about the EMP storm event? Too difficult? Should it be taken out? Made much more rare?
@2,3: It´s a game balance question. I wanted that in some cases you have fights without full shields, especially when
flying in enemy space.
@4: I could include this, but it would delay game play. That´s why I added the "lifes", so you don´t have to
save/reload everytime.
@5: That´s intentional. The game could be quiet frustrating, if the enemy would board your ship.
@6: (Answered above)
@7: That´s correct. In the betatest an additional turn was added to the enemy missiles to make up for that, but
people thought that would be a bug. What I could do is to have player missiles impact when they go from 1 to 0, but
again this might be considered a bug.
@8: Can you specify it?
@9: Which planet event?

Bug or feature?

I found an asteroid base (it has text description "battleship") and attacked it with my Patton destroyer. I almost destroyed it but it managed to escape, because I didn't use tractor beam! How can it be so? Does an asteroid fortress use hyperdrive?!

@Niels: Your game rocks, btw.

I'm away from home at the moment, so I'll try to post examples you asked for in the next day or two.

Re: EMP Storm:

It's not the storm that's the problem; it's perfectly reasonable. It's only when an opponent successfully uses its own EMP ability that things get out of hand. Once the player is "emped" by the opponent, several rounds can pass before the player gets another turn. I lost 4 in a row (plus the EMP). This can happen without the enemy action, but only if the player decides to not take the "Arithmetic" penalty, so, they get what they deserve.

In any event, just sitting there waiting for a turn that never comes is pretty frustrating. Not challenging, just frustrating. There is an easy fix, however, one that even fits the setting:

"Fluctuating levels of electromagnetic radiation make ship board scramblers inoperable!" (No EMP ability may be used.) Or at least a limit on the number of consecutive turns that the EMP effect, well, affects any one target.

Re: Missiles:

It's not that big of a deal, just a surprise. The player who successfully uses EMP on an opponent gets an additional round of unreturned fire do to the turn structure, so I guess it works out in the end. Ending turns as each player finishes would work as well, in both cases.

Thanks, again, for listening. Your game rocks.

@Asteroid base bug: The class is "battleship class", that´s correct. However it should no be called "ship" in any other occasions and obviously it should not attempt to flee. I think both is fixed in the next update.

@EMP Storm: I think I do this in the next update. Any objections from other players?

In the next update:

[...]
- Balance change: When the special combat event "EMP storm" is happening you and the enemy cannot use the ability EMP strike.
[...]

@Niels: Really like your game! Good job!
Any idea when a new update will be out???