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  • Much thanks to Shadowmaster for his updates and what not these past couple months.
  • Donation Subscriptions: Active subscriptions from this month have been processed. I realize that there are many that are behind. Make sure you have ONE and only ONE recent ticket open about your subscription with "DP" in the subject and I will get to it as soon as I can (this week).
  • Kicked the training program back into action after an error and you should see all the results from any battles/training you've had or done.
  • Arena sim reported as down but appears to be working ok to me. Please report further problems.
  • Fixed a long standing but overlooked error with heat sinks being partially repaired.

    5/11/2009

  • Added a link at the bottom of the factions directory to list unfactioned empires.
  • Gave the newbie jeeps 2/2 sensors.
  • Added a Newbie Faction [NOOB]! This faction will be the default for all new empires. It will give them a chance to ask/answer each other questions, get a HUGE research bonus, and once I get repair facilities set up, give newbies a place to repair and reload their units.
  • Beginning empires now start with a four JEP-MG jeeps at skill 4/4. This should give new players the opportunity to begin fighting wars and dueling immediately, and hopefully find more enjoyment in the game and encourage them to stick around longer.
  • Added a link at the bottom of the main HELP tab to provide information and tips for fighting pirates. The information on this help page largely pertains to smaller empires and less active players, but anyone relatively new to the game may find some helpful tips or advice.
  • Fixed a problem that had several damaging symptoms. First, the "unclaimed" zone where people from empires with no zones live was attacked. This battle went to ABR where it killed ABR, so ABR was down last night and is still working through the backlog of battles. This will not happen anymore.

    3/31/04

  • Hopefully fixed a problem where people were able to enter battle in zones that did not have terrain created because of pirate attacks. I'll be watching to see if this is really fixed. This problem affected a lot of things, including forcing people to reload the featureless map every phase.
  • Ok I want to explain some of the BV changes to cut down on the number of bug tickets people are submitting on the subject. First, mech piloting skills don't significantly impact a units performance in an arena at skill 0 or less. In other words, a 1/1 mech and a -10/1 mech are both (with very few exceptions) equally effective at dueling as neither will miss with physical attacks and accordingly BV is not increased for piloting skills under 1. Secondly, the lower your gunnery skill gets the less of a difference each point makes. The 3 point difference between a skill 2/2 and a skill 5/5 unit is tremendous and BV reflects that, while the 3 point difference between a -1/-1 and a -4/-4, while still important, isn't nearly as dramatic, and BV reflects that as well. Another way of explaining that effect is that previously a -1/-1 unit would match BV with a MUCH heavier and still good skill unit, and not stand a chance in arenas. Hopefully with the new BVs it will be viable and even desirable to duel the lower skilled units.

    3/30/04

  • Pirate units no longer add to your "kills" as listed on the top 100 empires/factions by number of kills.
  • Lots of updates haven't been posted, but I want to mention the most significant change. Unit BVs have been altered, dramatically in some cases, in an effort to bring equality to the arenas. While the new system is not perfect either (none can be) it should be a lot better than the old one. Gamewide BV has not changed much at all, but some empires may see a big swing in their BVs.

    3/29/04

  • Added more error handlers to tower creation to explain why you can't always create a tower.
  • Chanced "Research Jobs" to "Research Capacity" on the stats frame, because the jobs label is inaccurate for empires with TCs or DP-doubled research zones.
  • Fixed a problem with faction leaders who get reduced to level 0 not properly disbanding the faction.
  • Fixed a problem with unit lance/company/battalion information not showing properly.

    3/24/04

  • Fixed a problem claiming multiple zones.
  • Added mechs to the "my items" page of what you have for sale on the market (only significant for mech producers).
  • Fixed a problem which was not listing low ammo units as needing repairs.

    3/21/04

  • Fixed the same bug on the level 3 map.
  • Fixed a bug on the level 2 map that had been allowing people to see pirate zones.
  • When you try to claim the last 10 zones of a level 0 empire you now get a descriptive message instead of an error.
  • Fixed a prereq bug on the tech tree for VNG-A3 and VNG-A4.
  • Fixed a problem with free reattacks not always calculating as free during the check if you have enough money, and thus not allowing you to reattack even when it is free if you didn't have enough money on hand.
  • Removed some alliances people still had with empires that no longer exist.

    3/20/04

  • Allowed mechs that were formerly pirate salvage to be preplaced.
  • Allowed mechs that were formerly pirate salvage to create arenas.
  • Fixed a problem that had allowed someone to claim the units in battle of his enemy.
  • Fixed the links on the battleplayers page.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing people with no zones from loading the TC page.
  • Fixed a bug that had pulled a players salvaged mech that he bought off the market back into active duty for the pirates it came from.
  • Fixed a problem of Stone Rhino legs not showing up in your parts listings.
  • Quest 1 has been started up again.
  • A resource plunder bug had been fixed.

    3/19/04

  • Found a big problem with large pirate groups. When there were over 36 pirates in a group (usually infantry) and a player entered the battle, any units over 36 of the attacking pirates were removed from battle, as they should be. However these units were then sometimes reattacking the zone, or worse attacking adjacent zones, which would actually pull the remaining 36 units out of the original battle to rejoin the group in the new attack. This has been corrected. Pirate units kicked out of a battle due to over-the-limit numbers will now sit complacently in enemy zone until the battle resolves at which point the next 36 will attack. So, basically, pirates are now following the same rules as everyone else when it comes to attack limits.
  • Gave convention mechs, belatedly, to those in attendance at the german nevcon last year.
  • Pirates will no longer destroy building crews in captured zones.
  • When you claim an established mine zone from an undefended level 0 empire, the mine will now decommission automatically.
  • Fixed a problem with some mech limbs not being available in your inventory, even when it said you had them.
  • Fixed a bug with renaming lances.
  • Fixed a bug that was charging people attack costs over and above transit costs for attacking non-adjacent zones held by your pirates.
  • Fixed a bug introduced recently wherein critical weapon hits on mechs scored from the rear were not always destroying the weapon.
  • Reduced the maximum number of pirate forces to attack an empire, per level. This will not change anything below level 10 because they always hit the BV cap before the force-size cap, but as you start moving through the higher levels the effects will become more pronounced. For example level 13 pirate attacks will in the future be of the same size (though better skill) of what used to be a medium-to-large level 11 attack.
  • Fined an empire $10 billion for a very inappropriate nevmail (which was deleted).

    3/18/04

  • Changed the mine generation program to be more responsive to market prices. For example, at current price levels there is no need to keep generating so many new Basic Metals and Neveronium mines, while it is still important to increase the numbers of the other mines. The generation program will now monitor market prices and adjust placement rates accordingly.
  • Fixed salvage mech assignment for previous mech pilots. It wasn't giving the +1/+1 to skills for a new mechtype.
  • Changed the critical hit messages for mechs to reflect the location the damage is taken to, not the location the hit was received on. For example if you hit the left arm of a wasp and the damage destroys the arm and some transfers to the left torso where a jump jet is destroyed, it will no longer list as a "left arm" crit but instead a "left torso" crit, where the jump jet was actually located.
  • Fixed 105 soldiers who were still assigned to destroyed units, and thus not showing up in your people list even though they were still counting as a claimed character.
  • When infantry soldiers die, their money now transfers to the empire just as it does for mech and vehicle pilots.
  • If someone is being rude, threatening, or otherwise saying things to you that you don't care to hear in a private chat on another system (AIM, Afternet, other IRC, etc) please don't come to us demanding we punsish the offender. All the systems I mentioned have really useful "ignore" features and I advise you to use them when you don't want to listen to someones vulgar ranting. Threats or excessive vulgarity on OUR system, through nevmails, in-battle chat, or in the public #neveron IRC channel are a different matter and we will do our best with what limited resources we have to police them.
  • Removed excavating equipment from the product list. It was messing up the research tree.
  • Fixed a bug with hotdropping.

    3/17/04

  • Fixed a bug with the new enemy zone fix on the unit readout page.
  • Visual Bug: Damage to a destroyed section that transfers to a new section and results in a crit will show that crit as happening in the original area that was hit. For isntance, if an arm is hit and it transfers to the torso where a weapon is critted, the crit will say it happened in the arm. This will get corrected when we can make time.
  • Fixed a bug with company training.
  • Fixed a problem where Ripostes were still using direct-fire mods sometimes.
  • Fixed a bug where mechs attacking an arena would start prone on occasion.
  • Reminder: Passing information to ANY page on Neveron by using a non-mainstream browser, tertiary program or by manually entering information into the URL is strictly prohibited and can be grounds for crippling fines.
  • Fixed a minor problem which was using too much memory and rebooted the webserver.
  • Closed a loophole on the transfer pages that was allowed you to transfer negtive money if you passed information though URLs manually.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing salvaged pirate units from training.
  • Clarified the "zones owned" listed on the attack pages. It will look like a pirate zone belongs to the empire it has attacked, but since they do not really own the zones they are not counted in the "zones owned" tally. This was confusing some people.
  • Fixed a bug where disbanding lances was not lowering reputation as it should.
  • Mech salvage make the map look "hashed" like there is an enemy unit there.
  • Any person may now buy mech salvage, not just the emperor.
  • Fined an empire 70 Nevdays of income for a pattern of abusive language and behavior in battles. While tempers may run high in battles there is no reason to take it to an extreme. Please try to keep your communications civil. The penalty in this case was harsh because of a long established pattern of abuse reported on many independant occasions.
  • Fixed a problem that had been preventing rear-mounted mech torso weapons from being destroyed even when it said they were hit.
  • The optimize button will not properly fatigue a unit if any of the crew members in it are fatigued. Previously, optimizing would effectively nullify fatigue until the next fatigue update.
  • Fixed a visual bug on the closed help tickets page.
  • Claified some text on the Unclaim Zone button on the map since it was confusing people. The button shows all the time to save us from having to access the server for one more check that we otherwise wouldn't have to do. This reduces lag.
  • Added a check to the unit readout page that will take a unit out of "enemy zone" status if you currently own the zone. View the unit readout to activate a check for all your units in that whole zone.
  • The claim-region feature will no longer work if the region you have selected contains any water zones.
  • Fixed a problem with claimed people not showing up if they had no unit.
  • Fixed a bug that was in rare situations not deleting buildings when they dropped below 0 CF due to fire upon an enemy unit therein.
  • Fixed a problem with pirates attacking the "zone" where unassigned people are.

    3/16/04

  • Fixed a redirect error when moving companies on the map. It was going to a 404 page instead of the proper comanies list for the zone you moved the units from.
  • Fixed an error that was occuring with the new tech tree changes and engineering vehicles.
  • Donation Profile Update: Added an option to cancel a "pending" donation profile. Please note that if you have an error while at the Paypal screen you can manually send us a donation just like the old system, just include the Donation ID instead of your login names. The only 'special' thing that happens by going through Neveron is that the Donation ID and the amount of the donation are added to the Paypal information automatically. If your Donation is "Pending" it doesn't mean that you have sent any money. If you are unsure if money has been sent or not please check your Paypal account.
  • Fixed a bug with emperors not being able to sell vehicles from zones where there was a zone commander assigned.
  • Fixed lance and company attack options for arenas.
  • Added a correction for 3 way arenas that will now automatically end the arena and send the units home. All money is refunded. There are many, many checks in place to help prevent these from happening, but they are clearly not working in all cases. This should put a complete end to them.
  • Pirates no longer plunder uncommisioned vehicles, mechs, or items in transit to the conquered zone.
  • Pirates no longer plunder resources.
  • Added an additional check to the tower placement process to ensure that two towers are not stacked on top of each other.
  • Fixed a bug where level 0 empires could be attacked in some cases if they had never attacked anyone else.
  • Added a check to the unit readout page for units that were waiting for LC pickup but did not process properly. Most likely this was happening because of the performance problems of the past few weeks and should rarely happen now. If it does, you can simply look at the unit readout for the unit in question and if it is bugged it will be reset and your money returned.
  • Fixed some bugs on the hot drop attack page that was improperly recalculating target empire level and generally screwing things up big time.
  • Added links to the research tree for vehicle and mech designs so that you can more easily see the specs for those units. Will only work if you have the design available to research.

    3/15/04

  • Fixed an error with processing certain types of messages with donations.
  • Fixed the BEH-44F research prerequisites which had been incorrectly requiring ICE 300 when ICE 200 is sufficient.
  • Made a change to GR and LL-III mech weapons. They have always received a +2 bonus on their hit roll (e.g. 2D6+2 to hit) but no longer. Now, the modification is in the target number and the modifier is displayed on the weapon itself. So if you need, for example, a 9 to hit, it will now only need a 7 but roll the standard 2D6.
  • Added a pop-up check to tower placing when making a skilled tower to avoid accidental use of skilled people in new towers.

    3/14/04

  • There is an ongoing problem with ABR that is causing it to freeze. It is now working again and working through a large backlog of battles, so it will be a while before it catches up. This problem will be debugged by tomorrow.
  • Fined an empire 10 Nevdays of income for cursing in public mail. Please watch your language.
  • Killed a battle that was happening in the Land of Dispossessed. Pirates are somehow attacking there but they shouldn't be.

    3/13/04

  • Restarted ABR, which had stopped working for some reason.
  • Fixed a bug where pirate mech salvage was returning to enemy zone in the empire it was orginally pirating.
  • Fixed a bug where peoples dispossessed soldiers were engaged in battle.
  • Made the Empire Stats page list buttons along the top instead of down the side to accomodate players with less than ideal monitors and screen resolutions. It's 2004...isn't everyone running 1600x1200? ;-)
  • Updated the Empire Stats military maintenance section to match the one on the Finance page.

    3/12/04

  • Fixed a problem with salvaged pirate mechs not properly ending move phases.
  • Fixed a problem preventing salvaged pirate mechs from firing except on AI.
  • Fixed a proplem with salvaged pirate mechs not properly displaying info in the attack window.
  • Fixed a problem with salvaged pirate mechs that was preventing them from moving except on AI.
  • Fixed a problem preventing salvaged pirate mechs that have been commissioned from attacking zones.
  • Fixed a display problem with salvaged pirate mechs in the friendly units list.
  • Fixed a problem on the attack process code that was occasionally generating client-side vbscript errors.
  • Updated the name change feature to ignore your own empire when checking to see if a name is valid or not. This will enable people to change capitalization in their names if they so choose.
  • New Features: There is now a "Shipped Items" button that will show all the items being shipped between zones of a particular type. The buttons are located next to the "Switch Zone" buttons on your Armoury and Parts pages. The button opens a new window where the procedure is run to reduce server load.
  • Changed the code for preplacing units when a battle starts to be more streamlined and not cause any lag when there are no preplaced units.
  • Changed the calculation for military maintenance of uncommissioned vehicles (including towers). The result is a much faster login process, and for most empires, a higher maintenance cost if you have stockpiled vehicles or towers.
  • Sped up the slowest remaining aspects of battle concerning phase completion.
  • There were less page errors (which include timeouts) in the past 24 hours than any day on record. Less lag, less bugs, happier players (and Admins!).
  • Fixed a very minor problem in the repair completion code.
  • Fixed another problem on the zone conquering page concerning resource plunder.
  • Fined a level 5 $500 million for intentionally using bad html in their empire name (or accidentally doing it and not reporting it) to hide their empire name.
  • Donations: Just a reminder that the new donation profile system is for all types of donations. There is a handy form for both Paypal and mail donations. There is even a printable donation form for mail donations that has your Donation ID already printed on it. In all cases we no longer need your login names, simply your Donation ID, to process a donation.
  • Fined an empire 30 nevdays income for improper language in public mail.

    3/11/04

  • Fixed the training reults link to work properly.
  • Fixed a bug that was requiring too many workers to produce SRM-4 mk II and SRM-6 mk II ammunition.
  • Fixed a bug on the economic stats page for empires without any workers.
  • Fixed a bug when you were trying to attack from enemy zone against an empire with an apostrophe in its name.
  • Added a security check to the comms page.
  • Tournaments! Tournaments (a.k.a. Quests) have been reinstated. The light vehicle tournament, and mixed mech tournament will once again be regular and continually running events. If all goes well, more tournaments of various shapes and sizes will occur periodically.
  • There have only been 21 timeout errors experienced by all players over the past 24 hours -- progress is being made! Timeouts last week numbered on average about 3,000 per day, sometimes up to 10,000!
  • Handled an error on the mechtypes page when it gets passed incorrect parameters.
  • Fixed a problem on the zone movement page when people try to move units to a zone they do not own.
  • Fixed a bug preventing empires with no zones from changing their names.
  • Fixed an error on the zone-changing-hands page that was occurring when improper logging (due a variety of errors) had transpired.
  • Fixed a bug that was happening when you tried to claim the last 10 zones of a level 0 empire
  • Updated the lance reputation penalty when disbanding to not drop the reputation of units with a rep of larger than 0 to less than 0. Co's of units with a rep of less than 0 are still affected.
  • Sped up a query on the timer window which is a frequent source of lag.
  • Taught Randy how to use periods at the end of his sentences.
  • Cleaned up the links on the Finance page.
  • Major speed improvement to the faction war log page.
  • Cleaned up some links on the Alliance pages.
  • Sped up the general land war log page immensely.
  • Fixed a bug with the tower viability checks that was occurring in some cases.
  • Added a check to vehicle creation to help stop the primary key errors that people are getting.

    3/9/04

  • Fixed a bug on the repair completion page.
  • Fixed a bug on the top 100 lances by BV list, which remains slow.
  • Fixed a bug preventing the top 100 empires by morale list from loading.
  • Sped up the top 100 empires by BV list.
  • Wow its fast!
  • Neveron was down for about 20 minutes while some database tuning occurred. This should become a weekly occurance every Sunday at 1:00 AM MST.
  • BIG lag fix should help substantially game-wide.
  • There is a disturbing timeout source on the units table, concerning an index not properly updating itself. I manually updated it which will fix a lot of the remaining lag, but it may come back in the future.
  • Fixed an improper link on the Finance page.
  • Added a 'results' link to the training pop-up links.
  • New Feature: Zones you own or zones you are adjacent to which contain enemy units (including pirates!) now show on your level 1 map with a crosshatch line pattern.
  • Claiming pirate zones now requires you to have an adjacent zone.
  • Sped up the checks for units that have completed training. This had cut down on overall lag a lot.
  • Made a change to the "all do not attack" button in battle. This is a significant source of deadlock which may be unavoidable. If this change doesn't have a big impact I'll undo it later.
  • Removed extraneous pirate debugging and monitoring queries. Now that pirates are functioning properly any excess is being trimmed off to maximize performance.

    3/9/04

  • Fixed an overflow problem preventing the largest few empires from attacking remotely.
  • Deleted the pirates of SRTC because of a bug therein.
  • A new and laggy pirate behavior was noted in the largest attack to date, against Steel Roses Trading Co.. A solution has been implemented. If that too is slow, more significant changes will be made.
  • Big speed improvements on the companies summary page, particularly for larger empires.
  • Any zone move over 500 zones will now automatically use an LC without checking for continuity to reduce memory usage. Besides, its faster to fly when you're going that far anyway.
  • Restarted the webserver due to some memory errors
  • Took off two really slow queries on the lances page checking for things which probably don't need to be checked all the time.
  • Removed the city name from the list of zones with units on the "units in this zone only" page. Large empires were causing a good bit of lag with that page.
  • Sped up the timer a bit in certain cases during the attack phase that have been occasionally timing out.
  • Changed a check on the lances page to run much more quickly
  • Added some new descriptions to Anti-Infantry Vehicles.
  • Rewrote some updates which occur every 10 minutes which will hopefully cut down on the significant lag they sometimes cause.
  • Fixed pirate treasure point usage.
  • Reduced the number of pirate groups even more for level 12+ empires.
  • Changed the attack cost calculations for city zones. They're now based on the total number of buildings in the zone, not the total CF. Removing the need to determine (or maintain a running total of) total CF per zone will seriously reduce lag.
  • Fixed a slow query pirates were running, which may have been contributing to game-wide lag.
  • We again wanted to state that there is no single cause of the current lag problems (which have been greatly improved in the past week). Pirates themselves cause no noticable load on the servers. Players fighting back against them increases the load somewhat, but that alone is not the cause. The truth is that there is no single cause for the current server problems. Empires grow, numbers of empires grow and we add new things to the game virtually every day (new features, new checks, new bug fixes etc..) that all ask a little bit more of the servers. All this adds up. The lag is frustrating but it is also part of any internet based game. Lag 2 years ago decided nearly every arena battle to some degree and there have been times when the game was virtually unplayable, and that was when a level 8 empire was the largest empire in the game. We are continuing to make our systems faster and are also investing in a serious hardware upgrade that will hopefully have a major impact on the speed at which our server accesses data (and if not then we are sending the bill to Fyretrohl....).
  • Removed a bunch of code on the zone info page that was displaying things for pirate zones that were unnecessary (declaring war, other similiar info) when it was a zone belonging to your pirates.
  • New Feature: If a non-city zone is held by your pirates you may simply claim the zone (no charge) instead of committing to battle. This should make things much more conveniant for players. Note that this only works with *your pirates* as if you are attacking another empire's pirates you are effectively attacking that empire.

    3/8/04

  • Added an extra step in the mech purchasing code that will hopefully solve some primary key errors that were happening.

    3/7/04

  • Fixed a significant source of timeouts when attacking with units in enemy zone.
  • Found a really horrible source of lag concerning infantry damage, and corrected it. That was surely lagging the whole game a lot.
  • Made a change to the spotting code to greatly improve battle performance. No rules changes, just a back-end change.
  • Cut the liklihood of each pirate group being infantry by 25%.
  • The "distance to nearest city" figure has been removed from the info panel on the map page. That calculation was the source of over 100 timeouts during the past 24 hours and is not really important info to have displayed.
  • Donation Profiles: Just wanted to urge everyone who plans on donating to please explore and utilize the new Donation Profile system. It is the system use for all donation types whether it be mail, credit card or paypal. If you have any questions do not be afraid to open a donation related help ticket. Thanks.

    3/6/04

  • Fixed an error that some people were getting for a few hours this afternoon on the new donation profile page. This has been corrected.
  • Rewrote another slow query on the stats frame to speed performance.
  • Moved a slow query off the initiative page
  • Fixed a bug that was just created on the Buildings page that counted commercial buildings twice when tallying the total number of buildings in a zone.
  • Added another mech preference check to the mech readout page.
  • Made a big improvement to the load time of the stats panel on the left of the main empire screen.
  • Sped up a query on the pre-placing units page a bit.
  • Removed some unnecessary checks from the zone-changing-hands code when pirates are involved.
  • Added a couple checks when a mech pilot is blown out of their unit so to further prevent them from having the wrong mech preference.
  • Sped up the horribly slow People page a bit.
  • Big improvement to the empire page load speed should help the game performance as a whole.
  • Added an update to the buildings page if the number of buildings in the zone was not matching up properly and sometimes showing incorrect city sizes on the map.
  • Consolidated a couple queries on the buildings page that were getting the same information from the databse which will improve the speed of that page.
  • Got rid of those dumb gaps on the resource market that happen if you don't have any resources to buy at a faction or alliance discount.
  • After moving units on the map page it will now revert to the list of units or groups that you were moving instead of the zone info. This will make it easier when moving multiple units or groups as well as save on a little bit of server load.

    3/5/04

  • Fixed an overflow error that large empires were getting related to the new attack formulas.
  • New Feature: A new donation system has been partially implemented. The goal was to increase service and reliability for the donation system which is plagued by misspelled or missing login names or confusion about rewards. You can now create a donation profile which is assigned a Donation ID. If you choose to donate through Paypal the donation id will automatically be passed when you click on the Paypal link. This means you will no longer need to include your login name when donating. The Donation Id will show up and we will simply use that to reference the donation profile that you created. Donation profiles include an unlimited number of logins and you can list the smae login twice if need be. You can also include a short message with each donation. Please feel free to explore the system.

    Coming Soon: Instant credit card verification for added conveniance and faster processing.

  • Removed the query on attack_zone.asp line 408, another occasional timeout source
  • Sped up the query on attack_zone.asp line 460, another occasional timeout source
  • Moved some laggy checks off the various attack zone pages and now only run appropriate checks when zones change hands instead of verifying a lot of data whenever attack costs are calculated. This will really cut down on the timouts on the attack pages.
  • Cut down on the average number of database accesses needed for the default empire page, which should help overall performance slightly.
  • Moved some laggy checks from the timer (loading every 10 seconds) to the initiative (loading once per turn) page to reduce some of the lag caused by lots of people being in battles.
  • Zone attack costs have been adjusted. They are, approximately, the same as before. For some people they'll be slightly higher, for others slightly lower. This adjustment was following the success of the DOW cost changes of the other day and should speed the loading of any page that calculated attack costs substantially for large empires.
  • Removed the FCRX letters from the level 1 map. This greatly increases the speed of the map loading, and everyone I asked was of the opinion that it was useless information anyway. The only exception was knowing where your repair facilities are, so on the facilities page I added a list of all your repair facilities, and a link to set that zone as your active zone.
  • Changed the zone flagging procedure to not fail if the zone was already flagged. It will instead just reflag the zone. This should correct some problems people were having with it.

    3/4/04

  • Changed the DOW calculation to be less lag-intensive. The new and simpler formula means a reduction in DOW costs for most player.
  • Sped up another slow query on the login process. If you haven't realized, performance is the current #1 priority and will remain so until some real gains have been made.
  • 427 "lost" pilots were returned. They were still assigned to units that had been destroyed and were not listed in your people lists. Now, they're back.
  • Removed the largest lag source in the game, which should cut down on timeouts tremendously
  • Quests have been cancelled until further notice. The current quests will finish but not more will be started today.
  • Cut the military supply costs for an infantry unit from 1500 to 650 per nevday.
  • Fixed a query on the training results page that was causing timeouts for empires with a lot of units in training.
  • New Feature:Because of consistant problems with terrain you are now given a 30 Nevday grace period in which to decommission and recommission the towers in a zone that has had new terrain created since the towers were placed. You will find a "decommission all towers" button on the Tower Armoury of the zone in question. The grace period begins the moment terrain is created. If you miss it you will not be given another one.

    3/3/04

  • Sped up another query on the timer window which was occasionally causing a lot of deadlock felt nev-wide
  • Sped up the login process a bit, particularly for larger empires
  • Took out even more slow code from the timer page.
  • Changed some code on the battle maps to be less memory-intensive, hopefully cutting down on the out-of-memory errors
  • Took out the new insta-claim attack code for some more debugging. Will be back in later today. You can still attack normally!
  • Ripped out and clarified some of the new attack code to make it run faster.
  • Sped up the level 1 map loading a bit, which is another source of lag.
  • New Feature: Attacking an undefended zone should now kick you to the plunder and zone change processes instead of forcing you to do a round in battle. This will make attacking much faster as you will not need to load the battle map.
  • Corrected numerous errors on some different pages. Don't even remember them all.
  • Added some new indices to a few tables to increase performance.
  • Removed a really slow query from the login process which also is not used any longer.
  • Removed some legacy code from the timer which had been checking AI units to move even though AI is now in a separate program. This was only running in arenas, and its removal will mean infantry will no longer move in arenas on AI just like mechs and vehicles, which never moved on AI in arenas.
  • Pirate Tip: If you do not have time to fight your pirates right now, simply move anything of value out of the way and come back later. Having speedbumps in their way will ensure that factionmates can slow them down, but their already slow pace will ensure that they will not get very far before you can make time to deal with them. Remember that pirates are only bringing a taste of the reality of a player attack. Being attacked is inconveniant...period. Much better by a pirate than a player. Pirates will *not* ravage your whole empire in 24 hours. They are going for specific cities or even non-cities and will sit there once they achieve their objective (and take a long, long time getting there to begin with). Retaking the city is free and the worst case scenario is that you lose +/-10% of the buildings in that zone.
  • Pirate Battle Bug: There is a known bug where pirates are not creating their own terrain properly when they initiate a battle. This has been causing mutliple problems with these battles with needing to refresh maps, getting kicked out, etc. To remedy this, simply create terrain on the zone in question and your battle should be fixed. We are working to get that sorted out on our end so you will not need to do that in the future.

    3/2/04

  • We are saddened to hear about the death of the great Wolf of the original Genyosha Prime. Wolf was a long-term Neveron player and great supporter of the game in as many ways as one can be. We at the office were unaware of his condition or his operation and are sure it comes as a suprise to most of the players who knew him. There will be a new mech design coming out in the next couple months dedicated to all the fallen warriors of Neveron.
  • Total empire BV on the stats frame of the main page is now only updated when you log in, instead of every time you load the page. This will significantly cut down on lag.
  • Fixed a lag-inducing query on the faction details pages.
  • Sped up even more queries taxing the units table, which continues to be the largest lag source in the game.
  • Sped up some queries involving units in larger empires that was lagging the whole game substantially.
  • MPOGD: Thank you to all who voted last month and kept us on the top 10 list. All empires of larger than level 0 have received either $10 million or 10 Nevdays of income (whichever is larger). Let's keep it up!
  • Pirates will still attack you if you are at war, but there are 'dicounts' based on how much you have spent attacking and how much has been spent attacking you. If people were expempted from pirates based on a few attacks instead of the severity of the attacks, it would be a highly abusable sytem.
  • Updated Crusader K's to have LRM-10 ammo crits in their LT instead of LRM-5.
  • There is a disturbing trend in quests for people to form teams. Such teams are obviously against the spirit of these contests and clearly prevent all entrants from having equal chances. I'm not sure what we'll do about this yet, other than state our strong opposition to such team-forming and encourage players to actively police the tournaments themselves and take whatever action they deem necessary to discourage such behavior. If it becomes a serious problem there are a few avenues we can take, the most extreme being cancellation of the tournaments. One small step toward preventing this behavior has already been coded, and that is limiting an empire to one quest/tournament victory per week.
  • Quest victory conditions have been slightly updated, in that if you are the only unit left you will win even if you can't move to the winning hex because of movement crits.
  • Added a correction for vehicles that are unrecoverably bugged. Most often these units were destroyed in battle, but the process did not complete properly. The units are deleted and the crew becomes unassigned.
  • Fixed a problem with bugged towers vanishing instead of being put back in your armoury. This now works properly.
  • Currently working on a problem with the tower correction section of the placing units page. There may be errors on the page today. No need to report them until after another update is posted.
  • Quests: As stated yesterday, quests are back up and running. The only automated quest is a low BV vehicle-only quest. There are some questions about quests so I will explain:

    Quests are the newest form of tournaments. The currently automated one is a "free for all" quest with the goal being to be the last person standing. Other quests will have different goals, often pitting multiple empires in a co-operative format against the game, but then turning into a "last empire alive" format as the quest progresses. More complex quests may involve multiple goals. We hope to progress this feature to be more interesting and more complex as we find time.

    Quests require a lot of waiting for other players, meaning that they will often run several hours, especially "free for all" tournaments. You can always put your unit on AI if you need to leave, but the chances of your unit winning on AI are pretty slim.

    Quests are free to enter, but once your units are comitted you can not remove them under any situation save victory. Please do not ask for your units to be removed or replaced once they are in a quest, as it will not be granted.

    Prizes for quests are typically research points, and lot of them. When winning a quest you will be given the option of adding the winning RP amount to any one research project you are currently working on that is 2% or more completed. Prizes may vary on the quest, but this is a typical example.

    Good luck to all and have fun!

  • Cleaned up the updates page a bit.

    3/1/04