Azzer
25-01-2009, 09:30 PM
Design/Layout/Styles/Interface:
* Front page entirely re-designed/re-styled.
* In-game menu re-arranged slightly, eg account related options mostly wrapped up in to a single 'account portal' link.
* Web-based IRC link added to the in-game menu - opens a new window and makes a direct connection to the Bushtarion IRC server/room.
* News remains "unread" across multiple pages - so if you have 2 pages of unread news, going to the 2nd page continues to highlight the unread news.
* The "unread" improvement now also applies to messages, alliance messages, alliance news and alliance logs.
* If a member views any "alliance news" or "alliance messages", it no longer marks them as read for other members. All members have their own independant "read" marker for alliance news, messages and logs.
* Default order of ID's in "Your alliance" now matches the default order of ID's listed on the alliances page.
* Colour scheme related features have moved to their own dedicated page, instead of embedded within "ID Settings". ID Settings/Colour schemes page menus re-arranged appropriately.
* "Tag" column on many pages has been renamed to "Alliance".
* "Owner" is now listed as "Player" on most pages (eg world ranks), and is now listed before the alliance column, not after it.
* "Back To Top" link added to the bottom of a spy report, similar to on the news page.
* Politics posts now show the time of post in 24-hour timezone, and the exact second, that the post was made. Thread overview also shows 24 hour times now (though no seconds).
* Menu headers are now locked by default on all ID's, rather than unlocked. The associated ID setting is now an option to unlock them, rather than lock them (so everybody who had previously locked them, will find they are now unlocked, and vice-versa - be sure to update your settings).
* A few buttons have been renamed on various pages to be more intuitive (eg 'Order' changed to 'Hire' on the hiring page).
* A 'Fill All' link has been added to the maintenance page. This simply fills all the boxes with an 'a', for quick growing/planting.
* A 'Sell All' link has been added to the supply depot page, which fills all the plant-sell boxes with an 'a', unless you have unfilled land, in which case it will sell as many as you have surplus plants, keeping any behind that you can use for planting. The info-line on supply depot telling you how much room you have for plants has also been improved to highlight in red when you have unfilled land.
* The code that disables buttons when you click them (turning them to 'Please wait...' boxes), now re-enables them after 2 seconds. This allows people to re-click if they get a page-load problem etc., while still preventing people accidentally clicking twice in a row.
* Using the ~to special codes, commas, or the common quick codes on the supply depot page now displays the correct "Value" in the value box (previously the live value box ignored the ~to characters, and there were a number of 'NaN' errors).
* Buying up to, and selling down to, specific numbers now works fully and correctly on supply depot.
* All buttons/text inputs throughout the in-game pages have been re-formatted a little to look a bit "sleeker".
* Alliance related links "Alliance Mail", "Alliance News" are now in the "Your Alliance" page sub-menu, rather than the main game menu.
* Formatting is now correct when somebody has pure stealth incomings on the alliance incomings page (line-breaks inserted properly).
* The "% Complete" and "ETA" formatting of alliance developments, and personal developments, are now uniform in their display and format.
* If a round has not yet begin, then a message will appear at the top of all pages now, not just the overview, and this message will be a little clearer to newer players that the game is not yet running.
* The "Donate Funds" box now supports the quick zero commands - h, t/k, m, b... for hundred, thousand, million and billion.
* The "Voting" system has, for the time being, been entirely disabled. I'm not satisfied with any of the voting sites I know about with the exception of MPOGD.com - which limits you to one win every 13 month period.
Registration/Login/ID Management/Accounts/Names:
* Usernames have been removed. All user-related functions (logging in, security, etc.) now operate on your email address, rather than a username.
* "Company Names" have been removed from the game. There is now a single "Owner name" (or simply "game name"/"name"). The length is 35 characters, and has similar limits as the old owner/company names had. If you want ' of ' in your name, you can still do it!
* Account creation for new users has been drastically improved/simplified, including the reduction of 4 names (username, nickname, company name, owner name) to 2 names (nickname, game name). There is also now some Ajax use in this page, to automatically show problems as you enter fields (eg if a name is already taken).
* Session timeout (when you get logged out after not refreshing a page for so long) has been increased to 3 hours, from 1 hour.
* When getting logged out due to session timeout, logging back in from the "Logged out" page will take you back to whatever page you were trying to load, rather than back to overview again.
* If you only have one ID, you are taken straight to the overview page when logging on, rather than the portal ID Selection page.
* If logging on when your ID is currently marked for deletion, the ID is no longer automatically selected. This makes it a little harder to accidentally log in to an ID, which would remove the deletion flag.
* "Remember Me" option added to login, stores email entered for 30 days (and refreshes the 30 day timer every login when 'remembering'). To forget an email, simply login with the 'Remember Me' option unticked.
* "Forgot Password" added to login box, there was previously no easy or obvious way to access this facility.
* Player ID generation can now go up to 99,999... "just incase" ;) If the first 9999 ID slots get full, the ID creation continues to open up new ID's in batches of 5,000 up to 99,999 ID's.
* Referals are now done purely through your account nickname, not a "referal code". So if you were referred by me, you'd simply enter "Azzer" in as the referal link.
* If you give somebody a direct link to the game via your referal link, the "referred by" bit of the registration page is hidden, so they don't be mean and edit it out.
* You no longer need to click a confirmation link in your email when changing your account nickname - the change is now immediate/automatic.
* You can change your email address (which is now your username) yourself, without needing access to your old email address.
* Nicknames and email addresses cannot be changed more frequently than once per week.
Wiki/Manual:
* Manual has been converted to Wiki format. The staff/units, tech-trees, and technology listing pages remain as external pages linked to from within the new wiki manual.
Tech tree and Unit balances / Dynamics:
* Bikers are now ETA 4, fire before POM's, but have had their damage reduced to balance this out.
* Nanobots have received an increase in their health, as they are half biological, half machine.
* Protestor-Extremist route has received damage upgrades to the Rebel, Fanatic and Extremist units.
Rankings / Ranking System:
* Effectiveness has been removed as a game ranking, and has been relegated to a 'World Tables' field, for those still interested in their effectiveness.
*'Valuation' has been named back to 'Score', and this is the deciding and sole rank in the game that determines the winners/losers of a round.
* Alliance points has vanished, as have alliance effectiveness and alliance bounty hunting. There is now simply total alliance score (old "valuation") as the ranking.
* Portal now stores top 100 players in score, top 10 effectiveness players, and top 10 bounty hunters. The top 15 alliances (of 5+ members) in score are stored.
Alliances:
* Communications & Military officers are no more. They have been replaced with an advanced "Permissions" system, whereby the leader can specify the exact options available to any and every member - eg you could have an alliance where only the leader can do anything. You could have 6 members all capable of viewing military outgoings. You could have everybody able to do everything. You can also limit members a bit more than default settings normally allow - you can prevent members from seeing alliance incomings, or from viewing "Officer Only" threads - if you are recruiting new members whom you don't fully trust, you may find this useful. Almost every option related to "abilities" in an alliance are configurable for every member.
* As part of the new permissions system, members can have an optional "Security level" attached (any number between 1 and 255). This is used for cases where one member tries to kick another member for example - they can only kick people of lower security (not equal or higher). Likewise for the "Can become leader" option incase of leader absence/deletion - the highest security member with this permission will become leader if they are available (or selected at random if multiple members have the same level and are set to be able to become leaders). In essence, an alliance can no longer disband until every single member has left/been kicked.
* All members can have a "Title" set (either by the leader, or anyone with appropriate title permissions). These titles are visible only to other alliance members, and you can use them for any purpose you wish - to mark "ranks" in your alliance (eg Captain, Sergeant, whatever...), or for silly/fun things, to mark people who need to attack more or who are perhaps on temporary "probation" as a new member etc.
* Alliance incoming fleets can have "notes" set next to them (by anyone with note permissions), this could be for example something like "Fake incoming, ignore", "Send more hippys here", "Last tick defend this" etc. Note editing uses new Azzjax implementation, so no page reloading every time you edit one.
* Recruitment is now done through a process of members "applying" to join your alliance, and a member with appropriate recruit permissions either accepting, or declining, the member application. If the alliance reaches maximum capacity, people can still request to join, but you will be unable to accept any. A player can only be requesting to join a single alliance at a time, and must cancel one request before requesting to join another. All old "recruit permissions" stuff has been removed - it's up to you to filter out who you do or do not want to join from the applications. Alliance password has been removed as it is not needed for the new system.
* Alliances no longer need HQ buildings, or the "minimum member limit" (5 by default on world 1), for most features - eg all alliances are now visible in the alliance list, all alliances can use alliance mail/news, all alliances can set banners and flags. The only exception to this removal of most limits is sending units to a HQ - an alliance still needs to construct "Empty Land" alliance development to be able to be targetable by mobs, and the HQ and/or member limit is still needed for war declarations to be possible. Also, alliances below 5 members will not be listed on any final portal rankings.
* An "Alliance Logs" page has been added, this will be used similar to alliance news, but is not visible to anybody outside of the alliance. It is to be used to log almost everything related to the management of the alliance and it's members - logging who does what. Things such as members being accepted in to the guild, member parts, kicks, permission changes, title changes, fund donations, tax rate changes, war declarations, and similar things that relate to the management of the alliance but do not need to (and should not) be viewable to anyone outside of the alliance. These are kept for the duration of the round, so you can view your alliance logs back to day 1 and track what happened, and when.
* You can join one alliance directly from another, without having to go solo first. If you're in an alliance, and apply to join another direct - and they accept - you will instantly transfer from one to the other, without any requirement to go solo first. Going solo does not reset the timer which limits how frequently you can join alliances - only actually joining an alliance (changing tags) resets this timer (which is now 6 hours for the frequency with which you can join a 2nd alliance from joining your previous alliance, and 24 hours to re-join an alliance you were already a part of within the last 24 hours - reduced to 1 hour/6 hours respectively for private worlds).
* Tax rate can now go up to 25%.
* You can now kick players who have had their ID's/accounts admin-locked.
* The "A-Mail" link on the alliance page is now visible to everyone, since everybody could send mails to alliance anyway.
* Alliance's now have more of a "profile page" (similar to the new ID profile pages), similar to the old display when clicking an alliance name in the "alliances" list. It also includes an alliance "description" or "profile text", which can be set by anyone in the alliance with necessary permissions - an up to 2,500 character description or information about your alliance you want everybody else to be able to see (along with your alliance banner & flag).
* Politics posts now have a bit more customisation in 'who can see what' - when making a new thread, if your 'security level' has been set above 0 (it can go up to 255), you will have two options when making the thread - "Viewable To Security Level" and "Replyable By Security Level" - basically a minimum security level another member must be to either see the thread, or reply to the thread. This replaces the old "officers only" threads, with much more customisation. Eg if you have 3 'co-leader' type positions with security levels of 255, they could make a thread viewable to and replyable by only other people with level 255 - meaning they can hold entirely private discussions without any other members being able to see it. To mimic the old 'officers only' option, simply leave "Viewable To" at the default 0 so anybody can <i>view</i> the thread, and set the "Replyable By" to an appropriate security level. Sticky threads still exist, but can be set with these new options.
* Mass-mails now come from the HQ, instead of the individual, but have an automatic signature appended to show which ID actually sent the mass mail.
* An alliances member-count, total acres, and total score are no longer hidden for private alliances. They are all public/visible on the alliances page - however, the total acres and total score are rounded out to a figured that cannot be used to easily calculate the members of that alliance.
* Going solo no longer resets the timer for when you can join a new alliance/create a new alliance. Only actually joining/creating an alliance resets this timer. A minimum of 6 hours must pass between joining/creating one alliance, to being able to create/join a different alliance, but you can go solo at any stage in-between this 6 hour period without the time resetting. To rejoin an alliance you have already been in, the timer is 24 hours.
* Leaving/changing alliance, or being kicked from an alliance, will automatically recall the mobs of all members of the old alliance that were defending you, and any mobs you had defending them.
* Alliance banners and flags are now uploaded to and saved on the Bushtarion server - much like User Profile pictures - and are no longer remotely linked URLs.
Solo Play/Anti-rape:
* Pure Solo has been removed from the game altogether, including any previous pure solo benefits.
* "Personal Naps" have been renamed to "Solo Partners", which is what they are (helps prevents confusion for new players - eg "can allied players have naps?" etc.). A solo partner is for two players, who are both non-allied, to be able to send defense to eachother, and must be mutual between the two. You can have up to two solo partners.
* AR modifier raises slightly faster when losing troops while defending yourself. AR Modifier drops each tick at a slightly faster rate than before.
Game Mechanics/Systems:
* Seed and plant prices have been modified to better balance the use of Flower, Grass and Tree land, compared to Bush land.
* News is now given to a victim even if he has no staff at home, as this "lack of news" was a constant source of confusion to newer players.
* Insurance has been re-introduced, albeit modified, and injuries have been changed. There is now a single static "insurance/injury" rate for worlds, which in world 1 will be 35%. For all "starter" units (like gardeners, harvesters, hippies, yobs, wheelies), injuries will be used, with a fixed injury delay of 12 ticks. For all other units that are not "starter" units (things you gained through developments, or through bribery), insurance will be used, again with a fixed insurance delay of 12 ticks (rather than 'instant' as the old insurance was). The exception is if your alliance is at war - if you are at war with the target's alliance (or vice-versa), the insurance and injury instantly becomes 0. You will not gain *any* insurance or injuries for war losses. War now has a very good reason - you can truly kill your enemies. Solo players are, of course, protected from war declarations, and so will always gain their 35%.
* A fixed base bounty of 25% is set on all players, the same rules of how much bounty you can achieve in an attack are in place.
* Planting is now prioritised higher than growing - gardeners will plant any tree, bush, flower and grass plants BEFORE trying to grow seeds - meaning if you are growing tree seeds, gardeners will not have to wait until all tree seeds are grown before planting any more bush/flower/grass plants, etc.
* Player scores are now re-calculated both at the start of a tick and at the end of a tick, meaning any losses from a battle are reflected in your score the same tick it happened.
* Land score is now "land * land * 10", instead of "land * land * 20".
* The development ETA on overview no longer displays a negative. The game now stores at what ETA the development would be at the point you started the development for this calculation, rather than basing the percentage complete based on what the ETA currently is.
* The 10 second delay on sending mails out has been reduced to 5 second. 150 seconds for mass mails reduced to 120 seconds.
* Max word length increased to 100 from 80 before 'enforced breaks' are made in messages/politics etc.
* Messages From Admin now supports Bush Codes (just to make life easier for me!).
* Maximum size for message/politics posts etc. increased to 10,000 characters (from the previous 5,000 for most messages and 7,500 for politics). Alliance overview message size increased from 2,000 characters to 2,500 characters.
* Alliance overview message now support all new codes including colour codes.
* Friend notes/ignore notes/player notes no longer have display errors for notes containing special characters such < > etc. (previously displayed as '&lt;' and '&gt;').
* The "Enable Live Hyperlinks" option in preferences has changed to a "Disable Live Hyperlinks" option. In other words, any tags are, byd efault, live for all ID's/users. If you had already enabled this option, then you'll need to go and unselect the now changed "disable" option so URL's work again.
* The 'Disable Your Alliance Image' setting has been replaced with a 'Disable User Posted Images' setting.
* All politics post boxes and message boxes have a "preview" button, that shows you a preview of how the mail will look with all Bush-Code processed so you can check it for errors before sending. The preview loads "live", without the entire page needing to refresh.
* "Bush Code" has been updated with many new features:
- all codes are now case-insensitive.
- ID code format now follows standard code format eg {id} and {id} instead of the old system ([ID!{id}] and [ID!{id}s]).
- The [r] and [c] tags have been replaced with an tag, where x can be left, right, or center.
- A {name} code has been added - the unit name given must be the full unit name (case insensitive) including any spaces, and it will create a unit tooltip for that unit.
- [hostile] and [friendly] tags removed - stick to using the shorter but identical [h] and [f] tags instead!
- A option for the text size, supporting a number from 1 to 5, with 2 being the default/standard size, 1 being a bit smaller than normal, and 5 being large.
- An http://www.urltoimage.com/image.jpg code has been added for sending/posting in-line pictures. You can also resize the image dynamically, by using the format , for example [img=100x30] would size the picture 100 pixels wide by 30 pixels height.
- A option has been added, which supports standard web-colours (eg 'red' or hex-codes like '#FF0000') - be aware when using colours that users will have different backgrounds, so colours that look good to you might be invisible to somebody else!
- The URL option now supports making any text a link by using the format Text To Link Here (http://www.website.com). Previously you could only do [url]http://www.website.com.
- name had been added, for creating quick links to a person's portal profile page. Just put their nickname inbetween the user tags.
- [quote] and [quote={postername}] tags have been added. This are now also automatically used when replying or forwarding a mail/politics board post.
Global Politics:
* Global Politics has been removed from the game. Use the forums if you wish to post public war declaration threads or make any public political statements!
Forums:
* The forums now run on the latest vBulletin commercial forum software. There are many new and powerful features available in vBulletin, both for users and for moderators alike. It will take some getting used to, but please go out and try out some of the new features yourself - like albums, reputation points, social groups etc.
* Whole new "Forum Rules" are now publicised. These are in effect immediately, and replace the old "Forum Guidelines". They are viewable as a sticky thread in any of the main forum sections.
* The "alliance" related forums now take up their own forum category, and are a little different than before. We have a "Recruitment" forum (for alliances to recruit, or people looking for an alliance to post), a "Politics" forum (for war declarations, public announcements, and perhaps some political roleplaying between alliances), and a "general Discussion" section for any other chit-chat, discussions, or gossip related to any of the alliances in the game. ("Politics" is to be considered the more 'serious' side of the alliance forums... "General Discussions" for lighter or more general alliance chat).
Helpers:
* Helpers can no longer see when other helpers were last online, only Azzer can now.
User Profile / Points:
* The details for how to achieve the various profile awards/achievements have now been made public and part of the official game manual in the wiki - you can now see exactly what you need to achieve for any of the achievements you wish to aim for.
Marketing/Advertising/Promotion:
* Work has begun for some press releases to time with the start of age 5's first full round, netgamers globals/announcements will be utilised, and during the course of the first round some advertising campaigns will begin in a few places as a test-run, ready for a more full advertising launch for round 31.
Miscellaneous/Anything Else:
* The "Portal News" page now has the option to search for specific text, to help if you are looking for a particular older announcement.
* Bots now have a lot of new things on their minds, thanks to Weeble pep-talking them all...!
* Error messages are now passed in the URL by error code reference, rather than as full (editable) text, and are standardised in format throughout all game pages.
* Clicking a player's name throughout the game now takes you to a new "ID Profile" page, instead of directly to mail. From the ID profile page, you can click a quick link to mail (same as the old mail link), a quick button to instant drive-by/fly-over/hax0r/spy them, a brief rundown of their current core info (score, rank, land), and as long as they have not made their account anonymous (from the ID Settings page), you can see the nickname, and any user profile details (including their awards/achievements). The only thing not listed is their ID history (but you can quickly click their nickname to see their standard portal profile, where ID History is fully listed). This is to help encourage a bit more 'community' (get to know the players around you), and to encourage more use of portal profiles (since it's much more likely people will frequently view your profile). The option to have your nick "publicly" linked to your ID is set to off, or private, on new IDs by default.
* All nicknames become public on the portal. You can no longer choose to have your nickname remain "anonymous" on the portal rankings, if you make it to the portal.
* The dump data formats have been updated to reflect Age 5 data. Anyone that has code/scripts/databases that parse this data should analyse the new dump files and update any parsers as necessary.
* Front page entirely re-designed/re-styled.
* In-game menu re-arranged slightly, eg account related options mostly wrapped up in to a single 'account portal' link.
* Web-based IRC link added to the in-game menu - opens a new window and makes a direct connection to the Bushtarion IRC server/room.
* News remains "unread" across multiple pages - so if you have 2 pages of unread news, going to the 2nd page continues to highlight the unread news.
* The "unread" improvement now also applies to messages, alliance messages, alliance news and alliance logs.
* If a member views any "alliance news" or "alliance messages", it no longer marks them as read for other members. All members have their own independant "read" marker for alliance news, messages and logs.
* Default order of ID's in "Your alliance" now matches the default order of ID's listed on the alliances page.
* Colour scheme related features have moved to their own dedicated page, instead of embedded within "ID Settings". ID Settings/Colour schemes page menus re-arranged appropriately.
* "Tag" column on many pages has been renamed to "Alliance".
* "Owner" is now listed as "Player" on most pages (eg world ranks), and is now listed before the alliance column, not after it.
* "Back To Top" link added to the bottom of a spy report, similar to on the news page.
* Politics posts now show the time of post in 24-hour timezone, and the exact second, that the post was made. Thread overview also shows 24 hour times now (though no seconds).
* Menu headers are now locked by default on all ID's, rather than unlocked. The associated ID setting is now an option to unlock them, rather than lock them (so everybody who had previously locked them, will find they are now unlocked, and vice-versa - be sure to update your settings).
* A few buttons have been renamed on various pages to be more intuitive (eg 'Order' changed to 'Hire' on the hiring page).
* A 'Fill All' link has been added to the maintenance page. This simply fills all the boxes with an 'a', for quick growing/planting.
* A 'Sell All' link has been added to the supply depot page, which fills all the plant-sell boxes with an 'a', unless you have unfilled land, in which case it will sell as many as you have surplus plants, keeping any behind that you can use for planting. The info-line on supply depot telling you how much room you have for plants has also been improved to highlight in red when you have unfilled land.
* The code that disables buttons when you click them (turning them to 'Please wait...' boxes), now re-enables them after 2 seconds. This allows people to re-click if they get a page-load problem etc., while still preventing people accidentally clicking twice in a row.
* Using the ~to special codes, commas, or the common quick codes on the supply depot page now displays the correct "Value" in the value box (previously the live value box ignored the ~to characters, and there were a number of 'NaN' errors).
* Buying up to, and selling down to, specific numbers now works fully and correctly on supply depot.
* All buttons/text inputs throughout the in-game pages have been re-formatted a little to look a bit "sleeker".
* Alliance related links "Alliance Mail", "Alliance News" are now in the "Your Alliance" page sub-menu, rather than the main game menu.
* Formatting is now correct when somebody has pure stealth incomings on the alliance incomings page (line-breaks inserted properly).
* The "% Complete" and "ETA" formatting of alliance developments, and personal developments, are now uniform in their display and format.
* If a round has not yet begin, then a message will appear at the top of all pages now, not just the overview, and this message will be a little clearer to newer players that the game is not yet running.
* The "Donate Funds" box now supports the quick zero commands - h, t/k, m, b... for hundred, thousand, million and billion.
* The "Voting" system has, for the time being, been entirely disabled. I'm not satisfied with any of the voting sites I know about with the exception of MPOGD.com - which limits you to one win every 13 month period.
Registration/Login/ID Management/Accounts/Names:
* Usernames have been removed. All user-related functions (logging in, security, etc.) now operate on your email address, rather than a username.
* "Company Names" have been removed from the game. There is now a single "Owner name" (or simply "game name"/"name"). The length is 35 characters, and has similar limits as the old owner/company names had. If you want ' of ' in your name, you can still do it!
* Account creation for new users has been drastically improved/simplified, including the reduction of 4 names (username, nickname, company name, owner name) to 2 names (nickname, game name). There is also now some Ajax use in this page, to automatically show problems as you enter fields (eg if a name is already taken).
* Session timeout (when you get logged out after not refreshing a page for so long) has been increased to 3 hours, from 1 hour.
* When getting logged out due to session timeout, logging back in from the "Logged out" page will take you back to whatever page you were trying to load, rather than back to overview again.
* If you only have one ID, you are taken straight to the overview page when logging on, rather than the portal ID Selection page.
* If logging on when your ID is currently marked for deletion, the ID is no longer automatically selected. This makes it a little harder to accidentally log in to an ID, which would remove the deletion flag.
* "Remember Me" option added to login, stores email entered for 30 days (and refreshes the 30 day timer every login when 'remembering'). To forget an email, simply login with the 'Remember Me' option unticked.
* "Forgot Password" added to login box, there was previously no easy or obvious way to access this facility.
* Player ID generation can now go up to 99,999... "just incase" ;) If the first 9999 ID slots get full, the ID creation continues to open up new ID's in batches of 5,000 up to 99,999 ID's.
* Referals are now done purely through your account nickname, not a "referal code". So if you were referred by me, you'd simply enter "Azzer" in as the referal link.
* If you give somebody a direct link to the game via your referal link, the "referred by" bit of the registration page is hidden, so they don't be mean and edit it out.
* You no longer need to click a confirmation link in your email when changing your account nickname - the change is now immediate/automatic.
* You can change your email address (which is now your username) yourself, without needing access to your old email address.
* Nicknames and email addresses cannot be changed more frequently than once per week.
Wiki/Manual:
* Manual has been converted to Wiki format. The staff/units, tech-trees, and technology listing pages remain as external pages linked to from within the new wiki manual.
Tech tree and Unit balances / Dynamics:
* Bikers are now ETA 4, fire before POM's, but have had their damage reduced to balance this out.
* Nanobots have received an increase in their health, as they are half biological, half machine.
* Protestor-Extremist route has received damage upgrades to the Rebel, Fanatic and Extremist units.
Rankings / Ranking System:
* Effectiveness has been removed as a game ranking, and has been relegated to a 'World Tables' field, for those still interested in their effectiveness.
*'Valuation' has been named back to 'Score', and this is the deciding and sole rank in the game that determines the winners/losers of a round.
* Alliance points has vanished, as have alliance effectiveness and alliance bounty hunting. There is now simply total alliance score (old "valuation") as the ranking.
* Portal now stores top 100 players in score, top 10 effectiveness players, and top 10 bounty hunters. The top 15 alliances (of 5+ members) in score are stored.
Alliances:
* Communications & Military officers are no more. They have been replaced with an advanced "Permissions" system, whereby the leader can specify the exact options available to any and every member - eg you could have an alliance where only the leader can do anything. You could have 6 members all capable of viewing military outgoings. You could have everybody able to do everything. You can also limit members a bit more than default settings normally allow - you can prevent members from seeing alliance incomings, or from viewing "Officer Only" threads - if you are recruiting new members whom you don't fully trust, you may find this useful. Almost every option related to "abilities" in an alliance are configurable for every member.
* As part of the new permissions system, members can have an optional "Security level" attached (any number between 1 and 255). This is used for cases where one member tries to kick another member for example - they can only kick people of lower security (not equal or higher). Likewise for the "Can become leader" option incase of leader absence/deletion - the highest security member with this permission will become leader if they are available (or selected at random if multiple members have the same level and are set to be able to become leaders). In essence, an alliance can no longer disband until every single member has left/been kicked.
* All members can have a "Title" set (either by the leader, or anyone with appropriate title permissions). These titles are visible only to other alliance members, and you can use them for any purpose you wish - to mark "ranks" in your alliance (eg Captain, Sergeant, whatever...), or for silly/fun things, to mark people who need to attack more or who are perhaps on temporary "probation" as a new member etc.
* Alliance incoming fleets can have "notes" set next to them (by anyone with note permissions), this could be for example something like "Fake incoming, ignore", "Send more hippys here", "Last tick defend this" etc. Note editing uses new Azzjax implementation, so no page reloading every time you edit one.
* Recruitment is now done through a process of members "applying" to join your alliance, and a member with appropriate recruit permissions either accepting, or declining, the member application. If the alliance reaches maximum capacity, people can still request to join, but you will be unable to accept any. A player can only be requesting to join a single alliance at a time, and must cancel one request before requesting to join another. All old "recruit permissions" stuff has been removed - it's up to you to filter out who you do or do not want to join from the applications. Alliance password has been removed as it is not needed for the new system.
* Alliances no longer need HQ buildings, or the "minimum member limit" (5 by default on world 1), for most features - eg all alliances are now visible in the alliance list, all alliances can use alliance mail/news, all alliances can set banners and flags. The only exception to this removal of most limits is sending units to a HQ - an alliance still needs to construct "Empty Land" alliance development to be able to be targetable by mobs, and the HQ and/or member limit is still needed for war declarations to be possible. Also, alliances below 5 members will not be listed on any final portal rankings.
* An "Alliance Logs" page has been added, this will be used similar to alliance news, but is not visible to anybody outside of the alliance. It is to be used to log almost everything related to the management of the alliance and it's members - logging who does what. Things such as members being accepted in to the guild, member parts, kicks, permission changes, title changes, fund donations, tax rate changes, war declarations, and similar things that relate to the management of the alliance but do not need to (and should not) be viewable to anyone outside of the alliance. These are kept for the duration of the round, so you can view your alliance logs back to day 1 and track what happened, and when.
* You can join one alliance directly from another, without having to go solo first. If you're in an alliance, and apply to join another direct - and they accept - you will instantly transfer from one to the other, without any requirement to go solo first. Going solo does not reset the timer which limits how frequently you can join alliances - only actually joining an alliance (changing tags) resets this timer (which is now 6 hours for the frequency with which you can join a 2nd alliance from joining your previous alliance, and 24 hours to re-join an alliance you were already a part of within the last 24 hours - reduced to 1 hour/6 hours respectively for private worlds).
* Tax rate can now go up to 25%.
* You can now kick players who have had their ID's/accounts admin-locked.
* The "A-Mail" link on the alliance page is now visible to everyone, since everybody could send mails to alliance anyway.
* Alliance's now have more of a "profile page" (similar to the new ID profile pages), similar to the old display when clicking an alliance name in the "alliances" list. It also includes an alliance "description" or "profile text", which can be set by anyone in the alliance with necessary permissions - an up to 2,500 character description or information about your alliance you want everybody else to be able to see (along with your alliance banner & flag).
* Politics posts now have a bit more customisation in 'who can see what' - when making a new thread, if your 'security level' has been set above 0 (it can go up to 255), you will have two options when making the thread - "Viewable To Security Level" and "Replyable By Security Level" - basically a minimum security level another member must be to either see the thread, or reply to the thread. This replaces the old "officers only" threads, with much more customisation. Eg if you have 3 'co-leader' type positions with security levels of 255, they could make a thread viewable to and replyable by only other people with level 255 - meaning they can hold entirely private discussions without any other members being able to see it. To mimic the old 'officers only' option, simply leave "Viewable To" at the default 0 so anybody can <i>view</i> the thread, and set the "Replyable By" to an appropriate security level. Sticky threads still exist, but can be set with these new options.
* Mass-mails now come from the HQ, instead of the individual, but have an automatic signature appended to show which ID actually sent the mass mail.
* An alliances member-count, total acres, and total score are no longer hidden for private alliances. They are all public/visible on the alliances page - however, the total acres and total score are rounded out to a figured that cannot be used to easily calculate the members of that alliance.
* Going solo no longer resets the timer for when you can join a new alliance/create a new alliance. Only actually joining/creating an alliance resets this timer. A minimum of 6 hours must pass between joining/creating one alliance, to being able to create/join a different alliance, but you can go solo at any stage in-between this 6 hour period without the time resetting. To rejoin an alliance you have already been in, the timer is 24 hours.
* Leaving/changing alliance, or being kicked from an alliance, will automatically recall the mobs of all members of the old alliance that were defending you, and any mobs you had defending them.
* Alliance banners and flags are now uploaded to and saved on the Bushtarion server - much like User Profile pictures - and are no longer remotely linked URLs.
Solo Play/Anti-rape:
* Pure Solo has been removed from the game altogether, including any previous pure solo benefits.
* "Personal Naps" have been renamed to "Solo Partners", which is what they are (helps prevents confusion for new players - eg "can allied players have naps?" etc.). A solo partner is for two players, who are both non-allied, to be able to send defense to eachother, and must be mutual between the two. You can have up to two solo partners.
* AR modifier raises slightly faster when losing troops while defending yourself. AR Modifier drops each tick at a slightly faster rate than before.
Game Mechanics/Systems:
* Seed and plant prices have been modified to better balance the use of Flower, Grass and Tree land, compared to Bush land.
* News is now given to a victim even if he has no staff at home, as this "lack of news" was a constant source of confusion to newer players.
* Insurance has been re-introduced, albeit modified, and injuries have been changed. There is now a single static "insurance/injury" rate for worlds, which in world 1 will be 35%. For all "starter" units (like gardeners, harvesters, hippies, yobs, wheelies), injuries will be used, with a fixed injury delay of 12 ticks. For all other units that are not "starter" units (things you gained through developments, or through bribery), insurance will be used, again with a fixed insurance delay of 12 ticks (rather than 'instant' as the old insurance was). The exception is if your alliance is at war - if you are at war with the target's alliance (or vice-versa), the insurance and injury instantly becomes 0. You will not gain *any* insurance or injuries for war losses. War now has a very good reason - you can truly kill your enemies. Solo players are, of course, protected from war declarations, and so will always gain their 35%.
* A fixed base bounty of 25% is set on all players, the same rules of how much bounty you can achieve in an attack are in place.
* Planting is now prioritised higher than growing - gardeners will plant any tree, bush, flower and grass plants BEFORE trying to grow seeds - meaning if you are growing tree seeds, gardeners will not have to wait until all tree seeds are grown before planting any more bush/flower/grass plants, etc.
* Player scores are now re-calculated both at the start of a tick and at the end of a tick, meaning any losses from a battle are reflected in your score the same tick it happened.
* Land score is now "land * land * 10", instead of "land * land * 20".
* The development ETA on overview no longer displays a negative. The game now stores at what ETA the development would be at the point you started the development for this calculation, rather than basing the percentage complete based on what the ETA currently is.
* The 10 second delay on sending mails out has been reduced to 5 second. 150 seconds for mass mails reduced to 120 seconds.
* Max word length increased to 100 from 80 before 'enforced breaks' are made in messages/politics etc.
* Messages From Admin now supports Bush Codes (just to make life easier for me!).
* Maximum size for message/politics posts etc. increased to 10,000 characters (from the previous 5,000 for most messages and 7,500 for politics). Alliance overview message size increased from 2,000 characters to 2,500 characters.
* Alliance overview message now support all new codes including colour codes.
* Friend notes/ignore notes/player notes no longer have display errors for notes containing special characters such < > etc. (previously displayed as '&lt;' and '&gt;').
* The "Enable Live Hyperlinks" option in preferences has changed to a "Disable Live Hyperlinks" option. In other words, any tags are, byd efault, live for all ID's/users. If you had already enabled this option, then you'll need to go and unselect the now changed "disable" option so URL's work again.
* The 'Disable Your Alliance Image' setting has been replaced with a 'Disable User Posted Images' setting.
* All politics post boxes and message boxes have a "preview" button, that shows you a preview of how the mail will look with all Bush-Code processed so you can check it for errors before sending. The preview loads "live", without the entire page needing to refresh.
* "Bush Code" has been updated with many new features:
- all codes are now case-insensitive.
- ID code format now follows standard code format eg {id} and {id} instead of the old system ([ID!{id}] and [ID!{id}s]).
- The [r] and [c] tags have been replaced with an tag, where x can be left, right, or center.
- A {name} code has been added - the unit name given must be the full unit name (case insensitive) including any spaces, and it will create a unit tooltip for that unit.
- [hostile] and [friendly] tags removed - stick to using the shorter but identical [h] and [f] tags instead!
- A option for the text size, supporting a number from 1 to 5, with 2 being the default/standard size, 1 being a bit smaller than normal, and 5 being large.
- An http://www.urltoimage.com/image.jpg code has been added for sending/posting in-line pictures. You can also resize the image dynamically, by using the format , for example [img=100x30] would size the picture 100 pixels wide by 30 pixels height.
- A option has been added, which supports standard web-colours (eg 'red' or hex-codes like '#FF0000') - be aware when using colours that users will have different backgrounds, so colours that look good to you might be invisible to somebody else!
- The URL option now supports making any text a link by using the format Text To Link Here (http://www.website.com). Previously you could only do [url]http://www.website.com.
- name had been added, for creating quick links to a person's portal profile page. Just put their nickname inbetween the user tags.
- [quote] and [quote={postername}] tags have been added. This are now also automatically used when replying or forwarding a mail/politics board post.
Global Politics:
* Global Politics has been removed from the game. Use the forums if you wish to post public war declaration threads or make any public political statements!
Forums:
* The forums now run on the latest vBulletin commercial forum software. There are many new and powerful features available in vBulletin, both for users and for moderators alike. It will take some getting used to, but please go out and try out some of the new features yourself - like albums, reputation points, social groups etc.
* Whole new "Forum Rules" are now publicised. These are in effect immediately, and replace the old "Forum Guidelines". They are viewable as a sticky thread in any of the main forum sections.
* The "alliance" related forums now take up their own forum category, and are a little different than before. We have a "Recruitment" forum (for alliances to recruit, or people looking for an alliance to post), a "Politics" forum (for war declarations, public announcements, and perhaps some political roleplaying between alliances), and a "general Discussion" section for any other chit-chat, discussions, or gossip related to any of the alliances in the game. ("Politics" is to be considered the more 'serious' side of the alliance forums... "General Discussions" for lighter or more general alliance chat).
Helpers:
* Helpers can no longer see when other helpers were last online, only Azzer can now.
User Profile / Points:
* The details for how to achieve the various profile awards/achievements have now been made public and part of the official game manual in the wiki - you can now see exactly what you need to achieve for any of the achievements you wish to aim for.
Marketing/Advertising/Promotion:
* Work has begun for some press releases to time with the start of age 5's first full round, netgamers globals/announcements will be utilised, and during the course of the first round some advertising campaigns will begin in a few places as a test-run, ready for a more full advertising launch for round 31.
Miscellaneous/Anything Else:
* The "Portal News" page now has the option to search for specific text, to help if you are looking for a particular older announcement.
* Bots now have a lot of new things on their minds, thanks to Weeble pep-talking them all...!
* Error messages are now passed in the URL by error code reference, rather than as full (editable) text, and are standardised in format throughout all game pages.
* Clicking a player's name throughout the game now takes you to a new "ID Profile" page, instead of directly to mail. From the ID profile page, you can click a quick link to mail (same as the old mail link), a quick button to instant drive-by/fly-over/hax0r/spy them, a brief rundown of their current core info (score, rank, land), and as long as they have not made their account anonymous (from the ID Settings page), you can see the nickname, and any user profile details (including their awards/achievements). The only thing not listed is their ID history (but you can quickly click their nickname to see their standard portal profile, where ID History is fully listed). This is to help encourage a bit more 'community' (get to know the players around you), and to encourage more use of portal profiles (since it's much more likely people will frequently view your profile). The option to have your nick "publicly" linked to your ID is set to off, or private, on new IDs by default.
* All nicknames become public on the portal. You can no longer choose to have your nickname remain "anonymous" on the portal rankings, if you make it to the portal.
* The dump data formats have been updated to reflect Age 5 data. Anyone that has code/scripts/databases that parse this data should analyse the new dump files and update any parsers as necessary.