Well in the UK right now it's pretty cold outside, so what better excuse to stay in, stay warm and play a bit of Football Manager 2018 than the release of the Winter Transfer Update?
As always this update is save game compatible to allow you to continue your pre-existing FM18 career. However, if you want access to all the latest transfers, managerial appointments and the like you'll need to start a new career game choosing the 18.3.0 Update database.
Once you open Steam the game will automatically begin to update. If FM is already open, we recommend first of all saving the game then exiting. Once you've done so the game should update, but if you find it doesn't just restart Steam.
If you encounter any issues, please take the time to raise them on our official Football Manager 2018 Bugs Forum .
The changelist includes but is not limited to the fixes shown below:
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2018 | WINTER TRANSFER UPDATE 18.3.0 ======================================================
DATABASE -------- - Added database 18.3 to include winter transfer & data updates
STABILITY --------- - Fixed rare crash during processing - Fixed game freeze when attempting to upload highlight to YouTube - Fixed crash on continue with edited data - Fixed rare crash when loading save game - Fixed freeze during penalty shootout - Fixed crash during match - Fixed MLS crash when locking certain trade items in a trade offer
MATCH ------ - Fixed rare ball physics bug - Improved individual team talk reactions - Fixed team talk assistant advice when winning competition - Fixed passing accuracy assistant feedback - Fixed issue where stadium/players sometimes appear black - Fixed score diverging in online matches - Additional individual team talk button added to player’s row on team talk table
GAMEPLAY -------- - Fixed issue where player would become stuck in a trialist squad - Fixed issue where user was incorrectly being overlooked for management jobs - Improved AI shortlisting decisions in regards to HG players - Improved logic in selecting the players who will be returned in certain scouting assignments - Fixed issue where player attributes could be revealed too quickly - Fixed issue where users were able to make various promises to the board incorrectly resulting in rare sackings - Fixed a conversation not generating following a broken promise to a player - Fixed question incorrectly asked about chances of winning the league when already won - Fixed player given leave of absence by club leaving national team setup - Fixed instances where pre-match backroom advice had stopped generating - Fixed rare instance where user is unable to play national B team match away against a club side - Fixed instances of press and media carrying over previous manager’s pressure onto the new manager - Fixed instances of same press conference question being asked twice - Fixed instances of being asked about other manager’s response without seeing the response first
COMPETITIONS ------------ - Can now vote in World Player of the Year award if a national manager - Fixed Spanish Second Division Best Goalkeeper award being awarded to outfield players - Spanish First Division teams no longer fail to register first team players for no obvious reason - B Team players in Spain will be correctly eligible for First Team matches if made available - Bulgarian European Place Playoff now schedules not too late at end of season - Updated Mexican Cup structure
IN GAME EDITOR -------------- - Physical Condition and Match Sharpness can now be edited directly from the Profile screen via In-Game Editor
New update is out with two new blocks - Deuterium Generator and Small Deuterium generator. The first one is good for your bases, the latter for energy-intensive vehicles.
We have also improved the Build Vision. It now indicates the center of mass and total mass of each grid, so you will be able to design more stable air crafts.
Last but not least, you can now turn on/off your machines directly from their inventory, using little button in the top-right corner, without bothering with radial menu.
Here is the full list of changes:
added Deuterium Generator and Small Deuterium Generator
added indication of mass distribution to Build Vision
added option to alter the duration of daytime
added switch button into block "Use" GUIs
optimized first generation of the world (generating wrecks phase)
optimized game saving/loading, mainly on non-SSD drives
modified console to pause the game
fixed physics glitch when descending into water with jetpack in hover mode
fixed building positions on block "Reinforced Wall Ext/Int Conveyor Joint"
New update is out with two new blocks - Deuterium Generator and Small Deuterium generator. The first one is good for your bases, the latter for energy-intensive vehicles.
We have also improved the Build Vision. It now indicates the center of mass and total mass of each grid, so you will be able to design more stable air crafts.
Last but not least, you can now turn on/off your machines directly from their inventory, using little button in the top-right corner, without bothering with radial menu.
Here is the full list of changes:
added Deuterium Generator and Small Deuterium Generator
added indication of mass distribution to Build Vision
added option to alter the duration of daytime
added switch button into block "Use" GUIs
optimized first generation of the world (generating wrecks phase)
optimized game saving/loading, mainly on non-SSD drives
modified console to pause the game
fixed physics glitch when descending into water with jetpack in hover mode
fixed building positions on block "Reinforced Wall Ext/Int Conveyor Joint"
The Templar forms part of one of the most important units of the forces of light. The brotherhood of Templar has its potential in its great capacity of absorbing and mitigating enemy attacks.
The members of this company are selected and educated from their youth in order to achieve excellence and never falter in combat. Their shield and armor are their best bet in combat, providing them a great defensive potential.
The use of skills both augmented and imbued by the power of light help minimize casualties and allows those surrounding the Templar to focus on the battle at hand and to be able to fight with ferocity.
In short, a Templar is a hand to hand tank who blocks and slows down the enemy advance, allowing his allies to achieve victory easily.
Specifications:
Faction: Light Archetype: Knight Function: Tank Main weapon: One handed longsword Secondary weapon: Combat Shield Life: 4000 points Main attack: Sword strike, double combo if held down Secondary attack: Shield block
SKILLS
Utility: - Shield Strike: Strike an enemy with your shield and incapacitate them for a short period of time. - Stampede: Charge yourself with light and propel the Templar forward, damaging anything in his path. You can end this attack with a shockwave that launches enemies into the air.
Defensive: - Attract: Shout a warcry that forces the enemy to focus their attention on the Templar. - Sacred Shield: Invoke an energy dome that protects everyone inside from enemy attacks while keeping enemy units from escaping from it.
Offensive: - Devastate: Attack with the sword so quickly that it damages anyone a short distance in front of the Templar - Light Strike: Launch a high range high speed light projectile
The Templar forms part of one of the most important units of the forces of light. The brotherhood of Templar has its potential in its great capacity of absorbing and mitigating enemy attacks.
The members of this company are selected and educated from their youth in order to achieve excellence and never falter in combat. Their shield and armor are their best bet in combat, providing them a great defensive potential.
The use of skills both augmented and imbued by the power of light help minimize casualties and allows those surrounding the Templar to focus on the battle at hand and to be able to fight with ferocity.
In short, a Templar is a hand to hand tank who blocks and slows down the enemy advance, allowing his allies to achieve victory easily.
Specifications:
Faction: Light Archetype: Knight Function: Tank Main weapon: One handed longsword Secondary weapon: Combat Shield Life: 4000 points Main attack: Sword strike, double combo if held down Secondary attack: Shield block
SKILLS
Utility: - Shield Strike: Strike an enemy with your shield and incapacitate them for a short period of time. - Stampede: Charge yourself with light and propel the Templar forward, damaging anything in his path. You can end this attack with a shockwave that launches enemies into the air.
Defensive: - Attract: Shout a warcry that forces the enemy to focus their attention on the Templar. - Sacred Shield: Invoke an energy dome that protects everyone inside from enemy attacks while keeping enemy units from escaping from it.
Offensive: - Devastate: Attack with the sword so quickly that it damages anyone a short distance in front of the Templar - Light Strike: Launch a high range high speed light projectile
This week, we've added a basic functional builder to our internal testbuild! We've made a short video to show you how they work:
https://youtu.be/6bIVUv1_xf0 We still have to make them more user friendly and we want to add a couple of new features to them. You should be able to choose between letting the builders only place blocks where there are none, and letting them replace existing blocks. We'd also like to add a drop-down menu where you can choose certan presets like "walls only", pyramids and spheres.
Counting monsters
When we added monsters to the game, many years ago, we wanted players to be assaulted by a continuous stream of monsters during the night. That's why we added a "monster limit" that the game always tries to reach. When you had 10 colonists, roughly 20 monsters would be alive all the time. When the sun rose, all the monsters died.
After releasing the game, many players figured out that they could build a maze big enough to keep the monsters occupied all night. This way, their colonies didn't even need guards. In response, we removed the "dead at sunrise" vulnerability from the monsters. To make sure the monster assault would end near sunrise, the game now stops spawning monsters a couple of minutes before sunrise.
This works pretty well in most situations. But in the current version of the game, you can significantly expand the "safe zone" and get pretty close to the monster spawn area. Because the game always tries to spawn the maximum amount of monsters simultaneously, killing monsters close to their spawn zone during the first half of the night is pretty counterproductive. You waste ammo and the monster immediately respawns. We weren't sure how big the effect was, so we've tested two different colonies and counted the amount of monsters that attacks them.
The first colony is a physically small colony. Monsters have to walk a while before they're there, and have to enter a building where they are shot by musket guards. The second colony is large. Rows of musket guards guard the edge of the safe zone and shoot at monsters as they spawn. We've compared the amount of monsters that assaults those colonies to a theoretical minimum where the spawned monsters never respawn. You can see the results in the graph below:
As you can see, there are huge differences between the colonies. And that doesn't make sense. Places with many colonists should attract more monsters, but a colony shouldn't attract more or less monsters because of the precise way their guards are placed or the shape of their maze.
There is a relatively simple patch for this problem: spawn a fixed amount of monsters per colonist. We believe this is a lot fairer than the current situation. We expect to fix this as well in 0.6.0!
Ports
Last week, 5viki asked us if we could say something about a Nintendo Switch port in the next Friday Blog. We think this is a good moment to say something about ports in general.
The Linux port was relatively easy, and we hope porting the game to Mac will be similar. It's something we definitely want to do - but there are lots of thing we definitely want to do ;)
Porting the game to consoles is going to be harder. We'll need to add controller support, which takes time. Colony Survival uses Steam for a lot of things (like the server browser) and that will have to be replaced with whatever is used on consoles. We'll need to get development kits.
So we expect this process to take at least multiple months. During these months, development on PC will cease completely. And after releasing the console ports, updating the game will be significantly harder, because every update will have to be released on many platforms.
Finally, we have to consider (press) attention. Full releases get attention, updates a lot less. We'd like to attract new attention to Colony Survival when the game is complete, and releasing console versions is a good method to ensure this. We don't want to draw attention to the beta version just to be ignored when the game is finally finished.
We certainly want to release console ports. Preferably on PS3 / PS4 / Xbox 360/ Xbox One / Nintendo Switch and more. But for the many reasons described above, it's not a priority now. We expect to work on console ports in 2019. Mac port will hopefully come sooner!
The 'small colony' from the monster counting test above
Tower Defense & Missile Controversy
Last week's blog received multiple comments regarding missiles. They would be "out of place" and "too modern". We didn't understand at first. When we wrote "poison missiles", we were thinking of poisonous blowpipe darts.
We soon learned that the word "missiles" generally means "guided rockets". Oops! We probably should have used the word "projectiles". We're not planning to add modern self-propelled guided missiles to the game. We don't want to add weapons that are significantly more modern than the muskets that are currently in the game.
Others warned us not to turn the game into a Tower Defense game. We fully agree with them! Colony Survival never was and never intended to be a simple Tower Defense game. We just want to add some extra guards and more monsters with more depth than just "more damage" and "more health". That's why we're thinking of for example guards that can do area-of-effect damage or that can poison monsters.
Austria
I'm going to Austria tomorrow! That's why the Friday Blog was released earlier than during other weeks. I'll be a lot less active on Steam and Discord next week, but I'll certainly check the replies to this Friday Blog. Our programmer Zun will continue working and he'll be available as usual.
We would have loved to release the update before this short vacation, but we just aren't done yet. I'll return from Austria Sunday next week. We'll probably test the game and fix problems during the following week (March 12-16). We hope to be able to release 0.6.0 during the start of the week afterwards!
