Game changes

Game changes can be suggested in the new features forum.

Recent changes are as follows:-

May 2008

Carrier Bay Scan

Ships carried now shows ship stats, Level Shields and sleeptick activated

LC & VR Scans Updated

LC and VR can now see Friendly pilots on sleep tick showing Zzzz on scans ( under construction will work soon)

February 2008

Stats checker

Bug fixes to stats checker, hypering in/out scanner screens and time to next tick during a frantic.

January 2008

Vac mode

Warning given before you de-activate vacation mode (at present this isn't available on WAP).

November 2007

Vac mode & sleep tick

Activating Vac mode now disables sleep tick and you cannot set sleep tick once vac mode is activated.

Special gates & high/low damage ticks

These have been changed around a bit to keep you guessing :)

September 2007

Anomalies

Suspended temporarily whilst they are changed from random to a pattern based system like the special gates.

Downtime

Downtime in excess of 2 full ticks will automatically result in all ships being returned to their home base.

WAP pickups

These are in but only a few have been coded and there is frequently an errant error message about you ship being destroyed :-p They'll get better over time!

Fighters

Slight improvement to fighter's dogfighting ability so that they are actually more effective in fighting than other ships.

Special gates & high low damage ticks

These have been changed around a bit to keep you guessing :)

June 2007

WAP respawning

Pilots can now choose a new ship via WAP if they die. They can also start the game via WAP.

WAP Carrier/Cruisers

Pilots can now pickup their cruisers or carriers via WAP. Usual rules apply regarding score necessary and valid home world etc.

Inactive accounts

Accounts that were never activated have been deleted (1000+ accounts were signed up but never clicked the email to join the game).

Database

We're working on some updates to fix a few bugs and generally improve the way the code works.

WAP pickups

Nearly there with these, they will be in for the beta.

WAP LC/VR Comms

You can now send a message to your LC/VR via WAP.

March 2007

Bombers

Bombers now receive fewer points for bombing planets. There is no change to the scoring system for bombers shooting other ships.

Reppers

Full reps no longer yield extra bonus points nor do they contribute towards a {V}. Reppers no longer receive extra bonus points for repping in roids.

Images

Almost all images (and some other TVS files) are now cacheable (they load faster on your computer).

Tara's Bar java client

The irc client has been updated to the latest version available. The java irc client now loads in a new window. This solves the problem of pressing the backspace button accidentally logging you out.

VC scans + cloaked ships

VC scans now correctly total the number of ships in each sector. Previously they included cloaked enemy ships.

Online star

An online star now appears next to your LC / VC (if they are online of course). The star also now appears on the vote for an LC page and the elect VC page.

Deleted players

Deleted players no longer count towards the number of players reported in a sector for LC/VC scans.

Scans

Dead players no longer have access to incomming and outgoing scans.

Jan 2007

AAs

AAs now occur at random, not just on the OR.

June 2006

Sleep tick

You can now designate one tick per day as your sleep tick. During this tick you cannot be attacked or repaired, allowing you get a good night's sleep without worrying too much about your ship. However, during your sleep tick you cannot make any moves. Sleep ticks reoccur at the same time every day once chosen. Please note this feature is still being finalised so you use at your own risk. In particular, your sleep tick cycle cannot be altered, turned off or cancelled atm, so you may wish to wait until a few days into the beta when this might be possible.

Hypering

It now costs 3 moves to hyper from one sector to another (previously 5 moves).

Taunt page

By popular request, a link has been added on the taunt page to the big list of taunts in the manual. Idea courtesy of Phoenix42

Legion assignation

Only players who have moved in the last 16 ticks now count as active for the purpose of deciding legion assignation of new players (previously 40 ticks). Idea courtesy of Xin

Base destructions + vac mode

Base destructions (either through SDs, attacks or pickup attacks) will no longer damage people in vac modes.

Base destructions + invulnerability

Base destructions (either through SDs, attacks or pickup attacks) will no longer damage people who are invulnerable.

PDS etc + invulnerability

Invulnerable players should no longer experience damage when attacking or at eot.

LC elections

The campaign length for LC elections has been halved from 16 to 8 ticks. Idea courtesy of TheCount

Shorter WAP address

Firstly the old address still works!!! But if you are using a phone where you don't have TVS stored as a bookmark, the following should be a quicker url to type in http://tvsgames.com/wap/

Repair page

Fixed bug meaning you got logged out if you tried to repair when your target had just left the sector, died etc.

March 2006

Pickups

Three new pickups have been introduced to the game:-

• Cloak pickup
• Points loss pickup
• Extra move

Sent messages page

• Message subject now included on sent items page.
• Messages sent to enemy LCs now shown on sent items page.
• An ability to delete messages sent to enemy LCs introduced.

Squad pages

• You can now click a squad to see its members before you join.
• Members page shows the tick the pilot last moved.

Taunt system

• There is a master list of all the taunts with numbers assigned to them in the manual
• There is a taunt number box on the taunts page, so if you know the number of your favourite taunt, you can enter it here, without having to keep loading the taunt page

Scrap

The scrap limit has been doubled to 5000.

Bombers

Bombers are now awarded points for bombing based on the damage they inflict. This change has been designed to be score neutral for a "Galactic Bomber Alpha" with a 50-50 split of combat/piloting skill. This means that someone piloting a Galactic Bomber Alpha will score on average (100*current level) points per shot. Bombers will score above or below this average depending on their combat skill. This change is likely to be temporary and a better scoring system introduced for bombers in the future.

Veteran tag {V}

The {V} has been amended to make it easier for a combat ship to be awarded a {V}. This is to address the present imbalance between reppers and combat ships. This change is also likely to be temporary until a better system is introduced.

Cloakers

Combat bonus points for cloakers have been halved. This puts them on a par with bombers rather than fighters, and is a move towards fighters becoming a more attractive ship choice.

Vacation mode

In previous games the vacation mode button didn't appear until after Tick 40. This has now been changed so that vacation mode can be activated after Tick 1.

Rapid firing

There is now a restriction in place to limit the ability to "rapid fire" by clicking the attack button multiple times in quick succession. Note that this is only a small restriction to reduce the most effective rapid fire technique as attacks too close together can cause bugs. The less effective rapid fire methods have not been restricted atm.

Lag

Most of the games graphics are now being stored on my own personal server to help reduce TVS lag. The advatage is two fold:- 1) Less requests made to the TVS server / less of its bandwidth being used. 2) My server allows images to be cached so most times they will load instantly from your computer rather than have to be downloaded repeatedly for each page.

Reppers

Stats reduced to:-

• Shields 13 (-2)
• Speed 9 (-1)

There is NO reduction in the repairing ability of reppers as a result of this change and they are still the toughest ship in the game.

November 2005

Pilot descriptions

Finally got around to allowing some html tags in the pilot descriptions. The following tags are allowed:-

<b><a><br><p><center><h1><i><table><td><tr><th><font><style>

Let me know if you need any others but script, image and frame tags can't be put in unless anyone knows a secure way of doing allowing them?

Mirc tick reminder

Promised I'd release a simple tick reminder a while back to the people in taras. Hopefully someone will volunteer to improve it as i made it pretty basic just for my preferences only. See the Downloads/Extras sections

Stats checker

A version that is properly updated for the 'new' TVS domain is now in the downloads section.

Scrap limit

Increased to 2500

September 2005

Reppers

Now follow their manual stats. However, they no longer get bonus points for decoys and get fewer shield/speed points each time they level up (They get the same amount as all other ships get now (+5)). The effect is instead of being really weak and jumping up in strength when they become cruisers, they now start stronger than other ships and the jump to a carrier is smaller.

Main page

Some help question mark thing to tell new people why the login is disabled

Manual and FAQ

The new manual is completed as far as i can be ar$3d to do it. Primarily because i will be afk for a few months starting friday. We now have 60 FAQ questions Thanks to all that helped with both of them.

August 2005

WAP

Following wakko and Vermilians conributions to the WAP manual, incoming and outgoing scans are now available on WAP. There are also unlimited scan pages, meaning if the LC wants you fire on the 100th target then u can if u really want to

Wingee's really annoying banner

The ticker now refreshes and checks for new comms without refreshing that giant banner each time. Lots of thanks to eyecontact who helped with that.

Some other minor image change stuff thats not worth posting about in detail too.

July 2005

• pilot descriptions improved a bit. My favourite so far is parabola's

• Probably a bit obvious since you must have seen the red writing, sticky threads now available

May 2005

• VC can now elect a replacement VC

January 2005

• Scan towers removed. Scans are now linked to home bases - if your base is in the red, you don't have LC scans.

• LC Scans are no longer universal. They can now see only sectors containing a friendly ship (including cloaked ships and decoys).

• Base regeneration has been re-instituted at a reduced rate. Bases will regenerate at 500 hp per turn per sector dominated (200 for frantics)

• Bombers now get bonuses for ship to ship combat. These will be 50% of the fighter bonuses.

• Atmospheric Anomalies have been removed from the outer ring.

August 2004

• Homeworld and Scan Tower regen has been reduced to 0 and repairships may no longer repair them.

• Scrap dumped on a base or ST will now increase the current HP as well as the maximum - this is now intended as the only means of repairing a base.

• Long range comms are now only lost when a legion's homeworld is destroyed altogether

• Scan towers have been returned to the Outer Ring and their hitpoints have been further reduced

• Repairship scrap limits have been increased to 2000

• The buttons on the comms screen should now be Mozilla/Firefox compatible

• Both friendly and enemy scans will now be available to all pilots on WAP

May 2004

• Decreased Fighter bonusses in own homeworlds to fight stalemate situations,

• Scan Towers are now located in homeworld sectors with lowered hitpoints.

• Viceroy can now change Legion News and message squadrons.

• Changes done for squadrons: max. 10 members, squad leader can kick pilots out, LC can appoint the leaders.

March 2002

• When logging in for a new game, you will be assigned a new team as soon as you login, so the 'hack/expoit' for choosing your legion will be prevented.

• TVS Alarm - a little application that sits in your taskbar and pops up to let you know if you're being attacked, or when a new turn has started. Need to do a bit of testing on this once the game us up and running so probably a week in before this is actually available.

• Current Legion statistics - a new page which displays two tables. 1 shows a total of the CURRENT pilot scores. The other shows the number of ships of each level, each legion has.

October 2001

• Ships in New Sector Alpha will be faced with the same atmospheric effects as The Asteroid Field. Each attack and each turn a pilot is in New Sector Alpha they will take damage from the Manezium rocks. The amount of scrap found in New Sector Alpha will also be much higher than previous games.

• Increased attack damage effects in Outer Ring sectors will only be present in Outer Ring Sectors neighbouring base sectors. ie Star City, Durius Highlands, Mattas Head and The Tibran Mining Colony.

• A new pickup will become available - 'Explosive Decoy'. These are similar to regular decoys, except when an enemy ship destroys your Explosive Decoy ship they will take damage.

• Atmospheric Anomalies affect the Outer Ring sectors at random. I will not go into the effects of this - you will have to find out for yourselves.

• Sector domination bonus points will only be issued to ships dominating sectors neighbouring enemy bases (no longer any Outer Ring sector). Points will be distributed as follows:

Ship level	Sector bonus per turn
1 2 3 4 5	25 25 50 50 75