Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

GSB update, new campaign maps, much easier

cliffski

A few weeks ago I selected a new padawan to do some map design for Gratuitous Space Battles. His name was Carsten Lensch and you are all about to see his work. Today marks release day for version 1.56 of GSB, which has some major campaign updates. Here is what’s new:

Firstly (and most obviously) there are new maps. Instead of the one, static map in the original release of Galactic Conquest, there are now 4, all hand-designed, so they have interesting setups and chokepoints. They play quiet differently. If you have played the basic map a few times and think you have your big strategy all worked out, you will enjoy playing with the new ones.

Secondly, the campaign has been tweaked and adjusted heavily on the play-balance side to make it tons easier. If the game was unplayably hard for you before (even on the lowest of the 3 difficulty settings) you should definitely give the new version a try. Of course, you can still switch to high difficulty if you now find it a tad easy :D

Thirdly, a whole bunch of crash bugs and minor bugs have been tracked down and fixed. Anyone who found that the game would occasionally freeze at the end of a turn should find that squashed, there are some performance boosts and some rare crashes to desktop are fixed. Plus, all you people who had a problem clicking the buttons at the very top of the deployment screen should find that fixed too, plus the flickering of the titlebar now and then. HURRAH.

This update is all free, but for technical geeky reasons it can’t be entirely done as a new auto-patch. The game will get auto-patched to version 1.56, but to get the new campaign maps you need to either re-download the campaign installer, or run this patch:

Galactic Conquest Patch

Make sure you install it, like everything to the same folder as GSB, ignore any messages saying the folder exists, it should do :D. My next game will handle all this sort of stuff much better, it’s my #1 tech support issue (people installing the game in the wrong place).

Have fun!

7 thoughts on GSB update, new campaign maps, much easier

  1. Verrry nice!
    I got destroyed with my first three trys to play the campaign with some bad-ass ships jumping all over my helpless planets, without leaving any doubt that I could have done better- they were just too strong.

  2. Hi Cliff. If I have GSB from Steam (and assuming the auto-patch won’t work correctly still), should I

    1) wait for the patch to be pushed out, wipe local content, reinstall, or,

    2) wait for the patch to be pushed out, run your patch linked above?

  3. I’ll contact steam tomorrow, to ensure no last minute bugs surface first.
    The campaign patch is useless without the updated main game, so you might as well wait, they shouldn’t take long…

  5. Not a smooth update… However it is a very good update. Makes the game feel complete. I’m happy that the difficultly was adjusted, I had never won a campaign. I Love the smaller 20 world map.

    Thanks for you continued support of the product. I’m really impressed by how you stand behind your work.

  6. Hi! I’m a big fan of the game GSB and here is some feedback regarding the Galactic Conquest expansion.

    Gratuitous Bugs (probably before the patch, I don’t know):

    • Every time I tried to repair a couple of captured Frigates in a Repair Station, I got CTDs.
    • When loading a campaign after deleting ships designs, I got “There were problems encountered loading data for this campaign game. Sorry!”
    • I got a CTD after a battle, when capturing several user-made ships (Frigates, I guess).

    Gratuitous Suggestions:

    • To make an 8x speed.
    • To make an auto-resolve battle option – just jump you to the end of the battle.
    • I loved the new Campaign feature (spent several hours playing it), but it could be improved by added “real” AI opponents that build fleets based on their owned resources. Right now, it looks like random fleets attacking in regular intervals, with no strategy. Sometimes you just step to a “gratuitous” 56k fleet that will destroy everything you took hours to build.
    • Other Campaign improvements:
    o To be able to build-up and improve planets’ buildings.
    o Is there a real benefit for retreating?
    o To add a way to recon the enemy fleet before attacking. I just send 1 fighter to battle first, but that doesn’t seems like an elegant solution.
    • You can consider adding true multiplayer in the next expansion. It would fit nicely in the Campaign.

  7. o Is there a real benefit for retreating?

    Sure, you get to keep your ships and their crew. Saving Cruisers especially can be extremely valuable.

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