Neveron Update Archive
2002 Updates
Combat Changes
Weapon Damage- We have finally corrected the problem of mech and vehicle MGs and flamers not doing
correct damage vs infantry. Both these weapon types now do 2d6+2 (4-14) against all types of infantry,
double if the target is in the open (not under cover of woods or rough terrain). We have also made some
other damage changes:
All small, medium, and large lasers now do 1 point of damage vs infantry units (doubled in the open)
PPCs do 2 points vs infantry (doubled in the open)
SRMs and LRMs do DOUBLE damage vs infantry and QUADRUPLE if they are in the open
Autocannons now do HALF damage against infantry (normal damage in the open)
We believe these are realistic interpretations of the type of damage these weapons would do, and will add
an excellent new twist to fighting with and against infantry units.
The line-of-sight (LOS) bug has been fixed. If you can see your opponent, he can now see you, in all cases.
While reworking LOS calculations, I added partial cover rules. Note that fallen or prone Mechs
are still incorrectly treated as 2 levels high when calculating LOS both to and from the unit; dropping
prone behind a hill will not currently protect you. Partial cover can be obtained
by intervening hexes blocking LOS to the bottom half of your unit from the enemy. Not that it is easily
possible to have partial cover from an enemy, while he does not have partial cover from you.
Partial cover affords a +3 to hit penalty. Additionally, Mechs cannot be hit in the legs when they
have partial cover. This drastically increases the chances of a head hit, so while you won't be hit
as often when you are it may be more deadly - use it wisely. Note that infantry are not
affected by the +3 to hit. They can shoot a target with partial cover
equally well as without. Finally, AI attacks and attack processing
code has been slightly streamlined for faster battles, particularly with many AI units.
Arena Changes
Several bugs, abusive behaviors, and game balance issues have been addressed by a change in arena
architecture and function. There are no longer two classifications of arenas; all arenas will
function identically. These new arenas are be virtually identical to the previous dueling arenas.
All new empires, will receive up to
a $50,000 per NevDay income subsidy from the NGC. This income replaces the often-criticized existing
"free income" of A1 arenas that are not attackable. There are no auto claiming arenas.
INCOME: All empires now receive $50,000 per NevDay minus half their income as a bonus
to subsidize small empires and provide income to replace arena losses. For example, a new empire
with no daily income will receive $50,000 per NevDay. An empire with $40,000 per NevDay income
will receive an additional $30,000 per NevDay. An empire with daily income of $100,000 or more
will receive no subsidy.
ARENAS: The old arenas have been removed.
NEW ARENA CHANGES:
There is no longer a minimum BV for arena creation.
Arena size is now selectable.
Arena terrain is now selectable
Rep restrictions have been removed
Base prize values are fixed for each type of defending unit(s)
Donation Mechs and vehicles are now valued properly in arenas
The attacker may once again bring up to 110% of the defending BV (raised from 105%)
Challenge arenas have been added. These are no-fee no-prize arenas which you may retreat from
???? arenas are re-opened to the public after 24 hours if nobody has won
Star League Caches
Several caches of equipment and operable buildings ranging from small commercial zones to full mech
production factories and level 6 repair facilities have been introduced in random zones on the
continent. Within 72 hours of claiming a cache zone, you will be notified of anything found. The odds
of discovering a cache in a zone are approximately 1 in 6000.
Mobilization and Costs of War
War costs have been changed dramatically with the end result of making it more expensive to
eliminate another player, but much cheaper and easier to attack and take enemy zones. The changes
all revolve around a new concept called mobilization. From now on, you can only attack a zone
with units which are mobilized. Its simple: if a unit is not mobilized it will not appear in the list
of selectable units when preparing an attack on an adjacent enemy zone. Likewise, a lance, company,
or battalion which contains any units which are not mobilized will not be able to attack.
These changes only affect land war! You may still enter arenas and duel without mobilizing!
How to Mobilize
To mobilize an individual unit, click the name of the unit from the Units page or My People page.
If you have the proper authority to mobilize this unit a button will appear near the top right corner
of the page. Clicking this will mobilize the unit in question. IMPORTANT: once mobilized
a unit cannot be demobilized for 30 NDays! The cost of mobilizing a unit is clearly
displayed across from the mobilization button. You can also mobilize lances, companies, or
battalions all at once by going to the Summary tab of the appropriate page. There, if you
have authority, you can click the circle to the left in the sel or "select" column, and then
clicking the mobilization button at the top of the page. Units are demobilized in exactly the
same manner, from all the same places. Just remember, you can't demobilize for at least 30 NDays
(thats 3 real days) from the time of mobilization.
Costs of Mobilization
The total costs of maintaining all the units you currently have mobilized is displayed in two places.
First, it can be seen in the Wars tab of the Alliances & Wars page. Second, it is displayed
as an expense on the Land tab of the Land and Buildings page, where your empire income statement
is shown. These expenses are automatically deducted from empire funds every NevDay. If for any reason
your cash on hand drops below $0, all units will be automatically demobilized. In addition
any wars you have declared will be automatically cancelled if your cash on hand drops below $0.
Costs of War
As always, war is declared by clicking an enemy zone from the map (follow the Map link) and clicking
the Declare War button. In most cases the cost to declare war has dropped or remained the same.
Additionally, the "daily war cost" is gone. A state of war may now be maintained for free, for as long
as you like. A list of all empires you are at war with, as well as all empires who are at war with
you, may be viewed on the Wars tab of the Alliances & Wars page, which is where wars
are cancelled as well. Attacking zones of enemy empires which you have declared war upon is still free.
Additionally: attacking a zone of an empire which you have not declared war on, but
who has declared war on you is now also free!
However these cost reductions are more than offset in most cases by the mobilization costs, for when you
declare war, your entire military is instantly mobilized! because of the minimum 30 NevDay
mobilization time for each unit, declaring war is a very costly proposition by the time you're through.
In fact, most empires cannot afford to declare war and maintain that state for 30 NDays, which is
completely intentional. Instead, you are encouraged to attack your enemies by simply mobilizing a small
force, because the fewer units you mobilize, the cheaper it will be for you to maintain a mobilized state.
If you wish to attack a adjacent enemy zone without declaring war simply click the zone on the map,
then click attack zone. Once you create terrain, the cost of attacking that single zone will be
listed along with a list of all adjacent, mobilized units under your command. Select a force to attack
with and click the button. If you have enough money available it will be deducted and the attack
will begin immediately with the selected unit(s), just as before. The costs to attack a single
zone have been drastically reduced. This is to encourage neighborly attacks. Empires should
expect to be in a constant state of fighting with bordering empires. These cost changes make it
extremely difficult to eliminate an empire unless you have tremendous amounts of saved cash, yet
make it cheap and simple to conquer a few zones and cities here and there.
More on Repairs and Stuff
You need to have techs hired if you own a repair facilities and you want repairs to be done there.
You also must have repair materials on hand in the repair zone. You must have a skill 5 tech hired (at LEAST
one per repair zone) to repair mech IS, skill 6 for mech armor or vehicle IS, and skill 7 for vehicle IS.
Tech hiring is checked once per NevDay. If your offering price is not above other unfilled contracts,
you will not hire any techs. When techs are hired, you will receive a message stating that fact.
Large performance draining portions of code and processes were reworked to increase game performance. Large
amounts of deadlock combined with an increase in battles was making Neveron lag like a State of the Union Address
(as if you didn't notice). End result has been at least a 50% increase in server performance. More of this to
follow when we hook up a 2nd server next week.
Vehicle tables have been added to both the Beginner's guide and the Arena Help pages. Thank you to Dante
for his excellent work on these. The help files are being updated greatly this week. New players especially
should check these out for help in combat and other aspects of the game.
1/16/02
Cheaters - A player was banned and had all their empires deleted for repeatedly cheating. They were given
clear instructions to e-mail me before I deleted them, but they persisted in their cheating from another location
instead. There will soon be clearly printed rules about what is cheating and what is not, but I will outline the
generally known and accepted rules here and on the admin page for the time being.
If you control more than 1 empire, these empires MAY NOT interact with each other in any financial manner.
They may not buy or sell goods to one another, nor may they transfer money to one another. The exception to
this is outposts.
Outposts are extensions of an empire clearly marked by name. For example, the parent empire Star League has 2
outposts, Star League Outpost I and Star League Mercenaries. Star League MAY transfer money (and only money) to these
other outpost but the outposts MAY NOT transfer money to the parent empire. This is to prevent people from creating
100 empires called outposts and transferring money to the parent empire as a way of getting free money. This includes 3rd
party money transfers!! You may NOT transfer money from an outpost to someone else's empire and then to your main empire!!
Outposts MAY have alliances with each other but MAY NOT buy or sell vehicles/parts/weapons from each other.
You MAY attack an empire you own with another empire you control in land war, but you MAY NOT attack one of your
own arenas.
Any method of achieving these goals by circumventing the obvious is still considered cheating. YOU MAY BE DELETED
OR BANNED WITHOUT WARNING IF YOU BREAK THESE RULES!! I do not like enforcing rules, but cheaters ruin the game for
others. I have little tolerance for cheaters as they repeatedly consume hours of my day hunting them instead of developing
the game. PLEASE DO NOT CHEAT! The game is challenging and difficult, so when you succeed the rewards will taste
that much sweeter.
This will be posted on the Admin page for future viewing. Thank you, and if you suspect an empire
of cheating, or are unsure if something you want to do is cheating, please e-mail info@neveron.com [no longer valid]
Thank you to all our
hard working and honest players who strive to have fun and build their empires by earning it.
Arena payouts fixed. Payouts where the loser gets a portion of the money wasn't always working properly.
This should work correctly now, but note that the payout happens AFTER the arena claims (not when the loser gets
kicked out of battle) and the money goes straight to the empire funds. This means you will
need to really pay attention to see your prize added if it is a small amount.
1/17/02
Created a new Tournaments page devoted to the art of sponsoring and entering a tournament. All tournament
related inquiries can be mailed to NGC@neveron.com [no longer valid]...check out this new page for info on hosting your own
tourney!
After several days of performance tweaking that resulted in mild performance increases the whole thing
suddenly came crashing down upon us. Nev was down for a while today as we fixed the problems and lo and
behold!!! Neveron is running better than ever!! W00t w00t!! Kudos to Randy for these blessedly unburdened
processors.
The first hip actuator hit the market today as a test run by Randy. Congratulations to The Xenocide
for snatching it up! Every day we take a smaller step closer to complete critical implementation and
repair. Good things come to those who wait...
1/21/02
Fixed a bug where infantry were not being affected by woods to hit modifiers.
Became hyper aware of bug that messes with infantry LOS regarding buildings and
trees. Looking into it further.
Added button to vehicle units pages that will allow gunner and driver to trade places
thus making vehicles a little more practical. (You're welcome.)
01/24/02
Jeeps now have their weapons mounted in turrets. This comes at the expense of some ammo, and
redistributing the armor to cover the turret (thus reducing it in other location). Existing jeeps
will not be affected - they will remain turret less with front-mounted weapons. This change affects
new jeeps only.
Moving units between zones which you have claimed, but to which you do not have a claimed path
now cost $5,000,000 per unit. Please read all the details on the Map page.
The cost of claiming a neutral zone non-adjacent zone has been reduced to $25,000,000. This is
1/10th the previous cost.
Vehicle movement critical hit repairs are now possible. You will need level 1 - 4 repair facilities
depending on the damage, and skill 4 - 7 techs. Plus, of course, the appropriate parts
must be on hand in the repair zone.
Mech actuator repairs are now possible. You will need level 3 or 4 repair facilities
depending on the actuator, and skill 3 or 4 techs. Plus, of course, the appropriate actuators
must be on hand in the repair zone.
The Gauss Rifle is being changed to a self-propelled anti-mech missile. They will
have a minimum range of 2, and get a -2 bonus to hit. Units lucky enough to have a SPAMM launcher
will find their equipment modified soon. The BV of these units will be updated as well.
01/25/02
The Arena Help files have been almost completed. Players are urged to look through them for answers to
their questions about arenas, arena combat, arena prizes and repairing units. There will also be some tactics advice
printed there soon. Anyone who finds typos or has some ideas for the Arena Help should write to Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]
A new link has been added to the Communications page called Tips.
This new link will allow people to sign up for a mail subscription service that sends them free tips on how to
play Neveron. This will be of particular help to newbies, but anyone who needs some advice on land war, their
economy, empire building, and new features should sign up. There are some ads during the sign up process but the
mail subscription is mail free.
The direction of attack in land war has been fixed. If you attack from a zone to the south, you enter
along the south edge of the map, etc..
The bug making vehicles and Mechs not move during most land war fights has been fixed. All units will
now move in a land war if they are on autopilot. This has added significant lag to the servers which
will be addressed this week.
01/28/02
You may now cancel training. Click on the training unit and the "cancel training" button will
be on the top of the unit page.
Fixed another bug: some zones were still set to having a civilian population even after all
buildings were deleted or destroyed. This was seriously skewing income as well as commuting in
affected empires. As a result, some empires have drastically altered income or employment rates.
Please check your empire -- if it was wrong before, it is now correct.
Fixed the bug which starts units facing "0" in their first combat. That bug often meant that
you could not move until setting a facing first, which meant losing one or more turns before you
figured it out. Now all Mechs and vehicles when created/bought are set to facing "north" and can
move from there without needing to waste a turn setting facing.
Fixed the "BV bug" where all units were set to the BV of skill 4 units. Note that the bug which
resets units to skill 8 on occasion has not been fixed yet, though it usually self-fixes in a few NDays.
Fixed "phantom crits" on Mechs .. those crits that are not listed on the unit's page. I also fixed
them from recurring.
Units will no longer demobilize when you run out of money. This means your empire can deficit
spend to a degree when fighting wars.
01/29/02
All medium Mechs now have 4 internal structure points in their heads. Heavy Mechs
now have 5, and assault Mechs 6. Light Mechs remain unchanged with 3 internal structure points
in the head.
Cities in other empires now show as red circles on the level 1 map. They will not show
on other levels of the map.
When you conquer an enemy zone, you now also conquer any unassigned vehicles that were stored
in that zone, in addition to whatever spare parts are available.
Note that when you move units in a lance, company or battalion formation they
pull in ALL the units in that formation, no matter where they are. This means that if
a formation is split between different zones, all the units get moved to the new zone.
If some of these units need to be drop-shipped in to make this happen, you will be charged
the $5 million per unit that is moved. We will be changing this very soon so that only
the units present in the zone you are moving from will be moved. This will prevent
accidental drop-ship charges.
Fixed yet another repair bug which was preventing units from being sent to
repair facilities at all when it had two or more identical movement critical hits.
Fixed two distinct repair bugs, both of which were causing page errors when you attempted to view
(and thus repair) units which had been sent to repair facilities.
Fixed a bug which was preventing units in rare cases from moving to far away zones.
Added a message to notify you when your long-distance move failed because of proximity to
enemy force concentrations.
01/30/02
A system has been coded that will allow our Assistant Admin Dante to enter people into
tournaments. This will provide much greater flexibility for both the admins and the
players and will hopefully result in many more tournaments, particularly for 'off
hours' players.
All heavy and assault Mechs have had one point of armor moved from their CT to their H. This
may not seem like much, but 10 points of armor can withstand a PPC or AC10 hit, 2 ML, or 2 LRM groups
wheres with only 9 you would be checking for critical hits.
As you know, when you conquer a zone buildings are often destroyed. Now, when
research facilities are destroyed due to conquest, your victorious troops will pick through
the rubble and discover technology secrets! Every facility destroyed will add research points to
all technologies you are currently researching. The total amount of RP added will be equal to the
amount of RP the destroyed facility produced in one NYear-year.
War cost changes: when you declare war infantry is no longer
mobilized automatically!. This results in lower mobilization costs.
If you wish to use infantry to attack you can still, of course,
mobilize them from the unit/lance/company/battalions pages.
Several movement changes including:
The cost of moving units by airlift has been reduced to $2 million per unit, down
from $5 million.
Units moved as a group will no longer pull units from multiple zones. That
is, if your battalion has only 13 units in the current zone, and you move the battalion, only those
13 units would be moved. This also affects BV calculations for determining how close to enemy force
concentrations you may drop.
The time it takes to move lances, companies, and battalions has been
significantly reduced.
Overall sever lag and amount of deadlock was severely improved by eliminating
the need to calculate a path for every unit moved, since they are now moved as one group from
source zone to destination zone.
01/31/02
Fixed a bug whereby units in arenas were recognized as being in battle for land war
purposes, thus enabling players to effectively block attackers from taking zones by placing
units into arenas. It is no longer possible to do this.
When all the internal structure in a given location is destroyed on a mech, all weapons in that
location are now also destroyed.
If a Mechs leg is reduced to 0 internal structure, the Mechs movement rate is reduced to 0/0. All
piloting checks are then at +5. The mech also must immediately make a piloting check (with the +5 modifier)
or fall down. If it does not fall down it may continue to rotate in place, and it has jump jets
it may still jump.
The Charger CGR-1A5 assault mech has been changed from 3/5 movement rate to 4/6.
Implemented weapon critical hits on Mechs. UNTESTED!
Neveron Arms Sales, Inc. (NASI) has been forced to cut down on shipments to Neveron due to the
continued collapse of the Star League. Reduced off-world production plants and general depletion
of available merchant jump-ships have forced NASI to concentrate on the lucrative mech market. As a
result several less popular and lower valued vehicles will no longer be carried by NASI. Thirty-one
vehicle types will still be shipped to Neveron, and local vehicle construction by the larger empires
will play a larger part in vehicle availability.
Its a new month, if you want to help Neveron grow you can attract players by voting for Neveron
at www.mpogd.com.
Fixed at least some of the occurrences of the double attack/heat phases which can occur when a mech
is destroyed.
2/1/02
Fixed a bug that had been prohibiting you from selling the last item of parts, general
from any given zone.
Fatal vehicle critical hits have been reduced by approximately 20-25%
Destroyed weapons can now be repaired at appropriate repair facilities if you have the proper
level techs, facilities, and parts on hand.
Fixed bugs concerning shipping general and movement parts from the Parts tab between zones.
2/2/02
Fixed a bug that gave errors sometimes when trying to view unit information in battle.
unconfirmed ... if you still get these errors send details to bugs@neveron.com [no longer valid].
Fixed a bug which caused the timer window in battle to crash under very rare cases involving
tracing LOS between units on the edges of a map.
Vehicles with 0/0 movement points (MP) available may no longer change facing.
Fixed a bug where zones with multiple repair facility levels were not displaying, and were
causing other low-level facilities to not display on the repair options page.
Motorized infantry that are computer-controlled are now subject to the same move modifiers
as player-controlled motorized infantry. That is, +1 MP to enter rough terrain, light woods, or
to change 1 level of elevation, and +2 MP to enter heavy woods or to change 2 levels of elevation.
Bug reports are often filed for later examination. If you reported a bug that is still occurring
a month or more after you first reported it, you may wish to report it again. Sometimes we'll chalk
a bug up to "random bad luck" with pages not loading if we can not reproduce it or easily explain it,
so sending the same bug report a month later or even the next day if the specifics have changed can
be worthwhile. Bug reports which are sent anywhere other than bugs@neveron.com [no longer valid], or that do not contain
your login name, will almost always be ignored. Please use the proper address and include your
login name, without which it is impossible to verify the problem and/or check that it is fixed.
Fixed the bug which resets unit skills to 8
Added an intermediate page for zone moves, explaining how zone moves are made, displaying pertinent
move information such as the number of affected units and the type and cost of the move, and asking
for confirmation between committing the move. If you have errors involving this page please email
them to me. If you lose money moving units when it says $0, send me your login name, zone moved to,
zone moved from, and the name of the unit or group you moved. If you send me all that info and I can
verify the problem I will fix the bug.
2/9/02
You'll notice a new value, Empire Morale, on your empire page. This reflects the patriotism of
your citizenry. This value will be affected by many factors in the future, and itself will influence
many factors. Initially, morale has the following effects:
- Positive Morale values will result in increased income from commercial buildings and
taxes. This reflects the nationalism of your populace in buying locally manufactured goods
and a willingness to pay higher taxes. A morale of 5.0 will result in 5% increased income
from commercial and tax income. A morale of 150 would reflect a 150% increase. There is no
limit on morale income benefits. A negative morale would reflect an income drop.
- Morale slowly reverts toward zero over time. Every NDay your morale will shift 0.2%
toward zero.
- Morale increases by destroying units in battle, or in arenas. It increases from conquering
zones in land war, and increases fairly dramatically from conquering enemy buildings/cities in
land war. Likewise, losing land or cities in war will decrease your morale, and losing units
will decrease morale. However the amount of morale gained from destroying units is 50% greater
than the morale lost from having a similar unit destroyed. Thus if you fight 10 duels with
similar units and win half, your morale will be significantly higher than when you started.
Morale can also be increased simply by claiming more land, though this effect is relatively
small compared to fighting or conquest.
- Empires with more units shift morale more slowly. While a startup empire might see large
morale jumps after a few arena victories or a small land conquest, large empires will need
to destroy more units or conquer more land and cities to see similar increases.
Maintenance fees have been proposed as well, to partially offset the income bonuses associated
with morale. Maintenance fees will be defined in Support Points (SP) per NMonth. One support point is
equal to $10,000. Infantry require 1/2/3 SP for foot/motorized/jump. Vehicles require tonnage/5 for hover,
tonnage/10 for wheeled, and tonnage/20 for tracked, or a tonnage/50 flat rate for noncommissioned
vehicles in your armoury. Mechs require tonnage/2 SP/NMonth.
View the proposed effects on your income from these possible future changes on the Land tab of
the Land & Buildings page. They appear on the bottom in small print. These numbers are not
affecting anything at the moment. They are informational only, and will guide us as we steer them
toward a balanced number which will not adversely affect income across Neveron as whole, but will
reward people for using their armies or conquering land.
You may also notice that military supply is higher. We correct a bug whereby military supply
costs were much lower than originally intended. We will monitor the effects of this
correction, and if the effects are detrimental to the game as a whole we will reconsider our intentions.
Please check out this statement about the current problem hanging over our
heads which is quickly accelerating and threatens to destabilize the entire game. We would be
happy to read proposed solutions emailed to Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]. Our goal is to make minor
changes such as the proposed income/morale adjustments which would reward empires for fighting
like-sized empires. If such conflict were commonplace there will be no need to take steps to
concretely limit empire growth or income which we desperately want to avoid. With any luck
we can continue a policy of instituting new rewards for empires who fit into a dynamic model for
future war/growth without resorting to penalizing those empires who pursue as has been
most profitable a course of unlimited and exponential growth.
You can disband infantry units if you are the emperor and the unit is home. In such cases
you will see a button for disbanding the unit appear on the unit's page. Disbanding units
refunds $10,000 per man (as the men disappear) and their weapons appear in your armoury so that you
may sell them or reuse them.
2/10/02
Yes another change to morale and income adjustments, all part of the ongoing
process of seeking stability and sensibility. Despite the obvious nonsense of tying the empire's
morale inversely to the size of the army, there was potential for tremendous abuse in generating
significant morale and then disbanding/killing off your entire army and reaping billions of dollars
in morale bonuses. The new system equates morale inversely to population in place of number of units.
This makes more sense, as a huge nation will care less about a single arena victory/loss or minor
land skirmish. It doubly serves to solidify the morale increase for buying or creating units.
Zone movement has been patched. I say patched not fixed. There may well still be errors.
Movement of more than 10 zones will always be by LC at this point, so either move in
10-zone increments or pay the LC costs.
IMPORTANT Terrain is being moved to a new sever which is the first step in speeding
land war battles. During this migration process be prepared for many strange things to happen.
Battles may cease functioning, or terrain may appear/disappear at some point during the next couple days.
Once this change is complete, you will see improvement in land war performance. But the real
advantage is that is prepares us to move all computer-controlled unit actions onto the new server as
well. This will, once completed, result in spectacular war performance gains. This entire process
may take many days, so please be patient and understand that problems are expected to occur during
the transition period. At the end of this first stage, all created terrain will be removed from the
current server thus freeing massive amounts of space but meaning all zones will need to be recreated
before they can next be attacked.
Increased the timeout length to 2 minutes on the zone movement page. This is only a temporary
fix for enabling people to move units, as the page was timing out. At some point the page will
be rewritten to be more efficient.
Just because some people don't seem to believe that the changes positively affect most empires,
I thought I'd mention that 57.5% of empires are receiving more income than yesterday, while 42.5% are
receiving less.
Also, to keep everyone up to date, the projects that I am currently working on are eliminating
bugs concerning units moving between zones and reducing lag in battles. If you have concrete reproducible
bugs moving units/lances/companies/battalions please email me at randy@neveron.com [no longer valid]. You MUST
include your login name, unit (or group) name or better yet ID if you know how to find that, and which
zone you are trying to move to, and which zone you are trying to move from. This information will
be very useful in locating and fixing this bug. For lag reduction, I will be working to move critical
battle information onto another server to both increase war speed and prevent wars from lagging
the rest of the game.
The maintenance fees and morale income modifiers have taken effect. You will see the
figures correctly displayed on your Land tab of the Land & Buildings page. We will be monitoring
the effects this change has on the game extremely closely over the next few weeks and if adjustments
are needed to maintain (better yet increase!) the enjoyment of the game they will be made.
Engineering vehicles no longer count as units when it calculating average morale.
At the request of several players, morale now increases over time if your empire is not attacked,
thus rewarding to some degree peaceful growth as well as conquest. It should be noted that this morale boost
from peace is nowhere near as great as the morale boosts received from participating in
a war.
Morale now increases when you buy a new mech or commission/form a new vehicle/platoon. Morale
drops if you disband a platoon.
Due to rapid depletion of the natural resources on the planet Neveron, factory production has
dropped. All factory production has been slashed 50%.
Fixed the bug that was not charging to attack zones in a state of war. The cost to attack a zone
with a declared war (by them or by you) is 10% the standard zone attack costs.
2/11/02
All land war zone elevation and terrain information has been moved to the new server.
All land war computer-controlled unit moves are now processed on the new server as well. This
should prevent wars from lagging the rest of Neveron. They may still lag each other, but that problem
will be able to be addressed separately.
Reduced the refund per man to $5,000 when disbanding infantry units. The money you get back
represents the uniform, boots, overhead, etc. that you save by getting rid of the guy. The $5,000 that
you do not get back represents money you actually paid the guy to hire him.
2/12/02
Units in arena battles should no longer be appearing outside the borders of the map. I have not
been able to figure out how this occurs. Instead, if any units are outside the map they are simply
sent home.
You can now turn to face the edge of the map if you are in an edge hex.
Mechs destroyed by ammo explosion critical hits now award both reputation and morale to the unit
that fired the shot which caused the explosion.
2/16/02
An attempt was made at improving the troop movement system to no avail. The proper
method of calculating congruous transit lines is extremely slow and server intensive.
Please hang with us while we search for a practical solution to this problem.
2/17/02
Clarified Finance page to specify that transactions representing 85-90%
of the sender's funds will be denied. This rule has been in effect for months, just
never written anywhere.
Changed the Admin page to be a little more diverse and comprehensive. The
old Admin page can be found under the "Updates" tab of this new page (if you can read
this, you already found it). The rest of the pages will come together this week and
be an ongoing project.
2/18/02
Added a new help section to the Repair page. Check it out to clear up all
those questions about repairs you ever had. No, it doesn't tell you what is required
to build specific repair facilities, and there are some aspects that will be updated
in the coming weeks.
Fixed a bug that was both keeping people from accessing their units, and in some
cases, accessing their empires.
Added 1 gig of RAM to the web server to help server performance and possibly fix a
lot of the "out of memory" errors that have been cropping up lately.
2/19/02
There is a bug that happens nearly every time a battle is entered. You will be told
that the terrain generation had an error. Simply make one of the units in the battle
active an reenter the battle. This stems from a bug fix, and should be cleared up
by next week.
Added a "Hardware Wish List" to the Donate page. It lists hardware that we are
currently in need of. If you have, or can get, and item on the list and want to
donate it, we will trade you DP for it (typically for above market value). This is
an excellent way to get more bang for your buck on a donation. Note that for used
items we pay what it would cost for us to buy the specific item now, NOT what you
originally paid for it.
Disabled the "Resurrection" donation due to prolific bugs. These undead zombies
have been creating much havoc, running amok and stealing units from other empires, as
well as robbing empires of money. This function will be enabled when we find a more
competent necromancer.
The servers were down for about 8 hours last night due to a power outage.
2/20/02
Changed the Marketplace to open to a neutral page. People with slow connections
were having trouble loading the entire Infantry marketplace every time they wanted to
buy something else. This should speed things up for them significantly.
Fixed a bug that was preventing people from creating companies.
2/21/02
Updates Mech Marketplace to redirect back to the mech page. Now you can clean
light Mechs off the market faster than ever....
The pirate empire Butte Hold, once an admin controlled NPC empire, was deleted
several months ago. The new Butte Hold is a player-created, player-controlled empire
with no admin attachments.
2/22/02
Fixed a visual bug that made it appear that you were being charged 6 DP for
company skill and multiplier reductions. In reality people were only being charged
the normal 2, it simply looked wrong.
2/23/02
Fixed the company multiplier donations. It hasn't been working for the past couple
days (but no DP were lost to it).
Changed arenas to only be attackable by 5% more BV instead of 10%. This was
making a large difference in higher-BV arenas.
2/27/02
Battle icons fixed...they were messing up battle pretty badly for a time. There are
still some slight problems with them, and we will be working to get them fixed soon.
Battalions skill and multiplier donations are now fully operational. Cost is 6 DP
per use, per battalion. Note that as with the company donations benefits, all donations
affect the PERSON not the company/battalion. You can disband the company/battalion and
the effect will stay with the soldiers that the donation was applied to.
Added Morale Help to both the Empire page as well as the General Help files.
New icons will be phased in today.
Returned the Lance Orders page in battle to previous functionality by removing the
out of memory error. Note that lance orders are not always reliable!
Greatly reduced and perhaps eliminated the bug where upon buying a mech the pilot
may disappear or turn up in a unit belonging to a different empire.
Policy Change - We will now allow empire merging for a cost of 1000 DP. This
will allow the peaceful and seamless merger of 2 (and only 2) empires into 1. The cost
reflects the time it will take us to complete this bug free, as well as the fact that
we do not want this to be commonplace. To merge 2 empires please inquire at Help@neveron.com [no longer valid]
2/28/02
Changed the world maps. You can no longer look at the world map page source to determine where
and how many enemy units are present, or which types of buildings are in each zone.
The time it takes to download the world map pages has been reduced roughly fifty percent.
Unfortunately the time it takes to actually draw the map on your computer has been increased. Basically,
some of the work was shifted off our systems and on to yours. Level 1 and 2 maps will load faster
on all computers. If you have a fast computer and slow Internet connection you will notice much faster
level 3 loading as well. If you have a slow computer and fast Internet connection you may find the
level 3 map will take more time to load.
3/01/02
Its a new month! If you enjoy Neveron please vote at www.mpogd.com
The Total Annual Income listed on your Land page now properly reflects the morale adjustment
Dueling points are now lost when you lose duels
A total of $10,000,000,000 has been awarded to the top ten dueling empires.
Dueling Points have been zeroed
Over a dozen star league caches were awarded in zones claimed during February.
Bug fixed which had been preventing some vehicle factory caches zones from producing properly.
3/02/02
Untested double kill arenas should no longer auto-delete, so they'll stick around until
someone checks in on it which will trigger the 50/50 split.
If you are quick, you can now collect the prize in double kill arenas where you and your
opponent are both killed on the same round. Simply return to the arenas page and click on your
fight. You will be redirected to an updated arena list which no longer includes your arena, which
was closed. Return to the main page and you will see your prize. Prizes are split evenly between
both participants in a double-kill situation. If you do not collect your prize right away the empty arena
will be deleted and the prize lost forever.
Infantry units are now created with a base, skill 8, battle value (BV) instead of with a
BV of 0. Hopefully this will cut down significantly the number of BV=0 units in the game.
Added a button on the research completed page to validate the integrity of your
empire's research. The only commonly known event which this button will correct is when you
capture enemy cities which are researching a technology that you have not begun research on.
In this case, clicking the button will display the new research progress properly on your
research page.
Added a link on the bottom of the factories page to validate the integrity of the production
in the active zone. This is not the same as the research button, above. That checks the entire empire,
whereas production is zone-specific. Again the only common event triggering an inconsistency in
production data is when you capture enemy factories producing equipment you have not been producing.
The reason I have added these links and buttons instead of trying to institute a proper "fix" is that
for unknown reasons inconsistencies in the database can occasionally occur, likely due to page errors
when setting production or research. However these errors occur, the new button and link will allow
players to attempt to fix the problems themselves if they are struck. If you have factories not producing
as they should be, try the new link.
3/03/02
Fixed another minor combat bug where clicking your unit id in the friendly units list did
not display the data properly. Now, it works.
Fixed a minor bug where level 0 terrain and several unit icons were not showing in the data
window during battle.
Fixed the bug that takes the challengers money when an arena is cancelled after it is
attacked but before the battle actually starts.
3/04/02
Added weapon salvage for destroyed vehicles, same as Mechs (below).
Added weapon salvage for destroyed Mechs. Every undamaged weapon on a destroyed mech has a
twenty percent chance of becoming salvage. Note that there is currently a major problem with weapon
stockpiles in that they do not transfer to new empires upon zone conquest. Thus, you will only
gain weapon salvage of Mechs you lose in duels or Mechs that are lost in land war in a zone that you
already control. This is a known bug and will be fixed in due time.
Corrected a bug that was awarding double the displayed mech armor and internal structure as salvage
Fixed 17 Mechs with "phantom weapon crits" as described below. Many other Mechs may be so affected
but they are unfortunately unrepairable. If the same weapon is critt'd again in battle it will then
be repairable. Only Mechs with other listed crits as well as the phantom crits were not fixed.
Fixed a bug that was not always repairing mech weapons at repair facilities, even though
it said the weapons were fixed, sometimes they would still be listed as destroyed in the next
battle!. This has been corrected.
Corrected the unit skills of those Mechs, and others, which had been victim of pilot errors.
Corrected 105 Mechs which had been affected by the bug mentioned below, which has been corrected.
Fixed the bug that was not setting the new mech unit CO when the original pilot left by buying
a new mech unit for him/herself.
3/05/02
Vehicle units which have their turrets locked in battle now display that information, including
the direction of the lock, in the unit data window if you click the unit id from the appropriate
forces list.
Fixed a minor bug which caused an error page when trying to buy infantry weapons after someone
else bought them first. Now, it will simply kick you back to the marketplace.
Fixed a bug involving donations where if you got additional vehicles of the same type through
the donations page without first buying the original free vehicles, two free vehicle entries would
appear but buying one would cause both listed entries to decrement resulting in a loss of free
vehicles.
Fixed a bug that was causing all RT internals to sometimes disappear when a Mechs RA was
destroyed.
Fixed a bug that was making money disappear when transferring between people you control in
rare cases.
Limited the vehicle market to 10 entries per vehicle type.
3/07/02
Confirmation added when selling parts
It has become obvious that while BV is a very accurate measure of a units relative worth in
a duel, it fails to account properly for extreme movement. As a result, the UrbanMech has had a 5%
reduction in BV to make it more competitive, while the Mongoose has seen a 5% increase in BV for
the same reason. These Mechs represented the worst and best (respectively) dueling records for the
various mech types. Hopefully the BV changes will help equalize these models.
Added repair log details for everyone who has fixed units at your repair facilities,
including updated accurate measurements of repair part costs. Remember that is the part value
only, it is suggested that you charge empires many times the listed costs to reflect the value
of your techs and facilities.
3/08/02
Minimum arena size is now 10x10 hexes.
3/09/02
Resurrection is once again working properly.
3/10/02
The BattleMaster critical's were found to be inaccurate.
This is due to Dante's General Form of Aussie Incompetence and has been corrected.
(apologies to any Aussies not named Dante)
Well .. I can't be sure but I made some changes to attack processing which seems like it should
eliminate the double-fire and double-heat phases. Now after each attack is resolved the attack data
is deleted from the "Pending Attacks" table so if any error occurs, a reload (or retry) will pick up from
where the attacks left off, NOT from the beginning on the firing phase. It is conceivable that a
single weapon may still double fire but even if that happens only one weapon per broken
attack phase would be able to double-fire which is a very minor bug even if it does occur (which
is uncertain at this time).
Removed a bug which was causing severe combat errors when a unit was killed due to
an ammo explosion -- often resulting in double-fire phases or double-heat phases.
Unit maintenance costs have been increased 25%. This is because amount income, Neveron-wide,
generated by the morale bonuses was 52% greater than the amount lost through maintenance, and
still increasing daily. This maintenance adjustment is an effort to balance expenses with income.
Note that the net result of (morale income - maintenance costs) is still a very large increase, which
I see as balancing with the increased frequency of wars.
3/11/02
Units will no longer appear outside the borders of an arena. If they do, simply reload your
map and they will be moved to hex 1,1 in the upper left corner.
Drastically reduced the frequency of arenas in which more than one empire is allowed to attack.
If the attack is truly simultaneous this problem may still occur, but it should not be frequent
anymore.
Engineering Vehicles will no longer auto-mobilize when you declare war upon another empire.
Now Neveron checks for your longest-ranged weapon when listing targets in the Attack window. All
in-range enemy units will now show up in the list, even if some may be too difficult to hit or
not have LOS.
Changed the database structure to allow for the storing of additional mech critical hit information.
This will allow, among other things, a critical hit to destroy a single weapon in a location without
necessarily destroying all of them. If no new bugs arise because of this structure change I will try
to start working on the aforementioned weapon issue in a few days.
Increased the JED-LAS BV by 10% and reduced the DRL-1 BV by 10% in an effort to make them more
in line with other vehicle units
Fixed a bug which had several varied bad effects when trying to sell ammunition for the same
price at which you already had it on the market. This should no longer be problematic.
Fixed the bug that was occasionally not recognizing completed research, forcing you to begin
research on that item over again.
3/12/02
Mech repairs are enabled again. They were broken as a result of the changes I mentioned yesterday
preparing for weapon crit changes. Note that mech weapon repairs are still not working, but
all other mech repairs are, and the page even loads more quickly now as a little bonus.
I have found that it is much more efficient to process some Neveron calculations in a simple
stand-alone VB application which can be scheduled to run at various times throughout the day. The
first of these is the calculation of your empires Research Rank. Instead of being calculated
when you log in, it is now calculated at approximately 2:30 am (Arizona local time) when system
stress is at its lowest point. The benefits are obvious (less lag when you log in, and indeed less
lag when anyone logs in) and the only drawback is that your ranks are now only updated once
per day. I don't expect this will be a big deal for folks, but if it is let me know.
You will no longer receive messages when your players improve skills due to training or battle.
The largest single source of lag and deadlock in Neveron has been the training programming,
and the message generation accounted for approximately 50% of the training program's running time.
If removing the messages does not measurably help, they will be reinstated.
3/13/02
Now when a person disappears due to an incomplete mech purchase he will be returned within
24 hours, usually when you next log in. He will be returned in no unit, though often with the
money he had been given to make the purchase with.
Fixed an uncommon error that would give a vb-script pop up error when you selected your target
during an attack phase. Note that this was not preventing you from attacking, but was slightly
annoying nonetheless.
Corrected another bug related to the addition of two days ago to prepare for better crit coding.
This is always the way with new stuff, make a small change, spend a few days debugging. This one was
causing battles to lock up if a mech shut down due to high heat, and whatever related problems that
may have caused (such as multiple attack phases, perhaps?). Remember if your timer window dies and
you want to send a bug report about it there IS information in that window! you just need to
scroll down to find it. That info is vital to identifying and fixing the bug.
The speed of the login process, loading the main empire page, and as a result
all of Neveron has been dramatically increased.
The number of research jobs in your empire as displayed on the main page is also
now only updated once per day.
Population rank and income rank also updated to once per day.
BV rank is now also only calculated once per day. Soon, all ranks will be calculated once
per day with the probably exception of cash-on-hand, as that fluctuates most dramatically.
3/14/02
Bug fix: if you select a jumping move for your mech, then click remain stationary, you were being
charged 3 heat for the jump anyway. That has been corrected, remain stationary now always adds no heat.
A new walk-through has been added. Check it out under the help section if you're interested.
Fixed arena terrain generation. It wasn't always giving you what you wanted. Now, it does.
3/15/02
Changed infantry weapons stores substantially. They are no longer empire-specific, thus when you
capture enemy zones with infantry weapons you will immediately have access to those weapons.
Sped up the loading of the Land & Buildings page, just slightly but noticeable.
3/16/02
Critically hitting weapons on Mechs is now a little different. First, if you roll the exact same
crit location roll that was previously hit, no additional damage is done. That is, if there was
a medium laser in your right arm which is damaged by a critical hit, the next critical hit to the
same laser will do no additional damage, and in fact will not be displayed as a critical hit
on your battle readout. Not that some larger weapons have multiple critical hit locations because of
their bulk, and thus can be hit multiple times even though the first hit will render the weapon
inoperable. Secondly, if you have multiple energy weapons in the same location, and one is destroyed,
the others will still be operational. For example a single medium laser crit to a JVN-10Fs right torso
(which has two medium lasers in it) will only destroy one of those lasers now.
3/17/02
You can no longer run (Mechs) or move flank speed (vehicles) in the same movement phase that
you moved backward. You may still mix forward and backward movement in one phase but only at
your walk/cruise speed.
Fixed a bug that wasn't allowing empires with only 1 company to move their company
via the Companies page.
Added the ability for NBC bankers to let people know why their transactions were denied.
3/18/02
Physical Attacks are now possible! If you are in a mech, and at range in the same hex or adjacent
hex as your opponent, after selecting your weapons to fire you will see an additional menu where you
can select a physical attack. Help files on physical attacks will be forthcoming within a few days.
3/20/02
Fixed a display error on the empire income page. Empire income displayed and empire income
received is still not 100% accurate, though it is now much closer. The displayed values were too high.
Please realize that your actual income has not been changed at all, and the the displayed income should
be more accurate now.
Fixed the damage locations of physical attacks. In some cases they were incorrect, most noticeably
some punches from units in the same hex were hitting legs.
A physical attacks help file is up in the Arena Help files. You may also access it
by clicking on the Combat Help link during battle.
On a critically hit mech unit page, each crit will now only list once, even if it has been
hit multiple times.
3/21/02
To encourage the more exciting lance and company mech duels, the NGC has reduced the entrance
costs for high BV arenas. All arenas created with over 2000 BV have a 20% reduction to both creation
cost and attack cost, while the prize remains unchanged (i.e. very high!). Arenas created with over
5000 BV have had their costs reduced by 50% (again, with prize unchanged) and arenas created with over
10000 BV are now free to create and free to attack, with potentially well over $1 billion in prize
money for a mech company duel!
3/22/02
Hmmm, looks like I've been slacking doesn't it? Not so, I've fixed several small bugs that
haven't been worth mentioning, and made a few game-balance adjustments to several things such
as production times of weapons (decreased) and vehicles (increased). A new vehicle type was added
as well, the 55-ton Monash. And in case you never noticed, an 80 ton wheeled vehicle was also added
not too long ago, to give you all a reason for researching up to 80 ton wheeled vehicles movement
concept. There is also improved logging of which units fight and die in arenas, which will allow
me to monitor W-L records of the various vehicle and mech types and if needed adjust BV of some units
accordingly. It is my belief that a lance of light Mechs will generally be destroyed by a well-played
single heavy or assault mech which matches their BV. I will let you know what the results show -- I am
hoping that is not the case, I would like to encourage people to fight lance and company duels as they
are a lot more fun, so I need to ensure that the lance will generally have a very slight edge.
Building effects in battle have been revisited. You can now target buildings without error. Missed
shots at units in buildings will damage the building. Damage to any unit in a building is reduced by
a percentage equal to the the building CF (max 100%). The damage the building deflects from the target
unit is applied to the building. Infantry can enter or leave buildings with no penalty. Vehicles
can not enter a building under any circumstances [this will change in the future]. Mechs
can enter a building but with an added MP cost of 1, plus 1 more per 25 CF the building has. A mech
that attempts to enter or leave a building must make a successful piloting check, modified
for the buildings CF in the same manner as MP. Failure does not affect the move in any way but does
do damage to the mech equal to the Mechs tonnage/10. Regardless of the piloting check outcome, the
building will also take damage from the mech entrance equal to tonnage/10. Jumping over buildings
does not require a piloting check, but a jump which begins or ends in a building requires the check
and damages the building. Note that if you jump out of one building and into another you check twice,
once for each building. If you walk or run through a building you make two checks, one for entering
and one for leaving. The MP penalty applies when leaving buildings also. If you run through several
buildings you must make several checks.
3/26/02
Fixed sensor crits. There was a type in the code which was causing sensor crits to add more than +2
per crit to target numbers. This has been fixed.
Fixed a minor bug whereby zones were being listed as having buildings in them even though they did
not. This affected nothing other than the display on the zones page.
3/27/02
The donations page just got a heck of a lot faster to load for large empires.
On the donations page, it is now possible to click a button to show which zones you have
doubled, and when the doubling expires.
Fixed a number of bugs on the battalions page.
3/28/02
Fixed the arena cancelling refund. It will now be normally 90% - 100% of what you paid.
Added the option of donating to repair Mechs. Only when the Mechs are at home.
Fixed the fact that actuator repairs and ammo reloads were not showing on the repair history pages.
Corrected RP costs of some vehicles that were improper.
Sped up training calculations significantly which will reduce Neveron lag noticeably.
3/30/02
Changed marketplace to allow you to buy infantry weapons in ANY zone. Empires were having all
infra destroyed in land war but surviving. They then found themselves unable to build anything if
they had all their infantry killed.
4/1/02
The BV of several units has been adjusted, because they created unfair dueling situations. The
following unit types were too strong and have had their BV increased:
STK-3F
CGR-SB
FFL-4A
BNC-3M
IMP-2E
The following units were too weak and have had their BV decreased:
LCT-3V
HGN-733
UM=R60
VLK-QF
APC-W1
APC-T1
JEP-LRM
STRM-X
A new concept has been introduced, that of battle players (or BP). The idea behind BPs is
that they will allow other players to help you fight without needing to log in to your empire. Thus,
there is no security concerns as they cannot see any details of your empire. All they can do is help
you fight, and only in limited capacities. More help on this will become available soon but for
starters you should read the paragraph on your empire settings page (click your empire name from
the main page) and browse the pages in the new War Room section. While it is possible to prohibit
battle players from joining your empire there is absolutely no reason why you would want to do this.
The idea is that then can only help you. If you disallow battle players in your empire I would
appreciate an email to info@neveron.com [no longer valid] explaining why you made that choice so that I can address your
fears and if needed introduce more rules and restrictions to battle players, because I want this concept
to benefit everyone and harm no one.
4/4/02
Many many changes again. As you've no doubt noticed we have not been updating this page as regularly
any more. I'll try to touch on the highlights of the last few days.
First please go vote for Neveron at www.mpogd.com if you value Neveron. It is one of our
only sources for new players, which are needed for Neveron growth, and life.
Battle Players. Several changes have been made. First, you can no longer disallow battle players
in your empire. Before you get too worked up about this, lets consider the following additional
changes:
Battle Players can no longer participate in arena fights.
Arena battles are no longer viewable through the War Room.
Battle Players can no longer view information about the war zone.
Upon exiting a battle as a battle players, your empire will become active. This will prevent
various confusing situations whereby former battle players were unable to view certain aspects
of their own empires.
Introduced (for a few days) and then corrected a bug whereby characters with no unit associated
with them were unable to view various pages. This was primarily a problem for new players who do
not begin with units.
Removed enemy skill information from battle. You can no longer see your enemy BV or skills.
If you are a battle player, you can only see your own skills in battle, not the skills of
fellow friendly units. This prevents enemies from entering battle as a battle player to circumvent the
restriction on viewing skills and BV.
In battle, communications to friendly forces only will appear blue, communications from enemy
units are red, and communications from friendly units broadcast to both friendly and enemy
forces will appear as an ugly fuchsia. This was done primarily to allow you to determine whether a
friendly message was also broadcast to the enemy.
Unit IDs were removed from the battle map (they used to appear as white numbers under each icon).
They served no purpose but created tremendous lag in battles with several hundred units or more.
Perhaps ten or more sources of deadlock in battle were identified and eliminated. This has the effect
of both speeding battles significantly as well as reducing the number of timer-window errors which
could cause all sorts of battle problems (double phases, half-deaths on destroyed units, etc).
Reduced the initiative modifiers for large scale battles by 50% and 75% on the move phases and
attack phases respectively, to allow huge battles to progress more quickly. The additional time is
no longer needed as many recent changes have sped up these battles tremendously.
Altered the initiative process and end-of-phase process to decrease the likelihood of catastrophic
errors in battles with many human players involved. Tests involving Mad Man's Marauders vs. Group W
involved up to 14 human players and 620 units and the battle was not error-free but was extremely
playable with full turns (attack + move phases and resolutions) lasting approximately 13 minutes.
I will continue this week to work on improving the performance of large-scale battles, but I want to
stress that much progress has been made already and you can now expect to play to resolution any scale
battle if you have enough time.
Maps of battles with over 100 units will no longer auto-refresh when you move a unit! This
may confuse you at first. As repositioning 100 or more units takes measurable time it was decided that
allowing players to input moves for all their units before refreshing the map would be beneficial.
Thus, if you wish to view the updated positions of units during the movement phase you must click the
timer window to manually refresh the map.
Fixed physical attack damage when crushing infantry with Mechs.
Increased the payouts for arena prizes for infantry and vehicles. This is a move intended to help
new players and reflects the higher production costs of infantry and vehicles.
Corrected the Military Maintenance costs to once again include infantry. Previously, infantry
maintenance costs had been calculated using the image field of the units table, as all foot infantry
shared an icon, for example. Since the new icons have been implemented, nobody was being charged for
infantry maintenance. This was discovered and corrected this morning.
Fixed a bug which was preventing empires from mobilizing a lance if they only had one lance.
Fixed another battalions bug where the battalions page was not catching battalions with dead leaders.
Now, new leaders will be promoted/selected if the current one is no longer a part of the battalion due
to death or reassignment.
Increased the rate at which morale drops by 25%. Morale is still increasing too quickly
Neveron-wide despite the lack of major wars. Hopefully this change will stabilize the unchecked
growth in planet-wide morale.
Allowed for the creation of terrain even if you do not have enough money for the attack on a zone.
This allows your officers/Zone COs to create terrain more effectively.
Deleted all created terrain. Our hard drive filled on the Land War server and was cleared. We will
soon have additional hard drive space, but unfortunately all created terrain had to be deleted. With
any luck, this will never happen again, as we will strive to add disk space in conjunction with the
increase in created terrain.
Added another NBC banker to approve finance transactions.
If you lose all your land, viewing the map will now center on zone 0,0 by default, so that you may
easily locate and purchase a new starting zone (assuming you have $25 million available).
After three turns of not submitting any action during the attack phase (be it an attack, or clicking
do not attack) units will be placed on auto-pilot. This prevents players from leaving their
battles open but walking away from the computers for hours on end to slow the pace of battle.
An asterisk (*) has been added beside units in the list of friendly units within battle to
indicate which of your units are controlled by human players.
Messages from battle players in battle will be identified by the unit they control. Messages from
"real" players will still be identified by the name and rank of the transmitting player.
I'm sure there are at least a dozen things I've left off this list, and perhaps even major/important
ones. We've been working hard to smooth game play and increase performance this past week and
appreciate your understanding when this page is not promptly updated or emails are not responded to.
Our priority is in bringing you the best game possible and very often public relations takes a back
seat to productivity. Right now a growing concern is the difficulty in getting started as a new player.
If you are a new player and have any comments on the game, or how to make it better for you, please
email Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]. While we may not respond, we will read and consider every comment. Thank you.
4/8/02
Changed the finance page to run faster for our dial-up brethren. If you want to
transfer money to another empire simply click on the new link found on that page and
it will take you to the proper tools.
4/09/02
You may no longer donate for skill advancements if any units which would receive the benefits are
currently in battle (arenas or land wars). If you try, you will simply be returned to the donation
page and no DP will be spent.
IMPORTANT! As detailed below, existing alliances will have battle players set
as though they were newly accepted alliances. This will happen in approximately 48 hours, so
if you do not trust players you have high level alliances with you may wish to consider cancelling
them before then.
When you accept an alliance request, both players will receive initial battle player trust levels.
This is a tremendous help to all empires, because it will allow your trusted allies to pilot meaningful
units immediately should your empire come under attack, even if you are not on-line. The initial levels
for each alliance are detailed below:
NAP: 20 (standard for everyone including non-allied players)
Diplomatic Relations: 50
Trade Alliance: 100
Repair Alliance: 200
Research Alliance: 500
Alliance: 1000
MDP: 2000
When a war is declared between two empires, all battle player scores for those players are deleted.
Thus you cannot control enemy units, and he cannot control yours.
Even without declaring war, every zone attack upon another empire reduces your battle player
score with that empire by 10.
FATIGUE: Any units in a battle which lasts more than 2 day changes will begin to get fatigued.
Fatigued units skills degrade (increase) by 1 point on the second day change of a battle, and an
additional point for every additional day change they are in battle. Fatigued units recover at a
rate of two fatigue levels per day change that they are not in battle.
Land war changes: defending units no longer retain their previous positions on a map between
attacks on a zone. That is, if the enemy units have chased you to a map edge and you retreat, they will
no longer still be on that edge if you re-attack. Additionally, defending units will now begin together
as lances, in the same manner as attacking units (that is, all units in a lance will begin in
adjacent hexes). Finally, no defending units will begin a battle within 20 hexes of the map's edge.
4/10/02
A new BattlePlayer Help section has been added to the War Room page.
I just deleted the empire The Dorsai. As some of you know, that was my personal empire
which I began playing in December or January. The Dorsai was becoming large enough to begin to affect
major wars and influence the direction of the game, which as we've seen in the past can only be a bad
thing. I wish to thank the many people I fought in the arenas for an enjoyable time, and particularly
those empires who made alliances with me and helped my empire get off the ground. Attacking other
empires is the most enjoyable part of Neveron for me, but it was coming to the point where I was large
enough to seriously hurt long-time players were I to attack, and that is not my place. I may start
a new empire, but as always it will remain secret and small. --Randy
4/11/02
The War Room has had some new features added as well as some old things moved there.
Please explore it to find all your warring needs. Much of it is still under construction
but when complete it will be one stop shopping for land war types all over the planet.
There is now a button that will allow you to demobilize all eligible units with one
click. This button will check to see which units in your empire are past their 30 NDay
minimum mobilization, and demobilize them. It can be used as often as you like to
demobilize your forces. It can be found in the Troops section of the War Room page.
A new level system is being implemented based on your civilian population and BV.
There are currently 14 levels from Village to Dynasty. To see the level of your empire
click on the empire name and look at the permissions page. Currently these levels do
nothing but they will soon impose limits and grant limitations to your empire to
improve game mechanics and help aid the war on cheating. Read the admin page for updates
on this exciting new development.
04/16/02
More changes, as always. First, factory production was not where I had intended it to be.
It has accordingly been adjusted. All factories now produce 66% more than they used to produce.
By the way, if you build X commercials and X factories (producing foot assault rifles), the price the
assault rifles (adjusted for the market 10% loss) must sell for to make the same income the
commercials will generate is $8800 a piece. So the infantry market is a great place to make a killing
if you own factories at the present time.
You can no longer retreat off the edge of a map in land war if you do not own the zone you
will be retreating to. Your move will simply not process, and you will have not moved that turn.
The My People page will show the fatigue level of your pilots. Please keep in mind that
the first day change while in battle does not affect a unit's skill, even though the pilot will
show fatigue (1). The modifier for a units skill is the level of fatigue of the pilot minus one
.
Battalion skill improvement DP use problems have been solved.
More on levels. Everyone begins at level 0. Levels are currently based only on your
civilian population plus your total battle value. Thus, they are not always an accurate measure
of progress. The criteria for changing levels may eventually encompass much more than that. When
CivPop + BV reaches 1000 you go up to level 1. From there, they roughly double. 2000 for level 2,
5000 for level 3, 10000 for level 4, 20000 for 5, 50000 for 6 ... you get the idea.
When your empire reaches level 1, you may send funds to other empires.
When your empire reaches level 2, you may receive funds from other empires.
When your empire reaches level 4, you may view all other empire levels on the map.
Money transfers: there are now limits on how much money an empire may receive from another
empire. This amount is limited by empire level. For example a level 6 empire may only receive
$20 million per NMonth from any given empire. The level limits are as follows:
2: $1 million
3: $2 million
4: $5 million
5: $10 million
6: $20 million
7: $50 million
8: $100 million
9: $200 million
10: $500 million
11: $1 billion
12: $2 billion
13: $5 billion
14: $10 billion
15+: unlimited
Remember these limits are on funds receivable, and are a not cumulative. That is, if 2, or 10, or 1000
empires all want to send $5 million to a particular level 5 empire per NMonth, they may all do so.
4/18/02
Since the vocal minority are all complaining in all venues about the new transfer system, I
thought I would explain why the change has been made. Small empires have time and time again been
destroyed not by larger bullies, but my small mercenary units or outposts backed financially by
the larger empire which wished to see them dead. Small empires could be threatened by large ones, who
would often claim, yes I admit it is too costly for a large empire like me to attack a small empire
like you, but I don't have to. I can send 100 million to [outpost/mercenary/new-startup] and they'll
kill you. If they don't, I'll keep sending 100 million until you're gone. This has made it
impossible to succeed as a small empire unless you're taken under the wing of a larger empire. That
hurt the game as no one would dare to attack for fear of reprisals from mercenaries hired by the
"big brother" empire, or simply that their target would receive near-infinite financial backing, thus
ensuring the destruction of the attacker. Conversely, "protected" small empires or mercenaries have
been wiping out empires with impunity, knowing that with their sponsor behind them they were
invulnerable. This created an environment of fear for all new players, and indeed all players who
were not "in the loop" with the heavy-hitting chat room regulars. With this new system, if for example
a level 0 empire attacks a level 1 empire they can fight it out without worrying about destabilizing
effects of massive gifts from the big boys. Even level 2 and 3 empires may battle it out feeling safe
that any sent monies will likely not be enough to turn the tide of the fight. This continues right
up the level scale, until the top where the limits are so large as to be meaningless.
It has been said many times, This change hurts the new players! They can no longer get loans!.
Curiously, the only people who are saying that are the larger empires. This change hurts two groups
of players, and helps a vast silent majority of empires who have been living in fear or have been
intimidated by the power-brokers of Neveron. The first group of players hurt are empires who are
protected/funded by the larger players purely as "bully empires" to attack the little guys while
the large player sits back funding the war but staying out of it. The second group hurt are the large
empires themselves, who find their power to destroy all who oppose them reduced, and in conjunction
with that, a reduction in their overall influence. While it is still not impossible for a level 10
empire to destroy a level 1 empire, it is much more difficult than before, and the average player
may feel somewhat certain that when he attacks his neighbor for that much-needed morale boost, that
the fight will be between he and his neighbor, and perhaps other adjoining empires who get involved,
and not between the top 20 empires who would fight by proxy, funding those who are simply
enjoying the game.
A bug was indeed found concerning battle players and morale. In certain instances, lost zones
were affecting the battle players' morale as if they themselves lost the zone. This has been
corrected. Thank you everyone who emailed me about this, I finally amassed enough information to
be able to identify the bug, and quickly eliminate it.
Sales ... you can no only sell items for reasonable prices (relative to current market rates)
4/19/02
A new rules section is up on the Admin page. It is highly recommended that you
make yourself familiar with all these rules so as to avoid being penalized or deleted.
4/21/02
Arenas that have negative BV (due to fatigue) will now be cancelled and the units
sent home with no prize awarded. This can also be found on the Arena Help files.
Since the new NBC change has gone into effect rather quickly, empires with large amounts
owed to them ($500 mil or more) may get that money transferred to them in large sums in
the next week. Empires who are owed $500 mil or more can send a list of their debtors
to Wayward_Son@neveron.com [no longer valid]
with the names and amounts of each debtor. The debtor can then
send in a transfer request and I will move that money from one empire to another. Any
bug exploitation or money funneling via the NBC will be punished as per normal. Requests
made after Sunday the 28th will be ignored.
Banner contest! Neveron needs a standard size (468x60) banner for advertising purposes. If you wish,
you may create and send banners to Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]. At the end of the month, the best banner (assuming
we get at least one we like enough to use!) will be awarded 50 DP. Animated gif are OK, but please
no shock-wave, as many sites will not allow the use of shock-wave banners. Thanks!
We are also in need of a new front page! Please send original artwork only to Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid].
All entries become the property of Neveron to be used as we see fit. Artists will be awarded DP
if their art is used.
4/22/02
I just thought I would mention that land war is the coolest thing ever.
A new unit movement program has been written and implemented. You may now move up to
1000 zones within your own empire without using an LC as long as those zones are connected
by land you own. This is great news for larger empires who were often limited by the
previous 10 zone rule.
Training has been fixed (again) and should remain fixed.
4/23/02
Top 100 list has been changed to be search-able (ctr + F) and Empires by Absolute Morale
has been added. The morale shown is the number that is divided by yourCivPop. pop. to find your
average citizen morale.
You will notice this icon on various pages throughout the
game. This is the new help link and you can click it whenever you need help on the page
you are working on.
4/24/02
Current entries in the banner ad contest can be seen here.
The "demobilize all" troops button on the Troops page has been fixed and should
work properly now.
The finance page has been altered to allow you to search by name. If you want to
send an empire money, open the drop down menu and press the letter that their empire
name begins with. The menu will jump to empires that begin with that letter.
Once again, a new training program has been released. And once again, it works flawlessly in
tests, and runs in a fraction of the time as the old one. An error log is generated upon any failure
so again, it should be easy to tell if it is working correctly. I expect you should have no more
troubles training.
4/26/02
Another entry has been added to the banner contest. See link from yesterday.
A rudimentary land war help file is up on the War Room page. Check it out if you are in need
of basic help for land war. Expect a much more complicated technical guide soon.
4/27/02
Several Mechs and vehicles have had their BV adjusted, in an effort to find balance in the arenas.
Namely, the following Mechs now have higher BV: BLR-1G, HSR-300-D, HBK-4N, BL7-KNT, OTT-7J. The
following Mechs now have lower BV: CN9-AH, HNT-151, VLK-QF. The following vehicles also have lower
BV: HTZ-1, TX-LRM, MXM-00, SLD-1, DRL-1, APC-T1.
4/29/02
More banners are up! Check em out! Thank you to all
who have entered so far. Don't be scared to improve, change or make more! Also, our URL
should be displayed as www.neveron.com I think most people will find www2.neveron.com
a little confusing.
Charging damage and death-from-above (DFA) damage has been changed against mech targets only.
Damage to the target mech is now split into 10 points groups. For example, a 5 hex charge from an
Enforcer (50 tons = 25 points of damage) will now do 10 points to one location, 10 points to a second
location, and 5 points to the third location. Note that these locations may be the same, but each will
be calculated separately. The net result should be that charging is less fatal, while DFA will be more
fatal, as there will be more chances to get that 1:6 head hit.
When your mech is on the ground (facing = 0) and receives damage from weapons fire, all damage will
be applied to the front side regardless of the attackers location.
When firing from the ground, you can shoot in any arc as though it was your front arc. You may
not fire leg weapons. Your less-damaged arm (ties = LA) will be used to support your mech, and may
not fire.
All attacks made from a prone mech will have a +2 penalty to their "to hit" number.
All attacks made against a prone mech will have a +1 penalty to their "to hit" number, unless
the attacking unit is in the same hex, or adjacent hex, as the target mech, in which case there is
a -2 bonus to the "to hit" number needed.
Military maintenance costs have been increased by 20%. While all empires will be affected by this,
it is those empires with huge armies sitting in museums collecting dust that will really feel it.
People who fight a lot not have outrageous morale multipliers which more than compensate for the
increased costs of maintaining a large army.
4/30/02
Prizes have been awarded for the top 10 dueling empires, in the form of morale boosts for their
empires. The civilians love to be part of a famous empire! Additionally, $100,000,000 was awarded to
the empire Major League for having the lowest point total of all empires!
Check out the new Neveron Alliances Directory created by a fellow Neveron player. There is a link
to it on the Alliances page.
Please help Neveron grow into a more exciting and involved place for everyone.
Recruit your friends and enemies, family and coworkers!
Also, vote for us at
www.MPOGD.com
to help Neveron get cooler than ever!
5/01/02
Big change for small empires! Due to the increase in large arenas, the NGC has reached record
popularity throughout the galaxy, bringing in more money than ever before. This is turn will now
be spread among the fledgling empires of Neveron in the form of an increased subsidy. The small
empire subsidy has been increased by $50,000 per NevDay. Any empire with under $300,000 per day income
(up from $200,000) will now receive subsidy benefits. To check your subsidy income, view the Land
page in the Land and Buildings tab.
Mail messages will now only stick around for 3 NMonth (approximately 9 real days). Any mail
older than that will be deleted.
BV has been adjusted on Mechs with piloting skills lower than gunnery skills
5/02/02
Please note that the Rules page and the bug policy have been slightly updated.
One rule was somehow deleted that appears as follows:
"You may not send a single empire money from multiple empires that you control,
or funnel money through other empires. Transactions that send money from
multiple (more than 1) empire that you control to any other empire is illegal,
and is an attempt to circumvent the transaction limits. These transactions will
be denied and in cases of repeated attempts, players will be punished. "
Added a new tab on the Alliances page to access the Neveron Alliances
Directory. Register and advertise your alliance there to connect with other players
and research other alliances.
5/03/02
Welcome to all our new players! Neveron is currently experiencing growing pains and we are
shifting efforts from bug fixing to performance improvement. New equipment is being ordered and
slow code is being upgraded/eliminated. Please stick with us while we continue to improve this
terrific game.
The AI code is currently being rewritten to eliminate past performance issues. The current
AI is working much more efficiently in how it affects the servers, but does not have the ability
to control all the units in the game all the time. This means that the AI will only work sporadically, but
as a trade off large battles are much more playable and server death much MUCH less common. Future
AI improvements will enhance the AI beyond its current limited capabilities.
Banner ad winner! Thank you to everyone for your hard work on all the banner entries we have
received. Simply because the contest is over does not mean that we will not continue to accept
banner and art submissions at all times. If we use something of yours you will be rewarded!
Here is the winner of the Neveron banner contest!
Other entries may be used at some point. The creators of these banners will be contacted if that is
the case.
5/07/02
You can now create terrain in any zone, not only zones you are adjacent to. This will speed up
large scale attacks, since while you're fighting in one zone, in another browser instance you can
be generating terrain for your next attack.
You can now unclaim terrain, if it is more than 5 zones away from a city. While this may seem
a foolish thing to do (making it easier for enemies to approach your cities undetected and unchallenged)
it will help reduce the cost of maintain a large amount of land because ...
Land administration costs will be going up soon. Probably as soon as tomorrow, the land
administration costs will approximately triple, to $150 NDollars per zone per NDay. This will be
up from $55 currently. This combination (unclaimed + increased costs) will probably cause some of
larger empires to unclaim a lot of land, thus freeing up space for newer players as well as making
them more vulnerable to attacks. Fighting your way through 100 empty zones is tedious (if not
impossible), but perhaps in the future people will have smaller empires, easier to both attack
and defend.
5/08/02
To prevent people from losing money to timeouts, you may now only hire 112 new soldiers at a
time. This will also cut down on deadlock and other performance issues for other players.
5/09/02
Fixed a bug where infantry were being hit by physical attacks as if they were prone.
Infantry will now do damage in 5 point groups against 'mechs similar to LRMs. This will mean they have a
slightly increased chance of getting critical hits but they will do less damage to a single area.
Unit readout pages now have a anew feature that allows players to set the Ideal Range of each
unit. Ideal range is a number that the AI uses to determine how a unit should react in battle...
whether to charge or stay far away. Note that the AI is still not working at 100%, so this feature
will not work properly until it is.
New hard drive installed on LW server. Warriors now have nearly unlimited disk space to create
terrain. War away...
Resurrected people now come back with $0.
5/11/02
To enter a battle already underway, simply click the word stating that person's location on the
Empires page. That word is now a link.
Fixed a bug where the battle screen was only opening in the main empire frame.
Fixed a bug where claiming units from the Units page wasn't working.
The immediate threat of wild fire to Prescott has diminished but evacuations are still taking place.
800 firefighters, 4 bombers, and 3-5 helicopters are currently working on preventing the fire from
eating Prescott whole. Read about it at: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0516fire16.html (note
that this story is a bit inaccurate but your will get the idea)
5/16/02
Level 0 empires are now unable to participate in land war. They can neither attack nor be attacked
until level 1.
Severe overhaul to the game has resulted in extremely decreased lag for all. All scheduled updates
(training, day changes, etc..) should all work now, and with an efficiency that Neveron has never seen.
Note that it may not seem much faster than a few weeks ago as we have many more people playing now.
A new mail feature!! Weeeeee! You may now send mail to all empires with whom you have a Diplomatic
Relations treaty or better at the same time with no charge. You will see it listed in the mail
options on the Comms page.
Unclaiming will now work for everyone (hopefully) though the unclaim doesn't look like a link anymore.
5/17/02
Added a new Collect Money option to the Finance page that will allow emperors
to collect all money from all unclaimed people in your empire and put it back your empire funds.
A new Transfer History page is up on the Finance page. It is only accessible
to the emperor of the empire.
A simpler way of understanding our money transfer policy is that only 1 money transfer is allowed to 1
player in 3 real life days, regardless of how many empires that each of you control or how they are
related to each other.
5/19/02
Where to even begin? With todays changes I suppose. First, ideal range for AI units may now
be set anywhere from 0 to 100 hexes.
Any AI unit with an ideal range of 30+ hexes may not be controlled by BattlePlayer. This
helps address the problem of enemies controlling defending "speed bump" units and moving them toward
the attacker.
Default battle player scores are now 10 * empire level. That is, a level 10 empire can by default
command 100 BV worth of units in another empire's battle as a BattlePlayer. You'll notice, of course,
that level 0 empires can't command anything, which keeps people from creating junk empires just to
screw up fights as BattlePlayer.
There is a new world map page. It looks better, but is functionally very similar.
I don't think I'll even try to catch up all the days that weren't recorded here. The only 3
highlights worth mentioning are that you cannot attack a level 0 empire
You cannot declare war upon an empire of lower level than yourself
The exception to the above, is that once you hit level 10 anyone may declare war on you.
Meaning a level 11+ can declare on a 10+ even though they are of lower level.
5/30/02
Surrounding an empire with a level 0 empire is expressly forbidden and will result in the
deletion of the level 0 empire, with possible fines against other empires of the controlling player.
6/1/02
Thank you! Thanks for voting last month at MPOGD.
Neveron remained in the top 10 all month, and we gained many new players. If you still enjoy
the game, I would urge you to all vote again, as the poll resets each month. I have awarded
all empires $5,000,000 as a thank you gift for your support. As always, if you have
ideas on how to improve Neveron, do not hesitate to email ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]. You will not
get a reply, but your ideas will always be read, considered, and often implemented.
6/2/02
Some new changes. One is quite interesting. On the map, in zones you own, when the terrain has
been created, there is now a link to a page where you may set up initial defensive positions
for your units that are currently in the zone. That means you can line up your troops strategically
along borders, or hide that speed bump of a jeep in a hole it can't move out of, forcing the enemy to
actually walk across the zone to kill it rather than waiting for it to charge up to you. Only the
emperor may place units, and only one unit may be placed per hex.
Creating infantry platoons will now use your WORST available soldiers, not your best. After all,
no one wants their prize mech warrior ending up in that builder platoon you just created. Vehicles and
mechs, when created, will still pull the best person available.
6/6/02
Flamers now do +2 heat to mechs when they hit, in addition to the 2 points of damage.
Level 0 empires are now limited to a maximum of 10 zones.
Heat sink critical hits are now effective
Heat sink repairs are now possible, requiring a level 2 facility and skill 7 or better techs
Over a dozen new vehicle types have been introduced. These will not be sold by NASI, they
will be player production only.
One of the new vehicles carries a new weapon type, the Machine Gun mk II. This gun has double the
range (2/4/6) of a standard MG, does half the damage (1 point) against mechs and vehicles, but standard
4-14 damage against infantry.
6/9/02
DONATION CHANGES! Due to the increased costs of units in the marketplace, and the relative
decline in the value of NevMoney in general, the amount of NevCash per DP has been increased to $5,000,000. This
is effective immediately.
Also, the relative ease of generating elite troops has resulted in warfare often being influenced
by available DP instead of player skill and planning. As such, the DP cost to reduce company skills
has been increased from 2 DP to 3 DP for both personal skill downs and company skill downs. This is
also effective immediately. Skill multipliers (the ease of increasing skills through training or
experience) are still 2 DP.
6/10/02
Ha! Betcha thought nothing new was happening on Neveron, didn't you? Guess what, you were wrong...
The only Reason why we have neglected to update this is we've been too busy working, that and I hadn't
worked out how to do it yet... So, without further ado - this is Dante, and this is my first admin update.
Jump Jet Crits... They Work. They Hurt. They can be built and fixed with the required research.
The AI... Now, it appears to be more like an Artificial Intelligence, rather than a successful
experiment into Artificial Stupidity... In some cases, its just plain Ruthless... With set up
defences, the AI now engages the closest enemy at its nominated range, and keeps it at that range until
it is destroyed - no more of this Charging in, turning around, running away... Performance of the AI has
increased a Thousand-Fold, with Large wars running much smoother...
The Uriel Assault Tank was added. Its a 90T monster... The scary thing is, I am not done adding
vehicles yet.
16/6/02 - (6/16/02 for you Americans)
As you can see, Wayward_Son is back in the office... Please feel free to direct to him
Wayward_son@Neveron.com [no longer valid] any and all inane thoughts which happen to walk through your head...
(Who is the Dork now?)
A few people have been investigated for "Cheating" - Not everything reported is, but rest assured
things are investigated thoroughly, and the people are either exonerated or punished accordingly...
6/19/02 (Second Post)
Marketplace help files are now complete and fully functional. Expect more complete help files
everywhere soon.
The Marketplace will now show a message when you have a zone active that isn't big enough to support that
market. For more information on this see the Marketplace Help files.
Dante is a dork.
6/19/02
Jump Jet Critical Repairs are now 100% Online...
6/21/02
Fixed a bug that wasn't allowing people to tool ammo production.
6/23/02
The password change page has been improved and repaired. You can access it from the Empire
Setting page, via a link near the bottom of the screen of the Empire page.
Ammunition dumping is now available during combat. It is done during the movement phase
and there are a couple options: you may dump all the ammo in the unit or you can dump ammo from
selected ammunition storage spots.
6/25/02
A big change in battle is currently underway with the advent of double blind rules. Currently
in battles you will see a "+" sign next to enemies with whom one (or more) of your units has line
of sight with. If none of your units have LOS with a particular enemy, this "+" will not appear.
The next step in this change will actually cause the enemy icons themselves to disappear, thus
preventing you from seeing their location or where they have moved unless you have units with
direct LOS with them.
The Armoury Help pages are now online.
6/27/02
A new page has been added on to the Units page that will allow to you to see only
the units that are in your active zone. It works in every respect like the regular Units page,
but will only show those units that are currently in the zone you have displayed at the top of
your screen. This will greatly aid in organizing battles and claiming people. One very efficient
way to claim a unit in a large battle is to go to the map, click on the zone the unit is in
(which will make that zone active), then go to your Zone Units page and claim the unit from
there. Other "convenience" features are soon to come!
A new building type went in today...the Technology Complex! These massive structures are the
wave of the future on Neveron. Costing $1,000,000,000 (yes, 9 zeros), and taking up 400 buildable
spaces, these monolithic research centers are capable of researching 100 RP per NYear. In
addition, they house all of their own personnel, eliminating the need for residential
buildings, and cost no money to be retooled. They also do not have any upkeep costs, as all the
money made from them is reinvested back in the facility. These powerful new buildings may
require things such as power plants in the future, so please be expecting them.
7/02/02
You can now claim or unclaim units during battle as per the normal claiming rules.
To do this simply click on the unit name on your friendly unit list. The bottom right hand
frame of the screen will show the unit data as well as a button that will allow you to claim
or unclaim them. It also puts the unit on/off AI where appropriate. The control button for
that unit will appear/disappear when the next phase starts or if you press the "Sync" button.
More convenience features to come. If you have any ideas for some please send me an e-mail at
Wayward_Son@neveron.com [no longer valid]
Please do not expect a reply, but I will read them all. No, a demotion
button is not forthcoming.
Good job on MPOGD, folks. Keep up that voting! We really appreciate it! Click on the link
at the top of the page to vote.
You may now see a list of skills on the Donate page next to your list of dead people. This
will help folks who want to resurrect their dead characters without the crap shoot element.
It rained in Prescott today for the first time since March!
7/03/02
OK last mech type is now on the People page as well (see below for details).
When a mech warrior is blown out of their mech, their preferred mech type (the last type of
mech they were in) will appear next to the unit status on the Empire page. This will
soon be added to the People page as well. This is to help folks avoid the +1 skill
penalty incurred when switching a mech warrior from one mech type to another which represents
their unfamiliarity with the new mech.
Happy Independence Day to all Americans. This is the time of year when we justify the
salaries of big budget movie producers. Due to the holiday certain problems that may arise
will be slow to be fixed, or may not be fixed at all. Be assured that they will be handled
by next week.
7/4/02
Terrain creation is jacked for some reason. Expect a fix by next week (yes, sorry).
Fixed the Battalions page so that Batt COs and Emperors can now move battalions again. Sorry
for the inconvenience.
July 5th...hangovers abound.
7/5/02
The LW server has decided to cooperate and both the AI and terrain creation are back online for now.
7/6/02
Dante is Back in the office and has been working almost non-stop to reattach peoples lost empires
and logins. Updates have been few and far between due to most of our time being dedicated to getting
Neveron back online after the Hacker attacks. Bear with us, and we will have more information shortly.
7/19/02
Wayward Son is back in the office and plugging away on various things, particularly convenience
features. If you have an idea for a convenience features, please send an email to Ideas@
Neveron.com [no longer valid]. All e-mails will be read but only few will be replied to. Thanks to those who
have added their input so far.
7/26/02
Added a new feature to the Marketplace page that allows you to take your items off
the market. Neveron Arms Sales, Inc. charges a small 5% brokering fee for having listed the
items for sale, and they are immediately placed back in the armoury that they were sold from
allowing you instant access to your goods. This will especially help some of you folks who have
a hard time counting your 0's while putting things up for sale. This will also help people
who have items for sale well above current market prices. You can easily retrieve your items
and then resell them at a competitive price. To access this new feature go to the Marketplace
and click on the My Items link.
In classic form, a small typo was the only thing standing between the evil Zombie Mechs and
their rightful place in the salvage yard. This has been fixed and battle should work properly.
Damn those misplaced commas....
Fixed an ammo bug that was getting some numbers crossed and not reloading properly. Sorry to
those who found themselves ammo less at the beginning of some fights.
Added current market prices to all the armoury and parts/ammo pages for easy selling. Now
you can see what the lowest price of anything on the market is without going to the market itself.
7/29/02
A new feature has been added to battle. If you are the emperor of an empire and you send
units into battle (arena or land war), and you don't have any of the units claimed, the game will
auto claim the best unit for you so that you won't be kicked out of the battle. This is assuming
that you have less than 10 people claimed already. Once you are in battle it is easy to claim/unclaim
units as you see fit by clicking on the unit name in the friendly units list, and then using the
appropriate links in the unit data frame.
Many performance related fixes today. The hourly update that was doing various things and
taking between 3.5 minutes and 15 minutes to complete has been trimmed to 36 seconds. Some lag
is being reduced by making updates happen when you look at specific pages. One of the biggest
sources of lag was the unit reputation updates that made sure all the units had the correct
reputations. This is now instead done when you look at the individual unit's readout. If your
unit rep seems wrong look at the readout and it will update.
You may now update ideal ranges of all specific unit types in your empire in one fell swoop.
Simply look at the unit readout of the unit type you would like to change. Update its range as
per usual and you will be asked if you would like to update all units of that type. If you answer
"yes" then all units of that specific variant will be updated in your empire. Answering "no"
will update just that one unit. Note that this feature is very specific, so different infantry
weapon or move types need to be done separately, as do different mech variants. I will be adding
similar features to the Active Zone section of the Units page to allow you to
update the units in a specific zone.
7/30/02
More lag improvements were made today. In addition, BV was also adjusted for mechs. Piloting
skills now now have a greater influence in raising or lowering a unit's BV. The net effect was
a total lowering of most empire's BV because of pilots with worse piloting skills than gunnery
skills.
7/31/02
More lag fixed today...we're getting good at that.
Unit readout pages now have a new feature. You can click on the Lance or Company name and it
will take you to Lances or Companies page. If the unit is not in a lance or company, it will
take you to the lance or company creation pages. This will not work in the arenas, or if you are
not of proper rank.
8/1/02
Fixed a bug with the auto claiming feature that was claiming the CO of the unit but still
kicking you out of battle. You will now auto claim the unit and stay in the battle.
Added a new "unassigned people" list to the People page for easier access to soldiers
not in units.
A nasty bug that wasn't reloading mechs healed with DP was fixed. This will work properly now.
8/2/02
We apologise regarding the frequent downtime lately. Our web server has developed a nasty
seizure disorder and needs frequent monitoring. We are purchasing a new web server in the
next couple weeks to help decrease the workload. In addition...
To help with overall server performance a major overhaul was done on the People table.
This will have almost NO effect on how the game is played, only in how we manage information
in the database. Currently there are 5,316,903 soldiers in the game. 4,928,290 of them are
infantry soldiers, and each of them have their individual characteristics recorded on the People
table (skills, money, reputation among many other things). To reduce some of the major
lag we have been experiencing, we are no longer going to record the stats of soldiers who
are non-CO infantry. The CO of a unit will still have a fully recorded person (and thus
be claimable and be able to hold money, etc..) but the other 27 people will only exist as
numbers.
EVERYTHING ABOUT THE GAME WILL STAY THE SAME! You will still have to hire 28
soldiers to form a platoon, and you will still be able to replenish your infantry platoons if
you have enough soldiers and weapons available. The only difference is that you will no
longer be able to buy soldiers out of infantry platoons. If you want to put the CO of an infantry
unit in a mech or vehicle, you will need to disband the infantry unit and then he will become
an unassigned soldier.
If this makes no sense to you at all just remember this: Your mother loves you very much, Neveron
will now be faster, and you can no longer move people from infantry units to other units.
8/3/02
The new database rearrangement has gone brilliantly. I did a test today by selecting the
entire People table..a process that would have killed the game for 20 minutes or so previously..
and it ran in 1.5 minutes with no lag on the system. This means that ALL processes related to the
People table should be running 10-20 times faster than before, and those types of queries are on
nearly every page in the game. Updates are also running much faster now.
The downside is that the restructuring has caused some bugs for newer players. Some of these folks
were kicked out of their empires by mistake and we have been relinking them with their empires
as they contact us. We have also made a change to prevent this from happening:
To avoid the above mentioned problem, all infantry units will now take the highest RANKING
unassigned soldier in your empire (regardless of their skills) and make them the CO of the new platoon.
All other soldiers in the platoon will be selected from the bottom (worst) of the skill pool on
up. This means that if you have an unassigned mech or vehicle pilot, they may very well end up
commanding an infantry unit. To get them out simply disband the unit, and they will become
unassigned again.
Please note that soldiers who go into infantry units as non-COs get their records deleted!
Please make sure to hire enough new soldiers to avoid any skilled people from going missing!
8/5/02
With performance getting under control, we are turning back to game play and have a rough
draft proposal for a new Alliance system. These are general ideas of a system we would
like to implement in the next month or so. Please read it through and send us your
thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. Alliances
A new donation option has been added that will allow people to heal vehicles instantly.
This option fixes all damage and critical without parts or repair facilities. It costs 1-3 DP
depending on the size of the vehicle.
There is a known bug in the research updates that is not giving some people their
alliance research bonus. This may take a couple weeks to correct and we apologise for the
delay. On the upside everyone got 10 times normal building speeds for a day or two.
More results from the database restructuring are in. Normally over the course of a day
there would be literally hundreds, even thousands of procedures run by players that would take
the database over 5 seconds (and sometimes much longer) to process. The total number of processes
in the past 24 hours exceeding 5 seconds is 4! The bulk of lag that exists now lies in the
daily updates and training programs. We will continue to work on these to trim them down even
further.
8/6/02
Due to a mail server problem, all @neveron.com [no longer valid] addresses are currently not receiving mail.
If you need to contact an admin via e-mail, please use DanteNeveron@hotmail.com [no longer valid]
8/7/02
Changed some code that was giving higher priority to claimed people to be placed as COs of
infantry units which was dumb. It now just looks for ranked people.
Tournament- The Underdark Confederacy is sponsoring a light mech tournament on Sunday,
August 18th at 11 AM Arizona time (2pm EDT and 7pm GMT). 1st prize is $50 million and 2nd is
$20 million. The battle will take place in a 60x60 hex arena and contestants will enter in teams
of 2. Only 1 mech per PLAYER, 1 mech per empire, and you must be on a team to
enter. All prizes will be split between the team 50/50. There is no skill or BV limit.
Khan Squire Van Houten will be acting
as the Tourney Marshall, so please address all questions to him. For more information on
tournaments, please see the Tournaments link on the Arenas page.
We are still having mail server problems so address all e-mails to DanteNeveron@hotmail.com [no longer valid].
8/11/02
The Underdark Alliance has increased the 1st prize of the light mech tourney to $75 million
per team and the 2nd prize to $50 million. To enter you will need to either be in the chat
room 30 full minutes before the tournament or e-mail your teams and unit IDs to DanteNeveron@hotmail.com [no longer valid]
To find out how to access your Unit IDs please see the Tournaments
page.
I continue to urge everyone to check out the Alliances proposal
which will be going in in the next few weeks or so. Thank you to all who have taken the time
to send us your thoughts and ideas.
Fixed the View All Unassigned option on the People page.
8/12/02
Somehow the rather comprehensive Arena Help files got replaced with some lame ass page. I switched
them back. Please see the Arena Help link for most of your questions regarding combat of all types.
Wayward Son is working on a tutorial for Neveron that will directly aid beginning players when they
first log on. If you have suggestions as to what should be included in this, please e-mail
DanteNeveron@hotmail.com [no longer valid]. Thank you.
A temporary problem with our ISP caused the T-1 to go down today for about 45 minutes. Sorry for any
hassles and we are looking into a second T-1 for extra bandwidth and redundancy.
8/14/02
A new rule that has been being enforced for the past couple weeks but not posted is that we
are now only allowing you to transfer money to other players with your primary empire. For now
this will be seen as your "parent" empire or the largest empire you control. Consistent abuse by
players has made these new restrictions necessary.
8/15/02
A rule change was made today that you can not ship between zones that you own unless there
is a contiguous line of zones that connect them.
The initial infrastructure for Factions have been created. On your Alliance page you
will find a new Factions link. You may now create or join a faction as you see fit. There are
currently no benefits to joining a faction, but we will be adding these over the next few weeks
and months. Please keep reading here to stay update on the progression of Factions and read
the general Faction proposal at this page.
8/18/02
8/19/02
An out of game message from Khan Fyretrohl Taney:
The Neveron Admins have always shown a
willingness to listen to the players. However, the Chaotic nature of our methods of communicating
with them tends to muddle the messages. So, in an attempt to get a better ear from them and to
focus what is wanted/needed from the players, I am creating an email group for players to work
on issues together. I will limit the size of the group, only to try to keep things within
reasonable bounds. I am asking that each of the major alliances have at least 1 member on the
group. The admins have agreed to work with us to improve the game, but, with the caveat that we
always remember that, in the end, they have the final say. For more information, please check
out http://www.ccgheaven.com/neveron/NeveronPlayersBoard.html. This will NOT replace the
existing methods for communications with admin (forums, ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid], etc..).
Happy day! Our mail server has been repaired. You may now send mails to all the @neveron.com [no longer valid]
addresses listed on the Contacts page. E-mails that were sent to our temporary Hotmail
account have been moved over and we are still working through them, so there is no need to
resend an e-mail.
8/20/02
Fixed an ammo crit bug on mechs that was killing units when they should never have
taken damage. Let us all pause for a moment of silence for those needlessly killed
mechwarriors...
Changed the Marketplace and Armouries so that you CAN transfer items between zones
you control (no matter the distance) but NOT if the zone is under attack. This is to prevent
sieged zones that are in a perpetual state of war from being reinforced with new supplies
unless there is a long enough reprieve in the battle for items to be delivered.
Faction Updates:
Any level 5 or higher empire that is not a member of a faction may create a
new faction.
The Alliance and MDP have been removed from the former alliance system, as
they served no real purpose anyway. Meaningful alliances are being replaced by
Factions. Additionally, the former alliances will be known as "treaties"
instead, to better reflect their non-military nature.
The Directory link has been replaced in the Factions section by a directory
of Neveron factions. Faction leaders may edit the description and web page, and
people may view who is in each faction as well as basic faction information.
Any level 1 or higher empire may be able to join factions. If you are
eligible, you will have an option of submitting an application from the faction
details page (click Directory now) for approval by the faction leader. Pending
applications will be visible on this page. If you are a faction leader, you may
approve/deny applications from this page. If you accept an application, you will
be told how much it will cost to accept the empire into your faction, and asked
for confirmation.
Factions now have a research multiplier bonus, based on the total number of
levels in the faction. The bigger your faction, the bigger your bonus. The bonus
is applied to all members of the faction. This free research boost replaces the
previous research treaties, which have all been reduced to repair treaties. The
displayed research multipliers on your research pages are now correct.
Faction leaders may now tax their faction. The tax rate is displayed on the
faction information page. The maximum faction tax rate is 10%. The tax rate is
multiplied by the daily income (before expenses) of each member empire to
determine an empires tax. This tax is automatically paid to the faction leader
every day change. The Alliance Costs on your income page will show this expense,
or for faction leaders, income. By default, all new alliances will have a 0% tax
rate.
8/21/02
Updated the armouries and parts page again...no shipments to zones will be made while a
zone is under attack. Shipments that should arrive when a battle has taken place will be
delayed for 1 to 2 NevDay to ensure the safety of the personnel delivering the items. If you
have a battle that extends over the course of many NevDay, or a battle resolves but the zone
is re-attacked, the shipment will continue to be delayed unless the shipment date came between
the battles.
8/22/02
There was a bug with DoW cancelling. 15 DOW costs were refunded this morning and the bug was
fixed. If you lost a recent DOW you can recreate it and it will work this time. Many of you lost old
DOWs because they now expire after 1 NYear.
Policy Change: Empire renames will still be done for $500k per zone the empire owns (with a cap
at $250 million). In addition the empire's arena record may be set to 0-0 at the players discretion.
8/26/02
Land War Change If there are 2 battles happening in adjacent zones, and units from one battle retreat
off the map toward that zone, the units will exit the original battle and enter the ongoing battle in the adjacent zone.
People are urged to read the updates section of the Faction page for some explanations on recent Factions
changes as well as future ones. Factions
You may now send mail to your entire Faction, as well as to your Faction Leader. Both these options
are free of charge.
9/2/02
You can now change the e-mail address of your accounts on the Settings page. Click on the lick at the bottom of
the main empire page. We need these emails to send you lost passwords or contact you regarding problems
with your empires. Please keep them current. Thanks!
9/7/02
You may now change your empire name on the Empire Settings page (link found near the bottom of the
main Empire page). Note that people using double quotes may have some errors. I will soon be making it
so that you have the option of deleting your dueling record when you change your name. Name change costs
have also been reduced to $250,000 per zone your empire owns with a cap at $250,000,000. Please read all the
material provided before changing your name. Unless you can provide an actual error page and line number,
an Admin will NOT correct your mistakes.
9/17/02
Important change! Mech prizes in arenas have been increased 60%. While this may shadow the increase
in market prices, that was not the reason for the change. The reason was to properly reflect
the higher intrinsic value of mechs compared to infantry and vehicles, and to set proper "base prices"
for these mechs which will affect their production times in factories.
10/4/02
Our apologies for not regularly updating this page. Neveron is now back at full staff and this page will be
updated almost daily. Please check it on a continual basis to stay abreast of new changes and bug fixes, as well
as exciting events in Neveron.
10/6/02
The empire (HK)People's Repubic Of China, Horoscope's World, and many related cheat empires were deleted today
for massive cheating in the arenas and on the Marketplace. Neveron is hard. Cheating sucks. If you want to complain
about hard and slow it is to progress in Neveron, join the Gruffels Furry Blue Dominion chat room and grummel about
it all you like. If you choose to cheat instead you will be either deleted or fined in a manner that far exceeds
the gains you received by cheating. If you are unsure of what is cheating and what is not, please read the Rules
page (found under the Admin link). If you are still unsure please write to Help@neveron.com [no longer valid]. Thank you to all our
players who have been honest and fair in their game play.
It is now more clear on the Buildings page whether or not you are allow to delete buildings. If have controlled
a zone for more than 30 NevDay a Delete Building button will appear at the top of the Buildings list. If not
the button will simply not be there.
Name changes will now only allow you to choose a name with 35 characters or less. In addition it checks
to make sure that your new name is not the same as an existing empire's. Note that attempts to make your name
look the same as another empire will result in deletion or having your empire's named changed to something dumb.
Empires that have quotes in their names may be having problems changing them. This will hopefully be corrected
sometime this week.
10/9/02
Order of operations were changed in the mail code to ensure people aren't charged for mails that did not get
sent due to timeout problems.
To help "newbie proof" the infantry creation process and prevent people from putting skilled pilots in
infantry units, you now MUST have 28 unassigned soldiers who are 8 skilled in all areas EXCEPT infantry weapons
to create an infantry platoon. Note that when the platoon is made, it will still grab the HIGHEST RANKING unassigned person
regardless of their skill. The rest of the people in the platoon will be unskilled. To get the ranked person
back simply disband the unit. You will lose the other 27 men, but you will reclaim the weapons and receive
$5,000 per soldier that was fired.
Many empires were found to have incorrect map color values which were giving them problems when looking at
certain map views. I have reset their map colors to grey where they were wrong, and have prevented people from
entering incorrect values.
10/10/02
Infantry creation was down for about 6 hours yesterday due to a syntax error. Sorry for the hassle.
10/11/02
To help curb major abuses of the Vehicle Market maximum prices have been set on selling vehicles. This is
to help prevent people from bypassing transfer rules by setting absurdly high prices on vehicles. Note that this
practice *IS* a violation of the money transfer rules as written on the Rules page. Empires who have engaged
in this practice will find themselves under intensive scrutiny in the coming weeks.
The game will now send a pop-up message telling you how much you were charged for removing items from the
Marketplace on the My Items page.
You can now claim the zones of a level 0 empire as long as that empire has more than 10 zones and the
zones are neither defended nor built. This is to help prevent people from abusing the invulnerability
of level 0 empires in land war. There is rarely a case where a level 0 empire will need to own more than 10
zones.
10/12/02
An empire was fined $2 billion today for rampant and blatant cheating in the arenas. It is extremely illegal
to duel 2 empires that you control.
10/13/02
All told 650 empires were deleted today, many of which were cheating but many of which simply had names that were
not serious. In the future, empires that are clearly not a serious name (silly is ok, but junk is another) will simply
be deleted. I have gotten beyond being frustrated and annoyed with people cheating, particularly the blatant arena
cheating of late. It is being perpetrated by a few players to the detriment of all others. In the past we have doled
out stiff but relatively lenient fines for cheating. This is no longer. If you cheat in the arenas I will simply
delete all but your biggest empire. In addition, I will add up all of the arena winnings in our log that you have ever
received, legit or not, and subtract them from your empire. If you are unclear about a rule on the Rules
page, simply write an e-mail to Help@Neveron.com [no longer valid]. Your question will be answered within 24-48 hours.
Because of a severe cut in market sales in the Never Arms Sales Inc. Arms Division, the Sales Brokering division
has implemented maximum and minimum prices on vehicle sales on the marketplace. NASI hopes this will boost the
companies dwindling stock prices. The NASI representative would like to point out that these limits are EXTREMELY
liberal, and are simply a stopgap to prevent gross over inflation or a complete collapse in market prices. They will
be tweaked if necessary.
Fixed a bug int he vehicle market that was preventing people from selling vehicles if there weren't already some on the marketplace.
The vehicle marketplace is now listed by tonnage, not price. This should make it easier to find specific vehicles.
10/14/02
The Lances page now will allow you to select only the units in your active zone for Lance Creation. You can not
currently sort them by type AND location, but hopefully will be able to soon. This is to help people create lances that
are already in a specific location.
Arenas now start the attacking empire's units on the opposite side of the arena from the defender. It will also
allow you to see the enemy position on the first round of entry regardless of your sensor ratings. After that round
you will detect the enemy as per normal.
Fixed the Parts market so that certain parts that weren't being taken off the market when sold now disappear properly.
10/15/02
Land war battles (not arenas) which have not been resolved after 24 real hours will automatically resolve
in favor of the defender. Attacking units will be removed from the battle and bumped to the nearest friendly
zone.
Fixed vehicle movement part production. If you had factories tooled previously which were not working,
you should use the validation link on the bottom of that zone's factory page to start production.
You can now demote anyone of rank Lt. or higher if they are unclaimed, or claimed by yourself. On the
People page click their rank. This will allow you more flexibility in lance creation. Demoted soldiers
lose some reputation, and their skills worsen by one.
10/16/02
The max price on engineering vehicles has been altered to more reflect current market values.
A problem with the vehicle market forced me to take all the items off the market that had been placed there. The
items have been replaced in your Vehicle Armoury.
Fixed an annoying visual bug on the parts page. No I won't tell you what it is.
10/31/02
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that wasn't fixing sensor crits on donation mech repairs.
Added unit skills to the Training page for your convenience.
Password changes are now logged.
Announcement: Contrary to some people's hopes (but most of our fears) Neveron is NOT shutting down. Any rumor of such
an action is just that, a rumor, and should be ignored.
New Feature: Somehow it went unreported that repairs have changed. All results are now shown instantly and there is
a complex new partial/critical repair and failure system in place. This new system allows for the partial repairs of critical
if you do not have the appropriate skilled techs or facilities to do the job. This means that facilities that
previously couldn't fix certain things now have a chance of fixing them partially (with penalties to hit and range) or completely
if they get lucky. All repairs now also have an equal chance of critical success and failure, meaning that you may unexpectedly
find you may have more armor in a certain location or less ammunition. These critical changes are permanent. The new repair system
is both more fun, easier to use and cuts down dramatically on server lag.
New Feature: You may now use the armoury pages to create multiple units all at once. Please note that infantry
units recruit their own soldier for everyone but the CO. You no longer need to manually purchase large numbers of new soldiers
to create infantry, as it will do it on its own.
New Feature: You may now set your troops to patrol areas around cities. They don't actually move around, but it is
an easy way to distribute units around cities for defensive purposes. To do this go to the map and click on a city you control.
Click on the "set patrols" link and you will be given the option to distribute units into zones depending on how many units you
have available under a certain BV. To change the BV use the option on that page and it will give you new choices. For instance:
if you wanted to distribute only Jeeps and untrained infantry, you would want a max BV of 20. Once you have an option you like,
simply click the button next to the option you want, and the troops will be sent into transit to occupy the surrounding
zones.
Bug Fix: Fixed a crucial security bug that would allow people to take control of other's empires.
11/1/02
New Feature: Soldiers now slowly lose skill over time. While not
immediately noticeable, you will see that over several weeks, or more likely months, of time (i.e. NYear)
some of your units will lose an occasional skill point. This is not common, and reflects the aging or decay
of unused skills. This change was met with immediate and violent dissension among the active players in
chat, and was thus addressed as follows. You can now set your military maintenance rate. By increasing the
amount of money spent on maintenance (which includes what we call "maintenance training"), no skills will
degrade. In fact, if you increase it by large amounts, all skills in your empire will slowly improve, reflecting
accelerated training programs for all units on duty. At the highest levels, this improvement will be
very significant. Likewise you can reduce the amount spent on maintenance, which eliminates the regular
training programs for active duty units and results in faster skill degradation. To set your rate, go
to the empire settings page, the link is right below your list of claimed people.
11/3/02
You must now wait 40 NevDay between military maintenance rate changes to prevent abuse of the system.
11/4/02
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that wasn't allowing techs to be hired properly.
AI is being steadily improved on a weekly basis. AI now retreat off the map when appropriate (overwhelming foes,
out of ammo, forced off by being cornered). This means that AI will now retreat off the map if their ideal range is high enough.
The AI will now also back units up when appropriate instead of turning around so that they can continue firing.
Empires that become level 1 and attack someone in land war retain their ability to both attack and be attacked if they
drop to level 0 again.
Level 0 empires should be aware that currently they can lose any land that they do not have built or protected. If you want to keep
another empire from stealing your land, put a unit in it.
11/5/02
Land ownership costs were slightly increased. While the largest of empires may be able to notice the
difference this makes to their income, none should find it significant. This may be the first of many gradual
increases to encourage people not to claim thousands of zones they do not need. Remember, you can always
unclaim unused zones if you want to reduce your Administrative Overhead cost (which is based linearly and
entirely on the number of zones which you own)
The BV restrictions for LC's have been removed for all units. You may now hire LC's to pick up and drop units anywhere
you want as long as you own the zone.
Bug Fixed: The donation to repair mechs has been updated properly to repair sensor critical's.
Coming Soon! LC costs for vehicles and infantry are being reduced. Vehicles will be $1 million and infantry
will be $250,000.
Coming Soon! Jump infantry will soon (in the next few days to a week) be able to para-drop into enemy territory.
This will allow them to attack any non-city zone and attempt to secure a landing zone for other units. The cost will be $25
million plus normal LC transport fees for units. Once a zone is secured other units may be sent there via LC as per the
normal rules.
11/6/02
New Feature: Limbs are now viewable on your Parts page. You can move them around and sell them, however the
limbs marketplace has not been finished yet, so you can not actually buy them from others. This should be completed tomorrow.
Limbs are already ;ready coded into the repair features, so if you move limbs to repair facilities they will be fitted onto
your mechs. As with any new feature there may be some bugs, so please report them to the Bugs@Neveron.com [no longer valid] address.
Nominate your favorite name for the newest Neveron continent to the east of the main continent (check the
level 4 map). Send your nomination to Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid]. The top 5 (admin discretion) names will be voted on by players
to pick the final name.
New empires now start on the newest Neveron continent.
Before a giddy land buying frenzy starts, please be aware that land maintenance costs are likely to rise again in the
near future to make land baroning a more overhead intensive project.
The level 4 map was improved and enlarged to make room for the 2 new continents that have been added.
11/7/02
Fixed a bug which prevented some vehicle units from being repaired.
Fixed a bug which was preventing some empires from training infantry units.
Added the ability to see water zones to the level 3 map.
Jump infantry para-drop attacks are fully functional. The costs are extremely high for such attacks, reflecting
the powerful nature of such a strike. They can drop on ANY zone, including cities.
11/8/02
Infantry are now easier to detect with sensors. This doesn't mean that they wont jump into hiding in woods every so
often.
New Vehicles: The Scorpion-A4 armed with SRM-MkII and excellent sensor package has been added as well as 2 types
of Packrats. The Packrat-T1 has an upgraded sensor package and the Packrat-T2 has upgraded sensors and weaponry. Note
that all these designs are relatively low RP making them easier for empires to produce. Few other vehicles on Neveron
have sensors of ANY kind.
New Feature: The marketplace now has a market for mech limbs so that you can purchase and sell them
for repairs. It is found under the Parts section.
New Weapon: A new weapon has been introduced, the SRM-2 mk II. This weapon uses a heavier armor piercing warhead.
Each missile that hits does 50% more damage than the standard SRM-2, or 3 points of damage to armored targets.
Damage to infantry units is the same as standard SRM rounds. The SRM-2 mk II generates more heat, 3 points,
and fits only 40 reloads per ton vs. 50 reloads in a standard SRM-2.
11/9/02
Mail Server Down: For security reasons, the Neveron mail server is currently offline and could be down for the
next couple days.
New Feature Many of the armoury and parts pages now have "ship all" buttons that will allow you to ship
everything on that page to a specific zone. This will hopefully alleviate some of the tediousness of shipping supplies
to repair zones. If a page doesn't have this feature yet it will soon, so just keep looking.
11/11/02
Fixed a bug that was not allowing the new vehicle types to list in the armoury.
There are perhaps 6 or 8 donations that have been sent in over the past 4-5 days that do not have their
login names attached. If you have donated via PayPal before today and have not received your donation points,
please send an e-mail to Randy_Shepardson@yahoo.com [no longer valid] with your login name, and the PayPal Transaction ID and we
will award your DP as soon as possible. Thank you.
The "ship all" changes have been completed and all pages now have the option. Note that shipping all will
not select just one of the item types on the page, but everything on that page.
The mail server is still down, but we hope to have it back up and running by the end of the day tomorrow.
11/12/02
Our mail server is back up and running.
11/13/02
To the mercy of all, all private mail notices will now only be shown one time. This will alleviate the
horrendously of those persistent private mail notices. From now on if you get a PM notice it means you have a
NEW messages and should check your mail. This does NOT apply to game wide mails.
The Lances Orders option has temporarily been removed due to a bug. It will be back up and running again soon.
11/14/02
A hugely exploitative bug in the Armoury was fixed. If people encounter bugs that allow them to cheat they are
advised to report it to Bugs@neveron.com [no longer valid] immediately. Reproducible bugs that are reported often garner a reward (based
on Admin discretion). People who exploit bugs of this nature will find themselves disproportionately punished for their
actions. Cheaters suck.
Auto training performance should be significantly improved, thus reducing total server lag.
11/18/02
New Feature: You may now delete all your public mails while still saving your private mails.
11/19/02
A loophole in the Factions coding was allowing people to farm level 0 empires for their money without taking up
space in the faction. We have modified the Faction rules so that if you drop to level 0 you will automatically
be evicted from your faction to prevent this abuse.
New Feature (being debugged): Infantry will now flee battles if certain criteria are met. Factors are
your empire's morale, the power of the detected enemies (based on sensor checks), and the power of the friendly force.
Infantry that flee are taken off the map immediately (the soldiers scatter in complete rout) and then regroup in the
nearest friendly zone. Some of the soldiers from each unit will desert (based on empire morale), the routed soldiers
will all receive a reputation drop, and some of the abandoned weapons will be left in the contested zone as salvage.
11/20/02
Device installation was aborted. System will be stable.
Neveron will be up and down today as a critical network device is installed and debugged.
11/21/02
Training page will now show the persons skills appropriately. Previously it would show the unit skills (which remain
unchanged until the next day change) giving the appearance that the unit had not trained at all. Please note that although
the format and mechanics of training has changed to be more efficient on the servers, the system has not changed since last
winter. The odds of skilling down are still the same as they have ever been.
Vehicle AI is continually being improved. AI movement bug was fixed today that was making the AI think it
was moving over terrain when it wasn't, resulting in reduced speed or no movement at all.
Fixed a bug on the movement marketplace that wasn't allowing folks to be notified they had sold their items.
Terrain generation fixed to allow rough hexes properly.
11/22/02
Coming Feature: Static defenses are currently being coded. Their will be 6 levels of battle towers with
various armaments and features. They will have weaknesses like vehicles but be more armored and armed than pretty much
any single normal unit in the game. The maintenance fees will also be high to prevent them from making empires
overprotected.
New Feature: Emperors may now delete 5 buildings at a time on the Buildings page. This will help tedious empire
restructuring a bit. Note that it IS laggy, so may get yanked or modified at some point.
New Feature: Emperors may now evict players from their empires if they have been inactive (not logged in ) for
more than 14 real days. This will unclaim their claimed people.
Just thought you'd like to know how cool Sly is.
Fixed a bug that was allowing people to remove their items from the marketplace after they had been bought, thus
duplicating the products. Thanks to Hippo for the heads up on that one and he has been rewarded accordingly.
400 additional empires have been deleted as per the new policy. All of these empires were level 0.
Policy Change: To help deter cheaters, I will be deleting large groups of empires created with similar names.
An example of this is as follows-
MikaUniversa
MikeUniversa
MikeUniversal
MikeUniversale
MilkaUniversa
MilkaUniversum
These are clearly junk empires and will be deleted. Another example is:
KinoRaum_XxX
KinoRaum_XxXx
KinoRaum_XxXxX
KinoRaum_XxXxXx
KinoRaum_XxXxXxX
Again..clearly junk. I will also be investigating empires created by the same person within a short amount of time (days).
When you lag the game...you lag with Bin Laden.
Cheater Alert: Over 750 cheat empires were deleted this morning, and one player was deleted and banned for an
absurd amount of empire farming. He alone probably had 300 of the empires that were deleted. I will be creating more
monitoring tools to watch for cheaters. In addition to just being lame, cheaters create immense amounts of lag by creating
large numbers of unused empires. These empires are calculated into every update in Neveron, of which there are many. The
next time you get frustrated because of lag, remember that cheaters are making it probably 20% worse than it would be otherwise.
If you suspect an empire is cheating, please write a note to Help@Neveron.com [no longer valid] and we will
look into it. If you are unsure of the rules, please look at the Rules page located under the Admin heading. Rule updates
will be coming out soon, so please read the Updates for more news.
11/23/02
Fixed a bug on the general parts marketplace where parts weren't being deleted once bought.
SRM-mk II's had some bugs related to them all around and were fixed.
A bug that wasn't updating new infantry units' BV should be fixed.
Policy Change: Resurrections will now cost 2 DP per person. All the regular rules apply.
11/24/02
All buildings in a zone are now deleted if you claim that zone. This was implemented to fix some lag issues, but
has apparently been thwarting the efforts of some people who build cities for other empires exploiting a loophole in the unclaiming
code. You are not supposed to be able to unclaim cities, and if you reclaim them the buildings will be deleted.
New building icons have been introduced to differentiate between building types in land war. This will make it easier
to scout zones and destroy specific buildings if need be.
The line of sight code should now be more accurate (more bug free), faster, and accounts for the level of buildings
when determining LOS and partial cover. Mechs are 1.5 levels high, while most buildings in the game are 4 levels.
Expect to not have LOS on units more often now in cities because of this. All arena buildings are level 1, thus
giving partial cover.
The delete multiple buildings button will now delete the SMALLEST 5 buildings (by max CF).
11/26/02
The hardware list on the Donations page has been updated. Please e-mail us if you have any of the listed equipment
and are interested in donating them.
11/27/02
Zones: Claiming an unclaimed zone now deletes the entire inventory of that zone (vehicles, weapons, etc..)
Bugs: A market bug made buying items off the marketplace free for short time. The units in question have been deleted and
the few empires who fessed up about it were given a reward for their honesty. This also resulted in some people's items
on the marketplace being bought for free and them not receiving payment. Unfortunately, there is no way to reimburse
empires for this problem. Very sorry :(
12/2/02
Bugs: Fixed a bug where people were losing access to their zones if the ZC died.
Emails: Please note that we receive hundreds of e-mails a week here at Neveron and there are only 2 of us to respond to
them...in addition to all the other work that needs doing on the average day. Also, some people's e-mail services
will not accept our responses for some reason, making it very difficult for us to respond. This is often the reason
that people do not hear back from us about important issues. Including your empire name, login name, and a variety of
e-mail addresses that you may be reached at will help ensure that your problems get addressed in a timely manner.
When corresponding with us, please also make sure to leave all previous correspondence attached to replies, so that we
have a reference to work from.
Towers: You may design and research your own tower designs (check the Research page). The towers are
static defense units, fully customizable and lots of fun. You can only build a design as large as the size the
size of buildings that you have researched (everyone starts at 25 CF). Note that no other part of the towers code
has been completed, so you can not build or see your towers, only design and research.
12/3/02
Units: It never got posted but you can scrap vehicles to reduce maintenance costs and
receive salvage (for spare parts).
Events: Party!! The 1st Annual Neveron Holiday Party will be held on December 27th, 2002 at 4 pm EST. The
party will be located at the Masonic Hall in Keene, N.H. and hosted by Chetter and his cronies. Dinner, snacks,
and beverages will be provided (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and you are encouraged to bring your drink of
choice as well. If possible please R.S.V.P. with Chetter at (603)-313-9997 or e-mail him at ChetterBlaine@hotmail.com [no longer valid]
The Neveron staff will be in attendance as well as players from a dozen states. If you are in need of a ride from the airport please
let Chetter know and he will arrange one for you.
Festivities will include:
Door prizes
Raffle with a Grand Prize of a Stone Rhino
Double donation bonus! All donations received at the party will be automatically doubled
Note: Normal donation bonuses DO NOT apply unless they are over $2000
We are also trying to get a high-speed internet connection which would allow us to host the first ever
Neveron Battlefest...a land war tournament pitting one team against another for big prizes. If this happens
people will be encouraged to bring computers with network cards and cables. Stay in touch with Chetter for
details.
Much thanks to Chetter and his gang for their time and effort.
Donation Options: You may now choose Instant Buildings on the Donate page. Level 1-6 repair facilities and
Technology Complexes are all available at the click of a button. All work instantly once commissioned, and standard
buildable space rules apply.
Fines: A level 6 empire was fined $2 billion for cheating and about 200 of his related empires were deleted. Cheaters suck.
Bugs: A problem with mech not being destroyed properly in battle should be fixed.
Ammo crits should work properly again
Fixed several significant partial cover, line of sight and woods cover bugs in battle. We added a new LOS code last week and are still debugging it
12/4/02
Bugs: Fixed a bunch of zones where the ZC had died, thus making them invisible to the owner
Fixed a visual bug on the Finance page that was making it look like you could send certain empires more money than
you actually could
Market Auction: Neveron Arms Sales Inc is exploring the option of changing the marketplace selling
format. The object is to create a more competitive market, help prevent abuse of the market and add a little spice to the game. Currently the markets work on a straight fee per item system. You put up
200 Jeeps for a certain price and people buy however many they want at that price.
The new system would create an auction service where you put up a certain number of a certain product. Customers then bid on the whole package
and the highest bidder receives the items at the end of the auction. Auctions could be a set length (determined by us) or perhaps a variable set by the seller (with a minimum time). Please send comments/questions/ideas to
Ideas@neveron.com [no longer valid] - Thanks
12/5/02
You now view public and private mail separately on the Comms page.
Performance (lag) has become a major issue of late and has not been addressed because of completing the towers
project. Once towers are finished performance will become the number one priority, but because of the holiday
season
Cheater: A level 5 empire was fined $400 million for dueling against another empire he controlled.
The other empire was deleted.
Fixed a typo on the TC donation that was saying something about doubling bonuses instead of buildings.
Please do not send e-mails to multiple addresses at Neveron. There are only 2 of us so we read it all. Thanks.
12/6/02
Items being sold on the marketplace will now be turned over to the conquering empire if the zone they are being
sold from is captured in land war.
Towers Go Beta: Towers are finished being coded. You can train, fight, create, research, and deploy
towers to your hearts content. At this point you can not buy or sell towers and we do not have plans to make
that possible yet. There will be the usual round of bugs so please expect them and report them to Bugs@Neveron.com [no longer valid].
Thanks, and happy defending.
-Towers must be designed and researched on your Research page.
-Tower designs can be donated for as normal research.
-Only 1 tower design may be researched at a time.
-Once researched you can build towers in factories as per normal, and ship them noncommissioned between zones that
you control.
-Once commissioned, towers can be trained and scrapped like vehicles.
-Towers can be equipped with sensors 5 levels over the level you have currently researched.
-Towers do not require that you research anything except for building designs. All empires can research
level 1 (25 cf) towers.
-In battle, an infantry unit that attacks a tower at range 0 does 100 points of damage (simulates the storming
and neutralization of the tower crew).
12/7/02
Fixed a bug with purchasing mechs that was causing a major error in the process.
The Faction Leader will now receive a message when someone applies to be in their faction.
Error: The error we are looking for will most likely look like this:
Error Type
Active Server Pages, ASP 0113 (0x80004005)
The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a
new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeout or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.
/people.asp
A normal timeout error appears as follows:
Error Type:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server (0x80040E31)
Timeout expired
/personbar.asp, line 37
The "normal" timeouts are due to lag, and are not directly the problem itself. The thing causing a large
amount of lag will give the first error. If you can please send any information, ESPECIALLY a line and page
number associated with the first error above. Please send it to bugs@neveron.com [no longer valid] - Thank you.
Caps were placed on the weapons market to help deter abuse. 2 items that were on the market that were grossly
exceeding those caps were placed back in the stores of the sellers. If there are any problems with the limits set
please send an e-mail to bugs and I can tweak them to allow for current market trends.
New Feature: Long have we wanted reputation to be a more significant attribute than bragging rights and
now it is. Every 10 rep points will earn a unit a +1 bonus to initiative.
12/8/02
Timeout Bug: We really appreciate everyone's effort in trying to help us find this bug. As the example
below shows though, we are looking for something very specific, and NOT a timeout error. If you get an error that
says "Description: Timeout expired" it is being caused by general server lag. Please do NOT report these bugs.
Thank you.
New Feature: As promised Factions now operate as Trade Alliances. Faction leaders will soon be able to
set their
Faction Discount on their Factions page. The default discount is 50% off. Faction member's items are listed
in orange on the marketplace. This is currently only operating on the Infantry market, but will be expanded soon.
Updated the marketplace to allow new SRM-2 sales again.
The mail system received a major overhaul, thus reducing lag and hopefully bugs associated with it.
A major overhaul to error page will now deliver significantly more data and records for us, allowing us to
track bugs and the causes of them much better.
12/9/02
New Feature: The vehicle marketplace now gives a list of faction members and trade alliance empires
with wares for sale at 50%. Faction members are Orange, trade partners are Red. I hope to give faction leaders
the power to change their discounts tomorrow.
Fixed a bug where empires not in a faction couldn't buy infantry weapons.
An odd section of the day change was removed and performance increased by about 40% (for that section of the
update).
Donation vehicles will now arrive immediately upon purchase.
Infantry Marketplace has been debugged as well as significantly performance enhanced. Not including lag
from other sources (which is, of course, significant) it should be 50%-75% faster to load the page.
Bugs galore are being fixed today..too many to even bother telling you about. I will make sure to note significant
ones.
12/10/02
The Updates page is now (obviously) split into separate months for easier page loading.
The infantry and vehicle armoury pages now only have a "create multiple" button...if you want to create
just 1 simply enter 1. Creating infantry will now ALWAYS auto-hire the 27 non-CO soldiers, thus requiring you
to have $270,000 per unit and 1 unassigned person.
Ammo dumping has been fixed and now also double checks before it dumps it.
A bug that wasn't allowing donation vehicles to be bought has been fixed.
12/11/02
Fixed a bug on the Claim Zone option that was preventing folks from claiming zones.
To alter the previous update: ALL donation repairs will now completely RENEW the mech, taking all repair
critical successes and failures away.
Fixed a bug that was not delivering infantry weapons properly.
Instant repairs on donation mechs have increased. These are mechs of incredible power and have had relatively
cheap repairs, allowing them to easily go on continuous war rampages. To help abate the constant use of instant
mech repairs of these powerful units, the cost has been increased to 10 DP for all custom mechs except the Starslayer,
the Axeman, the Hollander, and the HGN-732, which have been increased to 5 DP each. These mechs will also be
healed differently, fixing any permanent repair critical's (both good and bad) that they may receive, and restoring
them to their original quality.
The Zones part of the Land/Build page now no longer gives the option to see units in a zone. To use this
function either look at the map or at the Units page. Both give options for zone viewing.
There have been several day change lag improvements over the past couple days, continuing to reduce the amount
of lag that occurs. Many pages have also been altered to improve performance.
12/12/02
Fixed a bug that was allowing people to have more than $2 billion at one time which is too much for any
one person to hold. When the amount gets over $2 billion the excess disappears for unknown reasons. This bug has been fixed and
you now will not be able to hold more than $2 billion on one person.
So that large empires with large numbers of volunteers can create infantry platoons out of them, the original
create single platoon button has been replaced.
Faction members will now expedite shipping to each other, reducing shipping times by 50%.
New Feature: A Faction war log has been added to the War page. Check this frequently to ensure
none of your faction members are under attack. In addition, both the war logs will now activate the Map
page if desired.
Reduced the minimum costs on many weapons market items.
12/13/02
Fixed a bug that was causing the stats page to not show up properly for some people.
Announcement: Because of the holiday season, we will be slowing our work schedule significantly to
spend time with friends and family, and to break from the intense work that we have put in in the past 6 weeks.
This means that e-mails will take longer to be responded to or acted upon, and do not be surprised if e-mails are
not returned until after the New Year. Donations will still be processed within 24-48 hours. We thank you for
your patience during the holidays and wish the best of luck to you and yours.
12/15/02
Donations: PayPal technical difficulties are preventing donations from being processed right now. I apologise to those who have
been waiting for the past 24 hours or so. The donations will be processed in the next 24 hours. Thank you for supporting
Neveron.
Formations: Disbanding lances will now cause a reputation loss among its' members.
12/16/02
Faction Discount: Faction Leaders may now customize the Marketplace Discount their faction members receive. This
amount can vary between 10% and 75% off the listed price. The tools for doing this are found under a new link in the
Alliances page called Benefits. The discount can only be changed once every 100 NevDays.
12/17/02
Errors: There is currently a common error in land war where it will tell you that terrain was not generated correctly and kick you
out of a battle. Often this error is incorrect, and if you reenter the battle everythign will work correctly.
Auction Marketplace: Thank you to everyone who commented on the Auction Marketplace idea. Although we received the usual round of "why are
you even thinking about that when you should be coding THIS" remarks, it is our goal to solicit feedback on potential
future changes when possible. Your feedback has greatly influenced our thinking on this topic, and how it should be
implemented in the future.
12/18/02
