As our Freelancer community grew larger and release of Oblivion came closer, it became obvious that Discovery Gaming Community is no longer enough for two games at once. Freelancer activities were growing surprisingly rapidly for the last several months here, so I decided to separate Oblivion forums from Discovery, leaving Discovery only for Freelancer and sci-fi-related discussions. All general forums remain, of course, but Oblivion forums become read-only since today. If you are interested in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, register at our new forums!
The new message board will be dedicated to The Elder Scrolls games, Oblivion in particular; it will also contain general forums, including gaming forums, like Discovery has.
Our goal is to create a friendly, helpful and mature The Elder Scrolls community where you will be able to share your knowledge, get answers to most complicated questions and discuss freely both gaming and non-gaming topics.
A new Freelancer forum - Discovery Mod Discussion - was added to Discovery message board. Goal of introducing a new forum is to separate server-specific discussions from topics related to the Discovery mod itself; it will also host 4.79 beta testing discussions and bug reporting threads.
4.79 beta was not yet released, but will be released very soon. Follow forum announcements.
Beta testing guildelines
1. Downloading
4.79 beta will have 79.1, 79.2, 79.3 and so on version number. Each time new version is released you'll have to download complete beta (about 18 Mb), for each version will most probably feature lots of changes.
2. Starting
4.79 beta testing server will come with whole user database of our normal server. However, your progress on beta server will not be saved or compensated on main server.
Each new character created on beta server will have 500 million starting credits and same ship/equipment as normal.
Following ships must be re-bought on Beta (otherwise we cannot guarantee flawless work of server):
Huegenot
Marsflyer
Server administration will compensate your expenses. If you do not re-buy the ships as soon as you can, you will be banned from further testing for security reasons.
Administration reserves a right to wipe beta server user database if this will prove to be essential for further testing.
5. What needs to be tested?
- All new systems
In particular: missions and NPC encounters in all parts of each system. Object placement and infocards. Nebulas correctly displayed on nav map. Crashes.
This is true about 5 new systems, Omicron Minor and Omicron Delta.
- All new ships
In particular: maneuverability. Correspondence between infocard stats and actual stats. Texture alignment, weapon hardpoints, overall model quality.
- All new bases
In particular: NPCs, equipment, commodities and all rooms. Everything should work.
- All new weapons: that's one of the most important parts of testing. Each weapon should be tested on NPCs and preferably in PvP combat.
This also applies to renewed Sidewinder and Swarm, battleship flak cannons.
- NPC difficulty: as many NPCs, especially high-level, have new equipment on them, difficulty of missions should be carefully tested.
- Check capital ship maneuverability. Stats for all capital ships were changed (for many other ships too).
- Testing of trade routes: report all routes that are too short and lucrative in comparison to average Freelancer profits.
4. Bug reports
Testers should report all bugs, flaws and misprints that they notice, related to 4.79 changes and earlier changes from previous versions of Discovery. Special forum thread will be available for beta bug reports. Provisional list of possible errors (not complete, for many different errors might exist):
- Crashes related to specific ships, systems or objects
- Random crashes
- System flaws: missing descriptions, weird-looking system objects, overlapping objects
- System parts that simply look wrong, dull, illogical etc
- Encounter flaws: for example, too many hostile NPCs near a base, too many pirates or ships of specific lawful faction in one place.
- Wrong weapon balance (errors in balancing new weapons)
- Wrong ship balance (new ships overpowered/underpowered, have weird maneuverability values)
- Base-related bugs: docking problems, wrong reputation, etc
- Problems with NPCs at bases: wrong factions, missing traders
- Flaws about equipment dealers: too many items in one place, not enough new items where they should be
- Flaws about trade routes: too much profit or too low profit from specific route
- Errors and misprints in names and descriptions of everything
Testers should never conceal mod problems to secure potential benefits for themselves (for example, leaving a secret super-lucrative trade route).
5. Feature requests
Special forum thread will be started for all feature requests that testers and other members might post. Please do not repeat requests that were already rejected or delayed until next versions.
Balance correction requests should be posted in bug reports instead.
6. Contacts
Testers should contact server administration immediately if they experience crash-to-desktop type errors or get disconnected from server for no particular reason (most likely due to server crash). In this case testers should also leave a message on forums, recording the place and situation where the crash occured. More details = better.
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