New Features: Event Pins and Future Turn Prediction

We are releasing a couple improvements today to improve your ability to see important events in your turns and plan ahead.

1. Event Pins have been added that display important events filtered out from your reports on your map. These are things that can sometimes go overlooked like failed ground attacks, new natives appearing, etc. These small pins can be used to see what is going on in a location. To keep the number displayed reasonable, we prioritize what types of messages are important enough to display, and are open to feedback on things you think should be included or not. Keep in mind that the types and quantities of certain events can vary quite a lot in different stages of the games and from race to race.

2. Future Turn Prediction has been added which will allow you to preview the effects of your commands and help plan future turns. Many (but not yet all) host steps are included in the prediction, and more will be added in the future. Keep in mind that because there are unknowns or random events that occur during host, we at times make assumptions to create the results, such as:

• Ion storms move, but do not change speed, strength or direction
• Starbases will build ships regardless of the state of the ship limit.
• Ground attacks assume the defender has the max possible defense posts for their population
• Other players are assumed to have default advantages

You can predict out any number of turns in the future, and can also give commands in predicted turns, just know that these commands are not saved when you go back in time again.

Note that this is a large and complicated new feature, and as such we know that there are likely still some issues that will need to be corrected with it. If there is a problem that prevents the prediction from running, you should get an error window with an option to send us a report. This will automatically package up and send us the necessary info about the game and error, so it can be quickly tracked down and eliminated. If the prediction runs but you see results that look incorrect, or are due to a host step that has not yet been implemented, you can let us know in the comments here.