colony cheat

Very inventive I will have to try the cheat myself.

You must be playing super evil picking all the slimy worm events. Did you ever get the nice guys forcing a revolution on your planets.

Will the cookie idea work for those that have their cookies disabled? I have, at times, changed my cookie file to read only. I have heard that it is possible to totally disable cookies, and there is nothing to prevent someone from erasing the cookie file between saving and reloading the game.

I think this is one of those things that you can't really change... if someone wants to do it badly enough they're going to find a way to do it. It should be common sense that you're cheating and you just shouldn't do it. I personally have no problem with this, because GalCiv takes a decade to shut down on my computer, and I don't want to go thorugh that just to get a better planetary event...

It would be easier to use a pre-made list of which planets contain which events at the start of the game. This would remove any such cheating.

Paul.

I think of more of leveling the playing field than cheating. Ever notice that Aliens have all sorts of 3)plus planets while the game usually sets Earth to 18.

THAT SHOULD BE "30 Plus".

Couldn't one just save the random seed and use that on a reload.
I thought that's what civ3 did to avoid the reload type cheats....

Saving the random seed would still allow the player to do something else which also requires a random number before the colonising. It could still be abused in this way. In Civ3 you could reload, fight a different battle first, and then return to the important battle.

Paul.

The whole object is to make it more difficult to abuse this re-load cheat. In the beginning of the game where reloads are quick, it could take upto 15 minutes just to get a +34 planet improvement. I've seen +40 only twice since beta 3 arrived.
On the flip side, the starship and research offers painless points to sainthood.
Since the galaxy is made into grids, I suggest a cookie with a grid location code in its name. The number is meaningless to us but the program knows exactly which grid/planet location is being referenced. The player would not know which cookie to erase. If he erases them all, all the planet will be affected. This may make the save game unplayable. Cheat no more.

I have to agree with Wyrenn on this--the "cheat" you describe is the point of saving game states in the first place--it's a common practice in many games for a player to stop and save a game at a favorable point and then set off on some dangerous course only to reload that game again when he gets slaughtered. If someone wants to consider planet colonization as that kind of a situation, so what? A player might find a galaxy they like (or find challenging for some interesting reason) and go back to an early state to try different strategies or go for different kinds of wins. Is that cheating?

And it could be argued that any game worth playing is randomized to some extent--the same tactics or strategies aren't guaranteed to elicit an identical response even from the same point in the game. Stardock could eliminate saved games or they could establish every planet situation and every anomaly ahead of time so that when you try a game again from a certain point those aspects are always totally predictable. But wouldn't that be less fun?

So if this combination of features allows "cheating", it also makes the game more interesting and fun. It allows the player to both experiment by trying out different approaches to the same scenarios and yet keeps the game fresh and keeps the player on his toes.

I say leave it up to the player to choose to use the features provided the way he or she wishes.

-Robert

And by the way, Ted, by "cookie" you mean small files with only one or two simple pieces of information in them, right--not brownser cookies? I'm just mentioning it because there might be a little confusion about what exactly you are proposing (or its suggested implementation).

-Robert

You are correct, Robert. I meant a small file. As far as I know, their is only 1 save game on main menu. Perhaps a save game menu ala Doom, where the player could give a description to the save game and have 10 saves.

My strategy is to do an initial save, fast build 4 scouts and check the nearby sectors. If I like what I see, I restore to the beginning and invest 10-20 hours of playtime (more if I want superevil with good worms).

I also agree with Technician. Earth is rarely above 19. I've seen an AI start with twin 26 and a 20 in same star.

While a ramdon galaxy map is nice, I bet us users, once Brad releases an editor, will post some really good maps.

Final note: This game has the potential to out-score Civ2 or Civ3 in the PCGamer ratings. Why hasn't PCGamer even mention this great game? (and yes, I did write and I am a subscriber)

Jotun,
I agree that we don't want to restrict replay value on favourite maps, but we do need some method to restrict 'reload for gain' tactics or else the metaverse will become a joke. Players (who have the patience and desire) could just keep reloading until they achieved the exact results they wanted. All you really need is some way to ensure that random events in the next turn remain the same.
Paul.

There was a definite mention by Brad of multiple saved games being part of the 1.0 release. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I hadn't heard about an editor, will there be one?

Solitair -- We can certainly agree to disagree about the importance of the metaverse as a way for players to be rated against one another, but maybe a simple count of how many times a specific saved game has been reloaded could be used to "weight" point counts. Each saved game could keep a list of previous saved games and how many times they had been reloaded before that particular game was saved along with a counter incremented each time that saved game is reloaded. That information (always from the last saved game loaded) could be made visible to all and/or be used to generate penalties or influence where games appear in rankings.

This penalizes cheaters without removing options for tinkerers or experimenters.

-Robert

Jotun -- your idea is nice but remember that some player can only play for around a hour /day and what hapened to theyr score with this many loadings they have?

I agree with Jurgen Apart from obvious cheats like this one (Which I am sure Brad will spot and correct.)It does'nt matter if I keep going to previos game to get a better result. As lucky Jack said elswhere as long as everone has the same tools It does'nt matter. We are after all playing against ourselves. The purpose of the metaverse is twofold 1 to act as a league table 2. and I think more importantly, for Brad to identify good strategies and update the AI to give us all a more challenging game.

Beside which how long would a gigantic game take to comlete?

My games on a gigantic map take about a week to play (and I am retired and have plenty of time). On GC/OS2 it would take me a month to play a game on a gigantic map, but then I was not retired and did not have the time I do now.

Ah!!! To be retired with GalCiv at your side!

Heaven Sheer Heaven.

Hopfully when I retire We will be be on Gal Civ 8 I'll be a Commander and Jack will be first Lord of the Admiralty (or US equivelent)

As far as the colony cheat goes, I wouldn't waste my time on a class 19 or less world. Class 26, I would want least 33% worms (+8). A perfect (assume) 40 on a 26 world means +10 or 36. 1 or 2 36 planets with improvements will make a vast difference in the game.

BTW, how is improvement calculated? Assumming 40% worms and 26 class planet with soil, habitat and terafarm:
26 * 1.4 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.2 = 52.8 world.

I know this was in another message but what happened to the Terrafarming improvement debate? 1000 shield for 20% is steep.

I haven't worked this out as far as a specific formula to use, but what would matter is not how many times you load saved games in general, but how many times you go back to a particular saved game and loaded it again and then only combined with the cumulative effect of multiply loaded specific games, and then only the count of those loadings that applied to the particular game state that you submit to the metaverse. Plus there would be thresholds such as "more than one multiply loaded game", "only games reloaded more than twice", etc.).

For instance, if you were doing the colony cheat, you would have a pattern that looked like:

Saved game 1: 7 loads
Saved game 2: 4 loads
Saved game 3: 6 loads
Saved game 4: 8 loads
etc.

That is, you are going back to the same saved games over and over to get just the right planet. If you were just playing along a little every day, your loads would look like 1: 1, 2: 1, 3: 1, 4: 1, in which case no penalty would be applied. Also, no penalty would be applied if you went back to that first game above, loaded it an 8th time and never did any multiple reloads again in that resulting game because it falls below one of the thresholds.

The point being that nothing would prevent you from doing the colony cheat if that is your thing, but it would be detectable when the time comes to compare your scores with others. Neither would the occasional going back to fix a mistake ("Whoops! I fired on the Drengin!") penalize you because ocassionaly reloading a particular saved game more than once would fall below the threshhold. And even then, the penalties would start very small and accumulate slowly.

Not that it's likely that anyone is going to implement anything like this, but if there is a big movement towards stopping cheaters, I'd hope it was implemented with detection and penalty guidelines rather than actual restrictions on game play.

-Robert

Ted,

The calculation for planet class improvements is not cumulative. If you start with a class 26 planet and add soil enhancement (10%) gives a class 28 planet. (Also the results is not rounded. The decimal part is dropped.) Add hibitat improvement and you get 26*(1+.1+.1) or 26*1.2 = 31. Add terraforming (.2) and you get 26*1.4 = 36.

Now, here is the difficult part. I have not yet tried to figure out if the earthworms adjusts the original planet class or is just added to the improvements. If it adjusts the original planet class then you have a potential (with the 3 improvements) of a class 50 planet (26 * 1.4 = 36 - 36 * 1.4 = 50). If it just adds to the multiplier with the rest of the improvements then you have a potential for a class 48 planet (26 * 1.8 = 48).