Spore ships for all?

No Korath monopoly

from GalCiv2 Forums
Yesterday I played my first game of DA beta 2, first of all it looks great and at least on my computer it ran fine without any major slowdowns. I was going to say that it looked fine and that I had found two issues, until I realized that one ship hitting more than one ship in one round of combat was supposed to happen.


The other issue that remains outstanding is that by the time I conquered the Drengin, Korath, and Thalans(I eventually won on culture over the Krynn. I got lazy) all of us, except the Thalans(they were stuck on Thala for the whole game) had spore ships.


It was my understanding, though it may be erroneous, that only the Korath got the spore ships as a perk of their super ability and that nobody else could get that ability, which currently seems to be linked to the tech allowing colonization of toxic worlds, which anyone can get either by reseaching or my method, trading with the Korath.


So to sum up this whole post: Are spore ships supposed to be like the good and evil technologies and limited to certain races, or are they more like the Korx getting all trade techs immediately and everyone else can get them later?

3,980 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
During a game of beta 1A, I managed to steal the tech by conquering a planet, adding an additional way of getting spore ships.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, that needs to be a special tech that is both non-tradable and also cannot be stolen\found. Really makes their super ability pointless (like when one of the abilities was the trade techs).

I like the idea of spore ships otherwise. It just needs a catch in there to keep it theirs.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the xml files, the techs have a property called "CanBeTraded" set to "0". This seems to indicate that the tech isn't meant to be able to be Traded. The code for the property, however, might not be in the game just yet (or enabled)...

I imagine a similar property might be introduced for making it so the tech can't be stolen. *shrugs
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The devs stated way back that you can steal the spore tech...... It's supposed to be that way.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The devs stated way back that you can steal the spore tech...... It's supposed to be that way.


Perfectly reasonable too!
No matter how difficult a technology is to obtain, it is never impossible. That is exactly why the North Koreans have nukes, and many other countries are still trying.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Perfectly reasonable too!
No matter how difficult a technology is to obtain, it is never impossible. That is exactly why the North Koreans have nukes, and many other countries are still trying.


I don't necessarily think that's really the point. The question is more about if the game is more fun and if the super abilities are better balanced in one way or the other.

I think the spore ships tech should not be stealable or tradable.

All the races get an advantage or something special with their super ability. In this case the interest of the korath's adavntage decreases very quickly after the begining of a war.

Everyone has expierienced games where all the players had the spore ship technology. One of the reasons i believe this happens very quickly is that planets captured with spore ships tend to be reconquered very quickly because of their very low population level and the spore ship tech eventually gets stolen (or traded...)

This doesn't seem very balanced compared to the other special abilities that are all permanant advantages (exept for super adapter that i believe should also be rebalanced for example by giving the iconian refuge a permanant pq bonus for example).

It can also be totally unbalanced if the Yor get their hands on this tech you have to stop every spore ship they send and you have to do so in your space because there is no way to catch up with thier ships in Yor space.

I also think that the fact that all players have access to spore ships isn't very fun it removes any interest in standard invasions once you steal the tech and seriously decreases the strategical interest of having high population worlds.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Unless I missed an update post, Brad's basic definition of Super Annihilator is "Can build spore ship which when used on a defenseless colony will eliminate all population and turn it into a toxic world of the same class."

I agree that it does not make sense for a Super Ability to be traded or stolen, *unless* this is a significantly incomplete definition and there is more to Super Annihilator than the spore ship tech. Because I doubt there's more to Super Annih, I suspect the spore ship tech will be hard-linked to the super ability when DA goes RTM.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't necessarily think that's really the point. The question is more about if the game is more fun and if the super abilities are better balanced in one way or the other.



This is a good point actually!

On the one hand it is fun to be able to strive to obtain the tech and use it

On the other hand it is nice to have somthing dangerous in the universe that cannot be duplicated.