Welcome zyk2001. It seems the White Tower has attracted a large number intellects willing to engage in debate and I'm one of them.

The best way to slow invasions down is if the AI knows how to manuveur ships tactically and strategically: defensive starbase construction in key sectors, group defensive positions, delaying action, and counter attack. That whole bit of choosing your battles and the site of battles is lost.

In Civ3, the speed impedence, the conquered resistence, and the cultural flip back, they slowed invasions to an impractical level.

In GalCiv, it's pretty hard to get enough taxpayers to enemy worlds.

hi all,

just wondering if anyone on the council reads the "Red Wall" series, it's simaliar to "Watership Down". Just wondering...oh yes and i like the White Council....very good name and reference.

I've not read those books, mrbigg. Googling them, I found that they talk about animals fighting against evil. I'm more into the simpler mainstream fantasy books with the usual warriors and wizards, etc.

Interesting that you mentioned the empire name cause I was thinking whether it would be good to change our empire name to the Fellowship of the Ring so as to encompass the wider Tolkien world and not restrict our role-playing to just wizards.

This name will still allow us to maintain consistency with our alignment and philosophy. But it would free us to role-play different races and classes. It would also be more recognisable to other fantasy enthusiasts.

Any opinions from those of us who role-play here on the board?

I'm fine with either name.

I've got the Drengin.net beta and am putting it through it's paces. Anything you are particulary interested in seeing? I wrote up a breakdown on the changes thus far with the data files in the Mods forum.

~SDC~

Yeah, I've read your post with the spoiler warning.
Interesting stuff. I wonder why SD don't just have a simple anomaly graphic so as to give an element of surprise in discovery.

Yes, it would be good if someone could put up screenshots of some of the new features for the community without Drengin. Ethermage has already shown us the new stars and rally points. So maybe you could show some of the other features.

Too bad I'm past the 'exploration' phase of this game, else I could show you some of the new anomaly graphics.

But I can show you this stuff.

Here's the 'Star List'. You'll find it off the 'Planets List'.
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/StarList.jpg
It shows you star color, population, # of colonies, and ownership. The 4 'mode' buttons at the top don't work yet. I'd imagine they will be filters of some sort - uncolonized 15+ planets, ownership, the like. If you click on the star the map will zoom there, pretty handy. Also in the screen shot you see one of the new 'Wormhole' graphics. A lot of the anomaly graphics got enhanced, you'll still see the stuff you are used to, but there are additional graphics now. There's only one new anomaly type though (if you haven't checked it out yet, see my thread in Mods with the 'Spoiler' warning).

Next, we have the new Diplomacy screen:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/Diplo1.jpg
You can see that there are now hyperlinks on some of the stuff you can trade. I hope they plan on hyperlinking Trade Goods as well.

If you right click on a star system, you get this screen:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/Diplo2.jpg
Pretty darn handy. Shows you where the system is located, how big the population is, the influence, and the number of colonized worlds around that star.

If you are trading techs, you can right click on it and jump to the tech tree:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/Diplo3.jpg
Once again, very handy. They still haven't come up with a system to consistently format their bonuses, however (note the Trade Routes +1% in the screenie).

If someone else has already covered rally points, those are the main points in this first beta. We know there's much more to come, however, as the promised new ships, linked events, more UP Issues, and other stuff haven't shown up yet.

It's been very stable for me so far. The hyperlinking is nice, but I've got the Tech tree pretty much down at this point- it will be much more handy to someone new to the game. The new graphics are a welcome change, and that new anomaly is a lot of fun! Certainly made me change my game plan for the early game. Rally points will be a godsend on larger maps. Overall, I give it a big thumbs up, and we know there's a lot more content they'll add before release. I'll keep you posted.

~SDC~
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Here's another screenie:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/anom1.jpg
Here you can see one of the new anomaly graphics. This anomaly type's description is 'Free-form Gas'. This anomaly existed before, but it's behavior has changed in the expansion.

Before, to the best of my knowledge, when you investigated 'Free-form Gas', it behaved in the same way as the 'Research Hurricane', it would either give you a 25% boost to the current tech being researched, or it would give you a research assistant whining about it being a waste of time.

Now, it is a wild card. I've popped ability bonuses, as well as boosts to the current tech out of these. Fun.

~SDC~

Thanks, HFO!

I'm going to post all this into a new thread on the main forum together with Ethermage's one so that everyone can enjoy it.

Hey HFO,

Is the hyperlinking for ships on the Diplo screen pretty much have the same info as they do for the stars? Attack attribute, defensive attribute, speed, sector, etc.

If they are giving the sector info for every ship, that's very revealing espionage on maps with size greater than medium.

Oh the screen shots were very nice, HFO. The interface looks much better.

Here's what it looks like when you right click on a ship in the Diplomacy screen:
http://www.ctuit.com/bill/Diplo4.jpg

As you can see, you pretty much get all the information you could want- stats, location, even current hit points.

Seems to not be intelligence based. I guess the assumption is this sort of thing, in times of peace, is readily available knowledge. Don't forget there's a whole layer of civilian traffic that's abstracted in the game. Any nation on this planet can readily ascertain the location of each of the USN's fleet carriers, same goes for fleet warships in GalCiv.

I do wish they'd get cloaking working, though.

~SDC~

Related issue,

The ability to see details of enemy ships in orbit (even within FOW)during war is especially helpful to humans.

It would be good if this "sight" be given at a certain level of espionage rather than immediately.

I'd prefer if both this and the ship trading screen details were tied into a certain level of espionage. But in the absence of that I'm OK with the current system, it is definitely an advantage to the human, though.

~SDC~

HFO - sorry if you've posted this already, but is there a resolution to the 'wastage' issue in social production, ie can you now build 'nothing' and not waste money?

And Ray - the Fellowship of the Ring sounds much better IMHO, more room to roleplay. Also, more avenues of attack for your worthy foes.....

Nope, the money still vanishes into the ether. Have they mentioned they might be changing this? I was under the assumption that this was a design issue they weren't prepared to revisit.

~SDC~

I actually like the Fellowship of the Ring name alot as the thought of us being a bunch of adventurers belonging to different races and classes appeal to me.

I'll still role-play a wizard though. Like Wombat correctly described in one of his "attacks" earlier on, it's like a boyhood dream for me

The new name also ties in very nicely with my story in the Summoning. That ended with the forming of the Fellowship.

RayChua,

i think that The Fellowship of the Ring would be a decent name for the empire.Hmm....how about we adapt a name of/or group from one of the other Tolkien books?Perhaps something from the "Simalairon"...sorry not sure how to spell it,can't find my copy of it,there are a great many names that we could use from something like it.


On a side note,i recomend that you try "Salamandstron"...even if your not into the animal fantasy it still is a great story and has some amazing battle sequences...just a sugestoin.also just wanted to say that there are some very interesting threads in here

Everyone is probably aware of it, but when your at war
with an empire, ships do not show up in the trade
screen dialog.

I do believe it would be nice if the capacity to see
enemy ships was related to espionage level, someone
should mention this to them, specially ships orbiting
planets, which you can always see currently.

Ok, I post that as a suggestion in the sticky thread.

I would even go so far as to say that low
should result seeing ships in orbit
medium should result in seeing ships in their sectors
high should rsult in seeing ships in neutral(all sectors
not owned by either the AI or the player) and high
should result in seeing ships in your own sectors.

The cost for gaining such espionage level should
perhaps be increased to compesent for the actual
use that this would carry

Yeah, current espionage is of limited use. With the addition of the capability to locate enemy ships during peace times would make espionage even less worthwhile.

The only reason for me to spend money on espionage is to prevent event wars. However, I've had two recent event wars despite the fact that I had advanced espionage so I seriously don't know why I still want to pour money there.

Certainly doesn't make too much sense. At first I thought I could get some advantage by espionage and knowing their income and cashflows and racial modifiers, but after getting the feel of the game I could just guess everything with the help of the diplo screen and be on target most of the time.

And in times of war I would use sensor drones or scouts to get all the info I needed for proper battle planning.

I've noticed that espionage doesn't really prevent those events from happening once you get them. You'll get them less often though, but if you are militaristically dominant, that event almost never happens. So rather than pouring money to get several useless espionage ratings I get more military to mow over whoever declares war (or just extort a lot of stuff from them when suing for peace).

You guys probably noticed that I'm still a Commodore after turning in 40 games. So either Rear Admiral is not implemented or the requirement is something else.

Well, I'll be going back to working on my Maso Gigantic. The Maso Tinies were fun though, think I've gotten the hang of beating that setting already.

If you noticed, my Maso/Tinies have also improved in scoring. I suspect that is due to the fact that I consciously trade only the techs that I critically need and research others myself. I think you only get points for researching techs, not trading or conquering them.

Again this disadvantages Maso players as tech trading is a vital strat to maintain tech parity.

But I guess it is understandable as it is a no-brainer to just trade for a whole bunch of techs from AIs before the end of the game for points.
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That, I think is incredibly unlucky.