AP Feature Discussion Thread

from Stardock Forums
So I played a game of the new expansion, and I was looking for people's opinions on the following issues:

- Logistics. Should resource starbases be exempted? Is there going to be any way to raise your logistics ability? Should the "starbases must be 3 squares apart" restriction be lifted? Should Terror Stars cost extra logistics points?

- Custom Rulesets. I'm referring to the "Custom Rules" listbox next to the "Star Density" listbox on the game start screen. What exactly do these do? Is there going to be an in-game help screen, just like the the racial abilities are described?

- New Difficulty. Setting the AIs all to "Intelligent" is now only "Tough" instead of "Painful". Why the downgrade? Has anyone tried Obscene?

- 2 new AIs. What do they do differently? I also noticed that with 2 new AIs, tech whoring is now 30% more effective, since there are more AIs to trade with. At least one of the AIs should be given "tech whoring" as part of their core strategy.

- Has anyone tried doing anything with any of the editors yet? Or are they still incomplete?
190 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
- Custom Rulesets. I'm referring to the "Custom Rules" listbox next to the "Star Density" listbox on the game start screen. What exactly do these do? Is there going to be an in-game help screen, just like the the racial abilities are described?
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I was wondering the same thing. They have cool names, but I don't know what these things actually are. I''ve noticed that the victory conditions blur out, so it must effect them.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
http://www.duodecimal.net/images/AP_GCS_1.gif
http://www.duodecimal.net/images/AP_GCS_2.gif

Those two images show what the settings for the 10 scenarios are. The items after each race are alignment, intelligence, and team (where Humans are always on team 1).

I just finished rebooting from a crash that happened when I tried loading a custom scenario; will be doing mroe testing in a bit.

Note that, in the Good versus Evil scenario, the alignment settings do not go with the teams.
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Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I have a question about logistics for you who have already played: is there a tech that helps this ability or it's just a cost for now? (when I was about to construct a 4th starbase (on a resource) I was informed that it would cost me 750bc to complete construction ( :SURPRISED: ). If logistics is a tech, I don't know where it is in the tech tree: can any of you enlighten me?

As for the new races, I think it adds variety. And make the game more complex (when managing relations/alliances). I started a small/tough to try the expansion, and so far I don't feel really advantaged by the new possibilities of tech trading: until recently, the AI were all far ahead of me. I could only catch them by buying all the minors stock of techs, plunging into an huge deficit (4000-6000). Even thought I know I can have better deals selling one by one, usually I think it's too time consumming, and I tend to sell them by packs of 4-5 techs.

Another question: I know the paladin ship availability is conditionned by the alignement. But what level? I'm currently 91, I can start the construction of the ship, but it stays stuck in the "completed next month" phase. I guess, if it is not a bug, I'm not "good" enough to built it. In which case, I shouldn't even be able to start producing it (IMHO).


~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
There is nothing in there now that affects logistics. It may tech, maybe a new resource (cyan torus? tetrahedron? tesseract?) - probably won't know until the next major beta.

I'd guessed in another thread that the current rate of 250 credits * number of existing starbases might drop to 200, 150, whatever, for each "Level" of logistics (as you notice on the Starbase build screen, you're at Logistics level 0).

I've built 40 starbases, and it gets something expensive pretty damn quick. That's just to claim all the resources on a gigantic map and about half a dozen more for my best sectors.

I'm trying to figure out where I first read about Wraiths and Paladins, probably an old news item somewhere. I have a slim hope that the alignment values were in that newspost a week or two back. Or not, I was writing down all the alignment tech values at the same time, getting ready for a colonizing cheese end-run.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Duodecimal

I just remembered I saw something in one of frogboy's first posts. But there isn't much details in it:

"Paladin. Available only good good aligned civilizations, the Paladin in a fairly tough capital ship that has the added ability to restore the hit points of friendly ships in the same sector slightly faster."

link: http://www.galciv.com/expansion.asp

There is some info there about the scenarios and all. I had forgotten about it :) .
~SDC~
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