Eilarais

Reply to Space Rangers 2 is now on TotalGaming.net in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

This is great, I really wanted this game when it came out, but I never bought it because of the CD protections. I'm definitely picking this one up online.

Reply to Race skills in Dark Avatar in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

You are right about the Korx. They will trade away the Trade Techs, and they will loose their advantage. I agree, also it's not a unique rule, by the end of the game they won't be anything special. Half-income trade routes would be good, but an entirely new source of income would work too. What if the Korx had some way of making money from their

Reply to Race skills in Dark Avatar in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Super-manipulator and super-diplomat sound very similar. The Drath are big on defense, so maybe their super-ability can involve that somehow. You could do any of the following: 1. Defense Cannons - 10-20% chance to destroy invading transport ship. 2. Planetary Shields - Tactics are less effective or are not allowed. 3. Sensor Grid - +2-4 (or 10-20%) bonus moves for defense-type ships. I like #2 best, none of the other abilities touch on that part of the game. T

Reply to Why doesn't ship life support add up like I think it should? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It has definetely changed from patch 1.20 to 1.30 or 1.31 (don't know, because I updated from 1.20 directly to 1.31). The 1.2 screenshot seems okay, it looks like the map size multiplier is no longer being applied to the component description in 1.31. Definately a bug, in that case. You could probably just work around this by adding the

Reply to String not found issue in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Excellent, so we can fix this by adding a 'Eleventhbbreviation' tag to the .str file? Also, can this be left open enough so that players can bodge in 10 (or, ahem, 12) races if they really want to? I've been doing this for a while and just dealing with the UI issues, and I'd hate to see it fixed.

Reply to Unprecedented Feature in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I agree. It surprises me 1) that game dev companies don't hire or contract with these guys more often and 2) that, many times, the modders do a better job than the devs. I've always thought that the real benefit to modding is that it lets designers really dive into the niche markets that are too small to be worth any money. If modders started get

Reply to 1.4a 10 Opponents Yeah! in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

(This is a partial repost) If you play as the custom race and click to enable all 10 other races, the race button will say 'random' and all ten oppenents will appear in the game. I thought this was intentional, there was a fix in a previous patch that addressed a UI-related bug when all 10 opponents were enabled.

Reply to String not found issue in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

If you play as the custom race and click to enable all 10 other races, the race button will say 'random' and all ten oppenents will appear in the game. In the stats screen, the game tries to get the suffix for 11 (th), but it never takes it from the .str file. I tried adding it manually once but the game never looks for it.

Reply to bug or scam? please help... in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think I'm going to miss that guy. I could say anything to him and not feel too bad about it.

Reply to Displaying ResistanceBonus in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I'm pretty sure the game just looks for what it needs in the .str files, I've never had any luck adding to them. This is probably not changable.

Reply to How Microsoft dominated the galaxy in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

This would be a great mod if you made each side into a major corporation and gave them a big bonus to trade and a penalty to economy and ship attack. You could tweak the improvements, too, to put more emphesis on influence/resistance and super projects.

Reply to Why doesn't ship life support add up like I think it should? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I know that range component effects are multiplied depending on the size of the map, but the modified value should be what shows up in the component description. The 'range' race ability is applied after you build the ship, it doesn't show up at all in the shipyard. Does the second support component you add give another difference of .4, or does it add the correct amount? Also, is it still a .4 difference on maps of every size?

Reply to Prepping 1.4, Dark Avatar AI in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Your politics aren't quite mine, but what do I care? If I didn't want flavour, I'd eat white rice every meal and never try anything new. A game with a consistent, well-expressed philosophy that I'm not 100% alongside is far more interesting than non-offensive bland pap. It's really too bad that most people don't think this way, there would be a l

Reply to Something smells like gas... in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

If it's a company, then have fun trying to get them to lower it. It's thier company, and they should be allowed to charge whatever they want for their services. I think that even hard-line free-market economists draw some boundaries when it comes to basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter. If you die by not having something, it's not

Reply to Starbase area of effect question in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Might want to try using a lighter color for your race, or park a couple of constructors over the SB and select them all at once (causing the fields to overlap and be very visible). I tried using lighter colors a few times, but there seems to be a difference between player alpha and computer alpha. I even switched colors with the computer a few ti

Bonus tile problem (1.31) in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Recently, I tried upgrading a few farms with food bonuses into manufacturing plants, and I noticed after a while that my max population was only decreased by the base amount, not the entire amount. Reloading fixed this problem. Also, is the entire population supposed to disappear after the next turn? I figured the population would just take a huge morale hit as it went down gradually. This may or may not be related to a 0-production bug I encountered a few games ago. I built an antimatt

Reply to Is there a way to uncolonize your planets? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There's another way to skin that cat. You can use transports and colony ships to rapidly depopulate a planet without abandoning it. Never tried, since I refuse on principle to abandon planets, but I've had some colony rushes where a planet's ability to produce ships has outpaced its ability to produce people. In theory, I could have pulled everyone out and moved on. </

Reply to Prepping 1.4, Dark Avatar AI in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Personally I prefer the simplistic role government plays in this game. After all I'm supposed to be the supreme ruler of the galaxy anyway. What fun would it be to have to stop waging war with my massive fleets to have to go make nice with the systems under my thumb so they'll allow me to continue to play? I think the game should introduce a full

Reply to Prepping 1.4, Dark Avatar AI in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I think Draginol was talking in terms of how the AI uses its agents rather than how the player is allowed to use them. You will be able to order each agent individually so if you want you can put one in every opponents empire. The question is how is it best for the AI to handle them? Yes, I guess that makes more sense. Looking back at my post, th

Reply to Unprecedented Feature in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It's a small ape descended from a rare type of monkey that escaped from a Zoo in Dudley, England, back in the 1960's. The colony now migrate between the Midland's cities nesting in office tower blocks. They like to steal spreadsheet printouts to use as nesting materials and collect. When they move on they break down their nests, archive the spreadsheets fr later reference

Reply to Unprecedented Feature in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

That's because you can't win, right? Perhaps "surrender monkey" is a better description for you. Your valuable insights have been duly noted. Please feel free to post any additional thoughts you might have. It's no

Reply to Prepping 1.4, Dark Avatar AI in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Back to non-political stuff, been working on the AI for Dark Avatar. It's really proving challenging on how best to use espionage agents. Should they be concentrated against a single player? And if so, who? Should they be held in reserve (since new agents cost increasing amounts) so that you can do a mass attack or should you do a steadily increasing stream of them to an

Reply to Unprecedented Feature in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

What's with the retentive spreadsheet monkey players? Just play the game. It's fun. I stopped playing games years ago, I have a lot more fun modding and designing than I ever did as a player. Besides, the feature wasn't requested because it's fun, it was requested because it's necessary in order to make truly original mods. What, exactly

Reply to Those wacky AI ships! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I wish we could design the enemys ships so that I could go against vastly cool ships like mine. You can do that now, if you copy any shipcfg file into the ships directory and rename it to a preset name it will be used by the AI. Not all of the designs are used, but I know that all of the files that end with the numbers 1-3 are used. I'll

Reply to AI attempts to trade alignment specific tech to me when I'm different alignment in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I've also noticed that the 'Battle of the Gods' scenario starts you with these techs regardless of your alignment. In fact, you never get to choose an alignment because Xeno Ethics is already researched and the dialog doesn't come up.