Pnakotus

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

SR2 is awesome. The best part is the unscripted war and random-seeded galaxy: I've had games where the Coalition is clearly winning from the start, and I'm left to my own devices. I've also had games where the Coalition loses half of it's territory almost immediately, and I have to prop up the military with fat donations and personal leadership to turn the tide. It's AWESOME. Some of the adventure puzzles are frankly INSANE, though. I hope everyone remembers calculus and algebra. <i

Reply to I want to be an arms dealer! in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The AI often hugely undervalues deals - I've had offers (with massive, absurd diplomatic superiority) of 350 bucks for a class 16 planet right in the middle of their influence. I've sometimes been able to make money by deliberately making similar ships to theirs (ie, weaker than mine) and selling them... but you'd think you'd be able to really make money (ie, actual profit over manufacturing costs and time etc) but you can't. Even if they'e got 200,000 in the bank and are losing, they won't bu

Reply to Why does the AI always surrender.... to another AI? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The surrender system is just broken. I know everyone harps on about the secret hidden depths of the amazing surrender decisions... but all *I* see is someone starting a war, me jumping in YEARS later and contributing little (maybe capturing a few planets, slaping some fleets around etc), then the sap calls me up and says 'lolz we own you by surrendering to those guys that we really hate but haven't actually made any progress into our space! YOU LOSE!'. Clearly, the way to get surrende

Reply to Ships around planets... in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

O rly? Based on what? It doesn't answer his question, anyway. 'In orbit' can cover a pretty absurd amount of volume around a planet, and late-game with a sizable empire the planet could be host to thousands or millions of non-military spacecraft. You should at least be able to SEE the ships in orbit.

Reply to Please add the Early Loan Repayment option in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

Sorry, the result of defaulting on loans is that you can't get more loans. This happened to whole governments in the past. You'd end up lost post-Revolutionary France, where your finance minister ran around assuring everyone you could repay your debts while taking out more, sinking your entire economy, depressing the value of your currency, breaking forgien trade, killing quality of life through inflation, ruining investment, all that jazz. Hence, stiffing your creditors is an extremely bad i

Reply to Please add the Early Loan Repayment option in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

GalCiv2 loans are simple loans: any moron with a calculator is aware of how much the total repayments over x weeks are. The obvious 'early repayment' option is to allow this full value (principal + interest) to be repaid at will - hence the lender isn't losing money, and the borrower isn't getting credit for free. Adding some ridiculous 'you have to pay fifty percent more for no reason other than game balance' is not required. The Galciv loans strike me as mobile phone deal '$25 a week for tw

Reply to Please add the Early Loan Repayment option in Economics GalCiv2 Forums

That's absurd. Credit and investment is the basis of a modern economy: characterising anyone who lends money to a government as a 'loan shark' is just ignorant. You certainly CAN pay loans back early, and it would be unusual for a business loan to penalise you for doing so. Get this - the lender gets x profit over 637 weeks, or can get that SAME profit RIGHT NOW in one lump sum. What do you think they would prefer? Why does anyone want to make the economic model MORE unrealistic? Have you

Reply to I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Does anyone know the cause of the frequent 'blank page' people get when browsing the forums in Firefox? I'm forced to use IE to get at several threads (even some of the journal threads).

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Prolet, you should be proud to be on the bottom of that list - you don't have thousands of worthless scouts cluttering up the place! I'm not sure why the startup options seem so poor now, as they never really bothered me when the game came out. However, now I want to be able to use the seed options to actually define the type of game I'll be playing, and this is impossible without using a bloo

Reply to I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

What. Word crashes? What does Word have to do with the forum software being pants? Why should I write my posts externally and c&p it into IE (like it's 1992) when no other forum on the internet has this behavour? Unlike others, I'm not interested in tolerating substandard solutions, and I'm curious why these forums are so crap and seeing them improved, instead of 'lol just workaround lol'. And why doesn't the form keep your text again? Once more, other forum software keeps it so you can pr

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

GHETTO EDIT - the tech problem is specifically with engines, apparently. Weapons don't seem to have the long list, but 'impulse drive' has a list of ships designs (including user ones) with a list of techs required after it. It's two pages long on 1280x1024.

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Oh sure, but I've been away and probably missed the 'crap the dead turn is a bug' announcement. So long as it IS a bug, and they fix it eventually, I'm happy. The map seeding is a more serious problem - I've been experimenting, and setting everything to high results in absolute chaos every time you CTRL-N, with totally different galaxies emerging each time. You'd THINK they'd all have heaps of stars, habitables all over the show and every star with five planets, but you'd be wrong.

Reply to Korean Test Missile in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

tlwhite, I can appreciate the possibility of partisan action within SK, but the NK military is simply appalling. Unless the NK knock out the SK military in the opening strikes, they'll get steamrolled. And again, the nukes are the deployed WMD of the US. Sure, they've got piles of rubbish gasses and newer products like VX, but I'm not aware of any deployment or planned deployment of these weapons. On the other hand, nukes are ready 24 hours a day to strike anywhere in the world. T

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Marcathonas, if you start a new game in 1.2, at the start (with few techs) you'll have a huge list of techs for core designs in the tech pane. You should have a look - it's terrible, and worse than the older versions where they just listed what ships it lead to but not the additional techs.

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

A preview would be great - even a general one, like the continent shapes in Civ. Something showing the vague shape of the stars, the spread of planets/habitables and artefacts and start locations. At least then there would be feedback for your choices.

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well you'd expect that from random, wouldn't you? Although - here's a point - is random totally random (ie, a random number of stars) or a random choice of the other options (ie, 'random' gives 'rare' or 'common' etc stars). Who knows, because they're poorly described. And what is the behaviour of planets? Does the game generate planets according to 'planets' then convert a selection of them to habitable according to 'habitables'? Or is 'planets' just the empty, worthless ones? Why is the

Reply to I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Really? I guess so, but I've returned to the forums due to 1.2, and I managed to lose the same thing twice. Of course, it doesn't have it's contents when you press back (all phpBB forums do, so I'm quite used to it). It seriously challenges my understanding of the IT industry that Stardock can have such a terrible record with their forums. The early traffic problems were nowhere near as bad as 'not compatible with a whole browser'. I'd get sacked if I implemented software like thi

Reply to Korean Test Missile in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

My point is that there are only one kind of WMD in the US arensal that is current atop missiles, in submarines and ready to load into bombbays. Of COURSE the US has all kinds of crazy weapons (although I'll point out VX isn't a WMD, since it's local and has low duration) but the only one they're going to use is nukes. Or do boomers carry a few anthrax missiles too?

Reply to Korean Test Missile in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

The NK military is so hopeless the South Koreans could handle them by themselves. The only threat is massed chemical attacks on major cities like Seoul, but if NK uses WMDs the US will too. And the US only has one kind.

Reply to I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

You don't say? Made easier by the fact that this is the only form on the entire internet that loses it's contents when you post, fail, and go back to it? It's easy to copy the post when it's gone, right? And sorry, it doesn't make it any better that the forum is broken for non-IE users to say 'lolz use this ridiculous workaround'. Sorry, the forums should WORK. They don't. Why the hell not?

Reply to Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Phew. Anyway, discuss. If there are any mods that address these concerns, I'd like to hear about them.

Quibble Revenge in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

So I'm using IE now, this better work. 1.2 is heaps of fun, and the game is now stable and feature-packed. However, some irritating things are still present, and I want to know why and if there's a workaround. 1) The stupid game-start dialog shows up every time you load. Why? I don't want to see it. I also don't want to be dragged through the tech screen and the planet screen, but it's the stupid 'we start our quest to the stars today' text that's absurd two years in.

Reply to I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

WTF it worked. So the forum hates Firefox now? GREAT.

I can't post to the forums? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've now lost two longass posts, as the forum software doesn't seem to let me post from Firefox. I'll try in IE, see what happens. PS, I ranted about the galaxy seed options being obfuscated, non-instictive and broken. And now it's all gone! :(

Reply to Carrier Ships and Auto-Ship Naming for next v1.3 in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

This idea is only 'thrown out there' every two or three days, so it's not like anybody is sick of hearing about it yet. It's certainly not a problem that I've never read a 'lolz carriers plz' post that addressed the tactical utility of these vessels, or described a niche in GC2 militaries that they would fill. Nothing like a content-free 'give us carriers... well... because' post! I h