Arturus Magi

Reply to Easter Eggs and such in Gal Civ in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Leto - Duke Leto Atreides, Dune?' Actually, this one would be a mythological reference. Leto was the mortal mother of Phoebus Apollo (Zeus being his father). ~SDC~

Reply to Enhanced Terraforming 1.1 in Mods Stardock Forums

'Good job JoB ! The mod still allow for a little "too much" TF IMHO...But it's better that the paltry +10+10+20 standard limitations, so thanks !' If you really want low class planets to be colinizable without making it too easy for high class planets to get out of control, my suggestion would be a long series of high cost, low individual value improvements. 100 +2% PQ improvements will get a class 5 up to class 15 (about 21 after accounting for the already existing improvements,

Reply to Satellites and artificial planets in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Artifical Satellites represent the tech to create the Terror Star's hull. (insert Lando Calrisian voice here: 'That's not a moon, that's a battlestation!') Also, it was noted a while ago that some of the 'creation' stuff was coded in, but hasn't been activated yet (probably mostly because of AI coding concerns, similar to the reason wormholes are 'no show'). ~SDC~

Reply to Randomize the Star Name List? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

bah. Stupid HTML parsing. That should read (with the '{' replacing the angle brackets that got clipped above) " '{{{{{{{{stars.lst' line near the middle of the list. Incidentally, and this may be the cause of the occurance itself, after examining the file again I noticed that most of the names above that line are repeated below it." ~SDC~

Reply to Randomize the Star Name List? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The game doesn't recognize that there is anything after a certain point, but other than that the names used are random. I'm not sure if it's an absolute reference in the code, or if it has something to do with the ' ~SDC~

Reply to We desprately NEED a VERY VERY GOOD Manual in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'In real life, the "Galactic Rulers" are too stupid to understand anything other than simple approximations.' And they shouldn't have to, because in most governmental systems that's not their job, for the simple reason that noone can do everything. It's that person/entity's employees/aids/senchals/etc. to advise the 'ruler' on matters that aren't in his/their direct expertiese (which in most cases is pure politics). ~SDC~

Reply to Engine software, graphic software...anyone know of any freebies? in Mods Stardock Forums

'Maybe some others can recommend free paint programs / tools / filters.' The GIMP is always a good place to start for free imaging software. ~SDC~

Reply to Leases, Loans, and other pesky drains on my cash in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When you do things like that, you usually have to pay an additional penalty over and above the normal cost offsets the over-time income (you're technically in breach of contract when you make such an offer).... If you're already (relatively) near the end of the contract, it will probably turn out to be more expensive than just paying it out on the initial terms. ~SDC~

Reply to Ablities in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Out of the manual (p. 6, heading Civilization Bonuses): 'After choosing your political party, you can add up to 10 ability points to key areas of your civilization.' ~SDC~

Reply to Influence - I don't understand! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'The influence you can trade through diplomacy are of the first kind, whereas sector ownership and planet defections are determined by the later. I think Brad's article on influence focuses on sector influence too. Perhaps we should have the UP votes specifically named "UP Votes" and add a small line in the F5 UP window that influence determines how many votes you accumulate over time.' The two are basically the same. #2 is how many of #1 you get each turn. Sector influence is

Reply to If the AI attacks a stack of ships, which one dies first? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When two fleets of ships encounter eachother, the ship with the highest attack attacks the one with the highest defense. AntiMatter Missiles may have a special clause in there because of it's unusual stats, though. I'm not sure about that. ~SDC~

Reply to I-League in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Don't they show up in the Minor list? I'm sure they did in my last game.' If you eliminate them and another planet defects later, they don't reappear. ~SDC~

Reply to Figuring out ETA of ships? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'All we have to worry about in GalCiv is planets, anomalies and other nonmoving simple stuff.' And AI ships, Space Monsters, Pirates, starbases turning into terror stars, anomolies appearing or being picked up, and sudden unexpected changes in range and/or speed from techs, starbases, and UP Issues. ~SDC~

Reply to Crash when looking at other civ's stats? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

One possible cause: when a race is killed off, the game doesn't remove them until the end of the turn. Sometimes the game will crash if you try to check such a race's stats. ~SDC~

Reply to The range limit again. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The AI's intial colony ship doesn't have the range limitation. All of it's other ships do. This would suggest that the AI's starting ships aren't initialized correctly, then fixed during the end of turn processing. The colony ship gets a destination on the first turn, and thus the range checking fails for it, but the Survey Ship gets sent off to explore or pick up anomolies and gets caught by the range checking on the second turn. ~SDC~

Reply to Planet Names in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Hmm, thought they used real star names.' Some of them are. A number of others are literary or mythological references (some of which really don't make sense. Gaia is another name for Earth.... Why is it on one of those starts over there? o.o ) ~SDC~

Reply to Precursor Power in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'I'm sure you could recieve any random event in the game happen to you.' Some events really can't happen to the player. This is one of them, as are the PQ35 artifact and the Dark Arnor events. ~SDC~

Reply to New Concept: Risky Techs in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Of course, concidering 50% as the break point if you implemented this and didn't change anything in your existing tech tree, on average everyone would be researching in about half the time.' This is the function of the Creativity ability. I'm not sure how well it works, as I rarely have techs with more than six turns to research anyway, but I suspect it's generally only a few turns or so before finishing when there's much chance of getting the tech. ~SDC~

Reply to OK, new best starting Bonuses? in Strategies Stardock Forums

Based on what has been said elsewhere, Luck prevents bad events from affect you as often. It doesn't affect good events at all. ~SDC~

Reply to Abililty Points? in Mods Stardock Forums

'Negative anomalies don't work either, though. I was hoping to make some booby-trapped anomalies but that idea didn't pan out either.' This is abuse of C/C++'s lack of boundschecking, but making anomolies that provide a bonus of +65535 or or +429467295 should effectivly cause a penalty of -1, depending on how the data is set up. I haven't actually tried this, but, assuming no code in GalCiv specifically looks for something like this and the parser reads by data type, it should work. <B

Reply to Looking for: Ability "Lists" in Mods Stardock Forums

'[Ability20] Crime' IIRC, this is intended to offset the graft penalties that show up if you get extremly high incomes or have a very large treasury, but I don't think it actually does anything yet. ~SDC~

Reply to Flagships are in? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Actually my inviso ships usually appear next turn.' This is not the effect in question. Once in a while ships will dissapear under unusual circumstances, both on the main screen and in the stacked ship list. The Fog of War quirk is something else entirely (that is related to the increase of your sensor range ability). ~SDC~

Reply to Precursor Power in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

It's +1 to a random ability each turn. It generally takes a while before they get any significant benefit out of it, but it can run up indefinately if you ignore them long enough. ~SDC~

Reply to Starship quality bug or question. in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'Why don't you just save the bonuses to each ship? Wouldn't that be easier.' It would be easier to deal with the Starship Quality bonuses, but it could break increasing racial bonuses to Attack, Defence, or Hit Points working on ships already built to some degree. ~SDC~

Reply to Highest PQ planet? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

'" As of 1.03, the highest planet quality verifiable as legit is 81, without library mods. With them, I think you can manage 120-something." None of the equations i've seen for "legit" max PQ seem to take into account even a single worm event for a single landing, which makes me suspect how accurate they are. ' The Life Force Artifact event, which is also a colonization event, has a 10% higher max PQ bonus than the Earthworms event, and is listed in the equation I gave for 1.02