50% morale is not bad. (As a rough estimate, the average US president only has an approval rating of about 45%.) That said, Morale bonuses of +60% are not really that good mid to late game. A single starbase on a morale resource can grant a +95% bonus by itself, techs can get another +80% (IIRC), and there are morale anomolies and events as well. ~SDC~
'So set up PBEM games like I did in SMAC.' In my opinion, that's the best way to play any multiplayer game, but I haven't heard of people actually playing PBEM, even when the potion is available (with the exception of fans of Stars!, which I probably should have expected to overlap somewhat here). ~SDC~
'Your not the only one wampyre. My civ has nearly +60% to Moral, and not one of my planets is above 40% moral.' A +60% Morale bonus is really low for mid game. I'm still in the colonization phase and I'm at 75%. By endgame, I'm usually looking at +170% or higher Morale boni. A single fully constructed starbase on a morale resource by itself grants a +90% Morale bonus. ~SDC~
Look at it this way: When you got that notice, the other races probably recieved some similar notice (you usually do when an AI is close to a victory condition). The easiest way to stop someone's cultural influence is to increase your own, so you're going to have to improve faster to get that last 10% of the victory condition. ~SDC~
I generally colonize with less than 50M, even when I have my morale bonus up high enough to drop 500M on a class 11 and still have 80+ morale. ~SDC~
Larger planets have a larger base production. The ratio of population to max population (and your spending rations) determines how much of that base production is utilized. Things that increase production should act relative to the base production. ~SDC~
'most likely?anyway to know? I'd hate to think I have to GUESS at whats going on like I did with ANOTHER recent space game. ' There's no way to garuntee a warning, but the higher your espionage spending, the more likely it is that you will get warnings and news reports on things the other races are doing. ~SDC~
'If you can't destabilize them, can you culturaly overwhelm them?' You can't destabilize them, but you can culturally dominate them, and you can buy their planets (but expect to pay out the nose for it, it's not anywhere near as easy as with a major AI). ~SDC~
Destabilization reduces morale, AFAIK. ~SDC~
As far as I know, all bonuses stack indefinitely. Production has a point of diminishing returns based on the individual planet's class, but other than that, I haven't seen any significant limitations. ~SDC~
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'1. once you've achieved "max espionage" for a race, can you drop the slider back down to zero?' Some events are based on your espionage spending, and it's possible to steal techs from a race if you have active espionage. 'regarding #3, are there any non-event type things that effect alignment? In my most recent game I ALWAYS picked the "good" option (i.e. the option with the biggest penalty) whenever there was a colonizing or a random event. but i just checked my end o' game s
It _is_ unusually low, but there are things that can cause it besides AI destabilization. Overpopulation rarely will cause something like that, but abnormally high planet classes with out racial morale improvements can get to the point where something like that can happen purely from overpopulation. The population growth, planet quality, and morale interactions were tweaked to make it very difficult to run into, though, as to get to those sort of planet classes you usually need the Pla
'You could get planets that wouldn't allow farming (without terraforming) though, and I believe Gaia worlds offered bonuses to farming. Fairly sure Orion was usually Gaia?' Barren and gaia planets provided bonuses/maluses to everything. The problem was that every standard race's base farming rate was two per population unit, so the penalty from a barren planet meant 0 food production. And yes, Orion is always a gaia planet. As for specializing in MoO2, I usually found it not
'Planets in moo2 had differing ratings for industry, farming, and research.. it only made sense to specialize..' Actually, only industry and research, AFAICT. Farming only occured through 'specials' which roughly correspond to the colonization morality events here (and provide the means to those same bonuses you mention, although generally in too small of an amount to make a big difference for most planets. ~SDC~
'... do planets *have* a max population?' Planets do have max population based on their class, but it's hard to get extremely high and extremely low class planets up to that point. I'm planing on eventually trying to put together a table listing the max population of various class planets. This may take a while, though, ans the SDC is being a bit stubborn about downloading GC right now. ~SDC~
'Or do they plan to make it? It's hardly a scarcely-known fact multiplayer extends the life og a game indefinitely if done right. Half-Life is a good example.' The problem is that multiplayer is very difficult to do right withour breaking single player (mainly as a time/resources/manpower shortage, but often out of apathy as well). One reason I don't play RTSes often. ~SDC~
The techs remain researched and the abilities persist regardless of your alignment. All that happens is that you can't research any new techs with a high (low) alignment requirement. ~SDC~
'So is there any way for the Metaverse to tell if someone, say, went through and boosted all their home-system's planets to class 40?' It probably doesn't check, but that one's rather easy: The highest base class a planet can have is 35, and that would have an entry in the events data file as well.
Stardock Forums
DDHELP.EXE is part of DirectX. Crashes there are almost always cause by video or sound card drivers. Updating those and DirectX may fix the problem. I can report that Trillian does not cause any problems here (98SE/DX8.1).
'If a world defects and joins the Independent League or some other 3rd party faction how is it that it suddenly acquires an UBER-economy that allows it to pump out a battleship every turn? (or worse) ' Races that are created by defection of civil war may have the tech of their parent race. In the case of the I-League, that would be the race whose planet first defected to them.
You start with one trade route and get a second with the tech that allows you to trade. Techs then allow you to get six more, eventually, seven if you're a bit tricky with your alignment to pick up both Smuggling and the normal good alignment techs. (I don't know of a similarly (relatively) easy method that ends with evil alignment, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't one.) The last route requires either alot of work to pick up both the good and evil techs or a UP resolution t
It is theoretically possible to switch alignments, but it's not easy. If you go good, then switch evil, it will probably be easier to accomplish than the converse. Evil choices tend to have a slightly heavier weight than good ones. ~SDC~
'Nicely done, though I'd much rather prefer having that information in-game. Ah, well, can't have everything....' It's been mentioned as being in planning for a future update. ~SDC~
'Shouldn't the number of trade routes be linked to population somehow?' The trade income is linked to population (via the end planets' economy ratings) instead of the number of routes. ' Does this mean that a technology victory is infeasible in a small galaxy? (Or does it mean that you just get technologies really fast late game in a large galaxy?)' Some of both. I rarely get to a point in the game where I don't have at least three techs with a research time of 2 mont
Stardock Forums
'Now how am I going to break it to my kids that they can't dress up and pretend to be "Star Wars" characters because it's a copyright infringement?' That is specifically mentioned in the Fair Use Act as an exception, and even if it wasn't, LucasFilm authorizes the manufacture of Star Wars costumes. The only purpose for a costume is to act a part, therefore the manufacture of the costume is an implicit authorization to people buying one granting the right to act out a part other