Starstriker1

Reply to Core Ship Design requirements for TOA in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

If you aren't up for designing your own ships (honestly, if you aren't that enthralled with the idea just grab a template and throw some weapons on it yourself) ToA has a new feature where the game will automatically design the ships for you (check the options menu). In general, you NEVER want to mess around with "core ship designs" because they are inherently and uniformly bad. They don't take advantage of your latest techs or miniaturization, and they usually don't look as awesome as the on

Reply to Obama, the American economy, security threats, and failure. in Politics Stardock Forums

Man, I love how some Americans seem to view "liberal" and/or "conservative" as a swear word. It is ceaselessly entertaining. The right wing ideologues think that "liberal" means "granola munching communist athiest tree hugger" while the left wing ideologues seem to believe that "conservative" is analogous to "uneducated, inbred rural hick". Doesn't it ever strike you guys as insane? When the only conclusion you can come up with is that your opposition is pure, unmitigated evi

Reply to July 2006 (What changes did George Bush bring about in Iraq?) in War on Terror Stardock Forums

Very enlightening, Leauki, thank you.

Reply to Brad's November Impulse wish list... in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

For the dock, I'd just like it if the damned thing would register my clicks 100% of the time. I love it otherwise, but occasionally it refuses to register the clicks until I click off on the desktop or an application first, which defeats the point of the dock in the first place.

Reply to GCII - Espionage in a more Customizable Galaxy in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Awesome, that's a much needed tweak to AI. Is that the extent of the changes though? One of the major complaints was being crippled with agents, and another was the exorbitant cost that fielding agents required. Decreasing the cost of agents (or making it dependent on the number of agent's you currently have available/in the field) would solve that well enough.

Reply to Stardock Announces "The Gamer's Bill of Rights" in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

Erm... I'm sorry, but GC2 was most certainly "finished" on release! It was feature complete, as well as more stable and bug free than the majority of releases. I think that part of the bill of rights is more in reference ot the games that come out feeling like they're still in alpha, and need a patch to even be playable! As for updates, comparing games to movies isn't really useful. Aside from the fact that NOTHING comes out "perfect", movies are recordings of predefined events,

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Aye, battles are typically resolved within 6 light seconds of the starting point anyway, which nicely avoids crossing into complicated stellar navigation. Additionally, nothing says that the frame of reference that the battle is starting from isn't already moving, thanks to relativity. I like the idea of scaling down the battles to more reasonable scale, myself. It'd be scaling down the top speeds, weapon ranges, and accelerations uniformly, and maybe a few internal changes to things

Reply to Stardock Announces "The Gamer's Bill of Rights" in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

If the industry at large conformed to that list, I would be a happy man indeed. The only other publisher I can think of that sticks to this consistently is Valve. ...it's no coicidence, then, that the majority of my purchases are either through Stardock or Steam these days.

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I haven't experimented too much with the max speed... it's basically just there to keep the ships from entering relativistic territory. At 0.01c, it doesn't come into play often... despite the utterly ridiculous accelerations involved (something like 400-4000Gs... I did the math at one point.) My thoughts on tech progression are similar... instead of unlocking new weapons with each tech, you'd, say, improve the yield of missile warheads, or build a range extender for particle beams, o

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

...the quick reply butchered my post formating. I hit the enter key in there a few times, honest!

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I am, actually... just haven't checked these boards for a few days! I'd assumed the thread had long since died. I'd figured that I'd done a crappy job of selling the system, what with that text-dump first post and utter lack of screenshots. In fact, I just finished up a new, more concise pitch and a few screenshots last night with the intent of posting them right now... not sure whether I'll do that now. At any rate, a newer version of the simulator can be found at http://www.mediafire.com/fi

Reply to Cheesy fleet tactic in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

As far as I can tell, the fleet support modules only increase the weighting of a ship. For instance, I once used a frigate with targeting computers and warp bubbles alongside more conventional combat frigates. The command frigate was a less powerful (but slightly better defended) warship, yet it was always the focus for enemy attacks. However, an unarmed, unarmoured "carrier" craft built off a cargo hull will never be targeted first.

Reply to Best AI of all times - why, oh why?! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Okay, so perhaps formiddable isn't the right word, but it's an order of magnitude better than stock DL AI.

Reply to Best AI of all times - why, oh why?! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Are you running the latest patch? Furthermore, at you running any of the expansions? The AI has always been improved with every patch and expansion... it's quite formidable right now in Twilight of the Arnor, though not unbeatable.

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

...sorry, what? Please make just a little bit of sense.

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've updated the first post with a new file link. The newer build has projectile colours by team (to make things easier to understand) and interpolation between frames (which stops your eyes from bleeding at low tick rates). Just for redunancy's sake, [link="http://www.mediafire.com/?elmbc7r4zip"]here's the link[/link].

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

...tactical combat is a bit of a dead horse topic... there should even be a sticky thread on it. Also, you might want to take a look at the files I stuck in. On top of more interesting ship and fleet design, making things look cooler was one of my main design goals.

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]First of all, if you want a magnificent combat system for GalCiv3, take an example from Sins of A Solar Empire, and then improve upon it. The combat system for that game is wicked.[/quote] It's also built for a [i]real time strategy game[/i], which makes it completely incompatible with a galciv game. Besides, I always found those battle uninteresting to watch unless you set the camera to follow a strikecraft, as everything else stayed completely immobile and just hammered on each

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

True... it'd also help matters if the transports were not single vessels, but groups of smaller ones.

Reply to A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] However, I'm worried the various interactions between attacks, defences, and other factors might make the combat system a headache. Also, the problem with that kind of system is that a balanced approach will never be as efficient as a focused one. Let's say a balanced fleet, with attacks against big, medium, and small ships as well as weapons of all weapon types meets a fleet with, say, all beam weapons? Sure, they would be more vulnerable against mass drivers, but since that's only a th

Reply to An Example Of Why You Really Do Need To Update Your Drivers in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Uh... how would drivers for your video card fry your wireless network card and CD drive? I think you might have had a different problem entirely if that kind of hardware damage occured!

A proposed combat system for GC3 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[edit: File has been updated so that the resolution isn't fixed to 1024x768] I apologize for the length of the following post... I can't seem to help myself! I'll try to format it so that it's a bit easier to read. Anyhow, I've been giving some thought lately to the combat system in GC2. To be honest, it's pretty dry... simple to understand, but it doesn't allow for a lot of variety or very interesting interactions between ships. It's pretty easy to find dominant strategi

Reply to Hey, Look What We Found! in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Last I heard, the reason that Stardock didn't put Twilight on shelves is that it was expensive to go the retail route, and that they just didn't have enough clout with retailers to get their expansions AND their core game on the shelves at the same time.

Reply to Rangers luck runs out! in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Well, the "creativity" bonus is responsible for the finishing techs ahead of schedual (so if you selected or got that perk somewhere, it'll kick in every so often) but it's dependant on how much research you're doing whether it shows up at all. If you aren't researching, you don't get creativity bonuses. As for the military/social connection to Rangers, I'm not so sure about that. I've never noticed it, myself... I'll keep an eye out for it, though!

Reply to Galactic Civilizations III in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I like SoaSE, but I'm not sure that making a galciv game more like SoaSE is necessarily a good step. After all, the target audiences (and the base game designs) are removed from each other by a fair margin. The same thing goes for tactical combat of any sort... it's awesome as an idea by itself, but it wouldn't work well with a turn based, large scale strategy game... it just isn't what the game is about. Besides, can you imagine managing a hundred battles a turn? I say, keep the square