Mistoffeles

Reply to Where is that cruiser? in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

Core ships are really great ...for decorating your wastebasket. Since about my third game I have not built a single core ship, and as soon as there is no more exploration to do that "flagship" is recycled for scrap. Here are a few general recommendations for one method of starting out, you may decide this is not your style but it's one way that I've used successfully: Optional: Making sure you have Stellar Cartography as a starting technology pic

Reply to Now What..After Diplomatic Victory, what should I try for next? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Turn off Diplomacy Victory when you start the game. Personally, I turn off all alternate victory conditions at the start of every game (I wish GC2 would remember this from game to game), but use influence and diplomacy extensively through every game. Often I will have one race attacking another for me, while I am attacking a third, and taking over a fourth with influence.

Reply to Freeze-up in ship designer in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Yup, much easier to delete-and-add.

Reply to Combat stuttering in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

He said he is having trouble with playing combat at 1x, not playing GC2 version 1.0x In answer to the OP, expand your swap file to at least 2GB, 4 if you can afford the space, prefferably on a hard drive that is not attached to the same IDE cable as your main hard drive. I would also recommend that you upgrade your RAM to at least 1GB. Or do what I did and just turn the "tactical

Reply to Difficulty levels- what do they mean? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've found that there is a strange relationship, or lack of one actually, between the "intelligence" of the individual AIs and the "difficulty" level of the overalol game, even though they are tied together in the game setup screen. Why does the map generator produce a map that is biased towards the AI races farthest from you when on a higher overall difficulty level, but not on a lower level? As for influence, you can influence any planet owned by any race into a culture flip. I have

Reply to No offense but... in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

There should be a poll on what, of the features on the "long list", people want the most. It would certainly settle once and for all what the devs should be concentrating on. Edit: P.S.: Programming multiplayer is not really all that hard, the hard part is in maintaining the connections, preventing cheating and so on. The reason why GC2 is not suited to multiplayer is that it is turn-based, and each player can take as long as they want to make their moves, so there is no "simultaneous

Reply to Serious performance issues in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I have to agree, Omega drivers are risky on a simple tower system, much less something as complex as a laptop. I recommend either drivers downloaded direct from ATI, or the SoftMod version: SoftMod ATI drivers

Reply to Regarding Used Copies of GalCiv II in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

For what it's worth, a license for software is a contract between the purchaser and the software company (or a company the software company has contracted in one way or another to "sell" its product), so unless the contract (EULA) explicitly states that the license is transferrable, it isn't. This is why Stardock's method of distribution is ideal, you can't get the "latest" version of the software without registering on their server, but there is really nothing whatsoever stopping you

Reply to Universal Translater in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I have attempted to avoid researching UT..by the time I am ready to invade anyone, I am ganged up on by 2 or 3 other races, usually at least one with warships to take out my defenses and another spamming me with transports, or fleets of transports...i.e.: absolutely zero chance to survive.

Reply to "the game is too easy", they say in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

An exploit is just a way to manipulate the game in a way the developers didn't think of first. For example, the trick of using your latest crappy tech to buy tech from every AI, then cross-trade between every race to gather tech so you can cut down on the amount of research you have to do. This is old hat in some games, where very advanced diplomacy and trading has been a key priority for the developers of a second or third sequel in a line of games, but wasn't prioritized in GC2.<br/

Reply to Planet/Ship window order has changed in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It works like the colonies list, or most any other list in most recent Windows-based programs - click on something in the list heading, and it sort it by some category; click on it again, and it sorts it in reverse order.

Reply to Is it possible to break an alliance? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Why would you make an alliance with a minor race in the first place?

Reply to Why Are There No Planet Classes Below 4 in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

1.) I had a huge map with 6 class 3 planets. 2.) Class 0 planets are great, when you get the random event that transforms all "previously unusable planets" in a 2 sector (yeah, sectors, not parsecs) radius from a certain planet into class 12 planets. I got over 30 new class 12 planets to colonise out of that one

Reply to How does the Military, Social, and Production work together in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

This is something that always bothered me about this game, there is no way to produce the maximum social, military and research on any planet. What did I build/buy all those factories for if I can only get maximum social production by setting my research and military production to zero?

Reply to GalCivII not working with mousesoftware in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Never had a problem with Logitech MouseWare and GC2, 6-button mouse.Not when I installed GC2, not when I installed a new version of LMW after GC2 1.0x, not when I installed updates of GC2 after that. Default settings or custom, no problems at all. Can you give some more specific details, such as what model of mouse are you using, in what port, and so on?

Reply to asymmetrical hardpoints in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Try using a stub hull and mounting all of the components shrunk down as small as possible, then covering it all with a "skin" such as the nice Starfleet models that have been made available by the modding community, or one of your own creation. I even find some of the unadorned built-in ships look pretty nice without all the functional components hanging off of them. If you place your weapons right, they can even appear to fire out of the appropriate place on the "skin".

Reply to Non-functioning Engine Parts in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Sweet ship I've switched over to using a "stub" hull, attaching functional pieces shrunk down as small as necessary to hide them inside an aesthetic shell, then covering them with a non-functional hull graphic that visually hides the functional components completely inside. This way I can use B5, Star Wars, Star Trek and other ship models without marring their visual style with incongruous visual elements from the functional components.

Reply to Play at any resolution.... except mine. in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

It's 2006, if you're not running at least 1024x768 it's really time for a new computer, or at least a new monitor. I've picked up used machines from a second hand/junk store that can do 1024x768, although admittedly it is the highest resolutiuon they can do. Any computer that cannot do at least that is not only going to make modern games hard to play, it's very bad for your eyes, which is going to cost you in the long run a lot more (both in dollars and in vision problems) than a low-

Reply to First Time Gal Civ-er in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

Orbits could be handled by displaying a star and its planets as one object on the map, with the planets themselves showing as orbiting their star much like the moons orbit their planets presently. You would have to "enter" a system (much like how you enter orbit around a planet presently), which would open a "star system sub map", to go to a particular planet. This would make a whole lot more sense than the current system, which shows planets as orbiting 2 and 3 parsecs from their stars, or 600-

Reply to Planets not within reach of my colony ships in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Right from the beginning you can fit one colony module, one basic drive (I forget the name off the top of my head) and two basic life support modules, which will give you extra rance and a speed of 3 parsecs (squares) per week (turn). Alternately, you can drop the engine and add more basic life support modules for even more range, and stick to the basic built-in per-turn speed of the main drive that the hull starts with, which iirc is 2 for a cargo hull. Use the fast variant to nab planets in th

Reply to Halo Wishlist in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Those are nice ships, but would you really want to have ships like that with the incongruous engines, weapons, defenses and so on of GC2 sticking out of those nice, streamlined hulls?

Reply to Forum Software is some sort of abstract hellscape. in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

There is one and only one problem with these forums. They are a sad victim of "reinvent-the-wheel-itis". I believe there was a reason why they are custom-made, and that is so they can show up in the SDC application, but SDC could have been coded to access the data through a PHP linking application to an existing forum software. Any other reason for building a custom application when many forum packages already exist with much richer feature sets and capabilities, and that a

Reply to AI's cost/benefit analysis needs improvement, BADLY! in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It shouldn't be hard to add temporal delta to the algorithm, i.e.: "this will cause a loss now but eventually lead to a much larger gain", it would only take the addition of one more table-based variable to the analysis. it could even be done without that if there is a "desirability" already in the equation, as a lookup based on the value of the planet's PQ could be factored into the desirability.

Reply to Something missing from the game: atmosphere in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Ascendancy had a great AI, it just wasn't developed by The Logic Factory. The built-in AI sucked, however a replacement AI mod was released by someone. I don't remember who, and can't find it on the net, but I know I have it somewhere because I go back and play it occasionally and always add the mod.

Reply to Add coloring feature to ship design in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Artwork and names on an individual or class basis like the old WW2 fighters would be interesting.