BinaryAlgorithm

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Some observations: * "We lost contact with one of our colonies" message plays repeatedly when a planet is taken that is on the verge of being culturally flipped by the enemy (but nothing actually seems to happen). It may be flipping to them and immediately to me such that I don't see it (one phaseline is above 50% for them in one direction, but they have no active broadcasting in that area, so it's shrinking). * If your culture is halfway to an enemy colony, you should be able

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

* It would be nice if fighters were rendered at least one zoom level out from where they are now; the trails are fun to watch as they mass attack a building or cap ship. * Finished up my second game finally; took about 17:45. I can't imagine playing multiplayer with this magnitude and the current game mechanics, but shorter games are possible with smaller galaxies. Perhaps the save/load feature can be used to resume a game online and people can join up knowing their position, and losing

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Here's an example of culture deadlock between star systems. I am blue, and I have eliminated all colonies in this system. The problem is, the culture lines from green and pink will never go away until I destroy their empires. Both have only a few colonies in the next star system, but I am certain that both orange and myself have more culture coming in (in fact, I have 4 consecutive systems pushing in). For some reason broadcas

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

>>> Agreed, I've found cannons to be too weak to do any good. Perhaps there should be a long range missle launcher upgrade for the cannons? Or a anti-fighter flak upgrade? I suggested long range launcher above, but perhaps make it an upgrade for the cannon that is researched (I am assuming the finished game will allow building upgrades?). Allows specialization in your defenses. Prevents some bombing of the helpless cannons. >>> The cannons need a bit more punch. Perhap

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I admit that the Kol is a superior battleship. In a cap ship battle a level 3 adaptive shield would help immensely. However, my preference is based on speed. Cap ships always stumble around planets (especially keeping large fleets together), and dealing with buildings and cleanup takes a long time. I was disappointed to observe that the Kol's flak gun doesn't seem to kill fighters, but simply injures them. In any case, it almost certainly doesn't kill more than one at a time, and at high antimat

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I reloaded the save game and there was considerable lag (15-20s) after the loading screen before the 3D items were loaded. I think that's because of the inefficient nature of the save files currently, but it probably won't be a major problem. It's a large map (because I like to push things to the limit hehe). Reloading didn't fix the periodic lag, but I figured something out. The lag occurs when the game is updating my resource numbers, so whatever calculation is done there is becoming

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I've nearly completed a ~100 planet, 10 star system game (is my second game now). The AI is set on medium (10 players in the map, independent, no teams, locked). No roaming pirates, was distracting me last game and not doing any real damage. I now have a greater perspective on this game; the report says 13 hours so far put into this map. Why is it taking so long? I got one word: Culture. But first, let me add some misc. stuff: * Too many colonies = display problems when hoverin

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Culture: Actually I was able to pull 0.2/0.3 culture (being produced, still capped at 10% in terms of effect) in my home system with 5-6 broadcast stations, and also in a foreign system. I am now playing the 100+ planet map with 10 stars. I discovered that culture only bounces off a location if you have a majority of the phaselines covered (so to bounce to other stars you need to cover the current star). Still have no idea how much I am affecting enemies until they actually flip, then I see it h

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

This is what I'm suggesting for culture mechanics. Red has 16 culture points. Blue also has 16 (planet's base cultures from population and bonuses from any broadcast centers). The spread rate from the home planet is (100%). The loss ratio per jump is 80% in this example, so from the next nodes the spread rate is (16)(0.8) = (12.8). The third layer is (16)(0.8)(0.8) = (10.24). The middle planet is 2 jumps from both capita

Reply to Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Thanks for sharing your ideas about these issues. Looks like you're the pseudo-moderator for the time being As I understand it, Shield Mitigation is the efficiency concerning the amount of damage that the shields block. Think of it like armor, but instead of an armor number, it's a percentage. If the shield mitigation were 100%, then the ship would be invincible. If t

What would you like me to Test? in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

Since we're all dumping our personal desires onto the developer and it's a privilege to be able to even see this Beta, I figured I would ask; What is your priority right now for gameplay testing? Any areas that I should be focusing on in the game to give feedback (I could do general testing, but if there are specific mechanics that are being reconsidered, what are they)?

Interface and Gameplay Suggestions in Beta Feedback Sins Forums

I just finished my first game of Sins (Beta 2) and I am very impressed. I have some comments and suggestions based on my experience. Questions: What is shield mitigation? I know it goes up if you are getting hit rapidly in a short time, but does it block damage or decrease their chance of hitting, or other effect? Can I make a capital ship patrol a sector, or use waypoints? What I like: The music, the graphics, the sounds. Feels very realistic. <b

Reply to DEVS: 1.5 GB Hard Limit for Memory Allocation; Smart Cache Suggested in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

You will experience both slowness and graphical glitches in the form of missing textures because the game is unable to allocate memory for the textures (even if you have free physical RAM, it is unable to map any more). I usually use task manager to monitor at what memory usage the save error occurs (1.5 GB VM usage for me, 2.0 GB hard crash, approximately) and restart the game when I get close.

Yor Slow Effect in my Space in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

This may be a known issue, but the Yor speed limit of 3 applies near their planets, even when they are in my sphere of influence. I figured it was only supposed to work within their zone of control. However, ships just built say 7/3 movement for instance and get full movement for a turn before slowing down.

Reply to DEVS: 1.5 GB Hard Limit for Memory Allocation; Smart Cache Suggested in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

What's wierd is that the memory leak became less severe as I took over the map. I can only assume the AI processing became less complicated at this point. Lag decreased noticably when 1-2 AIs were eliminated completely. Up until that point it was taking about 1 second to move each of my ships 1 square; eyes of the universe no doubt contributed to the lag, but it was significantly faster when viewing areas with few of my planets (many of which were full of defenders). I have only seen severe memo

Reply to Sunny days and game development in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Maybe I should move out there and come work for you guys. Looks like a much better work environment. Happy developers make better games GalCiv really is a community project though. It's always changing, and as such some bugs are inevitable. I was able to help Cari find the source of at least one major bug, which made me very happy. The community support is awesome too; there is never a shortage of

Reply to Games I want to make! in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Draginol et al, I am glad for the great success of GalCiv II. I understand the irony of having a limited market share for the genre you love so much. It was quite apparent when I went to the game developer's conference interested in a game design career and found the major developers there really were not interested in making space building games or other types I'm interested in - not as much money in it. I ultimately decided to change from CompSci to English:

Reply to REALLY nasty AI! in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I'm running dual-core with DA 1.61, but the game only uses 50% capacity, even with the "force max cpu" option on. Do I need to toggle an option in the prefs.ini file?

Reply to Revised Alignment Abilities in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the input CaptainYar. No doubt this is a major overhaul, which is why I don't expect it can be taken as-is and written into the game without many discussions (and yes, I am still working with them to fix other bugs in the current game, an ongoing process). Perhaps it is just the writter, programmer, or game designer in me, but I like to participate in the creative process; in many ways this is a player-made game, which is no doubt the reason for the game's popularity. <br

Reply to Revised Alignment Abilities in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

To be honest, I just created this in response to the usual: "The MCC bug makes Evil overpowered" "Good is underpowered" I was writing bug reports and got some random ideas. Wanted to see if people found the ideas interesting. I'm not really expecting much from it, or the devs to do anything with it.

Reply to Revised Alignment Abilities in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

I have not touched modding yet; don't really plan to. I am mainly interested in changes to the actual game to extend the strategic variety, for which I think this is a decent start. However, some of these must be done by the designers, for the combat engine is not designed to handle the "Quantum Bomb", for instance. I tried to stay within reasonable boundaries of what the game engine could currently handle or with simple changes to the game engine. I was just inspired to flesh out the a

Revised Alignment Abilities in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

Modified Alignment Bonuses: Good Abilities: * -50% colony maintenance for all planets * +50% diplomacy * +25% morale * +25% influence * +25% influence for all influence starbases (automatic) * Cannot use invasion tactics that reduce the PQ of a planet Buildings: * "The Happiness Radio Network" - Galactic Achievement. Requires "Cultural Domination" tech. Increases the chance of a planet flipping (when ap

Reply to Alignment Balancing and New Abilities/Ideas in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

I posted the Revised Alignment Bonuses in another thread.

Reply to Alignment Balancing and New Abilities/Ideas in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

IMO better: num_attackers / num_defenders. Prevents 1M invaders cheese. Actually, I had (att / def * 25%) originally for that reason, but most of the time it would have been useless because if you had equal numbers you should win the battle, so I changed it. Your formula makes more sense because normally to lose you must have less than half the troops, so you would get something like 1-50% depending; if you "almost win" the battle, you have a d