Roxlimn

Reply to Carriers and modules in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

It'd make sense, too, and enforce a greater feeling of "ownership" of the influenced space. After all, if no one's willing to refuel your drives, you're dead in the water, literally. Would it be possible to mod a -50% range modifier to all nonallied civ ships within your own influence? Module suggestions: Point Defense module. +50% damage to Small and Tiny ships, preferential targeting for Small and Tiny Ships in fleet battles; +10% missile def

Reply to Stardock's Copyright Security Solution in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

They need to get their heads on straight. MUSIC is completely dominated by piracy. There is no music anywhere that cannoted be pirated and put on torrent the day it's released. If nothing else, you could just rerecord the track while playing it on a music device. It CANNOT be protected. And yet iTunes makes a killing on their store, featuring music they don't even make themselves. It's really, really basic economics. If y

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

psychoak: I know you're trying to be funny and all, but that really would be something important if: 1. US representatives dealth with you and your organization as if it were, in fact, the defacto government in exile of Oklahoma. If so, then you have cause for greivance. 2. If your forces were key pieces - important in the liberation of Oklahoma from Mexico or whatever, you would also have cause for grievance. Again, please review the fac

Reply to Selling ships to other races in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

I was recently able to purchase nearly the whole of the Torian Empire - lock stock and barrel - for about half of all my old garrison ships, which were still a lot more potent that the ships of their enemies - the Drengin. However, once I had got hold of Toria itself, the influence powers was enough that their last world revolted to me in short order. Conquest using ships! At point of sale.

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I disagree, and I'm a doctor. The effort that I put in and the effort a dedicated plumber puts in are exactly the same. It's not his fault that he doesn't have my natural focus or my educational opportunities. It's NOT FAIR. If we're going to talk about ethics and what's fair, what's fair is that everyone gets the same return for the same efforts. That's fair.

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

CobraA1: Historical context is important. Many of the most sophisticated pirates reside in the Philippines and China. These are not two-bit hackers in some basement with a network of computers. They are backed by millions of dollars in illegal sales and have the hardware and software expertise commensurate with that budget. While I may sound critical of the US, the only real suggestion I made was that US companies ought to mind third world sa

Reply to Carriers and modules in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

It wouldn't be that materially different from a Constructor. You send the Constructor, then make a whatever base for nothing in the early game, or cheap in the late game, since the range rarely matters on any size less than Huge. The idea has merit, though, and I have thought about it. My opinion is that it's best to keep the range bonus in-fleet - that is, the Fighters can't significantly function outside a very short range from their companion vessels.

Reply to Psyonic Weapons in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

In terms of military, Evil tech tree is second best. Good tech tree is best because it gives you awesome weapon-specific defenses that are actually strong enough to make you relatively protected from off-type weapons as well. Single ship strategy with invulnerable ships means that you don't break the bank assembling single heroic ships to take over the galaxy, and your defense tech boosts means your on-type defenses just gets silly. In terms of economy, Neutral get my vote

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Frogboy: I think psychoak is correct here. When I purchase a book I'm free to do with it as I wish except for selling its contents or copies of its contents for profit, or else copying it and distributing it indiscriminately, which is also covered by copyright law. A book isn't a license. The book doesn't limit my ability to read other books, nor does it wreck the photocopier I use to make as many copies of it as I deem ne

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

WIllythemailboy: Absolutely. I was proposing that they further drop the pricing on the base DL game because I believe that if they cater to an international market, and they do, then there is a secondary market for significantly cheaper games in the developing world. $20 for the base DL game is more or less okay in the Philippines. We're not that badly off. Then again, the piracy penetration here isn't as good as mainland Asia. I think th

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Draginol: I know that calling it a "license" makes software people more secure about the entire thing, but ultimately I think it drives away consumers and as for me; it makes me want to just shaft the entire industry and not buy a thing - stop playing games altogether on the PC/console, or only play abandonware or pirated software. The most basic piece of saleable product that was meant to be protected by copyright is a book - it's the original copyright mater

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

CobraA1: Regarding the petro-dollar scheme: The petro-dollar scheme is essentially the ongoing legal global market on oil and dollars. The US has enforced a system in which oilcan only be traded and bought in dollars, not in any other currency. The obvious corollary to that is that the dollar becomes necessary for all countries if they want to buy oil. This is one of the reasons why the "oil for food" program in the late 90s was a sore point

Carriers and modules in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Not too long ago, the community was brainstroming ideas and we collectively (including the devs) hit on the "solution" of modules for ships that would enhance roleplaying with the races and strategy and tactics as well. IMO, this is the way of the future. It's easy to add parts like a module. In fact, a Warp Bubble Ship makes more sense than a Carrier Imperial Star Destroyer. After all, if you can install a warp field that big, why would you limit its use to a single

Reply to Another Company doesn't want my money in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

If it's any consolation or indication, Galactic Civilizations 2 appears to be THE most unprofitable software to pirate for Chinese and Philippine hackers. It's extremely difficult to find a pirated copy of this game, and when you do, it's obvious that it was hacked by some third stringer peon - the code has a tendency to CTD and it's missing the movies. The last time I checked out the black market, there was no stock of GC2 or Dark Avatar - DA apparently never even made it out t

Reply to Have you ever downloaded a game? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Yes. A lot. Local pirates are incredible, but their servers are usually well-hidden and password protected. Not only do they do no-CD cracks, but local pirates also usually clean up the code as well, and they respond to problems with a game with patches long before the Western gaming industry caught on. For a long time, you bought a game, but downloaded the pirated version anyway because the pirated version was better in many ways. There are other reasons as we

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Zyxpsilon: In a capitalist society, value is a matter of perception and pricing. Nothing more. If pricing is not based on any set value, then you cannot say that a given product is priced correctly or justly without considering the local market structure. Please read on market structures and how they relate to each other when they differ. If a given object value is absolute, then you ought to be able to barter it for another given object of c

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

CobraA1: [quote who="CobraA1" reply="10" id="1912646"] Clearly, you have no idea why the US is the dominant economic power in the world, despite being its biggest consumer-driven market. Clearly, you are very opinionated on this issue. In fact, I'm seeing a bit of a pattern: You are "disagreeing" with my opinions, yet we are sharing many of the same basic facts. It just seems that you prefer to paint them in a negative and anti-western light?

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="CobraA1" reply="3" id="1911574"] . . . and the reason why games cost $40 or more, which it well above the cost of the CD or DVD, is because it also represents a investment of capital. If it did not, it would cost $0.02. [/quote] True, but each instance of the game represents a smaller fraction of justifiable return on capital. Once you get beyond the idea that nothing has intrinsic value, then the value of a product that's $40 in the wrong market is also

Reply to What would be viable copy protection? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

Cobra A1: [quote who="CobraA1" reply="17" id="1910592"] I don't go around stealing cheaper vehicles made on assembly lines either. My analogy holds. In fact, the amount of capital and investment is totally irrelevent to the argument. They're cheaper and easier to steal, therefore stealing is right? Am I supposed to believe this is some form of logic? Let's assume that's true. I still don't agree with theft. I don't change my beliefs about mo

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

Having targeting priorities would be too complicated to make a strategic game around with the defense/offense/module factors thrown in. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Making an algorithm that would be able to deal with it would be even tougher.

Reply to A Plea For Decent Armies (Ground Units) in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Ground combat in space 4X games as a natural extension of MoM's tactical unit battles are something that I've been salivating over for a very, very long time. Glad to see that it's got the dev's interest as well. For those who don't like it, it's not a big deal. Even according to MoM strategy, individual tactical battles could be foregone conclusions based on strategic factors. In fact, once your army is big enough, you tended to automate those battles anyway. <

Reply to What the heck did they do to the economy? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

Didn't really have a tougher time with the economy in ToA. Mostly it's just the same. Of course, I do penny-pinch as a matter of personal habit, so that might have something to do with it. Generally speaking, I don't produce buildings that I can't maintain and pour money into in order to make it effective. You need to source your income before you decide to spend it. You can plan to have your income increase simultaneously with production and research buildings

Reply to What would you do with a class 26 planet? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I play at Large map settings. I also once had such a planet and a +300% research tile on top of the +700% tile. No I did NOT specialize it for research. This is what I did: Since was in the initial phases of exploration and colonization, I needed military production, and lots of it. I ignored the research tiles initially since my economy wouldn't support that kind of research spending anyway. I bought 2 facs and then built a starport and finished

Reply to Building a good economic planet in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Normally, the game has a hard limit of about 20 billion before the morale situation becomes prohibitive to solve with morale buildings, but you also want to have enough tiles to justify investment. For a PQ6 planet, it's usually simply not very feasible. You want 2 factories to enable decent social production on focus, and one or two farms plus one or two entertainment buildings. This means that most of the performing econ planets I have are size 8 or better.

Reply to PC game piracy hurts us all in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Peer DRM is highly unlikely to work because there's too big a market for nonPeer DRM to make it work. Case in point: Region-specific DVDs. One of the main reasons region-specific DVDs and players that play them aren't very common outside the West these days is because it doesn't work . China and the entirety of the East and South Asian sphere has such a vast pool of underpaid skilled workers with nothing better to do that not only are they able to crack s