Lord_StarPilot

Reply to Beta 4 tentatively this Friday in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Take all the time you need, Brad. We will wait, mostly, impatiently , but we do understand. So no worries about us! Thanks for keeping us informed!

Reply to Turn Problem in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

It sounds like a known bug in the current beta code. One that may/should be fixed in Beta 4.

Reply to Everybody's coding for the weekend.. in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

I commented on this yesterday, but that post seems to be lost. How about making the planet name - info be seperated into two lines? That would make it easier to read all the info, and let you put more info on screen clearly. For example, you could display: Size - Name Social - Turns Left/Military - Turns Left So, it would be: 10 - Earth Entertain... - 2 / Scout - 3 Wouldn't that be easier? If a queue is empty, you

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Excellent idea, ProudCanadian!

Reply to A new idea for Planet Invansions in Warfare Stardock Forums

It wouldn't be any more difficult then shooting an ship in orbit. They go several kilometers per second, after all. Ships that aren't on the exact same vector have to be able to do that, so being able to shoot a meteor wouldn't be any more difficult. Railguns don't change things. They just let you throw something that is somewhat ferrous.

Reply to Recruiting the Troops in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

With GC1, colony ships could carry a very large number of people. So starting it off at 100% would have left you with no one on the planet. The auto-launch with 1/4 was very useful for spacing those unhappy people automatically. For troop carriers, you'd generally want to load it full if you could. Unless the planet just didn't have enough for the transport. As GC2 allows us to design our own colonizers and our own transports, it would probably be more useful to have the sl

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Brad has already stated that upgrading/refitting will be a seperate matter from new ship construction. However, the cost will come out of your normal costs, so that if you want to upgrade quickly, you'll have to take that money from another cost (ie, miltary, social, research). Whether it will be 4 cost sliders instead of three, or a split in your military slider (between new ships and refitting ships), it all means that you cannot max out your building and refitting at the same time.

Reply to Upgrading buildings on planets is boring and long for nothing. in Ideas Stardock Forums

I'm just brainstorming, Brad. Micro-management is the beast we are trying to keep from growing, and the system described struck me as having a strong possibility of impacting epic style players rather strongly. We will see it in action soon though, so it will be easier to judge if it will be a concern. Does the math support going straigth for the big ticket items is faster/more efficent? It didn't under Acendancy, and you are using the same basic world system as them (with just some m

Reply to Galactic Civilizations is not Master of Orion in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

It's just a matter of resources. StarDock doesn't need the name "MoM" to have a good game, and successful hit. Does Atari own the old SimTex titles outright? I know that at one point, the Microprose title/brands were being sold very cheap by Hasbro (which changed its gaming name to Atari, IIRC). That's how PopTop acquired the name to "Railroad Tycoon". I suppose right now, with Civ4 coming out, would be a bad time to go looking at what they'd sell the title for. Too bad. Bu

Reply to Upgrading buildings on planets is boring and long for nothing. in Ideas Stardock Forums

But why should it be added to the current build queues when the queue already has something in it? For quick researchers, this could result in multiple sceduling of upgrades before they can actually get built on the small worlds. Cari, what kind of game balance is it to have advanced items that cost less to build then the basic units? I can understand operating costs being less, but when should an improved item cost less? Consider, if I can drop a basic factory on a newly s

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Oh yeah. A "Go To World" option could also allow for the easy colonization of known, unsettled worlds. Just set the "Show all" switch on, and select that unowned world! Away goes that ship. It might be useful to have a "Show un-owned worlds only" switch, but that would be more easily determined after having the "Go To World" functionality and some play experience with large galaxy maps with lots of worlds.

Reply to A new idea for Planet Invansions in Warfare Stardock Forums

You don't need Star Wars/Trek tech to lob rocks at a world. We can do that now. It just takes dropping a rocket engine on an asteriod or comet, and patience. The faster you want that bit of rock to hit another target, the bigger the engine. In GalCiv, there are no left over citizenry to be assimilated. This could be an interesting thing (ala MoO or Civ), but right now, everyone fights to the last working body, no exceptions. This means that orbital bombardment should already be consid

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

CariElf, Having a general "Go To World" command would be more useful. SMAC had a very nice "Go To" command for units. It would list the player owned cities (with a boolean switch to flip to all players), how far away they were, who owned it (useful for when showing all players), and some pertinent info for the unit. GC2 could provide a list of player owned worlds (with a boolean switch to display all known worlds), distance from currently selected unit, who owns the world (useful for

Reply to Why do game sites compair this game to MOO2? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

I've played several 4x SF Galactic Conquest games that included complex planetary combat. Guess what? Every one of those games failed! Why? Because it took too darn long to play the game! That killed the word of mouth for those games, and they promptly failed. Consider the scale of what you are talking about. In a Medium sized map, you could end up with 200 planetary battles (if you go with very common world settings!). Can you imagine if you had to do a TBS world conquest game per wo

Reply to Why do game sites compair this game to MOO2? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Astrax, if you follow independant game developers, you'll find that it is the case. Go look at Cornutopia, for instance. Same thing there, and its a whole (successful!) company of 1. What you find is that successful independant companies stay successful by being realistic in their sales projections. For instance, Cornutopia projected they'd make $10K off its Flatspace game, and cut their development budget to be $5K in accordance. At a risk: losing that $5K and the time to make the ga

Reply to Huge capacity colony ships and mass instantaneous conscription. in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Well, maybe your government form is similar to Isreali or Swede where every citizen has to serve a certain number of years in the military, and the government reserves the right to re-active any citizen? They might not be as trained as your career military person, but they'd know the basics wouldn't they?

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Brad, there isn't any way to make everyone happy. You know that. But hopefully, refits can be made as minor an issue as possible. I like the consistancy of having refits be merely repairs. Whats the difference in fixing a broken destroyer that has been shot up, had half its weapons destroyed, lost 2 engines, etc and upgrading to a newer design of the same hull with upgraded weapons and engines? If you can repair in field, you certainly can perform many forms of upgrading in the field.

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The problem I have with Saber Cherry's suggestion is the instant pause that my ships being upgraded suffer from. Why should they if the material isn't there to be used to upgrade the ships? I don't mind the ships being "useless" while they are actually refitting, but it seems odd that a damaged ship will still be 100% usable, but a ship in deep space will be some floating bit of trash just because its been scheduled (but won't get the parts) to be upgraded. A better alternative is to

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Any game mechanic for upgrading ships should take these factors into account: 1) The cost difference between the original ship and the upgraded ship to prevent cheese. 2) The distance from the planet it was constructed on (to prevent cheese with building super fast ships and then upgrading them to mega death ships easily). 3) The MANUFACTURING capacity of either y

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

You can't simply have an instant upgrade path because it would be incredibly easy to exploit. Players could make a very wimpy, cheap ship and then "upgrade" it to a mega powerful ship. There has to be some sort of mechanism to upgrade ships to avoid that. This was a serious exploit in SMAC. You'd make a really cheap unit, and then just perfor

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Okay guys, let's make sure we're on the same page: User has made the Constellation class star ship. They crank out 20 of these ships and they're all over space. 40 turns later they're at Phaser Mark IV technology and decide it's time to upgrade their Constellation ships. They can either A) Upgrade them all at once or B) Go to individual ships and have them upgr

Reply to Galactic Civilizations is not Master of Orion in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

You mean Elemental? I've been waiting on that game! I know it had started initial prototyping, but since GC2 came along, I think it's been "paused". Isn't Society in the cooker as well? That would make 2 teams, doesn't it?

Reply to Intercept ability in Ideas Stardock Forums

SMAC has auto-intercept in its air-combat layer/model. It's nice in that mode, but for GC2? I think it would be better to be able to build significant interdictors at a military starbase. This would create a move penalty to non-native and non-allied ships. If you want to defend your border, then you'd just build a line of military bases that have interdictors on them, and leave a small response fleet out there to whoop on on the slow pokes. I think this would be better then "auto-atta

Reply to Upgrading\Refiting Ships in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Martok and Ugleb, that would be the horrible chest sucking wound version of upgrading. Now, if there is a button on each ship panel that lets you "upgrade" that individual to the designated descendant (so you can refit, one by one, as well as all at once), now we are in business. Otherwise, you are going to end up rotating all your ships out of the combat line, by class, to a safe point before you initiate upgrading. Suck suck suck! So, if we go with the SMAC upgrade functioanlity, wh

Reply to Why do game sites compair this game to MOO2? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

MoO1 was SP. MoO2 was MP from the start. My manual includes a section on IP play, and I started with a pre-order. The MP people forgive MoO2 for having poor AI because they played MP. The SP players, well, they are the ones down on MoO2's AI. Note who those include. Like the Big Bad Bradman himself.