Sigma 7

Reply to where can I find general info on ship attributes? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Is it just me or is Sector Sweep kind of useless? Why not just set a ship/fleet on "Guard" in the middle of the sector[/quote] If you keep it in the middle of the sector and "Guard", the sensor radius basically stays the same with no change. With Sector Sweep, the ship moves about in the sector to give a minor "boost" to the detection radius. Ships can be detected a few squares further away, and the sweeper can move away from the incoming hostile at the same time. B

Reply to OT: Anyone here know of any X-COM like games? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]that underdog site that everyone is talking about, what is it supposed to be? can you download free games on it or is it just reviews? i tried checking the site out, but &*$^ #@*%!!! i never seen so many pop-ups in my life! i checked the site out for a minute only and i then gave up! im not going to bother going there again unless there really is something worthwhile to download there.[/quote] They provide download links to abandoned titles, while provide links to online stores t

Reply to I can't beleive this crap in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

If you purchased the game off eBay using a Credit Card (which you should), you may want to contact the credit card company to discuss a chargeback. If you can get Stardock to claim that the CD-key was banned a few months back for being pirated, all the better. If you purchased it through Cash or Cheque, fraud recovery is a bit harder. You will need to look on the web to see methods on fraud avoidance and protection (such as this Slashdot thread: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=

Reply to pop ups interupting my galciv game!!! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I've heard the samethin happen as well. Technically, such programs are illegal, regardless of whatever is placed in a license agreement. If something managed to sneak it's way onto your system, you may want to check out Ad Aware. It detects current advertising software, and can remove them: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Reply to Interface question please in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I get "Colony Ship Class" or "Survey Ship Class" for the second line using the first two ships. It's probably telling you which kind of spaceship it is.

Reply to What is an Overlord? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote] Next question: Has anyone managed to research excalibur tech and build some of those bad boys? If so, how do you prolong the game enough to get that far up the tech tree? Huge universe? Harder difficulty?[/quote] It's been researched before - it's quite close to the Final Frontier technology required to win the game. However, it's not likely to be researched as most players would shoot towards Final Froniter instead (unless it's either disabled or for some other reason.) <b

Reply to Information Warfare bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]If you try to pick mostly good things but several bad -for the PQ boosts-, more often than not you end up neutral- which gives no benefits, and get nothing to show for it.[/quote] The neutral alignment has benefits that are not available when using either the Good or Evil path. They aren't obvious, but they are quite significant if used properly. This benefit (a spoiler, actually) is exclusive to the Neutral alignment only. As soon as you deviate by choosing a good o

Reply to 1.04.59 or later bug reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Perhaps an Alliance victory should have a 12-month timer as well?[/quote] What purpose would that serve? If you suddenly have an alliance with every single race, that qualifies as a victory. The problem that I reported was that it is too easy to get an alliance with two rivals currently at war with each other. You can stand at the sideline without any worries of being drawn into the conflict - especially if you win that turn.

Reply to 1.04.59 or later bug reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Probably a design feature (or oversight), but should be reported anyway: I recently had a 5-way alliance victory with the AI players engaged in a total slugfest. While I appreaciate the united galaxy as a victory condition, it shouldn't be possible to achieve it overnight by signing Alliances with all five races at once. This, as you know, causes massive complaints about Alliance Victory being dead simple. To fix this problem, I suggest that a prerequisite for an All

Reply to Is there any way to declare war without opening fire? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]The way I understand it, this was designed as an anti-exploit feature. Players could have this nasty habit of buying tech or whatever from the aliens on a long term deal and then declare war to erase the debt while being able to use the new goodies immediately. So it was decided to basically make all the contracts iron-clad. Nothing can break the deal. [/quote] Although I'd agree, there are still ways to exploit the anti-exploiting feature. Just kill the initial Drainol ships, d

Reply to rolls of the dice in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

The battle calculations are clearly stated in the manual. If you can't find the location of the helpful text, you could instead view the GalCiv Simulator. : http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/simulator.asp Be sure to check for updates for that simulator, as there is a deceptive bug with the old one: http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&ID=75540

Reply to Simulator Bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

For some reason, the forum doesn't seem to like the or tags. I'd love to make it nice and neat in such a way that it can be cut-and-pasted, but those tags kill any oppertunity to do so - unless you open the page source and manually edit out the s...

Reply to Simulator Bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Okay, here's the change to the function. function Simulate() { var trials = 1000; var aWin = 0; var dWin = 0; var tHpAvg = 0; var aAtt = parseInt( document.frmBSim.attackerAtt.value ); var aDef = parseInt( document.frmBSim.attackerDef.value ); var dAtt = parseInt( document.frmBSim.defenderAtt.value ); var dDef = parseInt( document.frmBSim.defenderDef.value ); var aHpOrig = parseInt( document.frmBSim.attackerHp.value ); v

Reply to New Message Board Features in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Found an interesting forum bug: I found myself in an intermediate state where I could post forum messages, but couldn't submit my vote to polls. It's very strange. The bug may be caused two different sets of forum cookies expiring at different times, and is likely to reoccurr again for me on August 30, 2003.

Reply to Is there any way to declare war without opening fire? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]And would declaring war cancel my outstanding debts? [/quote] No - you still keep paying them.

Poll questions in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

When using the AMD chipset, do we use the raw clockspeed, or do we divide the number by 1000 and pretend that to be the cloclspeed in GHz? And while I'm asking, why does the poll assume that the only differences between the types of computers is the clockspeed? In theory, it's possible to run it on a Commodore 64 - not that well, but it's possible.

Reply to 1.04.59 or later bug reports in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

Found a bug with a special event that raises planet quality. As some of you may know, there is a chance of finding a small precursor artifact that raises the PQ of all uncolonized planets within two sectors of a system by ~14. I have a saved game that shows the aftermath of this event (where it happened to all planets within two sectors from "Hestia.) When you open the saved game, you can see a 3x3 zone where the PQ of planets have been boosted. However, the center of effect was sup

Simulator Bug in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

I found a problem with the GalCiv Battle Simulator that is available from the metaverse link. While it is a useful utility, it reports that the victorius ship will have a bit more hitpoints than it does after winning a battle. This bug only occurrs on close calls like 50-50 chances. In the average hitpoint calculation, it only reports the result assuming that the victorius ship had a 100% chance of winning. From this, the reader incorrectly assumes that a Ranger (60/12/6) attacking a

Reply to First post, in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]What he means is that game designers can't seem to design a game that has a good AI and yet allows good micromanagement. MOO3 has terrible AI but allows you to take charge of everything. Galciv has great AI but doesn't let you micromanage much of anything. [/quote] If that's what he's referring to, then the statement isn't correct. The level of micromanagement available in a game is completely independant of the computer AI. If you check the MOO3 forums for bug re

Reply to First post, in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]Seems that nobody can get the a.i. and micromanaging at the same time.[/quote] I don't quite follow what you're trying to get at here... If you are saying that people have trouble dealing with the AI and have trouble micromanaging, that isn't exactly true - there are some reports of people actually finishing the game on the hardest difficulty level. There are also some impossiblechallange games/victories that some people go after - and succeding. [quote]is my

Reply to Things I Think GC Could Improve Upon in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]5. How about a civilization that obeys BORDERS! That would be nice. Civilization 3 is the only strategy game I've seen so far to do this and do it well. I'm really sick of those damn Altarians building starbases in my space![/quote] If you don't like those starbases (especially when they begin to become a bit powerful), demand that they hand it over. If they refuse, attack. Of course, if they have built a resource starbase, that is a special case. Resources are free

Reply to Is this a typical thing to happen in a game? in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

There's some talk about making certain council meetings have a prerequisite based on time or technology. As a result, such meetings won't be as devistating (or as predictive) as they should be. Prison ships are extremely powerful compared to the norm - the only way to defeat them is to use a large armada of capital ships. You might want to attempt to draw those ships into the territory of other players. In the earlier versions, you could use a single scout to keep the priso

Reply to Micromanagement and other frailties of TBSGs in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]" there would be automatic alerts in place for anyone that entered your area of dominion...you wouldnt have to figure it out by hand." This has long been a frustration for me also. I sometimes think it is neglected by designers because they keep switching mindsets between strategic thinking and the first person excitement of actually doing the front line things like fighting battles and gazing into space:). [/quote] Actually, there is an alternative to automatic aler

Reply to Win by alliance with all five races! in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]I had a fun game with all 5 races set to Pure Good/Intelligent. I went pure evil immediately, and pulled off a alliance victory, with every race allied with every other races. [/quote] I'm really insterested on how that was possible. While it's possible to do alignment rebounds to snag one or two empires in a permanent alliance, it's quite a feat to nail all five without such tactics.

Reply to first impression in Galactic Civilizations I Stardock Forums

[quote]The ideal tech tree should always be hazy right ahead and completely unknowable further in the future. This is a significant flaw in Civ3 because it conflicts with the raison d'etre for the game.[/quote] A prerequisite for a hazy and completely unknowable technology tree would be to randomize the contents, prerequisites, and exact attributes of such a tree. As much as we'd like it to be, it is extremely difficult to randomize such a tree without causing at least one problem. <br