Philocthetes

Reply to Selecting Space Miner ships when they are working in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Does cancelling the mining order throw out progress to date, or will the miner pick up again where it left off?

Selecting Space Miner ships when they are working in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I've tried stabbing around with the mouse, but cannot seem to get to a miner when it is working. I want to upgrade for speed while I'm thinking about it rather than having to remember to go check the boat after it finishes the current field.

Reply to How to check pop growth? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

IMO, if you keep your focus on steadily increasing your tax revenues, you'll naturally do what you can to keep pops growing b/c they are the tax base.

Reply to A Plea to Uplift the Minor Races in Dark Avatar in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It would be great to see some sort of alien diversity amongst your civilisation and the bonuses associated with that. I think "complexities" is at least as apt here as "bonuses." I'm pretty sure the point is moot for GCII, but I've yet to notice an authoritative rejection of the minor promoted to major idea. p.s. I *am* starting to hope

Reply to The Plague Mega-Event in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

In 1A, I didn't seem to see any (Tough) AI hostility when I kept the cure until shortly before someone else researched. I spent *months* growing rapidly while the AIs actually fought amongst themselves, wasting precious population on troop ships, and I did indeed make out like a bandit b/c the AIs seemed to give up colonizing. Has anyone gone through a Plague event yet in Beta 2?

Reply to Beta 2: Super Hive Special Ability in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'd trust Brad's notes over the UI text at this point. The reduction can seem pretty dramatic on larger maps, but I managed to finish a 1A game on a Huge map. Even with slow ships (trying to recover from being a speed junkie, eh?), the unlimited range let me score *many* sweet planets that I would never have gotten otherwise.

Reply to AI Manufacturing Capitals before Turn One in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

There is an order to the turn. Usually you get your moves ahead of the AIs, or at least it seems this way. The appearance of these Man Caps *before* even the first "normal" click of a game makes me agree with the folks who think something's changed or gone wonky. <TABLE cellpadding=8 width="95%" align=center bgColor=#FFF394 class="mb-Bod

Reply to Beta 2 - Battle of the Gods in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Not a good scinario anyway. BoG might not be much fun for regular play, but I found a couple of runs through the scenario very educational in terms of learning about GCII techs. I hadn't thought about it until I read this post, but now I'm hoping we'll see updated scenarios in the next beta release. If BoG makes it into DA, I'

Reply to 20K Cap in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Re Brad, "business," and incremental budgeting, BP OMowe is correct that public/private sector is irrelvant. But things can be different if the organization is using zero-based budgeting (admittedly rare in business and not common in gov't). ZBB has merit b/c it forces all units in an organization to re-justify their budgets annually, but it demands much more work than the much more common pattern that sees so many office workers being handed supply catalogs in the last month of a fisc

Reply to 20K Cap in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I first got edified about the 20k cap when I posted to ask if you can have too many economic mines. I balked hard at the cap, but have since come to appreciate it somewhat as another aspect of the GCII system that's designed to keep you paying attention to details and re-thinking your strategies. Buying ships is certainly not the only result of wanting to avoid that "lost" income. That said, I would not mind seeing the spending motivator changed to a morale penalty b/c that makes more n

Reply to One aspect of Terror Stars I'd like to see in DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Gay Mafia No one can be as butch as men who have nothing to do with women. I'm queer and I've never really understood those lads. But I admit to sharing the impression that "my people" are over-represented in the creative arts, and might also be a very dangerous class in the murderous arts, at least until we can burn all the closets. Th

Reply to One aspect of Terror Stars I'd like to see in DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It's not anything to do with scientology Given today's IP regimes, that's not strictly accurate b/c Hubbard's estate is entangled with the business of scientology. It is also pretty hard to assume that a commercially successful artist's work is not influenced by his spirituality and/or business sense. Re poor Mr. Cruise (yes, I had a tee

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

As a second generation counterculture person, I find it very interesting that two folks so very well known here for feistiness have been praising an herb famous for "mellow vibes." As someone with a painfully strong family tendency to tell other folks what to do, I have to say that Wheel's bit about drug tolerances and user mindsets is terribly important to consider regardless of whether you're hitting the ibuprofen, Xanax, or something non-industrial. Evil adds the also-crucial busine

Reply to One aspect of Terror Stars I'd like to see in DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Yeah, I consider that pretty useless. I admit I was fishing for details in addition to wanting math folks to talk up about what the influence base AoE does to empire influence. On the latter, I suppose I need to root in old threads b/c the short answers here are short and I'm curious about why/how this % influence bonus doesnt' remain in effect f

Reply to One aspect of Terror Stars I'd like to see in DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

@Mumble: Aren't you too extreme about "after a planet or two has been flipped or once the battle has moved on to a new area they become useless." Lower strategic value I don't question, but doesn't an influence base always add to your overall empire's influence and don't you always get some less-quantifiable benefit from a star fort's ability to boost speed for passers-by and help guard growing or lightly armed fleets? @Fuels Chief: Is "tugs with will be was engines" a hasty t

Reply to Maurading Pirates in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

The multicore stuff Brad just raved about in Dev Journals makes me think we have real hope here for both the pirates & uppity minors. If a thread can sit cooking stats full time, can't another thread cook up some of this "dark corners" stuff that Wheeloffire seems so passionate about?

Reply to REALLY nasty AI! in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Your strategies could be written to disk and then analysed in future games by the AI. It's something I definitely want to put into our next game (a fantasy strategy game) in some form so that the AI really does learn over the course of multiple games. MoMmy please! Or if that's to gender dysphoric, "Thank you sir, may I have another!"

Reply to Maurading Pirates in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

Arrr, the Fuels Chief's a "real" sailor, innee then? 1) Fluffed pirates seem more fun than nerfed ones, especially with an on-off option or better yet an intensity slider or option set. 2) A "whining complainer" is someone who makes points and/or uses language you don't like. IMO, you're best off ignoring such annoyances unless they provoke a constructive response from you.

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

There's far more than pulpwood owners behind reefer prohibition. Marijuana is terribly tangled with US race issues and earns dread from some elites b/c they fear stoners will shop less, which might be true for poorer folks but makes no sense to me when I think of rich folks with gold cards and hash brownies. Re the "health" research, I'm afraid I'm a skeptic all around in that camp. The pharm pigs definitely need a comeuppance, but to talk about "cannabis" as medicine is about as precis

Reply to This forum aides me through my long work day in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I'm always fuzzy, if more so during cold weather. And I have to use one PC for both work and play, so the discipline thing can be *very* hard. I've had some projects in the past year that required about 15 minutes of GCII for every hour I'm chained to the chair. In my paid work, I mostly try to translate management- and marketing-speak about IT into reasonable English. When you have to read thousands of words from folks who think PowerPoint is a writing tool, well, wildly distracting br

Reply to Science ficiton, games, definitions, etc. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I must say I didn't expect this thread to digress into psychedelia, but given my ire at the unbelievable waste of public money and the loss of freedom for so many "victimless crimes" I can't say I object. The "war on drugs" is no more sensible than any of our insane binge of wars on non-states that started with that famously fiesty half-lefty, LBJ (poverty, drugs, and terrorism are the big three, but "war on X" is about as trite as a new cliche can get). Methinks, though, that

Reply to Um need jelp with alliances in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It will insure that you are dragged into a war at the most inconvenient moment of the game, usually against the strongest AI in the game, while the good ally who did the dragging sits on his/her/its hands/tentacles/appendages during the entire war. I've used alliances in a number of my DL 1.4X games, and several times WhoStoleMyNickName's experie

Reply to Um need jelp with alliances in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

change getting "close" back to being logical in some way For me, figuring out how to keep your diplo status moving steadily up is still very frustrating in DL 1.4X. But I'm not an extremely methodical player given my paper-RPG tendencies, so maybe I'm missing some tricks (cheese, whatever). That said, Dethadder is using "logic" in a ver

Reply to Does the Metaverse need people who don't care about scores? in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the dataset answers. Given the need for intervention from support to get myself set up and the fact that DA doesn't do Metaverse yet, I'll likely put off signing up until next year. Still hoping to get close to finished with my 1A Huge map before 1B is posted.

Reply to Does the Metaverse need people who don't care about scores? in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think the opinion is good So none of you old hands have seen signs that the Stardock devs get some dataset value out of posts to the Metaverse?