Me too. I always play on gigantic maps and they still seem too small. Most of the time I don't even have to put life support on my ships since they can reach almost the entire map without it (after colony rush and starbase techs). It would be nice to have a REALLY big galaxy to play with, I know it would probably make the games very long but I don't mind epic length games.

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe

Sounds good. By time you met any of the other races you would both be at the high-end of the tech tree and with economies in full swing. That would make for some epic battles!

If I ever play something like this, it would just be for the range, that is, I'd set stars to few, and planets to few and technology to long. The only reason to do so would be to create that 'distance' factor, but I would probably only do it once or twice just for the sake of it. Realistically, it's just much more fun with everything close together and a lot of action going on at once. Conquering a massive galaxy like that would just be way too tedious with a lot of stars and planets. Keep in mind that 32x32 is actually 4 times as big as 16x16... that's just way too much in my book.

Here's a crazy idea...

a multilayered map à la HOMM simulating multiple wormhole-tied-galaxies

Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big?

Ever played Settlers 1 ? It's biggest map could take weeks to get close to the computer players (depending on starting positions) and weeks before you defeated 1 of the 3.... But you could only play the largest map if you PC was up to it (had the RAM).

Does that imply that GC2 should do the same ? Not really, and SD did allready comment on map size some time during beta 3 or 4 (sorry no link) so I don't expect that GC2 will allow bigger maps. Maybe the expansion or GC3

Gigantic is actually 18 * 18 - so 324 sectors (72900 individual parsec squares). A 32 * 32 would be 1024 sectors (230400 parsecs). Have you any idea of the sort of computer you would need to run a game that big? Consider that every turn each AI has to evaluate every other ship / planet / starbase that they can "see" and decide if they need to do anything about it. Might as well make your moves, hit "Turn" and go to bed hoping that the AI is done by the morning and your comp hasn't crashed

It would be four times bigger.. but that doesn't necessarily mean much. The more important question is whether the AI is O(n), O(n^2), etc. with respect to the size of the galaxy (number of planets, etc). We really can't venture a guess as to whether a galaxy an order of magnitude larger would cause problems because we have no idea what kind of solutions they've implemented to the Travelling Salesman problem they have.

It's probably more a question of fun.. a galaxy that big is very, very large- and it could make for some epic games if you were able to start "clusters" (essentially four Gigantic galaxies adjacent to one another) of civilizations who would evolve, become more powerful, and then eventually collide with one another on a large scale. Or, it could be tedious.

I do think it could be an interesting option to have, if it is within the AI's limits.

I've got enough trouble playing on anything other than large It's what I played both GC 1 and GC2 on (large maps that is) since it all fits nicely in the map... but thats just me

Ummm...I thought the hyperdrive made those wormhole simulators obsolete

I'm sure they will come up with some 'creative' solutions... aka... dimentions. You could research "Dimentional Gateway" to access the other side, where evil Altarians are slaughtering the haplessly nice Drengins because their blood makes for a nice wine.

Your ships would have to be equiped with "dimentional drives" in order to cross over, and there would be all kinds of messed up scenarios where you could sneak into the heart of another empire by traveling from the otherside and jumping through.

Yeah, things like that... actually, now I that I think about it, having 2 layered map like this might be a lot better than just one massive map... if only for the gameplay possibilities. You'll be wondering for half the game what's going on "over there", worrying whether a massive fleet will come out of nowhere and crush you... fun stuff.

Expansion anyone? I would so buy that. Hell, when is the preorder?

Gigantic is 256 sectors i belive...

Nope... definitely 18 * 18 or 324 sectors - just counted 'em.

We really can't venture a guess as to whether a galaxy an order of magnitude larger would cause problems

Try playing an abundant everything on Gigantic with 9 max intelligence AI opponents (so they have to evaluate against all their algorithms, and everyone has obscene amounts of planets and ships). You'll soon see why they can't go any bigger.

Sounds cool but would take years to play a game!

Sounds cool but would take years to play a game!

why "but"? Is that a problem anyhow?

(yhea, you could never finish a game, 'cause SD would come up with a patch always before you can end the game, so you start another to test the new AI...)

It's just nice to have a choice to specify our own map size with no limits. I mean, we don't have a limit for polygons for models so why do will need a limit for map size unless something's hardcoded to a certain size.

I can imagine myself years from now still playing this game and probably having a machine that can handle 50x50 maps BTW, I just pulled that number out of thin air.

If you played Gigantic on abundant/abundant/abundant I could see that taking a large amount of RAM, but it would take an even larger amount of your sanity.