drakkheim

Join Date 02/2006

Bug: Max Deficit and Allied gifts.

Ran across 2 bugs in my current game.
1) I upgraded my ship (bullpup (small & mean)) to a newer version(bullpup mk2). I clicked the upgrade all ships of this type checkbox. This upgrade was going to cost me ~11,000bc and I only had ~300bc. So i figurered it was either go into massive debt or the Yor would wipe me out. So I clicked the Accept button. Lo and behold my Civilization's balance dropped to -2000 (instead of ~ -10,700bc) which I was able to repay off in short order. So I got 8,000bc worth of upgrades for free.

2) In my oh so epic war against the Yor , my buddies the Alterians and Arcaens have both been giving me ships to aid me in my struggle. The bug is that eveything they have given me turns out to be starbases in the weirdest places (like an influence and military starbase in the middle of the Alterian home system, far far away from my conflict with the Yor) Not particularly useful in my desperate struggle. (But at least I can give them back as gifts and earn some friendship points

)

-D

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1) I've seen that before, but when buying outright a big expensive planetary of one kind or another. I wondered if I'd been set up with an automatic loan or something, but never thought much about it.

2) Think of them as gift tokens.

Either...
....take them back for a refund (sell them back) or replacement (ships of your choice)
or
....Give them to the Yor as a peace offering. Give yourself a break at your lousy allies expense, and possibly drag them into a war over badly placed starbases so you gert forgotten in the fuss.

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I'm pretty sure that's a bug they'll want to be fixing. The hard cap of -2000 is useful, as sometimes you just get stuck in a rut and it takes a lot of work to get your income positive again. You have to be above zero to buy anything, and they do allow you to go below zero during said spending.. but I never imagined going below more than a thousand through an instant buy. That's just... broken

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2422

It's not a bug. It's really important on the forums especially to distinguish between features or design aspects that one doesn't agree with and bugs.

What we will probably do is have it based on difficulty level eventually. That is, if you're playing at a high level, then there won't be a debt cap. But to a new player who suddenly mistakenly buys a huge and expensive thing, it could be a game ender for them if they found themselves massively in debt.

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I would have thought that the effect of a maximum deficit would be to stop you spending more than a certain amount (an upper cap on your spending of 2000+your cash), rather than letting you basically get free stuff when you buy something that is too pricy.

It would seem very exploitable, as discribed.

Sugestion: One could remove this cap, allow overspending, but allow your goverment to declare bancruptcy, changing potlitical parties and race policies or alignment.

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Frogboy: In some cases, what you consider to be a design decision looks like a bug when we encounter it. This is a good example of that. It would never occur to me that the game would be intentionally designed to let people buy an unlimited amount of stuff but prevent their cash from dropping below -2000bc, essentially letting them get everything that would go beyond the -2000bc for free. I'd expect the game to tell the player they can't do it because they don't have enough money.

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I'd have to agree... it's fundamentally impossible for anyone to distinguish between a bug and a bad design decision. So, it could be a design decision to have tooltips stay on the screen until you move the mouse around frantically to clear it. But it seems like a bug, and has been reported as such. Similarly, an exploit that allows someone to create unlimited amounts of money from thin air by constantly keeping his treasury near the debt limit is indistinguishable from a bug to anyone but the programmer.

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I'll agree with the others here. Certainly looks like a bug to me. Money for free: As my researchers would say, " w00t".

I would, as well, prefer one of the following three options:
1) Not allow spending beyond a certain deficit.
a) Fixed based on difficulty
b) Fixed based on diplomacy, trade, and influence
2) Accurately reflect your deficit

Blifneb

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Yeah seems exploitive. If it lets you spend more than that but only charges you to -2000 I can't see that as anything more than a cheat.

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I have to agree. I'm a big fan of Stardock and GalCiv, but that's a truly awful design decision!

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it's just counter-intuitive and a big exploit, is all. In Galciv1 you had to pay it ALL back.

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Isn't "counter-intuitive and a big exploit" a pretty good definition of "bad design decision"?

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was there any other word on this? is it being fixed?

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Well if it's a design decision then doggone, I'm going to use it.

It's time to roll out the small-hulled one-sensor POS ships, and upgrade them all to 250bc mega-laser hulks.

It's not an exploit if it's not a bug.

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It's not a bug. It's really important on the forums especially to distinguish between features or design aspects that one doesn't agree with and bugs.
What we will probably do is have it based on difficulty level eventually. That is, if you're playing at a high level, then there won't be a debt cap. But to a new player who suddenly mistakenly buys a huge and expensive thing, it could be a game ender for them if they found themselves massively in debt.

Why not have a check to see if you can afford to spend that much, and if it'll put you over the cap then have a popup saying you can't afford it.. I don't think you should be able to outright buy things that would even put you into debt, but from a reality perspective it could be like a line of credit. Trying to buy something that will exceed your credit limit ends up being denied.

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It's not a bug. It's really important on the forums especially to distinguish between features or design aspects that one doesn't agree with and bugs.

What we will probably do is have it based on difficulty level eventually. That is, if you're playing at a high level, then there won't be a debt cap. But to a new player who suddenly mistakenly buys a huge and expensive thing, it could be a game ender for them if they found themselves massively in debt.

Is this your argument for the debt cap? That a neophyte player may accidently go deeply into debt? Because there are other, better ways to avoid that if this is your concern. And Syneris suggested a pretty good one; anytime you're about to do anything that could put you in debt, ask the player to make sure that this is what he wants. You can even make this an option that the player can switch on or off.

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I think the argument is that: the player might accidentally make some bad strategy decision that only getting himself in debt will solve. They don't want the newcomers to feel frustrated at how hard the game is.

With that said, besides making it only available on the easier level, a pop up explaining that this is a newbie feature might help too.

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I 'm bumping this in the hope that Stardock taks another look.

This is an absolutely huge exploit. As soon as your economy can produce, say, 750BC/turn, you can buy absolutely everything you want for 2000BC. It'll take 3 turns with no production to get out of the red. Big Freaking Deal!

In my last game, I decided to give this a go in the mid game. I was about to go to war, so I decided to upgrade my entire fleet to the latest models of ship. Total cost: 64000. Then I went through my planets and rush-bought Invention Matrixes on every planet. Another 50000. I ended the turn more than 100,000 BC in the hole. But next turn, like magic, I'm back at -2000BC. Two turns later I'm producing again, and the Drengin worlds are falling like dominoes to my upgraded ships.

Now, I appreciate that Stardock wants to keep new players from inadvertently going deep in the hole. But I sometimes play a strategy game called RealLife(tm) that has a good mechanic for this.

In one game, I was playing a recent college graduate. I had $5000 in my checking account, and a credit card with a limit of $2000. I started spending like crazy. Travel. New clothes. New computer. You name it. Pretty soon I had a credit card debt of -$1000. But I decided I really wanted to purchase a BMW and charge another $30000 to my account. See if you can guess what happened? Did the credit card firm

(a) Pay for the BMW, and then credit $29,000 to my account, so I'd be back at my credit limit of -$2000

or

(b) Deny the purchase, on grounds that I had exceeded my credit limit and could not spend any more

Seriously, it should be obvious that (b) is the correct in-game behavior. If a purchase would take the player over their limit, don't allow them to complete it. Credit limits are completely intuitive to anyone who's ever had a credit card. If Stardock wants to add higher credit limits on higher difficulties, that's fine with me. But the current design is a ridiculously large explot.

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Sorry, dup post.

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