LintMan

Reply to Master of Orion;Space Empires;Galactic Civilizations in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Was it MOO that had it so when you conquered an alien-controlled planet, it remembered what kind of aliens lived there (and maybe their racial traits/bonuses) so you had to deal with that (ie: morale/insurgency issues) and could shuffle populations around? I'd prefer that over GC2's genocide-type planetary invasions. Other favorite MOO aspects: building huge huge fleets, the Orion/Antarean/Space Amoeba uber villains, player-controlled tacti

Reply to A victim of ones own success in Game Journals GalCiv2 Forums

I'm betting your policy of listening to feedback and providing rapid updates also has the effect of creating more vocally demanding/critical customers by encouraging them to think about the product's flaws and raising expectations that they will be improved/fixed in the near future. That's a two-edged sword because if the fixes/changes don't come (or just not quick enough), those heightened expectations are deflated and you get upset customers who mig

Reply to Opinion: Why should I care that the AI doesn't cheat? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I'm not really hung up on whether a game AI cheats or not, but definitely prefer if it doesn't. There's a few reasons why I and I suspect most people would care. 1) Even though this is a single-player game, in my mind the AI is a substitute for playing against a real player. You can see a cheating AI as equivalent to doing handicapping, but I think many people would prefer to be challenged without the need for handicapping. Whether it's a st

Reply to Fuzzy math and game development in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

#54 by Avatar Frogboy [Stardock] Wednesday, March 08, 2006 2:19 AM I haven't heard any alternatives that wouldn't create a worse issue or require a drastically different economic system which isn't going to happen in a 1.x, that's more of a sequel thing. Any changes to the system would have to fall under these guidelines: 1) No dra

Reply to Fuzzy math and game development in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

To me it seems that there must be a better way to solve the problem of spending jumps when auto-upgrading is enabled than by charging for unused social production; the increased planet focus micromanagement (or big economic penalty from not doing so) seems to detract from the intended benefit of the auto-upgrade convenience. If I understand correctly, in your example where social production wasn't wasted, with the player making 5000 revenue with no social production then dropping to -

Reply to Solution to early land grab be-all-and-end-all in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

One thing that might work to limit an early massive land grab, is to make new colonies have an initially high per-turn development cost that goes down over time (perhaps as population increases). I remember seeing something like this in the venerable Spaceward Ho! 4X game, and it worked pretty well to limit over-expansion; if you expanded too quickly, the development costs could overwhelm your capacity to afford them and your colonies start to die. With some balancing to make sure

Reply to Star Control Mod? in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

SC2 is one of the best games ever, IMHO. GC2 is great, but it doesn't have the real-time action and adventure components to make for a good SC2 mod, I don't think. FYI, Shrapnel games sells a nifty little space action/adventure game called Wierd Worlds that captures a small bit of the SC2 feel.

Reply to I Colonized a Planet... with an empty colony ship in Colonies GalCiv2 Forums

I ended up with a 1-citizen colony ship once, when I accidentally upgraded one of my sensor cargo ships to a colony ship (instead of the new-model sensor ship). I parked in on a planet I owned and filled it first before trying to colonize with it, though.

Are "Creativity" and "Luck" racial abilities worthwhile? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Creativity and Luck are both cheap (1 pt) racial ability picks that give seemingly large bonuses (+25%), but it's not very clear how they work or how much impact they have. Is it a 25% factor increase to some existing chance - ie: your base chance was 10%, so now it's 12.5%? Or an overall increase of 25% - ie: you base chance was 10%, now it's 35%. Big difference in effect! Does anyone swear by either of these abilities, or are they mostly ignored?

Reply to Galactic Civilizations II: Beginner's Strategy Guide in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

I was one of the people hoping for a beginner's-type intro guide, but unfortunately, most of the guidance I was looking for was in how best to handle all the stuff that was skipped over by "Time passes"... Stuff like: - What planetary stuff do I build on my 1st planet after that first factory and lab? Is it better to build this stuff ASAP and fill up all the slots, or hold off and focus on other things (ie: ship production). Keep some homeworld slots open to use later for the

Reply to Brad's known issue list in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

#81 by Citizen David Weldon Wednesday, March 01, 2006 2:19 AM I seem to get "fake" turns. That is, the turn clicks over and all ships have renewed movement, but no production and no research happens. As far as I can tell, I've never had 2 turns in a row skip production and research, but it happens about 10% of the time, especially if I'm

Reply to STICKY: EASY TWEAKS to make the game better for you in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Sorry for the double post - it seemed to hang when I submitted this so I stopped it and resubmitted, and it ended up posted twice.

Reply to STICKY: EASY TWEAKS to make the game better for you in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

- As a total beginner to GC2 trying to select what to research, I'm pretty lost because I have no idea what, say, a xeno lab is, or what smart drones do, so it's hard to make an informed decision of what to research. It'd be really nice if I could click on or mouse over any of the modules, improvements, components, etc a tech provides and get a description or what they do and stats for them. I know this is almost tantamount to being a "GalCivPedia" effort, so I could live with just a text file

Reply to 1.0X Preview in GalCiv II News Stardock Forums

Funny, I just got my first bit of playing time with GC2 last night and jotted down a few desirable tweak requests to post when I had a chance, and two of them were 1) put tool tips on every button, status window, etc, and 2) fixing the sliders - the espionage slider is especially hard to use.

Reply to Preparing for release day in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

A few random comments: - I love backstory - more please! Of course, IIRC, I read a whole ton of backstory on MOO3's web site and was then very disappointed to discover it had little relevance to the game itself. If the game mostly ignores the backstory, it's the literary equivalent of the cover art on an old Atari 2600 Pong game: a dramatic action painting of a realistic tennis player on the box, but the game inside is a few squares and rectangles. <img src="smiles/BigSmile.gif" bord

Reply to Is it done yet? in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

Is AutoPlay the mode that lets you watch the AI play itself? If it isn't, I second tinplated's request for that mode to be user-available!

Reply to User Interface tweaks & Civilization 4 in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

I think you're giving Civ4 too much credit for some of those UI innovations. I'm pretty sure that I've seen both the "light up" end turn button and the "can tell from appearance that units have no moves left" features in multiple turn base strategy games through the years. I'm pretty sure that Conquered Kingdoms by the long-deceased QQP back in '92 or '93. IIRC, units "greyed out" when they had no move left and you could pass on a units move and the end turn button would behave as it the unit