sweatyboatman

Reply to Ashes: WEEK 5 DEV STATUS in Escalation Dev Journals AshesoftheSingularity Forums

IMHO, the army system is a brilliant breakthrough that will be copied in every future RTS. But it needs a lot of work to make it so players can use it efficiently. I've only played a handful of games so far, but my main gripe is that the UI for unit selection is broken. The way armies and control groups interact is a muddle. I can have an army, and I can have a control group, and those two things can be different. Is there really a use-case for this kind of functionality?

Reply to Crap manual and more.. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The irony of this post is that while you were writing out this rant, it probably never occurred to you that you could post your question on this forum.

Reply to To those complaining about Morale - you have it all wrong. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="dansiegel30" reply="17" id="3564907"] LEP is mainly meant to be an inefficiency malus, and that intent will forever remain in the game. [/quote] Then why not make it that and just detach it entirely from happiness.

Reply to Sensors in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="dansiegel30" reply="12" id="3564878"] go into debug console and type 'wingame'. [/quote] OMG! Why is everyone calling for nerfs! [e digicons]:troll:[/e] I win every game I play using this method. On the larger maps, especially on the higher difficulty level, it's absolutely required. Otherwise I would just have to play the same game for months . Stardock, please don't take out the debug console! This is a single play

Reply to To those complaining about Morale - you have it all wrong. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I have to say, I'm not sure that Stardock meant to do it, but they made a game that's actually easier to play if you're a hardcore min-maxer. As documented endlessly, if you follow a few simple rules, you can make all the mechanics of the game disappear. at which point all the numbers and carefully crafted UI becomes just useless cruft. unfortunately, playing that way not only takes all the challenge out of the game, but it also becomes painful as the game d

Reply to The GalCiv III wishlist thread in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Trying to limit my list to things that I think might be achievable w/o ridiculous amounts of rebuilding #1 fleet management: change ship roles "on the fly" (so I can change a ship from assault to escort to guardian depending on how I want it to behave in the current fleet) #2 battle viewer: capital ships should turn and broadside. I know, in space, broadsiding doesn't really make sense, but it's so purty ! [e digicons]:smitten:[/e] #3 diplomacy

Reply to Conflict Without War: How to Solve the Borders Issue in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Your culture isn't your borders. Space is vast. Your borders encompass the atmospheric bubble around your colonized planets. And yes, the AI gets annoyed when you fly through their space. Just like you get annoyed when they fly through yours. Huh. How about that.

Reply to Please Please let us complete multiple buildings/ships in one turn in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Reianor3" reply="45" id="3562977"] "Release quality" and "room for fixes" are contradictory concepts. It is of cause a fact that the value of "release quality" has taken a plunge, but that fact itself is no excuse for keeping it drowned. [/quote] Ah, back in my day, men were men and video games were released without any bugs. You kids, get off my lawn!

Reply to Whats with the Yor dominating all games? (Patch 1.03) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Rishara" reply="9" id="3562756"] I ended up disabling the Yor in my suicidal games [/quote] I don't think Stardock put a lot of thought into balancing the game at that level of difficulty. I don't think they ever will (or should).

Reply to Opinion, suggestions or just random thoughts on GCIII in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Kyoss79" reply="3" id="3562742"] Well when you go the way of diplomacy.... It's kinda easy to be friends with everybody. Not saying the OP did. [/quote] In my experience, the high level AIs are really good at expansion and that if you just leave them alone, the bonuses they get will very shortly outstrip what's possible even with extreme specialization. I'm not a hardcore min-maxer (for example, I don't do the Pragmatic Constructor to Colonizer ch

Reply to Opinion, suggestions or just random thoughts on GCIII in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote]Since I have never actually fought a war I am not really suited to offer particularly qualified suggestions on that front. [/quote] Perhaps you should try that. [e digicons]:digichet:[/e] On the higher levels of difficulty I find it surprising that you're able to run away with the game without conflict. The AI at higher levels gets some pretty massive bonuses. [quote]I still do not know how to end my turn without having to go through every ship, shipyard

Reply to This is How I Would Program the AI for War in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Reianor3" reply="15" id="3562567"] The point - it's not AI's job to BE smart. It's not the AI's job to be EFFICIENT. It is not even his job to force YOU to be efficient and smart to beat him. His only jobs are to pretend to be smarter than he is and to make YOU feel smart when you beat him. [/quote] This is silly. The AI is part of the game . Beating the AI is not about proving how smart you are, anymore than doing well at Tetris i

Reply to The Problem with Beta Testing in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Pillars of Eternity was also crowd funded through Kickstarter. According to Wikipedia, the kickstarter raised a bit under $4M, which IIRC exceeds the budget for GC3 by nearly $1M. I bet if someone gave Stardock an extra $1M to spend on GC3 the game would have come out a little different. The point being that there isn't much point to criticizing Stardock for their business practices. The people on this forum have even less knowledge about the details of Stardock's business tha

Reply to colony ui suggestion in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I support any quixotic quest to improve the planet screen UI. It's just not going to happen. Tooltips are the new hotness. Everyone knows that if you bury something it becomes more valuable, just ask a pirate. [e digicons]:ninja:[/e] I honestly think that the designers looked at the screen and decided that there were too many numbers and it was too confusing. "But we need to know all this information" people who actually play the game said. So the designers said "Rather than clut

Reply to Changing Research values in GalCiv III Modding GalCiv3 Forums

how about upping maintenance cost for research facilities? you could also look into nerfing the base research rate for planets.

Reply to Turn off Surrenders in GalCiv III Future Ideas GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="JTS80" reply="2" id="3561419"] At some point, I also would like to have the option to allow or disallow surrenders. Because the Krynn didn't surrender to me, but to the Drengin. As I really wanted to get rid of the tons of useless starbases the Krynn had built in my own territory, I had to declare war to the Drengin next. It can have a tactical advantage to have surrenders (no "cleanup time"), but it can also have a disadvantage. [/quote] You had a choice, yo

Reply to The Problem with Beta Testing in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote]Unfortunately, it's the wolves who have the expertise in breaking game mechanics.[/quote] That is not what Beta testing is for. While Stardock pays lip service to the idea that the Founders (and the rest of us in the Beta process) are getting a chance to influence the course of the game's development, that's not really true. Stardock has people they're paying to design and implement the game. They weren't looking to the Beta process to give them insi

Reply to Please Please let us complete multiple buildings/ships in one turn in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

You want to keep the thread on topic, stop saying stupid stuff. [e digicons]:troll:[/e]

Reply to Please Please let us complete multiple buildings/ships in one turn in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="cstorvold" reply="32" id="3561592"] This is still a Beta quality game and needs a ton of polish and tweaking. [/quote] That's nonsense. This is a release quality game by an independent developer. There's still plenty of room for fixes and improvements, but the game works, it plays well, and the cracks only start to show as players get more advanced. Most of the beta things in the game are due to the limited budget of an indie developer. Stardock h

Reply to Defenses and hit points in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The GC2 system was better, [e digicons]:troll:[/e] I would like the system to be more complicated. I understand why they went the way they did. It's easier to calculate and understand. I just think it's too deterministic. X shields cancels X lasers. There's no mystery, just the RNG calculating hits and misses. I think the damage system should work so that all defenses have an X% chance of negating the damage altogether and then a Y% chance of mitigating the damage as well

Reply to v.1.03 opt-in war bug in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

I believe it's a Tier-5 Pragmatic trait "Revered" or something like that. Which, you know, there should be some way of knowing that's about to happen. Even just a pop-up that says "Psst. Taking this race's homeworld will cause the rest of the universe to declare war on you. Are you sure you want to attack them?"

Reply to Things that would be nice in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="putty101" reply="31" id="3560236"] I can't believe I'm the only one making noise about this! [/quote] Careful, with language like that you might end up getting banned. [e digicons]x_x[/e] Rule #1 of commenting on Stardock's boards, always use the sandwich method! Hey guys! Love the game, best GalCiv ever! but the UI design is like being dragged over hot coals. Also this game is way better than Civ5.

Reply to Poor cache management in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

Still doesn't explain the behavior where the game runs fine and then lags. If his computer couldn't handle the load then it would just always lag. But it sounds like a threshold case. His computer is good enough to run the game, but not good enough to overcome some occasional (and unexplained) load. If the problem is sloppy memory management, then identifying it and fixing it would mean that the game would be playable by a much wider range of machines (and it would also m

Reply to Sooo diplomacy.... About that.... We're gonna need you to come in on Saturday to write the code for it. in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="peteincary2" reply="18" id="3558684"] 1) Being able to give gifts should always be allowed. That would solve a lot of issues right there. If you are trying to keep an ally alive, you should be able to feed him ships as needed, as long as they are gifts. Giving a gift should not count towards the diplomacy trading waiting period, or maybe even allow gifts of sufficient value to speed up that waiting period. [/quote] Seems like applying a relationship penalty for "

Reply to What do the difficulty settings mean? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Seafireliv" reply="5" id="3559687"] Even more puzzling why they haven`t taken advantage of it. [/quote] If what Brad/Frogboy has said on these forums is true, the AI engine in this game is pretty much unrivaled in terms of the power it can bring to bear. Most games don't bother doing AI the way it's being done here. They set up a nest of hard-coded scripts that the AI then follows and then they throw in some cheats wherever their testers determine that th