John Falkenberg

Reply to PCGamesN Has a New Galactic Civilizations 3 Preview Posted in GalCiv III News GalCiv3 Forums

I have long found it faintly amusing that a number of 4x space games tend to give humans 'a diplomatic edge' when assigning racial attribute to us Ho-mans. That this is not borne out by either history, past or present, or reality in general never really seem to cross designers minds. I think its outgrowth of the Humans are Special Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreSpecial <

Reply to Show off your ship designs 2013 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Is someone going to thow up an official Show of your ships 2014? Im a couple years behind getting mine posted, So I figured I better do it now before a 2015 thread gets made....

Reply to "Out of Memory" during quicksave, then crashes. in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Few questions: Do you play on bigger maps? How much Ram do you have-system not video. What OS.

Reply to What would you like to see in GC3 (your perfect 4x star game) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Well. for a complex entity like a star-faring empire, or a prospective one, the cost of maintaining warships would be very expensive-even in peacetime. Perhaps not prohibitively depending on size of your empire so, but expensive just the same. In most 4x games, for simplicity sakes, fleets are always assumed to be 100% combat ready. This means fully crewed, fully fueled, fully stocked with munitions and supplies, and ready to fight at very short notice. &n

Reply to What would you like to see in GC3 (your perfect 4x star game) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Well, one thing that frankly irritates me to no end with GalcivII, is how easily the AI will declare war on you, and then literally, fight to the death over it. Seriously. The 'AI' in Galciv, indeed in many 4x games in fairness, has no clue, or desire to sign peace treaties, even when there fleets are being massacred and their planets falling one after another. I have played matches with really absurd situations like I have 200 worlds and

Reply to What Mods Did You Use? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I use Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 https://forums.galciv2.com/405819/page/20/#3204457

Reply to Division of public and private sectors in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Dude, this is GalCiv3, not Ayn Rands guide to the galaxy ok? If you want a game an emulates the ponzi-scheme US permanent war-economy, I am sure there is some low-brow indie producer that has cranked something like that out. I mean, you guys can 'imagine' deep thoughts about how 'efficient' private vs public is in the far flung future. You can also imagine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin while you are at it. Thankfully, nothing like this will ever

Reply to Stay Out Of My Space!!! in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Conceptually, the idea of enforcing 'borders' is in interstellar space, is impossible for all practical purposes. The idea of course, comes from our limited perspective of living on an basically 2-D planetary surface bound by a 3D sphere. Of course, our linear thinking 2D ape brains find he concept of territoriality an appealing one. Interstellar space itself, is tactually and strategically useless. Only planets and solar systems matter-not empty space whose primary characterist

Reply to What would you like to see in GC3 (your perfect 4x star game) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

For Larsenex [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] http://www.amazon.com/Falkenbergs-Legion-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/067172018X

Reply to Finite, Depleteable Resources in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

A lot of the commenters here clearly dont understand issues like EROEI and depletion rates. You dont have to 'run' out of physical ore or energy source or whatever your extracting for it to become uneconomical to continue extraction efforts. Since there is clearly a lack of understanding of the basics here. Humans, and (aliens) always go after the 'low-hanging' fruit first. The easiest (cheapest) and highest-quality reserves will be exploited first.

Reply to What would you like to see in GC3 (your perfect 4x star game) in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I think the question isnt so much 'What I would to see', but more, please take the concepts and ideas introduced in 2 and clean\enhance\implement better. For example -Tech tree needs needs major overhaul. -Mainly the weapons\armor tech tree are not well thought out. Incremental upgrades that are so weak it makes almost no sense to invest in them, except that you need them to get to the good stuff. Laser I, Laser III? Laser V? they ALL suck

Reply to Removing Ship Hull Size in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

The current system of classification is about as logical as any your going to come across. Starships should be designated by tonnage and size-not arbitrary and meaningless titles, like 'destroyer' or cruiser, which are meaningless terms when applied to spacecraft. If your current empire is only capable of constructing hull sizes up to a certain size-then that is the system you should use. Galciv calls them Tiny, small medium etc-all perfectly logical

Reply to Fighters/Drones, Command modules and carriers in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Fanboys cant seem to live without there space-fighters can they? Well, GalcivII got by just fine without them and so will GalcivIII. 'Spacecraft' carriers serve no purpose. Tiny one man fighters don't make any sense tactically or strategically. No space-faring empre would invest in them. Too much expense and complexity for way too little bang. Single pilot fighters belong on the small and big screen. Enjoy them there-they serve no purpose in 4x games l

New Ship Packs\Models for Sins-do they exist? in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Are there any simple replacers for SINS ship models? Im not talking about TC's, or mods as such, but just plain old simple models. You know, just something that makes your capships and frigates look like SW, ST. Babylon 5 or w/e floats a modders boat, but otherwise leaves the vanilla game alone. Yes, I can see there are mods that seem to feature new models, but they always come with some kind of extensive mod attached. I dont necessarily need that, but some ship model replacer

Reply to What does the "Focus" button in ship design screen do ? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

How about-its a just a fairly useless feature that even if it did work properly(which it does not), would at best be, of marginal utility. Once I mastered the art of making my own designs, and disabled the boxy looking stock designs, I found the game a lot more fun. The few times I tried to use the 'focus' button, all I learned was i was spending too much time focusing on something that didn't really do anything very useful. So I stopped trying ages ag

Reply to Best Starships in Ultimate Edition in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Your question doesnt really make much sense. No one races ships are really more 'powerful' since all races share the same basic tech lines far as weapons go. Its really a question of how advanced you are, not what race you are. I play human all the time and who has the most powerful warships?....I do! But this has more to do with the fact, I try to conquer planets with other races shrinkers and built ships on worlds with Ship Quality and HP bonuses. IoW, I try to leverage ev

Reply to Support Ships for fleets. in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

My support Ship is an L-Class. Unarmed, so it never draws fire. Its a Defence\Warp bubble design. The idea is send them into battle with strong fleets. They gain XP just like any other ship. Its possible to get my un-armed command ships with 600-1000hp. When that happens, Upgrade that ship to one of your standard L-Class warships and send your fleet a new support ship-repeat . I had a game recently where I had a L-Class warship that started out as a un-armed support ship with 2376 HP. <p

Reply to Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13 in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Just some general comments and obseravations First of all-overall this is great mod. The fixes to the tech tree really make the game play much better than vanilla. It goes a long way to fixing a lot of the issues that plague vanilla that SD could never be bothered to fix. I always play immense 8-9 opponents at top 3 difficulty levels The good Starbases! Can actually defend themselves now!, and fairly early on in th

Reply to Grand Maps bigger than immense in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

This game is far too buggy, even for immense. Eventually it reaches a point where auto-save causes a lot of crashes. Althernately, if you have a custom map with a lot of planets, eventually the bogs down to the point it takes 45mins or longer just to process a single turn. Either way, super-huge maps, which is what I prefer, are not quite impossible to play, You have to learn to tolerate constant restarts to get through a decent long, immense map. SD has shown little inclination to patch or f

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

There seems to be a problem with your 3b, When I go to build and improvement, I can only qeue one Improvement per tile. As soon as I place the improvement, say a factory, it disapears permanently from the build list. What is the problem?

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Unique Tech trees would be a plus. I pretty much play terran exclusively, and one of this games(many flaws) is the underlying structure of the weapons branch. The way it is set up now, the weapons techs make it useless and costly to build ships that basically have no offensive strength at all. What this means in practical terms is, there is zero benefit to building a costly and inneffective miltary in the early and mid-game. In fact, until im near the ends of the tech tree, I dont b

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Does this mod(patch really from the read) address the issue of the Torrians simply not builing anything at all on any of their worlds? thnx

Reply to I'm new, and i have a few questions. in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Yes Econ starbases stack, but you wont be building 20 I can tell you that Leaving aside the cost and resources to build anyting like that many for a single world, there is a per-sector limit on stabases. However, for industrially rich worlds stacking multiple econ bases can certainly be worthwhile.

Reply to What would you like to see in Galactic Civilizations 3? in Galactic Civilizations II Stardock Forums

Overhaul the combat system. It looks nice to see your custom ships floating around the viewer but the current sloppy system has to go. The strategic map. Even if you accept the lame excuse that the map is "abstracted" for gameplay purposes, it still is a VERY poor representation of intersellar space. Remove the so-called stars-planets-resouces from the map and make the star systens self-contained, almost like a mini-game unto itself. MOO1 and 2 understood this conc

Power Duel Scenario and its allegedly "huge" fleets in Twilight of the Arnor Stardock Forums

The Power Duel scenario write-up alleges you can "go-crazy" and logisticss are hardly an issue. Really? is that so. 72 logistic points at end of the tech-tree is hardly what I call "massive" fleets. the scenario is all the more annoying in that the drengin are hostile from the get-so, which is fine if your looking for a challenge(it is), not so much if your trying to set up a massive conflict with all the techs and the huge fleets the scenario promises