WarEagle

Join Date 03/2006

WarEagles "things I wanted to say"-collection

Well, things I wanted to say :)

Hi,

I've collected several things I noticed in GC2, there are different part in this "report":

* improvement ideas
* glitches
* bugs
* crashes
* the online board
* annomalie-ideas

improvement ideas
=================
* The button for ending a turn should be disabled when having a dialog open, I often press him by accident when I whant to close e.g. the colony-display
* add the logistic-costs in the shipdesigner at the right box below sensors-range
* when having selected a ship and pressing the right mousebutton, there should be an information about how far this trip would go, maybe supported by a little route the sould would try
* please add things like "asteroids" or "nebulas" to the map, these shouldn't make any difference for the economy, but they could be strategically important, nebulas z.b. lowering shilds, asteroids lowering movement and such things, be creative

* optional export of the timelines as html-page, would be nice for presenting it to friends, but at the moment screenshots are working fine also

* create a shortcut to galciv2.exe and put this link called "Galactic Civilisation II - DEBUGMODE" in the startmenue, so you will receive more debug-output

* When updating a starbase, and if entering a planet, I'm missing some kind of "galactic position" when playing bigger maps, you often get lost where this station is located. A little minimap in these cases would be great
* create planets with multiple moons
* allow planet's moons to rotate in different directions

glitches
=================
* mousewheel doesn't work (should work when turing in the textarea)
* anomalies should receive a different color for the minimap, the uncarographed terretories have the same color, so you don't notice them
* making an other wold the new homeplanet should provoke a confirmation dialog
* tooltip on the planetwindow should not be like this:
77%=-9% sdflsihcv, -36% sdcvdc, +22% scdacd
but:
- 9% sdflsihcv,
-36% sdcvdc,
+22% scdacd
= 77%

* in compare to the detailed vector-graphics the selection-circle looks strange, maybe use a vectorgraphic for this, too?
* when entering a number, you have to leave the field. go to the diplomatics, select money, then enter any value and press directly on ok -> it works, but select the value by mouse and then press accedently in the inputarea, then directly on ok -> the value is resettet to 0
* selecting a ship, then pressing left-button in the space, the quickinfo switches from ship to general informatino, but the ship is still focused

bugs
=================
* when playing in windowmode and you are dragging the technology-tree, then you leave the window, the drag is still activ, even if you release the mousebutton
* strg-number for opening the trade-menue works even if the races aren't detected (maybe works also for AI?)
* if the text in the planetary window which is given if a sector has advantages is bigger than the textarea, the scrollbuttons aren't workig (maybe only German)
* it's impossible to upgrade "given" ship-designs, only selfmade ones are able to be updated/upgraded
* the buttons right/left inthe diplomatic window aren't working fine, when the turn starts with a diplomatic, they only bring the window to THIS race, to no other, you cannot switch through the others
* using autosurvey on a survey-ship directs the ship to the next anomaly, even if the terretory is undiscovered
* Start new game, when the techtree appears keep on pressing escape until the options are shown, then press mainmenue and try starting a new game. you'll be put in your last started game. Then press "turn" the button will disappear. Looks there is an refresh missing after starting the new game.
* I don't know if it's important, but the debug.err sometimes gives:
*DEBUG ERROR: ***Unable to find required tech ImpossibleTech for PirateShip. ***
*DEBUG ERROR: ***Unable to find required tech ImpossibleTech for Starbase. ***
maybe there should be added a unresearchable tech called ImpossibleTech in order to avoid these messages.

crashes
=================
* when starting a new game and you are clicking very fast on next, sometimes gc2 crashes

the online board
================
* the server seems to be over his capacities, there are extremly often timeouts
* it would be great to be able to send private messages, this would make the communication e.g. excanging emailadresses very easy
* I think the rating (trolling/insightfull) doesn't work
* the watch-functionallity always gives me a timeout
* it's impossible to edit a record which isn't the last one
* quoting doesn't work for me (Firefox 1.5)
* the pages are getting too huge, e.g. the current thread I'm watching has a html-page of 300kb, because I only have ISDN this takes me about one minute to load (isdn=8kb/sec at maximum speed). In addition to this the images have to be loaded. By killing all tabs on this page the page shrinks to 270kb, about 10% saved (it notepad took 10min to search and replace the tabs, what a bad editor...).

annomalie-ideas
==============
This are only some Ideas of mine....
I like the idea of not only have advantages of things, so you have to decide if the disovery is worth the risk.

* Value asteroids - Your surveyteam discovered some value materials in the nearby asteroid-fild, selling these materials gave you X bc.
* Minefield! Your ship went right into a uncartographed minefield and several explosions occured, the ship got badly damaged! (Ship hitpoints=>1)
* Ancient Strategies - The survey team found a little box containing ancient writings. After translation they exposed to be strategy guides. At once you trained your soldiers by these. After some time you noticed the strategies being completely nonsense and lost some combat knowledge -1%. (not below 0%)
* Good deal - You captain found a merchant selling pieces of an old ship, at once he bought this. After some studies it turned out, these was nothing else than junk, you lost X bc because of this. (direct connection to the positiv effect of selling a crappy ship)
* Bad luck - One of your great scientists was killed by exploring this wreckage because he forgot to close his helmet during the decompression. He was the leader of your current project. (loosing half or all of the current researchprogress
* False accusation - You received a transmission saying one of your commanders did a crime. You arrested him at once, but it turned out this was nothing else but a joke, because of this the moral of your people decreases by -1%. (not below 0)

That's all for now

WarEagle
p.s.

OH!
I forgot the most important thing!
This game is great, it really makes fun, so don't see the things above as accuse, they are only ideas to make a good game a great game

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Taking your improvements in order:

I agree on the turn button. It also needs to be moved a little bit away from the mini-map. Several times I have clicked on the mini-map, with the mouse pointer clearly in the mini-map but near the edge and it has activated the turn end.

Definitely need to have the logistic cost in the 1.1 ship designer.

The visible path and number of turns have already been announced for 1.1

The rest of your improvements would be nice but certainly no big deal, except that the mini-map needs to always reflect what you ar dealing with on the main window, such as starbase updates.

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In 1.1 beta the display of the movementway is a nice step, but take a look on this excample:
you are fighing 2 sectors from your remaining ships, you want to know if they would reach the border in time or not. What do you have to do?
a) count movementfelds by hand

move them and after their movement take a look on the now displayed button
what I whant:
rightklick and then (without releasing) display the way and the distance, pressing esc should cancel the movement.

The post is for general not specific for 1.1

this are simply things I would like to see/I'm missing, but if 1.1 1.2 1.9 10.2992 thats unimportant

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Also going in order.....

I agree that the ship editor should display the logistics cost for a ship, but think that where you suggest putting it would be a waste of space, since the only thing that affects logistic cost is the hull size.
Might be better to put the number next to the hulls when you're selecting them. Or in their empty descriptions. Or on the Hull Size tabs....

The inability to see a ship's movement range is a pain. I suggest ripping off civ4's "go to" ... thing. I was going to explain this further, but do I really need to?

I loved the way the G key worked in civ games.
The other suggestion was going to be copying the constructors' colored circles, but planets would screw that up. Along with the fact that ships don't go in a straight line............ Why don't ships go in a straight line?

Strategic objects floating around would be neat as hell. Don't forget the sensor obscuring nebulas

I wish X3 didn't have Starforce.

The minimap makes me sad, it keeps me from playing gigantic maps. Please also add 150 zoom.

Anomalies on the minimap don't bother me much, since you can toggle their display. But resources drive me nuts.

It would also be nice if the morale tooltip showed how far over 100% it was. I find myself manually adding them up far too often in the beta early game

Entering money in trading is a pain overall. If someone goes in to fix that glitch, can they also make it so that right clicking the arrows increments the amount by 100? Or shift clicking. or something.
Also, the other race's response to the offer doesn't update until you click OK or one of the arrows.

Forum needs work

Sorting by LAST POST became traditional for a reason, watch also times out for me, and bloated HTML is the devil.

I'm also liking the game, and the company, which is why I'm posting instead of just my usual lurking

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People actually can get their morale scores over 100? I can hardly keep mine in the 60s - 80s, LOL

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A planets moons always rotate in the same direction due do planetary tides. They also always keep one side facing the planet at all times (it is impossible to see about half of the surface of the moon from Earth).

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In response to glitches on output, I understand what the O.P. wants my take is with say Morale I still don't understand how the overall value is X , when all the + and - ends up with a different number.
I've never understood influence for that matter either, other than the "fuzzy math". Want more build more embassy/culture places.

Also in response to the OP, I'd copy paste your well thought out suggestions into the thread that says" STICKY: Tweaks to make the game better "

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Oh, one more:
Please add a button like "as jewel" or "as dummy" to the ship designer. This button should allow you to use "normal" parts like colonization-modules for free without function.
Why?
Because take a look on a Yor-colonization ship, does it look good? Yes. Can you rebuild such a ship? no
It's only something for your eyes one additional point on the list to improve the appereance of gc2

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