I've got an idea, fix the problem that causes the game to crash to windows everytime I try and play. Same problem that a lot of folks are having in Windows Vista.

Dear Frogboy,

I've just upgraded my DL ver 1.4 by buying DA ver 1.5 online and installing it. I've been playing for about 2 weeks now and there are some SERIOUS problems which you need to recitify before I even consider buying another GalCiv game. First is TRADE which is practically worhtless. I've been exploring this in another thread and am actually modding a game specifically to investigate and explore trade in DA. There is a severe problem with starbase maintenance that completely destroys the value of trade in medium and smaller maps. How do I know this? Because I've started my investigation and discovered that a 5 bc per turn maintenance fee destroys the Korx superability and benefits on medium and smaller maps. That means every year (52 turns the owner has to pay 260 bc per starbase whether or not it is useful. Adding trade modules gives you up to 60% additional income from a trade route if positioned effectively. That's only for a maximum of 17 turns if you perfectly position it, and if your really, really lucky you get more than 1 trade route merged together. What that means is that to break even the trade route must generate 433 bc for the maximum of 17 turns it is effective meaning in a perfect situation the trade route has to generate an average of 26bc per turn or your running on a deficit. On medium or smaller maps the amount is on average double that because starbase placement is usually less than ideal. This also has the effect of removing the bonus production value for worlds that generate less than 433 bc of bonus production per year meaning that worlds that generate 17mp's per week of starbase bonus production are running at a deficit. But worlds that exceed that are still efficient - providing your economy can burden the cost of the additional research/industrial units. If your intent was to eliminate or reduce the or some how address the 24 starbase 17k to 20k tp research worlds then you have failed and have instead created a severe game imbalance that negates a whole branch of the tech tree (trade), the Korx and their superability. Either limit the additional maintenance expense to only production upgrades (not very effective) or remove the bonus production from them entirely (which also creates a lesser cost to value problem), and to save the Korax, have their special abilitiy negate the cost completely. Perhaps best of all is to apply the maintenance cost to starbases only in maps of large or greater.

Second, there is a game imbalance with component sizes, particularly engines, that cripples large and greater maps. I personnally don't play large maps in DA now because my playing style favors starbases, and the way the game is now it would literally take me thousands of moves on a gigantic map to play out a game. This is unreal. Your size modules for engines should be balanced for the map size so that the player, outside of a random event that doubles speed, can create a constructor on a huge hull that only takes 2 turns to travel across the entire map from corner to corner. Because of the large numer of constructors required to build a starbase and UPGRADE it. Now I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but it just makes sense to have a spreadsheet for starbase management. Why? Because I should only have to build and construct the initial constructor ship; send it to a destination and build the initial starbase hull; and then manage upgrades like any other planetary improvement - from the spreadsheet. Then ship speed is nolonger a consideration for large/gigantic maps. Meaning that players like myself, who enjoy the building aspect of the game can still manage a decent game on the big maps. Personally, I think its time to abandon the entire ship size scheme because its outmoded. Hull sizes are a part of GalCiv original that I think would be better replaced with a hardpoint system where logistics defines the maximum number of hardpoints per ship and that component size should then be how many hardpoints it uses. Of course thats a major rewrite in itself, so I'm not holding my breath. (Again, though, engines should always be scaled to the map size, and fleet size logistics should be replaced by support modules or even eliminated entirely.)

In SUMMARY, their are some serious game imbalances that affect the GalCiv trademark of giving players the flexibility to use different playing styles, which in my opinion should be rectified or GalCiv will probably start to die. Since my play style favors DL, I see no reason to upgrade or purchase another GalCiv game unless it also supports my play style. Please don't tell me I can mod my own changes. That's just a cop out. Honestly, some people (I would guess the majority) are computer challenged and modding simply isn't a reasonable response for them. In the end its up to you to decide. I just hope GalCiv doesn't go the way of the dinosaurs.

It's looking like we're going to have to split the changes we wanted to make into a 1.6 version an d a 1.7 bersion because we really need to get 1.6 out.  The big changes in 1.6 will be the performance improvements which have to take precedence over new features.

Anotehr big thing in 1.6 are little bits of tuning in the UI. For instance, going to the diploamcy dialog and starting to trade lets you now click on the alien's treasury and it will default to the amount you need to make the trade which was a feature that got mentione da lot in this thread.

I've put in various AI updates here and there based on quite a bit of playing and messed around with some of the default values on techs and ship pieces. So I think people will be happy with 1.6, especially those who were having performance issues. The mini map had to be totally rewritten to get decent performance for some people on Vista with nVidia drivers. But it should improve performance for eveyrone, especially on larger galaxies.

Then for 1.7, I'd like to start putting in more features. But I want to make sure everyone's expectations are realistic, it's not like we're going to add multiplayer or have a new United Planets in or something. But we are going through this post pretty thoroughly and trying to see what we can do.

I think the issue with contrusctors is not that you have to build so many but that you have to micro manage them too much.

I think what might be a good feature would e a new type of rally point that simply says "Send all completed constructors here automatically".

Selected ships have an animated cursor around them. I'm not sure what you mean by tithis.

It would be a help if the ship presently selected was highlighted somehow. Maybe it flashes at fast speed or changes color. It is frustrating whem you think you have selected a ship but end up moving a different one.

Selected ships have an animated cursor around them. I'm not sure what you mean by tithis.

Dear Frogboy, I too have experienced this effect where the ship in the current display remains highlighted after movement is exhausted with what I will call a "ghost" cursor when the next ship in the movement que is selected. Its easy to miss when you get click happy, but if you actually read the text display the ship designation, location, and move parameters are different. By hitting "C" (instead of just clicking or using the find button, which doesn't work when this occurs) you are moved to the actual location of the selected ship. It appears to happen when the ship movement que exceeds the current buffer limit and needs to make a call to another stack(if it were written in assembler and not perl or somesuch thing, so feel free to ignore the extra jibberish). After hitting the "C" key and/or selecting the correct ship it(the stack pointer?) restores itself until the next group of large movements occurs. I hope this explains the problem better, because it can be annoying.

Good job on creating a fun game! I had a couple of ideas:

1) Planetary Terraforming - I don't really like the idea of useless planets, especially ones that look like they could be inhabitable. Many of the techs in the tech tree are extremely futuristic and powerful in nature, I think that you should be able to terraform uninhabitable planets. If you allowed all planets to be terraformed, it would put less emphasis on a colony ship rush for races that are driven to research. I also have a problem with the Terraforming tech, where it states "allows you to terraform useless tiles", but then it only gives you a handful of tiles to terraform. It should allow you to terraform all tiles (because they are useless), or the description of the tech should be changed to "allows you to terraform barren tiles" or something like that.

2) Artificial Wormhole Travel - I know that this is really radical, but I think it would be cool to have the last space travel tech be "Artificial Wormhole Creation", where a ship creates a wormhole that allows travel to any point in the galaxy. You could make it take the ship a couple of weeks to open a wormhole, or make it a very (and I do mean very) large component to put on a ship (only possible for the largest ships). I think that it could create a unique possibility for space warfare and traditional "front lines".

3) Separation of Civilian and Soldier Population - I don't really like the concept of transporting a billion soldiers to a planet to fight a civilian population without any military training. Plus, taking a billion soldiers from a planet every few weeks really starts to add up. I think that you should be able to create soldiers at a planetary improvement, and maybe spice it up a little by allowing a player to manage and customize their armies. The customizable ship feature is a very good feature, and I think the game would be even more enjoyable if you broadened that feature. The soldiers shouldn't take on the population of an entire planet either, because the majority of civilians would capitulate rather than die. Planets should be required to hold armies for planetary protection, or a draft option should be used to draft 10% of the population into armed service (with a deduction from soldier efficiency).

4) Governmental Espionage - I think that, while planting spies on planetary improvements is important, a new governmental infiltration option would be nice. Instead of only being able to plant agents on planets to infiltrate a race, have them go direct to the source: the government. It's kind of like going back to Dread Lords, where you put a specific amount of money towards a race and then just wait. If you implanted an agent, they wouldn't be found right away because they wouldn't be responsible for disabling a planetary improvement. You could give them specific orders like technological sabotage or stealing money.

5) Super Nova Weapon - It was suggested before about a weapon that could destroy a planet and turn it into asteroids. This is another radical idea that may not be practical, but it could really change game play for tech driven races. You could make a tech that would allow you to "detonate" a sun and destroy the solar system completely with the resulting super nova. If two races had the tech, it would be the equivalent of mutually assured destruction, where as if one race had it, and was on the losing side of a war, it would change the tide. Use of the weapon should have very negative diplomatic side effects with other races, it should be very expensive, and it should require a lot of support techs (perhaps even special shields to allow ships to get close enough to a sun).

One question: did you really read all those suggestions?

Anyway, here are mine.

1) defenses should be more valuable. Attack right now has a great advantage. Simply said I do not research defensive techs

2) trading techs is impossibly expansive. diplomacy is useless.

3) want a carrier type ship: get X bombers that attack with your best available missile type (one shot). Each launched bomber has Y hit points and the other side cannot hit the carrier if any bombers is alive. Bombers are shown only when making a fleet battle. basic carrier could load a balance of stuff (weapons, engines...) and bombers.
Example: large carrier
120 hit points
80 for stuff
40 remaining for 8 bombers (Y=5 ; X=8)
Lost bombers would be replaced at the rate of 1 per turn if inside controlled territories.

4) want a stealth type ship (a submarine). can be seen only when nearby. strikes a selected ship even inside a fleet and inflicts a large damage like 50 points. very slim defenses (1) and hull (10) so an enemy first strike would win normally.

5) if you make peace you cannot go to war before X turns

6) whant to have the ability to tell the AI to remove ships from nearby or exchange starbase / planets on a 1 to 1 ratio

A general comment: I have found DA much more enjoyable that GC2.

I would like it if the game had a bit more mystery about it each time you started. Games like Elite (and Frontier) were good at impressing upon you just how big space really is and you had to play for days to find all the gems hidden in the game.

When exploring space it would be good if you weren't able to discover all of the other Civs within a few turns of the game. I appreciate you can set the map size to Gigantic but even then you still know which direction to head in to discover the other races. For example, I find that I often start a new game on one of the extreme edges (or in a corner) of the universe - so I know which direction I have to head in. When this happens it removes a lot of the mystery and the interest of exploring further.

I thing I have noticed is that when I use auto-explore or auto-attack (or other "auto" actions), the ships tend to follow the same paths if they are close to each other in position. Would it be difficult to implement a way to prevent this from happening? Maybe create waypoints or something. It's kind of annoying when two scout ships just follow each other or two fleets head for the same target.

I would love a more detailed look into each planets military, social and technical production per turn. There is a dandy mouse over to see what is affecting morale, but not for the other factors. It would help with upgrade decisions and give an idea of how much you would benefit from a starbase, etc..

yet another idea...

As part of a spying level, or just in general, It would be time saving to ba able to view and AI's tech tree. I mean all the info is really already available, but hard to see.

Dear Frogboy,

One part of DA that would really benefit from further development is spying.

There is a special reason for this. The AI always attacks only the weakest civs in order not to risk anything, so wars are often not very thrilling, it is just about who can grab most colonies from the weakest. However, as a weak civ there is not much you can do against the more powerful, because the smallest skirmish means you declare a full scale war... So, here some new spy rules would come in handy, letting you play offensively against the powerful civs in a new way - without them knowing YOU are responsible.

Suggestion: Spying should be a technology type, with a few branches. Basic tech level to be able to start paying to get agents. Futrher techs would give you both better chances of succeeding, lesser risk of being caught

... (continuation from above): but most importantly: giving you new missions you can accomplish, like assasinating the planet's leader, sabotaging buildings, spreading disease or even starting a reverse terraforming! (NB. the game Haegemonia has wonderful spy rules). Getting caught should be a question of your level of spying versus the victim's level of counterspying ... Stopping the spy would not mean that his origin is automatically revealed, but when the origin is revealed that would of course be a major diplomatic incident (changing the relationship towards hostile).

In this way you would be able to play more offensively against the PC without going to war and with only a risk that you will be caught. This could become really important in the game if you consider 5 smaller civs all going against one leading civ individually ...

Create a MULTIPLAYER MODE ON A SINGLE COMPUTER (without going online). Like I control one race, a friend controls another race, another friend controlling another race, etc.. You can have each race controlled by computer or person. You can add time limits too finish your turn, or a total time limit, etc..

UNEXPECTED COSTS. NASA says it costs 100 milion to make this rocket but then it turns into 300 million.

Each Space ship must have a Captain. The computer can name them or you can.

Stable WORMHOLES and unstable wormholes(Areas). Have trade vessels pass through wormholes for faster trade. Create a special starbase to control your side of the wormhole. Have more than one race share the profits of the wormhole. Study the politics of the real panama canal and suez canal and apply it to the game. To collect taxes on all other races using the wormhole for trade or military use or whatever use. Races will fight for the ownership of the wormhole. Have the range of your ship extended on the other side of the wormhole so its not forced to come back to your territory range. Wormhole TECNOLOGY to create a wormhole.

WEIRD SPACE where time is slower or weird things happen like in star trek.

BIG AND SMALL NEBULAS that TAKE UP ONE OR MORE SECTORS. Ships must go around them. Maybe they can hide in them to avoid destruction.

I DONT LIKE it when another race has a SHIP IN MY TERRITORY without expressed permission. Each ship must ask for permission and say why. Give the ship a warning to leave the territory. Their ship must be there for trade or their has to be a diplomat or some reason, and must ask to before crossing the border. Or if they are in war with someone else and must pass through my territory. They have to pay to pass, give some research or something, or a threat, or they must be very good allies.

The NATO, UN, (Middle East Union, forgot the name), AFRICAN UNION, EUROPEAN UNION, etc.. There are more than just one union and countries can belong to more than one union. All of them having different goals. Free trade, trade taxes to some countries, military unions, etc.. Say the UN votes that the drengin(iran) cannot have WMD. COALITION FORCES under one general. Try to SPREAD DEMOCRACY (worked in germany WW2, failing in Iraq), SPREAD COMMUNISM ( russia to china to east germany to cuba by force, or by election like in venezuela). Have nations swing more often on there political views or evil to good and back. USA was once evil with slavery stealing land and now we are much not evil anymore.

Ability to enslave an entire race or just a single planet. Ability to sell slaves off a planet you concored and sell them to another race. Or if my race would be enslaved I would still be able to play or there would be a way to fight for freedom or rebell in some way.

Better military negotiations between allies. Economic, etc..

Basically I want the game to better reflect the history of the Earth as we know it(But into a space game). Many empires rose and fell over the Histroy of the Earth. Many religions came and gone. Why did they rise and fall???? RELIGION, ECONOMICS, DISASTOR, SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS(creating increasing nebulas, planet evacuations),etc.. Somehow give large Empires different kinds of weekness that will make them fall apart and seperate them. Have 10 diffent faces for each race when they split up. Kings and Queens and Generals and Knights and Marriages( to join empires). Dividing Empires amoungst the children or just one of them. Assasinations to become King or President. I REALLY LIKE THE FAMILY TREES FROM ROME TOTAL WAR.

The one thing I'd really like to see is when Council votes come up that are of the sort like limiting number of starbase modules it should be a pair of votes. The first vote is "Should starbases have a limit of modules?" If that passes then vote on the number of modules.

It would be a help if the ship presently selected was highlighted somehow. Maybe it flashes at fast speed or changes color. It is frustrating whem you think you have selected a ship but end up moving a different one.

Selected ships have an animated cursor around them. I'm not sure what you mean by tithis.


Reply_________________________________________________________________


The animated cursor cannot always be seen. I tend to play on larger maps, hence I spend most of my time looking at the map zoomed way out in order to see enough of the planets on my screen. I noticed that as you zoom out further and further, the planets and the map get smaller and smaller but the fleet and ship "icons" get bigger. But as the icons get bigger, the animated cursor gets smaller, hence it is now hidden behind the fleet "icon". Having to zoom in and out constantly to find the animated cursor is just to much. I find that when you are deploying forces to multiple planets on big maps there is no choice but to zoom out in order to see enough of the map.

Other comments...
1: The animated cursor may be more easily seen if it were a bright color like yellow. It could also flash or rotate to catch your eye. The blue tends to blend too well into the background.
2: It would be nice to be able to select multiple ships or fleets at the same time to move all of them with one command.


By the way, this is a great game, good work!

( Frogboy May 8, 2007 23:56:37Reply #279 )

With the number of constructors presently required, it would be nice to have a controls that would allow you to send only constructors created from all or some ports to a location.

I think the issue with contrusctors is not that you have to build so many but that you have to micro manage them too much.

I think what might be a good feature would e a new type of rally point that simply says "Send all completed constructors here automatically".

Reply_______________________________________________________________

That would certainly be a good improvement Frogboy. Although it would be even better if I could select which planets would be affected by the rally point. After all, you may be working on star bases that are just too far away from some planets and maybe even out of range for the constructor to reach!

Master ship command/battle screen.


The concept of a "Master ship command screen" involves adding a new command screen that could be used to see the complete inventory of ships you own and which planet they are orbiting.

This screen could also be used to...

1: Immediatly deploy the ships from that screen, individually or as a group to a rally point.

2: You could set the default "ship launch status" for each planet. This way you could decide if some or all ships being created on Mars will be put in orbit or launched in to space right away.

3: you could select an action by ship catagory, like, all war ships from "this" planet will be launched to rally point "X" but all constructors will be launched to rally point "Y". All others will follow the "default launch status" instruction.

4: You could create and manage fleets. the ships would automaticaly lauch and join together to form a fleet at a preset location.

5: You could upgrade a ship by clicking on it.

6: The upgrade status of each ship will be displayed

7: List of ship stats and cost should be available when cliking on it as well as an indication of how long it would take each planet to build one.

8: You could change what ship type is being built on planets from this screen as well.

9: a "broken arrow" command that sends all war ships to one location regardless of any other setting. This command sets all planets to focus on ship manufacturing. When released, all planets go back to what ever they were set to before.

This new screen would be like one stop shopping for ship control and management. There are many more possible options, but this post is long already. Besides, I think you have the picture.

1) make the variable number of asteroid squares per racial homeworld indicated in the .xml file work. Right now (1.5x, 1.6b1,2), all home systems get exactly 3 squares of asteroids. this is a wonderful tool to get a little more differentiation, fine tuning of racial characteristics, but it sisn't working.

2) consider movement advantages for tiny (and small??) craft when moving through asteroid fields. Basically I'd say just let tiny ships move normally through them, and smalls maybe lose one MP.

3) consider combat bonuses for tiny/small ships when they are attacking from or defending on asteroid fields.

4) consider similar additional combat bonuses for tiny/small ships when defending from orbit.

5) consider permanent +1 speed advantage for tiny/small ships.

6) consider a "Super Planetformer" super ability, either as a substitute for Iconians or just for custom races. Gives additional +1 tile per planet per level of terraforming tech.

drrider

things id most like to see.

1) Open up the hard code just a bit to modding when it comes to both time related and random event types. i.e.
a) U.P. Voting - love to be able to set this to bi-annual, quarterly etc.
Adjusting the planetary colonization, random ethical event chances and Mega Event chances/timing. Mainly, to allow for creation of events that are NOT based on good/evil, and to allow for easier testing of such. (erm, is it possible to trigger an event based on planetary population?)

2) U.P. votes should have a 1 month warning, allong with What the vote will be - therefore allowing for more political options.

3) Minor Races.
a) please, at least in the scenario mode, allow for the minors to again be able to colonize, or allow personality adjustments for the minors that does not turn them into a "major race".
Minor races of the same ethical attitudes should be very inclined to ally with each other early in the game, thereby increasing thier survival rate. Think of them as minor political factions within the UP, a "Confederacy of independant planets" if you will.

4) Remove some of the Hard Coded referances on various improvement types throughout the game to allow for more modding options. i.e. F-LogisticLimit currently requires specific building types to be used, effectively cutting it off from modding.

5) Yes, please create a new govener that allows for Planets creating Y ship, go to Z Rally point - would be amazingly useful.

Starbase Transporter/Tug Boat
Provide a ship module allowing you to create a starbase tugboat so you can move them around, (slowing of course) or simply provide a module which can be added to the SB to allow it to move itself. This would allow players to change thier tactical positioning. Again this should be a slow process.

Military starbases should be allowed to auto/manaual attack enemy vechicles that come into thier sphere of infulence.

Patrol routes / linked rally points
Allowing patrol routes to be ship up for ships on sentry, or gaurd duty

Hunter/Search and destroy options for ships
Option for ships or fleet to perform automatic search and destroy for emeney ships.(need to be able to define a race to target though, incase of multiple enemys)

"GW Swicord" mentioned this, which i also would like
Separate sliders for spending to recruit spies (Economy page) and spending for intel on each rival empire (Foreign Policy page).

A starbase that can automatically attack a ship, becomes a mine.

Dear Frogboy,

I have also observed one other condition that causes ships to lose their rally point and/or destination. Namely, when the AI initiates a diplomatic screen, which it did in one of my recent games, some ships were still moving. After the screen closed I had to reassign rally points for 2 or 3 ships which hadn't moved or hadn't finished moving when the diplomacy screen was initiated. I suspect this could be responsible for some of the AI/player ships losing their destination, as well as freighters which stop moving along their trade routes.

I think the game itself is fine, but the engine and UI need work. I think many of the big gameplay changes should wait for a later game, while SD concentrate on polishing GC2.

Pregame setup is fiddly, uninformative, and unfair.

*Tech customisation - something many players never do, it's that important - involves eight million clicks. Display the point value of the tech next to it's name, problem solved.

*No way of really knowing how the different map options inter-relate. Some options missing, like 'resource frequency' etc.

*Unfair custom races, as have been mentioned. I'd like to turn off the 'story-based' fixed bonuses for the base races - I don't care about the GC story, and I want freedom and fairness when configuring races.

The old 'load game, get new game popup' thing is still present, and it's a big strike against the game. The first thing a new player sees when they load is a totally nonsensical 'we just started our expansion...' message. I'm shocked it's still in the game after all this time.

Every UP policy should have a matching diplomacy option - ie, for every trade restriction, starbase rental or whatever, you should be able to inflict that on people (or offer it to people) at will, instead of waiting for the slow and random UP.