Yah, as far as I know. It's an older video card from probably 2-4 yrs back when I bought my Dell, so it might not be up to snuff. I want to change it, but I can't really get better without buying a new computer at this point. I can play and it's not real annoying, just wish it wasn't there.

Lucky, did you try it again?

wow, i guess 3 times is a charm...got it now.

I'm also disappointed. What's going on with the off-type defense bug? Is that being addressed? Does SD even see it as a bug or not? I haven't seen anyone officially acknowledge and address this. Please let us know what's going on. Thanks.

This sucks.. what about us people that do not or can not use SDC due to internet avaliability on our PC's, are we never going to be able to upgrade our games, so we could suffer from these bugs, just so they could be silently patched up again???

Because having a validated cd isn't worse than not being able to patch/upgrade our games...

THIS SUCKS.

Can you archive an update in SDC much the same as you can the game? If so how about archiving it and emailing to these people who can't have SDC on their net equipped PC. They can simply burn the patch to disc and take it home with them and away they go......

If this can be done, I'd be more than happy to email updates to those who wish them.

After re-reading that, is what i said even legal? If not feel free to slap me down, not trying to step on toes here. Just thought it would be nice to help out those who don't have net at home....

I don't have the net at home, but what I do is download the fixes from SDC at work (I'm in an office by myself, which helps) and just copy the Galciv folder onto my ipod and take it home. I need to reinstall the sig for my home computer all the time (I've got a copy), but it's a solution.

Yes, as has been stated previously it is in the bug tracker to be worked on.



No, it can only be archived in its entirety.

sorry but what is this defense bug that everyone seems to be talking about?

i tried to search the bug forum but came up empty. is there a link to the discussion or what it does?

From what I heard, the defense bug is because the defense is pooled against each individual weapons. So when an offtype weapon is used, the total defense = floor(square root total defense) and the absorbed amount is then subtracted from total defense value.

I suggest to when square root of defense is used or right type defense is worn down to 0, the rest of the damage absorbed by the defense should modified to the power of 2.
Example: Assume all rolls are maxed and assumes weapons firing order is random.
Defense = 16B + 0MA + 0MS = 16

3MA damage vs total defense of 16 (off type)
= 3 damage vs 4 defense (square root 16).
3 damaged is absorbed as 3 < 4
total defense now = 16 - 3^2 = 7

Then 2B damage vs 7 (on type)
= 2 damage vs 7 defense
2 < 7
total defense now = 7 - 2 = 5

This is for single defense type. In the case of multiple defense types it gets complicated.

Defense = 9B + 4MA + 0MS = 13

3MA damage vs total defense of 13 (on type now)
3 < 13
total defense now = 9B + (4MA-3) + 0MS = 10

2B damage vs 10 (on type)
2 < 10
total defense now = (9B-2) + 1MA + 0MS = 8

3MA vs 8 (on type)
3 < 8
total defense now = 7B + 1MA-1 + 0MS - 2MA^2 = 7B + 0MA + 0MS - 4 = 3

And now the defense is of single type (beam only) for the rest of the round.

This way, weapons would be more balanced against defense and fix the off type bug. Any thoughts, modifications, and problems with this formula?

See here for discussion of off-type defence bug.

What you have to remember is that as presently documented, each defence type (including additions from off-type defence) is tracked separately through a combat round. If you wear down the armour with your mass drivers it doesn't affect the outcome when you fire beam weapons at the shields.

The bug is that the off-type bonus isn't degraded at a normal rate because apparently the degradation is applied to the original off-type defence value, not the added (square-rotted) value.

The square root thing on the off-type defenses is strictly a hypothesis I thought up. Different test battles with fleets seem to fit the theory, but that's all it is right now--a theory.

Anyway, I think Stardock had their priorities right with this patch. The FOW and crash issues were one notch higher-priority than the defense and tech trading. You can have fun on the higher difficulty, letting your foes dominate you tech-wise but you dominate them ship-wise. Steal their techs.

Now I see, you mean the defense should not pooled together as one but should be by types as well.
100 Beam Def, 20 Mass Def = 100BM / sqrt(100)+20MA=30MA /sqrt(100BM)+sqrt(20MA)=14MS and that should be the static maximum value for each round. Any decrease of defense should only decrease the value of the matching defense type.

The current formula subtracts the values from the original un-square rooted defense value instead of the calculated sqrt value. So it seems 3 beam attack will destroy the defense value of a 5 mass defense just as much as a 3 mass attack. BUT 3 beam attack have a GREATER CHANCE of doing bleed through damage to HP as the mass defense value is square rooted while the 3 mass attack will roll against the full value of the mass defense and have a MUCH LESS CHANCE of doing bleed through damage?

Is this correct?

I do believe my head just exploded...

I am gonna be honest. I am 33. I have been playing games for a very long time now. And I have to say, the process of updating the game is so tedious. I have followed these instructions but to no avail. Honestly, I don't understand why their are so many associated "programs" for DA??? I SHOULD just be able to log onto a site and download the update. With DA?? Hitting "update game" just opens another program with no mention of a patch AND flushing the settings as stated above does nothing. It shouldn't be this difficult. Seriously.

To counter a large off-type effect goes, you need to pack enough firepower to wipe out all defence points. For the example above, you'd need to exceed 120 points of rolled damage against one defence. If you're up against a fleet of similar ships (although I don't know how likely that is) remember that as you lose ships, your damage output goes down. Therefore your ships should be also be able to withstand damage over the long haul.

You may also need to check 'Show pre-release versions' (it's shown at the foot of the Games page in Stardock Central) in order to see the latest update. You'll know yourself that fixes released between major patches for a game can also introduce new problems, so by default I think it is unchecked.

When SDC finds an update and you okay it, the actual updating process is relatively straightforward.

If the defense formula was like that, then I would suggest this: when defense absorb off-type weapon damage, it should use
sqrt(sum(off-type defenses) - defense damage ^ 2) to deplete the overall off-type defense faster.

I'm not aware of the issue. This issue only recently popped into the bug tracker.  People need to realize that posting on the forums alone doesn't garauntee we know about it.  If it weren't for Kyro, it would still be unknown.

When was this introduced? We haven't touched defenses other than the values in the XML since release.

I'm a little confused by this statement.

I load up Stardock Central and it pops up a dialog that says "GalCiv has been updated". I press the update button and it gets updated.

 

that's what I had to do. thanks. I think it is working. Still not as intuitive as it could be.

If I had to guess, it's been in DA since the start of the new combat system... its only recently been noticed due to the fact that you can get your money's worth in defenses again. It only really becomes noticable once the defense starts reaching into the double digits.

I would imagine far more bugs are reported on these forums rather than are e-mailed to Stardock and would imagine this will always be the case. It's certainly a lot easier reporting a bug on the forums and getting pretty much instant feedback from other players as to whether anyone else is experiencing similar problems. Of the many bugs I have personally encountered in Gal Civ 2 DL+DA only one have I e-mailed about yet I have posted many times that amount of bugs on the forums.

I'm sure theres a message somewhere, perhaps players including myself need to e-mail Stardock more about bugs rather than just posting on the forums and the devs probably need to spend more time reading and replying to forum posts (although having said that Stardock are much better than some games companies I have encountered).

Well, during some of the beta of DA, I'm not sure if the off-type defences bug existed yet. If you read the combat example here it specifically says that not all sources of defence degradation were accounted for in the 2A build, but they would be in the next build.