Well, feel free to make your own game.

As for Galactic Civilizations, here was my rationale - a major new tech stream should cost more than modifications to that tech. So Lasers I will cost more than Lasers II but additional ones will cost roughly the same.

As for how many turns it takes to get to the next tech, there is a slider to control the research time.

Yes, everyone has opinions on how this or that feature should be made but to assume there is a single "correct" way is nonsense.

Hey, Frogboy.

You've been getting a lot a flak from some lately, but I just want to remind you that...

your game is awesome. You are one of my heros. What you've done with your life is amazing.

THANK YOU for improving ours.

Most of us aren't really arguing that our way is the correct way. I think we're just stating our opinions about how we wish the game would be. I think most people are also hoping for more options. In some cases, that is where the modding system comes into play.

The game developers and designers have their own rationale behind every detail. But sometimes their priorities are different from the players.

Even though I think I now understand the rationale behind the current trading system, that doesn't make me stop wishing that it was more fair. Personally, I'd rather the suicidal AI get additional bonuses in other areas, but still keep a fair and logical trading system. There are ways to combat the 'buy the galaxy' strategies rather than gimping the trading system so badly that it's near useless.

I currently only use tech trading to sell them for minor amounts of cash to the minor races to help me finance the initial colony rush or first way. There is never any reason to trade planets or ships. They are near worthless to the AI. Some people understand the nuances enough to get more out of trading, but for me, it all feels so random. Sometimes I can get hostile races to fight. Sometimes I can't, and I don't understand why. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons behind the scenes, but it doesn't stop me from feeling the system is screwed up.

Oh well. As long as the developers are aware, that's the best we can do.

I agree with you. We all have our own ideas.

But reading through the posts, it's pretty clear that some people think that there is a "correct" way for everything and everything else is essentially a "bug" to be "fixed".

Note that none of this means that I don't still love this game. I do love this game and I think it's one of the best, if not the very best game ever. I've logged some crazy hours playing this game, especially recently.

So congrats and thanks to the developers and designers. I was just hoping to get my voice heard about how I think the game could be made even better.

Jasamcarl, what difficulty level do you play?

At Tough, I didn't used to have much of an issue. Some AI were pushovers. Some AI were harder to deal with.

At Suicidal, it's a whole different story. Even the minor races are unreasonable at that difficulty. Yes, I do understand the irony here. It's Suicidal. It's supposed to be hard and I'm complaining. But this is made hard in a way that feels really, really unfair to me. This is made hard in a way that basically removes this aspect of the gameplay.

If the multiplier was x2 at Suicidal, I would be okay with it. But the difficulty multiplier seems like it's x10 or x20. It's something ridiculous.

I already said I was going to mod it over my upcoming deployment so... um... okay? Is that what you wanted?



Would you like a thanks? I've already posted one around here. Would you like money? You already have a lot of it, and despite the treatment I got at the hands of the CEO himself, I guess you're lucky that you'll probably still get my money. Hell, maybe some day when you guys are bigger, I can go back to this post and show the equivilent of the CEO of EA trolling his customers (or me trolling him, depending if you read the rest of my post or not).



Yeah, I DO have insight on UI design and balance. I have my OWN insight - because I deal with this UI on a daily basis, I have a list of things that simply annoy the hell out of me. Maybe instead of a nice, long, meticulous post on exactly what my problems are and my own suggestion to fix it, you'd prefer I simply make a ****ton of whines about how shit it is? I'm also not stupid (but thanks for the subtle insinuation). I never ONCE said that there was no balance problem with just going through and changing the speeds of the all the techs. I never said there wasn't. In fact, one of the trickiest parts of my mod (since god knows it'll never be a feature) is that every racial tech tree needs to be considered in how it affects it. There's also other things as well - player abilities, bonuses, and the like will also have much more of an impact on slow-tech games than they do in fast-tech. Did I ever ONCE say that there wasn't, that you should simply get off your lazy ass (since I KNOW you're not doing anything [Insert eye-rolling]) and jump to do what I demand? No, I didn't do that either. The closest I got was asking for what a developer thought of my suggestion (and instead I got a heap of sarcastic bullshit).

I also never said that this wasn't a lot of work either, or that I expected it to be in the game in time for TOTA. What I *WAS* looking for was a constructive discussion with other game players, and in light of positive feedback, a response from someone official on popular threads is nice as well. Am I expecting a "Yes! We'll get right on this!"? No, that's silly. Was I expecting the response I got? Well... no, not really. The fact is, however, that the tech trading and tech speeds issue has been brought up over and over and over, and from what I've seen, the majority of people do not like how either of them works - and we've gotten nothing but stony silence from the official side of the camp on a response to this.

Anyway, I digress. Since I'm such a burden, what with giving you a couple hundred of my hard-earned dollars, encouraging others to do the same, making these decisions with blind trust that you have the customer's best interest sincerely in your heart, and then posting constructive feedback on what few weak points I see in your game on your forums and everything, I suppose I can start posting in a manner that more fits what you look forward to in clientèle.

Would you like me to start by spamming the Sins of a Solar Empire forum with whining about what a bunch of worthless ****s you all are for my minidumps? Or would you prefer that I start a little closer to home in this thread and suggest that you eat a ****?

Is that how you'd rather I communicate around here? Because I can do that, I'm really quite good at it.

You already told me to make my own game, and I'd fix this myself too if I could, only all these values are locked away, and without an SDK, I'll never be able to change them. I guess I'd make a thread asking if we can have an SDK now that TOTA is out (nearly, at least), but I'd sincerely hate to post anything constructive, or at the very least, polite. I don't want you to get upset again that I didn't make an expletive-filled post calling you a bunch of assholes for stopping development on GC2, and demanding that I'm *OWED* an SDK.

Huh? Obviously, the current system is an intentional part of the Suicidal difficulty. Obviously, it was designed this way to make it more difficult for the player. If you actually read my post, instead of flaming me for some reason, you'd see my point.

There are many ways to make the suicidal AI more difficult. Some ways are acceptable to players. Some ways are not. I'm not the only person who has a problem with the trading system.

In any case, there is no point in my stepping down the difficulty when I can beat suicidal right now. Anyways, the obscene AI won't act much differently from the suicidal when it comes to the trading system.

I think it's an impossibly high standard to expect any AI to evaluate the relative worth of a trade in vastly varying game situations with the same balance an experienced human player is capable of. One thing I like about suicidal is that everything gets harder, diplomacy included. If they took that away, to me it would detract. Suicidal is supposed to be punishing IMHO, all the way around. It makes it so much more satisfying each time you win that way.

It's too broad a statement that the current trading system is unacceptable to players as whole.

cityman, IIRC the AI always used to treat the player and other AIs using the same ruleset for diplomacy (and, in fact, for everything!) Assuming this hasn't changed, then the only reason it offers you such lousy deals on suicidal is because it has enormous inherent diplomacy bonuses. This is good news (if you play non-metaverse games) since it means you should be able to fix things to your liking simply by modding in a high diplomacy bonus for your race. Have you tried that?

Ah, I didn't realize how Frogboy (or whoever designed this system) modified it for Suicidal. I thought the algorithms were actually different. I didn't realize it was because of huge diplomacy bonuses for the AI. My error was believing the trade window when it told me that my relative diplomacy skill was still relevant to the deal at hand.

Okay, that is better than I thought it was. I am focusing on Metaverse games lately, but it might be fun to detour once in a while and see if I can tweak it to my liking.

Perhaps the trade window messages should be updated to reflect the true diplomacy values?