Kay, some final thoughts on the upcoming Enhanced Espionage feature if you don't mind, Frogboy.

It's just that i really don't want to miss this golden opportunity to share some important (to me, at least!) suggestions in case you can't remember or want to go through previous threads where excellent ideas have been offered by many of us.

- Spy Base(s) on PQ1 planets; Placement limit of One and hard-coded limitation of automatic terraformable tiles (up to 18, IIRC) to a single extra tile or a maximum of two; i'll let you guess what the other lonely tile(s) would be great for right beside the base itself!

- Spies functions;

1) Stealing from Trade Routes
2) Boarding Ships (cloak, control during battles -- ex: Beams twarted!)
3) Sabotage & Destroy buildings (counter measures by Repair crews)
4) Capture_Abduct_Interrogate opponents' Colony_Transport passengers

- Espionage in general;

1) Control over side-bars listing for planets & ships
2) Show destination lines for clicked opponents' ship
3) Blockade StarBases & Asteroids Mining.
4) Loyalty to prevent some flips
5) Indirect ***NO-BROKERING*** some techs by choice for espionage points
6) Impact global Morale & Influence values
7) Ship modules
8) Block Sensors & Scans, invisibility concept - indirectly

and, finally... spies gaining experience to become Heroes and progressively enhanced by themselves.

Surprise us all with anything or something else!

But i'm wishing (as what was inserted on purpose in the X-Worlds 05-F mod) for the best & more -- overhere.

I'm really looking forward to the updated manual. Right now, and old manual from a previous version seems to be renamed to 'twilightmanual.pdf' and included in the download. Some explanation in that PDF about the new manual being work in progress would have been nice and less confusing for new players such as me.

Hey, are extra super abilities (for the custom race) part of the "new content" you've been working on?  

What about a terraforming or Shake and bake colony system, where you could develop a tech line that would allow you to colonize a 0 planet. I mean that one is not that far off, I was watch a documnetary about how we might terraform Mars someday, I mean I know that mars is already a 4 but you get what I am driving at. Would be cool to see a "genesis device" in game. Its not impossible because minor races that spawn do that taking control of once 0 planets so its in the code some where right?

Also this is most likely a Gal Civ III thing but how about a little control over how your ships approach a battle. For one thing why do they always fight to the death, even Civ 4 has a units chances of withdrawling from battle. I mena if you have three little ships get attacked by a huge fleet why not have them withdrawl, or maybe they could use a hit and run tactic where they get off a salvo and then retreat, might add a layer of tactical planning to the game. I am not saying a tactical map in which we control but more a general order we can select, kind of like the pre invasion screen to tell our ships what we want them to do in general. This could be techs that you get after developing a war college and would be like the invasions, steller officers? Maybe? Also it could set your fleet to skirmish or defensive to reduce losses or my agressive which means you will inflict more damage but lose more ships in the process.

Again I could see that being a Gal Civ III thing.

Another thing I would like to see would be a "Federation" diplomatic option for good races. Its not fair that minor races pop up and evil races conquoer them get the planet and perhaps steel some good techs and the good guys are helpless to do the same without being a bad guy. But perhaps minor races would join the "Federation" which would be a peaceful way to incorperate minor factions into a major one, especially if there already in your border or you have some treaties and an alliance with them? This could also perhaps happen with a major race that is not doing so well kind of like a surrender but not as stupid, I don't know how you can be losing a war and surrender to someone else, be like the Germans surrendering to the Japanese in WWII just to stick it to the Allies, you should have to surrender to the race beating your brains in.

Also said this before but more ship jewels would be great. Ship design is half the fun of this game and is part of the reason that despite the fact that I have been playing for years the game still feels fresh and new.

At the moment fleet combat is relatively simple, so even an AI can put together fleets that give the human player a challenge. By putting fleet combat strategies on the table, you have to teach the AI how to use those strategies. Finally, although these changes would be reflected in the combat viewer, they might not necessarily look good.

Targeting the ship that is able to inflict the most damage per unit of damage receivable does make a lot of sense. Fighting to the last ship makes sense if you have another wave waiting to mop up stragglers, and the crews eject or make it to escape pods before their ship blows up.

I definitely agree with this 1000%. I believe in one game I played, when war was declared on me. spies became disabled, when I.H.M.O. when at war should be the only time that spies should be allowed to disrupt andplace infrastructure out of action.


I remain unconvinced that this needs implementing as a Tech, more as a Diplomatic option to swop star-map-data. This is perhaps a GC3 level of revision. Anyway, strategically and tactically such swopping is a 2-edged-sword. :NOTSURE:

Debug Message: Saving: Game mode is normal.
This is the last line of my debug.err file, obviously it doesn't even say the game crahed. However, Vista (Home Premium, 32-bit) always reports it had to close the application because of a "Buffer Overrun" after I've started 'Task Manager' because the game hangs while displaying its activity as "Saving" after I've clicked on the turn-button or pressed >return<.
In another thread forum members advise pressing the >spacebar<, so I reloaded the game and pressed the >spacebar<. Poof, the game was gone! :SURPRISED:

Debug.err Highlights are : -

System Manufacturer: INTEL_
System Model: D5400XS_
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Extreme CPU X9775 @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Physical Memory: 3068MB RAM
Page File: 1110MB used, 6997MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows

Device Name: \\.\DISPLAY1
Card Name: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip Type: NVxx
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Key Device: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0604&SUBSYS_23701682&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1778 MB
Current Display Mode: 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Max Resolution:
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.7519
Driver Date: 5/16/2008 14:01:00
DirectX Acceleration Enabled: Yes

Debug Message: WARNING: Starbase module: Starship Repair Bay could not find tech requirement: Basic Starship Repair in galaxy tech list - Using no tech requirement.

Debug Message: Reading Star Names
Debug Message: Reading Star Names... Done
Debug Message: Loading Game
Debug Message: Loading: Game mode is normal.
Debug Message: Loading Galaxy
Debug Message: Game started in version v1.96 Twilight of the Arnor
Debug Message: Using mod Generic
Debug Message: Mod description: This is a generic mods folder for casual mods.
Debug Message: Sectors across: 22 x 22
Debug Message: Loading FOW Map
Debug Message: Loading ZOC Map
Debug Message: Loading Planets
Debug Message: Loading Stars
Debug Message: Loading Anomalies
Debug Message: Loading Resources
Debug Message: Loading AscensionCrystals
Debug Message: Loading AsteroidFields
Debug Message: Loading AFMiningBases
Debug Message: Loading Civs
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Terran Alliance who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Drengin Empire who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Altarian Resistance who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Arcean Empire who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Torian Confederation who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Dominion of Korx who has intelligence 40
Debug Message: Loading player civ Solarians
Debug Message: Loaded Civ Pirates who has intelligence 1
Debug Message: Loading Colonies
Debug Message: Loading RallyPoints
Debug Message: Loading Ships
Debug Message: Loading Fleets
Debug Message: Loading Turn Event Log
Debug Message: Loading Treaties
Debug Message: Loading ENDGALAXYDATA
Debug Message: Updating ZOC.
Debug Message: UIBeginGame called with g_ulLocalPlayerID = 6
Debug Message: UIBeginGameHelper: New Game Started
Debug Message: UIBeginGameHelper: Mods are Enabled
Debug Message: Destroying ship Colony Ship 283. Orbiting: 0
Debug Message: Updating ZOC.
Debug Message: Destroying ship Altarian Scout Ship M0 v2 289. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Wisp
Debug Message: Destroying ship Arcean Scout Ship M0 v2 290. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Arcea
Debug Message: Destroying ship Terran Colony Ship M0 v2 275. Orbiting: 0
Debug Message: Updating ZOC.
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: About to auto save.
Debug Message: Save Game: About to save
Debug Message: Saving game C:\Users\***{edited-out}***\Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\AutoSave.tmp
Debug Message: Num Sectors Across: 22
Debug Message: Saving: Game mode is normal.

I actually have 8Gb's of RAM although MicroSoft's system is only capable of using 4Gb's less system usage for mapped memory (driver addresses / values, etc.). I also have 2 X9775 4-core CPU's. So there's no shortage of Processing power or RAM. Sorries for the boast. I am using the Pants-Political-Parties Mod and a tweaked Anomalies Mod. and a few 'Improvement.xml' file tweaks (through the Editor).

This is not the first-time occurrence of this game phemomenon. My Civ's abilities have been tweaked for an 80% Planet Quality level which I consider to be pertinent if not somehow the cause of this fault. (:(

That advice you saw was only for cases where the turn button disappears but the game does not proceed; if it hangs on save it's a different issue.

Does it happen every time you play when the game tries to autosave? Have you tried it without the mods, and with standard race configurations?

The short answer is 'no' because it never happened in V1.95 ( the version I downloaded when I purchaed "Twilight").

I could try that but I much prefer my own race, the "Solarians", as I've stated before I prefer a more colonialization (English) style of game building up to a war of allies with self-designed "Capital" grade Spacecraft on an Immense or Gigantic map.

It somehow just rang a bell with me that in V1.96 the change log states somewhere that it fixed the bug where you could have 72-tile planets (which I never experienced), although V1.96 does seem to cope with plants of up to 50-tiles.

The bug does happen sooner or later in every game, I haven't been counting but from the progress made in research in the game I'd guesstimate it's happening around the hundred turn mark, plus-or-minus 30 turns.

Anyway thanks for the interest Kryo, however I've now re-discovered how to properly submit am "Error Report", it's been such a long time since I've needed to I'd forgotten, and am about to do so after posting this.

So...how's progress on 2.0?

Thats what I want to know. Cause I do remember reading a article telling us that basically there would be a progress report from Stardock sometime in August and maybe a release too... so how things going?

There are still 2.5 weeks remaining in August, so they got plenty of time to hit that date.