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Join Date 12/2008

Good while it lasted

Wow, another bug? I produced a freighter from Haven, sent it to Grace to make Grace the source, then sent it to its destination Begle. The trade route showed up as Haven-to-Begle, yet the route value is much higher than from Haven to nearby Tralar. Either a bug, or it's just not possible to produce a freighter on one planet and freely make another planet its source.

Actually, my first complaint is that GalCiv2 forum servers are terribly slow, slow enough for me to finish lunch before the first thread comes up. And since that is my first complaint, I'll take the chance to write as much as I can in this one post I can afford!

Speaking of bugs, there seems to be many in GalCiv2. Many seem blatantly simple. Is there no bug report facility? Perhaps we could help the developer team cleanly organize bug reports (say with Mantis?)? Is there a need for us to help with version control or something?

In short, I'm really wondering what's up with the developer team on GalCiv2. The concept is really neat. The programming, maybe not terribly sophisticated (compared with real-time games). Yet, all these problems?

As someone from the IT industry, I can pretty much guess what's going on, or what's missing. There's a marked difference between the team on Sins of a Solar Empire and the team on GalCiv2.

Or it could just be a matter of human resource, if given similarly messy organization in both teams.

Someone here even mentioned the dreaded "bug-become-feature" syndrome. A bad sign for any developer team.

Anyway, it was nice while it lasted. GalCiv2 is simply too buggy in various aspects. I could make a good list of bugs and issues, but I'm not sure if it's even worth my time. I'll stick with chess and the occasional Sins click-fest. I regret not returning the Ultimate Edition I bought; support on Impulse seems improbable.

By the way, for all the espionage posts I read here, none mentioned that there's a way to use spies WITHOUT losing a single one, ever. I spotted a few studious researchers on this forum. Maybe they'll be interested to know this. This is yet another issue with the game.

All in all, severe problems in:

1. Game bugs/issues

2. Slow forum server speed

3. Lack of easy bug reporting facility

4. Forum itself is buggy (no preview, no search, etc). I sure hope this isn't used as a bug reporting facility.

Good while it lasted. Can't waste my life tinkering with a toy like this anymore. I thought it was a solid strategy game, since it comes from Stardock.

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GalCiv2 is simply too buggy in various aspects.

Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.

The forum speed varies, but generally seems quite fast on my end at least. And as the reply-editor is WYSIWYG, I haven't missed preview mode either. Although I have to admit, Impulse download speeds sometime ARE excruciatingly slow, down to under 100 kB/s.

PS: Traderoute income is based on route length AND population / income of the planets. Also, the route income in the window is the one currently generated, which increases with time. So an old route will naturally show more income than a newly established one.

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By the way, for all the espionage posts I read here, none mentioned that there's a way to use spies WITHOUT losing a single one, ever. I spotted a few studious researchers on this forum. Maybe they'll be interested to know this. This is yet another issue with the game.

Being one of the people's who's post you probably read, you would note that in 2.02, passive spies cannot be lost, only the active, destructive spies can...as they should.

Sure, the bug-reporting is clunkier than just a window that pops up and hit send. Once you are use to it and being reliant to do some leg-work, then you pick up Smart Exception from Stardock and also grab the debug.err and email it to their support address for them to analize. Forum bug support isn't the 100% way to go, but often times eithe Kryo or someone from the community helps out.

Forum speed. It depends on browser and oddly enough, windows build and addons and such. For some odd reason, the forums are horridly slow at home for me with FF 2, yet at work they run faster w/ FF 2.

The freighter thing, that is just how they work. Whatever planet they get built on is their source.

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Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.

The exploitable bug I found trading influence comes darn near close, IMHO.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

I regret not returning the Ultimate Edition I bought; support on Impulse seems improbable.

The patch went up yesterday.

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1. Game bugs/issues

I've been playing these games & expansions for a couple of years now... and whatever 'crashing' events i experienced were mostly (99% of the time) caused by my END of 'puter settings & hardware.

Besides, SD staff & coders are professional enough to FIX, TWEAK, debug their own extremely_near_flawless game(s) often enough that my leisure time is shielded with three thick Duranthium levels, sealed with a few coats of Adamantium glue, nailed by a series of Arnor rivets, locked up behind enhanced espionage walls, protected by a bunch of Black Hole Eruptors... for all my moneys worth.

Forums? Reporting Bugs, easily?

Look around abit, would you.

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Quoting tetleytea,

reply 3

Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.

The exploitable bug I found trading influence comes darn near close, IMHO.

What patch? Impulse doesn't show any new version ready to install for me-lats version 2.02.030, which I installed on December 3, 2008. Is there something else beyond that currently available?

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Mac2411, Kryo possibly meant that the patch is for the European *Ultimate* version... not what most of us have (US or Canada and a few more places, maybe!).

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Quoting pndrev,

reply 1

GalCiv2 is simply too buggy in various aspects.

Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.

Someone below posted the 2.02 for my Ultimate Edition came up yesterday! Downloading it right now.

(And to Loupdinour as well...) The espionage exploit is for active spies as well. I have never lost a single spy I placed on planets. This exploit effectively halves my opponents' production.

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Quoting Zyxpsilon,

reply 5

1. Game bugs/issues

I've been playing these games & expansions for a couple of years now... and whatever 'crashing' events i experienced were mostly (99% of the time) caused by my END of 'puter settings & hardware.

Besides, SD staff & coders are professional enough to FIX, TWEAK, debug their own extremely_near_flawless game(s) often enough that my leisure time is shielded with three thick Duranthium levels, sealed with a few coats of Adamantium glue, nailed by a series of Arnor rivets, locked up behind enhanced espionage walls, protected by a bunch of Black Hole Eruptors... for all my moneys worth.

Forums? Reporting Bugs, easily?

Look around abit, would you.

One bug was the wrong estimation of completion time for planet improvements that are being upgraded. There wasn't any reply to that bug I reported, except something along the lines of "not a new bug, been there so long, not sure if it'll ever get fixed".

Well, I just fired up 2.02, and that above bug seems gone. Will see if it comes up again.

Fortunately for me, 2.02 for Ultimate Edition came up yesterday. Unfortunately, there is now a crash bug that didn't exist in 1.97. Anyway, things are looking good again. I'm sure more patches are on the way.

I just wonder where this comment came from: "some bugs are there for so long, they've become a feature".

Misinformation, perhaps. Also, I was misinformed here that tournament scores don't depend on the number of turns I take to finish game (less turns translating into higher scores). A few good stickied posts, or some solid manual, should solve that. An easily searchable forum will do too.

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Quoting pndrev,

reply 1

Are you sure you're playing the latest 2.02 version? Because I haven't seen any gamebreaking bugs or CTDs for quite a while.

There are at least 2 huge gamebreaking bugs still in the latest version, although I imagine Stardock will eventually get around to them, since they have said they confirmed one of them is a bug, and not a 'terrific new feature'. Of course, only happens on huge and larger maps for the most part.

AI doesn't expand. Some do, evil civs don't. Various other civ's don't. This is game-breaking because you know what civ's are going to be fluff before you even start a new game, takes the immersion right out of the game.

AI's don't build any planetary improvements. Some AI's dont build anything at all on many planets outside their intial sphere of influence, the Torians do this all the time, as well as many others (not the evil civ's, since they don't leave their initial sphere ever, unless through conquest). I have not heard Stardock say anything on this yet, but is very annoying, I have seen this happen in every single version of ToA so far, including 2.02... never saw it in DA or DL that I can remember though. This is game breaking because every planet where nothing is built also will not be defended, it just sits there, often I build transports (and rename them to colony ships), since that is in essence what they are doing when they take these planets.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

In many areas GC2 has exceeded my expectations, and yet because of those last few things that need fixing, I'm disillusioned enough to put it aside and play something that doesn't quite meet my expectations but doesn't get me obsessing about Teh Last Bugz.

Don't get me wrong, it's got playability in spades, but it's difficult to settle down and play the game when you have to avoid using feature X because it's broken.

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Setting the 'personalities' of certain AI civ's will avoid these problems, you can set their personalities during game setup screens, and change say the Drengin and Korath to Generic Personality, same with Torians and Iconians so they actually build stuff. But you lose some of what makes them 'them'.

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