While cosmetic only, shouldn't a class 16 planet look somewhat Earth-like? My second game with Beta4a has one that looks like Mars, both on the main map and in the planet view. I can send in a saved game if needed.

in GC1 i seem to be intuitively able to see the best planets so far in GC2 I have to click on them to do so, so I think there is deffo something in what you say - perhaps I AM JUST TOO EARTHBOUND!

in GC1 i seem to be intuitively able to see the best planets so far in GC2 I have to click on them to do so, so I think there is deffo something in what you say - perhaps I AM JUST TOO EARTHBOUND!

If you want to know which planets are decent at-a-glance, just zoom out until it switches to the strategic view.

Starting new game gives me very very fast animations on planet rotations and shipyard.

This seems to be related to my CPU (AMD X2 3800+) becasue when i set to affinity to one processor in the main menu and start again it seems to be ok.

I have found that it is very easy to mine galactic resources: the mining improvements don't seem to require techs.

O.K., this was an odd one. Since GC2 CDT's on me too often to finish a game, and it CDT's within a few turns if I try loading a saved game, so I tried a tiny game, rare stars, rare planets, rare inhabitable planets and a single opponent. Figured that way I'd get it over with fast. Well, it still CDT'ed before I could explore a 3x3 sector map, but that's not what I'm reporting. It seems it stuffed my opponent into a pocket universe, because even after exploring all the stars, I couldn't find him. He was having some population growth and doing some tech research, so he existed somewhere. Sadly without a saved game file, I've got no evidence, as I hadn't saved it since normally the games last longer than that.

If you want to know which planets are decent at-a-glance, just zoom out until it switches to the strategic view.

Given that it's so easy to zoom out on the main map, and that that view shows you planet quality, resources, starbases, anomolies, etc, I'm starting to question the need for the mini-map. If you could just zoom out on the main map and then have the options (like you do on the mini-map) to show autopilot, influence zones, etc, then why do you need the mini-map?

Could be that also. It's certainly not staying put--when I saved, my current research had only a few weeks to go, and when I loaded, it had 40+ weeks to go

I saved a game last night with only 6 weeks to go for researching Star Democracy. Upon loading tonight it shows as 26 weeks.

Post edited: Interesting, after the first turn the time to research went from 26 to 25, then after one more turn it went to 18. Now it's going down one week per turn as expected. I wonder if the effect is simliar to the drop in influence after a load of a saved game, where the influence comes back up as it is recalculated over the next few turns. In this case, of course, the research doesn't appear to get back to normal.

Given that it's so easy to zoom out on the main map, and that that view shows you planet quality, resources, starbases, anomolies, etc, I'm starting to question the need for the mini-map. If you could just zoom out on the main map and then have the options (like you do on the mini-map) to show autopilot, influence zones, etc, then why do you need the mini-map?

i agree jmgarth and have suggested it before - i'm on a 10.6inch widescreen and the "starship console" takes up a fair bit of room - i'm wondering whether when you pull out to tactical, the console drops down, just leaving the tool bar - that way you have a much better view. it may also then be that you can constuct your own tactical menus (like the quick build) round the edge of your tactical map.....

i agree jmgarth and have suggested it before - i'm on a 10.6inch widescreen and the "starship console" takes up a fair bit of room - i'm wondering whether when you pull out to tactical, the console drops down, just leaving the tool bar - that way you have a much better view. it may also then be that you can constuct your own tactical menus (like the quick build) round the edge of your tactical map.....

Excellent idea!

The planet/ship quick build list shows different completion times than the completion times shown if you go to the planet window. For example, Primus II one the quick build list shows 26 weeks to complete the extreme stadium, while if I go to the planet window for Primus II it shows a completion time of 23 weeks.

I didn't think about it until you two guys mentioned it but I hardly ever use the mini-map during games. The main map is just too versatile to waste time looking at the mini-map. It seems that Stardock, by making the main map so great, have made the minimap nearly obsolete.

Above in post #61 and earlier, I reported a problem where Senate elections lose track of which party you are. I've now confirmed that this is related to loading a saved game. In my current game (Beta4a) I'm playing as Technologists. After changing government to Republic I went through several election cycles with no obvious anomolies. Then I saved the game and quit. Tonight I reloaded the game, and on the first Senate event, where I was trying to change the government to Democracy, the game claims my party is now "Industrialists" and that the Technologists (my real party) voted against me. This is now 3 out of 3 games where after a save/reload the game insists that my party is Industrialists, despite the fact that I had started out as Federalist/Federalist/Technologist.

ok, I finally was able to win a vote to convert to a democracy, but the vote smells of integer overflows, although I thought I'd seen that BoogieMac had said that was fixed in Beta4a.

My attempt to post the image here didn't work, so I'll email the image to gc2bugs.

I didn't think about it until you two guys mentioned it but I hardly ever use the mini-map during games. The main map is just too versatile to waste time looking at the mini-map. It seems that Stardock, by making the main map so great, have made the minimap nearly obsolete.

Well, giving the fact that I can't zoom out with hot keys (I have already post a bug about this) on my computer (french keyborad and french XP), I found the mini-map helpful

Well, giving the fact that I can't zoom out with hot keys (I have already post a bug about this) on my computer (french keyborad and french XP), I found the mini-map helpful

Get a mouse with a scroll wheel

Does the cultural victory work? My influence sphere is the whole galaxy (I am playing medium cakewalk), cultural victory is enabled but I don't see any countdown.

I found a problem with queue and upgrade: if you have put some entertainment network in the building queue of a planet and discover the tech that allow to build the multimedia center, the entertainement networks that are in the queue aren't upgraded and are stuck with an ETA of 1 week: turns can pass, they won't be build. And they prevent following improvements in the queue to be build.

I have get flipped some AI planets. They were building ships. I have decomissionned the starport. The planet details no longer give the ability to build ship, which is normal. But the ships were nevertheless built few turn later, which is very anormal.

Does the cultural victory work?

Yes, I've won two games so far by culture flipping the Korx.

I reported a problem with culture flipped worlds not obeying the Governor, and Cari said she'd look into it.

Graphic bug:


The sun, when it touches the border of the interface (where we click to get everywhere) loses its exterior and all we see is the polygonal network building its "round" surface.


My specs:
laptop ThinkPad R50
Centrino 1.5
512 RAM
Radeon 7500, 32 RAM
WinXP
DirectX 8.1

Yes, I've won two games so far by culture flipping the Korx.

I am not thinking about winning by flipping all worlds. I am thinking about Galciv I cultural win: being the most influential civ during x times.

build times
::big:: Others have likely reported this or mentioned it, or what have you... but I'll just re-iterate. The build times for projects/ships are not 100% accurate, sometimes you will stay on "1 week" for 2 or more turns. Most evident if you start a new game, flip your spending sliders to 100% social, 100% spending, build a factory... it claims 1 week, but it really takes 2.

::small:: In addition to that, if you have 0% military production, the quick build list and starport UIs show a -1 for build time...whereas the colony management screen properly changes this to a "Never".

planet details UI
(polish) Whilst in your polish mode and cleaning up your text strings... the "word on the street" has some funky characters in it... I noticed it on the one that said "Taxes are at a pretty fair level right now. Alan Bradley seems to be a decient job keeping things balanced...let's hope it stays that way." The funky characters are at the beginning and the end of that snippet, and the misspelling is not my typo.

(polish) more /n's in text... this time in the main planet description, center screen.

::bug:: Starbase bonuses are not being listed.

main map
(polish, cosmetic) There is still that quirky, non-critical, issue of ships being painted on screen, facing a direction they are not traveling. It's purely cosmetic, if you manually move them, or leave them on auto pilot and watch them move, theyre facing will properly change...

saved games (just for reference, this has been an auto-save game that I loaded up)
- the tax rate is not being saved properly
- ship icons for ships in a planets orbit dissapear. not the shield on the planet, but the icon for each ship in orbit.
that is, until you click on atleast one icon for each type of ship, select another planet, then go back to the previous one... then all the
- starbases on a resource when clicked on previously displayed the description for whatever resource was there, but now it only shows the starbase stats...

Ran into 2 problems that may be bugs. 1. In the planet building que, the list will not scroll up or down, you can move the highlighted job up and down via the arrows, but the scroll bar will not move.
2. Even after deselecting the Follow autopilot ships, the game continues to bounce, and I do me bounce between any ships that are on autopilot.
I also experianced a crash to Desktop, with a windows error tracking messge, this was while trying to save a game I loaded from a autosaved game I had been playing.
Tonight I am going to uninstall, clean and reinstall the game to see if that may have been the issue

GW

Ran a game on a tiny map with abundant habitable planets but rare everything else. Included one AI opponent...

There were about 4 stars, but apparently the game didn't create the Sol system. The terran alliance was placed in MY system, on a class 0 world. Game ended on turn 4 with victory for me.

Also, neither the terran alliance, nor the thalans (me) had their native system. We ended up in the primus system. They were on Primus 2, and I was on Primus 1.

after you finish researching the Trade technology, in the GNN news window, instead of Buy, it says guy.