Tertullian

I have a new (1-month old) laptop with the *evil* Vista OS on it and experienced this problem. After playing around trying to figure it out, I found that when a lot of background processes are running (i.e., anti-virus scans the hard drive) the crackling happens. When the anti-virus is not scanning the hard drive, sound is great. So my advise is to see if there is anything in the background that is accessing the hard disk frequently. P.S., did I say that I hate Vista?

Ahh...ok...all the ships so far I've built are unarmed (colony/constructor/survey). That would explain it. Thanks!

Just downloaded DA 1.61.090 and am playing first game with this version. Still early into the game. I have noticed that when I design new ships, there is a stated maintenance cost>0 during the design process, but when I save the design the maintenance cost=0. Looking through all of the DA screens, it does appear that my ship maintenance cost are actually zero and my treasury does not get docked for any ship maintenance costs. Unless I'm missing a particular rule where

OP--kindness begets kindness. Had you simply asked for the information you need instead of ranting, your problem may have been solved by now. Yet you have still failed to give anyone looking at this post key pieces of information needed to be able to help you. What specific game did you buy? Gal Civ I, Gal Civ II, or Dread Lords? Did the advise from Frogboy work: If it's GalCiv II (plain old GalCiv II) you just go to the downloads area and cl

You need to balance your economy, production, and research. From your post you are focused on production and research, but are ignoring the economy. This is why you go broke so fast and the game seems to come to a screeching halt. Here are some tips--this build pattern is fairly reliable, but there are be better ones out there once you gain more experience. This gives a balanced planet, and assumes a PQ10+ planet: 1. Upon initial colonization, build 2 factories. 2. Buil

Make sure that you update to the latest version. Looking through the wiki at specific game concepts would be good (the manual is not useful since the game has changed significantly since then). Part of the fun is "learning" some of the good techniques and strategies as you move up on the difficulty level. As far as the knobology and button pushing goes to get things done, the tutorials are probably your best bet...they aren't tooo long but are tedius and boring.

Financing for ship upgrades is based on a capitalistic economic system--you get a discount on the upgrade price for cash up front. Otherwise you have different financing terms where a down payment is made, and then regular weekly payments for a certain number of months. Of course, financing charges add to the net cost of the upgrade. If you have a robust economy, ship upgrades won't bankrupt you unless you try to upgrade all ships in a class where you have large numbers to upgrade. Many

For me tiny hulls are thowaways. Small ships are my bread and butter through to mid-game. After a few rounds of combat my veteran small ships have the hit points of a new medium or more. With weapons upgrades and operating in a pack they pretty easily take down smaller fleets of larger ships. I also use small ships as my planet defenders to put up a feasible defense against attack, as a reserve fighting force, and as an invasion preventer. Once mid-game hits, I focus m

It depends upon your gameplay style. For a while preferred neutral myself. More recently I've become enamored of Evil--those moral choice bonuses are pretty appetizing as well as the new weapons. If memory serves me correct, discussion on the forums generally consideres neutral the most powerful, evil second, and good a distand third. I guess good guys really do finish last!

Not sure of where you got that idea of how pop growth occurs. It is wrong on most counts. The initial colony base supports 6 Billion people. Each farm adds support for 3 additional Billion (with incrases to this value for the food population techs researched). Population growth each week depends upon your planet's morale (for example pop growth is doubled with 100% morale). Base population growth is some small fraction of your current population, with an upper limit (I don't kn

Better this "Stupid activation bs" as you say than a Starforce-style protection system that wreaks havoc with your computer. Stardock's system is one of the least onerous in the industry. Not to mention the fact that they bend over backwards to try to be helpful to you.

When pursuing an influence victory, you can go about it a couple of ways: 1) the pacifist way is to litter space with influence starbases and try to "flip" planets to your civ. However, as you have noted the AI sees your strategy and doesn't like it so he declares war on you. 2) Be aggressive in going to war with civs that do not share your moral alignment to eradicate them. Be buddies with those with your moral alignment so they don't declare war on you due to your ever increasing influ

Cheese anyone?

When going to war against the big guy a key question is relative military strength in the field of battle. Even if your enemy has overwhelming military based on the graph, if he can't mass his force effectively to take you out you can start chipping away at him. Fight on your terms with superior firepower. This helps minimize your own ship losses and begins to shift the military balance. This may also be an opportunity to form a bastion or enclave area containing military starb

Sounds like Fuels Chief has too much time off watch underway! Maybe I ought to call your CO and tell him to work you harder. My gigantic games also take me around 30 hours of game time, over many sittings (2-3 weeks). Medium games take me 6-12 hours. Usually over 2-4 sittings. Overall I like to take a break once the colony rush is over and consider my strategy for a few days bef

I think using the focus button would be the way to go. Let's say you have 10 tiles to devote to some combination of manufacturing facilities or research facilities. If you split 5 manu and 5 research, and assuming you're at a point where each building gives 5 production/research points you could, with sliders at 100% research or manuf max out at 50 points either towards research or production (excluding the colony tile effect). With slider at 50% production/50% research you are only get

In the spirit of mouse click reduction, I'd like to have the ability to upgrade all ships of the same type in a fleet rather than having to upgrade each one individually. Many a time in a war I've only got funds to upgrade one or two fleets a turn, not the entire class of ships. It's a real pain to upgrade a fleet of 8 Storm-class fighters to Tornado-class fighters one by one (5 clicks/ship x 8 ships = 40 clicks minimum!)

In principle borders must be defensible and defended. It does me no good to claim a border that I do not have the ability to defend--my claim lacks substance. A good example is the old 3-mile territorial waters boundary which came about because in the 17th through 18th centuries land fortifications could only hurl a cannon ball out to 3 miles. Beyond that any territorial claims had not substance or support. I think a borders concept could be included in the next version or expa

1. You need a specific "survey" module to grab anomolies. Your initial flagship has that, but to build other ships with survey modules you need to research Sensors. 2. Factories only support production (social and mil) on their own planet. There are also modifiers to production such as econ starbases that can affect all planets within the radius of influence of the starbase. Some technologies also apply global bonuses (as a percentage) to all of your planets. 3. The +10 economi

nutcase2--possibly a bad install disk? If you've got a high speed internet connection, you can download the game from the web using your registration key. The bonus is that it will be up to date to version 1.4x which is the latest and greatest.

Even in v1.4x the turn button sometimes turns green with movement left on some ships. Though not as often as in prior versions from what I recall. The best bet is to hit the "find" button. If there are ships left with movement points (other than those headed to rally points or other multi-turn destinations), the view will center on that ship.

If your video drivers are over a year old, you need to update them. This is the most frequent cause of this problem. If your computer was top of the range a year ago, it should be able to run the game easily once the video drivers are updated. If that doesn't work, post the debug.err text file (found in the directory where the game program files are located). This may give a clue as to what the problem is and help others help you.

Fungus--having re-read your original posts (which I did prior to my first reply to this post), I can find *nowhere* in your previous posts specifically requesting "that if it was 'not' a bug to please post a reply that states why." Perhaps I missed that line in your previous posts, but I think not. Have you followed up as Kryo suggested? In this thread you have received replys from *two* Stardock employees, both of which appear to have read your previous posts. Also, k

Make sure you upgrade to the latest version (1.4x). It includes a lot of bug fixes and enhancements to the game.

It is more a strategic level game, not a tactical one. Thus while you control the wars, individual battles are determined by a "roll of the dice". No, the game can't be modded to allow you to control the tactical combat. The video accompanying ground and space combat is simply eye candy, but good at that. So you do watch the battles unfold.