The -worst- copy protection is my opinion is Valve's Steam engine. What an intrusive piece of #$%^. I have an untouched HL2 DVD sitting on my shelf because of this horrible little program. My favorite part was when Steam started causing problems with the sound in the game, which was confirmed about a thousand times by users and flatly denied by V
I do not quite get your line of argument. In my opinion, the code "cheats" whenever it provides resources (typically information or production boost) to AI that is denied to the player. Usually it is done purposefully to provide challenge to the player (this includes "cheating" to make the game "work") but sometimes it is unintentional (as it appears to be the case with th
I think this mechanic is already supposed to exist in the form of the maintenance cost, which is great because it shares the resource used for economic and research development (money), which means you have to find a balance between all three. The problem is that the maintenance cost is negligible compared to a strong economy, so you get 7-doom-ray ships. I don’t remember off-hand, is the maintenance cost of components included in gc2types, or is it internal? Note: I just thought, to i
I like it, this has the potential to be a real genre-breaker, like Hegemonia could have been. Hopefully they keep the focus on the RTS part, though.
It's worth mentioning that you can 'fix' the problem yourself by changing the sizemods of every component to 0 in gc2types.xml. It makes a big change to the game, though, so you might not like it as much as you think.
Knowing the location of a resource without exploration certainly qualifies as AI cheating to me. The fact that this is done to provide challenge to the player is beside the point. I couldn't really call this cheating. It's a real trick that the AI is even capable of not knowing everything about the map, almost every 4x or RTS game ever made does
I don't think this will work, unfortunately. First, the code assumes a certain number of raceIDs, ending with the Dread Lords. Second, minor races are placed based on the size of the map and the distance between each player, specifically to avoid doing what you want to do. It would be an interesting scenario, though.
I think you can just delete your old ships, the game keeps a copy of your ships in the save file. As far as I can tell, the files are only used to transfer ships between games. The easiest thing to do is make a batch file that clears the contents of the ships directory before launching the program, this will keep each game separate and your old games will still work.
I notice there are a lot of unanswered posts on this topic recently, maybe someone could post a tutorial on dealing with meshes and hardpoints? Or, maybe Stardock could post some information about how they make them?
I don't see why they would still revolt, their only reason for revolting is because they think the high influence empire is so much better than their own they would like to join it. If they know they can't they'll stay with their current empire, they don't dislike their own empire, or if they do they can perform an unhappyness revolt instead of a culture one. </ta
Personally, I'm glad at the lack of multiplayer in GC2. There are design problems involved with trying to make games work both ways, and it usually compromises the gameplay. For example, RTS games are mostly multiplayer, and so mostly the AI sucks in those games. However, the unit balancing sill has to accommodate the crappy AIs, so both sides lose out.
I am working on a bugfix mod that will finally fix the broken hardpoints on ships (i.e. rotated 90 degrees instead of flipped, shifted left, etc.) It will also set all hardpoints facing straight forward, and contain a set of improved shipcfg files for the AI. As of 1.3, I need a tool that will convert the binary files back into plain text so I can edit them. Is there a way to do this using free tools? If not, what was actually changed in the new meshes? Request: In DA, can someone add
Simple, the leader can just refuse to let them join his empire. By letting them know this beforehand any incentive to revolt should be removed. Maybe then they could still revolt, but join another empire instead. This way there would be an unpredictable cost (or benefit) associated with rejecting a planet. In the diplomacy screen, there
Building your own PC costs about $600 and a little time/effort compared to paying four times as much for Mommy Dell to sell you an equivalent machine preloaded with garbage software. You can get a top-of-the-line machine for that price too, if you're willing to recycle non-CPU components like the HD and monitor. Now that consoles are nudging up
#1 Diplomacy: Exactly as stated above. The ability to communicate conditional statements to the AI. #2 Race-specific objects: Without using the custom tech tree hack. Lots of modding potential here. #3 'Shipyard-only' flag for ship designs: Enough said. #4 Nothing: I like the new features, but there is a need for another solid round of QA testing. For example, PQ bonus of captured planets, "11string not found", etc.
I'll say this, if I can't find a crack for the game, I won't buy it. This has become my decision rule for all new purchaces since protection methods started blacklisting third-party software. I couldn't see straight after the first time I saw one of those little windows telling me to uninstall software from MY computer.
Those definitions are in the game's code. I wouldn't recommend changing them anyway, however, because the AI gets a little weird if it's production capacity is too far off from it's available techs.
It's 'The Balance'. I'd personally like to see features which really dig into managing a civilization; specializing planets, setting food routes, and all the other little things which keep the typical obsessive-compulsive player happy. Hell, left to my own devices, I'd be plotting out power conduits on my ships. But for every detail which is expanded, the game's
The only problem I see with this idea is, how long do most games really take? I don't think I've had a game thats lasted more then 5 years and I played a tough game on a huge map with 9 AI. It wouldn't even have to happen every game, though. It'd be a lot like a random event, except that you could make it happen to someone else. I don't
It would be great to be able to deal with that diplomatically. If you can use influence to weaken military production, and you can use ships to intimidate other races, why not use diplomacy to change influence rules? At the very least, you could pay another race to not flip a planet.
The other problem is that each race-specific change then also requires it's own technology, and also shows up seperately from the main item instead of replacing it. And you have to disable tech trading for it to work smoothly. My idea is to use this feature to tweak the default items for each race instead of adding new ones. It would really help to differentiate more between races if the Thalans had slightly better factories and the Drath had slightly smaller defense components. Unfortu
Will there be an option to add race-specific items in future versions? Specifically, it would be great for improvements, starbase modules, components, and technologies to be able to be divided that way.
There are some good ways to use surrendering to your advantage, but the problem is that, for a lot of players, it messes up the story. I don't like the idea of one race immediately becoming indistinguishable from another, and I hate having to end a war because it was going too well. Any word from Stardock on this one?
Yeah, I think that the threat is implied if you ask for something without offering anything else in return. The AI'll never surrender something as vital as a planet or a starbase though. I thought that might be the case, but there are 4 problems with this: 1. You cannot use a threat in connection with anything else. The idea is to offer
I know that DA lets you customize other races, will any part of this include the ability to switch off or tweak the surrender function that the AI uses? I have issues with that particular feature, and I think it's something that would make the whole game much more fun for certain playing styles. Also, is it possible to jack up loyalty bonuses to the point where it effectively shuts off planet-flipping?
