Actually, while I'm not wrong about there being negative influence coming from labs, it doesn't appear to be the only cause. It seems that more populated worlds, such as but not restricted to the homeworld, are subject to influence penalties, but those with just an initial colony only have a penalty when they have labs.
I noticed that in the latest beta, research facilities appear to make it easier to influence a planet. Each lab generates -1 influence points, which is multiplied in the event it is on a tile which has a research bonus. So I'm intrigued to know whether this is an intentional addition, or an accidental one.
My suggestion would be to first of all, prohibit planetary attack by forces which were not within a few squares of the planet at the beginning of the turn. I feel that if you're going to gain air superiority for a ground assault, it should take at least one turn. If you have a fully-escorted fleet of transports and you're not simply cherry-picking the planet, then you have nothing to fear from in-system fleets attempting to defend the planet. Thusly, the AI could always make a proper
Is it me or this system discourage using fleets with more than one weapon type? Since for each different weapon type you will have to go through the full defense, it would be weaker than having only one type and using the defense degradation to its full potential. When your enemy begins employing defences against your most prevalent weapon type,
I've e-mailed in an exception log but thought I should at least mention it here in case someone else runs into it. The Yor have been at war with the Altarian Resistance for most of the game and have been steadily winning. Eventually they must have become so powerful that the Altarians gave up, because their leader portrait popped up saying they've decided to surrender to their enemy. Now since I had a mutual research treaty with the Altarians, I decided to bring up race stats
I'm not sure if this is intentional but, having had the Dread Lords pop up suddenly I was lucky enough to have a bunch of transports ready to go and invade them. When I get there I realise that they only actually have 20000 colonists (vs my 3000000 troops) and although they put up a valiant fight I roll over them only losing a third of my contigent. In effect, I basically got a freebie planet
I was thinking that, since there exists beaming technology to transfer raw materials from an asteroid to a planet, why not from planet to starbase, or between starbases? Instead of sending constructors out to perform upgrades, you use your starbase network to transfer the necessary materials where they need to go. This makes the deployment of upgrades much simpler, and planets which would normally waste a square on a starport in order to build cheap constructors can still use their mi
It seems to me that there should be a diminishing return as you increase the number of engines providing thrust. Both the cost and the size of the engines should increase, to reflect the increasing complexity of the power generation and fuel transfer systems. Periodically along the propulsion tech tree, you could have a side branch which allows you to reclaim some of this 'lost' space by focusing on a particular multi-engine system. Naturally you have to consider whether it's worth in
Sure, I'll try and grab one next time if it happens again
When this event occurred recently, it was one of my citizens gone postal that shot the Korx leader. Now the Altairan Resistance came to my aid because I'm leaning towards good, but in the prompt it actually says that they declare war on me, not the Korx. GNN on the other hand correctly reports them declaring war on the Korx.
On the plus side, any race can build a military starbase and equip it with a warp disruptor to achieve a similar (but not super) effect. So, although you might have to spend a bit of money, you can slow your opponent down to a crawl if he's planning a counterstrike.
Obviously the cost to maintain starbases introduces a new twist. If you go out and grab every resource you can find early on, you'll find yourself short of credits for your up-and-coming fleet's maintenance. However when you examine each base's details the maintenance charge is listed as 0 bc. Whether you're simply paying a fixed charge per base (it seems to be set at 10 bc each at the moment) or a sliding fee depending on just how outfitted it is, it would be nice to see the figure t
Planet-to-space weapons would be a nice idea as a defensive technology. However, because even planets such as Earth are large enough that you would need a lot of ground-based cannons, there would have to be a limit to how effective these weapons can be. An assault fleet would likely stay out of range of ground weapons while it engaged the orbital defences. Therefore you'd only get a chance to do some real damage against the enemy as he attempts to land troops. When the assault fleet
I was actually thinking that if you and your enemy have fleets in the same sector for which a battle would be interesting (that is, it could go either way) then you might at least get an inconspicuous prompt saying 'this is a moment that should be captured for posterity' - then it's essentially up to the player whether they want to grab a screenie showing the fleets positioning to attack (or retreat) - but also a ping on the mini-map might be an idea, so you don't forget to actually perform thos
While I agree that there is a case for shelving the EG in order to spend more time on other aspects of the game, I do feel that it has merit as a means of marketing the game. Think about the power of a tool that can tie together screenshots, data, narrative, and glorious battle scenes into an unfolding saga. It's beyond the scope of Dark Avatar and a February release to work in the full EG, but by implementing some rudimentary AI that captures certain key moments, that takes note of new innova
One of the things I particularly liked about Master of Orion II was the freedom to design a certain kind of ship for a given mission - there was an equipment listing longer than you could shake a stick at. It had an amazing replayability factor. MoO3's only good point was the introduction of macromanagement. Instead of being bogged down with endless decision-making every turn players could (much of the time) happily hit end turn knowing that their empire wouldn't run itself into the g
Hey, I was just curious, are the medals supposed to fall out of their boxes? Or am I just having browser weirdity?
I would guess that it's supposed to apply to all income. Granted, in the late game trade won't be bringing in quite so much as taxes, but taking a slice of it for humanitarian purposes is fair enough.
When a United Planets ruling is made regarding the taxation of warring empires in order to provide humanitarian aid, the tax is not applied as a percentage. If for example a rate of 20% is set, the actual tax collected is 20BC not 20% of that empire's income. So either the text for the resolution needs to be changed (to read BC instead of percent) or the calculation needs to be fixed. At the moment, the 20BC penalty for being at war is a trifling concern <img src="http://images.stardo
Just out of curiosity, will GC2 still be playable as-is if Dark Avatar (beta) is installed? I'm pretty sure that's how it worked with the expnasion pack for GC1, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask
I tend to build more powerful defensive ships in the time that it takes to come up with the technology for a realistic patrol ship. The earliest example is usually a medium fighter with an ion engine and a pair of lasers. In the event that one of my regular fleets needs a bit of cannon fodder for a local incursion, these defensive ships make good throwaway ships. Sure, they do have an ongoing expense, but at the very beginning security is a prime concern. The more weapons eac
The thing to do about Mars (or any other grotty barely-habitable world) is, if you have time to produce one, make a short-range coloniser without adding anything. When you see a colony ship headed over, launch your in-system coloniser. It'll still get there before anything coming from out of system, assuming you spot them (a couple of scout ships cover this contingency).
I had a nasty fight going in at a border, and decided to get my troops transports back a sector or two. Seeing as I didn't have any ships to cover them, I sent them unescorted. The very next turn, one of the enemy fighter groups has locked onto these transports to pursue, even though there isn't a single ship of theirs that can have seen them. What are they, psychic?
If you make ships to sell, then you're not going to make a profit on them, but you're going to making less of a loss than if you made more ships than you actually need.
This is why you hould escort your battleships with similar throw-away ships
