Alfonse

The problem is this: the worth of a tech is (or, ought to be) based partially on what you can do with it. Like selling it to others. A tech that you can't sell to others isn't worth as much as one you can. Personally, I don't think that this shouldn't be an option; it should be a trading possibility. That is, you can trade individual techs with the understanding that they can't trade them to anyone else. That way, the AI can factor it into its idea for how much the tech is wort

[quote]Exactly ..... "Maybe being able to out-right purchase ships and such is wrong" .... So whats with the "nonsense" ..... you just said it yourself![/quote] You may have noticed that the line in question was under the section where I assume that the "nonsense" was true. [quote]The capability to pile up cash, can attract "Strategies" involving filling every tile on every planet with eco buildings, doing instant purchase with the proceeds, and individuals kidding themselves t

[quote]Whilst buying ships etc is clearly fine, there is a limit to that. Instantly buying dozens of ships / fleets severely throws off the game balance, and in the context of the game, to have the ability to instantly buy anything and everything is nuts.[/quote] Nonsense. Balance, for a game like GalCiv2 is about making sure that all sides have the same opportunities. The AI has the same opportunities to make huge stacks of money as the player, and it has the same opportunitie

[quote]Only solution is buying stuff till your're below those marks again, to enjoy your full income.[/quote] Why? What is the point of this? Why does the game have these arbitrary markers that say, "if you exceed X, you're playing a different game?" I mean, is there a purpose in having an arbitrary value that causes your taxes to be cut in half? This kind of arbitrariness doesn't make the game better; it just makes it more annoying. It's like the tech bug where suddenly your t

[quote]The point was why do all 4PQ planets have an INITIAL 8.00 pop cap (do not figure in Farms, racial bonuses, etc). [/quote] Because the galaxies are random enough without needlessly handicapping a player just because they got a bad string of planets. Tiles are an exceedingly [i]precious[/i] resource; I'd hate to have to waste one just because the planet rolled low during galaxy creation. Basically, all you're doing is turning a PQ10 planet into a PQ9 with a Farm.

[quote]Someone else please provide the technical argument explaining why programming a mod like this would be very simple if we had the proper tools.[/quote] Sorry, I have this thing about lying. As a programmer, I know the technical arguments, and they all work [i]against[/i] what you say. That is, the people with the knowledge of how networked games work all know that it is in no way "very simple." Your entire argument is grounded in ignorance.

Um, no. The maximum population of a planet is dictated by playstyle, how many happiness buildings you're willing to build, and how many happiness buildings you [i]can[/i] build. If you have 3 PQ4 planets and they have 2 PQ4 planets, then you win because you have more tiles to work with, not because of population. Ultimately, tiles are the foundation resource that all other game resources come from.

[quote]With most races, the they influence a planet enough, a 'Skull n Crossbones' icon will appear over their planet. THe planet then has a small random chance of defecting every turn. THe MCC removes this aspect, and once enough Yor influence has been exerted on a planet, the planet automaticially flips.[/quote] Wow. It's strange that this is an Evil building. One would expect that influence-based conquest would be Neutral or Good tactics.

[quote]So if you knew a guy and got along great with him for 15 years, and then one night he rapes you, it's cool because you had some great times?[/quote] And with that, your analogy leaps [b]boldy[/b] off the slippery slope. Seriously, comparing a bug in a game with [i]sexual assault[/i]? TA could erase your entire hard drive and fry your computer, and the comparison would still be ludicrous.

[quote]Here's a peek at the changes...[/quote] Hey, I may actually buy TA now ;)

[quote]Nevertheless, I still know self-aggrandizing BS when I smell it.[/quote] Well, as an actual programmer who knows what those comments are, they are not "self-aggrandizing BS". It's a method of software development that is functional. And like all methods, it has its advantages and disadvantages.

[quote]1) Are you utilizing industry Agile dev principles such as TDD, CI in accordance with automated testing? 2) Working late hours to get out a game tells me that your weekly development velocity is not being evaluated properly potentially, your scope is erratic or a number of other issues...[/quote] LoL! They're in [i]game development[/i]. Nobody in game development does that. You get a piece of code, you hammer it into the shape that your designer requires, and you mov

[quote]Did ToA really have to be released before PM2008?[/quote] Yes. Because it was already very late and they had preorders to fill.

[quote]focus upon graphics and twitchy gameplay over any substantial content.[/quote] Why aren't "graphics and twitchy gameplay" substantial content? Just because you don't like games with time pressure doesn't mean that they aren't substantial. [quote]How is Bethesda making Fallout 3? Into "Oblivion with Guns", their own words after they promised back at their acquisition of the title that it "would not be Oblivion with guns". Yes, a pen and paper RPG has been turned into a FP

[quote]The point I'm making is that including the monitor in the price for a computer but not including a TV for an Xbox is not a fair comparison.[/quote] It is a fair comparison. If you need Product X to use Product Y, and Product X has [i]no viable uses[/i] without Product Y, then Product X is clearly just a component of Product Y. Therefore it makes sense to include the price of X in the cost of getting Y. A computer case, for example. You might use it as a paperwei

[quote]Where's the gaming fun, otherwise? Or even, the key strategic knowledge of such occurances when it does or should matter *indirectly*.[/quote] I think you're kind of missing the point here. In service to gameplay, graphics must convey information. In Pac-Man for example, the graphics tell you the location of your avatar, where you can go, where the available pellets are, where the Ghosts are, and where the power pellets are. They may be plain, but they are clear and dist

[quote]Including the accessories means the console owner has to throw in his controllers, multiplayer subscriptions, and any other accessories too - if you're comparing hardware, you should compare base hardware.[/quote] But every console comes with controllers; you can't separate the price of the controller from them. Additional accessories are usually bundled with the games that use them, so they're part of the game's cost. And the subscription service (should there be one) is a yearl

[quote]Yeah, because, you know, the evil pirates would crack the game and nobody would buy a single copy![/quote] Why are you putting words in my mouth? I have said [i]nothing[/i] to suggest that I think that piracy would be the reason that the game does not sell "many more units" on the PC. I simply don't see the market for the game on the PC. It would certainly sell some units, but if TFU across all non-PC platforms sold 6 million, adding the PC would not bump that number up to 8 mill

[quote]Granted, that's from way back when the game was first released (from videogamereview.com), but it at least shows psychoak isn't talking out of his butt.[/quote] Except that Psychoak made it sound like [i]anyone[/i] would get the bug. Rather than, say, people who tried to use cloaking (which wasn't most people). Not to say that a halt-progression bug is ever a good thing. But there are degrees of things. [quote]The article said that Sandy Duncan, the Microsoft VP

[quote]If it had not made this decision, it would undoubtedly have sold many more units of the finished product.[/quote] That's just flat out untrue.

[quote]Alfonse, do you actually use any consoles or do you just enjoy ragging on PC games?[/quote] Yes, I play on consoles. However, I don't buy crap. [quote]One of the Kotor games flat doesn't work. It gets to a certain spot and a bug prevents further progress.[/quote] Having played through both KotOR games, I can certainly say that your statement is flat-out wrong. However: 1: Both KotOR games are quite buggy. KotOR II significantly more than KotOR I, but th

[quote]According to this, the typical mentality of a console gamer is to eat up whatever developers throw at them and like it?[/quote] No, it is to evaluate a product based on what the developer gives them, not what they think they are entitled to. If it's crap, it's crap. If it uses the controller poorly, then it does. End of story. There's no, "Well, if I had the [i]right[/i] controller" nonsense. The game expects you to have input device X and is built around a human being's

[quote]A Java application can only allocate so much memory, and the user has to explicitly run the JVM with certain command line parameters to allow it to use more memory. A memory leak is not allowed to continue indefinitely in Java. And, of course, the whole thing is always cleared when the program terminates.[/quote] Which would you prefer in your game: 1: It leak memory until it crashes after hitting the 2GB limit? 2: It thrashes the garbage collector, quickly rend

[quote]I sort of dislike when developers imagine they know my preferences better than I do.[/quote] This is the mentality behind the typical PC gamer. They're never satisfied with having an actual, well-crafted game; the developer must spend their precious time to ship dozens of slightly different games that you switch between with a gigantic options screen. It's like demanding that movie directors, when shooting at 2.35x1 screen ratio, should spend a lot of time lining up thei

[quote]But, what runs on the 64bit version?[/quote] Quite a lot, actually. The backwards compatibility for Vista64 is pretty good. And a requirement for getting WHQL certification for Vista drivers is that they must provide a 64-bit version of said drivers.