Jim Frazer

My favorite idea for Constructors is the ability to cram in more than one Construction Module. Stick 2 or 3 on a constructor and it provides 2 or 3 upgrades to the starbase. Then add an extra set of modules to the Starbase Fortification line that creates smaller Construction Modules. Size 30 at first, then size 25, and then size 20. Combined with miniturization, you could plunk down 4 upgrades on a Starbase per ship late in the game.

Hmmm, I've been seeing many more escorted transports in Beta 4a then I did in Beta3. Since going to Beta4, the Drengin have been sending in waves of fleets consisting of 3 small hulled ships and 1 transport. I've been playing on Challenging since Beta 3, so not sure what it's like on Tough. In Beta 3, I was getting swarmed with piles of unescorted transports. The Torians were sending 6+ transports a turn into my territory trying to get to

I'm running a Radeon 9800 Pro as well and had a lot of CTD's before switching to the Feb 2006 drivers. I still get the rare CTD these days, but not even close to what was happening before I updated my video driver.

Population density will also reduce approval/morale. You can hover your pointer over your morale percentage on the planetary detail screen to see what is dragging it down.

With the game so customizable, you can make it harder on yourself pretty easily. Turn off tech trading, up the AI, lower what the starting races think about you, etc... I will say that the Influence and Military resource bases are majorly game deciding. I wouldn't mind seeing the AI put a higher priority on mining bases in general. I've been playing on Painful lately and while they will attack my mining starbases, it doesn't seem to be an

Well, I fixed the issue. Weird thing is, the source of the problem, I think, was my Stardock WoW Desktop skin. After switching back to the standard Windows XP theme, GalCiv's buttons and stars look fine again. Just to test it, I turned back on my WoW theme and boom, buttons all blocky and squares around all the stars. The new version of DirectX was the cause though, no doubt about that. Whether it was the interaction between

Just installed the April 2006 version of DirectX and now GalCiv looks like crap. Hard to explain the exact issue, but there are miscolored cubes all over the place. All the buttons have blocky corners now that smooth out when I put the cursor over them and block up again when I move away. Sooo... should I be attempting to roll back to the old version of DirectX9.0c? My other games seem to be OK with it at the moment, so I'm not thinking

Weird glitch in beta 4: At war with the Drengin for several turns. We're exchanging ships left and right and I'm slowly taking over their territory. One of my worlds gets hit with half a dozen transports over 2 turns, but with a 22 bil population and a huge soldiering bonus, I'm able to fend off the wave of invasions. Same turn the invasions hit, the Korx declare war on me (no idea why. Bribed by the Drengin? debug.err doesn't show that kind of stuff, so not sure what happened).

No debug needed for this, as it's a non-crash/lockup/etc... Running Beta 3A (just installed this yesterday). I noticed this the first time I played with 3A, but thought it might have been issolated. However, in this current game I'm playing, it has gotten worse. I've started taking over the galaxy with influence and am taking Thalan, Iconian, and Altarian planets left and right without the need for invasion. I'll start invading some worlds soon, so we'll see if this is d

I dunno, I consider part of the fun and challenge of the game is not always getting a super sweet starting position. The same can be said for Civ IV; you can start surrounded by swampland with maybe 2 or 3 city's worth of building area, surrounded on all sides by enemies. Or you can end up on fair sized island alone with all the resources you need and progress unchallenged. But, if you really want to make the planets a little easier to a

I'm pretty sure it's just some random occurance. When loading my auto-save, I'm able to invade the world now. Being a programmer myself, I know nothing is as frustrating as an un-reproduceable bug event. But still good to report it, just in case.

Just CTD'd while invading a minor race's world. I had been playing for about 3 hours before this crash occurred. I've been able to invade other planets without a problem, so I'm thinking this is just a random thing. Anyway, here is a chunk of my debug.err with the system stats and what happened at the crash. Debug Message: Version v1.1 BETA-3 last updated on: Thu Apr 6 14:45:50 2006 Debug Message: Could not find a TGN Serial No.<b

Mine came through USPS as well. Giant bubble envelope with the box inside. Which, by the way, I was surprised about.. I would've been perfectly happy paying $45 for the download and just having to redownload it if I rebuilt my system. I was more than happy to spring for the $5 for the CD to get mailed to me. I was expecting my $5 to get me a paper sleeve with a CD inside and a little poster with the tech treel. Wasn't expec

Maybe it's a coincidence, but I've noticed practically everyone that has "constant" crashes is running a 2 CPU box (almost always a 3.0 GHZ). Does GalCiv2 just have major problem dealing with a dual processor system? Don't get me wrong; I was crashing like mad in Beta 2 using a single processor 2.53 ghz system, so I know there are other causes of crashes. Just noticing a trend that's worth mentioning.

Yor are still harder to flip, but they are easier for sure in 1.1. I had been able to flip planets of every race except for Yor; I usually had to go military on them instead fo slowly eating them up with influence. I'm sure the Yor planets would have eventually flipped, I would just lose patience after 30 or so turns and just invade them. Influence is my preferred win method. It fits in best with my play style. So I've been pretty happy

Which version of the game are you running? The beta of the 1.1 version has made planets in revolt much more likely to flip to your side. Before 1.1, I had never flipped a Yor planet before (dame +100% loyalty), no matter how long I have 4+ ips on the planet. But since the beta, I've been able to flip their planets fairly regularly. The Yor and Torians are still harder to flip for me, it seems, but they eventually come to see the Terran si

Relic did the same thing when they direct sold Homeworld. I picked it up for $39.95 through Best Buy while Relic was selling it for $49.95 direct. Every time I've seen a company direct sell their product, they have charged more than I would pay at an EB Games or a Best Buy. Why? They had to sign agreements with those companies that they would sell for a certain price and never less so they weren't viewed as competing with the retailers.

Good advice. I just ran a diagnostic on my bootup and it told me "CMOS Battery is low". Never would have thought to check that... I think I'll run out and grab a new one during lunch tomorrow. Would be crazy if that turns out to be the cause. But I've seen weirder things on a PC.

I couldn't get the game to BSOD on my wife's system, so I switched back to my box to try ti figure out what the heck was going on. Well, last night I had something weird happen. The game locked up and froze my video card, making my max resolution 800 x 600 and my max colors set to 4 bit. Took me some fanagling, but managed to get a true shut down (I hate pulling the plug on a system crash). When I tried to restart, I got nothing. Black s

I'm going to install the game and install Beta 2 on my wife's system. Her's is identical to mine in every way, except for the software installed. If I can't duplicate it on her system, I'm going to assume it's an interaction with another application or, worse, my video card is giving out and it's just a coincidence that it started happening around the same time that I switched to 2A.

well, it just happened again. Nothing I can see in the debug.err file, but here's what we have: Debug Message: Version v1.1 BETA-2A last updated on: Thu Mar 30 21:37:53 2006 Debug Message: Could not find a TGN Serial No. Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.********* System Info Time: 4/1/2006, 21:31:07 DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) Machine Name: **** Operating System: Windows XP

BSOD just happened again. Completely different game. This time I know it wasn't tied to an event though. Ran to the kitchen to nuke some food with the game sitting at the tech screen. Came back 10 minutes later, selected Advanced Mini and clicked "close". At the galactic map, it just sat there. No turn button, cursor was free to move but I couldn't click anything. After a few clicks my computer started doing the "too many clicks!" be

Yeah, it's considered a hardware issue from XP's perspective. The v2 Beta is sending my video card into an infinite loop, so XP is killing it to prevent my system from completely dying. It just happened a 3rd time since I downloaded the second Beta, so I'm going to have to say it's the cause. Nothing else is locking me up, and I was find in v1 Beta. Trying to get some data I can actually send in to Stardock, but not easy on a

Hit a BSOD earlier tonight. The Blue Screen stated "The device was in an infinite loop" with the device in question being my video card (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro with the February 2006 drivers). First time I've had this happen so far. The BSOD occured after pressing the Turn button. It sat there frozen for roughly 45 second before crashing out. I'm thinking it's related to a given random event because after restoring the auto-save, I

Deleted because, well, it should be in the Beta report post.