Pnakotus

Star Control and Star Flight were my favourite Mega Drive (yeah, I'm Australian, sue me) games too. It always amused me that Star Flight was so hard they basically gave you a walkthrough in the manual, or else you'd never be able to follow all those obtuse clues. Triva: SF was originally a PC game. The PC game is fundamentally the same, but staggeringly ugly (CGA) and unwieldy. Starflight2 was more of the same but had an easier-to-follow

I've put this on the suggestion list: all the UP policies should be implementable piecemeal by trade. Waiting for the random UP to bring it up is worthless, but being able to send a 'you'll be paying for those bases or you're toast' message would be useful. This sort of this would be great for sharing your starbase bonuses with allies and even paying tax for your own bases inside an allies zone, just to stop them getting cranky about it.

Space is both empty and useless. Making cultural borders like the Berlin Wall would be like allowing the US to bar anyone from entering the eastern Pacific ocean. Nobody 'owns' space, and nobody would want to since it's worthless. That said, there is no diplomatic option that allows you to demand someone stop dropping influence starbases in your space. The AI can call you up just to say how cranky it is about something (fleets lurking, et

[Full battle combat] In full-battles, the game only draws art for a single weapon regardless of how many the attacking ship has - unless it's some large number like 4. I've only seen beams display more than a single beam effect. The game also only draws art for one weapon per type: if you have a laser and a plasma, or a harpoon and a photon, it only draws one. This could be improved. [Full battle combat] In full-battles, there is no way t

There should be rename icons on the colony screen: if I rename planets at all, it's based on what my intentions with it are (industry, research etc) and it's annoying to check tile bonuses or the build queue and have to drop back out to the map to change the name. The colony build list should use items that are sorted by production (industry, money, influence etc) but right-clickable to select lower tech level structures of the same type if

Now that I've played around with GC2 a bit more, the 'scenario' play would be very suited to a SC mod. Although anyone who just puts attributes and art in for SC races gets my vote. GC2 + 'Launch Fighters' FTW. SC3 had bad design. From the 3D starmap to the uninspired (and crap) Crux ships to the 'wow the Ur-Quan went evil again, never saw that

Wait - its a problem because you exploit it? Sure, the tech trades don't seem to be linked to relationship enough - ie you can get new techs off people who don't really like you - but of course the AI wants to buy tech it doesn't have. It's just an area players are better than the AI. Turning tech trading off just because you can't stop yourself ruining the game for yourself seems absurd. How about, I don't know, NOT doing it?

Yes, I've noticed the AI tend to fill the leftover space on their ships with life-support. If you get bored zoom in on a scout you've spotted miles from anywhere - you'll probably be able to see the life-support modules. I believe in 1.0x10 there was some tweaking to get the AI to focus less on range in it's design.

However ridiculous borders in empty space are, the UP already considers influence to be largely interchangeable with territory, since bases/colonies are taxed based on whose influence there lie in. For example, it IS possible for a group to pay tax on their homeworld if it falls within another sphere of influence. Someone CAN build a base in their terrority and later have it be counted as in anothers territory once the influence moves. I simply thin

Currently, the rush-build contractor names are Terran-specific. Ideally these names would be drawn from a list of names specific to each culture and perhaps those of known groups or allies. In many games the Terrans (and Earth) aren't present, and these names persist. I imagine this is a similar situation to the gradual removal of the last bits of Terran-specific language over the last few patches.

Does 'I just made a similar thread' count? I'm all embarrassed now, I should have just commented here. I agree that the 'trade' system could use some new, 'diplomatic' options. Starbases are particularly bad, as I've had peaceful allies slapping influence bases all over my territory: a definite aggressive act. There's nothing you can do about it, though - although I'd like to see my suggestions about UP modifiers being tradable, as I thin

I'd like to be able to offer everything the UP can declare to my allies. For instance, I'd like to offer the use of my starbases in trading to my close allies, and I'd like to demand they pay me for starbases/colonies in my influence. Particularly when there is a very strong alliance, it's a shame you have to wait for the basically random UP to throw up the right thing, and it'd be much better if you could just offer (and of course take away) the use

I can certainly see that - although I must play much slower than you, as I've stretched even early campaign missions to more than a decade... To be honest - ridiculous population issue aside - it should be pretty easy to have a similar option to 'tech speed' that solves this to everyones satisfaction. I'm not sure this issue is really that imp

I imagine game design has always been a conflict between detail and usablity, micromanagement and accessability. I've always wondered why more games don't use internal scripting languages to allow user to create 'on-the'fly' bits of automation to reduce workload. I've been playing around with the governors, and either I'm using them wrong or they're not very flexible. Depending on how flexible the tools they're built on are, I think a basi

This still simply reeks of retentiveness. I've had games where as I enter an approval crisis, my 'population' drops, then rises again quickly when the problem is resolved. The 'population' is *not*, categorically, the total sentient population of the planet. Let it go. For a laugh, let's pretend it is. This means every single sentient on your planet is a soldier! A fantastically 'realistic' idea brought over from good ole MoO! <img src

As far as I know, Influence bases simply generate influence (like a planet would), which affects the influence borders you describe. I use them to generate influence near enemy colonies far from their capital, which seem to defect more easily. Actually, I'm not sure if their bonuses are supposed to be +x%s on planets in its range, or if the starbase itself generates (x) influence. They work just fine with no friendly planets in range, however.</font

I have started a huge game, and have now begun consistently getting this error. I have a particular save which causes it in no more than five turns. I'm using a 6600GT on a single TFT with a logitech wireless optical mouse.

Thats a shame. The changelog says ' “Invasion Cheese” effect removed where planet populations after the invasion were incorrect. ' So I guess the problem isn't resolved. I'm using 1.0X6 atm, and it's only happened once. I'm more worried about the disappearing mouse cursor issue.

You won't find many SC fans who agree with your stance on SC3. From a basic 'bought to you by the Star Control universe' I think a mod could work. Slotting in the races wouldn't be too hard - although you might need new 'attributes' to make Mycon or Chenjesu - and even the art would be fairly basic. It's only if you try to create a mini-SC inside GC2 you'll run into problems, as noone uses one type of ship, there's technological progress,

Who cares about people like that? The absolute worst they can do is trash a thread: they're not materially affecting the quality of the game or anyone's attitude toward it. As an aside, I've never seen an 'official' forum with such candid and open devs. It's certainly very refreshing, particularly compared to the likes of Blizzard.

I'd be nice if you could expend a constructor to heal a starbase, or have it enhance repair-rates for things it's stacked with. Maintenance ships, maybe?

I believe this issue is resolved in 1.0X: it's mentioned in the changelog. I've had problems with this as well.

The attackers get an advantage for space superiority, but it doesn't scale. For example, you could have five fleets of 'T3h Ub3r Dr34ds' in orbit and you'd get the same bonus a pair of unescorted transports do. I guess UI suggestions should reflect the repeditive actions that frustrate people, so here goes. I'd like to see the rename option available in every planet/ship screen: I name planets after what I use them for, and by zooming into the planet view to check what bonuses there

As much as I think it's a shame stars can't be renamed, I see the logic. You own ships, starbases and planets: nobody owns stars. Would everyone share the same name, so there'd be wiki-wars where a star is constantly renamed? Would everyone have their own name for a star? I guess if you control all the planets in a system, you could perhaps 'group rename' the star to x and the planets x I, x II etc.

I'm aware this has been posted before, but I was wondering what the status on the population spike issue was. I've got before-and-after saves, featuring a jump from 10b to 420,000,000b after invasion. I'd like to help as much as possible to resolve this issue.