DreadArchon

Urgh, no. Game's own forums = good. There's just a certain detachment in being made a subsection of somewhere else. It's a turn-off. People who dislike the forums don't HAVE to use them, after all. And it's not like you'll stop hearing complaints on a new forum, either. My suggestion? Find a more stable forum software and stick it in! The forums don't work AT ALL for me on Firefox or Opera, and they have a number of bugs all their own, so it'd be better to simply find

That's true, I've turned it on for that in a couple games. I usually play with planets at a minimum of Common, though, so I often just assume--correctly--that all stars will have planets.

Now that I've NEVER seen. Do they do it often? Is it possible that those planets were damaged in a recent invasion? Are those numbers (30 and 35) exaggerated, or precisely accurate (I've gotten planets that jumped by 15 tiles after terraforming, it would appear that terraforming availability is randomly determined)? Edit: And what's "3 hours?" I've played a few games where the colony rush wasn't done in three hours, and I rarely if ever am finished with construction that fast, but ho

I've seen double star systems in sandbox, they're just not common. And of course, I think you can edit individual Custom maps to look however you want, to whatever specificity you want. There's a list of usable random star names in one of the folders somewhere. If you want, you can simply add in the names of stars you want, though the locations will always be random in sandbox.

It lets you see planets around stars on your mini-map. I usually have the planets turned off since they clutter the map, so I don't recommend researching the tech until you need Sensors--but that's what it does, all the same.

A lot of people complain about the AI not developing planets well. I hadn't really noticed, but I looked around in my most recent games and sure enough... Now, I haven't done any real testing (since I'm not really sure how to), but it would APPEAR that the AI will not build on Terraformed tiles! All the races in my current game (on Painful) have free space on their (otherwise expertly developed) planets, and that free space is about what I'd expect you to get by Terraforming.

Just send all your trade routes to them and put lots of economy bases between you. That'll pay more than a Class 21 economic world would, and you can use the funds to "decommision" one or two of your current economic worlds by upgrading them to production.

Yeah, people pretty frequently wish aloud that minors could be more active. I've seen the Scottlingas do things like that. Other people never seem to see the minors do anything, though. It's odd.

I've considered that, but the scale is too out of whack for me to care about realism in stellar cartography. I mean, you're aware that planets are orbiting their stars from at least 4 light years away, right? That two 25-foot fighters can't get within 3.258 light years of each other for fear of crashing?

I think the tech descriptions are hilarious. (I also like how the default ships all have movie quotes as descriptions.) They'd be dumb if you read them every time you played the game, but so would you, for that matter. ... Hmm, the smiley button isn't working for me. Meh, insert wink here. >_ "Now the aliens working in our factories will actually be aliens. Get it? Oh the wit!" Edit: Though I am miffed about the descriptions for Subspace Blasters & Annihilators, as they

"Chaotic Evil" means you're averaging between neutral and evil. There's a red one for pure evil. I'm "Chaotic Good" because I have a good game in amongst my neutrals, but there's also a pure blue neutral and a pure white good.

I've heard terrible, terrible things about Star Wars Galaxies, but I'd *love* to see a well-done space opera MMO (besides Eve). I'd certainly play such a game set in the GalCiv universe.

Y'know, I'm not having any of your problems. I play on Tough (and now I'm on to Painful) and the AI makes planets quite well, I always feel a little pang of guilt (in my treasury) when I'm bombing them to dust from space. Actually, the ONLY problem I see with the AI's planet-building is that they consistently put their tech and manufacturing capitals on the same world.

You have to develop your economy first then comes the research and military. See, I totally disagree. More research = better economic bonuses, and better everything else to boot. Research while going broke is always going to be useful later and will quite often prevent you from going broke again, while making money can only get you out of on

It can't be THAT hard. Shouldn't there be an XML file somewhere that tells the difference? I may not know where it is, but someone must know what Gifted does.

Does anyone mix up the ships in their fleets at all? Lord no! Bigger hull = more engines. What good are tiny ships in an offensive force if their top speed is two Hyperwarp III's? Heck, they could fake carriers by simply putting in a special rule that lets Huge ships transfer their movement and life support values to any Tiny ships i

Well, I'm by no means a great player, but here are some suggestions to get you started: +Population fuels your planetary economy to a certain point; to get population growth , which is what matters at the start of the game, pay attention to your morale. You get a boost to population at 75% morale and it DOUBLES at 100%, while 50% or less will slow it to a crawl and like 30% or less will halt it. Lower your taxes to get more population at the start of the game; you'll be in deb

Larger ships get the same weapons and armor, but with more hit points and, of absolute importance IMHO, MORE ENGINES. I always go for huge ships if I have time to build an invasion force unmolested, and I quite honestly do it for no other reason than engine space.

Trade crappy techs with them ... Not necessary. Give them good techs and they'll be able to tie up your enemies while you get ready to finish them off. Just don't give them anything that you really, really don't want the major races trading into ("Sure, we'll give you Doom Rays!"). Also, the "Ally and trade" thing is a good idea. If you

An even better way to keep morale at 100% is using entertainment buildings. During colonization I have my social spending at 100% and immediately build 1 or 2 factories, then 4 entertainment buildings on every planet I colonize. This allows you to keep a high tax rate and still get the double population growth bonus. Hmmm, that could be a good

I don't understand the whole "ship building is hard" thing. I'm not trying to insult the people who have problems with it, I just flat out don't understand. Could someone explain it to me? I got it right on my first try: "Alright, this needs a gun and an armor and a life support. Now, how many engines can I fit on this baby..." Also: Is that really what 4X means? I keep intending to ask but I never remember.

You can change the XML data to be whatever you'd like. Now, I haven't tried since my game always crashes if I attempt to change my XML files, but: We can modify our Metaverse files?!? That's kinda cheesy, isn't it? I mean, what if I wanted my custom race to have a +1,000% to economy? Doesn't that kind of throw off the whole "fair scori

The manual says that the AI jumps from "Intelligent," which is smart but doesn't cheat, to "Genius," which cheats for 25% bonuses. In-game, however, there's a "Gifted" between them. What does Gifted do, 110%? This site doesn't seem to say. Though they'd be beating me if tech trading was turned off. ^_^;

Planets that fight like starbases. I want to be able to damage planets from space with my ships. (None of that "Terror Star" junk, though that would be cool too.) I have all manner of horribly powerful captial ship weapons, but I can't do actual orbital bombardment? It's stupid, and absurdly unrealistic. ( As is the fact that you can't stack ships in the same parsecs as other civs--I mean, it's A FREAKING PARSEC. THEY'D BE LIGHT YEARS APART, ABOVE OR BELOW EACH OTHER.

They could do a spinoff--"Galactic Civilizations Tactics" would have a revolutionary new ship class system, and an immersive storyline about a young aristocrat who discovers corruption and a bit of mystery in the organizations he's put so much faith in. But no chocobos. Wark! Seriously though, I'd LOVE to see a modern computer adaptation of Battlefleet Gothic (the Warhammer 40K fleet co