CraigHB

It's totally understandable why devs jump ship from PC to console. Games are easier to develop and can make more money faster. If nothing else, the compatability headaches they avoid make it very attractive. Plus, games don't have to have to be as innovative to sell well. I believe PC gamers are the connoisseurs. Like cvearl said, most poeple aren't going to put money into a decent gaming rig. We have pretty high expectations and PC devs know that. I think it's sort of l

I think most people use both as the need arises. However, the emphasis settting may have no effect under some extreme slider setttings. For example, if you put the sliders on 100% research, there's no need to have research emphasised on any planets. Conversely, even with military spending at 100%, emphasising social production can divert some spending on a particular planet. It's really going to boil down to how many planets you're managing. In a big game, where you can be managing

I'm seeing a 250 battles medal, but not a 250 game won medal.

Sounds like you got the dreaded virus that's going around, hope you get better quick. I have to say I've noticed that SD and IC seem to work as a single team, just based on the participation of both parties in the forums. It's great to see things work out well for you guys. IC has done a real bang-up job on Sins and it's great to see that kind of quality and support right out of the gate. I think you guys definitely nailed this one and the release of Sins has brought me close

Great to hear. I'm not playing the betas because I want to experience the finished product first time. Looking forward to it!

I have little interest in a console. For me, the TV is for watching television and the computer is where games are played. I have little desire to multiplex a console into my PC monitor either. I know some people do that, but it seems redundant to me. I tend to drop in and out of the gaming scene depending on how much free time I have. There's always been more interesting PC titles than I have time to play. I limit myself to a few favorite genres. Limiting yourself to trad

I don't use the ability to emphasise production area much except in the very beginning of a game when I only have a few planets. I mainly rely on the sliders. Think of the silders as a global control and emphasis from the colony manager screen as a local control. I believe the approach is sort of a compromise between micromanagement and the ability to have some control over things on a planetary basis. Hypothetically, you could have sliders for each planet, but then management would become

I have zero concern that a "GC3" would be a let down after GC2. Stardock seems to do new games in a big way and I have very confidence they'll do something really interesting when the time comes.

Yea, hehe, I really liked that last Duke Nukem release of some years ago. The seqeuel has had the world's longest development cycle for sure.

[quote]You are not getting 20+ (on High) with a 9600 in Crysis. I don't care how 'superclocked' your card is. That is not possible.[/quote] Not necessarily. It's possible if you run down the resolution. It will look like crap, especially on an LCD, but it will speed up frame rates quite a bit. Running Crysis at 1680x1050, my 8800 delivers 30-40 FPS in most scenes. That's with a high machine spec setting. I'm running the "extra high" usePOM effect which is a nice one, but to incr

I never played the original StarCraft so I know little about the game. I have a couple questions about it I wonder if you guys wouldn't mind answering. I took a look at the screen shots over on the StarCraft II site and it looks more like a Civilizations setting with things taking place on terra firma. Is that the primary environment in which the game takes place? Does it take place in space at all? I'm not big on multi-player and from what I understand, that's where the gam

Anomilies have regenerated as long as I can recall in DA. What was added by a recent update is standby mode. A ship in auto-survey mode will announce that it's going into standy when it can no longer find any anomolies. Unless you take it out of standby, it will automatically re-engage auto-survey when an anomoly pops into the galaxy. Very handy.

[quote]Also, GalCiv3 will benefit greatly from the technology we're developing for our fantasy strategy game.[/quote] A lot of very nice information in that sentence. So, we've got a couple more great sounding games coming down the line. As much as I've been playing these Stardock games, you guys are quickly becoming my #1 source.

I do some programming, but not any Microsoft stuff. It's all embedded systems so I use a couple proprietary assembly and C environments. None of the stuff is very demanding as far as workstation load. The machine I had several years ago would be fine for work. I mainly upgrade to support games and have a generally faster system, but I try to avoid spending too much. I'm usually going for more middle of the road stuff. That Raid 0 SSD sounds like a really great system. I could go

Well, it's good enough for me. I'm sure I'd get my behind handed to me in a multi-player game.

Yea, the game is very RTS, but for me, there's a lot to like about it. For one, it takes place in space. I'm into all things science and science fiction so that appeals to me right out of the gate. I'm a single player and the game has pretty good AI. On the downside, the game tends to play the same every time so that's going to be a source of boredom eventually. However, the play is interesting. It has scerene periods of doing this and that interrupted by periods of excitement. Even the m

I bail on that pirates event. The whole map fills up with them. However, in DA, if you wipe out a race without killing their military, you can end up with a good number of them and this time they have good ships. Though, I can usually handle that one.

Putting the game on ancient Altaria would make it more science fiction than fantasy, wouldn't it? That would be fine by me actually. I tend to avoid things where the word "fantasy" can be applied. When I think of fantasy, I think of a story that relies little on the viewer/reader "buying it". In science fiction, things usually have some sort of believable technology behind whatever is happening. It's a pretty wide fuzzy line really, but I can feel the difference more than I can explain it.

It's a very heady complicated game and may not suit the taste of some people. For me, I'll try just about anything if I think I have a chance of getting into it. You need to give yourself a fair amount of time to figure out how to play it. Start really easy with difficulty on the lowest and on a small map and only a couple races. Most of the stuff you can learn through the tutorials and by trial and error. Once you've played a bit and understand the basics, read some of the strategy guides

Awesome game, really enjoying it. Good to see Stardock release another successful game title. All the best wishes and keep 'em coming!!!

He was a brilliant man. I've seen a few comments he's made on the state of science and technology. Very insightful and very interesting. Great loss to the world.

I think they're behind the curve on this one. I think most of us feel it would be better to release the game when it's done than to release it early and see big changes post-release. That said, things have going slow with the beta releases so I doubt we're even going to see a March release on this one. I was hoping to see it this month, but if it takes longer, it takes longer. Though, it would be nice to know one way or the other. I'm not particularly displeased about it and I've already pa

Each expansion adds new aspects to the game and tightens the screws on the difficulty. Personally, I would start with Dread Lords and go to Dark Avatar once I felt I had a good handle on the game. I think TA has the most departure with unique tech trees for each race. It actually took me quite a while to master one tech tree, let alone a number of them.

Well, then let me rephrase that, I don't understand why people like RTS so much. I don't think it's that great. It doesn't take long for the few I've played to feel like a pointless click fest. Sins has a more relaxed pace so I like that one a lot more than any of the others I've played.

I bought the original Dread Lords "gold edition" from Walmart. I subsequently bought the expansion deal online (DA + TA) and switched to using Stardock Central. No problem getting things installed/activated through SDC and I saved a few bucks with the online deal. I now use SDC exclusively (that's how I bought Sins of a Solar Empire) and have since discarded the original GC2 box and CD. Sounds like you went about things the wrong way and it cost some money. Sorry to hear that.