ToS Iceman

Someone actually worked around that by increasing sizes by a factor of 10 IIRC. But if you read the rest of the post, I point out 2 facts, one is most modules have a fixed weight and so the system is not really consistent - and mounting those modules on small and tiny hulls is a cheesy byproduct of that issue; and another is that it's actually a duplication of effects, because there already *is* miniaturization in researching higher tech levels of the same item. I don't see any referenc

@Oldstatesman but most are not noticable to the casual player. Which ones specifically? I'd like to know. And the negative spin put on even the good points make me question the purpose of such a review. It's not a review, just an analysis on DA vs DL, what "new" features were added and their extent. Solver has it pretty much nailed down IMHO - good points and

I mean it's currently 2 (according to my superficial tests), and should be 1. Hence, again, the thread's topic

but could some extreme acts of war/else affect our good/evil status? Things like destroying a colony with pop in it? I'm not even sure why you can actually do it. Kill off billions of your own people. Unless you're evil, but even then it's a stretch. Giving it away to another race, or simply uncolonizing it (becomes a defended independent planet) would sound more reasonable. I also don't understand why you can destroy your own homeworld. Especially w

I always thought PQ related to the size and available development area on the planet rather than the actual quality of the planet. Well, size in the starmap isn't really related to PQ, is it? As for development area, that's habitable area too. So max pop should be linked to PQ. As for mineral quality, unfortunately the game doesn't take that into account, nor mining - except for asteroids, but that's a generic production bonus. <div class="

On the subject of trades, a few thoughts. Is the Trade ability worth it, when compared to the Economics ability? specially now, with trade being weaker. Is the Trade Routes ability really useful, when compared to both Trade and Economics? This all relates to the (excessive?) number of abilities, some of which are pretty much dispensable, and others are just occasionally useful. The bonuses don't seem too well balanced either, so some of them are never really a bad choice. Some o

I just checked, and here is how Tourism income works. Total tourism: 1bc for each 100B population of the galaxy. This total is divided between the races based on influence. You checked the manual, right? And I guess you meant 100 *million*, not billion. In the game, my calcs indicate it's 1bc for each 1 bill actually. And the total is not actually divided among the races, each race gets their influence span % (controlled sectors) of that total.

But miniaturization as it is implemented isn't really miniaturization, it doesn't make any real sense. It doesn't miniaturize (is that even a word?) anything, it creates more space in hulls. Some items do have a fixed size, so... It's one of the abilities that should go IMO. The real miniaturization comes from researching further into the branch, so there is actually a doubling effect at work here. What miniaturization is doing now should have been accomplished through researching further in

It's not like I was expecting you to say anything different really Anyways, looking at DA and comparing it to DL, I'm not so sure it really is worth not only being rated so high, but also being an expansion at all. What was really done? - Graphics : they were announced as being better and lighter on your machine. They're better, but lighter? Where are those memory problems coming f

You could make it so that those extra tiny/small hulls you get when you research... can't recall which hull tech... are those enhanced versions. Makes more sense (since you don't get them from the start, only after some research into hulls), and involves less changes.

You have to check if the increment in tourism revenue is higher than the cost of the constructor used to build the starbase plus the 5bc/turn maintenance. It depends on a lot of things, namely map size (smaller maps have lower gal pop), star/planet density, # of races. You can do the math, since you can easily access each race's pop levels, including minors. Have been thinking of testing this for some time, but never really got to doing it, there are other more effective ways to spread your SoI.

Yep, 10% for 3 maintenance is pathetic. In th early game at least, and later on you'll want the better power plants, which for the same maintenance give you a much better bonus. BTW, there's a QA issue with the Quantum PP, it's tech description reads Anti-Matter PP, copy+paste error I guess.

Shouldn't the loyalty and morale/approval bonuses, for good and neutral respectively, be swapped? I mean, wouldn't it sound a little better? And it'd balance things out a bit. The 5 colony maintenance bonus, hmm, isn't it like handing you 60bc for free? Once you have 5 planets I mean. Sounds a little lame.

The workaround I do is not to bother with colonization techs. Invade instead. You don't need colonization techs to invade; in fact, you can steal the techs that way. It's a workaround, and even though it's even better than researching (for what you get), it's not a solution. Feels cheesy. A new feature that doesn't work correctly... I don't think DA is coming out quite as expected. I don't quite understand why you can invade extreme planets without a

In Civilization 4, the solution was to pretty much make it so that you could only trade apples for apples (techs for techs for instance). That way, players couldn't easily exploit the AI. Not only there's a logic to it, it reduces cheese. It also forces you to have the right "bargaining chip". In GalCiv, we slog through with trying to let people trade ships, techs, money, treaties, war proposals, etc. for any combinat

You know, the way I think it ought to be is, Evil should be the rush alignment, and Good the "in it for the long haul alignment". And neutral is somewhere in the middle but gets along diplomatically with everybody. That's the way it SHOULD be. Agreed. Neutral got Neutral Shipping too, with more Trade Routes available. Did it really need it?

Think about one small but important example of the "mess" that develops when things aren't thought through and let be dragged on. Planets are represented by a PQ number, which is supposed to measure their quality at an indeterminate number of characteristics. It's an easy way to grade planets, simple and clean. Does it tell you anything though? Nope. It should, but it doesn't really. It determines the pop limit in terms of natural growth for that planet, but is that really an issue? Nope. Oh yea

Hmm, why would you stop researching lasers after learning about plasma?! There's no such thing as studying all about lasers. Besides, plasma studies don't necessarily have to be related to lasers.

Well, first of all 11B pop worlds have something to do with morale buildings and how they were made all but obsolete. The morale caps, well, it's the base mechanics that should be improved so that no morale caps are needed. They're not really mechanics, they're artificial crutches to make the system not cave in on itself. The fact that you have to read the forums, or an outdated wiki, to understand the system is absurd. Not everyone does that. Players don't have to know the math behind the syste

(3) Remove the 300% food bonus title!!! Or make it useful. Allow it to increase the planet's pop limit, but at NO cost in approval - approval is calculated as if the farm was on a no-bonus tile for pop limit purposes. Could be an interesting way to make econ planets.

Tourism income depends on both galactic population (and hence your own population), and the territorial extension of your influence. For each 1B pop in the galaxy, 1bc is generated for tourism; if your area of influence is say 50% of the galaxy's sectors, you get 50% of that money. Expanding your AoI to unowned sectors will get you access to "wasted" bc.

I disagree: some users can be extremely picky or overly judgemental over a game that aactually deserves high praise and rate it poorly soley because of a few flaws or 'bugs'. When those few flaws or bugs break gameplay, then high praise might not be totally deserved, don't you think? When a few bugs have been there forever and don't get fixed, even though they're well known, that doesn't look good either. When there's stuff in the game that might as wel

It's game mechanics. Plain and simple, and it works, in that it's meant to ensure that players can't just make huge high-pop worlds and harvest money. They chose to make the econ system work that way, they should have thought about it a little better. No clairvoyance needed, just some basic common sense, and knowing how the game really works. Now, if you go the "doesn't have to make sense" way, then 100B pop worlds aren't really an issue - a realism iss

Now I am stuck with a version that is basically crap with no way to return to a version that worked because stardock no longer has it for download. The wonders of the "no-DRM" SDC system...

@ACS_Solver: Just out of curiosity, would you still rate DA as a 9.2 today?