ToS Iceman

I said that we get the +1 without engines because outer space is slanted downhill. Rediculous? YES! Does it matter? Yes. Where there's downhill, there's also uphill. the end result is the same. No it isn't. It was mentioned above, you can have defensive "drones" with no engines, and therefore with more space for

Oh for Pete's sake people, you get basic FTL propulsion free with the hull. There, simple, done, find something else to nitpick. Why? This is as good a flaw as any other. Yep, there are plenty in this game, so any single one is as good as the others There has been a lot of nitpicking already, there'll always be. Why shouldn't this particular issue be nitpicked?

Well space goes downhill so you get a base speed of 1. Say what?! Actually instead of thinking the ship has having no engine just consider that you are getting a free one, like impulse drive or simple thrusters. In technical terms, I'd say all ships come with sublight thrusters by default. Those shouldn't let you "jump". This, of course, doesn't make

actually, you're perfectly wrong. some of the most powerful radio telescope arrays are just that: arrays, composed of dozens of much smaller radio antennae. the most powerful optical telescops also work similarly: multiple hexagonal mirrors arranged in such as way as to make them act as a single larger mirror. the advantage of multiple smaller reflectors is that they can be adjusted and fine-tuned independantly, providng a much clearer picture. but those are p

Why on earth does ship sensor range stack? Yep. Should be a one-per-ship item, and so should life support. It would make researching these techs more valuable.

So what's your point? The implication in that statement from the manual implies that with no production, the people who were working effectively disappear from the game. It just confirms what I said about no division. Nope, it doesn't imply that they disappear, because they don't exist in the first place (they're not really figured into the planet's pop). The justification given in the *manual*, as per the OP's quote, is that workers shift between the p

Its strategy, because otherwise you wouldnt be able to beat the game in Suicidal and the other hardest settings. You cant beat them if you dont specialize your production sometimes. Maybe you didn't understand. There is a strategy to playing the game, of course. The use of *sliders* however, does not directly involve any "strategy", it's just a means to implement it. Point was it introduces unnecessary micromanagement. Which IMO isn't necessarily a bad t

I guess it would need little bit bigger PQ values for homeworld Yep, mentioned this somewhere else (farms). Going with the story, I'd say HWs should have higher PQs and *no* special tiles (Precursor artifacts and such sitting on your HW unnoticed is kinda funny...), and uncolonized planets should have lower and slower improving PQs and *with* (the possibility of having) special tiles - to make them more appealing, and (almost) competitive relative to HW

that's not strategy, that's just annoying. Yep, the sliders/focus suck IMO. Skilled workers going back and forth between the private and public sectors, at the whim of one person?! Heheh. It's very much strategy in that you have to decide what to build, what to research, and which will take priority and get more funds. Hmm, nope, adjusting sliders is not strategy, it's math, or experimenting, or both.

In case you haven't noticed, I was in that thread too I don't think CodeCritter really meant *lasers* in that example, as if that was the case (and the example is really bad) some of the lasers from the second attack would have then be applied to another defense since the shields had already been depleted. I think he meant an abstract 10 damage weapon, just for illustration purposes.

Actually it does show attack rolls, but not defense rolls. Maybe it was just a simplification...

No doubt farms aren't really much of a factor in the game, compared to other building types. They're pretty much just another line in the techtree. They should be more needed, that's for sure. Problem is, the way the econ system (and the whole game, which is heavily based on it) is built, any change to anything involving pop might bring the whole thing down. Each factory reduces the popuklation max by 500million While this is a very good idea,

This is how it will work When a weapon is fired, the defending ship's defense in that category is decreased by the attack roll until the defense in that category is depleted. No off-type bonus? No defense rolls? Or was that just an inaccurate example?

Of course (and that's what I was talking about above) the "bug" where it's the base PQ that determines pop growth and not the current PQ has a lot to do with that. Maybe it's now being used as an artificial way to keep low PQ planets less interesting, instead of "fixing" them - it sure is easier, they just have to do nothing

One possible way to look at it: With a planet already at a certain state of development, there's a lot of interconnected systems and rules that have to be taken into account... but with a low quality planet, it's a blank slate. You want a continent here? No problem, there isn't a trans-atlantic current to mess up, do with this ground as you will! Those systems existed long before humans walked the earth. Uncolonized planets aren't blank slates, their mor

If targeting was purely random (like in StarChamber), defense regen could be a factor (but could also have a negligible effect). Since it's not, I don't think it'd make too much of a difference. One ship could benefit from this. Invunerability fields should be invincible to lazers Now this is *the* interesting issue. Making some defenses useless against much higher level weapons, and conversely some weapons useless against much higher level def

Bigger in size and not in mass would require a lower density, and within our solar system planet density (for rocky planets) is quite constant. Lower density means gas giants. So does much much larger diameters generally. Even much larger surface areas doesn't automatically mean much larger usable space, as the unusable areas (like earth's poles for example) also become larger. Anyways, checking the ingame representation of planets and their diameters...

But then it won't be your *home*world anymore, right? This is just a personal opinion, but I can't understand why there are planets with PQ so much higher than the average HW. If you think about it, the HW is where the native species adapted to for millions of years. Take the example of earth. Granted that ~2/3 of the planet's surface is covered by water, but would the habitability of the planet be that much higher if it wasn't? Probably much to the contrary. The oceans are used for a bunch

1. You have a bug and support forum...I would hope it's monitored or used to get bugs to devs! Saying you're not aware of a bug that's been heavily discussed here is kinda wierd. Seems Kryo and Cari were aware of it. Lack of communication between team members?!

I think it's the simplistic r/p/s system giving in. We're seeing other simplistic mechanics going the same route too. Predictable really. I think it's pretty obvious that the game needs a more robust combat system. No sizemods, maybe no rolls. A complete overhaul, unfortunately.

They may still have to eat, but if they don't pay for it, they won't get goverment issue food *Taxes* are not used to pay for food So what you mean is that the younger pop (those who don't pay taxes) don't get to eat. How can a planet sustain a pop growth rate with that philosophy?! <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Wink.gif" border=0 align=

But habitability is a very different issue. If you'd say a planet was PQ1 for humans but PQ5 for thalans, that'd be one thing. Different temp tolerance and gravity, environmental conditions, etc. But that's not the case. All of a sudden, with only Soil Enhancement (we're not talking terraforming) you get a *huge* boost in habitable/building space.

Domestic or widespread piracy. These roaming squadrons Asteroid belts would make great hidden bases for pirates. You wouldn't be able to detect them until you'd get close enough.

If fuel for ships was actually a concern... for those fusion drives of course. The best space strategy game I ever played actually had hydrogen and methane as fuel components, along with some other 15 or so elements that made up a planet's composition. It kinda made high H planets valuable for the huge fleets late game.

I don't think that you actually commit genocide, remember the actual population that shows is not everyone on the planet but everyone who is paying taxes.So in theory you don't kill everyone, So the non-taxpayers don't count towards the farm-dependent pop limit?! Even though they don't pay, they *do* take up space and eat I esp