AlmostDecent

I have a follow-up question. I have been playing ToA, but began with the Dark Avatar campaign. I noticed that it is using the unique tech trees of ToA, and am curious to know if this will not skewer the experience as DA was not designed with them in mind. At first I paid no attention, but on hindsight, and just finished first two scenarios, I wonder as perhaps I am getting more than the expected loss of buildings (incompatible with my race and hence unusable) after conquering a planet than wa

[quote]There is only one LucasArts game I'm looking forward to and its only LucasArts cause it happens to be from their universe. the KOTOR MMO made by.......BIOWARE! Cause honestly people, Bioware knows RPG's, they know PC's, and they know their players. Why else would I still be playing KOTOR and enjoying it after knowing every little secret...seriously?[/quote] And KOTOR II, which was a no less brilliant sequel.

[quote]Hello,i would like to see:1. A fleet based range/support module to build tanker style cargo shipse.g. Fuel generator, cost: 70, size: 20, +50% Fleet range 2. A fleet based repair module for specialist maintenance shipse.g. Repair bay cost: 70, size: 15, +10% repair3. A new weapons ability: capture ship I like these a lot.[/quote] Same. I think they are very good ideas. For the capture ship, you'd have to have some special conditions though. No tiny or small fighter could

[quote]Small quibbles aside, I am enjoying ToA alot! It really does deserve the great reviews.I installed with SDC and Vista and had to manually create the shortcut to the launcher.[/quote] SDC, XP, and same. That said, don't get me wrong, I love the game, and only mentioned this as some users might miss it, or other reviewers, and it would be a shame as this is a huge feature. Note also, I sent IGN an e-mail suggesting they give the editors a review of their own as a followup, conside

[quote]The Twilight icon stored in my Start Menu starts the Launcher widget.-HM[/quote] Not mine. Were you a Beta tester/user? I wasn't and bought and installed it first week of May. I checked again, and there is no doubt.

[quote]Excellent commentary and truly deserved rating above the 9th dimension of quality & reality. How could IGN even miss-out on the supplemental assets such as the Editors though.[/quote] Actually, Stardock is partly to blame for this. After installing ToA, it not only doesn't create an icon on the desktop, but the one created in the Program menus jumps straight to the game. The Editors are reached through the ToA launch screen only, so you actually have to hunt down and create thi

[quote]Excellent commentary and truly deserved rating above the 9th dimension of quality & reality.How could they even miss-out on the supplemental assets such as the Editors though.[/quote] Actually, Stardock is partly to blame for this. After installing ToA, it not only doesn't create an icon on the desktop, but the one created in the Program menus jumps straight to the game. The Editors are reached through the ToA launch screen only, so you actually have to hunt down and create this

"...there's no way we can't recommend this to anyone looking for a deep, rewarding, utterly captivating turn-based strategy experience." http://pc.ign.com/articles/873/873344p1.html

[quote]6) (Sorry!) Never been a huge fan of the colonization-based ethics choices, which always favor evil. Some events not tied to colonization, and some that favor good/neutral please![/quote] This is a very good point actually. I landed on a planet, and the choices went like this: Good - Nothing happens Neutral - +8% production bonus Evil - +37% production bonus !! That is really huge. The only way this could be offset would be if the actual choice of bein

I found a small bug yesterday. If I have two buildings in queue to be built, and I buy one, the next run it CORRECTLY announces I built X and am now building Y (the next building in queue). However, if I have only one building, buy it, and then place another building in queue, the next turn it INCORRECTLY tells me I built building X, and am now building NOTHING. If I check the planet though, it correctly shows the building being built, and shows that construction has already star

Most of the important things have been said IMO, so I will push the ones I agree with the most: 1) No tech brokering option. Made even more valuable when tech trees are fixed/fine-tuned. 2) Cleaner, centralized new turn screen (with necessary announcements). [B]Surprise factor[/B] [quote]3) Option toggle for hiding enemy ship stats from the player UNTIL they actually meet in combat. A higher level of espionage (higher espionage tech? Not all spies are created

[quote]Imho, the underlying problem is the curent inferiority of mixed strategies. *This* should be analyzed and addressed.Okay, sure, I can go along with that. As long as it encourages me to build a 'normal' empire, I'm fine with it.[/quote] Not sure. Perhaps a solution would be to weaken the sliders and strengthen the planetary focus options. Instead of only focus on/off, you could change this depending on the resources a planet has available. I tend to agree that having an all-lab p

It's really a matter of taste. The list you gave is pretty eclectic to say the least. I'm surprised no one recommended the highly regarded [link="https://www.sinsofasolarempire.com"]Sins of a Solar Empire[/link], also by Stardock, and no doubt superb. I was a big Civ fan, and when I heard of GalCiv2, I was curious. Civ in space? I hadn't really been taken by Alpha Centauri, and was hesitant about this. I finally demoed it, played a couple of games, lost, read the entire manual, still l

[quote] You didn't mention if your playing DL or DA, but JPinard wrote an excellent and in-depth strategy guide for DA that can also help DL players out too. You can find it Here [/quote] I agree. That tutorial was what helped me finally get a grasp of the game. It is a very good tutorial, and really helps one understand a lot of things. After that I made changes, but that's the point isn't

[quote] I don't understand how someone can take gamerankings and similar websites seriously. It's one thing thing to be nominated by editorial staff, it's another thing to be nominated by a statistical flux. You can have a thousand websites like that with a thousand different "tops". [/quote] It compiles the average grade given by those [I]thousands[/I] of sites. How can you say that a grade given by an editorial staff is significant, but that the

No, I had no spies eliminated on this planet when the warning came. The spies also did not appear on the tab, yet the red spy icons were still very visible at the bottom right corner.

While playing the DA campaign (latest patch installed before starting mission) I have received more than one announcement that enemy spies were uncovered in one of my planets. Several times however, when clicking to see the spy, no spies appear in the planet in question, nor any other. I thought it might need a turn to appear, but after a couple of turns, it was clear there was no spy. So some spies appear, and some do not. This is a new issue I had not seen before. Albert

I quite like the DA idea of requiring certain techs in order to colonize a hostile planet environment, however, what about conquering such a planet that has already been 'tamed'. Right now, if one conquers a Barren planet, for example, owned by another civ, and don't have the Barren colonization tech, then once conquered, the planet is more or less unusable. This doesn't make much sense to me. If the planet was successfully colonized by a foreign power, and this planet in turn is conquered, shor

Schizmatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling Dune. Use Of Weapons. Revelation Space. Fairyland (yes it's SF!) And of course: Shadow Of The Torturer. I loved Wolfe's books too, but Sci-Fi it ain't.

Oh... and how could I forget John Wyndham's "The day of the Triffids", "The Chrysalids", and "The Midwich Cuckoos". All equally great! I quite liked his "Trouble with Lichen" too, but really loved (I'd forgotten about it) his short book, "Chocky" which I highly recommend. It is a breezy read, and very good.

Dune by Frank Herbert and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. As a sidenote, Neal Stephenson's White Snow was an exhilirating and ultra-original read.

I'd like to be able to customize the music. I'm sure this would be enormously appreciated by many. I have nothing against the internal music, but this is the kind of game some will presumably be playing a LOT, at which point it would make sense to be able to choose one's own. I had in mind at least two options: - customize the actual events/race music, but without having to resort to tracking down the folder, copying and renaming. - a standard background music played fro

Play the tutorials, and play a couple of games with a small map. Just to get familiarized with it. This tutorial is quite good. There is also the Gal Civ 2 wiki .

I just started the whole modding thing (as a user), and this was one of the packs installed, with 3.0 first as specified in the instructions. One question though: the mod doesn't appear in the mod list in the Options screen. Is it supposed to? Kyro's Hull mod does, so I know I'm doing something right. Thanks for the effort and contributions BTW!

What exactly does SDC say when you try to register it there? It says, "The Serial Number you have entered is invalid. Please ensure the information you have entered matches exactly from your order email. Use the Lookup Serial Number button to resend your account information to the email address you ordered under." I tried following the instructions, and I did a cut-and-paste from the e-mail it s