Lloyd007

The current economic meltdown is Washington and Wall Streets fault, Bush, Clinton, Republicans, Democrats... they were ALL complicit in building up the double F bubble. Banks saw a huge opportunity to make tons of cash in selling bad mortgages and noone in either place devoted a single brain cell to the possible situation of housing prices going down and thus the whole scheme collapsing. So now here we are bailing out a bunch of greedy schmucks who bet the farm on the rool of a dice that came

The reduction of fair use is one of the big things I find wrong with the copyright system. The literal 'Mickey Mouse' legislation (Disney were the big movers in the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act') extending copyright to essentially forever (and I'll bet my bottom dollar they'll be at it again when it comes up again.) is another. Corporations conducting searches and initiating lawsuits without a shred of evidence for thousands of dollars is a third. The entire DMC

Back when CD's first came out they were $14-16 and people paid those prices. They still pay those prices. Same with VHS/DVD's which were always $19.99 for a newer release and then falling as things got older. The biggest downward influence in pricing for mainstream stuff is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart FORCES producers to have a certain price point or they don't stock it and since Wal-Mart is the blue whale in the fishtank they can do that. But even Wal-Mart charges what the mar

Prices won't come down. Companies will charge what the market will bear. If they think that's $50 it's $50... If it's $20 it's $20...

Yes. I'd seriously like it if it was the govn't handing these matters and not corporates suits. I want my rights back. Just don't be surprised when everyone who has ever used the internet gets indicted under the current laws. A few years ago Google got sued over its image search, which is basically just a giant copyright infringement program. The courts ruled for Google based on 'well it really is against the law but we like it so we're going to let it stay.' They should have r

Nice Strawman there. Where do I say copyright holders shouldn't enjoy profit from their labors... I do not nor will I ever say that... However copyright holders cannot have the same rights as holders of tangible property because the nature of intellectual property and tangible property are fundamentally different. Only a few people can enjoy a car at any one time. A car company uses a ton of labor, parts, and materials to build a car and once they use those parts they cannot use them t

[quote] Er....what? That's about as logical as saying 'if you have children you are a paedophile'. [/quote] No it's more like saying. If you drive a vehicle you WILL have violated a traffic law. You WILL have at some point gone at least 1 mph over the speed limit even if you are the most careful driver. You will have parked too far from the curb at some point. You will have waited too short a time at a stop sign. You will have not used your blinker to signal a lane change f

The Yor are by far the strongest tech wise. 1-3 bc maintenance collectives, an incredible research building to start, the best pop/morale building in the game, strong soldiering, strong econ... There really is no downside

Either that or tech up defense. 80 or so defense on medium hulls with weak attack is cheaper both tech and cost wise and a fleet of 3 will survive to fire back. OR a bunch of tiny ships with one top defense tech means that if the DL ship gets one bad roll it's done. The key is to make either of enough ships to survive the round with just enough firepower to kill the DL ship

I don't think it is econ. From my espionage their tax base is over 8k per turn and they have a 500bc per turn surplus

Intelligent. Actually they aren't doing too bad against the other AI's. They got the Thalans to surrender even though the Thalans had like 40 worlds left (to be fair they were fighting basically everyone). But vs me with no defenses and no way to build defenses on their outer worlds they will die really fast.

In an immese game where I am playing the Yor on intelligent the Torians aren't building anytihng on a large number of their colonies. All the other races are building stuff (that I know of, haven't met the Drengin or Altarians yet). Also the Krynn never research planetary invasion... By design or bug?

Research points do carry over. I personally don't see much point for PP to carry over and it would probably eat a huge amount of comp resources.

First time they appeared in one of my games I was already on Disrupters and high level defense. The other ai's were being a pushover so I left the DL alone... Very fun game there (gigantic map). Unfortunately for them one of my default choices for any race is 30% soldiering and I'm nuts about getting it as high as possible. An 8/2 advantage with only 20m invaders really doesn't do jack...

Abandonware is a legal and moral grey area I agree. Personally I think it's fine if the game is dead, not sold or otherwise available at all commercially. If another company picks it up and offers it though it stops being abandoned though and you should purchase it but if not it really is a personal decision since noone is ever going try and enforce something like copyright infringement for abandoned but then re released games.

Problem with DRM is it all comes down to trust. If the copy protection scheme Frogboy postulates comes about and it doesn't work well because of the DRM messing everything up well... People will go back to something that works. There is a good reason why Vista isn't selling well because it is a steaming pile of DRM that doesn't work well because of that reason. That and if you get really bad DRM shoved down your throats with no alternatives or recourse... There is always the court of p

Since they are boilerplate there are sections of the EULA that would be easily enforceable and those that are wishful thinking kinda like how the back of pay for parking ticket stubs have that 'disclaimer of guarantee' when it comes to someone stealing your car (it's settled law in all states that I know of that parking outfits do have responsibility of someone steals you car from their place.) Noone's really challenged EULA's because they are for the most part unenforced and unenforcea

If there are no uncolonized planets of that hazard type left the AI will not pay anything for the tech AFAIK...

In my games the turn button disappears frequently. Every time it's caused by the 'unused movement points' bug. Trivial but annoying...

Playing as the Yor Immmense scattered abundant everything. Tech and ascension victories off. Tech trading off. 9 Ai all intelligent... Terran, Drengin, Drath, Krynn, Torian, Korx, Altarian, Arcean and Iconian. Still playing but here are my observations. Korx died really quickly... lightning fast... didn't even meet em... Altarian and Arcean were really weak. Didn't expand much at all before getting killed. Arceans never had more than 10 planets out of 500 and Altarians never had mo

Congratulations to Stardock for landing such a big fish and good luck to GPG; I've really liked Supreme Commander and its expansion and will definitely be taking a look at Demigod... Honestly I hope all the DRM fanatics and their peddlers like Starforce, Pace Software, Sony Securom and the rest choke on their own bile. I despise companies that punish their customers and for example won't buy Bioshock until it's $9.99 and put out by Valusoft.

Personally (and I may be wrong) I think Galciv 3 is a long time coming. Stardock has been developing and supporting this game for 2 years and I think they may want to move on to other genres for a while like getting out that MMO they showcased a while back and maybe developing a new fantasy TBS. The Galciv series won't die out but I think Stardock will take a break and since they only have enough manpower to really work on 1 or 2 games at a time... I mean think about it. Id to

The big thing is the followup. In one of my current games I left a lot of low PQ planets uncolonized simply because I was going for juicier targets. The Terrans colonized piecemeal and I got three colonies from them quickly. The Drath spammed colony ships and got 4 colonies up in short order which was enough to keep them safe (until I invaded, that is, then I got a boatload of free techs...)

The only MMO I've found to be 'fun' has been City of Heroes/Villains. Aside from running out of things to do in the mid to late 30's the game is fun, fast paced, and designed specifically against grinding since even with the 'loot' Invention Origins they are really just gravy over regular SO's. A huge part of the game is the fact that you can design our character in millions of different ways and look cool even at lvl 1 and most costume upgrades are level rather than loot based. They also implem

First of all I agree that DRM and copyright are two different things although it is the IP companies fault almost exclusively for muddying that water probably beyond repair ie. people now consider that DRM less products in the software/music/movie world are not coprighted... DRM is a plague, poison and blight that I think will kill off most computer games in the future if things continue the way they are. A software company has a right to protect it's IP but it does not have a right to