HydroAC

slabster, I like the hard analysis, which is missing from my AARs. This helps me understand and de-black-boxify the game. I have to admit I’ve been a bit lazy in ferreting out the mechanics of the game so your work is appreciated. It’s like deconstructing GalCiv2! My only suggestion is to use more paragraphs, spaces, and bullets to break up the text a bit and divide the major subsections/topics. This might be especially helpful when you dive into the nitty gritty of the product

Most of the global warming climate model results I've seen (summaries of, anyway) show the USA Midwest getting drier to much drier: think Oklahoma (fairly dry, hot) or West Texas (hot, arid to desert). Florida is a largely former coral reef that is just above sea level, so it doesn't take much of an imagination to think it will return from whence it came... Hydro

Oz, You have it the nail on the head: even if anthropogenic global warming is true, are we willing to pay the price to stop it? Right now China is bringing on line enough coal fired power plants to power Britain EVERY TWO YEARS. By 2010 China will emit more CO2 than the USA (who is the Bad Boy poster child for most of the world), and China’s CO2 growth rate is exponential at this point. And this doesn’t even consider India, which is also developing rapidly (growth rate last year was ~10

Wow! I love the use of lots of screenshots. This just shows that a defeat can be a great story! Hydro

GJD - thanks for the tips! There are too many choices and not enough time, so I browse through the various SF awards for good SF book candidates: Arthur C Clark SF Award: http://www.sfsite.com/lists/award-arthurcclarke01.htm British Science Fiction Awards http://www.bsfa.co.uk/index.cfm/section.awrdlist Hugo Awards http://www.worldcon.org/hy.html Nebula SF Awards http://www.dpsinfo.com/awardweb/nebulas/ If there are others

It’s interesting to know of the bug, but I’m not sure it is a big deal. After all, it is now apparent how to minimize it - don’t reload. This does to some degree affect the level of difficulty due to AI advantage, and if it the bug presents too much of a challenge I can just move to a different difficulty level. Fair is fair. That said, I am by no means a power player: I play for fun, and GalCiv2 if fun. Brad and his team have done an outstanding job and I appreciate their efforts. <br

GalienEvil - Actually, I’m pretty sure our sun’s temperature has been increasing since life started 2-3B odd years ago. During this time the Earth’s atmospheric temperature has been more or less stable, or at least stable enough to maintain life – kind of a life-centered feedback loop, where CO2 and the greenhouse effect are a vital factor. Eventually as the sun becomes elderly its outer fringes and energy output will crispy fry Earth, but that singular event is billions of years away. <br/

Friend Oz, My much-abbreviated summary of the causes for global warming is below. This summary is based on the article in the Skeptical Enquirer: Global Climate Change Triggered by Global Warming by Stuart Jordan, senior staff scientist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. I tried to keep the summary accurate and concise, and any errors in my summary are mine and I apologize in advance. If you’re interested in the entire text, it is available at the Center for

LostHero, Nice story with an interesting premise! You may want to post future AARs in the AAR section. The images are fine, by the way. But please consider using a spell checker and kindly use capital letters with your sentences since that makes it much easier to read. Thanks! Hydro

What did you have in mind? A fictionalized version of the more technical AARs? Or fleshing out some of the existing short stories? I'm not sure paying is a terribly good idea, though. Most sites like this do have some Fan Fiction, which is submitted simply because the game has inspired the authors. Hydro

Well, I’m 43, not married, but always looking for The One. I detest first person shooter games as mind numbing and twitchy and generally dislike RT game as click fests. That leaves, of course, turn based strategy games. I recall many hours behind my blinding amber monitor of my oh-so-hot XT in grad school playing Populous. Later I graduated to Civ, Moo2, and then fell out of computer games for a while – until I discovered SMAC in 1999. I was traveling on business and had lots of free time in the

Braddock – you asked for what struck me as wrong in Crichton’s discussion. There were several, but the one that caught my attention and set off my BS Detector was his discussion on Consensus Science. In the speech text he states that consensus in science is irrelevant. His point is that science is not a democracy where anointed ones will decide what is true. Further, this statement is meant to impugn the statements made by all the major scientific organizations in the US, Europe, and t

There are two pages. All the detail is in page 1 of 2. Hydro

NaytchGC – why, thank you! They’re fun to write, but take a LOT of time. Sadly Real Life has intervened to remove most of my free time **sigh**. I read Starship Troopers ages ago and Ender’s Game (with its many sequels). Loved them both – a lot. They’re all safely tucked away in my SF library. I have a few Virge, but not Fire on the Deep . I don’t have any Stross. I’ll put both on the list, although if they’re out of print I may have to scour used book stores. Dune was go

Out of curiosity I read the article. It did get a chuckle out of me since, although there were some intriguing ideas, it was full of assertions and ‘facts’ that struck me as just plain wrong. Of course, Mr. Crichton is selling his point just as hard as those he criticizes. He has an agenda – and is pushing it hard: he cherry picks his examples, sets up strawmen (the SETI formula – and his silly hook statement that got us all to read the article), and then obligingly knocks them down –

Good luck! I'll keep my eyes pealed for 'Wyndstar' in a few months! Hydro

Wonderful story. Excellent AAR! It certainly IS epic! Hydro

Is she still alive? I thought she died. Maybe she and Imus can get something going together. There's a match made in heaven. Oh, yes. The village of ~9000 where I live in the west Chicago suburbs decided to have their first newspaper edition with an Ann Coulter editorial. Boy, did that ever get a pointed and decidedly negative response - and that is in the conservative suburbs. Both Ann and Imus are in the entertainment industry, although I get th

Friend Kinjiru, you are quite right. I found the little switcheroo at first to be surprising, then alarming (since I thought my PC had been hijacked), and then I was slightly offended. If I want non-linear hyperventilating rants I’ll visit Ann Coulter’s web site. Hydro

Civ4 has gotten good reviews, but I lost interest pretty quickly. What was infuriating and what eventually made it selfware was its tendency to crash or simply...stop...after mid game. My PC was well within its recommended levels and the patches didn't help. Maybe I’m spoiled by games with well designed and interesting factions (SMAC/X comes to mind), but the Civ4 factions all seemed one dimensional and I had a hard time caring enough to spend the time to make the game work. GalCiv2 is

Clearstar, One part of GalCiv2 that I like is that I can try different strategies. I tend to get stuck in as rut and have found that the AARs and strategy posts are very helpful to see what other people do. For instance, as PitSnipe said, population is everything, and to get more population you have to be competitive in the colony rush. Perhaps you are spending too much time and resources in technology and a lower grade of propulsion would work. Getting spd 3 or maybe 4 colony

Good grief! As if I feel inadequate enough. Hydro

Marshal, You’ve set a high bar. Simply excellent. Hydro

'Broken' is a strong word. I think it is better to test how the races fare with respect to each other and a human player. That is the test of balanced game play. What is good is that the developers are always tweaking the races and gameplay so that there will be some sort of balance. That said, perfect balance would be perfectly boring, which is why I like Super Abilities. Hydro

The default hulls generally do not have the best weapons, engines, armor, sensors, life support etc that your empire has. If you use the default ships, therefore, then you will miss out on the fruits of your hard-won technology. Also, the default ships are not optimized for what you need to do. For instance, do you REALLY need to get colony ships out and have them go as fast as possible? Then you need the best engines you have. Do you absolutely have to have the best fighter to fight th