Lord KiRon

Two words: ITS NOT :)

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[quote]Hard copies are much harder to replicate than a pdf.[/quote] Reasons are clear no argument here but it still does not means problem does not exits, that's why I started this thread - as psychiatrists say "admitting that problem exist is a half way solving it" :)

Indeed , check the eBay and "second hand software" shops. Anyway I also understand why StarDock operates this way , but StarDock is not the issue here, the issue is much broader thing. I started this thread mainly to start discussion on the topic, I do not have simple solutions as well. I also really wanted Frogboy to comment if possible at some point. So far I saw his as a very reasonable and fair person and I am sure when preparing "major industry change" he should

You missing the point guys . As I said I LOVE online distribution , it's quick it's easy it... many good things :) However the problem is (at least as I can see it) that it causes users unwillingly to gave up their rights, rights they have when they used to buy hard copy. May be even this is OK as long as user KNOWS what he doing. But usually he does not. And thats a big issue here. It's a same thing like with electronic books - legally you could sell your hardcopy

The digital distribution idea is great , I really love it but there are unnoticed strings attached that make it worse then buying DVD in store : With DVD (yes retail one , the one with annoying protection etc) you can : 1. Sell it. 2. Give it to someone else. 3. Even pass it as heritage :) The Impulse and SDC accounts are personal - you can't sell your game , you cant land your game and surely no one can inherit it af

I can give you one reason why its BAD for gaming - games crash . Simply games that runs fine under XP - crash. I do not know is it NVIDIA driver to blame or something else but this one reason beats 1,000 "why it's good" reasons.

I guess I was a part of "big move" after many people got disappointed with MoO 3 and looked for alternative which was GalCiv back then. I wander what other "waves" of users this forum (StarDock) had ?

At least UI play beta with them for couple of months already :)

All this Demigod stuff does not sounds too attractive to me but I guess it will find it's auditory.

News is published on Gamasutra , what else you want ?

[b]Hollow Man[/b] May be you right but the problem is in aproach , I do not want to apply any "hacks" or hidden setting. My internet was down , I tried to run it , Steam refused asking for internet connection. That was the end for me buying on Steam. I did not get message "Do you want to play offline" I got message "you have to be online" .

[quote]You don't need to connect to the Internet to play Steam SP games. As long as you've connected once to activate (like Stardock games), then set the appropriate settings in Steam to cache your userdata, you can then disconnect the network, and the next time you run Steam, it will run in offline mode.[/quote] [b]Hollow Man[/b] You are wrong on this , I bought Space Empires V on Steam and it was my first and last perches there - the game not start withoi internet connection and t

OK , Lets put it this way (at least for me): 1. If it is another SDC with non games as well - I "buy it" but if SD moves to Impulse instead of SDC they need to move my purchases (games) there as well. Also I have 14 Totalgaming credits - I weant this converted to Impulse otherwise it's a rip off. 2. The main advantage I'd like to see over Steam is no need to connect to internet to play. If this is kept I use it, if not I am back to buying disks. 3. Subscription mod

It would be funny if it end up someone from StarDock team getting married :)

I just hope it's not that StarDock going to use the stupid DRM scheme that was suggested (one programs checks for validity of another and so on in a game explorer). Also I think it can be StarDock probably merges with some "big gun" , not sure it a good thing. But the safest bet is just release of PoliticalMachine .

Are you sure you ready for release ? With each version I see more and more "basic" bugs: Invisible core ships (had invisible starbase once) , Freighter command not working , technologies not appear in the tech list (but you can select them from tree) , some starbases can not be repaired with starbase repair kits,, miners doing nothing when in auto mode and there is upgrades to do, 3 "Sol" systems (each one with own earth mars etc) on the same map , CTDs from time to time , "next turn" disap

[quote]All the time invisible ships ! ------------- We're not getting any here. Are the invisible ships ones that you designed, AI designed, core ships, or some combination thereof? [/quote] Core ships, mainly constructors and colony , right from the starting of the game (my 2nd constructor build by "buy" option in one turn was that way). Also my race was missing from the beginning the "Hyperdrive technology" so I could not build the ships at all. A

BUUUUGS ! All the time invisible ships ! At some point I started to get ship built as invisible (black rectangle in ship built message). P.S.: Played custom race with Altarian look.

I agree with your upgrade path , my PC is also almost 4 years old and I am just about to upgrade it (well I did added RAM , HDDs and changed video card over the time)... I used to upgrade each 1.5 years before. Planing something not that fancy - Q9650 with 880GTS 512MB and 8GB of RAM would be enough I guess :)

Finally ! If you did it with Sins release this would prevent about 40% of so called "piracy".

DOS attacks ... it feels like epidemic lately, on many popular sites you recently open them and see "sorry we were down due DOS attack..." or something like that. Regarding MP and GalCiv2 - I believe it's a good thing that MP was not implemented because no MP user would agree to "live with" that amount of bugs GalCiv2 has. We single user players might be a bit surprised or upset when some building does not do what it supposed to do or income calculations behave strangely or eve

I surely understand that the matter "hurts" but haven it been enough discussions ? Simply put - look at MP3s , the publishers (all "major 4" ) dropped the DRM. Anyway , personally one way or another if StardDock moves to DRM that will be last StarDock game I bought.

I use creativity all the time and usually it works fine , sometimes I do 20+ or even 50-60 turns research and it usually kicks in. There is a small bug related to it however - if creativity "hit's" on the last turn of research it researches the next technology without asking (sometimes it's nice but usually strange) and only after that you get a message that "due to creativity ...". Also if you play good civ. you can research +25 creativity (at least for Altarians for sure).

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