Shamgar

There are two issues here: The scoring of an individual game, and the calculation of the metaverse "average." I have found the former to be somwhat of a puzzle, but nothing to discourage or take away from the fun of playing the game. The latter, however, I have found frustrating, and I think that is the burden of the "complaint" in this thread. I was rather surprised, for instance, to get a 20,000+ score on one game (certainly not my best, but not my worst, either), and see it drop my MV score b

Yup, same thing just happened to me. Went after a nice, juicy I-League planet, and the Torians and Altarians both declared war on me to "honor their alliance." Thankfully, I'm far enough into the game now that I should be able to take them both out. So yes, the other races *do* notice if you are "cherry picking" the minors.

You would be welcomed, too, in The Colonial Fleet. [link="http://colonialfleet.net/index.php"]http://colonialfleet.net/index.php">Link I have found the group to be friendly and helpful, with a nice active message board. We have our eyes on third place, and more members would be a great help! Whatever empire you join, be sure to have fun playing the game!!

Excellent idea! Besides the tedium of guiding the constructors, there is the problem of usually not knowing whether an upgrade you want is available for a star base until you send a constructor there and find out that it isn't! It is too much to go around clicking individual star bases to see what's on each one. Your suggestions would *greatly* clean up the game.

I use a class letter (P = patrol, F = fighter, OD = orbital defender, D = destroyer, C = Cruiser, B = battleship). I used to name each class (e.g. P-1 Gnat, P-2 Blackfly; F-1 Hawk, F-2 Falcon, D-1 my wife and kids' names, etc.). Having done that for a while, now I am more "practical" and use the name to give the ship's specs, e.g.: F-3 2-0-0 0-1-0 would be a fighter (small hull) with a speed of 3, beam attack of 2, and missle defense of 1. This is helpful for easily grouping ships of the

>In addition they should also get their starbases, ships, technology, and star maps I don't know. Often a force facing defeat will begin take great efforts to prevent the "goods" from falling into the victor's hands ... e.g. scuttling ships, destroying intel. Getting all of a civilization's techs, especially, would give the victor far too much, and from a gameplay point of view likely unbalance things drastically. And how would we like it if a nearly defeated empire surrendered all of

I got two rangers once. They were a life-saver defense-wise, but not as helpful for offense since they are so slow. As far as getting an announcement somenon has found a Ranger, I think the "announcement" is when it appears in your sensor range and then begins blowing up your ships. I'm sure that any military would want to keep such a find as a "secret weapon" until the point it is being used.

Along the same line, I've noticed that the AI does not take advantage of bonus tiles very well. I treat those like gold. When you think of it, even a 100% bonus is like getting an extra tile (with no need to build or pay upkeep) if you build the right thing on it. Yet, I'll find AI planets with the "wrong" item built on a bonus tile, even though there are still "blank" tiles left. Sometimes I end up demolishing the improvement to build the right item.

Here's a related question ... once the planets flip to you and they are firmly in your cultural control, does the influence starbase serve any purpose? If the influence they generate is limited to their sphere of control, would it be advisable to "decommission" an obsolete influence star base, to save on maintanence costs? BTW, I have had Yor planets flip over to me, too ... so it can be done! A cool thing happened in my present game: A planet "saw the light" and came over

I like making a minor my trading partner. That way I don't lose revenue when I end up at war with a major. It annoys me when another major gobbles up a nice, juicy high PQ planet. (Mostly, it annoys me because if anyone gets that planet, it should be *me*). If they look like someone is about to grab a minor planet, I develop a cheap "blockader," mak

Also, consider the original setting when you started the game for the density of planets. If you set it at "abundant" you will find plenty of planets, but if at "rare" you will spend a lot of your initial turns on Earth and Mars! (There are settings in between, too ...)

Wow. I put size "12" for the font on that post. That's the biggest 12 point font I've ever seen. Sorry, I didn't mean to shout.

Thanks for your great efforts to make a great product even better. I do not regret a penny of what I spent on GalCiv. For future revisions... for those of us who *do* chose to include tech trading, a mousover or something in the diplomacy window that gives the relative value of the techs being traded.

You can change them after colonizing, anytime and as many times as you like! Just select the planet, and click on the name in the panel at the bottom, and the window comes up for you. I also like changing the names, but sometimes I get so "into" the land rush that I don't take the time right away.

Whenever I trade techs with an alien, I always check to see if I can get some credits in the bargain. It's handy to use the slider and see when the text turns from green to red, so I know how much I can get. However, the slider is so "sensitive" that it leaps in high increments (hundreds, usually ... I supposed depending upon how much the other trade partner has). For instance, in one instance a mere touch of the slider made it jump from zero to 230 or so, and the only way to get to a number inb

When my survey ship explores an anomaly that promises to "add 2 defense points" to my ship, the ship still shows "0" for all three defenses. I don't know about the ones that give me attack points, I haven't happened to find one yet.

Very nice work, it's looking great. Here are a few things I ran into: Pressed the ' - key to "fiind your toughtest ship," and it brought me to an *alien* ship. When the GNN window comes up to tell me of the turn's accomplishments, and I press "go to planet," the GNN screen keeps popping up on top when I try to do something such as change the ship I am building. The only way to escape this is to press "done" on the GNN screen, even if there are other planets listed on it tha

A small, thing, but would seem to save a bunch of unnecessary mousing & clicking: When you launch a transport, the default troop load is half capacity (500). Now, I'm a guy, so for me a power tool has only two practical settings: "Off" and "full power." Likewise, it will be rare that I ever send out a transport with less than full capacity of 1,000. But now, each time you launch, you have to mouse on over to the window and click five times on the +100 or else grab the slider and pull it up.

Unless there is some method I am missing, I find it a bit cumbersome to find out which of my planets are idle in one or the other of their production queues. I go to the "planet" list, scroll down until I see an empty line, then click on the planet to see if there is something that I could (or want to) work on ... and then I have to go back to the top of the list to start scanning again. An "idle planet" button would be very helpful.

Unless there is some method I am missing, I find it a bit cumbersome to find out which of my planets are idle in one or the other of their production queues. I go to the "planet" list, scroll down until I see an empty line, then click on the planet to see if there is something that I could (or want to) work on ... and then I have to go back to the top of the list to start scanning again. An "idle planet" button would be very helpful.