drakkos137

Join Date 10/2013

+12

Notes from my first game.

Greetings.

Played my first match, with the goal in mind of getting all techs in the tree.

Ok, I didn't start out with that in mind, but eventually.

Notes as follows. Hopefully some of this is useful.

Ver 0.40. I'm assuming this is what everyone's working with atm.

"Soil Reclamation" - typo - "therefore" should be "terraform".

Turn 277 - Captures last Altarian planet, can no longer target leftover Altarian ships.

Precious Metals tooltip - spelling error - "idea" should be "ideal"

Constructor tooltip - sp - "Construct" starbase.

Mining Ring tooltip - sp - "Recourses" should be "resources".

Queuing Eject from a starbase during an enemy turn does not actually make the ship eject, but rather spawn in the same location as the starbase itself. Must then be moved off to use.

Harpoon Savo - sp - "savo" should be "salvo"

Sending too many constructors causes starbases to bug; this problem seems to be more prevalent after you've selected a starbase specialty. First bug seems to be an inability to complete the last tech. Second bug is that "extra" constructors dock with the starbase as defenders, and aren't registered for construction, and require being ejected and re-entering the starbase to register. Occasionally the ship itself will be "stuck" as part of a fleet, and will require going into the details for the ship itself, and exiting again, in order to be able to control the vessel. Not consistent.

Energy Phasing - "staff" should be "stuff"

High energy Transfer - "leach" should be "leech"... or should it?

Armour Enhancement - unnecessary comma between "through" and "changing"

Armour Mastery - "master armorers" cost +25% instead of -25%.

"armoror" should be "armorer".

Adaptive Counter Measures - fairly sure countermeasures is a single word.
- "algorithim" should be "algorithm"

- there's a spare hanging "c" after the period.

Arreon Missile Defense - "chafe" should be "chaff"

Countermeasure Manufacturing - "Cost +15%" should be "cost -15%"

Low Cost Point Defenses - "Cost +10%" should be "cost -10%"

Turn 828 - Credits went over 2 million, flipped to the negative end of the scale, now increasing from negative, can no longer purchase. No impact on morale.

Master Shield Assembly - "cost +25%" should be "cost -25%"

High Density Shield Generator - hanging c after period.

Low Cost Shield Generators - "Cost +20%" should be "Cost -20%"

Low cost Shield Systems - "Cost +1%" should be "Cost -1%"

Pulse Cannon - Starbase improvement titled "Not in Alpha"

Graviton Thrower - Starbase improvement titled "Not in Alpha"

Quantum Drivers - Starbase improvement titled "Not in Alpha"

Singularity Drivers - Starbase improvement titled "Not in Alpha"

Some personal feedback.

I've played thousands of hours of Altarian Prophecy, and this feels good. Now, onto the negatives.

Fleets are messy and difficult to use.

no snap-to-battle function is jarring.

invasions are blase.

being unable to build on-world is annoying, and completely changes the strategy of the game, particularly when you are forced to field combat ships to defend every single shipyard. Particularly DO NOT LIKE this aspect.

Do Not Like Tiles. I much prefer the text list of upgrades from the original Gal Civ, and feel it is beyond ridiculous that an advanced space-faring race can't find enough space on their respective ball of rock to build all the necessary toys. This portion of the game can be removed entirely.

No longer able to increase spending to increase output? Where did this go? In its place, we have an option of moving our focus more towards military or social on the empire level, and from manufacturing to research on the planetary level? Am I missing something here?

The value of income for morale is greatly, greatly overstated. What's the point of Festival? This clearly needs to be reworked, when the be-all and end-all of planetary happiness is the cash flow.

100% happiness on each of my planets, for hundreds of turns, but the average never increases past 98%. This would earn an F in most math classes.

I'm sure there's more that I thought of, but didn't jot down, I'll be back with more hopefully-useful info after my next game, wherein I intend to max out the Alignment trees.

Fun!

Good game so far, guys, the spirit is there, though I do wish you'd be more true to the original formula.

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I have to agree with some of you're complaints. That tiny and small ships can't be build on planets is kind of ridiculous especially as the tech to unlock small ships implies it unlocks the shipyard as well.

About the tiles, I'm not entirely against them but do think 10 as a standard is very low. You're point about not being able to build all of the improvements was a complaint I had but hadn't posted here. It makes no sense and considering the size of the hexes, one takes up most of the US and Canada. No factory, research center, power plant or any other improvement needs that much space even a large network of them doesn't need that. I would say at least break up each hex into 4 or 5, that would allow for all improvements to be build on even small worlds.

About you're concern about no focus spending, I think you are missing something about the production wheel(or whatever they are calling it). Its the color palette think on the planetary management page the top is all wealth, lower left all production and lower right all research or any combination of the group around the circle or inside it. Not a fan of it either but others seem to like it. I've discovered what I thought of as a lot of micromanagement was not even what a lot of people testing this game seem to consider sub-optimal management and the production wheel give them the fine control they want.

I'm with you about the income morale issue too but don't really have a suggestion to improve it.

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peregrine23

Join Date 02/2007

+79

I strongly disagree here. The tile system is important for the feel of different planet qualities. Also, the adjacency bonus is probably my favorite upgrade from GC2. Planetary building is an abstraction. It's not like you can only build 3 factories and nothing else on a quality 4 planet.

No longer able to increase spending to increase output? Where did this go? In its place, we have an option of moving our focus more towards military or social on the empire level, and from manufacturing to research on the planetary level? Am I missing something here?

There is no longer a tax rate the effects approval, but moving production around between manufacturing, research, and wealth is done with the production wheel on both the civ and planetary level, and prioritizing manufacturing between social and military is done with the slider below the wheel an can also be done civ-wide or for each individual planet.

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Of course the tile system is an abstraction and I even like the adjacency bonus system but its still a bad system. Even a small planet should be able to support all of the improvements available. It just won't have a huge population which still should not stop a planet like Mars from becoming a powerhouse with automation which should be more important that population but isn't even an option.

The adjacency bonus works well for simulating building economies of scale and other synergies but ignores other possibilities and only really works well if you get those mostly complete hex rings with appropriately placed bonuses. However industrial processes(this includes farming) should depend more on automation and technology than population while research and wealth creation should depend more on population(intuition, reasoning and entrepreneurship that can't easily be replaced by machines). Drakkos' point about an advanced space faring civilization that can't find the space to build all of its toys being ridiculous is right, turning Mars into a factory world is exactly what we should be doing in this game but we can't because we can't get enough population to actually do so. This is why I'm starting to feel like this isn't GalCiv3 but GalCiv2 64 bit edition. Stardock isn't really improving on its past performance but iterating it forward just enough. That makes sense form a business standpoint but a little more risk could do better and make more.

I'm not a fan of Steve Jobs but he made a comment about the iPhone that I think is very appropriate to this discussion, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." Show me a better way and I'll want that better way but until I know about the better way I don't know I want it specifically but I do want a better way I just don't know exactly what that is yet. I am hoping Stardock will show me a better way but the game as it stands is not that. I'm hoping for GalCiv3 where I can turn Mars or an asteroid belt into factory worlds and have my planets like Earth be where my population produces research wealth and culture and incidentally doesn't have to pollute the biosphere by having heavy industry on the planet anymore.

I would also love to have my rule judged not by how much entertainment I provide but for how I encouraged a free and open society. It would take a lot of work but it would make me happier to be judged by my policies on open borders, trade freedom, whether or not I'm spying on my own people etc than providing entertainment or a choice when colonizing a world.

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