Hamilmac

Join Date 04/2006

+27

Beta 0.51 Patch Feedback

The one good thing about being home sick is that I have plenty of time to play.

Comments (Huge map, 4 AIs):

Game loaded faster. However, the version number still claims 0.50 even though the patch was applied.

I can still see all the black holes through the FOW.

Even though I have auto upgrade selected, improvements did not auto upgrade. Okay, wait: this only happened in the turn I got xeno industrialization (I had to manually upgrade). Other planets are auto upgrading in later turns.

I have to say that +12.5% for precursor relics is a huge dip from +500%. I’ll make no other comment until I’m further into the game. Okay, at turn 150, the new value seems just right. A nice little boost but not overpowering. I would hope that we can improve this as new techs become available (maybe we can and I just haven’t seen it yet).

When a new shipyard is produced (or one goes idle), I would rather have the galaxy map center on the shipyard instead of jumping to the manage screen. That way, I can see which shipyard I’m dealing with.

The game freeze is still occurring on the galaxy map (music plays, buttons make clicking sound, but screen is frozen and must use Task manager to quit). As in 0.50, this does not repeat. Specifically, this always occurs for me when I grab the galaxy map and try to move it quickly to another location or the game tries to move the galaxy map quickly, and usually after I’ve been playing for about two dozen turns or more. (On turn 149, this freeze just happened for the third time in my current game, then happened twice on turn 154.) UPDATE: So, I have a multi-monitor setup and I had Word open on one monitor to record my observations as I played. After the double freeze, I closed Word and was able to play to turn 200 without a freeze. As soon as I opened Word again to finish these notes, the screen scrolling became glitchy. Before this Beta, I was able to have Word open without apparent affect on the game.

I really like the new terraforming system, though I have noticed that it is best to get all the techs before terraforming a planet. Soil Enhancement uses the same hexes as Ultra-Terraformer (UT), but Terraforming Plant, Habitat Improvement, and the Resequencing Station will often make tiles available that UTs do not. It is a shame to waste these extra tiles if placing them before you get UTs.

I’m starting to get the hang of improvement placement and tuning a world’s improvements to the world itself. It adds an interesting dimension to gameplay, but does require more player management.

There is a bug with the Quantum Leap Ideology option. It claims to grant 1000 research points. It only advanced me one tech but for several turns the game kept offering me new Benevolence “techs” which I took at the bottom of the pyramid. I wasn’t doing anything to earn so many ideology points.

Speaking of the Benevolence Ideology tree: would it be possible to tone down the +influence? My influence in the game is ridiculous. I’m flipping worlds without even trying.

I would really like to have multiple profiles under the Govern Civilization: Economy screen. In general, my planets have three states of nature: just starting out, mature and growing, and fully built out (for the level of tech I’m at). I really want different civilization governors where I can set the percentages for each governor. That way, I could quickly move planets from one state to another. With over 60 worlds to manage in my current game, I am spending a lot of time micromanaging each world.

I really like that each shipyard can send the ships it produces to starbases (and other stuff) to reduce the micromanagement of moving individual ships. Easier than creating rally points for everything.

Govern Civilization: Commands: Shipyards: Building still doesn’t work right. It adds a ship instead of changing the production.

I like the new minimum spacing for starbases. Thank you.

I like the character graphics on the diplomacy screens. I’m not sure about the UP yet. Since I’m the most powerful player, I can choose the options that benefit a single (mine) civilization because the AI players always vote for themselves. But if I propose something that benefits all but has a tax to it, they all vote no.

Ship pathing: When I click a destination for a ship but change my mind (or made a mistake) and click a new destination while the ship is still moving, the ship will go to where I originally clicked before moving to where I really wanted it to go. Not sure if this is intentional.

Thanks again for all your work!

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Gilmoy

Join Date 12/2009

+41

Quoting Hamilmac,

What do you mean by "waste"? Every tile has a (hidden) quality %, and the higher terraforming techs can fix a tile of lower starting %, which equates to affecting more possible tiles. But there's no difference in end product. It's overkill to wait 100+ turns and pay 300+ mp to UT a tile that you could have fixed earlier and just as effectively for only 39 mp with a Soil Enhancement. Plus, you lose out on the adjacency bonuses you could have had for that 100+ turn gap.

Skipping terraforming techs doesn't gain you extra tiles. The planet has the same max number regardless. So you'd minimize total cost by using the cheap techs as fast as you get them (1 per tile). The only potential drawback is that early terraforming techs might make you commit your adjacency bonuses one way, which later on become sub-optimal once you get UTs and open up many more adjacencies. (But heck, once you get there, just destroy your installations and re-build them as needed: that's actually cheaper than the Ultra-Terraformer per hex, so cost is not an obstacle.)

Quoting Hamilmac,

Speaking of the Benevolence Ideology tree: would it be possible to tone down the +influence? My influence in the game is ridiculous. I’m flipping worlds without even trying.

Everything will be balanced later. For now, focus on whether the mechanisms work without crashing. You've proved that flipping works

I suspect that certain global effect restrictions, e.g. "homeworld only" or "first k colonies", are not (yet) implemented in the game engine. IIRC, Benevolence tier 5 has some bonkers stuff like "homeworld gets +100% influence". If it is not-working the same way as tier-3 Mindfulness, then ... all of your planets get the +100%, whee! Yes, that would be ba-roken to the point of being fun. Note it, log it, hie thee hence and test influence victory.

Quoting Hamilmac,

We feel your pain. But this is indeed pandemic across Stardock's game engine. It works the same way in SK (and FE:LH?). Right-click, or right-click not; there is no undo. Just pretend that right-click teleports your ship, and the pretty UI animation is just eye candy. Once your ship begins the movement animation, you cannot change or abort it. (This sucks in SK where the map has terrain gradients that confuse the mouse targeting, so that your hover circle can randomly jitter from this-square to far-away just from the impetus of right-clicking -- which can cause your ship with 9 movement to plot a garbage course in the wrong direction, thereby wasting 2.5 turns of movement. There is no undo. Save often, load as needed. It is less of a problem in GC3 because space is flat. Hmm ...)

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androshalforc

Join Date 03/2007

+62

Quoting Gilmoy,

reply 1

here's the problem

lets say the you start with all tiles that are 100% unlocked

soil enhancement unlocks one tile at >=90% (i dont know the actual numbers so im making them up)

terra-forming plant unlocks one tile at >=80%

habitat improvement unlocks one tile at >= 70%

re-sequencing station unlocks one tile at >= 60%

ultra terra-former unlocks all tiles at >= 90%

biospheres unlock one tile of any %

the problem exists if i use the terra-forming plant/habitat improvement/re-sequencing station on tiles that are >= 90; i have now wasted my one shot on an 80/70/60% tile for a tile i would have infinite uses of the ultra terra-former on

a simple solution would be to have the tiles color coded 100% usable = green, 90% would be blue (ideally green and blue should be switched), 80% yellow, 70% orange, and 60% red.

2 other options that chage how the game works would be to allow the ultra terraformer to change all tiles >= 60% or whatever the level of resenquencing station is or to allow each of the levels to unlock all tiles at thier percentage

i prefer the second option 1 its closer to how gc2 worked and it balances the terraforming techs a little more the first option makes the ultra terraformer even more powerfull then it currently is which at the moment is prettey powerfull

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Well, here are some of my bugs.

My observation is quite the same, that UT only terraforms on the Soil Enhancement's level. So it is worth to wait for all the techs and then start to build them as planned for adjacencies. By the way the UT is broken by referring to its description, it sould be on Resequencing's level. Maybe it is a bit OP to be able to build UT like 10 times or more... it is a bit over the top. (All kinds of tiles that are or will be available later should be seen right away when selecting terraforming - different coloring is a good idea)

Another bug is that all of the buildings are missing the information how many times they can be built (1/planet, 1/civ). There is a way to build more of them actually, if you start building on every planet at the same time, the same improvement.

Also, there is a global event with a name Terraforming, but it gives no tiles at all, neither many turns later, nor the -90% temporary bonuses.

Most of the Ideologies at the last line (4) are not working yet, for example, Rally gave no ships at all, unlocked but nothing happened (neither later on).

There are other features, like military building giving capacity bonuses for planet built ships... well, capacity makes no sense After building the ship. Capacity comes before that, when putting components on ships. So actually it has no use.

Another like that is the Starbase module which gives immunity agains nebulas... right, well it also makes no sense, as you cannot build anything into nebulas or dust clouds in the first place. So as a 'module' it is useless.

The treaties tab under diplomacy just crashes the game still, every time I click on it, no matter what (I meant NOT the one inside the civ's trading screen).

Sometimes even if I load a game after Im already inside a game, crashes the game on the load. If I restart and load the first time from the main menu, it is okay.

When alliance becomes an available option for a race is still a mystery... regardess of any factors...

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