Bad Night on 4B

from Stardock Forums

I encountered some strange stuff and rough edges I have not seen before when playing as the populists in a huge Galaxy tonight. Some of this stuff needs to be polished up before release in my view.

I encountered the following situations in a couple of hours play -

1. Got the news message 'Torians have discovered a Crashed Ranger....etc' I had not met the Torians or any other race at this point, nor had I attended the UP. How would I know this?

2. ten turns after this situation in 1. (above) and about 20 or so turns into the game, I got the same news message, this time for me and suddenly I had a pre-Ranger as well. At this stage I hadn't even developed defenders. Coincidence? I have only ever seen this screen once before in all games I have played. Fine if it is a coincidence of course.

3. I set my Survey ship on 'auto-survey' and it surveyed itself way-outside of its achievable range possibly due to a wormhole? not sure. However, it then kept surveying and generating benefit for my empire way across the Galaxy. I don't like this at all if it's intentional, I guessed this was part of the code introduced to return ships to known space on auto-retreat to deal with the problem of ship ranges when they were introduced?

4. To test theory 3 above, while the ship was still outside of navigable space, I re-opened the ship panel and switched it from 'auto-survey' to 'auto-attack' to see if all of the auto-commands are 'navigable space independent'. This time when I returned to the main galactic map I got the 'out of range' window which very strangely you can only close in this situation by clicking on 'Done' exactly 16 times! >:( >:( I repeated this several times-try a combo of 3 and 4 yourselves and see. There is some inconsistency in the behaviour of the auto-nav comands in out of range situations as well as a bug here.

General comments for the game 'polish' agenda-

5. Have you noticed that morale on the planet that has just completed a 'Wonder' plummets and continues to plummet unless you tweak the global economics sliders to stabilise it for teh entire empire? I could not stop this single-planet morale slide in any other way even though the planet had some major morale social projects built on it and was in the 70's or 80's for morale just before project was completed. I have noticed this a few times. I did not try the individual 'details' screen, and its morale slider but I couldn't understand why this was happening in the first place so I was unclear about the logical action to take.

6. There are still a few game-unbalancing scripted events in my view (possibly a view not shared :d) which I don't enjoy at all when I get them: the old 'speed trippling' event is still there which is my prompt to restart a new game to be blunt, and I have just encountered a 'research trippling' event (applied all races in Galaxy I believe) which I could personally do without, especially after having groomed and developed my Civ painstakingly to a point where I feel I have eared every research point. If these MUST be in surely trippling is to great?

7. The anomaly discovery pop-up adds nothing of informative value after a while and it would be nice to have a way of switching it off - or a filter that allows you to get it to pop-up only when something special happens (like entering a wormhole or discovering a ship? a-la E.U. anyone?). After a while, especially if you have several explorers out there, its constant 'pinging' open every few seconds gets to you.

8. Would it be nice to get a warning message if you selected to build a one-per-empire only project (such as a Wonder) that you were already building somewhere else? This error discovered late, results in many wasted turns of social production on a planet and retards development.

9. I accidentally bought a ship for about 400 credits when I only had about 40 in the treasury! I did this by hitting 'build' rather than 'cancel'. I have done this several times (yes I am an idiot).

As I was generating cash so slowly in this early stage, that was my game pretty much dead. I have got into a debt situation of 200 or 300 credits on occasion before and in the early part of the game it's almost impossible to recover from this either at all or quickly enough to stay in the race.
I therefore suggest-
a) a 'cancel build' or 'do you really want to build?' message and/or.
b) the ability to SELL social projects for 50% of their cost as a way of at least having a means of recovering if you get into debt without having to re-start.
s
270 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
5) The drop in moral maybe due to an increase in population. Building more social programs makes the population growth even worse giving you a downward spiral.

6) I like these events have not seen one in awhile I hope for the research event in the game I am playing. I want a technical win.

7) I hate pop-ups and which I could turn them off, with IE 6.0 too.

8)I the OS/2 game any funds spent researching a wonder could be applied to another wonder. sigh

9) The warning would be good only to warn you that buying would put you in the red. If you have the cash you should have no warning. Last thing this game needs is more dialogs too close.

As mentioned in another post if you could mothball unwanted ships it may help with the funds.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
How about a warning when not building anything on a planet .. been caught that way a few times, no idea why unless hit next to many times. Anywho it would be nice if got some msg about not building 'social' project on a planet.
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like a not building warning
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
sometimes the small freighter ships stop right under a colony. If the colony made new ships and the player takes them out, they drop on top of the freighter and game won't let player select those ships directly
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Master_Lame, I had the freighter problem and using the find ship button I got the control.

Steevo I also noticed the morale drop.

Instead of pop-ups, what about a back-button (like for Word Processors) always available that takes you back one action at a time with a given depth of let's say 2-3 actions?
Of course only "selected" actions... ;)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Me three would like a "not building" warning. I used to think that this was one of the "re-load game bugs", but it happens quite often. I've found that the only way to be sure you don't have a lame duck is to click your way through the Events window in the lower right corner after you've gone through the usual windowed completion/new build process.

End transmission.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Steevodeevo,

I agree with you on the random events. Quite a few of them seem to be problematic:

1. Speed x 3 = no more fun in the game.

2. Research x 3 = ? I haven't been able to determine whether this one actually works. Once this event kicks in the stated completion times for research don't seem to decrease when you are choosing a tech in the technology screen.

Normally when I get this event my empire is already producing a decent amount of research so it's really hard to tell whether the event has any impact.

3. The Venge. - Half the time when I kill the Venge the game doesn't acknowledge that they are dead. The event window that proclaims "The Venge nuked another planet" still keeps popping up and they are still present on the minor races diplomacy screen. Picking them to talk to at this point results in a CTD since they don't really exist.

The AI races seem to ignore the presence of the Venge and will do nothing to take them out. It's up to the human player.

4. Dreadlords - Brad fixed this one but before that happened - if they showed up early enough in the game it was essentially "Random event - You Lose". The AI races ignore the Dreadlords and do nothing to either take them out or defend themselves.

5. Pirates - The AI races don't seem to react to the Pirates in any way.

6. Space Shark - The AI races just sit there and die. It seems to be up to the human player to take it out.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Just played part of a game last night, and 9 definately could use some sorta "back out of" feature.. I was at like -800 and I'm just going to start a new game since I can't build anything. I can't really see any situation where you'd want the player to have to totally restart a game off of one decision early in a game.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Perhaps a bail out event after being in the red too long would fix the problem. Something like, the senate has raised a high taxation recovery package (+x credits, where x is your debt), your citizens are forced to pay the bill for your mistakes. Moral -20% for 5 years, 10% risk of revolt on each colony, 25% chance for each ship to be scrapped.

Alternatively an event where race Y offers to pay your debts in exchange for ... . This could use the trade screen to work out what equals the value of your debt and give to race Y.

Harsh, but lets you keep on playing and start recovering.

Paul.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Sell a planet or techs for cash.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
magus

Sell a planet or techs for cash

and if you havn't got universal translator at this stage :)
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
I have actually seen the AIs react to both pirates and the space shark.

Undo would be great--perhaps a way to jump back to the start of the turn?

-Robert
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
To Ensign Technician:

You can disable popups in IE using external software like Webwasher (www.webwasher.com) or a different browser like Mozilla (www.mozilla.org) :) .

Anyways, back on topic. I think Stardock should allow you to choose whether you want a build confirmation from the options. I personally would not want one but I think the option should be there.

Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Heh-heh, I run my economy at full spending for years....

But there is a CTD in the Details screen if you try to change planets. Also the text displayed for the button that toggles from planets to star systems on the planet screen has a missing text string.

And I've had a couple of lockups when two of my survey vessels hit the same spot on autosurvey.

And occasionally a constructor won't improve a station automatically--have to tell it to.

Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Let me cast my vote for the undo button that would go back two or three orders, and the warning if you attempt to initiate building a one-per-race or one-per-galaxy improvement when you're already building it elsewhere.

Anyone else experiencing the lag in the announcements for completion of projects? I never noticed this happening in earlier builds, but it happens quite often now.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
The lag in messages is very noticeable. The current build has the lag for military projects and sometimes for the UP. I'm not sure if it's a lag or a log window scroll location bug.

Paul.