As I understand, tiles on GalCiv maps represent time, not distance; the idea being hyperdrive is magnitudes more effective when farther away from gravity sources.

It used to represent one parse and still should.

I also don't like this idea as it would dramatically slow down the game to a point of not being fun. IMHO

DARCA.

Parsecs are a unit of distance (3.26 light years to be exact), so yes, the tiles on the map represent distance and not time. Habitable planets are generally not located 6.5 light years or more from their host stars.

I recall that the hyperdrive is supposed to warp space, but to a lesser extent than the Warp Drive or HyperWarp. Therefore, the same constraints that apply to warping space in real life should apply to warping space in GCIII. We cannot make a game totally divorced from reality.

Regarding life support: it might do us well to have a "soft life support" range within which ships can gain speed bonuses from starbase modules (maximum, about 5 parsecs in all directions from a starbase, 10 parsecs from an inhabited, friendly star system) and a "hard life support" range which represents the absolute maximum distance that a ship can travel. And again, remember the concern I am discussing about these distances has nothing to do with life support ability per se, but with the ability to create large-enough warp bubbles to travel at any speed.

while i don't have access to the relevant quotes atm. I believe it has been stated several times that yes you travel more slowly when close to large masses (sun's/planet's) that's why planets are spaced so far it takes approximately the same amount of time to move 1 tile in a solar system as it does to move 1 tile outside of a solar system even though the two tiles are not technically the same size

so in game they are treated as the same distance for simplicity of mechanics while lore wise they are not the same

thus since they don't represent distance it is more appropriate to measure them in time

edit

i found one quote that hints at speeds relating to (suns/planets)

this is from a galciv 2 tech description impulse drive

and i also found this and thought it was humorous although not related

from the tech new propulsion

one light year is equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres (or about 6 trillion miles)

making a trip seem to take 600,000 times longer doesn't sound like a good idea to me

i would definitely be downloading such a mod

The issue with your description of folded space is that it assumes space to be pre-folded. At least for Alcubierre drives, this is not the case: a warp bubble surrounds the spacecraft, and then adds space behind the spacecraft and removes it behind in order to move the craft at faster-than-light speed. The actual distance between stars does not change at all at any time. There is no such thing as an "adjusted parsec".

It doesn't matter if space is pre-folded or not, the map displays the relative locations of objects as seen by a ship which is folding space. It's kind of like a subway map - it shows you where the stops are relative to the other stops; this one additionally scales it so that you have an idea of the time between the stops.

According to the linked quote, there is in GCII. That there isn't an 'adjusted parsec' in reality really doesn't matter, as the 'adjusted parsec' was created to explain how the hyperdrive of GCII - which, I might add, is itself a fictitious device which does not necessarily have any real relationship to the theoretical Alcubierre drive - works, as far as travel time goes (and therefore why the maps of GCII work the way that they do). A map displaying absolute distances would only have the stars on it, and with the way that hyperdrives in GCII/III appear to work, there would not be a clear relationship between the absolute distances between stars and the travel time between them.

Nor does the actual distance between stars in GCII/III change at any time (I would additionally dispute that the actual distance between stars is fixed in the real world, but it's not important for the discussion of the in-game representation). The map in GCII/III represents the distance covered by one move action. It doesn't matter whether this is one real-world parsec or one so-called 'adjusted parsec'. What matters is whether or not the map scale is appropriate given the manner in which the drive operates (if we're looking at it from an in-universe perspective) or that the map scale works for the game (if we're looking at it from the 'do the game mechanics work' perspective). Reality need not come into play here.

There is nevertheless a real-world analogy which can be drawn - that of maps which are scaled by travel time rather than absolute distance. Let's say, for example, that we have three cities A, B, and C, and that A is 30 miles from B and 50 miles from C, and that B is 40 miles from C. Let's further assume that there's a mountain between cities A and B, and that therefore the route A-B takes 2 hours to traverse, while the route A-C takes 1 hour to traverse and the route B-C takes 40 minutes to traverse (first letter is the point of origin, the second letter is the destination, and you can assume that reversing the travel direction does not impact the travel time). On an absolute distance map, you'd see that A is physically closer to C than it is to B, yet this is not valuable in terms of planning travel routes because the shortest-distance route takes the most time of the two given routes from A to B. If you were to redraw the map based on travel time, then you'd see that A is closer (in terms of travel time) to C than it is to B, and that the travel time A-C-B is actually less than the travel time A-B. This map and the absolute distance map are both valid ways of displaying the relative locations of A, B, and C; however, the travel time map is more useful when planning routes than the absolute distance map despite being a nonlinear representation of the absolute distances between the various locations. The GCII/III maps are analogous to the travel-time map, not the absolute distance map.

Do any of the Founders know of a way to mod multi-maps into GCIII or even GCII? I believe that many people would like it as a mod (the starbase part could be done easily with data modding).

Another idea would be that the influence range of starbases and planets would only extend a few parsecs away from the starbase itself. One cannot have a significant influence over deep space, and the game should reflect that reality. Rather, influence should be spread by trade, both passively and with an ability of players to subsidize trade routes to specifically spread the cultural influence of the chartering player.

My issue with logistics from two is the AI would and could stack several fleets in the same tile.  It got annoying and spammy.

The downside is you might Civ V-style AI movement issues if you do this.

Logistics is something I'd like to see impact maintenance costs for ships- kinda like how forcelimits work in the EU series.  This would hopefully make fleets more fluid.  Garrison ships/planetary defenses would need to be exempt- maybe allow ships to be moved to planetary defense, where they wouldn't count for maintenance or limits, but because static (only defending a planet).  Would fulfill a militia role similar to Elemental games.

Range was occasionally a factor in II, but it was more due to bad luck.  I do think constructors shouldn't provide range without modules so it takes more of an investment to expand range- it was too low-cost before.

Most people are just going to spam constructors to get around it. Or use the upgrade glitch, if it's repeated in GC3.

I think we're just looking at two very different game philosophies. You want to use range to slow the entire game down, but the GC2 range system was designed to slow only the colony phase down. Range was very much an issue in GC2, but only in the early phases. That was intentional.

I look at it this way: my mid-to-end game ships can often go 20+ spaces per turn; why should they be limited to a one or two turn range? Life support should be based on how long your ship has to be out. Your ships might take 20 turns to cover the distance mine can in 5 - yours would *need* life support to stay out that long, mine would not.

Unless my math is badly off, he's removed the base life support from the basic hull entirely (or set it to 9 or lower). That's the only way a ship needing to go 100 spaces would require 7 modules giving 15 space range each. That means *everything* is going to need life support; every ship is going to be less capable or need to be bigger than it would otherwise need to be. In GC2 terms, that means we wouldn't be able to use the classic tiny hull colony or constructor ships until deep into the miniaturization techs, rather than just the two we need now, or use small hulls to fit the life support module in. Either way the ship is more expensive and slower to build than it otherwise needs to be.

Except its bad for new players, mainly because there are attributes associated to it, techs associated to it, and special events that give you bonuses to it.

Most of those are effectively "wasted" after the early phase of the game.

That's why I'm still in favor of just removing range entirely, or simply make it a tech that gives your ships +X% range...maybe in that 2nd era of the new tech tree. But no reason to make it a core attribute imo

Range is great because it regulates the game flow and how far you go to war.

without it some realism goes away and Si-Fi's beloved life support. It would make a poor game IMHO.

I thought range was fine in galciv2 very fine actually, as I am playing in a modd with techs that give bigger bonuses and it still feels pretty balanced. In galciv3 it feels harder to go just a bit further on small maps with two life support techs fully specialized. Maybe its because we can't design our ships, but hey its a alpha.

DARCA  

  I seem to recall it was easy in the last GalCiv to change the range parameter yourself.  In the XML files.  I did do that, and had an enjoyable game where bases/planets were needed to extend my range..

However, I see no reason to inflict my idea of fun on others....let them be free to change the parameters themselves.