Question: What plans are there to showcase players ships in battle or otherwise? Will there be movie style cinematics where players can watch their own ships in awe?

Just watched it

Looks like it is coming along nicely.

Shame not all goodies will be in but that is what DLC and Expansions are for.

Quoted from reply #25 ------------

Yes, we could in GC2, so I hope there are plans to bring it back.

On the production of antimatter being mined from black holes:

Antimatter is basically particles of matter that happen to have an opposite electric charge from common particles. They become fuel when particles and antiparticles annihilate each other, with that process then being able to be contained and harnessed if happening in a large enough scale. This is different from the manner that conventional matter with high energy value exists. 

The artificial production of antiparticles has been done in very tiny quantities. Perhaps in the future larger quantities can be produced and become a feasible (albeit dangerous) source of energy. As with the lore of the game itself, fusion power was a human invention that revolutionized space travel. However, it wasn't mined from the sun but artificially produced on Earth.

This is of course a game with game-playing aspects to take into consideration but maybe, instead of antimatter, "exotic" particles could be extracted from the edge of black holes which could then provide strategic bonuses for players, such as an extra move or two of interstellar travel and so on. Changing the utility of black holes from a direct source of fuel to a giver of bonuses could provide for an interesting and more congruent game play.

And it would be very interesting to have a representation of supermassive black holes (within the boundaries of design aesthetics) in the middle of galaxies for large to huge maps, at least as an option.

In the real world Anti-Matter (and Hydrogen for everybody who thinks we will get water powered cars), is not a energy source, but a battery. It's energy storage. It will always take more energy to make antimatter or hydrogen, then you get back for using it as fuel. This is true for petrol and stuff too but we don't have to produce oil so nobody cares.

As for the game, anti-matter is just a well known term so that's why it's used. 

How will resource crystals be returning to GalCiv 3? Have you thought about obscuring them inside asteroids? I didn't like how the old game had them floating around in space by themselves, often times the only thing in a quadrant. Im sure you could come up with a cool idea if you played around with it for bit.

Hooray, there are many changes that I like, especially as they seem to be doing something about improving the trading mechanics, witnessed by having Luxury Resources [extra 2 granted in "Trader" branch of newer Pragmatism tree in Ideologies].  But then again things could still change, hopefully developing this further.

I know I'm going to have to lean to live with Hexes even though I still don't like them [ if I can do it with Civ5 why not].  I'm begining to look forward to the Beta as it seems we're definitely not getting any new alpha releases.

Currently it takes more energy to generate antiparticles or fuse two light atomic nuclei. But "always"...?

Precisely because fusion and antimatter are essentially energy storage, working essentially like batteries, and are not exactly static fuel sources, either fusion cells can also be "mined" within the game, or mining antimatter is a rather silly way to make black holes useful. Making black holes generate bonuses - as their mystery unravels with the advancement of technology - would be a more elegant solution, in my opinion.

H-H fusion is a possible positive energy source; we don't have the technology to make it work now because we can't generate the conditions necessary for it to be self-sustaining. It definitely IS a net-positive energy source in nature, we just can't replicate the natural conditions necessary yet.

More importantly, he wasn't even discussing H-H fusion, he was referring to hydrogen combustion or fuel cells. Current technology can make compressed hydrogen a viable energy storage medium, but only if the energy to make it is abundantly available at dirt-cheap prices. Iceland is heavily involved in research and pilot projects to use hydrogen, since they are nearly energy-independent with renewable geothermal, hydro, and wind power, with a small, mostly centralized population.

Likewise, antimatter could be a storage medium for much higher energy levels - if you are into Star Trek lore, that's basically what they used it for. There was a giant solar-powered antimatter generator that made the AM to run the ships. If a large natural source of AM could be found, it might be mined as a type of fossil fuel. That has also occurred in a couple sci-fi universes. Known Space had an extra-galactic rogue star system made of AM frying through Known Space at a high fraction of light speed. They literally took chunks of solid AM off the planet to build weapons. For a rough reference, a piece of AM the size of a dime reacting with normal matter would be about equivalent to a 1KT nuke.

I caught the replay.  You folk are bad luck for my work schedule.  I arrange things to have a break at that time and somebody's cross-continental emergency needs attention. 

I like all the eye-candy improvements except maybe the black hole.  It seems too large and out of scale with the rest of the map.  Game play aspects sound intriguing.

I saw an Altairian Space Port with rotating rings.  I was very excited.

I am extremely impressed by the ship textures.  Very pretty, very shiny.  You do need a grime overlay, though, something optional I can apply to freighters and such.  How about huge scorch mark overlays for damaged ships? 

Thanks for discussing the wiggling ship issue.  I understand the challenges that were brought up.  As I think about it, my gamer's heart and imagination says it has to be possible to display space travel as a straight line.  We'll see.