Perigrine23's Beta log

from GalCiv3 Forums

Hey, I'm trying to log bugs and other issues as they come up, here are some notes from my first game in the Beta build.

 

GalCiv III Beta Log

Drengin

Large Spiral

All common

Other races gifted

 

  • Team selection a bit confusing, maybe “none” rather than “0.”
  • Durantium hard to see on normal (non-strategic) map.
  • Dots of color around stars in undiscovered space – turns out to be black holes, but issue remains.
  • Still no indication on Govern Planet screen as to which side is civil and which is military production.
  • Typo - Haven “That just living here make people happy.”
  • Like flavor on tile bonuses, but need numbers as well – just saw where those bonuses are, turn 50. I think they should probably be in the tooltip.
  • Would like a color change when action button changes to “turn.”
  • Having trouble managing approval, what does “planetary wealth” as a modifier mean?
  • Researched Arena, but it isn’t showing up under available projects.
  • Economic Ring is having no effect on planets.
  • Really need the camera to go to combat when an enemy ship is attacking yours.
  • Turn 162 and have 1 level of pragmatism and 2 of malevolence will soon be out of planets to colonize. Too few ideology points available and the benefits are too minor, especially on the second level.

Shipyard

  • Parts occasionally shrinking to much smaller than they should be, then re-enlarging. I haven’t figured out what triggers either.
  • Need a warning when you hit cancel that you are deleting your whole ship and not just a part.
  • Hit “enter” after adjusting a part in shipyard and it kicked me to a loading screen that is going forever, had to force quit the game.

 

5,284 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top
    • Economic Ring is having no effect on planets.
End of quote

Actually, it does give the +10%.  The bug is a deeper Beta UI flaw:

  • 1. "+x% Production" modifiers are not displayed anywhere.
  • 2. "Raw Research" and "Raw Wealth" tooltip scores are not really "raw", they already include all of your "+x% Production" bonuses.

"+x% Production", e.g. from approval bonus, Economic Ring, and colonization special events, all work the same way.  They stack linearly with each other, so let Pb denote (1 + sum of all of your Production % bonuses).  Then next turn, all 3 of your axes (mp, rp, bc) are (for now) quietly scaled by Pb.  This is done before it displays your "raw research" and "raw wealth" tooltips, so it's already baked into the "raw" scores.

Proof: Just pick any world and multiply it out.  Your "raw research" = (pop) * (rp%) * (Pb), where the Pb sum uses last turn's approval bonus and Economic Rings, and this turn's everything else.  Similarly for "raw wealth" and mp (although it doesn't display "raw manufacturing").

Example: My 2 new colonies both have +50% from 100% approval and +10% from 1 Economic Ring within range.

  • One of them also had the Worms or Food colonization event that gave +10 Benevolent, -10% food, +30% production.  It's getting +90% = 1.9x its population in total output.  Kind of fun to see a brand-new colony with 2.5 bp generating 10.00 mp in its turn of colonization.  Things get built!
  • The other one is getting only the 1.6x for +60%.
Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I mentioned in another post that there are too few idealogy points to go around on maps where you limit the number of habitable ones. I have no way of increasing my idealogy as I no longer have any planets to colonize. 

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

From the dev streams in late July/early Aug, they plan to add random non-colonization events that invoke ideological choices (e.g. survey events?).  So just work around the lack of planets for now.  (i.e. make galaxies with many worlds, or test other stuff)

Other ideology bugs/inconsistencies:

1.  Ideological points get reset to 0

  • I'm playing an all-Benevolent game, i.e. I always take the Benevolent colonization events.  So my ideology points earned are just 10k/0/0, where k = the number of colonies I have.  But those points are vanishing.
  • After my 2nd colony (= 3 planets total), I had 20/0/0, and I unlocked tier 1 Benevolence for 20 pts.  I still had 20/0/0.
  • After my 5th colony (= 6 planets total), I had 50/0/0, and I unlocked tier 2 Mindfulness for 45 pts.  This reset my ideology points to 0/0/0, and the costs still went up (to 50 for the other tier 2 choice, and 98 for tier 3).  That means I need ten more planets to go from tier 2 to tier 3 Empathy.
  • Since then, I've colonized 2 more (= 8 planets total), and now have 20/0/0 pts again.

Alpha 0.31 Pragmatism tree never deducted any points earned.  It seems redundant to increase the costs and take points away.

2.  Mindfulness (Benevolence, tier 2) gives the Approval +25% bonus to all of your planets, not just "Your first 3 worlds".

I'd pay 50/0/0 for that!  canwekeepthisplz

3.  All colony events use the terminology "benevolent" for Benevolent, "pragmatic" for Pragmatic, but "merciless" for Malevolent.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Gilmoy, reply 1

Actually, it does give the +10%.  The bug is a deeper Beta UI flaw:

1. "+x% Production" modifiers are not displayed anywhere.
2. "Raw Research" and "Raw Wealth" tooltip scores are not really "raw", they already include all of your "+x% Production" bonuses.
End of Gilmoy's quote

Thanks for the clarification, I had confused production with manufacturing.

 

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hey you gota keep up perigrine23! Your threads being hijacked! Lol.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Some more thoughts after playing the Alterians mid way through a medium galaxy:

  • After killing one ship in a stack all disappeared visually but were still present and attackable. Mouse-over still gives tool-tip. Not visible on strategic map.
  • Pup-up saying you’ve enterend the next tech age would be nice.
  • Sensors, should they have DR? (see below)
  • Stacked ships UI is really poor, can’t select and give commands other than move to individual ships/fleets in the stack.
I know the AI is dumb right now, but here are a few things I observed it doing:
  • Terrans built their tech capital on an active core world (-25% research)
  • AI is building colony ships after all planets have been colonized

 

After building a couple of cargo ships loaded with sensors it occurred to me that sensors become exponentially more effective (measured by number of hexes revealed) while their cost increases linearly. This means that the more sensors you have, the more cost-effective they are, until you get to the point where you can see the whole galaxy. I'm not sure if I think this is a problem or not. I was able at a fairly early stage to build ships with a sensor range of 34, granting me vision of a large percentage of the galaxy. Is this a problem or just a strategic choice?

 

 

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Regarding sensors. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. I'm still thinking about. I wasn't fond of the 15 sensor range that GalCiv 2 had. I'm very happy to go play with large sensor ranges right now.

If I recall correctly, in GalCiv 2, the main reason why the sensor range got a limit was because a person's computer couldn't handle seeing so much of the map at once. It was never limited because of balance reasons (I don't recall ever hearing anything about it).

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

More playing, more notes:

  • After capturing the planet with the Terran’s research capital, I destroyed it. After doing so, I was able to build another research capitol on any planet, including the one that already had my research capitol on it.

New game: Iridians, Large galaxy, uncommon everything.

  • After Iridium Center is built, Iridium Store becomes available again. If this is not a feature, it should be, it’s cool. This also happens with Iridium world, so your Center upgrades to a World, the Store upgrades to a Center, and you can build another Store. Same effect with colonial bank to banking center.
  • I am having a hard time figuring out the results of battles ahead of time. Based on weapons, defenses and hp, the results seem to be inconsistent. Are factors like range and fire rate being taken into account? How much RNG is there in the auto-resolve?
  • I upgraded a ship in a fleet. The upgraded ship left the fleet then I have a stack of ships and have to deal with the horrible stacked-ship UI, so I can’t upgrade any other ships without moving them off the stack and can’t even space-bar to keep the rest of the fleet on the same tile while my ship is upgraded.
  • Unique tech trees are awesome. The game could use a little block of flavor text somewhere explaining some of the special features of each Civ's tree and unique buildings and techs. The tech tree is a massive wall of information, and can be hard to process, give the players a little guidance.

 

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Peregrine23 said:

"After Iridium Center is built, Iridium Store becomes available again. If this is not a feature, it should be, it’s cool. This also happens with Iridium world, so your Center upgrades to a World, the Store upgrades to a Center, and you can build another Store. Same effect with colonial bank to banking center."

I believe, I know what causes this. The one-per-planet improvements have a Preclusions-tag, which prevents former and later versions (if available) from showing up independently in the build-list (at least, if I understand the purpose of the tag correctly). This tag isn't set right for some of those improvements. I'll take a look through the ImprovementDefs.xml again, and see, if I can find them all.

PS: The quote-button no longer works. X(

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

A few more notes from my game as Iridians:

  • Iridium world is effecting the entire civ rather than just the plant on which it is built. All my planets currently have +750% wealth just from these improvements.

  • Having many starbases visible seems to effect performance. I have an area with 10 starbases placed as close together as the can be, and animations (specifically of ship movement) are very choppy when this area in on screen.

  • Rounding in used mass in Ship Designer can be very annoying. If my ship is showing 72/80 capacity, I should be able to fit a mass 8 piece. Either always round up the displayed used mass or show the decimal.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I love the name, "iridium world!" its SO benevolent. :)

Harolden Gaul says to lord kona, want to buy some souvenir weapons from iridium world?

Lord kona says yes and then shots him with the weapon and eats him.

They are dumb enough to bo have that happen, luckily I like the iridium so I'll help* defend them.

 

DARCA ;)

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I love the name, "iridium world!" its SO benevolent. :)

Harolden Gaul says to lord kona, want to buy some souvenir weapons from iridium world?

Lord kona says yes and then shots him with the weapon and eats him.

They are dumb enough to bo have that happen, luckily I like the iridium so I'll help* defend them.

 

DARCA ;)

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Iridium world is effecting the entire civ rather than just the plant on which it is built. All my planets currently have +750% wealth just from these improvements.
End of quote

This is because the improvement has this tag

<Scope>Global</Scope>

for both the income and influence bonus.