[Feedback] Beta ver 0.80

from GalCiv3 Forums

Beta ver 0.80.9.0


A quick feedback for the new beta.


1) Crash.

**

Lots of random crashes with total reboot of the PC.

Nothing specific, it crashes at any time, even doing nothing, just looking at the planet screen, the tech tree screen, the general map, etc., even when "alt tabbed" while using Notpad or an Internet navigator.

It becomes really tedious to test the game.

If I remember correctly, it started with Beta 4 ver 0.70 release and subsequent, I had hoped for an improvement with Beta 5 ver 0.80, but no change.


**********
**********


2) Visual effects for the U.I.

**

First time they appeared ("shaking" home screen, etc.), I figured:

"my graphics card is dead"

and, "the latest provided NVidia drivers are definitely out of play"

and, "they program with clubs at Stardock" :)



There is also the "dark effect" around the selected tech (specialization techs), in the tech tree screen, etc.

All these visual effects are disturbing, really hoping for an option to disable them all; I prefer an efficient U.I., pleasant to the eyes, but without invasive visual effects.

**

I have not tested every option yet, but thanks for the Trails on/off option for the ships trails on the general map.

Also, is there a way to remove the bothersome "shooting stars" on the general map?
If not, just make it possible.

**

On the graphics part.

*

The colored backgrounds for the different tech trees do not merge very nicely with the colors used for the techs "boxes" and the colors used for tech ages "bands".

*

The background for the Benevolent ideology is too much "washed out".


**********
**********


3) U.P.

**

There is no way to know the % of votes for my civilization in the U.P. screen, during a meeting.

**

There is no way to see what a particular civilization thinks about another civilization in the U.P. screen.

Ex:

Being Iconian, no way to know what the Terran civilization thinks about the Drengin civilization.


**********
**********


4) Trade screen.

**

There is no possibility to cycle the minor races in the trade screen (just like it's possible for the major races).

**

Add a way, for the player, to hide (with a setting) what he don't want to trade (so no need to display them, and clearer lists), in the trade screen.

**

Set the default value to "1" instead of "0" in the "Trade Resources" (etc.) windows, in the trade screen.

**

Display how many credits the players earn per turn, in the Trade screen.

**

Display the relations state between the players (diplomacy's tooltip info: Annoyed, Cool, Ambivalent, +++, ---, etc.), in the Trade screen.


**********
**********


5) U.I.

**

Add a way to Resume/Shut down all the shipyards at the same time in one action.

Example, in the "Govern Civilization" window, "Commands" tab: All shipyards currently active must be set to "Shut down".

**

Add an option (on/off) to play with the Map Size Bonuses (ship moves etc.), or/and an adjustable option (% bonus).

**

Display the player's current point levels for "Benevolent", "Pragmatic" and "Malevolent", in the colonization event screen.

**

The Thulium sprite, in the zoomed out view, can too easily be mistaken for an Iconian survey ship (same color, shape similarity).


**

The minimap zoom is currently useless, it only zooms in the center of the map, no possibility to move the minimap display. It work a better way in GalCiv2.


**********
**********


6) Improvement.

**

Civilization Capital and Colony Capital improvements reduced to 10B pop and 5B pop respectively, ouch...

Perhaps a tad radical?
Need certainly to be tested!

*

Also, I preferred the previous values for the farm improvements (Xeno Farm to Lossless Farm: food + 2, food + 4, food + 8, food + 12) to the new values (Xeno Farm to Lossless Farm: food + 2, food + 4, food + 6, food + 8).


**********
**********


7) Ship.

**

Pop capacity reduced from 5B to 3B pop for the colony module, ouch, this greatly reduce the possibilities.

I think 5B pop for the colony module was nice.

This is certainly related with the Colony Capital improvement change (10B pop reduced to 5B pop).

All of this will drastically change the game play.

**

The "free" player's ships at start of the game are different form the default ones in the ship Designer.

Colony ship ("free" at start of the game):
Colony Module (1)
Hyper Drive (2)
Life Support (2)

Scout ("free" at start of the game):
Navigational Sensors (1)
Life Support (2)

vs

Colony ship M1 (default in ship Designer):
Colony Module (1)
Life Support (2)

Scout M1 (default in ship Designer):
Hyper Drive (1)
Navigational Sensors (1)
Life Support (1)

Is this intentional?

*

I suggest to tweak the values, for the hulls and the components, so the player can design this types of ships at start of the game.

Colony ship (possibility for the player):
Colony Module (1)
Hyper Drive (1)
Life Support (1)

Constructor (possibility for the player):
Constructor Module (1)
Hyper Drive (1)
Life Support (1)

Scout (possibility for the player):
Navigational Sensors (1)
Life Support (1)
Hyper Drive (2)

Scout (possibility for the player):
Navigational Sensors (1)
Life Support (2)
Hyper Drive (1)

Scout (possibility for the player):
Navigational Sensors (2)
Life Support (1)
Hyper Drive (1)

Scout (possibility for the player):
Navigational Sensors (3)
Hyper Drive (1)

Scout (possibility for the player):
Life Support (3)
Hyper Drive (1)


**********
**********


8) Diplomacy.

**

There is no way to see the races abilities in the diplomacy screen.

**

The Civilizations logos (over the planets) are not visible enough, in the Diplomacy screen.

**

There is no way to see what a particular civilization thinks about another civilization in the diplomacy screen.

Ex:

Being Iconian, no way to know what the Terran civilization thinks about the Drengin civilization.

**

Add a quick way (ex: smileys near the civilizations planets) to see the player's relations level (Annoyed, Cool, Etc.) with all the others civilizations at the same time.


**********
**********


9) Planet screen.

**

No more info about Planet Defense?!?
Bring it back. :-)


**********
**********


10) Pirates.

**

Display the remaining hit points (at least, full info would be better (weapons, etc.)) of the Survey Ship when asking to attack the pirates.


**********
**********


11) Shipyard.

**

Limit the shipyard sponsors to 5 goes against the original goal of the system (reduce the number of shipyards).
Say the player has 3 adjacent stars systems, with 2 to 3 colonized planets (per example 6 to 9 planets), located in the effect area of a shipyard; he must now build a second shipyard.
Perhaps a limit of 10 sponsors would be better.


**********
**********


12) Starbase.

**

Ship repair.

I have not tested yet how it work, 1 Hit Point per turn on the general map, 2 or 3 Hit Points per turn when stationed at a planet/starbase/shipyard. And I know there is some ship module to repair all the ships in a fleet already in the game.

But in addition, it would be nice to have some "Fast Repair Ship" (ex: 5 hp/turn) starbase module(s) (for Military starbase only?) to quickly repair the ships located in the starbase effect area.

**

The "Request Constructor" feature is a step in the right direction to reduce micromanagement, thanks for this feature.

But, :) there is no way to select the constructor type you want to request (it's automatically the one generated by the program with the latest amelioration available).

And, I have specifically designed a particular type of constructor to upgrade local starbases, so, without the last engine (not needed for this task), or/and without lots of Life Supports (not needed for this task), or/and without lots of Navigational Sensors (not needed for this task).

And, I cannot select the shipyard, located 3 stars systems away, that could fulfill this role perfectly, instead of the automatically selected nearest shipyard, the one who is completely saturated by the construction of powerful combat ships for at least 40 turns.

So, basically, it's good enough as a temporary solution to help reduce the micromanagement while testing the game; but not efficient enough to seriously play the game.

I take this opportunity to include a link to a topic with suggestions to help reduce the micromanagement in the game:

https://forums.galciv3.com/462140


**********
**********


13) Bug.

**

In the "Navigational Sensors" tooltip (ship designer screen), there is a text line indicating "Life Support Mass".

**

The backgrounds in the ideology screen are buggy, wrong backgrounds displayed.

**

There is a typo in the leader name (D.L. Bradly) from the start of the alpha release, you can see the right spelling on the leader badge "Col. DL Bradley", in the Terran trade screen.



**

Not yet tested all the game settings for anti aliasing, etc., but there is "flickering" with all the 3D objects (ex: planets textures, ship textures).

**

Default in the Diplomacy screen background.



**

Ship path behavior.

The ship should take the direct path (red in example) instead of the detourned path.



**********
**********


14) Resource.

**

No Precursor Military resources on the map?

I want them. ;-)


**********
**********


Previous topic with still valid suggestions for the game:

https://forums.galciv3.com/462394


**********
**********

10,252 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I've just been playing Multiplayer with Seilore and the game constantly crashes to desktop during turns and at the start of new turns.the map size was immense and we had 6? opponents on gifted the rest of the settings you'd have to ask Seilore about as he set the game up but with the crashes we had to constantly turn Steam off and when restarting the game it seemed that steam was stopping the game from starting? I even had to restart my computer to get the game going again.

Oh yes and the ingame chat window still cuts off the last post/reply

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'll add some comments on the current state of the game.  I've only been playing the Beta since late in Beta4, but I've noticed some things, mostly feedback and quality of life related, that could use being addressed.

Planets and Planet Improvements:

There is no information displayed whether a given improvement is a repeatable improvement, buildable only once per planet, buildable once per faction, or unique across all factions.  It would really help an inexperienced player to know, "Oh, you mean I can't just build solar power plants all over my planet?" or "Oh, once I complete the Citadel of Revenue, I can't build a second one."

Tied in with the issue above, there isn't any check currently that looks to see if a once per faction improvement is being built on another planet, just if there is another one completed, and this check only seems to fire when looking at the construction queue.  For example, I can currently queue up the Citadel of Revenue on three planets, and they will all complete successfully.

Additional clarity on what improvements are upgrades over other improvements would definitely be appreciated.  It's fairly clear when you try to build an upgrade that is must be an upgrade, but even (for example) a note in the improvement description for Mega Factory "Upgrade for Xeno Factory" would be useful.  A note for any improvements that are not upgrades from anything else stating "Basic Improvement" would also be appreciated.

Information on improvements showing what they will receive from adjacency bonus without having to test-plop them.  For example, a note showing "This building receives +5% Manufacturing and +5% Research per adjacency level." on the Social Matrix improvement's description.

Transparency for what drives the raw production (manufacturing, research and income prior to multipiers) and tourism income.  It's fairly clear that the primary driver for raw production is the planet's population, but knowing exactly how that is derived, as well as if there are any further modifiers to that, would be appreciated.  Perhaps this could be added to the population mouseover, or simply add a new entry in the planet viewer showing raw production before assignment to individual categories.  Likewise, tourism income is just a line item underneath income without any explanation of what drives the value, making it hard to know what to do to influence it.

As stated in one of Unknown_Hero's previous posts, either a global toggle for 'auto upgrade improvements' or having this default to off would be appreciated.  It's frequently far more valuable to just build new improvements rather than upgrading a bunch of improvements.  Having that toggle on the planet level only would be fine if it's something that defaulted off and could be turned on once your planet is fully built outwards.

Synthetic growth rate seems to have no effect.  I have not seen this stat either reduce the time required for the assembly project or increase the population yield of the assembly project.  Some clarification on how this stat works would be appreciated.

Galaxy View:

Please make a fleet's total moves and remaining moves visible when selecting a fleet.  Right now it feels like a guessing game determining how far a given fleet can move per turn.

Ideology:

Prolific (Benevolent/Outreach 3) seems to have no effect at all currently.  Even if it did have an effect, +5 population to new colonies that, without technology upgrades, can only hold 5 population at the outset seems rather excessive.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Noctros, reply 2

Synthetic growth rate seems to have no effect. I have not seen this stat either reduce the time required for the assembly project or increase the population yield of the assembly project. Some clarification on how this stat works would be appreciated.
End of Noctros's quote


The game mechanics for synthetic species has changed through the betas. There used to be an assembly project where the effects of the growth depended on how much manufacturing you put into it. Back then, there were bonuses that increased the pop growth of that project.

However, there were some factors that prevented it from working well in game; even the AI had trouble with it. So instead, the project was replaced by a half project of sorts, where it worked like a planet improvement but did not occupy any tiles when completed. It couldn't use the synthetic growth bonuses (I don't know why). That it doesn't work right; it hasn't been updated.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting DivineWrath, reply 3

The game mechanics for synthetic species has changed through the betas. There used to be an assembly project where the effects of the growth depended on how much manufacturing you put into it. Back then, there were bonuses that increased the pop growth of that project.

However, there were some factors that prevented it from working well in game; even the AI had trouble with it. So instead, the project was replaced by a half project of sorts, where it worked like a planet improvement but did not occupy any tiles when completed. It couldn't use the synthetic growth bonuses (I don't know why). That it doesn't work right; it hasn't been updated.
End of DivineWrath's quote

It seems to me that the synthetic Assembly project could work like the Economic Stimulus project.  Rather than applying a percentage modifier to an existing base growth rate, the amount of manufacturing could apply a flat value to the planet's population growth.  That way, actual population growth rate would wind up being the value of the population growth, as determined by production input into the project, increased by the synthetic growth rate multiplier.  Or is this the way that it used to be working, the version that the AI didn't really understand?


Quoting Noctros, reply 2

Planets and Planet Improvements:

Transparency for what drives the raw production (manufacturing, research and income prior to multipiers) and tourism income.  It's fairly clear that the primary driver for raw production is the planet's population, but knowing exactly how that is derived, as well as if there are any further modifiers to that, would be appreciated.  Perhaps this could be added to the population mouseover, or simply add a new entry in the planet viewer showing raw production before assignment to individual categories.  Likewise, tourism income is just a line item underneath income without any explanation of what drives the value, making it hard to know what to do to influence it.

End of Noctros's quote

The more I play, the more I feel this is important.  It seems like the raw production is some value based on population of a planet times a modifier based on the population's morale, but without any way of seeing how exactly this is determined, it's nearly impossible to make educated decisions whether it's worthwhile to increase a planet's population at the cost of morale, or if this will result in a net loss of production when the planet's morale drops below a multiplier threshold.

Additions

Game Balance:

The faction morale bonus/penalty are far too drastic at the game's current balance.  The Altair almost never have to be concerned with morale, while the Drengin are completely crippled out of the gate, and only become somewhat manageable with initial investment in morale enhancing technologies.  This is probably because the morale levels haven't been rebalanced after adjusting the planets' base population levels and morale levels, but it shouldn't be forgotten.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Err... maybe I did a bad job of explaining things regarding to the Yor's synthetic population. You suggestions seem to resemble how things used to be. Let me try again.

The Yor used to have an assembly project. This project would convert manufacturing points into population growth. For every x amount of manufacturing put into it, the population would grow by Y. I forget the exact numbers, but it might have been something like for every 20 points of manufacturing put into it, you got 1 unit of population (1 billion). The synthetic growth bonuses applied so you could get 1.2 units of population. Considering that population has a strong effect on production, this could quickly lead to an exponential growth in population. Likewise, the synthetic population cap also worked back then, so you could not decide arbitrarily how many Yor you wanted. If the cap was 30 Yor, then the population would never exceed that no matter how much manufacturing you pumped into it.

One of the major problems with this project was, it was a project. It was always the last thing to be worked on by a colony because it was a project. If you wanted it to be worked on first, then you literally had to cancel all other planet improvements in the build queue (and turn off automatic upgrading of planet improvements or the available upgrades will be added to the build queue). Second, there was no system to notify you that a planet was at max population, so it was possible that a planet could be left doing nothing because the player was unaware that the planet was at max population (and there for the project could be turned off or replaced). Thirdly, this was a minimum population growth (so long as the manufacturing put in was greater than 0), so putting something even as low as 0.1 manufacturing into the project would yield 1 unit of population growth. Stuff like that lead to a number of complaints. I guess the devs found it easier to replace it with something else than to fix all of the discovered problems.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

One thing I've noticed and that I'm NOT happy about is that the camera views on the combat viewer have been cut down to Top down/Cinematic/Freecam whereas before Beta 5 we had 5 or 7 different views to switch between So what gives?

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Tourism is based on influence. I hope they give the yor some kind of population growth. I would rather have buggy population growthrather than none. It would be better to fix this. DDon't let your population gonover 40 billion. About building multiple wonders only one works,  but they all take up space. 

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

You should report this in the changelogthings seem to be getting done over there.