Questions for GalCiv 3: Crusade Streams

Thanks, Kristy.

Few questions, although partially answered by our friend DevildogFF:

1) Any changes to alliances mechanism?

2) Any changes to combat mechanism - small vs. big ships, evasion etc.?

3) How about changes to military starbases? Making them more competitive?

I understand Crusade is still in development so I know nothing is finished. I just had some observations of potential bugs, questions and suggestions that I thought of in the stream today.

-I have wondered with custom races, is it possible to pick to many 'Character traits' for setting up the AI? Whats the optimal number of Character traits to pick as I worry that if we pick to many that would make the AI un-optimal or not function in a efficient manner. Maybe there should be a hard limit? Unless it dosnt matter of course lol

- On the race setup screen. Can we get a "exclude race" button for each race so we can random but remove/exclude some races we dont want to show up in that game. EG: I want random Starwars Races but want to exclude my Startrek races or copies of races I have made edits on etc.. Atm we either have to delete them or manually pick each race which leaves no surprise when discovering races in game.

- In regards to the new bar in the diplomacy/Trade screen.
 I notice the bars colour is the same as the UI colour you pick for the race. If the race your trading with has the same UI colour as you It looks like the diplomacy bar may not be visible as the bars colour is the same on both sides. Also I suspect some combinations might be a problem for colour blind people or people with bad monitors where for example Terran and Altarian colours might look identical. Maybe a clear divider line between the two bars would be a solution
 
- Earths map is missing Tasmania on Australia. And also New Zealand is missing. (I have a feeling this has been missing since the first release but worth bringing up lol) Islanddog said 'they were destroyed" I assume that was a joke but if not whats the lore behind that haha.

- Just an random idea for release to keep us occupied an help promote Crusade. Can you hold a simple competition of some sort for fans to enter that the winners get there face as a citizen in the released game

<3 Love you all! It was a great stream despite the technical issues and I am looking forward to Crusade, keep up the good work!

I came a bit late to the stream, so I couldn't ask this directly but as somebody who couldn't play GalCiv I b/c I didn't have OS/2, then enjoyed a few years of great Stardock games (basically everything from GalCiv II to the Sins expansion) I have to ask if there is anything planned regarding Linux support either for GalCiv III, OTC, or Ashes? It would be a shame to (again) miss all those great games!

Tatiora, 

For next week~ 

• Currently there is very little reason to build a Military Starbase. Will these be buffed somehow so we have a reason to do a Maginot line in space?
• Can Brad and Paul elaborate on how specialty planets were changed will Ghost worlds still provide a 50% increase?

My question is is there anyway to change the tech victory from researching certain techs to maybe being ahead in research by points or shear number of techs

I would like to see the ai copy not necessary ship design this is fairly unimportant, but i would like it to copy what it is equiped with will it be able to do this in crusade.

Instead of what is seams where you.get the same number of anomolies regardless of map size. Can you make it scale better where abundant seem to be abundant on insane maps.

Are there going to be more habital planets on abundant insane maps.

In the base game you can do all three ideologies simultaneously, but are we going to pick an avefage of your choices, so your ideologies are based on more on how you make your decisions.

Instead of benevolent and malevolent, which sounds more like good, and evil, not ideologies. Can we actually have names that dont spund like good versus evil.

I finally got to watch the Crusade preview stream last Friday night.

One of my questions was answered: Administrators are non-recoverable when lost.  So burning an administrator to build a constructor that's used to make a shipyard means we trade an administrator for that easier-to-get shipyard?  Not a good trade, maybe, but games are about choices.

This raises another concern, though.  Will b-lining to weapons techs allow me to build an early attack ship I can use to cripple nearby AIs at the beginning of the game by killing off their colony ships, constructors, and possibly unarmed early survey vessels taking an administrator with each one?  Will the AI attempt to do this to me?  Will it be taught to provide effective escorts to prevent this strategy?

Other unanswered questions from a previous Crusade dev diary: (Edit: CRUSADE DIARY 5: Spies & Saboteurs )

And last question- Can you unequivocally state that these lines of code:

<!--Each time you research a tech in any tree the cost of all techs are raised by this exponent-->
  <TechInflationExponent_All>1.01</TechInflationExponent_All>
    <!--Each time you research a tech in any tree all techs cost is increesed by this multipyer.-->
  <TechInflationMultiplier_All>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_All>
   
    <!--These values allow us to further inflate techs on a per tree basis, this is to discourage the
    player from drilling down a single branch of the tree too quickly, and over specializing.
    I have removed the exponent, and have only a small multiplier, since it is added to the overall inflation settings.-->
  <TechInflationExponent_Tree>1.01</TechInflationExponent_Tree>
  <TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>

GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml lines 907 to 916 are effecting the AI's research rates as well as the players?  I"ve messed with modding this to change research pacing and I suspect that these values are effecting the player only.  I did one set of tests, but there's too many variable to consider anything conclusive.  Can give you the saves if you like.

Thanks Kristy and enjoy your vacation.

Will Crusades make more use of my multi-core CPU?  On that subject, I saw something that looked super exciting in a soak session.  I love it when Brad gets to show off a little geeky under-the-hood stuff.  He is so obviously geek happy.  I'd be exactly the same way in his circumstance.  "Hey, look at this!"  

Related question:  If I walk away from my game for an hour, have the AI players done some sort of deep down analysis while I was gone?  Are they the scheming devils I warn my citizens about?

An unrelated comment:  I saw several bits of very nice polish in the stream.  I like the new Influence borders.  I like the background graphic of an endless stream of ships.  I very much like the overall game getting that kind of love and attention.

I am overwhelmed by all the mechanics changes and will have to see how it all works out.  I am definitely encouraged, though.

Thanks for giving us a vehicle for dealing with questions that didn't make it through the stream chat.  Great stuff!

Hour 'til bump.

It would be fine, if founders have the beta concurrently with the stream, so we could examinate the stuff in parallel.

Haha

Referring the newest stream:

- Until now we had resistance and planetary defense. Is that still the case and how are those factored into the invasion equation?

- When defending against an invasion in Crusade, does the defender get the possibility to place their legions?

- Can defending troops be placed on buildings other than cities to prevent them from being destroyed?

- What are the green circles in the example invasion seen on the stream?

- Can legions level up?

- Can legions be moved between planets?

- Is there only one type of legion (as opposed to soldiers, tanks, battlemechs, whatever like in other games)?

- How do other invasion tactics like Information Warfare, Tidal Disruption etc. work with legions?

I'm a bit disappointed that this question thread didn't get any love in yesterday's stream.

Twelve minutes into the 3/29 stream Brad mentioned that soon after Crusade is released you're looking at more support for modding (paraphrased).

What does more support entail?  Do you mean just race creation and ship designer stuff?  Or is there some impetus towards fulfilling some of the requests in the Modding Wishlist thread here: https://forums.galciv3.com/478948/page/2/#3670794 ?

Like some other posters, I'm not so pumped about sacing citizens to activate abilities as a game mechanic.  Any chance this may be reworked in the future to where a citizen can be given a mission (ex. spy sabotages improvement) with a % chance of success that may get them killed if they fail, and will certainly give them experience if they succeed?  A little RND makes things very interesting.

I really like the trait-based events idea.  More immersion = better game.

Like that the Military Academy opens up a legion construction project.  120 plus turns to build on a partially constructed planet seems like a very high cost, though.  I was expecting a legion per-x-turns mechanic like we have with ideology buildings.

Will the Dregin get a free legion with their garrison improvement?

Greetings, 

One thing that I loved to hear was that tech costs will scale with map size! Most of my games have the research win disabled and I have found my self playing a game that last about 250 to 300 turns while the last 75 turns was me re-picking the capstone techs over and over. If I had one request it would be to make Age of Ascension techs 10 or even 30x higher then the previous age. By age of war you have enough toys to fight off or such other empires and the Ascension techs should be OOOOO ..ahhh.. ones that have pretty glittery stuff and make you go ..wow, now I am going to dominate!  I would love my games to last longer. Removing the micro of starbase management is very very helpful. Anyway  the game and the expansion look to be great. 

What changes can you tell us about specialty worlds or precursor worlds? Do Ghost worlds still boost your research on that planet 50%? Does a planet with a precursor elevator still help boost production of ships faster to the shipyard its sponsored to?  

Will we still get Ideology events (and points) for colonization? How about adding invasions to that (getting Ideology points/events)  as well? 

As always Gal Civ III is my go to game and I push it off on as many folks as I can when I talk about Computer gaming! 

One question:  If there are any citizens on a planet that is conquered are those citizens lost/killed?

If so this could make losing your capital to be crippling, especially late game on large maps! Especially if your capital is relatively close to the disputed border and can be taken early.  Make sure you have lots of Legions there

Just in case Brad is still wondering what the Torians did to get so powerful (4/5 Stream):

Nothing.

He scrolled the mouse wheel in while pointing at the wrong place in the race selection screen and it put them on genius difficulty.

In general I am happy to see he gets annoyed at similar things I do when I play this game. Is the AI fow-cheating (gifted+ difficulty) going away?

Quoting zuPloed, reply 19

He scrolled the mouse wheel in while pointing at the wrong place in the race selection screen and it put them on genius difficulty.

End of zuPloed's quote

Just watched the replay.  I thought I saw that and had to go back a bit in the replay to confirm for myself,  

Note that I do the same thing myself sometimes often, so I recognize the pattern from first hand experience.  

no beta

Hi guys! 

I've compiled what you've asked and will do my very best to see if I can't get some answers today and in the weeks going forward. Sometimes it's hard to get a word in edgewise when the guys get going. There's obviously so much to discuss!

~Kristy

Will the space elevator be visible in the planets' graphics on the galactic map when zoomed in?

I read that in Crusade every single weapon on a ship is fired separately. What about star bases? Since they are now also designable, that should apply to starbase weapons as well, shouldn't it?

Here's a question:
Will the missile weapon rate of fire exploit be fixed?

From the first specialization tech, and 2 ship components, you can achieve -95% weapon cooldown, which means +1900% rate of fire.
The tooltips are wrong, they suggest +95% rate of fire, but the effect is a weapon cooldown reduction.