joeball123

[quote who="androshalforc" reply="27" id="3413994"]this is really just an excuse for why the ai knows where all the planets are if it were accurate then playing as any other race other then terrans would give you a fully explored map at the start of the game[/quote] Playing as any race but the humans means that you do in fact know where all the planets are, as the Stellar Cartography technology places markers on the minimap showing the location of every planet in the game without

[quote who="DsRaider" reply="25" id="3413135"]Do you know how long it would take for humans to build up a population of millions on a colony planet?[/quote] Assuming a seed population of 1000 people and an average 5% per year population growth, you could achieve a total population of 10 million people within 189 years. Larger initial populations will obviously increase the rate of population growth If you assume an average annual population growth of 1%, that figure moves up to a litt

[quote who="John Falkenberg" reply="12" id="3412761"]Next to go, would be marginal planets with poor atmospheres, moons, high gravity whatever. After that-closest metal rich asteroids Then-you go for most distant and miserable asteroids and hunks of rock in your solar system.[/quote] I disagree with this. Presumably, even marginal worlds have gravities similar to the gravities of inhabitable worlds, yet since they are marginal , you wouldn't expect h

[quote who="Seilore" reply="6" id="3412720"]Why do you want to close your borders, after all your space will soon become my space[/quote] Is "Your space is my space, and only my space, so get out now, or I will bomb you" your national theme song? I tend to think that a better way of defining territorial borders than the influence boundary would be to have a United Planets standard range-from-owned planet boundary line (and if two planets owned by different group

[quote who="ParagonRenegade" reply="320" id="3412539"]The thing is, diplomacy, espionage and the such are absolutely essential to the strategic aspects of the game, otherwise known as the reason people play this game.[/quote] Espionage as implemented in GCII was about as essential to the strategic elements of the game as mercury is to your health. It was little more than a money sink that provided little worthwhile information about your opponents and carried an excessive price-tag, a

I agree with farming colonies that provide food to other worlds, or to a rebalance of the morale and population system so that it's practical to use even a single 100% food bonus tile. Once planetary populations approached 20 billion, there just wasn't a reasonable way to keep the population happy, and a single Advanced Xeno Farm on a +100% food tile was sufficient for 22 billion people in the colonies. At 15 billion you could keep everyone more or less completely happy with two VR Ce

[quote who="Lucky Jack" reply="7" id="3411634"]I find this is a bit difficult to envision. After all, we are a long ways from 2178, and we have already discovered and collected antimatter. Do you have any theories on potential new fuel types?[/quote] Without significant improvements in the ability to store antimatter, it isn't very useful as a fuel as it tends to only survive in our universe for a few fractions of a second. Moreover, you'd still eventually run out of your supp

[quote who="John Falkenberg" reply="16" id="3411623"]Starships should be designated by tonnage and size-not arbitrary and meaningless titles, like 'destroyer' or cruiser, which are meaningless terms when applied to spacecraft.[/quote] In modern naval terminology: A corvette is a small and maneuverable light warship commonly used for short-range patrol and escort, or as a defense for ports and naval bases. A <span

[quote who="Lucky Jack" reply="37" id="3411682"]Quoting Wintersong, reply 23 And don't get me started in lasers being colored beams that make noises in space. And what about that cosmic music that seems to play all over the galaxy???? In space, no one can hear your OST!!!! Or ships leaving no wreck behind once destroyed. There was once a whole TV program about all the simulated noise in space operas (movies and TV). There was agreement that space does not conduct soun

[quote who="yarodin" reply="282" id="3411541"]FDR? To be involved into domestic affairs doesn't mean you tell your people "put the factory at this place over there, it looks nice". Setting tax rates is an domestic affaire.[/quote] FDR is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States of America, who lead the United States for much of the decade leading up to the Second World War and all but the last few months of that conflict, and was elected to the

[quote who="John Falkenberg" reply="16" id="3411332"] Besides, the game even GAVE all you raving fighter-fanboys what your asking for. Tiny and S-class hulls. If you want 'fighters' do what I did.[/quote] Actually, no. Tiny and Small hulls in particular have some fairly hefty tradeoffs between speed, range, durability, and firepower, and as such if you want a fast fleet are impractical to use. The purpose of a carrier would be allowing the use of such hulls without nee

I mostly agree with keeping the starbase upgrade system that GCII had for GCIII. The only thing I'd really like changed about it would be to have an easier way to order up the constructors required to upgrade the station.

[quote]Can anyone think of a game mechanic that would allow you to help out an underdog covertly?[/quote] Not really a game mechanic, but you could technically build a wall of spaceships around the underdog; as long as you were not allied or at war with the stronger party, they wouldn't be able to attack the weaker party. Of course, the reverse also holds. You could also theoretically hire some of the other AI factions to assist the underdog, and you could attempt to brib

[quote who="TrueRazorwind" reply="32" id="3408107"]What if a Military personal resource was introduced a fighter would need only 1 pilot where a massive battleship would need over 1000 people to make it run properly[/quote] This is, unfortunately, difficult to justify when you can have a single transport ship carrying 1 billion soldiers, and it costs less than anything else in your navy (this is under the GCII model, mind you). If you can spare 500 million people for an arm

[quote who="DsRaider" reply="8" id="3408408"]Mental Parasites: Your Intelligence agency comes to you with alarming news. A alien parasite has secretly spread across the galaxy. Moral decreases and planets and ships have a chance of rebelling to a new minor faction.[/quote] Well, at least we ought to have good population growth and the people (aside from moralists and certain religious groups) ought to be pretty happy, though perhaps not

[quote who="jim_viebke" reply="161" id="3407169"]I shake my head every time a sci-fi writer mentions one ship being "faster" than another. Or that ships "slow down" when their engines are damaged[/quote] I tend to view this as an acceleration metric - if Ship A has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 2 and Ship B has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1, then Ship A is "faster" than Ship B because Ship A has a higher linear acceleration, and can therefore catch up to Ship B if both ships started at

[quote who="Replicators" reply="10" id="3407161"]GC2's ship builder is miles ahead of SD.[/quote] It really depends on what you want out of the ship designer, though, doesn't it? GC2's ship designer lets you make ships that looked more or less like anything you wanted them to, as long as you had the patience to place all the little pieces and had the parts you needed. It doesn't make the locations of the non-decorative parts important - as examples, the orientation and

Personally, I wouldn't mind having the option to turn off the badge, since it takes up a lot of space and I think it looks kind of ugly; besides which, I wasn't interested in the badge when I purchased the game. Nor am I particularly inclined to put up a big sign that says "hey everyone - look how much I just spent".

I rather liked the way Sword of the Stars did tech trading, where the tech trade is essentially a joint research project that either party can cancel. It gives you an incentive to maintain good relations with a partner for a while, and also doesn't allow you to just go around vacuuming up all the technology in the galaxy that can be had for love or money. It was also something that required a bit of investment into making sure you had go

If they include an alignment system similar to that of Galactic Civilizations II, I would like for it to not be possible to lock the alignment in place. And I'd also like for the choices affecting the alignment not to have the options of 'stupid good', 'maybe not the brightest neutral', and 'why wouldn't I do this evil', especially since if we really wanted a specific alignment we could just pay for it later if the current alignment wasn't what we wanted to

[quote who="Sifer2" reply="4" id="3404743"]Well part of the problem is justifying it at all in a Space conquest game. Since realistically ships in orbit could just bombard any ground resistance into ash one they have uncontested control of the space around the planet. The only reason to send in ground troops would be to subdue the population, and secure key facilities without destroying them. Though in theory you could also just destroy their food production, and wait for them to surrender wh

I suppose I should have mentioned that the interest rate in the formula I gave has to be the per-compounding period interest rate, meaning that if you compound monthly at an annual rate of 5%, I = 5/(12*100). [quote who="chuck1es" reply="8" id="3404714"]My concern is it sounds like the Beta access one requires you to still purchase the game.[/quote] I read it as being just like the advertisements which tell you the price you pay with the special deal being offered, and then co

[quote who="Jarac" reply="6" id="3404703"]Considering that you get Alpha access and the future DLC included with your purchase, I don't see how it's a bad deal. [/quote] Which is why I said "it depends on what your criteria for worthwhile is". I then proceeded to give an economics-based breakdown of how to decide if it's worthwhile, which requires you to make several assumptions about how the game expands after the fact. If your criteria is more of an "is it fun" k

This depends on what criteria you use for "worthwhile". If we ignore interest and inflation, $60 is worth 6-12 DLC packs at $5-$10 each, or three expansions at $20 each, or something midway between those numbers. If we don't ignore interest, then assuming a 5% annual return on investment compounded monthly, that extra $60 is worth about 1 $6 DLC pack every 5 months for the next 5 years, with ~$10 left over at the end of that period. Another equivalency over the next five years would be 2