Gilmoy

Gravity is gravity. Gravitational strength can be elegantly summarized by the amount that it redshifts light, which is equivalent to the energy it subtracts from a photon escaping (N.B. that's exactly what "redshift" means) , which is equivalent to the escape velocity needed to escape to infinity. (For everyday matter that moves slower than c, we must multiply the energy-per-unit-mass by the mass, which is awkward -- so we divide out the mass, which leaves an accel

+1. This is similar to a concept I call "theaters", which I find useful when playing any 3X, 4X, Empire-like, boardgame, or other game with buildables and exploration (including some RPGs). Any map-based game with lots of things going on naturally demands a narrowing of scope (or you'll get overwhelmed by the complexity of interactions). Evidently, US and other militaries have encountered the same problem and found the same solution, for similar reasons. Hence

And yes, I don't expect any of this to appear in GC*. This is just geek fun among fellow geeks. For game purposes, we happily suspend disbelief and grant the designers a great deal of artistic license. I don't mind the way GC3 black holes look and behave now. Maybe they're a bit too frequent, but that requires just a tweak to the map generator. As a game mechanism, it so happens that a GC3 black hole vortex is the only kind of impassable t

We have overwhelming evidence that something exists that is as heavy, compact, and dense as a black hole. Sag A* is a (decades-)known radio and X-ray source. We've tracked (in infrared, which fortunately passes right through interstellar dust that occludes visible light from the galactic center) huge stars whipping around Sag A* like comets around a sun. That nails Sag A* with a mass of 4.3 million solar, but it's compact , tinier than the st

I think this, in fact, is the novel and fertile game niche of 5X : explore, expand, exploit, exterminate, extend . Basically, first we implement Common Lisp (or a similar script language, but why settle for less). Then we (implement and) publish an API that exports all game data to this Lisp, e.g. ship list, planet manage, influence per hex, and every other kind of number. Every UI toolbox element simply queries a few data (plural :)) from t

Black holes don't "slowly" pull things in. They're indistinguishable from a star of the same mass. Gravity is gravity. Even a supermassive black hole of 4 billion solar masses anchoring a galaxy with a huge central bulge (and lighting up as a quasar when it's feeding) doesn't pull its own galaxy in. In fact, quite the opposite: its jets are so overpowering that it blasts away all available gas from the galactic interior, which kills off star formation

i.e. you're defining the concept of "region" as a scope for limits. Equivalently, you're promoting regions to second(?)-class values. (They're not first-class because they're still hard-coded, not definable on the fly.) Then it becomes trivial to impose region-wide limits for various buildables. The region takes over the role of encapsulating the "1-per-me" idiom. Of greater interest, you've further broken down the "region" constru

Yes, I think that is the intent. Research Project works the same way: you run your production through your entire manuf bonus pipeline, divide by 4 to get Raw Research, and then run that through your entire research bonus pipeline. So all of your bonuses in both pipelines pay off. This matters for e.g. Altarian, who have the Dark Energy branch that pump both manuf and research. They don't have to choose one or the other; they can pursue both. It's ba-

From Paul's stream comment: there is actually a need for a nifty tree UI for the buildable-trees XML files. A "buildable" is { tech / improvements / modules / components } + { ideology }. These form a tree (actually a forest), with techs at the top, the other 3 branching off them like epiphytes, and ideology (and its improvements) as a disjoint tree. Currently, Stardock does this in one big Excel file . As text. No UI.

Gosh, it's like WW2 piston-engine fighters using clouds to set up ambushes [e digicons]:grin:[/e] The Cylons hid among rocks before they ambushed the Home Fleet's battlestars. Darn those mechanical AIs! Good thing there are none in GC3 --

[quote who="Thecw" reply="10" id="3502865"] Galactic event: Wrong band arrives at rock concert. Instead of the 'Angelic Soothing Singers Collective' the band ' Disaster Area ' ... [/quote] "That's us. The Angelic Blues Brothers Singers."

[quote quoting="post"] An ultra-cheap, bare bones colony ship ... An ultra-cheap, bare bones constructor ship ... [/quote] Did those in my 1st Designer session. But I come from Malfador's Space Empires series, so I'm familiar with the concept of bin-packing ship designs to optimize functionality for cost. I further specialize my czers and ctors with exactly enough range for the planet they target (I count the hexes) , and whether to pay fo

Abusing the pronunciation: [quote who="jbbrower" reply="309" id="3502718"] Persephone [/quote] ... because that's where she keeps it. [e digicons]:X[/e]

Certainly a step in the right direction. But why stop at 4? Seek the transitive closure (of all possible axes of generalization). The uber-UI would be player-defined slices (subsets of stuff). You could define a slice to be a region of the map, or a logical grouping of ships (even if dispersed to heck), e.g. the fleet that shall congregate here and invade Drengi. That one mechanism would basically trump and s

[quote who="Hamilmac"] I really like the new terraforming system, though I have noticed that it is best to get all the techs before terraforming a planet. Soil Enhancement uses the same hexes as Ultra-Terraformer (UT), but Terraforming Plant, Habitat Improvement, and the Resequencing Station will often make tiles available that UTs do not. It is a shame t

Ugh. Edit post and delete the last N-2 lines [e digicons]:blush:[/e] (there is no time limit on editing your own posts)

In Steam, you can also right-click on "GC III", Properties, Local Files, and note the BuildId at the bottom. It auto-jumps every time they push any batch of files. It used to be (0.50) 411098.

Actually, running through both production pipelines (manuf + research, or manuf + wealth) may be the intent. If you can (live long enough to) build it, maybe you deserve it. If all equally skilled players are equally overpowered ... then they're balanced [e digicons]:grin:[/e]

[quote who="Hamilmac" reply="3" id="3502397"] ... for Iraq . . . well, I'm not going to give them my best stuff ... [/quote] Yes, that would be almost as awkward as, say, Iran flying the F-14 Tomcat. Japan commissioned a couple of battleships from the UK (in the mid-30s). Why not? Excellent work for a reasonable price ... and their own shipyards were busy ;)

Usually Stardock releases GC3 builds on Thursdays (opt-in?), and then features it in the Dev Stream on Friday. It makes sense: we get to flood Forums and Chat with quick (1 day, i.e. 18 hours gameplay [e digicons]:grin:[/e] ) feedback, which catches any showstoppers ... like Drengin colony ships crashing. Then they stay up all weekend and push a hotfix. Generalizing, I'd expect Sorcerer King builds to appear on Tuesdays, with stream on We

Kudos to the OP! This is a useful (and fun) variant of an Upper Bound test. All 4Xs, CCGs, maybe RPGs, and other games with pump-ups can benefit from this. Sometimes you can spot flaws this way that are not revealed in any other way. It also makes for great trivia questions and weekly contests :) What you're seeing is that GC3 productivity is exponential. If you live long enough to get past the bend in the curves, your upper bounds are ridiculously high.</p

Is that the Dagwood Bumstead Midnight Snack Ship? It even looks like a sandwich ...

Probably they think it's overpowered to beeline for a tier 5 Ideology. Those are supposed to be game-breakers, so you should suffer more than that to get them. As for the UI possibly misleading you: It's A Beta. Many UI things are half-done and still evolving. Suspend judgment (while you agitate for change).

Real Men Draw Pictures With Their Extra Gems! RPGs (and fantasy 4Xs) generally lack the concept of a party-level equipment UI that allows for convenient redistribution of stuff. They all reduce to click-level interactions, which scales up poorly. Let mannequin denote a unit's torso-like layout of boxes, into which you can equip stuff. Diablo started it, and every RPG-like uses it now (including SK). An "ideal"

Well, I suppose you could game the Ideology trees by synchronizing your colonizers so that you gain a whackload of Ideology points in the same turn , thereby leaping over the points gap. For example, if the tier-2 cost is 33 and tier-3 is 45, then you lurk at 24 points by stalling 2 colonizers ... and then colonize 3 in the same turn to hit 54. See if that lets you unlock a tier-3 instead of a tier-2. It's a Beta. This is what w