trims2u

OK, other than setting a Rally Point for a Shipyard, is there any way to control the hex that a Shipyard launches ships into? I often have these things stuck next to asteroid fields that the shipyard wants to eject them into, screwing me out of my first turn's movement. Also, while we're on this topic, Rally Points (which not broken) are too limited. I almost always want a ship to rally NEXT TO the planet/starbase, not ON THE SAME HEX; the A.I. should stop the ship as so

I gave you guys an 8 out of 10. I'm gonna ding you on being a bit over-ambitious, and the game still is missing a number of things that you promoted for it. I understand why they didn't make it, but you kinda oversold some stuff (the new battle viewer and tactics), as well as removed some thing we kind expected to be there from last time (asteroid mining?). There's also a few things that really feel just not quite ready yet (like the new tech trees, and how to deal

The best algorithm to use here is a slowly rising one to reduce base morale. Personally, the best one I can think of is Logarithms. A good example would be something like 0.25 * log2 (# of planets). That is, the log base 2 of the size of your empire, then quarter it. Which means, you get a 0.25 penalty to morale every time you double the size of your empire. So, at these sizes, you'd see the following morale penalties: Size

Map generation still seems to be too uniform. If I start a new game, with all the same settings as the prior one, I get the exact same star layout, and the same homeworld location. Doing this repeatedly gives the same results, though it flips between two different tile layouts on the homeworld. *Exact* same. Changing the map size and other map characteristics, then going back to the original parameters, doesn't fix this issue. Something similar

DO note, that tech specialization (and preclusion of alternates) happens in the Real World all the time. It tends to be heavily reinforced by the "installed base" legacy issue. For example: we use Binary math in computers, and Decimal math elsewhere. We know about Trinary Math for computing, and it's even been prototyped. It also has some advantages over Binary. But the cost to swap our infrastructure over to Trinary is ludicrously high. T

In theory, yes, putting a capital in the center of 6 adjacent tiles wastes some bonus, vs all 7 being occupied by a building of the same sort. However, that's an extreme outlier. It also presumes that you build worlds of almost exclusively one building type. That used to be a good strategy in GC2, but it's much less of one in GC3, due to both the "bonus" tiles and the multiple adjacency bonuses of various buildings (many give bonuses to buildings NOT of their origi

The algorithm for finding at least a reasonable guess at optimal is quite straightforward: Not adjacent to a tile which has a special tile bonus Not adjacent to a tile which has some special ability thingy already occupying it. The largest number of adjacent tiles If there are several that tie for #3, pick the one with the largest number of adjacent face neighbors (i.e. the tile which neighbors clustered together) You want the capit

Firstly, I do like the concept that certain choices should be EXCLUSIONARY - picking one option should preclude you from *EVER* getting the others (whether via research or trading or bonus). It certainly makes the game more interesting, and more consequential. That said, I agree with several of the points above, about many of the current "specializations" being either completely unbalanced between the choices, or for ones which one really shouldn't be an

Did you remember to go to the "Govern" screen, and reset your resource allocation to be more resource heavy? For the most part, it's not hard to be ahead in the research race if you've got the research component set to 40%+ of total use. Personally, I tend to set the allocation wheel to 10% income, 50% production, 40% research in the early game (during when I'm pumping out colony ships), then swap the research & production allocations in mid-game to get ahead o

I've used sensor ships since at least the early GC2 game, and it was pretty easy to get a 15-range ship there rather fast. Mid-game in GC2, I'd have a sensor ship with 15 range and 5+ engine movement and ultra-long range for less than the cost of a typical small ship armed to the teeth. Personally, I'd like to see it turned down a bit from GC3's current level. Maybe only allowing one copy of each technology per ship, or just limiting the number of sensors per hul

Notice that it's a PERCENTAGE adjustment penalty, not a BASE penalty. So, a -20 penalty for having 20 planets can be offset by having one basic morale building on each planet. It shouldn't need to be tweaked too much, except maybe to be slightly less than directly linear. Maybe the 2/3rds root or something like that. At that level, 100 planets would be -20.

One of the things that seems to be driving the problems with starbase management is that we now have to do mining starbases. Frankly, over 50% of my starbases are for mining, and the majority of them mine only a single resource, because of the separation between stars (I tend to play on "loose clusters" or "scattered"). I'm not a fan at all of the replacement of the space miner/mining colony concept from GC2 to the new method. I'd *MUCH* prefer we go back to

The problem will be much less noticeable when the "rollover" production is enabled. Right now, you lose any excess production from the turn when a building completes. Shortly, this excess will be applied to the next building in the queue. This will make upgrading faster. Also, given that having incremental buildings supply some bonuses before the final "ultimate" version you can build is ready, it's actually preferable this way. With rollover, you get the best

If we're looking to eliminate the constructor need (except for the initial placement), I would argue strongly for the Shipyard model, where planetary sponsorship is REQUIRED for construction. Starbases should never be allowed to self-upgrade - they should require either planetary sponsorship or a constructor. Otherwise, it's a portable super-planet, and that severely unbalances the game. We can also streamline upgrades by using the GC2 method where you set the priority o

Historically speaking, upgrades were extremely limited in scope, and done only with slightly more advanced technology. The most radical upgrades I can think of in naval history would have been the retrofitting of 1st generation SAMs onto late-WW2-era cruisers. Which was hideously expensive, as is. So much so, that most of the proposed conversions were abandoned in favor of building new, from-scratch ships. For example: the USN's Alaska-class "large

The problem is that certain "ideological" choices are either mutually exclusive (in the real world) with each other, or are significantly difficult to reconcile. For example, having a strong military where everyone serves mandatory military service for a fixed term is significantly harder to integrate with a belief that individual liberty is much more important than collective need, vs a society which follows fascism. They're obviously not incompatible, but a society that wa

Mass Drivers (the original "rods from God") give you a huge mushroom cloud bigger than any nuke ever could. Small rocks on the size of a car will give a more than a Megaton explosive yield, more if they're significantly accelerated when being launched. Using tiny asteroids (which are on the order of 100m+ in diameter) will produce impacts on the order of a GigaTon. Thems make nice 'shrooms.

Simply to make sure that sight lines are maintained, we can't do some sort of a bezier curve approximation. The ship has to pass through every hex it normally would, and none that it wouldn't. That said, the assumption is that we'll see the ship "bank" though the path, maintaining the heading (i.e. bow of the ship) in the direction of travel, and slide left or right as it continues along the path. Heading isn't important when moving for the ship, so I expect this is wh

Second things first: Fortify on Civ 3 & 4 (not sure about 5) worked pretty much identically to Sentry in GC3 (though it also came with a defensive bonus). Now, to First things: with anything other than a small number of ships on a small map, having a mode which DOESN'T notify you of ships within sensor range runs the very big risk of you missing that approaching ship. There's simply too many different ships to monitor, and it's easy to miss the graphic symb

Just to be clear, GC2 (or, at least TotA) also had modifications to the base unit movement. Impulse Drive, Warp Drive, and HyperWarp drive all added +1 to base movement, even without adding one of those engines in. There were also several race-specific techs which did the same thing. The problem in GC3 isn't different, it's just the scale. I do thing that the disparity between races in base movement for GC3 is a bit much in early-game. I think they should general

There are three levels of graphics on the main galaxy map: No Zoom Medium Zoom Full Zoom The first looks like an abstract representation of the galaxy, with little more than basic icons. This is completely intentional and MUST NOT CHANGE. It truly is a map, and maps don't have detail - they convey information, not graphics. Information on a large scale is aided mostly by simplification, not complexity. There's a

I went and looked, and something like Trac ( http://trac.edgewall.org/ ) is what we want. Both Wiki info, and bug tracking. I can stand one up on an EC2 instance in less than an hour. BUT, and here's the BUT, we need buy-in by StarDock that they'll use this instead of the forums. This isn't just a community effort to be successful, it has to be a community + company agreement.

Everything you want is available simply by increasing the size of the map you play on. Which, incidentally, is exactly what you're asking for, whether you realize it or not. Now, the bigger issue is having an option which has the positioning of stars and planets cluster towards the center of the map. The same style of game play you're after is available now in GC2, if you use one of the larger maps, with few stars in tight clusters. All GC3 needs to

Folks - As we get new people here, and things progress development-wise, we desperately need documentation. Release notes aren't enough, and it's a real PITA to have to noodle around just to find the new things; that's not testing, that's wasting time. In the old days, I'd say put up a FAQ, and update that. But that's so 1990. [e digicons]o_O[/e] Rather, we need a Wiki. Something that us users can help maintain, to take the load off

I hate Kickstarter. But, the Linux/Mac port is exactly the kind of thing that Kickstarter is great for, because it gets people to put their money where their mouth is. If at all possible, I think StarDock should run a self-sponsored site to get people to put down money for the Linux and/or Mac port. And, frankly, I'd hire someone to come in and consult on the OpenGL work - it's non-trivial to learn, and there's just as many dark corners as