trims2u

(1) if the VRAM is available, why not use it to cache things? (2) VRAM usage monitoring is mostly useless. The I/O on and off the card is far more important. (3) GC3 really isn't fully optimized yet, so I would expect a bit of slop in things like texture caching strategies. (4) We'd have to ask the Dev's, but there's a possibility the game is using the GPU for compute purposes, not just video display. (5) GC3 uses a fair amount of very lar

[quote who="AlienFromBeyond" reply="78" id="3556478"] Quoting trims2u, reply 56 Also, I noticed the patch Nerfed both the Durantium Refinery and the Thulium Data Archive quite a bit. Both had their adjancency bonuses reduced from +3 to +2. And I think the Refinery's Base Manufacturing bonus went from +

Also, I noticed the patch Nerfed both the Durantium Refinery and the Thulium Data Archive quite a bit. Both had their adjancency bonuses reduced from +3 to +2. And I think the Refinery's Base Manufacturing bonus went from +4 to +2. I *think*, but have to verify, that you also tweaked the Manufacturing and Research Capital improvements.

Also, if you're willing to choose Malevolent as one of your Ideology options, you can get a free Frigate that's good enough to beat up most Pirates, though not quite good enough to take out their shipyards. Basically, you really can't go Pirate hunting until around turn 30 or so, since before then you really need to be focusing on colonization.

[quote who="Seafireliv" reply="17" id="3555909"] I still get defeated by the AI on Normal. Perhaps you guys constantly reload or are using some other exploit that you happen not to mention? [/quote] I'm guessing you're not a serious Min/Maxer like all the hard-core players here. A lot of the "exploits" and "unbalanced" being mentioned is the ability to screw with edge cases and non-obvious assumptions. That's not to say that these exploits don't

Also, the 3 constructors make excellent scouts, if you get them at the right point. I'm playing the Iridium right now, and if I get them at the M3 level, they're faster than a scout, same vision range, and a heck of a lot more distance range. It's really an excellent choice instead of spamming a cargo-sensor ship. Particularly since you can use them to go a long distance, make a starbase, and then not need to load up colony ships with life support. &n

Ideology also severely impacts your relationship with the other races. And, yeah, it costs you more points to go up across multiple ideologies than it does to stick just to one. That, and all the nice bennies are really in the Tier 3 and up ideologies, which are darned hard to get if you keep switching around between them, given that total ideology points are generally quite fixed. Methinks someone hasn't really played the game too much.

[quote who="Publius of NV" reply="10" id="3554561"] Quoting Franco fx, reply 8 Quoting dragoaskani, reply 7 Take some pl

Initial load time for GC3 is heavily dominated by your disk's ability to do random I/O. GC3 is loading a whole lot of small files these days, rather than one big archive. It's harder on the disk I/O, but much, much easier for Mod-ers and expansions if you do it this way. On a fragmented HD, I've seen load times 5-6 minutes. Defrag that and it drops to about 1 minute. On my SSD, I get a load time of about 10 seconds. I would expect that mo

I would expect bundles of DLC, but only after they are released. So, rather than a "buy 3, get 1 free" coupon, and wait for the next couple of DLC to be released, they'll instead offer something like: 25% off 4 existing DLC. Pre-sales of DLCs are pretty much unheard of, for any game, because it's so unpredictable about when they'll come out, the quality of one, etc. So discounts tend to be applied to sales of EXISTING DLC packs, rather than future ones.

The text of the description is just flavor. Look at the bonuses that the tile gives, and build the appropriate improvements in (and around) the tile. Approval buildings are pretty few until the mid-game (at least), but they're also the least-needed ones, so no big deal there. Each building's tool tip will tell you what "flavor" of improvement it is, right underneath the title of the improvement.

[quote who="Natasin" reply="6" id="3554242"] I have an older athelon quadcore and 4gb and the game plays quite poorly for me. It used to be worse in previous betas though. Now I have terrible tracking issues and it slogs between turns. I've given up playing it until I get a better computer. [/quote] Just buy more RAM for it, and you'll be fine (after you get over the 1st-turn-take-too-long bug that seems to plague most AMD systems). Another 4GB

It (asteroid mining) probably will show up in the first Expansion pack. At least that's the latest word I've heard from the DevStreams. What form, and how it operates, is still way up in the air.

No, that requires way too much micro-management. You WANT the other buildings in the circle to auto-upgrade, because they will remain. The building in the center you DON'T want, though. Another example for me is the Colony Hospital. Many times, I don't want to upgrade it to a Medical Center, because the time it takes to do so is time I could be having the planet do other things (and, I've already grown to the max the planet pop will go by then)

I don't see the issue. Mine's still on 150. I'm on the opt-in patch (1.01).

Honestly, there's no "Right" answer here. This is a rules decision, and rules, by their nature, are arbitrary. Remember, there are two main audiences for GC3: 1) the "causal" player; people who are going to spend 10-20 hours/month playing. They're not going to know advanced strategies, and they're going to play the "surface" of the game. Rules for them need to make sure that there's no major cheats easily available, and no super

[quote who="DarkNeuron" reply="48" id="3552392"] Quoting Franco fx, reply 34 Quoting Echillion, reply 32 A lot of people will be upset if the devs get

I didn't say generalize, I said avoid single-purpose specialization. Even avoiding the 1-thing-per-term limit, you're better off with a planet that makes maximal use of the bonus tiles and adjacency bonues, which means in the vast majority of cases, you'll have TWO primary functions of a planet. Remember, there's at least 6 different kinds of things a planet can do: (1) Manufacturing (2) Research (3) Wealth (4) Tourism (5

ESC->Main Menu -> Quick start This let your restart with all the settings from the last time you used New Game.

Patriotic is a game-breaker in it's current form, as it let you completely ignore a crucial factor for EVERYONE ELSE. In anything, it should just nerf the LEP, not ignore it. Say a 50% reduction.The only other ability which has this kind of "ignore this completely" factor is Starfaring, and being able to ignore Nebulas isn't much of a big thing. Also, there's discussion about changing the LEP to either be non-linear (something like a Logrithmic functio

Also, note that the later mining technologies multiply the yield for a starbase. So, if you research one of those (say, you get the 2nd-tier High Efficiency Mining tech), you can send a constructor to a mining starbase, and add that facility. Each resource on the map will now count as 2 (or 3 or whatever the tech indicates) as far as the little resource availability counter is concern. Thus, with upgrades, you can build multiple units/structures for each resource on the map you ow

At least two of them (the "missing" races from GC2) are scheduled to be back as Minor Races as a DLC. I believe both the Torian and Drath were in that bucket. We'll see if they have some civ-specific building or such that differentiates them from a custom-race build.

Also, note that increased population makes it harder for an invasion to succeed. Approval affects the "Resistance" modifier, but the actual invasion success is calculated against the total population in absolute terms. Also, each "level" bonus from adjacency or tile varies in effect, based on the structure. The way to see the effect is hover over the structure, and look at the popup stats, and in the middle of it, you will see a section headlined "Level X",

[quote who="ManiiNames" reply="22" id="3551837"] Quoting Surge72, reply 21 I would argue that the one unit per turn is a good argument for not specialising all of your planets so heavily. This. [/quote] Again. Particularly in a large map, you're at a strat

[quote who="psychoak" reply="4" id="3551091"] It's under 80% because Stardock fell into the early access trap, and people have been reviewing it for months in an unfinished state. Regardless of what rating it deserves, it's weighted down by all the low reviews it's received in the past. [/quote] This is one of the big reasons that Steam needs to have a "sliding window" average for reviews, especially for Early Access. Reviews more than