Franco fx

If you create and save a custom race and establish your color scheme for the race, your basic ships will be the basic ships for the race you chose. From that point on you should be able to build and design ships tricked out any way you like. You will only be limited by the parts available (which will increase as the game gets closer to release). As long as you save the game after designing your ships, they should be available for you anytime you play as that custom faction. In other w

[quote who="Publius of NV" reply="12" id="3533821"] In my current game I have been steadily expanding my influence but so far have flipped only a couple of planets. But then I haven't put much effort into building influence buildings and haven't built any cultural star bases. [/quote] This is more like what my experience has been. The only culture bases I have built are the culture rings on the archaeology bases. They have not had any effect that I noticed but

I am all for limiting culture buildings to 1 per planet. Anything more is arguably an exploit and if they code it the AI can exploit with the best of us. LOL, I'll have to try that snuggler thing now that I know you can build more than one embassy.

As the Terrans all of my survey ships have weapons and while it seems I am only getting the warning on manual survey, the only way I have lost is when my hit points are eroded to about half. The weapons work fine in the battle viewer. With a custom race my surveyors show that they have weapons but you can't tell from the battle viewer. The just fly around taking fire and they win about 50% anyway. :) Weird, go figure?? It obviously needs some work. I also did the fleet thi

Ahh, so this trait is giving you planets that you are going to get is 10 turns anyway. Not so powerful after all, if it is working as intended Are you finding culture flips to be too easy? I am not. I won an influence victory on an immense map but it took over 300 turns and did not come easy. I could have won a military victory long before that. I don't understand how anyone can say that the AI is easy to flip. In the above game the Yor had the no flip trait and neve

What am I doing wrong. I am playing as the terrans and I am not taking over anyone's planets. I am building Consulates and researching culture and diplomatic techs. I am not threatened by them but I am certainly not threatening them. I will admit that I am not spamming culture star bases. Is that what I need to do ? Compared to GCII is seems to be well balanced to me. Oh BTW, I have that benevolent trait that is supposed to flip planets and it is not working

I like the look of that ship. I prefer utility over aesthetics and I am downright annoyed by large ships that have any degree of aerodynamics. I probably could not design a ship like that because, even though I like the finished product, I am ocd driven to symmetry in all things. :)

Obviously no one is considering the crushed dreams of the star namers who believed their choice was inspirational, and/or those who became founders solely for the ability to name a star. :) Actually, when we consider the number of stars out there, it invokes the monkeys and typewriters thing. All names are possible.

I think they are already on this one. In my first game, insane, Terans, it was working perfectly when I was operating surveyors manually. It was warning me of pirates and the battle viewer was working. My surveyor was sort of drifting aimlessly during the battle but all weapons were firing. When I switched to auto survey, it stopped warning me and went directly to the battle viewer, but it did not lock up. In my next game I was playing as a custom faction on a large ma

[quote who="Jarac" reply="7" id="3533097"] I'll be honest, it sounds a bit hilarious because it's like the AI is giving you a trojan horse kind of gift. [/quote] That is the first thing that crossed my mind. Maybe the AI is not as stupid as we think :)

I had the same problem and I am wondering if it will fix itself when I research atmospheric cleansing or the actual barren planet tech? Definitely a bug.

At the end of a battle you should be at the map location of the battle and see the last defeated ship disappear from the map. At least that is how it works for me. In other words, when I close the battle viewer, I am at the location of the battle. If you want to mark the place of the battle you could mark it with a rally point and name it "battle of Big Horn" or somesuch. :)

I am playing insane map with all the players plus one custom. So that's 8 and I make 9, right? The diplomacy screen has me # one in power, economy, military, no. 2 in research. I think no. 4 in population and no. 5 in influence. None of this make a huge amount of difference at this point in the game, but I happened to look in the victory box and I am rated #1 of 9. Is there more than one kind of influence in the game? I think there may be influence as it applies to the cou

[quote]At the end, races that had been influence absorbed turned pirate - and all their ships moved around in these enormous fleets with like 30 ships and combat factors like 356/128 beam + various kinetic/missile etc and this is a medium map with all races so territories weren't large and several never even got to Cruiser size ships. [/quote] This was in B4 as well.

Yeah the free planet sucks. In a recent game never even found it. I think for it to be worthwhile, the planets should be pre-colonized. Not sure how they would do that. :)

Unless B5 is different, if you destroy a ghost shipyard, you will find that it belongs to pirates. I agree that shipyards should flip with the planet.

I know they were trying to spice up the AI a bit but FCS, every major I meet is enraged and wants to kill me. Suspicious of my military build up when I have not built a single military ship. Hates me for invading their space wiyh no treaty. Hates me for having a different ideology. Hates me for trading with a race that has a different ideology. The first 2 races I met Drengin and Krin declared war on me immediately but were so far away they were probably at least a hundred turns from

Well they took out so many exploits, maybe they should leave this one :) Missing my free upgrades and it now costs about 600 to buy a surveyor vs about 125. Still a pretty good deal if you can buy it while in your ZOC. Worm hole just about take surveyors out of the game on insane map. It can take 50 60 turns to get them back. I usually never build surveyors but I had to in insane game. Can't play zoomed out on insane. Hard to get an accurate click unless you zoom in nearly

I would like to have an option to scroll through the shipyards like you can with the planets. Should be a simple thing, I guess :)

[quote who="Deaden Sho" reply="11" id="3532505"] I don't see why everyone dislikes the Dread Lords and the concept of them or space sharks as Phaedyme calls them, its a added challenge, maybe its just me but I play strategy games for the challenge not to just sit there and press next or order troops to and /win. [/quote] I didn't care for DL. I thought it was BS to introduce a faction so powerful that the only good strategy was to hide and research. I also hate shark

[quote who="Allmightytrav" reply="5" id="3532560"] Fair enough, Im trying to not set my hopes to impossible outcomes [/quote] Paul seems to have been selling this attitude, so I am keeping my expectations low. Maybe they'll surprise us. :)

LOL frogboy gave him karma

Not you UH, I was referring to the comment, "not much sense shooting down freighters if you don't happen to be at war with them", which was probably just a joke. Regarding the sentry setting, I think even your own ships might wake up a sentry. Maybe not, but to be honest, I don't find the setting very helpful vs guard, which is very helpful. Whenever I have used sentry they constantly wake up. maybe it might be a good thing to use on a border with a hosti

[quote who="Unknown_Hero" reply="18" id="3532060"] On that note, it might also be a good idea to stop making sentries go idle when they spot a freighter from a neutral empire. If they spot it in your ZOC, chances are that it only wants to open a traderoute with one of your planets. Not much sense shooting down freighters if you don't happen to be at war with it's owner. I think it does not happen often enough to necessit to implement a solution, and the sentry mode is

Well, a lot of it is still to come and we will know more after the release of beta 5. At this point the biggest change is in the combat system and assigning specific roles to ships based on weapons, defense, etc. This add quite a bit more strategy to winning space battles vs just being ahead of the AI in weapons tech. Upcoming, there will be an in game map editor, strategic resources that are supposed to