I had fun getting into the top ten and I don't feel that I lost anything so please don't get me wrong.

I managed to refine it a bit:

The Korx Game Tip Of The Day:

You can drop an agent on the Reeducation Center on Dec. 8th to end the game on the 22nd.

Gm00nii - why do you change the color of some of your words to red? May I offer some unsolicited advice without offending you? A lot of us, I would even venture to say all of us, find this disconcerting and offputting. I think you would have a better reaction from the people on these forums if you would simply post your comments as we do....using the default settings. I know I would very much appreciate it. Individualism has it's place but so does convention. There are conventions for communication and I sincerely believe, that in these forums at least, you would be better accepted if you would more closely follow them. May I politely request that you communicate like the rest of us in the stock fonts, font size, and color? Words can sometimes be highlighted in some manner if they are truly significant and important.....but highlighting words at random throws the rest of us off and frankly becomes irritating, especially for us older people who have become fossilized in our ways of using language and expect certain conventions when we read novels, magazines, instructions, and even forum posts. Please....I know you have been rebuked by others for your unconventional posts....I am just trying to explain why we react badly, and asking you to follow the norms. It would make communication more pleasant for all of us, including you. Believe me, your individualism is noted. You are unique on these forums; you really don't need to post in different fonts and colors to express it and doing so detracts from your purpose.

Great game Snark! I'm working on my write up now.

@CL - for that very same reason, I've started to ignore Gm00nii's posts.  And they're easy to ignore since they have the special formatting.  If I can suggest, simply don't read them.  I know it's made my forum experience more pleasant when I just skip over them.

IIRC the irish were wearing kilts too, but it's been a long time since i've seen that movie. in any regard, the kilt is semi traditional attire in ireland as well as scotland, it's just that irish kilts don't have clan tartans (AFAIK they're usually one solid color).

it also plays havoc with my dyslexia.

the worth of one's individuality is pretty insignificant when formatting is the only unique thing. one's individuality is much more valuable when the thoughts behind the words are authentic, unique and original.

true, you can look at a poet like E. E. Cummings whose work is valued, at least partly, because his formatting was so unconventional - but he was a master of the English language and the printed page, and everything he did had very specific intention. so he didn't use his oddball formatting all the time, only when it achieved some desirable effect.

Good point Dys. There are times when ignoring convention in language can be interesting/engaging/purposeful or simply powerful. There are other times when it can be distracting and bothersome. In the current world of literature there is a fellow named Charlie Huston who is cranking out some powerful novels that redefine formatting in ways that I think are an improvement over conventional usage and very effective. Cormac McCarthy also disregards convention and writes passages that are powerfully emotive withal....like a baseball bat to the head sometimes. English teachers may cringe but he is one of the most gifted writers out there.

Those of us who aren't world class gifted in language skills communicate better with us when we all work from the same set of rules. Few of us can pull off the unconventional communication and have it be anything but a disaster.

    @Clanlindesy, You might be right   then again if I compare myself to North Korea, the world is telling them not test missiles. Does North Korea change and listen and not test missiles? No, today they lauched a longe-range missile and UN had meeting and nothing happen, no war. You see, I can't make everybody happy and I am not even going to try to change. :karma:

Gmoonii - sigh. Listen, I asked very politely. I don't really know who you are, where you are from, if you are a nine year old girl or just some annoying troll. If you are a child then please listen...I am a father and I have a nine year old girl. I have given you the benefit of the doubt, just in case you are a nine year old girl, and I will do so one last time. I am going to speak to you as a father. It is rude when someone asks you politely to behave in their house and you tell them to go to hell. This thread is the house that Snark and I are building and you are misbehaving in it. If you don't want to change your behaviour that is your prerogative since you are not my child. If you don't wish to behave though you won't be welcome in our house.

Look at the posts you have received from dozens of others here over the last few months. Your formatting and syntax seriously bother others and detract from their enjoyment of these forums. I waited many weeks to say anything and, when I did so, I did it as politely as possible and bothered to explain the why's and wherefore's in a way that was as kind as I could muster. In return you send a post telling me you wish to behave like North Korea, a universally despised country, and deliberately write your post in an annoying font and continue to post your banner in different colors. That is simply rude and incredibly disrespectful.

Look at what Mottikhan has to say. Mottikhan is the top predator in the MV and has more karma than most of us combined. For him to say something like he did should give you serious pause. You should respect Motti for his accomplishments and be bothered when someone that talented and so widely well-regarded has such a negative view of you.

I will ask one more time: stop posting in anything other than default fonts, stop using colors, drop the Saint Mina banner, and try to use correct grammatical structure in your posts. It has been explained to you by many people, time and again, that we find your posts distracting and annoying and that they detract from our enjoyment here. If you will heed my polite request then you will be welcome here. If you don't wish to do so then please don't play in our house anymore. Go pollute other threads but stay out of the Twilight Pub, OK? Also stay out of the Tyranny of Evil thread as well and leave the Gerontocrats alone.

   @Clanlindsey, First of all, you not my bloody father and second, I didn't  say bloody hell or got to bloody hell or anything to do with bloody hell. 

   I was trying make a bloody point, that is all I was trying do. Something called freedom of speech. I know North Korea is breaking rules and nobody  has the bloody balls to anything about it.

   One more thing this my default font family and font size, so are you bloody happy now and there is no bloody banner so now that should make everbody bloody happy.

May I use white letters and black background?

Perhaps I was a bit hasty the first time. Let's just archive that comment to the ol' "View Edits" file. I still don't think your post sounds like something a 9-year old would write, however.

this probably one of the most misunderstood concepts of modernity, as well as one of the most misused (typically by trolls).

free speech does not apply to private property. if you were to go to disneyland and start shouting profanities through a bull horn, you'd be promptly escorted out of the park, and this would not be a violation of free speech. websites are private property, and you don't have free speech on any website except your own.

free speech isn't even totally free when you're on public property. different countries approach it differently; the UK has places like Trafalgar Square, for example, and in the US there are laws against disturbing the peace that mean you have to file large amounts of paperwork to exercise your right of free speech in public.

the concept of free speech developed in relation to and primarily applies to published works of literature, art and opinion: newspapers, books, paintings, plays, etc. it doesn't exist as a protection of a troll's right to harass others; that right, in fact, does not exist.

now, moving past the issues of fact and legal interpretation, you might want to take a step back and look at the situation. you're obviously trying to participate in a group discussion, GmOOnii. if you want others to value your participation and opinions, it might be a good idea to be a little less self-righteous and a little more conciliatory. the type of "free speech" you have here works both ways, and people can just as easily be trolls to you as you can be to them.

boring and normal is better than pretentious and obnoxious, though this is a truth younger people don't easily grasp. boring and normal are really underrated. however, if you really want to avoid being those things, be different by attracting positive attention. changing up your font and making it harder to read does make you stand out, but only because everyone is annoyed with you. if you want to stand out without annoying everyone, do something exceptional, like playing really good games of GC2. or better yet, curing a major disease, painting a great work of art, inventing a new paradigm in physics, or leading a nation through an era of peach and prosperity.

   I am sorry to polluted your Pub with my words, my font family, my font size, my colors and my empire banner so I changed my fonts and deleted all my banners.

   I was wrong and I give in, so in the future you should tell new members this rule that I didn't know until now, to use default font family, default font size, no colorful banners, no bold white letters and black back ground so this mistake will not happen again.

   Thank you for your time

    Saint Mina

OK, time to get back to the business of ToA. I could not help but notice that we are approaching the release of Demigod, and with it the promised fixing of the various issues with this game. I thought it might be a nice gesture for us to assemble a list of known issues, lest the programmers missed something.

I'll start:

Issue No. 1: The planetary governor. I believe I have made my thoughts on this issue clear, so no need to go into it again. Just that it is at the top of my personal list.

Issue 1a: I would like to see some changes to the GUI that will reduce the No. of clicks and reduce overall mouse movement.

Issue No. 2: Planet Count. It needs more.

Issue 3: The Arceans. They're worse than useless.

Issue 4: Starbase coverage area. It needs to be expanded so we can build 24-unit MSAs.

Issue 5: The reeducation center should be made available in all tech trees.

What is Demigod?

Issue 6: fix secret police center

Issue 7: several of the colonization techs are worthless ot the AI, forget which...I think Barren world and radioactive world....yet the AI chrages out the wazoo for them and they value the other three just fine. There is coding big in there.

Issue 8: give us control of what planetary structures we keep in the "new " list and which in the "old" list...I'd much prefer this to be "preferred" and "secondary" lists.

Issue 9: when building a custom ship type give us a dozen icons to choose from to represent the ship. On the galaxy view it is not possible to tell my 2/2 fighter with speed 3 from my 456/150 fighter with speed 15. There should be more icons to represent ships so that they are visibly indentifiable by type in the galaxy view without having to click on them.

Man, you really know how to hit Stardock below the belt! Snork!

-ahem-

Issue 10: Fix the planetary improvement icons. They all got scrambled in the last patch

But there is need to go into it again.

I haven't been watching your every post, but it seems like a dedicated thread for envisioned improvements (the more specific the better) to the planetary governor would have the best chance of changing things.

If you intend to make that this thread, more power to you.

Agreed.  Immense needs to have more than Gigantic...I'd like to say it needs more resources, too, as I haven't noticed much if any difference there either, but I'm not entirely sold on that.

Indeed.  As I've stated previously in at least two threads, the Arcean tech tree actually works much, much better with a speed bonus rather than a speed malus.  And as long as the Arceans have been around, if they can't do engines, I'm willing to bet they'd have ways to make up for it-which their passives are insufficient for due to engine stacking.

It doesn't, and you can.  I can't seem to find the various posts...we'll see if someone beats me to posting a screenshot.  Basically, you need 6 sectors, like the upper 2/3 of a tic-tac-toe game.

|n|n|n|
|n|n|n|

In the sectors on the outside, you place 4 starbases at the corners of where they touch the sectors on the inside, whereas you can only place half that in the sectors on the inside.

Left:
xx|x
xx|x
||||
xx|x
xx|x

Right:
x|xx
x|xx
|||||
x|xx
x|xx

Not sold on this one, either, but you make a decent point.

-

Would be awesome  And is therefore never going to happen.  But if/when it does, I'd ask that it be done in such a way that we can mod straight approval bonuses in, rather than morale, and rather than hardcoding it.

The AI should be considering the techs to be valuable as long as there are uncolonizable worlds of that type still available.

I like it, but I'm not sure that's feasibly addressable in GC2.

I probably got this wrong, but:

They do not all overlap in a central spot. Maybe I am misunderstanding how one is supposed to use a MSA.

I still can't figure it out. The outer ones don't intersect.

Ack! Someone show me a screenshot. I have poor interpretation skills today.

D'oh.

Disregard my earlier ASCII and try this instead.

Left:
n|
n|
n|n
n|n
||||
n|n
n|n
n|
n|

Right:
-|n
-|n
n|n
n|n
|||||
n|n
n|n
-|n
-|n

They need to be vertical; I forgot, my apologies.

You've just about got it with the second one-they do indeed intersect on the sector line, not somewhere out in the middle of the sector.

If this isn't clear as mud enough, then it's screenshot time: Found the original thread, and here's your screenshot, courtesy of Mumble:

Like this?

I guess if I amassed large ships below that asteroid, aligned parallel to the line between the sectors, all 24 tould touch some part of the ships. I would still like it better if the bases had a tad more range.

Hey, at least we have a new MSA screenie!

Pretty much.  It's easier to see if you select the top left and the bottom right or vice versa-one very important thing to note is that partial tiles do count...otherwise it wouldn't be possible.

I added a screen to my above post-did you see it? 

Yes, I did. Now I understand the contraptions a bit better. I'll modify my screenie with a "put ships here" arrow and place it on the TwP site for easy reference. Thanks once again, SS!!!!

How's this?

In that above above screenie your blocked by the asteroids somewhat. For a better idea on the Sweet Spots you are best selecteding the bottom left SB and the top right SB.

And turn Show Grid Lines on when you go to set up an array. It shows esactly which squares has the SB influence touching it.

Thanks!!! I substituted added another screenie showing the ship. The edit police are gonna hate me today.

How do I select the diagonal bases? I only know about the ctrl-drag method.

Dang, another edit: In the morning, I'll make some of the images smaller. This thread is gotta really annoy a dialup user......