Notes after few games and 166 hours.

from Stardock Forums

Below are my few notes about the game. 

ANNOYANCES

1. performance. When I was on 8GB game was unplayable after some turns. Right now even with medium maps and handfull of AI 2nd half of the game I played  with about 10 FPS. Game takes over 10GB of RAM and I guess still swapping - HDD is hearable. Every zoom in from strategic map is noticeable freeze. I turned off some graphics goodies but I don't think the GPU is to blame. Even at the beginning of the game the revealing of the fog is done in visible "steps"

2. soil enrichment don't override projects - this is the micromanagemet nightmare. Most of my planets are going with the projects and then I aquire land grabbing tech. IIRC in beta in such situations these colonies was marked at idle so I could easy assign the terraforming tiles. Right now I often realize there is something to build by accident. If it will work how I described above, it would be so much easier.

3. no auto improvement when new tech aquired - far in the game, all planets on projects. I researched some and traded some techs. Many turns later I realized that some of my factories have an upgrade arrows over them. I don't know why, I was under impression that the upgrade should auto jump in front of the project

4. starbases with interceptors slots have green shied icon - I know it's probably right because they have some forces, but when I try to quickly gather my forces in some part of the map this icon I use to quickly find and mobilize ships. Many times I clicked such base to realize (again and again) that there are no ships.

5. random opponents harder then set? - I play at the lowest AI levels (I'm casual. I like very much the planet surface puzzle. Waging wars - not so much) but I have a feeling that random opponent set at beginner level is much stronger thet specific opponent at beginner. Don't know if there's a way to check it during game.

6. improvements slider don't slide to the end - far into the game - war with Snathi (Revenge this time:)). They are smashing my shipyards and I'm rebuilding them. So it's "Shipyard/Military project/Shipyard/Military project..." for some time. Using the right hand slider in planet screen and sliding in to the bottom doesn't allow you to choose the bottom projects. You still need to mouse scroll it :<

7. Shipyard lost - near planets still on military project - you can't choose military subsidy when planet is not a sponsor of the shipyard - but when the shipyard is destroyed its sponsors at still subsiding something. Shouldn't they went idle?

8. Planet reclaimed - unhappy face till the end of game. Squirrels took 2 or 3 times one of my core system planets. Bad luck - my transporter made of pure money always reclaimed it next turn (they are bit too fast this transports I guess). Several hundreds turns later the planet still has red unhappy face icon. I guess the bunch of the Snathi Revenge invaders is still ocupying some woods and trying to reclaim the planet for their empire (which was already destroyed):)

9. ground battles too easy - whole invasion idea feels too simple. Load the transports. Zig-zag around defences and make it to the planet. Also building bunch of military improvements doesn't feel to help much. Perhaps it is, somewhere in the calculations. But there's no feel of it. I don't see my planetary defences doing anything. It's rather bland experience.

10. battle replay after battle viewer - why do I have to watch ships exchanging shots and exploading after I watched "full feature" seconds ago. This is unnecessary IMO. I gues after battle viewer there should be only the winner fleet on the map. 

11. ship numbers/health wrong during battle - during battles on strategy map numbers in the lower right info window don't match the numbers of ships. Quite often my fleet of 4 was shown as 8. It's fixing itself after the battle but leaves a bit of bad taste. Also partly damaged ship's icons often loose their red overlay during battle. 

12. ship numbers wrong during battle viewer - quite often ship numbers at the top of the battle viewer showe one ship more on one of the sides. And perhaps numbers/health bar drops should happen after the expolosion...

13. ship health not quite readable in battle viewer - ships icons turns to red and then to grey when they dead. IMO they should go black (with outlines maybe) or disappear completely. Dead ships icons are too similar to the ones alive.

14. alien fleet after culture flip stays on planet tile - and they can stay there many turns hiding in the back so when you double click it you can see the fleet composition. Maybe they should translate to nearest free tile? Or at least the planet should get the focus.

15. twinkling objects - during the end turn processing you can see objects (most obvious on shipyards) twinkle once. I have the impression te engine is going through the objects list one by one and doing all the calculations. This breaks the immersion a bit. I know it's a game and all but being the space emperor I don't want to "know" there is some engine behind all of it:)

16. diplomacy (planets) screen - in my last game it got messed up when I started making alliances. Some times there were only spikes with race logo, when their planet was shown on the other side of the screen.

17. diplomacy (talk) screen - whan I'm close to the deal I choose to offer some cash. Usually game fixes the right amount of credits to succesfully close the deal. But some times (when your whole cash is not enough) game proposes two different amounts:

I have 2500 CR.

Click - I offer 2356 CR - Sorry, can't do.

2nd click - 826 CR - Nope

3rd - 2356 CR - Don't insult us

and so on...

 

IDEAS

1. trade - There is no depth in trade. You send a ship or dozen. Star map gets all this line that are mixing with mining lines and that's all. I was thinking about the system that could make it more lively. Maybe in close ups you cod see little freighter silhouettes going back and forth. Maybe instead of creating 1:1 lanes they can converge and auto create some trading hubs. Maybe there could be some techs to pirate the lanes and these hubs. And counter techs to create auto escorts for trade lanes. Something that will breathe some civilian life into the galaxy.

2. starbase influence/capturing - Destroying enemy starbase is such a waste. Many years of patient camel cruises of wimpy constructors ended with one big flash. I wish there was a way to culture flip or capture the base. Maybe send a transports with the attack fleet that (if not destroyed) would dock with the base and take it over. 

3. more interesting anomalies/events - I'm under the impression that there are only few anomailes/events in the game. There are more colonization events but anomalies are just: get the cash, finish construction/tech, get ship... I don't really care about it, and about the crew of the surveyors, but they are like Kirks and Piccards of the game. Maybe some chain events will be interesting. Find ancient capsule, bring it to your best science planet, complete a project (maybe multi-planets project) and... you discovered that it's the Snathi artifact that you can trade with them for bunch of techs, or they will like you more when you put this on the tile on your homeworld.

4. ships leveling - I miss it quite much. If this could be done with civ-like skill selection it could bring much immersion in the game 

5. mass upgrade - It should have been in the game, I remember it was said in some of the dev streams. Please, bring it back.

6. real battle movements - It's the esthetic gripe only. So nothing high priority. But. The ships in battle viewer are behaving weird. All of them are closing to the dogfights. And dogfights look like all of the pilots are locked their controls in full rudder turn positions. I don't know if that's possible with curent engine but changing the ships behaviour to well known and loved ship of the line (big ones stay back and try for broad sides, smaller are dog fighing in all 3 planes) would be so fun to watch. Basically what I would wish is Homeworld with GalCiv models, or SotSE at least.

7. show me logistics - I will create a fleet from ships stationed on my planet/in the shipyard, but I dont remember my max fleet logistics, could this be added in the info window? The same goes for selected solo ships. I guess it would be nice it has (7/32) instead of just showing 7.

8. in ship manage screen show me upgrading ships with the hammer on it - Many ships bunched in one tile, some of them upgrading and some are free. When I try to create a fleet I can't because some of them are upgrading. IIRC in beta upgrading ships had a orange hammers on the icons so you can at one glance check their availability. Right now I need to select them or mouse over (don't remember really because I stopped using the window).

9. upgrade side menu for solo ships - selectse ships in fleet have an upgrade button in side menu which is cool. But to upgrade a solo ship you need to use the Command menu. Is it neccesary? Solo ships could have the side menu also. IMO it's more handy 

BONUS:

* weird AI strategy - I decided to wipe out the Snathi. Gathered 3 fleets 4 ships each (28LP). They got one planet with 16 crazy kinetic ships and shipyard with exactly the same composition. Every turn they were building one ship to reinforce the planet (so I surrounded it). I couldn't bite them and their one ship couldn't also make big difference. I wonder why they didn't strike some counteroffensive. Or spit the ship to some far regroup location to gather full fleets to kill me off. Well, it was a viable strategy to keep the status quo:) I decided I have better things then reorient the shipyards to kinetic defended ships and gather 5-6 fleets. So I enforced peace by juicy addition of 93 credits.

 

I'm sorry for the long text, It wasn't my intention but I sat and couldn't stop writing. Also sorry for the mistakes. I use English only for writing about games on some forums:)

--

Win 7 PRO x64, i7 4790K (4.0 GHz), 16GB RAM, GTX 660, SHARP 46"LE830E, GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3, SB X-FI, Logitech Z-5500 5+1 speakers

17,104 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ill try to address some things in PINK below..

 


Below are my few notes about the game. 

ANNOYANCES

1. performance. When I was on 8GB game was unplayable after some turns. Right now even with medium maps and handfull of AI 2nd half of the game I played  with about 10 FPS. Game takes over 10GB of RAM and I guess still swapping - HDD is hearable. very zoom in from strategic map is noticeable freeze. I turned off some graphics goodies but I don't think the GPU is to blame. Even at the beginning of the game the revealing of the fog is done in visible "steps" Could be your system. I play only insane and have 60 FPS to end game which is often 650+  turns. What are your computer specs?

2. soil enrichment don't override projects - this is the micromanagemet nightmare. Most of my planets are going with the projects and then I aquire land grabbing tech. IIRC in beta in such situations these colonies was marked at idle so I could easy assign the terraforming tiles. Right now I often realize there is something to build by accident. If iw will work how I described above it woud be so much easier. Terraforming has always been this way, you simply have to go thru your entire list of planets and place each tile manually. PiTA but it allows you to optimize placement. 

3. no auto improvement when new tech aquired - far in the game, all planets on projects. I researched some and treded some techs. Many turns later I realized that some of my factories have an upgrade arrows over it. I don't know why, I was under impression that the upgrade should auto jump in front of the project Auto improve is there. All my games my buildings auto upgraded. Go to the planet screen > govern and check 'autoupgrade' much micro removed here. 

4. starbases with interceptors slots have green shied icon - I know it's propably right because they have some forced but when I try to quickly gather my forces in some part of the map this icon I use to quickly find and mobilize ships. Many times I clicked such base to realize (again and again) that there are no ships there. Interceptors which is module you add will not display when clicked on, this is normal. They will show up if the planet or base is attacked. 

5. random opponents harder then set? - I play at the lowest AI levels (I'm casual. I like very much the planet surface puzzle. Waging wars - not so much) but I have a feeling that random opponent set at beginner level is much stronger thet specific opponent at beginner. Don't know if there's a way to check it during game. During game creation if you are at the add enemies section and have your mouse over a factions you can and will accidentally bump them up in difficulty. I have done this a few times before I realized what was happening. 

6. improvements slider don't slide to the end - far into the game - war with Snathi (Revenge this time:)). They are smashing my shipyards and I'm rebuilding them. So it's "Shipyard/Military projedt/Shipyard/Military project..." for some time. Using the right hand slider in planet screen and sliding in to the bottom doesn't allow you to choose the bottom projects. You still need to mouse scroll it :< If a planet was set to military sub and it has no shipyard or the yard is idle the production is funneld back into the planet for projects or buildings. 

7. Shipyard lost - near planets still on military project - you can't choose military subsidy when planet is not a sponsor of the shipyard - but when the shipyard is destroyed its soinsors at still subsiding something. Shouldn't they went idle? See above. 

8. Planet reclaimed - unhappy face till the end of game. Squirrels took 2 or 3 times one of my core system planets. Bad luck - my transporter made of pure money always reclaimed it next turn (they are bit too fast this transports I guess). Several hundreds turns later the planet still has red unhappy face icon. I guess the bunch of the Snathi Revenge invaders are still ocupying some woods and trying to reclaim the planet for their empire (which was already destroyed):) sometimes when I invade I get this as well. It is cosemetic. If you go into the planet screen and check happiness there you will get the true value. Its a small bug but can be annoying if you want to see all your planets at 100%.

9. ground battles too easy - whole invasion idea feels too simple. Load the transports. Zig-zag around defences and make it to the planet. Also building bunch of military improvements doesn't feel to help much. Perhaps it is, somewhere in the calculations. But there's no feel of it. I don't see my planetary defences doing anything. It's rather bland experience. Invasions will get a total revamp next year. You will wish it is like it is  now after they are done with redoing it. 

10. battle replay after battle viewer - why do I have to watch ships exchanging shots and exploading after I watched "full feature" seconds ago. This is unnecessary IMO. I gues after battle viewer there should be only the winner fleet on the map. Personal issue. You dont have to watch it at all but some do 

11. ship numbers/health wrong during battle - during battles on strategy map numbers in the lower right info window don't match the numbers of ships. Quite often my fleet of 4 was shown as 8. It's fixing itself after the battle but leaves a bit of bad taste. Also partly damaged ship's icons often loose their red overlay during battle. Not sure what you are refering to. I have not seen this issue. 

12. ship numbers wrong during battle viewer - quite often sip numbers at the top of the battle viewer showe one ship more on one of the sides. And perhaps numbers/health bar drops should happen after the expolosion... The viewer is not keeping up with the actual numbers battle. A good graphix card helps this issue. 

13. ship health not quite readable in battle viewer - ships icons turns to red and then to grey when they dead. IMO they should go black (with outlines maybe) or disappear completely. Dead ships icons are too similar to the ones alive. see above.

14. alien fleet after culture flip stays on planet tile - and they can stay there many turns hiding in the back so when you double click it you can see rhe fleed composition. Maybe they should translate to nearest free tile? Or at least the planet should get the focus. I have seen this as well. They should be ejected if you culture flip a planet. Again a small bug but one that will get fixed. 

15. twinkling objects - during the end turn processing you can see objects (most obvious on shipyards) twinkle once. I have the impression te engine is going through the objects list one by one and doing all the calculations. This breaks the immersion a bit. I know it's a game and all but being the space emperor I don't want to "know" there is some engine behind all of it:) Sounds like a graphix glitch. 

16. diplomacy (planets) screen - in my last game it got messed up when I started making alliances. Soe times there were only spikes with race logo, when their planet was shown on the other side of the screen. Again this is a graphix glitch. Try to close the game and restart from that save. It may fix it. One thing you seem to be having is graphix related glitches. Check your drivers and also re validate all your GCIII fiiles via Steam this helps fix many of the small issues you seem to be having. 

17. diplomacy (talk) screen - whan I'm close to the deal I choose to offer some cash. Usually game fixes the right amound of credit to succesfully close the deal. But some times (when your whole cash is not enough) game proposes two different amounts:

I have 2500 CR.

Click - I offer 2356 CR - Sorry, can't do.

2nd click - 826 CR - Nope

3rd - 2356 CR - Don't insult us <<< This is an old issue. I am surprised its still here. Clear the table and restart negotiations. Might want to add items. Trade now scales with how much the faction likes or dislikes you. 

and so on...

 

IDEAS

1. trade - There is no depth in trade. You send a ship or dozen. Star map gets all this line that are mixing with mining line and that's all. I was thinking about the system that could make it more lively. Maybe in close ups you cod see little freighter silhouettes going back and forth. Maybe instead of creating 1:1 lanes they can converge and auto create some trading hubs. Maybe there could be some techs to pirate the lanes and these hubs. And counter techs to create auto escorts for trade lanes. Something that will breathe some civilian life into the galaxy. I agree, we are going to get some trade updates in the future.

2. starbase influence/capturing - Destroying enemy starbase is such a waste. Many years of patient camel cruises of wimpy constructors ended with one big flash. I wish there was a way to culture flip or capture the base. Maybe send a transports with the attack fleet that (if not destroyed) would dock with the base and take it over. I would love to capture enemy bases as part of invasion tactics technology line!

3. more interesting anomalies/events - I'm under the impression that there are only few anomailes/events in the game. There are more colonization events but anomalies are just: get the cash, finish construction/tech, get ship... I don't really care about it, and about the crew of the surveyors, but they are like Kirks and Piccards of the game. Maybe some chain events will be interesting. FInd ancient capsule, bring it to your best science planet, complete a project (maybe multi-planets project) and... you discovered that it's the Snathi artifact that you can trade with them for bunch of techs, or they will like you more when you put this on the tile on your homeworld. More are being added all the time. I think adding more events and flavor would make a great DLC. 

4. ships leveling - I miss it quite much. IF this could be done with civ-like skill selection it could bring much immersion in the game This is coming. I would hope sooner than later. Personally I would rather have movable Admirals then experienced ships. This makes for more choices and make the Admirals special and give fleet wide bonuses. Say one Admiral per 10 logistics is my idea. 

5. mass upgrade - It should have been in the game, I remember it was said in some of the dev streams. Please, bring it back. You can mass upgrade, the problem you are having is it costs ALOT Of cash. Go back and upgrade ONE ship. now if you have that much money x your ships you can do it otherwise nothing happens. 

6. real battle movements - It's the esthetic gripe only. So nothing high priority. But. The ships in battle viewer are behaving weird. All of them are closing to the dogfights. And dogfights look like all of the pilots are locked their controls in full rudder lock positions. I don't know if that's possible with curent engine but changing the ships behaviour to well known and loved ship of the line (big ones stay back and try for broad sides, smallera are dog fighing in all 3 planes) would be so fun to watch. Basically what I would wish is Homeworld with GalCiv models, or SotSE at least. GCIII is a strategic game not a tactical one. I love the battles too but the game is not built around battles but rather how your rule the entire empire. I am sure more improvements will come to the battle viewer in time. 

7. show me logistics - I will create a fleet from ships stationed on my planet/in the shipyard, but I dont remember my max fleet logistics, could this be added in the info window, the same goes for selected solo ships. I guess it would be nice it has (7/32) instead of just showing 7. You can see logistics after you combine your first two ships. med are 5, large are 7 and huge are..10 (I think) and small are 3. Once you know the values its kinda pointless to tie up dev time placing it on ever screen. If you have 2 small, 3 med and a large you are at, 25. I would like to see what  your Civs logistics are next to the resources so I know at a glance what it currently is or at least place that value somewhere in the Empire Govern screen. 

8. in ship manage screen show me upgrading ships with the hammer on it. Many ships bunched in one tile, some of them upgrading and some are free. When I try to create a fleet I can't because some of them are upgrading. IIRC in beta upgrading ships had a orange hammers on the icons so you can at one glance check their availability. Right now I need to select them or mouse over (don't remember really because I stopped using the window). Always been the case. Dont know if there is a better way. 

9. upgrade side menu for solo ships - selectse ships in fleet have an upgrade button in side menu whitch is cool. But to upgrade a solo ship you need to use the Command menu. Is it neccesary? Solo ships could have the side menu also. IMO it's more handy 

BONUS:

* weird AI strategy - I decided to wipe out the Snathi. Gathered 3 fleets 4 ships each (28LP). They got one planet with 16 crazy kinetic ships and shipyard with exactly the same composition. Every turn they were building one ship to reinforce the planet (so I surrounded it). I couldn't bite them and their one ship couldn't also make big difference. I wonder why they didn't strike some counteroffensive. Or spit the ship to some far regroup location to gather full fleets to kill me off. Well, it was a viable strategy to keep the status quo:) I decided I have better things then reorient the shipyards to kinetic defended ships and gather 5-6 fleets. So I enforced peace by juicy addition of 93 credits.

 

I'm sorry for the long text, It wasn't my intention but I sat and couldn't stop writing. Also sorry for the mistakes. I use English only for writing about games on some forums:)

--

Win 7 PRO x64, i7 4790K (4.0 GHz), 16GB RAM, GTX 660, SHARP 46"LE830E, GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3, SB X-FI, Logitech Z-5500 5+1 speakers Your video card to me seems to be the weak link. How much ram is onboard that 660? Rest of rig looks good! You should get an SSD and mount the game there, much faster!

 

 

Sorry for the glaring red text. I wanted it to stand out. Doh..

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

Ill try to address some things in PINK below..

1. performance.Could be your system. I play only insane and have 60 FPS to end game which is often 650+  turns. What are your computer specs?Your video card to me seems to be the weak link. How much ram is onboard that 660? Rest of rig looks good! You should get an SSD and mount the game there, much faster!
It has 2GB. Unfortunatelly SSD not going to happen in forseeable future.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

2. soil enrichment don't override projects -  Terraforming has always been this way, you simply have to go thru your entire list of planets and place each tile manually. PiTA but it allows you to optimize placement.
I have no problem with going through all the planets. I just wish they were set idle so I won't loose turns on the projects when I can build.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1
3. no auto improvement when new tech aquired - Auto improve is there. All my games my buildings auto upgraded. Go to the planet screen > govern and check 'autoupgrade' much micro removed here. 
I know it's there. It's been working most of the time:) Problem is that with some circumstances (probably after tech trading) it's not working:) I dodn't touch planet government at all.

Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

4. starbases with interceptors slots have green shied icon Interceptors which is module you add will not display when clicked on, this is normal. They will show up if the planet or base is attacked. 
Yes. I know. And I know it has merits. But I still don't like it:)
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

5. random opponents harder then set? -   you can and will accidentally bump them up in difficulty.
I am sure I haven't done that. Need to check 2 consecutive games with  the same settings (random and set) and I will see if there's a difference
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

6. improvements slider don't slide to the end - < If a planet was set to military sub and it has no shipyard or the yard is idle the production is funneld back into the planet for projects or buildings. 
It's not the point. Shipyard was built and I have to choose a project. And I can't do it only when using slider - just little interface glich.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

7. Shipyard lost -  See above. 
Good to know they weren't sending all those hammers in empty space:)

Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

12. ship numbers wrong during battle viewer -The viewer is not keeping up with the actual numbers battle. A good graphix card helps this issue. 
I don't think so. It's not slow refreshing. It's kind of constant situation when through whole battle your opponent have one less ship alive then the number shows, ane battle ends when he has 1 whith health bar down to 0. The movie would be the best to show it.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

13. ship health not quite readable in battle viewer -. see above.
Nope. It's not glitch or bug. It's design decision. With all the freedom in customizing ships the dead ship colour can be similar to the color of live one. I CAN recognize them but it's not just a glance and I guess other method/colours would fit better here [small skul icon or sth.]
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

15. twinkling objects - during the end turn processing you can see objects (most obvious on shipyards) twinkle once.Sounds like a graphix glitch.
 
Yes. It may be. But it's pretty well visible even at the beginning of the game. No game breaker at all. Just the immersion suffers a bit.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

16. diplomacy (planets) screen - Again this is a graphix glitch. Try to close the game and restart from that save. It may fix it. One thing you seem to be having is graphix related glitches. Check your drivers and also re validate all your GCIII fiiles via Steam this helps fix many of the small issues you seem to be having. 
Drivers are up to date. I will verify files but it is very similar to what I saw on the stream during beta times. No biggie. Just reentering diplo screen fixes it.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1
5. mass upgrade - You can mass upgrade, the problem you are having is it costs ALOT Of cash. Go back and upgrade ONE ship. now if you have that much money x your ships you can do it otherwise nothing happens. 
So it's possible right now? I don't quite understand how. I'm upgrading single ships quite often and game never offered me mass upgrade 
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1
6. real battle movements - GCIII is a strategic game not a tactical one. I love the battles too but the game is not built around battles but rather how your rule the entire empire. I am sure more improvements will come to the battle viewer in time.
 
This is completely understandable:) So I'm rather counting on some talented modder/Homeworld fan:)
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1
 7. show me logistics - You can see logistics after you combine your first two ships. med are 5, large are 7 and huge are..10 (I think) and small are 3. Once you know the values its kinda pointless to tie up dev time placing it on ever screen. If you have 2 small, 3 med and a large you are at, 25. I would like to see what  your Civs logistics are next to the resources so I know at a glance what it currently is or at least place that value somewhere in the Empire Govern screen. 
I refuse to do any math while playing a game:) I have it enough in my day job. Point is the values are on that screen (when ships are in fleet) but hidden when ships are single. I agree that having that as one value in main interface would be helpful.
 
Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

8. in ship manage screen show me upgrading ships with the hammer on it.  Always been the case. Dont know if there is a better way. 
It is - put a hammers icon on ship silhouette.
 
Thank you for taking time to answer the above. To be clear I didn't wrote it to just bash the game. Overall I'm happy I spend the money for founder account. I knew I'd buy all the DLCs anyway:) 
... darn I messed up the quote structure a bit
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion