Below is the questions from the Q&A session from last week in text form.  I apologize it's a rough form.  I plan on cleaning it up a bit, but I wanted to get this out for those that haven't had time to watch it.  I also apologize if the questions or answers aren't exactly what was meant, as I paraphrased them.  Please feel free to correct me if needed.

·         Deribus - Will there be an increase in documentation for various game features?

o   One of the things will be in game advisors.  Some AI, and some canned answers of what you may want to do at this time.  There will be a lot of voice over this time around.

·         Deribus – Thinking of Civilization encyclopedia, or game wiki, will Galactic Civilizations IV have something like that? 

o   I know we want to do a galactic-pedia.  There will be underline things where you can click on beam weapons and it will take you to the galactic-pedia section.  Want to have a book icon where you can go to that.

·         Drison – With all of these unique personalities, and characters, how are you going to handle the late game micro-management?

o   The big thing this time around, you’re only managing a small number of them.

§  Core world – has a governor (citizens), has colonies for stat boosts on a stat.

§  Colonies – supply stat boosts (multiple colonies per core world).

·         Halicide – Does Galactic Civilizations IV have support to 3D print ships?

o   It’s in the game, hidden for Alpha, you will be able to 3D print.

·         Sycloness – Will Galactic Civilizations IV have adjacency bonus?

o   The short answer is, yes.  It is somewhat different than in Galactic Civilizations III.  In Galactic Civilizations IV there will be districts that if you put a whole bunch of them together to get the bonuses.  Then you can put down a building (wonder) to further boost this.

·         Derg – Are minor races going to be returning to Galactic Civilizations IV?

o   So minor races are coming back.  They are going to be done more like Galactic Civilizations II. 

§  Minor races will have their own diplomacy section.  You won’t be able to communicate them directly but like radioing them.

§  May be able to make them a protectorate and get bonuses from them.

·         Derg – Will minor races or other races be able to steal techs?

o   It will be more like completing missions.

·         Draginol Comment – Tech trading may be different, you may be trading tech points versus individual techs.

·         Dlapine – Will there be multi-monitor support?

o   I will have to talk to Cari to see how we could make this work.  We would have to create a separate Direct X window.

·         Dlapine – What level of modding are you going to support such as Steam?

o   This time we’re building it directly into the game to allow for users to more easily access mods.

o   We want to make sure that as we update the game, we don’t break your mods.

·         Dlapine – Can you add the real time clock option back?

o   Chad can you make a note of that.

·         Ghostfeint – More depth, tactical options in ship battles?

o   The reason why we’ve never wanted full tactical battles is because late game the battles can stretch we didn’t want players to have to pick between tactical or auto resolve battles.

o   Galactic Civilizations IV a lot of the battles will take place right there on the main screen but we’ll see how the alpha players feel about this.

·         Lord Goldmane I – Do you have plans to complete the Sol system with all of the celestial bodies?

o   I personally would like to be able to colonize moons.  In the Alpha there are already more planets Mercury to Saturn, as well as an additional planet Artamis.

o   There is so much more to do on turn 1 compared to previous versions.

·         Lord Goldmane I – A lot of newer computers can’t play the original (Galactic Civilizations).  Have you thought about porting it to mobile?

o   Turn off the on screen battle, and run it in WIN perimeter in Steam.  Steam should be updating this shortly.

·         Lord Goldmane I – Any chance you can do planet buildings such as Mass Effect 2 or 3 that you would have a planet that’s completely round and build on it.

o   We’ve played around with it before.  It’s really cool to have that feature until you have 60 planets.  The planet screen is very different from previous versions.

·         Omzh – What kind of inspiration are you brining in to Galactic Civilizations IV to make it unique?

o   The main thing you will see is the sectors.  People will find that the sectors is pretty unique.  A sector will give your race special bonuses.

o   The colonies and core worlds will cause this to really stand out.

o   Crusader Kings has been a big influence.

·         Omzh – How are you giving the characters more personality?

o   You do have your leader.  It has to do with choices you do in your game which may affect how your leaders feel about you.

o   Every game should feel like an epic story.

·         Hanakocz – Which language will the mods be in?

o   We will support the same languages we used in Galactic Civilizations III – XML.

·         Braneric – There will be no single player story campaign.  So how is the story going to be handled without that?

o   There will be a story behind the scenes.  You will see an aspect of that, through specialized events.

·         Braneric – Will we have a way to adjust the frequency of these events happening?

o   Yes, there will be the normal option.

·         Red Earth – How will trade of weapons or ships work out in the new game?

o   There are three new resources – so you can trade these special components.  Your diplomacy rating will affect the size of the load being traded.

§  This time around you can build modules in your ship yards to upgrade your starbases, you can trade these with other civilizations.

§  Nanites

§  Drones

o   There is diplomatic capitol in the game that can be traded.  You can smooth the AI over by trading diplomatic capitol.

·         Chat/Forum – Customization has always been a big part of the game, what customizations will be part of Galactic Civilizations IV?

o   Breaking the ship designer out of the game, from the main menu.

o   In game you can just add components.

·         Ascaloth – Combat now last multiple times, can you share any further detail?

o   Retreat is straight forward.  Surviving ships can just get out of there.

o   Turns go much faster because of AI vs AI fleet battles going on somewhere in the map because we will limit the number of rounds.

·         Ascaloth – Are there any plans to have blueprints in the game?

o   We’re moving away from many different weapons types and streamlining it.

o   Not sure yet on creating templates.

·          Zaselle Darkmoon – What is going to be the optimum for computer requirements, memory, and processing power?

o   About the same as Galactic Civilizations III.

§  This is done by subspace streams (pathfinding used a lot of resources).

§  Fixed rounds of battles (multiple turns), this should create shorter turn times since Galactic Civilizations III.

o   Video Card (GPU) you would need a decent video card (today’s standard) however, lower GPU’s would just need to have the settings lower.

o   The more CPU cores the better (AMD).

·         Basher – Will there be a civ creator similar to Galactic Civilizations III?

o   Yes, we will certainly have that in there.

·         Basher – Will the Bazaar and Mercenaries be in Galactic Civilizations IV?

o   The Bazaar is going away.

o   The mercenaries and marketplace are being split up.

§  The mercenaries

·         Executive orders, governors of planets (not AI but character) you can build things on the core worlds but anger governors, which make them angry and cause rebellions.  By building these buildings you get control, and you can spend control to create executive orders and recruit mercenaries.

·         The other way is through the leaders.  Everyone, of your leaders will have a ship.  If you get into a pinch you may be able to place their special ship on the map.

·         Larsenex – The Governors on the core world, are they limited to your home sector, and how many core worlds do you get in the galaxy?

o   There is no limit in the number of core worlds in the game.  Every world is a colony until they get a leader.  That leader then becomes a governor and becomes a core world.  In theory you can make every colony a core world.  The fewer colonies the core world has the weaker it is, but the fewer colonies a core world has the less corruption it has.  This will limit the number of leaders you have for other things.

·         .eXplorminate Rob. – Would you consider having a community faction creator contest?

o   I think we did that during Galactic Civilizations III at one point.  I definitely like to see that.  We are open to that possibility.  I would happily give credit and steal their ideas if they would let him.  We are trying to stay away from humanoid.

·         .eXplorminate Rob. – Are there any other games you get ideas from?

o   AI Wars, Distant Worlds, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Endless Space 2, Dyson’s Sphere

·         Ray F – Is it possible is there any chance we could get a box version of the game without DRM for Galactic Civilizations IV?

o   We do that with Galactic Civilizations III being available on GOG.

o   Unfortunately putting together a box set costs so much just to get those going, you’re really just better off just to get the GOG version and put it on USB drive or something.

·         Ray F – Maybe get a crowdfund Kickstarter, you may be surprised.

o   Yeah, we can see and I may be surprised.

o   I would love to put the story and lore into a box.

o   We did that with Sins of a Solar Empire and we sold less than 300 – 400 of those.

·         Wizisi2k – Will Galactic Civilizations IV have the Multiplayer feature that supports only the host having the DLC versus all players having the DLC?

o   I would certainly hope so.  Every other game of Stardock other than Galactic Civilizations III has that.

o   I can’t make any promises, but that would be our intent.

·         Wizisi2k – What terraforming on core worlds would look like and would it be possible to terraform Venus and be able to colonize it.

o   They were arguing it yesterday.  So terraforming is a thing that is really a hot issue right now with the developers on how this will work.  Everyone on the team is really passionate on the game.  So it’s being worked on every day but it’s premature to really talk about it right now.

o   Why stop at planets when you have stars.  Upgrading is a thing in this game.  Such as upgrading your core ship.  I would like to see spend a resource to upgrade a planet.  If we get there I don’t know but the mechanism is there.

·         Wizisi2k – Is there going to be cross platform multiplayer?

o   Yes, that is a mandate for this game, and not just this game but going forward.  I think we upgraded Galactic Civilizations III to make it work.

o   In Galactic Civilizations III it was a single player game with multiple people. 

o   In Galactic Civilizations IV it will be a mode, scenario and it will play out that way.

·         Chat/Forum – Will there be terror stars (death stars) in the game?

o   We have terror stars, no idea what a death star is but, terror stars are completely different.

·         Wizisi2k – Is it possible to know when the Alpha will be releasing next month?

o   I think we’re planning the first two weeks of June before the Steam Sale.

·         Sycloness – I missed the taunting and snarky comments that the AI used in Galactic Civilizations II, is that something we can get back?

o   Yes, that is something I put in there.  I actually show the AI, look you’re embarrassing yourself with what you’re doing there.

o   It will do it, in an in universe way.

o   That is one reason I would like to have prisons, capture leaders.

·         Omzh – A popular mechanic that has been showing up in a lot of 4x games is the private economy?

o   We’ve always had a little of that.  You used to be able to contract out things to the private sector.

o   It is ultimately a free command economy.

o   I would like to have like an East Indian company like mechanic in the game.  Most likely not in the base game but maybe in an expansion.

·         Chat/Forum – Could we reskin animations/colors to add more flavor to the aliens?

o   We’ve been able to make aliens in the past.  We would like there to be a lot of different variations of the existing aliens other than just hue changes.  We want to make sure we have lots and lots of minor civilizations.

·         Chat/Forum – Will we be able to have other ships join multi turn battles?

o   Absolutely, that’s a benefit of multiple turn battles.

·         Chat/Forum – Will more than two civilizations be able to fight the same battle?

o   Everyone can jump in on the main map but they won’t be in the same rounds.

·         Chat/Forum – Will you be able to turn off/on micromanagement colonies?

o   If you don’t want to micromanage colonies than don’t assign governors.

·         Chat/Forum – Will map size be able to be changed by modders if they have the memory?

o   I don’t know that’s one I’ll have to check with Cari on, to see how big we could go without bad things happening.

·         Chat/Forum – Will Ctrl+N be back?

o   Yes Ctrl+N is working.  That was one of the things that really bugged me from Galactic Civilizations III, so it’s almost back to Galactic Civilizations II.

·         Chat/Forum – Any chance to get a diplomacy system based on knowledge and espionage?

o   That would be a Derek thing.  There is a question right now on if your diplomats can get you espionage points.

·         Chat/Forum – will one be able to import modded factions from Galactic Civilizations III into Galactic Civilizations IV?

o   I would suspect not being all the changes in Galactic Civilizations IV.

o   Ships may be a possibility.

·         Chat/Forum – What is your personal favorite new feature in Galactic Civilizations IV so far?

o   Leaders

o   New Ships

·         Chat/Forum – If a player loses would they be able to take over an AI player to see how the game ends?

o   That is an interesting idea.  We have that as devs right now with the soak feature.  Just used for QA.

o   Maybe an observation mode.

·         Chat/Forum – Will different species be different or just cosmetic?

o   There is a big difference as some different races will be able to colonize different planet types.

o   I would like to have unique tech trees that are based on ability or root thing that is tied to a civilization to a specific philosophy.

·         Chat/Forum – Will the tech tree be integrated or isolated versions?

o   I don’t like the mesh tree that we had in Galactic Civilizations III.  I would like to see a completely different tech tree.

·         Chat/Forum – Will there be a pit boss multiplayer game that you could play by e-mail or text message?

o   I highly doubt it.  Really just a small number of players use multiplayer so it would be a different subset needed.

·         Chat/Forum – Will it be possible for enemy ships to surrender to you?

o   I don’t know, I doubt it. 

o   What might happen is a character shift. 

o   We potentially have some events in the game where a race can surrender to you. Or some mission based stuff.

o   In combat I don’t think so.

o   Maybe a leader surrender to you.

·         Chat/Forum – Has cloud computing been discussed at all?

o   We already do that a little bit.

o   In terms of having a server to run multiplayer games Servers are expensive with core usage.  So not really.

·         Lord Goldmane I – What about medieval races?

o   Well the Drath are dragon based.  (Basically space dragons.)

o   They could be modded or created as a custom civilization.