Not a bug, just thought about planet quality bonus. I did some checking yesterday and it seems to me that, due to the way the planet quality bonus is calculated, this bonus ability is extremely overrated. If you go with 7% planet quality bonus you give up 80% of your bonus points and what do you get beck? Not much because of the way the Galcivs (both 1 and 2) do the rounding, i.e. 1.9 gain in quality is rounded to 1 (and consequently, in Galcivs, 1.1 loss is rounded to 2, mean, mean stuff). This means that the 7% planet quality bonus will bring you actual increase in planet quality only if you colonize planets of quality=15 or better (planet quality 14 times 1.07 = 14.98 = 14). Now, in Galciv I your home world was quality=15 and common sense was that you do not colonize planets of lesser quality unless you wan outposts. So, this option would give you some improvement (still overpriced in my opinion, but, hey, it's only my opinion) in majority of the cases. In Galciv II, since the majority of the planets is in 4 to 10 quality range, this extremely expensive bonus in most cases gives you – nothing.

Also, the concept of terraforming is somewhat weird. If I got it right, (all three) phases of terraforming are available only for the planets in the 11(?) to 17 planet quality range. I don’t think that I’ve seen quality 18 planets capable of terraforming. This leads to somewhat weird situation where it is, in the long run, better to colonize quality 17 planet than the one with quality of 19 because planet with quality that equals 17 at the beginning can be improved to planet quality 20 while planets of quality 18 and higher stay where they are.

And the tile bonuses do not help this planet quality mess. Planet with two or three bonus tiles is worth more than the planets that are a point of two higher in quality but without tile bonuses.

All said, I don’t want to rub it in (or just a little bit maybe) but it seems to me that the entire planet quality (improvement) concept is transferred from Galciv 1 to Galciv 2 a bit to linearly. I think that removing range limits for terraforming and applying standard rules of rounding of decimal numbers (it works for financial people and whatever I think of them they still make more money than me) would help. Although I am aware that this rounding thing might take out some of the fun for some irresponsible individuals but I don’t want to go there for the reasons well known…

And one question. I have seen only 200% tile improvements so far. Are the 400% and 800% tile improvements in the same category as the planet quality improvement resource that I read about in the manual for GalCiv 1 but have never seen them for all these years of playing the game?

Popup Target,

You have to save your racial abilities if you want to have them in future games. If you just press 'done' they are valid only for that particular game.

I do save them. Sometimes they go poof for no apparent reason, usually when I go in to tweak something, but not always. I probably should report that as a bug.

The other bug that I'm reporting is that for the first time in 4C, I'm to the point that I've got the Hyperion Planetary Fleet achievement, and it didn't work. It would create a one-ship fleet in places that I knew I had three ships stationed. I'd get to see the battles, even though I checked the box for only showing fleet-vs-fleet battles, so I know the fleet is being created, but I also know I have two or three ships at every planet. For further testing I created the lesser fleet manager to see if that worked (the one per civ for a single planet version, and I can't find the one per planet unlimited planets version), and it worked, and then the Hyperion version started working. This isn't going to be something that I can reproduce easily, though I'll check it every game I make it that far.

Yes Popup Target, something is definitely going on. I was changing some of my race abilities (and saving the changes) when I noticed that instead of Technologist I became Federalist without messing with political part of race abilities at all.

Also, again not quite a bug but…In the description for Iconians it says:

The Iconians were the creators of the Yor. They are highly inventive and proud race, they consider themselves heirs to the Dreadlords.

And then in summary of their abilities it says:

+ strong diplomacy
- weak research skills

Highly inventive and weak research skills? Is this my English as a second language thing or are some things out of sinc here?

On the second thought, proud race and strong diplomatic skills might be a bit out of sinc but it seems to be a more of a philosophical issue.

UP event - planet x is now habitable who should get it? well ME of course, except the planet was Wisp and belonged to the Altarians and didn't come with a colony tile, so I couldn't do anything (well except kick the Altarian fleet out). perhaps event a little too random?

A mentioni was made of saving the political party and abilities after setting them up. How do you do that. The save button on my screen is greyed out and cannot be pressed. Every game I have to reselect everything.

Uh, oh! When I said 'my English as a second language' I ment - my. This if it wasn't already obvious (that English is MY second language)...

the damage indicator in the combat screen isn't working properly it seems - it is supposed to fill up with red until the losing ship goes boom, but I have seen plenty of situations where it seems to fail to indicate damage at all in a combat session and the losing ship pops and the indicator stays undamaged

there's a ship movement bug.

if your ship has four moves and you move three squares and then attack, if you win the battle you will come out with four moves again.

if the same ship moves three squares then goes into orbit, you can launch right back out of orbit with all four moves again.

had an interesting moment when my fleet (1 ship, i troop carrier) invaded a torian planet and completely bypassed the torian fleet. captured planet with a torian fleet in orbit, but when the torians counter-attacked, the orbital fleet became mine - the fleet combat screen went orange in the background, which was kinda cool cos i could see all the missiles and shiled more clearly, but i'm sure is not the intent.......

1) If you display the planet list immediately after a United Planets vote, your income displays as zero. Everything else looks ok.

2) Have an example of the Altarians surrendering to me without my knowledge. The game autosaved and everything was ok. I then saved the game as a backup copy - just in case. I then loaded my saved game copy and found that the Altarians had surrendered to me. I still have the 2 saved games if you need them.

3) Destroying a shipyard while it is still producing does not remove the production item.

 

Not sure whether this is a bug or not, but here goes ...

A week ago I was reporting on various UPC oddities, but had to leave town for a week. Now that I'm back I've reloaded my saved game, and have gone through 3 senate election cycles with no UPC events. Aren't they supposed to be more frequent than that? Other than loading from a saved game, another thing that might have turned off the UPC is that the Yor declared war on me and then surrendered, so I'm now down to only the Korx as opponents.

couldn't edit my previous post, but just wanted to add the ship movement thing only happens with fleet battles.


homeworld morale seems a little messed up. all colonies will be between 100-100% but the homeworld will be 35-50%. the popup that shows how it was calculated never adds up correctly either.

My game hangs allways the same point. Here is couple last lines for debug.err file

Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_1
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_2
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_3
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_4
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_5
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Tech_Improvements_Title
Debug Message: StarportWnd: Cannot find OBJID StarPort_Planet_Logo_Image

I just joined the beta so if I'm doing something wrong tell me

A few bugs and critiques:
I get no sound whatsoever while playing the game. I've turned the volume up to full and only makes my speakers buzz threateningly at me.

Whenever I send a ship somewhere after it finishes it's move for the turn it turns around and faces the galactic east (lower right of the minimap). It faces correctly when it moves, until it stops again.

The game crashes whenever I try to resume after using the windows key or alt-tab. ( I know this was already mentioned just thought I'd mention it)

I just joined the beta so if I'm doing something wrong tell me

A few bugs and critiques:
I get no sound whatsoever while playing the game. I've turned the volume up to full and only makes my speakers buzz threateningly at me.

Whenever I send a ship somewhere after it finishes it's move for the turn it turns around and faces the galactic east (lower right of the minimap). It faces correctly when it moves, until it stops again.

The game crashes whenever I try to resume after using the windows key or alt-tab. ( I know this was already mentioned just thought I'd mention it)

Latest batch of notes:

1) I sometimes get one or more popups telling me that the destination is out of range "it isn't" and then the ship moves anyway after I've researched all the life support techs. I don't think the ships in question were using any of the higher levels of life support, as I think one of them was my original survey ship.

2) If you click on a stack of two unfleeted ships, then right click to move the selected ship, the selected ship moves and stays selected. HOWEVER, the status window, including such things as the destroy button, refer to the ship that didn't move. This isn't very intuitive, was it intentional?

3) Would it be possible to have the military govenor display the number of colonies currently working on each design? Would it be possible to have any designs that aren't currently being built be left out of the left side list? Bonus points for both Oops, suggestion/request, not a bug, nevermind, will post elsewhere.

4) Are Singularity Drivers and Atlas slings positioned just a little bit early in the tech tree? At a time when I can only get 3 beam and 3 missile attack on a starbase, I can get 15 gun attack.

Oops, forgot one.

5) survey ship constantly dropping out of auto-survey because there are no more anomolies. Except, of course, for the fact that there are more, and in one case, it insisted that there were no more even though there were two more within the sensor range of the survey ship itself, so they had a first hand view that the anomolies were in fact still there.

I got the game recently, have been playing it for a little while, getting used to it, etc..
So far my games have been played all as Terrans, usually a medium-sized map with 4-5 opponents.

A few things wonky:

1) Renaming my leader name and planet name in the race setup screen doesn't work - reverts back to default at start.
2) UP Events - sometimes the event title goes off and ends with "..." which is minor but niggling.
3) Occasionally, resources show through the fog of war. Not on the minimap, just the main... really weird.

*4) I usually use the number pad to move my ships, a habit picked up from the various civs. This can cause some weirdness... for example, if the map's slightly off kilter in it's rotation angle, the "6" key can be east, southeast, or south (or right, down-right, and down depending on how you look at the map). Additionally, sometimes when I move my ship east, the map zooms in, but it doesn't actually zoom in - it seems to change the zoom-out distance to get to the strategic map. This can be solved by pressing the 4 key, which zooms it back out a bit. Am I just doing something really weird?
Lastly with the number pad, sometimes the movement command's not recognized at all and the ship stays there. Usually solved by just doing an autopilot move, but weird.

5) You can rename alien worlds, even if they're colonized? I do like renaming Altaria "Planet o' the Poopheads," but I kinda feel like they'd take offense.
6) Occasionally in the shipyard, I'll select a part, and the image (not the 3d, the actual picture) hovers on the side of the screen where no image should be... Goes away after placement tho.
7) When colonizing a planet, clicking cancel essentially has no effect; the planet's colonized, my colonists defreeze, I cry etc etc
8) I made a custom sensor drone with a range of 13 or 14. The accursed Drengin destroyed it, but until I exited the game, I was still able to see within the sensor range.

Other than that, it's working out well and is quite entertaining Good Job so far.

One suggestion tho:
It'd be nice to just have a little number indicator next to the treasury of how much is coming in each turn, just a little +/- and a number or whatever. I like the color scheme, but it's a little weird... Like those weather boxes that connect to the Internet and tell you what the weather's going to be by changing color.

Travic:

the audio is available as a separate download at stardock central.

to fix the alt-tab bug, find the gcconfig.exe file and make sure fullscreen is unchecked.

the ships pointing the wrong direction happend for me in beta 4b, in beta 4c it only happens for me when loading a saved game.

I played my first game with minor races on and interesting thing happened. Almost from the very begining of the game ships of one of the minor races start crossing my galactic space paying not much attention neither to perfectly habitable planets (PQ =11, 13) nor to the range limitations. They would jump out of the fog of war and enter 'my' space on one end and, undistrubed by habitable planets they would pass by, get lost in the fog of war on the other end. Bug or, maybe, Great Exodus scenario?

Thanks for the help axhead.

Another bug:
I was trying to cross the galaxy to meet the Torians, but no matter how many life support modules I install ships cannot travel more than halfway down the map. (the Torians and I are on opposite sides of the map. Galaxy size=huge or large I can't remember which.

I tried different ship classes and upgraded to ultra life support, but nothing has any effect.

I was playing a game where I went research crazy (most of them are that way, actually), and I found that if I put too much range on a ship, its range border gets very blocky, to the point of being square in extreme cases.

That sounds like what happened to me. My ships range limit is a straight line across the middle of the map.

The Yor had colonized Mars, and the planet just culture flipped to me. When I look at the planet window I see that it's working on building a starport, but no ship is shown being built (makes sense, eh? No starport, no ship). But the Planetary Details tab of the Civilization Manager show it both building a starport AND a constructor (with 17 weeks left to completion). I have screen shots in case anyone (BoogieMac?) wants one.