DarkYorPathfinder

Reply to transition from the opening to middle game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Preface all the following with "as a noob I have found..." and take with the grain of salt that goes with that statement. I never build farms on the homeworld. 16B is plenty of people for a class 10 planet, even after terraforming raise it to a 12+. I mostly only build one farm on colonies (and well down the priority list and only if the PQ is high enough to leave some free tiles after the basics) then carefully let the one farm upgrade by researching more farm techs. But even then you have to w

Reply to transition from the opening to middle game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I see one other little gem too - I make custom colony ships sometimes, after I have researched better drives or support maybe, or sometimes just to make a cheapo with no engines or support at all, but I never thought of putting a colony module on something besides a cargo hull, like a small hull. Interesting if it saves a lot of money. Have to look into that one. Take it you need Ion drive to make that fit with an engine? But maybe could make it with no engines even prior to that (I admit I have

Reply to transition from the opening to middle game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the tips, and I will look it up. Well, I read another similar thread where it was suggested to leave the build queues empty to avoid tanking the economy. I had been filling them and of course this meant going broke and then some with a long recovery. I find by avoiding rush buys and by not building anything on colonies during the colony rush I can avoid the colony hangover phase altogether, at least that worked in one game. So I may have this licked now, but will check the arti

Reply to Megatrons Custom Logo's in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I'd kinda like one similar to the "tribal skull" design from the library but with glowing red evil eyes and a rusty orange-brown Mars-y Arrakis-y home world in the thing in the crest, then to top it off a 'Sword of Damocles' type thing suspended behind and thru it (kind of like in the Star Trek evil alternate mirror universe logos). Tried to home make some of this but the blends do not come out well in paint and without the original artwork and no talent it is difficult. <a href=

transition from the opening to middle game in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I have gone thru maybe 6-7 games now of various sizes and lengths. I have (just me) backed away from the rush buy colony rush to trying to crank the colony ships out by normal builds as fast as possible (economy at 100% all-mil with tax rate mayb 49% maybe 59%). On the maps I play this usually gives me enough to start with even if the AI gets a few more worlds and I wind up using my resources more efficiently. But here is my question, even this way I wind up coming out of the opening of t

Reply to Building Ships in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

have you never designed a new ship from an existing one using the 'upgrade' button in the shipyard? this _automatically_ updates all ships of the original design currently under construction on all worlds from the old design to the new design. in my immense map game this saved my sanity. well, to the extent that was possible!

Reply to galaxy setup in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Here (from prefs.xml) is the way I seem to like it for TotA, although I am not entirely sure about the habitable planets because this way there is a danger some AI's (humans can use Ctrl-N) will wind up hosed by not having much in the way of colonization potential, and this seems to matter more to the AI than to a human player. I played one game on a similar map but with more planets and more habitable, and it was quite a good game but seemed a bit odd since every system had 5 planets and most s

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

the systems modding by a percent is already modelled tho by all the bonuses etc so there really is not much more junking up that this would do. you may be right about the small versus big, it is hard for me to get my head around that still and you make no mention in your example about number of weapon mounts which is critical to a small versus large battle as I now understand it (but hey who knows if that is correct at all). In a one-round battle (assuming there are at least 10 weapon mounts on

Reply to Slide-bar Math in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Just wanted to say that I thought 33% does not mean only 33% of your factory tiles get used, it means that all your factory tiles get used at 33% capacity Saying that a portion of one's factories remain unused is just a different way of saying that a portion of each factory remains unused.[/quote] Definately not. Saying only 33% of your factories get used leads noobs like me to think that production might be occuring on only 33% of their wo

galaxy setup in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Sorry if this has been asked before, but the various tutorials and strategy pages do not seem to me to agree or even to quite explain just what this is.[HR]Habitable Planets Number of Planets Number of Stars[HR]For the same density (ie per-sector) do you need to adjust these when you change map size? Is it total stars on the map or stars per sector? Assuming I get number of stars at that point, do you need to adjust number of planets as you adjust number of stars to get the same spr

Reply to Building Ships in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I would have to check but I think the social build queue updates when you research, in fact annoyingly so in many cases due to the terrible higher tech factories and labs. Irregardless... I am certain, because I do this all the time, the single build location for ships updates when you design a new ship using 'upgrade' from a ship that is already being built. So I do not see that a build queue, properly done like the social build queue, for ships would pose a problem with ship upgrades at all. I

Reply to TotA Super Warrior in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Plus the Drengin, even with ME off, had some kind of event where they (supposedly, me, I will never believe it) turned into peaceful good folks. Still went to war with me though, of course I _am_ the evil wicked 'Dark Arceans'. Tonight, Pinky, we conquer the galaxy!

Reply to Slide-bar Math in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I have heard folks say the factories/labs "stand empty" before when discussing the all-X strategy, but I find this is slightly mis-stating the case. It seems to be that when you set your budget sliders it spreads the funding across _all_ your factories (or labs) but they are just not 100% churning stuff out if the funding is not complete. I look at the lab or factory mp/tp per turn as a "potential" only reached if/when the empire puts the resources into it.[HR]But there are quirks certain

Reply to TotA Super Warrior in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

mostly the fleets were something like 2 heavy fighters and 2 super dom corvettes and maybe 1 frigate, but even so my cruisers (and there not so many, actually had none completed when the furry reptiles declared war on me, and two fleets of 3 basically took out 2 stacks of 30 5-ship fleets) are small-hull ships with no defense and space for a couple warp drives but killer, killer load of psyonic beam attacks (not what it once was now that it is at almost the end of the tech tree) so it would much

Reply to Whats your fav game. in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

GC2 series aside, if I have a fav right now kind of partial to Freecol (freeware Colonization). Kind of liked Europa Universalis II and even more liked Crusader Kings. Really like Football Manager series (now aka Worldwide Soccer Manager). Total War series was good but the campaigns kinda stunk in them relative to the battles. Other stuff you have to go back a ways. Lots of games I have heard about that I think I would have liked a lot but never had the time and money when they were out (SMAC, M

Reply to TotA Super Warrior in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks, interesting. They really ought to actually spell that out in the description that it only applies when attacking. Can lead some nasty suprises if you do not know that! That also means it is kind of a dud with the default Arceans because with their very low speeds they do not get to attack as much. And problably the AI ought to take that into account and come out after them instead of waiting to die. Those two Drengin stacks of 30 5-ship fleets just kept chugging along right

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Actually, there is one other side effect that I think would be a great thing if you cut the stats as you took hits. Right now the combat system attacks the ship with the highest attack factor. Unfortunately, this means you only at most have one ship after a combat which is damaged. If you kept exactly the same targeting method and cut the stats as you got hit then the damage would be distributed throughout a fleet so after a battle odds are (except where one fleet is way superior of course) that

TotA Super Warrior in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Not sure if this is working or not. Okay 95% of the time it seems to work as advertised. But there are maybe 5% of cases where the enemy shoots back in the first round. Almost always, in the one game I am trying this in, there are 0 damage done so same difference. However there is at least one case where I got jumped by a ship I presume coming off a planet and it actually attacked 'first'. I got to shoot back but meantime one of my ships died in the one round of combat as I destroyed the bushwha

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can say similar things about 'battleship' warfare, but at some point it was figured that silly things like crew fatalities and smoke and fire on board and water (atmosphere) damage would wind up degrading system operations ship-wide, enough so that almost every major naval combat sim uses a system akin to this (I think the originator of the idea was Fletcher-Pratt, not to be confused with Fischer-Price :)). and, after all, the graphics _do_ show those ships spew

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I would not expect the 'critical hit' level of detail in a game like GalCiv2, only mentioned it for completeness sake. But I do think think reducing the stats (attack, defense, speed, range at least) makes sense within the system. Still not likely to happen, but hey I thought it would be interesting and a new thought for some folks to lay out the case for it. <img src="http://images.stardock.com/s

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

okay, some moderator type can delete all my experiments, did not want to mess up the original post I made on this topic but had to see how the dang edit and break controls work, and now I have.

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

funny, also, that last post shows up with a edit link, but none of the others do, odd. btw yes the html tag works even when not in advanced mode, but weird the enter key does not generate the tag, maybe a conflict with the 'focus' for the enter key being set to the submit post button or something?

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

and yes it does. very, very clunky (since the enter key does not generate a para break) but okay at least now I can do it. only in advanced mode tho? let;s try there, did that do it?

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

okay, sorry, just testing the 'advanced mode' for 's. nope the enter key still does not add one, let's see if the when typed in does.

Reply to Ship Combat in GalCiv2 in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

hmmm... will not let you edit a reply, then? just the initial post? also how is it that everyone else seems able to add paragraph breaks and I can not?