Introduction+FriendlyHello

[Space_Man_1]

I'm new to the Apolyton site I've known about it though from GC1, GC2 and am finally here. I hope to be active arround here and have a good time Though I'll probably still hang out at the gc2 forums/site I figured it'd be cool to hang out with people who also have an interest in GC2.

[AoA]

Hey there. The forum's been pretty dead of late. But its always good to have another here.

[Space_Man_1]

heh well I sat in the chatroom for a long time on IRC and no-chitter

[Donegeal]

If you want chitter... got to the off toopic forum. Plenty of chitter there.

[Daz]

I guess he'd like to chitter about GalCiv2.
Anyway, there's talk about Stardock killing of their GalCiv forum, so there's a possibility of the people moving to poly....

[Solver]

Looks like there isn't too much GalCiv2 discussion to be found here these days, though a couple of months ago, there were some very active debates.

[Hansolo88]

I really like the direction the game is going right now, and I am definitely looking forward to the expansion pack. However, I have been on an RTS kick lately so I've been playing Total Annihilation: Spring instead of GalCiv 2. Funny how much fun one can have with a freeware game.

It would be really cool to see the Apolyton forums pick up the Stardock forum users, since the Apoly forums are so much nicer and there has been some great discussion in the past that it would be nice to see revived.

[Solver]

It's also nice that Brad has a habit of dropping by here .

I took a look recently at what the GalCiv2 expansion is promising, and that sounds very attractive. The updates to GalCiv2 showed clearly that Brad is very committed to fixing the problems in the game as they are discovered.

[Daz]

Well I certainly hope so.... cause there are some things in there that are easily fixable, but are still not.

I would like these things fixed before thinking about the expansion...

[Hansolo88]

Just curious, Solver, which features are most exciting to you?

I of course am happy to see yet more AI improvements, and more diplomatic treaties. However, I think the new planet environment colonization system is the most exciting to me.

[Solver]

In the expansion? I am an AI whore. If there are AI improvements, I'm instantly happy. So I'm looking forward to those. More treaties is good.

However, I am very excited about those asteroid belts. It's a map feature, it's something that further streamlines economy and makes planets more different... basically, it's one of those things that I had been ranting about in one of my longer posts about GC2.

Environmental worlds... I'll reserve my judgement until later. It sounds very good. It might be the critical, much-needed improvement to the colonization phase, and yet another factor in making planets more, well, interesting. But I'll want to see the implementation on that before I give any judgement.

[Hansolo88]

Fair enough.

I am also a huge AI enthusiast, its what brought me to GalCiv 2 in the first place. I don't know if I've ever seen a strategy game AI taken this seriously by the developers.

You have to admit, the combination of asteroids and environmental planets will incredibly liven up the map, and if done right it should finally add that extra depth and length that the colonization phase of the game has been so badly needing. And, depending on how moddable it is, it may open up lots of new ideas there too.

I'm curious about the asteroids though, am I to understand that we will build constructors to "claim" the asteroids with bases, and then they will provide bonuses to nearby planets? I wonder if they will all be the same, or if different asteroid fields will have different properties. Or if resources will only be found on asteroids now (I would prefer this). I also wonder if the asteroid bases will be upgradable, or if there will be different types of bases. As it is, they sound a lot like... starbases. Except with fixed locations, of course, and they will probably block starship flight like planets do. Anyways, lots of questions about implementation here.

Now if they only had the storms that Space Empires had in its system maps, the maps would get even crazier... but thats too much to ask I'm sure, or at least more than the AI could deal with. And the AI remains my priority.

[Space_Man_1]

Originally posted by Daz
I guess he'd like to chitter about GalCiv2.
Anyway, there's talk about Stardock killing of their GalCiv forum, so there's a possibility of the people moving to poly....

Zero possibility since people spoke up and would like to fix things up a bit and wait things out a bit more

And yeah I've been busy with my job heh.

[Draginol]

For me, the only reason for the expansion pack is the opportunity to code on the AI. I'm an AI bigot.

What drives me crazy about AI development is feeling soometimes like I can't convey to the AI what I want it to do.

Planet management and transport management in particular are incredibly frustrating.

But also almost equally frustrating is AI starbase building. I mean, I definitely feel I know the best usage for these things but then I code them in there and I still see it doing dumb things like two wimpy starbases next to each other.

Each new game gets better as it isn't quite as painful to debug this stuff (in the old days, I had to use beeps to debug the code). But when I see things like the starbase things, that makes me scratch my head.