Features coming soon to GalCiv

[Pyrkaige]

There was some interesting info from Brad in a We Love GalCiv type of thread in the GalCiv forums earlier regarding what we might be seeing added to the game soon:

Thanks guys, we really appreciate your support. It's been great fun and we have some really exciting things coming up for next week such as:

+ ability to toggle between planet list and mini map when looking at a planet.

+ ship automatically leave orbit option

+ some new events and technologies

+ Possibly some [?] buttons by things such as approval to help you understand why a certain value is something. I.e. explain how you got to that number.

+ AI enhanced further

It all looks great; it's rather amazing to see the level of support that Stardock is putting into the game. Many other game developers could take a note or two from their book!

If anyone sees any more notes from Brad or others in the know on what is coming, feel free to post them here. It's a bit hard sometimes to try to find real info on those boards when sifting through the multitude of posts.

[vmxa1]

Two others were doing that sort of support before this:

Andrew of Starship Unlimited
Aaron of Space Empires

All were/are very responsive.

[Fried-Psitalon]

You can actually SEE some of the threads here on Apolyton referring to these things. The idea that we might be having an effect on Game Development is very cool. (Okay, not just us, but still.)

YAR!

[Pyrkaige]

New features mentioned today by Brad on the GalCiv forums. Given how quickly the topics on those forums roll to the bottom, I'll post it all here:

Regarding updates, actually we have a BUNCH of updates internally but we can't release them until the stand alone 1.02 patch goes out.

Stand alone patches have to go through Strategy First's QA after leaving our QA (which is one of the reasons why stand alone patches are less common).

There's been a bunch of AI stuff including having the AI become more aware when it's cause is hopeless so that the end game portion the AI will just surrender more often. Plus more intelligent tactical generaliship. The diplomacy internals have been rewritten which is where most of the non-sound driver related crashes come from (though in fairness, 95% of crash reports are, unfortunately, due to the sound driver incompatibility).

But we have also rewritten our internal MP3 player so that it will work even when it's not Microsoft's MP3 player codec.

So the next update is going to be a pretty big deal.

More update goodness on the way! He also mentions the new tool for making ship models that was just released; the graphically talented among us will no doubt put that to good use.

[H Tower]

is there any modablity in this game? I haven't seen anything about an editor, or events or stuff like that.

[LDiCesare]

HTower, there is modability. You can look at one of the files (Data/invasiontactics): it gives exactly all you want to invade a planet: standard, core detonation, etc. are all detailed there. I didn't touch it yet, but if you want to add a new way to attack a planet on ground, you can. I bet there are other files lurking somewhere. I didn't look for them, though, just chanced upon this one.

[unic]

There are lots of other text files in the Data directory - just have a look around. There is also a ships encoder available - see the 'Mods' forum ( http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GM ) at the official site for more info about that.

As far as I know, there's not much documentation for the various files from an official source, but with developers being active in the above-mentioned forum, I think modding is likely to get started by fans anyhow

/unic

[H Tower]

I don't actually own the game, i'm overloaded with school stuff right now, but in a month all of that will be done. I'm trying to decide between Moo3 and GalCiv for a summer purchase

[The Templar]

Originally posted by H Tower
I don't actually own the game, i'm overloaded with school stuff right now, but in a month all of that will be done. I'm trying to decide between Moo3 and GalCiv for a summer purchase

I own both, and have played both. I like GalCiv much better. Of course MoO3 might vastly improve with a patch (but that would have to be one hell of a patch) ...

[Nirvana_CN]

Well that patch is out Templar, QS admit the modding community had already done most of what they have changed, they say something about a Code patch later in the year to fix other problems...im not savvy enough to know what the difference between a Code and Data patch is.

[korn469]

i think a code patch changes things and fixes bugs, while a data patch just balances in game values

so
code patch=fixed ctd bug
data patch=nerf various units

[campfreddie]

Yeah. It seems like we'll be waiting a while for the code patch.

The official MOO3 bugs forum has a list of the changes for both the code and data patches, which is updated once they manage to fix each problem.

While both look like making some much needed changes, there has not been any mention of QS having fixed the PD bug or the horrible diplomacy. They say that they will though, so I still hold out some hope.

I'll have to see what people make of the data patch. If it's better than the user mods then perhaps QS will turn MOO3 into a good game via code and data pacthes.

If it's worse that the combined user mods then (IMO) QS are just incompetent fools who don't deserve our money, trust or support.

For HTower: As far as MOO3 or GalCiv is concerned. From all the comments on all the forums it seems that Galciv *is* a good game that *is* being improved by constant patches and updates. MOO3 *might* be a good game that *might* be improved by patches. They both seem to have good modding support.

[Pyrkaige]

More upcoming changes to GalCiv mentioned today for the 1.03 patch in development.

Some of changes are mentioned in the Encyclopedia, that are specific to 1.03:

In the article on How Influence Works:

Sector Influence

Changes in GalCiv 1.03:
Starbases were proving to bee too powerful as a way to spread your civilization. So now we take into account how far away your nearest star system is too. Before, it was "whichever is closest". Now it is "whichever is closest" averaged in with how far your nearest star is. And we made it expensive to colonize crummy star systems to where it costs large amounts of maintenance to maintain life support. $5 per turn for less than class 15 and 10 X the government level if the quality is less than 10 (so a federation colonizing a class 4 planet to extend their civilization's influence would be paying 5 + 10X4 per month = 45 per month).

So it sounds like it'll be a bit harder to pressure other civs just with starbases and not actual planets.

Other changes listed in the Economics article:

How Improvements add to productivity

In GalCiv 1.03, we found that players found a loophole. While production itself was capped, the bonus production was not. So in 1.03 we changed it to that if bonus production >3 X the planet quality, it would start to get penalized. What was happening is that players would simply build dozens of star bases and just keep cranking up their production to ridiculous levels.

How starbases add to the mix

Starbases are similar to improvements in this regard except that in GalCiv 1.0 half the bonus production is given as free. Just remember though, in 1.03, after that free production is greater than 3 times the planet quality it gets penalized.

This should help keep starbases from being too powerful when people stack up 10+ in one sector. It remains to be seen if some of the other benefits that can be stacked (ship speed, trade bonuses, etc.) will be penalized at a certain point, as well.

There is also a funny screenshot of a new Technology Navigator that will be coming with the free expansion pack to be released in June, which should help dealing with shuffling through all the techs in the game.

[civer3]

Since the players are severely penalized in the new patches coming up without any new bonuses being given, I will simply not download or use any of them. As most worlds, below 15 are already a pain in the butt to colonize, to further penalize the player for colonizing those worlds is simply put unfair as the AI colonizes the worlds faster than the player ever could.

The economic strain of supporting all the maintenance is bad enough already. The game I'm playing is quite bad already. I 'm at war with the most powerful civillization and the remainig galactic power is rather hostile to me. Trade is nearly impossible in this situation. I would much rather build up a self-sufficient empire given the situation without being dependent on outside trade.

The fact than I'm fighting more than two civillizations at one time is rather awful and putting quite a strain on my pocket book. I have already increased my taxes to the point of no return. The expenditure has been severely reduced cutting down the amount of research and production that could be attained. Also, strategic use of certain star systems in the game would be severely hampered. The starbases penalties being imposed are also unfair as they take time to build up and they can quite easily be destroyed. I lost quite a number of them in the games I played.

[vmxa1]

This is my complaint, we should be able to make self sufficient empires with out massive tech deals or extortion.