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Reply to Asteroid Mining in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

A basic produces 4 IP (Industry Points). A basic asteroid mine can generate up to 5 IP, but more often 3 or 4 depending on distance. So a basic asteroid mine has about the same effect as a basic factory on that planet. An end-level factory generates 16 IP, while an asteroid mine that's one step down from the best will typically generate 18 or 19 IP. So a mid-level asteroid is somewhat better than the best factory (and doesn't cost maintenance). I've never researched it, but I'm

Reply to Getting really confused with combat... help please in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Well, your total fleet defence from your 4 ships was at least 1000, but that means that each of your 4 ships was only at least 250. That score of 250 is slightly borderline against 460-500ish attack. With some bad luck on your part they could hurt you significantly in that case. Though it would be very hard to kill one of your ships in a round. But if they were doing 20-30 damage a round to you and you were only managing about 10 points a round in response I could see you losing it. Still rather

Reply to Getting really confused with combat... help please in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Well, your total attack strength is basically irrelevant when going up against strong enough off-type defenses. I had a ship with 199 mass-driver attack that could barely manage to do 5 points of damage a round against a ship with no armor. Anyway, what are you doing at work with the flu? Considering the risk of infecting others, they should pay you to stay home.

Reply to Getting really confused with combat... help please in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Ok, so I read your followup post. The off-type defense bug would be enough that you wouldn't hurt them much, but I don't have any explanation of why their missiles would ignore your missile defenses. A fleet with 460 attack shouldn't have much chance of hurting a ship with more than about 250 missile defense, and I don't see that behaviour in my own game. My missile defenses against the Drengin worked as expected in the last post-patch game.

Reply to Getting really confused with combat... help please in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There is a bug in the game where 'off-type' defenses can be as strong or stronger than on-type defenses. So if you were attacking with mass-drivers against strong missile defences, it's possible you were hitting that bug and your mass-driver shots would not do much damage. On the flip side, if they were attacking you with missiles against your missile defenses, it's possible that they wore you down. If one of your single ships had say 300 defence against missiles, then it would take a *

Reply to Espionage Optional? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I understand that I can place my spies on other civs structures to stop them but I don't see how I get the different levels of intelligence that someone mentioned up here. Each turn, every spy that you have deployed in an enemy empire give you a point towards the next espionage level for that empire. So if you have one spy deployed, it might take 8 turns to reach 'low'. If you drop 10 spies on him at once, you'll hit low on the first turn and med

Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

What kind of priority does this have compared to some people having problems with crashes, slowdowns, etc? Are the devs aware that there is actually a problem here?

Reply to Issues with visuals of ships in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Yes. It's just a starting point so that you can build a base hull out of whatever blocks you want.

Reply to Ethical Choices in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

thank you, Mzuz. i was reluctant to re-argue this point. if he can't even grasp the difference between "there," "their," and "they're," i suspect the subtler points of ethics (such as the difference between sentience and conscience) might elude him entirely. Maybe his style of writing is a subtle dig at an overly-staid and rules-bound society? Like someone who disdains proper capitalization, for instance.<

Reply to For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I have played game where if they did have an orbital fleet manager I would probably be toast. These are games when I'm seriously behind in military tech but have to conduct an offensive anyway. It's painful enough tackling one Yor ship with 100 missile attack. Going after 6 at once I would just be tossing my fleets away. I'd say that if you would rather attack a full fleet of AI ships than individually, then you are going to win regardless of whether they are fleeted or not.

Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Is there a consenus that defence works not as specified, that it is better than stated in the manual? Well, there's no doubt in my mind that it's not working as advertised. I think that anyone who saw the same test case would be convinced as well.

Reply to [DAv1.5x] Nerf Defense! (lol) in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I think I may have to try and test this on a lower difficulty level or with a faster rate of research. Don't bother. Off-type defences are broken (see my above post). If you want, I can email you a save game that makes this absolutely clear. Edit: Also, the starbases only get one attack, just like in DL. It's like Stardock is trying to make them useless but failed due to off-type defences <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/s

Reply to Espionage Optional? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

But it is almost impossible to get past medium espionage level with more than one AI. I've found it fairly easy to get to advanced espionage level with multiple opponents. However, I do it in serial fashion. Drop all of your spies on one AI. Playing as the Krynn, that would be 15-30, depending on the stage of the game. When I dropped 30 spies on the Drengin, I got to advanced espionage level in about 5 weeks. Playing as other ra

Reply to dark avatar choppy even with graphics all the way down in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm also experiencing this at some point in several games. It seems as though things are going fine until at some point the memory use just explodes. In my current game, this happened fairly early in the game. Turning down the graphics doesn't resolve the problem. Looking at it in detail, it doesn't seem to be a consistent slowdown in the graphics. Animations run fine for a second, then stop for half a second, then fine for another half second, brief pause, and so on. It's not at all li

Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Goldie, it looks as though your proposed system is more complicated than I had realized. It may be good, but I think it's a little too much book-keeping to fit in the theme of GC2 combat.

Reply to [DAv1.5x] Nerf Defense! (lol) in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I don't know how it is, but I think it should be: That could also work. Currently, off-type defences don't seem to be fully depleted, so in your first example it seems to go to 132/11/11 instead of 132/0/11 after the first attack.

Reply to Can't kill Dread Lord Dreadnaught! Help! in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The 1hp thing is awkward and needs changing. Amen.

Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

so, what do you say? It may work as you describe. It's still a bug because it has the effect of making defences almost as powerful against off-type as on-type attacks. Or at least, Brad doesn't expect it to work that way, so it's a bug.

Reply to HUGE Off-type Defence Bug in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I i'm beginning to think this is a real bug and not all in our heads Oh it is absolutely real. If the system were working in any reasonable way, the beam defence ship could expect to win fewer than one in a million of those fights. Instead, it won 8 out of 9.

Reply to Tech trading after 1.5x. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The devs have repeatedly stated that the AI can't tell the human from another AI player. I wonder what those AI deals look like. I wonder how the AI can make deals *at all*. I mean, if techA and techB are equally valued, it doesn't seem to want to part with techA for less than techB + 1000 BC. If the AI won't accept an unfair deal as the buyer, then it would never buy from an AI. If it *will* accept an unfa

Reply to Combat bug in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I agree with abolishing the 1-hitpoint rule. I reported the healing bug a few weeks ago but it looks like it's still kicking around.

Reply to [DAv1.5x] Nerf Defense! (lol) in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It is surely true if you have no luck. But I recall having read somewhere that a 0-100 roll will translate into a 25 - 100 roll if you have 25% in luck Weapons roll individually, so having luck would make a 0-10 roll into 2-10. I'm not sure if luck affects defenses, but if it did it wouldn't affect defences that much, except to make the 'trickle through' damage impossible.

Reply to [DAv1.5x] Nerf Defense! (lol) in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The question is then...WHY did defense need buffed so profoundly...a size reduction AND a rating increase? Why did it need buffed at all? I wrote a whole bunch here, but then my browser had a problem, so I lost it. The short version is that the value of defense in the DA system is *very* dependent on ship size and fleet composition. So it makes it very hard to balance. People were finding that unless you coud reach the 'sup

Reply to [DAv1.5x] Nerf Defense! (lol) in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Well, I may not put the "wrong" defense on a ship, but in theory you could go down only 1 path of defense, making it better and smaller, and probably be ok most of the time? Yes. If you have a ship with very high defence against, say, beams, the only things that are likely to hurt it are: 1. Fleets with more than twice it's shield rating in beam attack 2. Ships that individually have a high prop

Reply to Economy help In GC2 & Dark Avatar in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

One problem I've run up against is trying to kick start a new colony without buying the first factory. I have a total of 170mp across 4 planets and unless I set my total spending and social spend very high ( far too high for the empire as a whole ) then the new colony gets no social spend and the factory build time is never. Is there a strategy for this situaton or is the economy model far from ideal. First,