shadowtongue

Of course Hivers in the AM era should be farcasting anyway, so that .99 is only for jumps over 10(?) LYs. But yeah, the warp lanes really only apply to Humans and Zuul, though Zuul can build the warplanes where they want them while humans are stuck with the map lanes. Freedom of movement isn't that critical on most maps though, unless you completely ignore building a sensor network of some kind on your front lines. Or unless you are an age b

SotS has it's RTS component, in the way the TW series does it. I've never played Sins so I can't comment on it, however GC2 is trash compared to SotS, even the AI in SotS is superior. GC2 is 'cute' but ultimately unsatisfying. I'm not sure I like the direction SotS2 is going, but I guess I'll have to see what it looks like when it's actually done. Then again, SotS without any expansions wasn't that great either, but once they got out a

Every day... I feel better that I skipped this game. At this rate I'm losing so much interest in the product that I'm even doubting I'll bother with it once the expansions are out. Oh well, pity, I was really excited for it, and now... At least the forum is somewhat interesting.

I can't say it's a bad game, but it did not appeal to me. If they had made it turn based I might have been down with it.

[quote who="econundrum1" reply="32" id="2812680"] In this case I agree with you elemental is never going to be exactly what you want. Myself I think tac combat could do with some improving certainly but I'm one of the people who was happy when it went turn based. Anyway in view of that your clearly doing the right thing by waiting and maybe skipping it altogether. On the economy that's all up in the air at the moment so certainly a wait and see attitude is sensible on th

[quote who="econundrum1" reply="27" id="2812339"] Just out of interest what do you think needs to be "fixed" for you to enjoy the game, I assume you haven't actually played it since you haven't bought it but sounds like you have some pretty strong ideas about how it currently works and how it should work anyway, so I'd be interested to hear them. As for the demo you'll be pleased to hear that they do plan to release the demo once 1.1 is out (because 1.1 is a pretty major chang

I'm still not buying it, because they still haven't fixed the things which need to be fixed for me to enjoy it. At this point I'm not sure they ever will 'fix' them the way I would like them to be fixed, so I may just wind up passing on it entirely, in spite of my desire to support SD, I'm not supporting them for something I don't think I would enjoy. I don't buy the whole 'support them, because even though it 'sucks' now they will fix it' argumen

[quote who="kyogre12" reply="276" id="2810325"] That isn't how things work. Matter does not have to be destroyed to create energy. If you remember your chemistry, when you excite the electrons of an atom (ie, add energy), and then those electrons fall back to their ground states (the lowest energy, most stable states), light is emitted. No matter is destroyed to "create" that energy.[/quote] Um, no. When you excite electrons what exactly are you exciting them wit

My Dell experience has also been excellent. I've bought 2 machines from them in the last 10 years and each have gone for 5+ years with no issues. Of course I added memory and cards here and there, but other than a too low power supply in one box, I had no issues with the systems. also use them exclusively at work, and again, zero problems in 7+ years, and some of those machines running instruments are literally on 24/7 for years.

Raven- I meant it was a good idea for GC2 to eschew tac combat given the way ships were designed and the pure RPS aspect of it. Had they chosen to make a fuller weapons tech tree it may have made more sense, but then again, if you want TW in space you already have SotS. Now I'd be ecstatic if someone took the StarFire system and put that into the tactical battles of their space 4x, but so far I've not really seen it. I guess SE is clos

Well in the case of Civ, they do reinvent the games from iteration to iteration. Some times there are more changes than others, but they are not 'from the same parts' other than the setting I suppose. New engines are new engines, as Brad has pointed out, that's where the real differences and potentials lie. Elemental isn't even anything groundbreakingly new... yet. Now MoO3 was something 'new', but the less said about that the better p

Oh, and I should mention that the focus in FFH is on fewer more powerful units rather than swarms of infantry crawling over everything. Some of the modmods probably take that a bit further, at least WildMana seems to from my limited experience with it. The 'leveling' of your units in both Civ and FFH is fun and meaningful in my opinion.

It's certainly a fair point to dislike the way combat is handled in Civ, but then again, combat isn't the focus, and I think if they had gone for the additional tactical map it would have slowed the game to a crawl without adding much. Because for one thing, tactical combat AIs suck in general, and giving the player yet another place to cheese the AI is neither interesting nor wise (the decision to not include tactical combat in GC2 was a good one I thought). Also

[quote who="wbino" reply="44" id="2801674"] I'm just curious to see how much money Stardock throws at this game. The core players have already bought it, but word of mouth has been terrible, so future sales are a question mark. Only so much money can be spent appeasing players who already purchased this game. I wish Stardock the best, but a month after release to still be discussing changing major

[quote who="Tormy-" reply="44" id="2801581"]New screenies! http://www.gamershell.com/pc/dungeons/screenshots.html[/quote] Bah... Those screens look terrible to me.

[quote who="nniles" reply="23" id="2797584"] LMAO at having to dig through 800 pages of fanboi crap to find out which of the features advertised on the box are supposed to work "out of the box."[/quote] heh... sad but true in this day and age. I know enough to do it, but you're right, it's a PITA and frequently a waste of time to wade through all the fanboi vs. troll posts to find the people who actually are being honest about the condi

[quote who="1SuperG" reply="50" id="2797430"] Quoting shadowtongue, reply 42 It's an inappropriate comparison to going out to a movie or buying dinner. You need to compare the games to other games, same market. Entertainment is entertainment. You have the right to do whatever you like, I'm merely pointing out that you place a pretty low value on entertainment and more importantly, your own time.[/quote] I place a low va

[quote who="dowdyhoody" reply="40" id="2797196"]I remember $29.99 for any intellivision game. And that was cutting edge grahpics in the early 80's. That's like $100 in todays money. I can't believe games are so cheap and people demand so much for the small amount they really pay.[/quote] Because that's the market games live in. It's an inappropriate comparison to going out to a movie or buying dinner. You need to compare the games to other games,

The point being (I think) that SD was creating the large complex software specifically for Elemental. With that in mind, the inability of that large complex software to handle initial design decisions seems puzzling to some of us. The reason is likely that the DD was 'leaked' to everyone so early, then when the engine was finally being developed the realization came that certain initial goals were unobtainable due to time/money constraints.

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="29" id="2796967"]Well, hope you're right.[/quote] We all do. The question to me is how long it takes, because the current CiV direction seems to be the wrong one for my tastes.

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="26" id="2796955"]Oh, god, thats a little much. I dont think we are getting 50$ worth of expansions nor are we the f'ing Mayflower colonizing a brave new world. We are getting probably 30$ worth of expansions and helping shape how they are going to develop.[/quote] Yep, though those of us who are still waiting (mostly for a demo just to see how well my older machine will run the game) can still help shape the direction even withou

Thank you for the detailed reply Brad. [quote who="Frogboy" reply="116" id="2796492"] GalCiv was always inspired by Civilization. Literally Civilization in space. I wouldn't do nodes in GalCiv because I already had a favorite game that did it well - Master of Orion. [/quote] Certainly, though even early iterations of Civ had bounds on the open movement system. Mountains, oceans, ZOCs. Early age you could only mov

[quote who="Frogboy" reply="111" id="2795950"] If we step away from Elemental - the game - and look at Elemental - the software it becomes easier to see the obstacles (besides 3D engine issues that affect stability and memory) 1. The engine didn't support population as a calculated resource (like food is). 2. The engine didn't support spells that used resources (i.e. spells were a different class) [/quote] And this gets back

[quote who="DKL" reply="27" id="2791261"] Quoting Martok, reply 23Dude, that's not much of a comparison. Just about every 4x game ever released is better than MOO3. Well, I personally loved it. It wasn't that bad, just it got dogpiled upon release due to few minor issues. Maybe its just cause I skipped MoO2 and and went directly from MoO, but I didn't notice any gamebreaking issues in it. It was fun to play. [/quote] Wow... &nbsp

Well the fact that Elemental is built off a new engine is hardly an excuse for it's issues. It may be a reason, but not an excuse. It boils down to 'the engine wasn't ready' instead of 'elemental wasn't ready', both equate to the same underlying failure. Anyway, the comparisons between FFH and Elemental are not exactly technical, but about content from what I can see. There's no reason Elemental couldn't have more/better content.