Philocthetes

I'd just like to say again that these boards don't have enough SMAC talk. [quote who="Gaston_DAoust" reply="38" id="2876853"]... The only downside is that it is not really a game, but a simulation and whatever you did, the game would evolve on it's own. It was quite possible to play a near perfect game only to have the engine blow one of the other factions through the roof (usually Yang) making the game unplayable and requiring a restart. [/quote] You've made me wonder if the

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="6" id="2876507"]... What your talking about is something i definitely had not considered and is different to the typical way RPG works! Most RPG games have a campaign and no sandbox at all![/quote] Indeed. That's why I found the early dev talk about some sort of TBS-RPG fusion really fascinating. I still think that the multiplayer side needs a Referee role so that someone can build and operate a map that other folks play on. The best thing about

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="11" id="2876481"]...Never heard of 'Eight Worlds Stories' but i assume it must have at least 3 block buster movies to its name and 2 major spin off series rite? Anyway, it sounds ahead of it's time from what i saw in Wiki. I mention the Asgard because they have lost all sexuality and can only reproduce by cloning. It will be the inevitable fate of any race that confuses the natural purpose of male and female sexuality and reproduction occurs in any di

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="4" id="2876453"]The answer to the OP's question is as simple as the answer to the question, is the campaign finished?[/quote] No, it's not, at least for some unknown share of us who've been following the game since before the public beta builds started. One of the great ambitions for the early project was to create a viable fusion of the TBS and RPG genres. To me, that would require a sandbox mode that essentially played like an RPG but was based on a st

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="9" id="2876450"]Funny how a simple game can demonstrate by accident what will eventually be possible in real life through advanced genetics! Then one day Nature will tap the human race on the shoulder and say "i Dub thee Asgard" (in terms of sexuality) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgard_%28Stargate%29[/quote] I'll see your burn-out SG Asgard and raise you the future humans in John Varley's Eight Worlds

[quote who="Tydorius" reply="101" id="2876253"]... Honestly I think with Impulse being installed on many of the machines with Elemental there should be some automatic crash reporting - This would help both keep players from worrying about having to find their crash data and give Stardock a flood of information, and just have a toggle box in Impulse to disable the feature for those who wish to opt out.[/quote] It should be opt-in, not opt-out, and it definitely makes more sense than th

[quote who="psychoak" reply="4" id="2875663"]You'd need a vassal system. Semi-permanent alliance with tech sharing, maybe if your vassal gets too big for his britches, he tries to take you on.[/quote] In other words, we'd need to see a big early-plan part of the dynasty system actually implemented. Me gusta la idea, mucho. At least for Enchantress if not the base/parent game itself.

Not yet, maybe in Fallen Enchantress.

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="2" id="2872554"]http://store.steampowered.com/stats/[/quote] Could you put at least a sentence or three behind why you bothered to reply to this apparent flame-bait with a link to a generic stats page? Some of us don't follow game biz-buzz closely and are still feeling generally hopeful about Stardock's new major hires. I didn't think this OP deserved any response at all, but now I wonder if there's something worth discussing that you & Trojasmic are

[quote who="FatNonFree" reply="1" id="2872035"]They're playing the first expansion and filling their hard drives with lots of screen shots of it![/quote] Please, please, no. My great hope is that the design leaders are still focused on plans for serious rework, especially given the fact that the new hires include a lead devoted to 'mere content.' Ideally, none of the 'content' decisions behind the RTM of Elemental 1.0 should limit the d

My collection of stuff is sort of a disrupted pack-rat pile driven by conflict between forced moves and sentimentality. I've somehow managed to keep fragments from the sidewalk in front of my childhood (early '70s) home, but I've misplaced or discarded more than a few things I'd still like to have easily at hand, including nearly all of the pre-CD software I once had around. The titles that've defined my gaming taste since the early '90s are Civilization, SimEarth, Master of Orion, Si

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="5" id="2871967"]... A long time ago i already suggested at least royalty Hero's could be allowed to marry into your family. But Hero marriages is like opening a floodgate - especially since players can up the stats of Hero's before marriage.... this will kill sovereign state dynasties with the AI. One idea could be that royalty Hero's can either be hired or married.... If you choose to hire, they can no longer be married.[/quote] Limiting marr

[quote who="Austinvn" reply="18" id="2871931"]... Thanks, love to know someone is listening! I really do appreciate all aspects of a good game, from balanced choices to variable playstyles to immersive lore to competitive multiplayer - it's just that it's harder (for me at least) to appreciate the latter three when the first is glaringly off. I may seem to focus on balance exclusively sometimes, but it's not just balance for its own sake; I see it as the foundation for all the other things th

[quote who="Mystikmind" reply="3" id="2871933"]It would be nice if there was an option to adopt at least 1 Hero of your choice into your family.[/quote] Given the general aversion to complexity, adoption mechanics are probably far too much to hope for, but I'd certainly enjoy playing with something that had offspring to competed and cooperated according to how they saw themselves in a family hierarchy. Excluding something like make Janusk a (re-incarnating?) fertile hermaphrod

[quote who="Austinvn" reply="15" id="2871306"]... I should note that, in general, balance problems aren't just problems for min/maxing metagamers trying to win as quickly as possible (though I realize the above paragraph may make it sound that way). Even if you're not aware of the one true strategy that beats all others, even if you're (for example) treating the game more like an RPG and doing whatever makes sense to you in-character, the moment you stumble across that one true strategy by ch

For civility's sake, I'll shelve the whole question of whether advertising is immoral or not. I love Mad Men, but have a hard time talking about advertisers for very long without getting rude. The other part of my objection to operations like Facebook is that they are making money by collecting and selling data about specific individuals. That data about you should be yours unless they enter into an explicit agreement and make clear the compensation you are receiving in excha

[quote who="natas2" reply="40" id="2870497"]Don't be an idiot. That's how to protect yourself on facebook. And nobody gives a rats ass what you are making for dinner either.[/quote] /Redacted under protest./ Countless corporations want to know what you are making (or ordering) for dinner, especially if they can connect that data with your rough income level and a half-jillion other target market metrics. Facebook isn't free. It aims to earn mega-money by helping yo

[quote quoting="post"]... http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/495903 ...[/quote] [e classic]:lol:[/e] p.s. [e classic]:-|[/e]

[quote who="Kitkun" reply="11" id="2867767"]... From what I've seen, this is probably the single most important skill in a leader. The skill of knowing in general what those they lead are doing. Once you have a general idea, you start to see who has good ideas and who doesn't. It becomes a lot easier to anticipate results, too. Just don't get too attached. ...[/quote] Gah. I'm geek enough to get hot for efficiency in its own right in a porno sort of way, but I'll be damned if I want

[quote who="Sir_Linque" reply="38" id="2869686"]I'm absolutely certain that the adventure tech tree will be gotten rid of.[/quote] Whatever. I'd still rather see all the mundane research ditched in favor of magic-only research and some really different ways to work with mundane knowledge in a fantasy setting (letting us get more or less the same results through recruiting champions, completing quests, and whatnot). If the 5-flavor tech forest survives into Enchantress , I migh

[quote who="Yaca" reply="4" id="2869652"]... I don't think less difficulty options are going to help much at all. How about you play a game on normal, if you don't like it you adjust it to be harder or easier. That sounds like a way better idea then just reducing the number of options, that is just going to make people go on the forums and bitch about making the fewer difficulties the way they like them.[/quote] For some unknown share of us who are still hoping to love this game, stri

Since folks are getting feisty about this again, I'll see the LessThan18-used-to-be-marrying-age thing and raise with "Why can't I make a betrothal treaty as soon as I have a kid in a cradle? Sure, it shouldn't be worth as much as an immediate marriage. But more than a few European aristocrats had their spouses chosen for them when they were still with wet nurses and nannies, and some of those deals were important factors in who was on what side in a given war."

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="6" id="2869444"]200 turns seems fine to me, if it was 50, I would have a billion grand kids.[/quote] This is one of those things behind why I ended up preferring turns to weeks/seasons even though I wish the game had a meaningful calendar. Like some other aspects of the game, the 'age' of adulthood for offspring really needs to be scaled to map size. GalCiv II has similar problems, the most-complained about possibly being ship speeds. A reasonable

[quote who="Uvah" reply="23" id="2869344"]Here's an interesting question. Why did they call it Facebook? When I first heard about it visions of a face opening and looking inside to see the person's gray matter. Weird.[/quote] If you're not just joking...they took the name from the directories some colleges make for incoming students.

[quote who="Philly0381" reply="2" id="2868896"]The best way, stay off of Facebook. One day, when you aren't paying attention, someone will pull a 'Gotcha' on you. [/quote] The OP's point about the younguns is hard to ignore. Sure, the best thing to do about Facebook is ignore it (and block the domain if your browser supports that). But if you're going to wallow in that online orgy of self-profiling for mass marketers and self-marketing for scammers, best take as many pre