Any changes to espionage? I'm really not liking the way it is right now.

Wow, you guys have really outdone yourselves! Looking forward to 1.7!

Not that anyone has time for changes just for fun. But, what do you think of having different pictures of the various ambassadors, like the Drengin guy on vacation at a volcano, or the Alterian Woman looking like we just woke her up, or someone sleeping at their desk, with the text saying "i was just resting my eyes, what can i do for you?".

of course ther are much more important feature to add but i thought this could make the screen more funny.

Would it be possible to let the minor races do some colonization? First, it strikes me as unbelieveable that minors wouldn't try to grap planets just like everyone else. Second, allowing minor races to settle a few planets would open up new strategic options.

Leadman

Awesome. I'm glad you put what we wanted in DA. This is one of the reasons I like Stardock. Usually, updates from other game developers just fix bugs.

Great Job guys, this looks awesome  

Etrius

BTW: I have one more idea. Since anomolies return now, there should be a core ship design that is an enhanced version of the survey ship, but has weapons and defenses, just like the Enterprise.  

Wouldn't the AI, not knowing they were worthless, still waste time chasing after them?

You can create a ship in ship builder that appears very simular to the origional survey ship and you can put as many weapons and defenses that your tech level allows. Just add a survey module and a few other options and you have your survey ship.

Don't forget about the UP issue: You can have ownership of anomalies in your territory.

Right now that UP subject doesn't do anythng considering that by the time they vote on that, all of the anomalies are gone.

Question on the Lease screen. The payoff amount is equal to the amount you would spend if you rode the loan out for the entire time. What incentive is there then to payoff? Or am I asking a question on something that is just a "look at the new UI for this"?

If you didn't want to fully implement how much of a balance would be remaining on the loan, perhaps just a flat % off of the full cost if you rode it out?

Oh yes, please give us back the possibility to do "passive" espionage like in DL. Or, if that's too difficult to integrate with the current DA system, give us the possibility to place "dormant" agents, that just would gather intelligence and wouldn't do damage to buildings.

Dormant agents would be somewhat cheaper and could not be removed by the targeted race (instead the targeted race could research a slightly extended counter-espionage branch of the technology tree that at each step would double the required number of enemy dormant agents to gather the same amount of intelligence from you.

Dormant agents would have a maintenance cost per week just like ships.

Placement of dormant agents: just enable the player to place agents on empty, unused and unterraformable squares in the pop-up screen where you also place active agents that do damage buildings. Through the same screen you would of course be able remove your own agents if you cant bear their costs.

The shortcomings this approach is of course that a race that is being heavily spied on by other races might not have enough free squares on its planets for your own agents.

I tend to agree. Right now surveying is kind of a silly race at the start. Making some substantial research necessary for it would add more choices to the game - the anomalies could be increased in value a little to make up for the necessary investments.

When I think to myself, "what else could they do to DA to make it any better?" your improvements in 1.7 cover the lot.

I would be happy if this was the last patch we see, although knowing you lot I dought it.

Edit:
You should know the only thing that slows down my computer (7400 go) is when a ship explodes. Try to optimize this if you can. It is not a problem with simplified explosions though. Oh, and I'm on XP.

Edit 2:
How about making the anomalies only see-able/identifiable with survey ships. This will make stumbling apon one more exciting.

Awesome awesome awesome. Any other game company would call this much new stuff an expansion and charge you for it

Geeze - You guys are awesome - yet another stunning update in the works! Love the idea of the lease manager - I use that option quite alot so I'm looking forward to an enhanced system.

I would have to second the issue about starbase weapons though, I've yet to start DA as I've only just finished GC 2-DL (awesome game!). I have read that the weapons systems have been improved on DA anyway - making cap ships more useful against swarms of fighters - but nothing about starbase weapons having the same bonuses.

Anyhow - Stardock, you're starting to show up other game devs here! - I'll be looking for to buying your next game.

Hands up for SupCom Zoom Functions.
That is the best map/view/zoom feature developed in the last years.

Even as a veteran player (I've been playing since Dec. 2005), I find it hard to see my base (before bonuses), effective (after all bonuses), and cost (some bonuses are not fully paid for) of my military, social, and research on the economic screen. Also my research bonuses are not reflected on the research screen.

I also would like "passive" espionage returned to the game.

The problem with removing the survey ship from the start of the game is currently, for performance reasons the AI was made to not value sensors which places it at a disadvantage. For example, getting Sensors Level 1 gives you a +1 to sensor range and allows you to build additional survey ships to explore anomalies before the AI can get to them. Since the AI won't research sensors and build survey ships, then the human player would get all the anomalies. So unless a change is made to the AI, the AI needs to start with a survey ship but it would make more sense for it to be a cargo hull ship.

Finally, as discussed in the following threads:
Researching with Factories and Building with Labs is Crazy!
Labs, Factories, and Focus
the current sliders and focus system is being used by advanced players in ways I'm sure Brad never intended. Switching to the model I suggest in the original post of the first thread is likely beyond the scope of a 1.7 release (given the need for rebalancing) but I hope Brad will consider it for GalCiv III.

I agree to these issues. The bonuses aren't transparent enough (how about bonuses and focused production, by the way - is this working as intended?), I'm not a huge fan of DA espionage personally, and a different slider model should be considered at least for a GC3. It reminds me of Hearts of Iron 1 sometimes: There you had just one "unity" for both research and production. Thus first your people researched like crazy and then you sent them in the factories to build sophisticated stuff, kind of like switching from 100%/0% to 0%/100% spending.

Schweet! The thumbs up would be there for sure.

It will be very interesting to see the new starbase pods, any chance of zone of control(military bases) being in the plans?

I do have 1.6 and the latest nVidia drivers. I think the problem is that I'm playing the original GC2 (non-DA) campaign right now and the patch only fixes the DA portion. Am I correct in that assumption?

Yes, 1.6 is a DA update. DL is still at 1.5 and does not include the new engine changes.

Don't ruin DL's mini-map! It is better and easier to read than DA's (at 1.6).

will one of the lease options carry a prepayment penalty?   



sweet crackers!!! you guys are freakin AWESOME!

At risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, it would be great if StarDock could make the changes necessary for the updated version of Kryo's hull mod, as detailed here:

WWW Link

I agree that the whole production systems needs a big revival. Most new players would be fairly sensible to reason "Industrial Sectors? That means better industry. I'll be able to produce more ships with less time/money. Let's research that." Then they wonder why their economy crashes. Similarly they probably don't realise that they're paying to use all the production bonuses granted by starbases and power plants.

The whole system is unfriendly and unintuitive and, in the long term future of the franchise, needs to be resolved IMHO.