I am trying. I has a nice rig while back but it got fried with a power underage. I could not afford to fix it then, and now any of the hardware is just obsolete. I need a new system and have been looking around, but a good gaming computer is going to cost (for what I want) a min of $1800, up to $4300 for an Alienware rig. I really am sick and tired of running in to requirement problems, so what I want to get is not likely to be compromised.

I am on limited income and have some other financial (cow excrements) going on making it take some time to get it funded. I know what I am using right now is... ahem, not a gaming computer. I am very happy the game even runs at all on it and was concerned about using a beta build. But so far (and thats not very far) I have not han any problems.

The good thing though, is if someone else has a similar computer and is having problems, perhaps the system settings shown in the debug file might clue them to what needs to be monkied with on their system and what may be best left alone. It runs on this Compuke, with those settings, with no real problems. That info has to be usefull from some point of view.

Too many time the only thing forum readers see is systems having trouble. I thought it might be nice to read someone show their boat anchor running the game without a hitch.

Come to think of it. The game running on this might just be the reason i am running in to all the other hassles in my life. I used up ALL of my good luck tokens getting the game to run and life declared "open season" on my wallet.

Geez. I read your post and not the quote. my bad.

When I installed the game originally, I went to the compaq site to get all the current drivers for this system, and dowlloaded what they had.

This might be the last set up of it's kind know to exists anyway. lol. No reason to expect driver updates for onboard items no longer being supported or used. The 04 gc drivers ARE the most current from compaq, and as far as I know I have to get any drivers for this system, from them.

Alienware are expensive, true. But using them to design a template of what I (think) I want and seeing where else I can get about the set-up is usefull. Too many times I have taked the word of and assurances from the stores that I was getting a good system that would have no problems running the current games (twice!)............ ya, shame on me.

I'm pretty happy with Beta 3A so far. Constructors tend to sit by the planet that made them instead of going to that planet's rally point but other than that it's pretty good.

Well, for my first post, I'm going to agree with Marcathonas; either build your own, or buy the parts and have someone put it together for you. I just built a system a couple of months ago for $1000: AMD 3200+, 1GB DDR 400 RAM, Nvidia 6600GT video card, a DVD drive and a CD burner, 19" monitor, Windows XP, and a 250GB SATA hard drive. All of the stuff was bought from Newegg.com, their prices are incredible, and you get it within 3 days. I actually put everything together while a friend of mine stood over my shoulder and watched to make sure I didn't make any serious mistakes. That cost me a chinese dinner and a bottle of Beefeater gin. I highly recommend doing this, it will make upgrading your system easier, if and when you decide to do so.

It's called brand recognition. Dell makes gaming rigs that are every bit as good as Alienware's, but people don't see Dell as a manufacturer of gaming PCs, so they changed their strategy and bought a recognized leader (if not THE leader) in high-performance gaming rigs.

You know, they aren't a purely game company. They have other things to do, like keepsafe which is the reason it was delayed. They do not have to do anything for you, they chose to update free out of their own kindness. They don't abandon games, they charge nothing for bug fixes or extra features, yet you, you whiny little ingrate, start feeling like it's your right to get these things? The only reason I haven't written down a longer reply is because the language involved in my original, intended reply would have got me banned. Shut up, and let the devs release it when it's ready. They owe you nothing.

I don't normally jump into these types of discussions but reading your post made me do just that. While it may not be the way all game developers do things it does not change the fact that they do owe us something. I paid money to purchase a product and expect it to be of a certain level of quality. I do not demand that it be perfect from the beginning as I do understand how large programming projects work and that a perfect program is usually a small and simple one. That does not change the fact that the release version of GalCiv2 has some issues that need to be addressed. While I do not believe that fussing at the developers is the way to go in this case, berating the customers that have a right to expect quality isn't either. If everyone assumes they don't deserve a quality product and accepts that, then all products will end up being crap. On the other hand, I am not at all saying Stardock has not done a good job. I like the game and am so far happy with the support after purchase. I praise the effort they give in improving the product and acknowledge that you do not always get that when you purchase software. But I cannot agree with your comment that they do not owe us anything. They owe us what we purchased which is a quality product that has few bugs and no major bugs that keep me from using it as it was intended.

I have never understood how people can read what they want into things, but such is life. My post is only intended to say that a consumer should get what he pays for and not be bashed because he demands it. In this case, I am not complaining about the state of the game nor of the support received after purchase. I am saying that a consumer has the right to say that his/her purchase is not up to their expectations. The quote I referred to basically states that a consumer does not have a right to a level of expectations of quality and that it is wrong to try to hold the producer to that expectation no matter what it is. The gist of the quote was:

They owe you nothing.

That concept is simply wrong. If we as a consumer are willing to allow that concept to be part of our experience, then we deserve every piece of crap we get. I agree that quality is a moving target as it is what I, the consumer, define it to be. That is an unfortunate part of selling products to individuals as we are all different and have different expectations. That does not mean that becasue its difficult for a developer to hit a moving quality target that he should not be expected to do so.

Now back to my thoughts on the prodcut before everyone else gets the wrong impression. I like GalCiv2. I am pleased with my purchase and do not regret it. I am happy with the continued support so far and agree that there are other software out there that does not receive this level. But I do not feel that I am getting a gift I do not deserve. As a consumer, I expect high quality and do not apologize for demanding it and no one has the right to say I can't.

Stardock's position is that the shipping game is pretty solid.  No product or service is perfect.

We also released an update called 1.0X. It's availble for download now.

Stardock is working on 1.1 because we are dedicated to the product. It is mostly a new feature update. I can't think of any significant "bugs" that are "fixed" in 1.1. There are plenty of glitches and bugs that most users would never encounter that we fixed in the process of working on 1.1, but if you find 1.0X to be "buggy" then it's unlikely we'll ever be able to satisfy you.

We apologize that 1.1 wasn't out as quickly as we intended. We added some additional features and we wanted to make sure that we did not release an update that introduced bugs. 

(Pardon the doublepost , but I wrote this on another thread but I think it was more appropriate here)

What you have here is one of the reasons that many of us LOVE Stardock.

Brad the HMFIC there has had the philosophy that dedicated customer support through continued work on the released software works to everybodys advantage. Other larger companies might work through the softwrae development cycle, including the first Beta version prior to final release of their software, and then might offer a patch or two to fix problems that might have come up after general release, and thats it. Thats the last time the developers work at it. So long goodbye. If you don't like it, buy the next version at full retail in a couple years, if there is a sequel.

Stardock is different. They treat us like adults and co-developers providing input. With every game they release they commit resources to support it in patches for a long period of time after the game's release. They not only fix bugs, that crash the game, or are causing problems, but they take our input and tweak the gameplay, add features, improve the game interface and design and listen to us to allow their game to reach a greater potential. And because they can use the feedback of many enthusiastic gamers, who understand this philosophy, they get useful feedback.

If you download only the released versions of the game through the Stardock interface, you are getting the original retail version plus the official tested update patches. If however, you do like many of us do, and live on the wild side, and enable the pre-release version downloads, you can see the newest tweaks and improvements and improve the gameplay a lot. The tradeoff is that the Beta versions are not fully debugged, and may have occassional problems. If you play the Beta and it crashes, you can post the Debugg.err file and provide some insight into the problems so that the guys at Stardock can fix it.

Unlike most game companies, the guys working on Galciv2 update the game constantly, tell us what they are doing and provide us access to these Betas.

So the reason one is playing the Beta versions is that it is the latest version of the game, (a bit unstable maybe) but with the latest and greatest gameplay and interface improvements. And by playing it you can help kill the bugs and provide feedback.

By the Way "HMFIC" is Head Motherf**ker in Charge" Frogboy rocks !