GCX Beta3 Commentary

Ack! I have to finish my current game first, then I'll post a rundown on what's new.

~SDC~

My first observation is the inclusion of a button below the purchase ship button in the planet screen. Clicking this button (its the blue button that doesn't do anything in previous versions) enables you to switch from planet view to system view. You can view all of your planets in one click to viewing all of the planets in one particular system. However, it could exist in previous versions, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. Could someone verify this for me?

I just confirmed that same behavior in Beta 2, so I don't believe it is unique to Beta 3.

~SDC~

For those interested solely in the cheat keys:

CNTRL-S: Whatever tech you are researching is instantly completed.

CNTRL-C: Clones whatever ship you have selected. This really helps loads when entering those sectors with 5 inhabitable systems.

CNTRL-V: When highlighting a ship, seems to produce a ship that is in no way connected to it, i.e. I don't know why that particular ship was chosen. CNTRL-V on a colony ship will produce a corvette, on a colony ship it will make a scout, a scout will make a battleship, a battleship will make a sensor drone. And so on.

CNTRL-L: Will autocolonize all habitable systems nearest to you as well as starbase resources. Seems to have a limit of three to four sectors from the center of your beginning sector. Though, it will do the same for all of the major AIs.

CNTRL-U: Reveal entire map.

Note: CNTRL-V now seems to instantly produce one of the following: BattleAxe, Defender, Starfighter, Corvette. Order is random I think.

[Message Edited]

Any way to trigger a Random Event?

*crosses his fingers*

~SDC~

Sorry, HawaiiFive-O,

I haven't found a way to trigger them.

But I'm sure I haven't found all the keys yet.

When researching a tech, the limit for months remaining is no longer 1000; so far I've seen a limit of 1275. Hopefully this corrects prior bugs concerning Months Remaining.

Using cheats too much will make your morality turn evil.

CNTRL-B: Produces a battlship.
[Message Edited]

Really?
I wouldn't have guessed.


[Message Edited]

CNTRL-T: Click on a ship. Move the mouse somewhere else on the map. Press CNTRL-T and selected ship moves there.

CNTRL-H,J,F,K,G? - I pressed one of these keys in while selecting a social project and nearly every project on the selected planet was completed. I tried to reproduce it but I'm not quite sure what I exactly did. Building social projects though possibly raises your morality level to something positive.

yay! just read that one of the cheat keys makes you skip the colonization period and divides the inhabitable planets evenly among the races.

guess this means i'll never be able to submit a finished game since i am always gonna use this feature!

Yes, I think it's a pity that Brad doesn't want these scores to be submitted to metaverse because, IMHO, it's no more a cheat that Ctrl-N.

With regards to the map revealing cheat code (Ctl-U), what's stopping me from saving the game. enabling cheat, revealing the map, then returning to my save?

The Visual C++ library, MSVCRTD.DLL, needs to be added to the distribution. GALCIV will not start unless there is a version of this DLL avaialable.

~SDC~

Reference to post #4 from Cirrhosis. Should the cheat keys be available now on beta 1.09(b)? or are you listing ones that will be available in the future? They are not working for me so someone might enlighten me Thanks in advance.

Sorry to waste the space. A little reading on Stardock solve my post #14 mystery.

Hopefully, doing so would place the cheat tag in all associated saves with the same game tag on it. That would put a damper in that.

Save-scumming would still work (rename the save directory, and voila).

To be perfectly honest, if someone is willing to go to all that trouble (save-scumming, etc) to reveal the map, so be it. It's hardly the most devastating thing in the universe - they could get the same effect by saving, then cranking military production to 100% with 100% spending and just producing an armada of scouts to explore the universe, then reloading afterwards.

That's true for smaller maps Bug but you can't scan the whole map with scouts on bigger maps because you run out of range.

On a Gigantic, I can see the entire map, all the AIs starting locations, all resources and good planets. All simply for a 30sec effort. The advantage is very high.

Ray, you can already see their starting locations right at the start using sector influence.

True if the AI are close by vincible, but unlikely on big maps such as Gigantic.

You can check influence on squares you haven't explored using that quantitative influence button (right next to the sector number at the top of the screen). Just search the map with that at the start of the game and you can find the AIs' home sectors.

This was posted on the forum some time ago, I don't remember exactly when or where, so I thought you knew already. Otherwise I would have given a non-cryptic explanation in my first post--I thought I was just reminding you! I obliquely referred to it in my single-sector maso AAR too.
[Message Edited]

That's true, I didn't know that. I was refering to the colours that we see when we start.

Checking every square would be tedious for very big maps though.

You only need to check the sectors near stars, and of those, only one in nine. (The AI's influence affects its home sector and all adjacent ones.)
[Message Edited]

Ok, just submitted a Crippling Gigantic under 1.091.

Tried to play in a similar manner as my last Crippling Gigantic under 1.05. All AIs pure evil, me Saintly. Researched all techs, got all TGs/wonders except one. Year of completion 2200.

Score was about 5k less than my 1.05 score. So if the difficulty weightage is the only factor changed in the scoring, it would seem that there is something wrong.

But this is just one game so I've try playing a Maso next.