Thoughts on latest build.

from Stardock Forums


For an early Beta the game works great, still lots of bugs but
the OS/2 version which by the way I still plays was buggy.
The game is playable and as addictive as the original now is going
to be a must have game when finished.

GC crashed only once for me so far and I think that ships are
still getting lost. I watched a Colony ship head to a system I wanted
an Alien Civilization got there first the Colony ship stayed stuck at this system.

The things I hate so far.
1)
RANGES !!!@@#@
What the hell when you travel through space you only burn fuel when you
leave and stop. You should be able to go anywhere. My scouts found a great
system had a planet rated 32 but my colony ship could not reach it. I had to
colonize some weak planets on the way and by the time I reached the planet it
was gone. Where are the space station and how can I use them ?
Can ranges be set as an option as in the OS/2 game ?
I am a technician so know nothing about copy right law but can you use Homer ?


2)
Can not manage planets as I would like.
Hit the planets buttons you have a BAR on the right side with pretty pictures of
your planets but I takes forever to scroll the planets. There is no scroll bar you hit
the down arrow see the next planet the top planet is gone and it take forever to go through all
the planets. You guys have to know what I mean about at TEXT box OS/2 has them.


3)
Navigating ships, auto plot works "maybe a bug or two" but how can you remember where all your ships are going.
If I am at war I may have 100 ships in space but none of the maps show which ships are on auto pilot
and give there headings. Can not the right mouse button do anything ? and what about having an option
that allows you to send your ships back to there home world ? The one screen that does show ships now
is useless. Press the ships buttons and little blue dots one per ship are seen on your map which is black these dots
are not visible unless you stare. Can they be made more visible ?


4) Tweaking the tech tree, last night I played nice so one of the technologies I should not of seen is MASTER RACE.
but even if good vs. evil thing is not working it takes too long latter in the game to research technologies I am researching
I think Planet Destruction and I am told the project would be completed in 2200 months which is completely unreasonable.
I find no more research anomalies I will never complete this technology


5) The social project teraforming gee where would I use this hey how about weak planet.
but guess what it takes at least 500 turns to complete the project and cost to much to buy.
Can this be lowered to be made a little less expensive?.

6)Where are the CHEAT codes?
201 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Please bear in mind that it's a beta with a long time to release/perfection.

1) Im not too fond of them either, but when we discussed it there were much more pro-ranges people than the ones against. I'm still hoping it will be optional before the game goes gold tho.
The Homer-pic is just a placeholder - did you really expect it to be in the game when it goes gold? There are many things that will be changed before then.

2) You can scroll between the systems/planets using the arrow-symbols when you have the planet-view open. Click on the globe to shift between systems and planets. The planet-list is on their todo I think. It sure needs to be taken care of.

4) SD havent put in all good/bad code yet. Far from it. Guess you'll have to wait and see.

5) How weak was that planet??? I havent used it on any weaker planet than planetclass 14. What was the class?

6) Doubt any implemented yet.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I know the game is Beta and much is going to be added. Just giving my feedback, you must want user feedback or you would not bother with a beta. If I state the obvious maybe I am wasting my time.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
1) We will be working on starbases next. Fredrick is correct in saying that a majority of the people here wanted ship ranges. There was a poll of the beta testers, and 56 people voted. 8 were undecided. 11 didn't want ranges. 37 wanted ranges. Fuel is not the only consideration in space. You have to be able to carry enough food and oxygen. Hydroponics bays alone aren't enough. You also have to have an energy source for things like lights and gravity (if you spend too much time in freefall your bones get too soft to support you in gravity), facilities for people to keep them from going stark raving mad, etc. You could put some of them in cyrogenic sleep, but you still have to have someone awake in case something goes wrong with the computer. There are limiting factors to how far you can travel. Technology would eventually be developed to extend your range.

I do not know if ranges will be optional, because it would affect the scoring system. Do we penalize people who don't use ranges? Is it fair if we don't?

Homer will definitely not be in the final game. He is just a filler graphic and a joke.

2. We are still working on the planet list and the ship list.

3. On the larger galaxy sizes, there's not a lot we can do about the size of the ships on the minimap. You can, however, zoom in and out on the minimap. We do have to get scrollbars in so that you'll be able to scroll easier when the map is zoomed in. Also, you can use the ship list to see which ships are on autopilot (clicking on an entry centers on the ship). Implementing a way to see the destination clearly marked is on our list.

4) Fredrik is again correct in saying that we haven't put the good/evil code into the tech tree yet, and we realize that the tech tree needs more balancing. I think that at least some of the techs which aren't fully implemented were given artificially high costs to keep it from being an issue.

5) If you start with Soil Enhancement and then Habitat Improvement, you can get the planet up to a better point before terraforming it. Social improvements that increase productivity and morale would probably also help. But as I've said before, we're still working on the balance.

6) We don't really have any cheat codes. Cheat codes started out as a way to help debug things back when people had to use dos command line compilers. If you're running through a debugger, cheat codes become less necessary. If I took time out from bug fixing and implementing new features to put in cheat codes for you and maybe like 1 other person who has asked for them, I would also have to put in code to make sure that your high scores could not be submitted.

We do want feedback, even if you are stating the obvious or being redundant. Please realize that Fredrik is not a Stardock employee and that your frustration should not be taken out on him. He's not getting paid for it. He is, however, trying to be helpful. If someone tells you "it's on the list" or something similar, we're not trying to quash you, we're trying to let you know that the beta testers are being heard and that we ARE going to take care of the problem. I probably put more time than I should replying to bug reports and stuff, but I want you guys to feel how important you are to us. We couldn't do this without you. If you would prefer, I could just start responding to all of your bug reports saying, "noted."

--Cari
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the detailed reply.

As far as seeing ships on the map if you press the ship button and the ships location appear as blue on a white instead of a black background would the ships be more visible ?

I am really not that frustrated after all GC is still an early beta.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Early Faster-Than-Light technology would burn fuel because you are trying to accelerate to faster than light speeds......so the acceleration to faster than light speeds, the energy neeeded to protect the ship from the effects of lightspeed travel, and the power burned to slow down would consume a tremendous amount of energy.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Fuel will always be used for support functions, such as air recycling and cleaning, waste water reclamation, food preparation, etc., etc., etc.,

Besides, maintaining the warp bubble (Star Trek style) needed to enable FTL travel may (or may not) require energy, hence fuel. We really don't know now because the technology has yet to be developed.

If FTL requires something other than the warp bublle proposed by Star Trek, then we have no knowledge of the energy requirements.

In short, it is all a guess, something where any game creator has to decide what rules he/she wishes to impose in the game.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Incidentally, I agree with Technician for the most part and we are aware of those issues.

Regarding the picture of Homer, I needed an image to stand in for the error dialog until the graphics people can provide one.

We'll probably allow ranges to be turned off but those games won't count in the metaverse scoring.

Good/Evil not in yet. In fact the tech tree is going to have to go through a major overhaul shortly that I'm not looking forward to since we have to categorize the techs too.

I have a long LONG list of usability issues with GalCiv that we're going to work on.

Just a partial quickie list:

1) The planet list is terrible. Very inefficient.
2) Very annoying to scroll through lists (there should always be a thumb and the mouse wheel needs to work)
3) It is a pain to have to go to the details screen to see governors.
4) Not enough info displayed on ship lists/planet lists.
5) Middle mouse button needs to be used for stuff.
6) Useful data needs to be displayed around a star system (if it's your economic capital, show a little star by it for instance, give users option to display what star system is building)
7) Make double clicking on a star system bring up the first colonized planet in it.
8) HOT KEYS FOR EVERYTHING.

Basically, I am a very VERY lazy gamer, I want to be able to get to stuff easily and quickly. Those are some of the things we need to work on in GalCiv.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks, Admiral CariElf and Avatar Frogboy, for the time you have just spent writing those lengthy replies. It motivates the sailors & marines...I have just purchased the new game "Medieval: Total War". The very first time I wanted to exit the game, it froze when I clicked "yes". No alt/tab & no control/alt/delete possible: complete static ice!...I had experienced an almost similar problem with the GalCiv beta before build 1Z. When I clicked "quit" within the save/load menu, the program froze (with a "debug library" popup emerging)...but I could then access the Windows Task Manager to close the program...I am happy to report that this "quit-button" bug does not occur anymore in the most recent 1Z build...In what concerns M:TW, this is a finished product that might have an exit-game bug. Go figure...