Sakhari

The changes to the market are probably the biggest issue right now. After the 1.03 patch, the only attention you'll have to pay to your economy is in making sure to throw a trade port in every available logistics slot. Credits will be your main source of crystal and metal through the black market. Beyond that, most of the other changes are either good or inconsequential in a single-player game so if you can live with a broken market for a while, I'd get it.

And then the morale thing clicks in... Disregard. As to the ideas, though, I think Uranium has a much better solution for the game as it is now. Tweaking existing values makes more sense to me (and is far more likely to happen) than adding completely new ones like morale and such. That is, of course, assuming anything needs tweaking at all and aside from late-game surivability, I still don't think that's the case.

Yes, I know what dancing is but I thought we were talking about the ability to colonize. Anyway, I figured I was talking to a newer, inexperienced player (No offense. Plenty of new people around) but since that doesn't seem to be the case... I'm not trying to argue that the Akkan is the best choice, especially due to colonize. Again, I'm just highlighting reasons that many people like using it for that purpose and yes, convenience and lighter micromanagement is a big one. For the sa

Amending my post a little... I thought you were listing culture as a win condition but on the second read, it looks like you were listing it as more of a tool which, I agree, is an interesting addition to the mix. Though, I still feel that this is just a semantics game.

[quote]#2 Players can win through multiple paths. I won a game on-line with culture on Saturday for instance.[/quote] I'm sure someone could probably win a game by sitting around and scratching their balls until the opponent got bored and left but in reality, this isn't a very effective way to play. Not that I don't appreciate culture being a feature (I rather like what it adds to the game) but only against the most inept (or already defeated) opponents are you actually going to win a

Well, it's still better than the 'nothing' you'd get otherwise and you'd still have to pay for that research as well. I'm not saying it's a huge savings but it's something you wouldn't be getting otherwise. And just for the sake of clarity, I'm not saying colony frigates are useless either. I'm simply highlighting reasons why people use colony caps.

1) Colony ships take an eternity to recharge Antimatter and they lose a huge chunk of it every time they make a jump. Cap ships with colonize are much more likely to be ready to colonize right when you want them to. 2) Free extractors/cheaper upgrades (I forget what the Vasari bonus was), over time, will add up to quite a bit more than a colony frigate is worth. 3) The colonizing cap ships generally have pretty damned good abilities on top of being able to colonize. Even if

I expect that I'll probably play it for a week or two before moving on to something more my style, much like I did with Warcraft III.

While I have no argument against there being more options, I think it's generally assumed that 'normal' settings in each of the offered options are the standard that the game is being balanced around. If a game is going to support any sort of competitive multiplayer, there does need to be some kind of standard. And if it's not in the 'vision' for this game to support that kind of play, that's fine too but someone should probably say so to keep from stringing people who want that sort o

If you're not interested in multiplayer, then this patch probably won't be 'that' bad for you. Many of the complaints are justified but against the AI, it's still easy to win with any faction and several of the other changes (more effective culture and Phase Inhibitors, for example) are pretty nice. I'd still recommend grabbing it. The market changes are a little annoying but I'd wager that'll be getting fixed in short order.

[quote]I agree - it isnt balanced to watch all that lovely firepower booming away for ages to knock off small units[/quote] This thread has nothing at all to do with balance. What they do is more or less balanced as-is. Now, I could agree that they don't behave as space-behemoth-y as one might expect but as was said, doubling all of the factors you're highlighting isn't going to help actual balance at all. They already have a lot more punch than any other basic ship and their