Starstriker1

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Actually, the Star Trek model has often been compared to the Alcubierre drive, due to similarity in terms and the general ideas behind them. However, if you check the wikipedia article on the Alcubierre drive, you'll find that the Star Trek scriptwriters haven't gone with that. They leave the technical specifications of the technology intentionally vague, for plot reasons. Suffice it to say, the Alcubierre drive is a more likely option than a warp drive simply because the former is base

Reply to uncertain, long term rewards for ethical decisions in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

No, ethical choices shouldn't be entirely predictable in their consequences. How many times throughout history has a bad decision come back to haunt the society that made it and assumed they could get away from it? How many times has a seemingly counterproductive decision had unexpected benefits? A good example is enforcing environmental standards actually having an INCREASE in an economy instead of the predicted decrease, since efficiency increased in the responsible industries and new spin of

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm aware of what modern Ion drives are. The issue mentioned in the tech description is stability, so however much weaker it is thatn conventional realspace engines, if it can be used while using a hyperdrive but other engines cannot, it has very practical applications. There are plenty of ways to justify it not being a step backwards, the biggest one being that the ion drive is an ADDITION to the hyperdrive engine, not a self sufficient engine in and of itself. In the sense th

Reply to uncertain, long term rewards for ethical decisions in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

My idea was less about the specific values and more about the idea that you aren't necessarily going to know the consequences... right now, its more a mathematics challenge (albiet very fuzzy math) than an issue of ideology.

uncertain, long term rewards for ethical decisions in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Good, ethical choices are generally not entirely selfless. They often have, or might be expected to have, long term benefits despite short term gains. Evil is usually the opposite (with exceptions), where you take short term gain without consideration of consequences. This is partially modelled already, in that races are more likely to like you if you're good aligned, and that many nasty events can happen to evil civs. However, it might be more interesting (and perhaps more rewarding) i

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Iceman, for the record, I was talking about a system (the Alcubierre drive... it's on wikipedia if you want to know more) that isn't a creation of scifi, but an attempt by a mathematician to run Einstein's equations in reverse. It has some wierd energy requirements, but it's not primarily fantasy like most Sci-fi's methods of interstellar propulsion (including star trek). Also, if you checked the tech descriptions, you'd realize that the ion engine and impulse drive techs aren't that mu

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Depending on the model hyperdrive is based on, it could be entirely impossible to attack a ship in transi However, for navigational purposes, a ship would have to stop at some point to get it's bearings, since it would be basically flying blind while in transit. That'd be when you shoot them...

Reply to Sensors Question in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I disagree. For combat ships, you often don't have the room for significant sensor groups, and the sensor ability allows them to operate effectively WITHOUT needing a spotter of some kind. In Dark Avatar, it's really useful if you have the first strike ability.

Reply to Targeting systems in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'd personally prefer a different branch, if only because the sensor branch already serves a specific purposse already, and it be putting too much functionality into a single branch of research. Besides, targetting technology isn't merely a matter of accurately seeing your target and predicting its motion, it also includes fine tuning the accuracy of your weapons and processing all the data coming in quickly and efficiently. It could very logically be put as an offshoot of sensors. Also

Reply to Minor Race gripes in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The minors could seriously use an update. They don't have to have all the bells and whistles and personality of the larger races (though the Snathi and Dark Yor in particular could benefit from some personality), but they should still be reasonably competent races that merely did not get started fast enough or have the resources to join in the initial rush with the other races. If they're made competent enough, then there should be the possibility of them becoming major powers should th

Reply to ideas/suggestions after a recent game in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

3) You're right, the defenders can have a lot of advantages and still take a bigger beating than the invaders. However: *Not all citizens are trained soldiers, and may even be liabilities *The attacker can land wherever and however he wants on the planet, meaning that the defenders are spread very thin *The attacker has full space superiority. I imagine that troop transports would be a hell of a lot of support for an army on the ground. 5)A better way to do it might be to si

Reply to Targeting systems in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Another thought. If the sizemod is substantial enough that tiny hulls get the targetting countermeasures much cheaper than battleships, that could make tiny hulls viable again (since multiple ships now get wiped out in a single blast, making them pretty useless). This is expecially true if the countermeasures could reduce a ship's minimum roll past 0 (where any negative number simply doesn't do any damage).

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm aware that faster than c speed is impossible, but where space folding techniques are used, the object doesn't HAVE to go faster than light to cover distance faster than a photon. If I've read stuff correctly, ships don't actually fight while in hyperdrive, so the only spacefolding going on is for weapons that require it.

Reply to I don't like using small ships at all in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I've found a use for the tiny hulls. Stick a large fleet of them by a souped up military starbase, preferably with some defenses on each ship (like the cheap but bulky armour that starship defenses gives you). Such ships gets a considerable defense and attack boost EACH, and since you can put a lot of them into a fleet, a military starbase will make a fleet of small ships much more effectives than the same starbase will make a fleet of dreadnoughts. ...I can see some potential in them f

Reply to Minor Race gripes in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I actually found a minor that successful invaded two planets... plus the one I gave them, they had a four planet empire and a considerable military. Not that they did much with it.

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think that the ship viewer is not representative of the actual combat, and is more of a special effects, make it look pretty kind of thing. I don't really consider it relevant for anything more than a visual treat. Given the tech descriptions, it appears that the intent was to be somewhat realistic as far as the technological and environmental limitations go. Thanks to that, the lasers aren't instantaneous, the mass drivers may be moving FASTER than the lasers, depending on how the hy

Reply to Targeting systems in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It appears that in Soviet Russia, Starstriker misunderstands YOU!

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Actually, i don't even know how you would controll the trajectory of a singularity? As in, what is stopping a targeted ship from simply turning away from it? At least missiles can trach a target, and beam weapons are instantaneous. First, beam weapons aren't instantaneous. <img src="http://images.stardock.com/gc2/T_DL/smiles/Wink.gif" border=0 AL

Reply to So, what will be the AI improvements in DA? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Even a focused world needs some extra facilities. A research world needs it's factories so that it can upgrade reasonably fast, for instance, and farms + entertainment centers are important to any economic strategy, allowing you larger tax bases and higher tax rates.

Reply to Targeting systems in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

You misunderstand me. ...in reference to my targetting system, such a system (whose goal it is to reduce the minimum damage an enemy ship might do) would be involved in combat as a counter to targeting systems placed onto ships to increase minimum damage! Sensor jammers, technology that makes "ghosts" and visual cloaking systems would all fall under the category of "making it harder for the enemy to shoot you with accuracy". But that's getting into specifics. The compo

Reply to Mass Drivers in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Mass Drivers - Not too effective, but cheap... until you get up to the good stuff, like nano rippers. It takes a little longer to get effective ships. Missile Weapons - Very powerful, very expensive. With almost every generation of missile, even in jumps between missile types like photonic torpedoes to photon torpedoes, the size gets smaller, and the damage often increases along with it... but the costs are always going up. The result? Very powerful ships that cost a lot to field. <

Reply to Super Pirates in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The Space Pirates are attacking! Quick, someone call Samus Aran!

Reply to Targeting systems in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Eh, I just meant "sensor ghosts" as names for possible countermeasures on the ship (like point defense and ECM are for missile defense), not as any special effect on radar or long range sensors. How does the current setup require the minimum damage to be lowered? As it is, it's already a minimum of one per weapon... aside from making stuff miss entirely, how much more CAN it be lowered?

Reply to 1-attack weapons cause constant damage in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Perfect accuracy on the scales of modern combat, sure. But in combat over distances of several light seconds? Again, that's a huge challenge, requiring good computers and even better sensors. Not to mention the ability to aim weapons with very, very fine precision. A hundredth of a degree variation on the orientation of the weapon will make the shot miss the target by several kilometers... Space combat has some obscene distances involved (even though it's not visually depicted in the ba

Reply to So, what will be the AI improvements in DA? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The Iconians seemed to love speciallizing worlds... New Iconia was all research (no manufacturing or entertainment, though, which wasn't too bright), while the planet beside it was all manufacturing. Anyways, yeah. The AI is a huge improvement, and playing against 3 eastablish gifted AIs is about all I can manage. It requires very careful use of my few fleets and my first strike ability to keep fighting, because any slip up will result in my fleets being trashed because they didn't have