Dog of Justice

Reply to Having trouble keeping up with the amount of ships the AI sends against me. in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Because of how defense currently works in the game, it isn't too difficult to shut down an entire AI fleet with hundreds of ships using just 1-3 medium ships of your own. You just need on-type defense equal to at least ~70%-80% of the enemy's maximum fleet attack value. (Psyonic Beams help too, since they give your ship enough offensive punch while taking very little space, leaving the rest for defense and engines.)

Reply to Altarian Afterthought AAR in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

One remark: instead of making every planet have a mix of factories and stock markets, my preferred strategy is to designate "factory zones" consisting only of planets benefiting from lots of econ starbases with all production bonuses (ideally 16, for +384% production/research), and stuff every other planet full of stock markets. (They'll temporarily have factories on them to let me build the stock markets faster, but I overbuild them with stock markets at the end.) This is substantially more e

Reply to Economic Might Indicator in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I was making 500+ bc per turn AFTER paying for production,research & maintenance. Shouldn't my economic might be more than 100? Depends on what stage you are at in the game. A few players have been able to make over one MILLION bc/turn later on. The economic might rating is probably telling you the truth -- you are slightly behind the AI average in revenue.

Reply to When to Build a Farm for $$$ in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I thought a civilzation wide morale bonuses only counted up to 100%. Does anything past 100% still help your morale? It's 100% after being multiplied by the base morale. So, ideally you synchronize your planet populations (higher population = lower base morale) with your civilization morale bonus so that you don't "waste" any of the bonus.

Reply to When to Build a Farm for $$$ in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Also, why 79% instead of 80% when the hardcapped penalty begins at 81%? Because the tax rate is rounded in some really weird manner that causes 80% taxes to not actually get you any more money than 79%, while you do still lose that bit of approval. Pay attention to your actual revenue numbers when you're changing the tax rate around, and you'll notice that sometimes a 1% increase/decrease in taxes won't actually make any difference at all.

Reply to Labs, Factories, and Focus in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Also the focus mechanic needs to be changed in some way, IMO it is nearly breaking this game completely. I agree that the mechanic is broken in the sense that it causes there to be essentially just two production strategies that dominate all other strategies, where previously there were many more. On the other hand, I have to concede that these two strategies are at least interesting to execute. One reason is that their rigidity amplifies the "planning ahead" component of the g

Reply to When to Build a Farm for $$$ in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

As you suggested, I don't use morale buildings to boost growth because fertility clinics are far superior; you only need enough to maintain 41% morale at 25B so the population can grow. Wait, you are seriously trying to push planets to 25B and beyond in DA?! If I were that insane , I would not bother going up to 41% morale. 21% morale, so I don't lose population, would be good eno

Reply to When to Build a Farm for $$$ in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Assuming you are playing DA, I cannot recommend that you ever build a morale building. I do construct one morale building on each low PQ (less than 11) planet late-game, to let me raise the population of every planet to 18B. But beyond that point, the returns diminish too rapidly.

Reply to Labs, Factories, and Focus in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

I haven't checked, but is the economy starbase research boost applicable to focused research? If it is, then you can turn off production on worlds surrounded by starbases (to save money if need be) and get the massive research bonus which actually turns them into decent research worlds. That would definitely compensate for the overall lack of research. If using research abilities (or innate race research bonus) then the early game 100% research blitz (which I hadn't th

Reply to Labs, Factories, and Focus in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

One of the big advantages of all-factories is your ability to quickly build and upgrade a whole mess of economic starbases. The resulting research bonuses (as large as +384%) make it fairly easy to catch up in that department.

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

He thought any new reports were the result of people not entirely understanding the system or falsely estimating their chances. Um, look at replies #20 and #21 in this thread. Particularly, Attack = 100 times 1 damage Defense = 0 on-type 100 off-type Number of runs = 100000 CodeCritter's method (i.e. how 1.6b5 works) Mean damage = 5.54366 Standard deviation = 2.31138 Ephafn's method

Reply to DA 1.6 changes in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

More changes: - Colony Module costs 50 (previously 30) - More Colony Modules on a ship = more population capacity (I don't think this was the case earlier?). For those whining that colony ships have been nerfed, be aware that you can design a 750M capacity colony ship on the first turn. (Okay, I don't know why you'd want to, since the ship would cost 205. But the option is there...) Random observation: - Super Breeder is more powerful than I thought -- the 4x 100% ap

Reply to DA 1.6 changes in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It's possible that Precursor Mines/Libraries can no longer be generated on the homeworld, at least on Medium or Large maps. (It used to be that they could show up on any map size larger than Small.) I haven't tried Huge or Gigantic yet. EDIT: Okay, maybe I just got unlucky for a while. One Precursor Mine appeared after a bit more Ctrl-Ning. Incidentally, I would approve of changing the game so that Precursor Mines/Libraries were not possible on homeworlds, or at least making

Reply to About Racial Bonuses in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Firstly, is it just my perception, or do the Yor start off with significantly more powerful bonuses (and better techs, too) than any other race? Most noticeably, they begin with Ion Drives and Stellar Cartography, two key elements in the "colony land-grab" tactic when beginning a game (I'm sure you vets know all of that, though). It's not just Yor perception. (ok, sorry) The Krynn are arguably even more heavily favored, though, given

Reply to Why does the AI keep rushing me with colony ships? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

The AI's colonization logic is off, but I do have to comment that the class 4 in your home system is more valuable than you're letting on. First of all, if you're lucky enough to have it within two squares of your homeworld, it provides a major boost to your initial population growth. Because you can load population to and from that planet USING NO COLONY SHIP MOVEMENT POINTS, you can immediately raise its population to over 2B. In addition, with Dark Avatar, almost all planet

Reply to Mysterious Zero Production Planets in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I know that production/research capacities are prone to get messed up when I discover new technology and some auto-upgrading occurs (even in DA 1.6 betas). There may be other ways to throw off the math that I'm unaware of, so see if you can track down why it's happening to you. Fortunately a save/reload always fixes the problem.

Nigh invincible ships: feature or bug? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

In the most recent Dark Avatar beta, some remnant of the off-type defense bug exists, but we've tracked down exactly what's wrong with the current algorithm , so there's a good chance it'll be fixed quickly. But there's more than one way to fix it, and it's not immediately obvious to me which way is better. So I wanted to ask you guys for your opinions. The difference is most clearly illustrated in one combat simu

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

off_type_def = (int)sqrt(off_type_def) + (int)sqrt(on_type_def); on_type_def -= (int)sqrt(on_type_def); int simulDoJ (int num_att, int att_str, int on_type_def, int off_type_def) { int att = 0; int i; on_type_def = roll(on_type_def) + roll(off_type_def); for (i = 0; i att += roll (att_str); } &nbsp

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Thanks for the clarification, CodeCritter. The 1.6b4 system looks better than it was in previous DA builds, it's no longer that far out of whack. Nevertheless, there is a very significant difference between DA 1.6b4 offtype defenses and DL offtype defenses. Namely, in DA 1.6b4 you really need INDIVIDUAL offtype weapons to be able to do lots of damage, because every weapon has to go up against a new full defense roll. One Psyonic Beam is a LOT better than 12 Lasers now

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

With two weapon types, each are shot in succession. Each weapon will degrade its on-type protection first, and once it is depleted, degrade the shared off-type protection. I just reread kryo's description of the current defense behavior, and (i) okay, you're right that multiple weapon types don't change anything under the current system, but (ii) that's because the current system gives defenses a bigger bonus over DL's system than I

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I just put P = On-type Protection + Off-type Protection Defense roll = rng(0, P) Unlike the actual system, there is only one roll (not one per defense type). When the attacker has two different weapon types, how do you degrade defenses?

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

DA defenses have never rolled; they've always started at their full value and degraded with damage. No, I think CodeCritter just forgot to mention them. kryo's description of DA combat in another thread does mention defense rolls. And without defense rolls, ships with defense at least equal to opposing attack would be completely indestructible ; I think I've seen my Krynn high-defense ships occasionally take 1-3 damage in such battles. T

Reply to A suggestion to solve the defense "bug" (off-type degradation) in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Uh oh. CodeCritter, there is no mention of the sqrt function in your description. Also, what happened to defense rolls? I strongly suspect that defense is still not working as designed. My training is in mathematics, and I can tell you that Ephafn's solution is correct; you should implement it. There is still a nontrivial detail regarding how to implement defense rolls under Ephafn's system, which we can discuss if you're interested. But that's not as high-pr

Reply to Strategy Rant in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Every planet has an Initial Colony or Civilization Capital that guarantees you have 12 or 24 base research available even if your planet has no labs. This seems adequate to account for Benjamin Franklins, etc.

Reply to AI cheating on first turn (buys more than one social improvement per planet) ? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

The issue of concern to me is when you are building 300 ships per turn and they're autolaunched to a rally point but a certain percentage of them just sit there by the planet that produced them. However, you don't notice them sitting there because next turn each of the 300 planets has produced another ship. The only way you notice is when you check and find 2 or 10 or 20 ships all sitting by the same planet having apparently lost their autopilot destination. I