For the last few months the team has been toiling away on THREE seperate projects...Political Machine 2008, the unannounced fantasy strategy title, and GalCiv 2.0. And for those months we've kept players in the dark about 2.0...mostly because of the frantic, nose-to-the-grindstone pace we've maintained.
But now it's time....time to finally start talking about what will hopefully be the ultimate update to our little GC2 series
For those that don't know, GalCivII 2.0 is the final major update that we'll be producing. More updates are sure to trickle out, but in terms of huge new features being added, this will be our last huzzah Sad, but inevitable.
For this reason, we really wanted to pack it FULL with all the little features that were straightforward enough to keep the game balanced, but interesting/exciting enough to make 2.0 special.
The first of the new added features (and what's turned out to the the most suprisingly time-consuming) is the addition of Planetary Governors.
The necessity of this feature really came late in the testing of Immense galaxies in the Twilight gamma. There were just too many planets to deal with, and even queuing up planet improvements on initial colonization got cumbersome. Looking back, it's a feature that players have requested for a long time, so putting it in was a no-brainer. Also, for everyones future reference, the best way to get a feature added is to get the programmers annoyed by it's obmission
All you do is create a governor type (give it a name and short description) and fill that governors queue. As techs for better improvements are unlocked, the queue will automaticially update. Special tiles are searched for and properly utilized, and terriformed spots are filled as they become available.
The system is slick, and works well as a 'macromanagement' feature opposed to a 'let the AI handle my planet building'.
We hope to have all the new features in the beta (Thursday, September 25th), with a final release on Wedensday, October 8th.
Up Next Monday (Now Tuesday): Another Manager, and a Feature Requested Since Dreadlords 1.0...stay tuned!
Holy crap. I've been wanting this since about 2 hours into playing DL a few years ago. I may have to break down and get TA.
Does this mean the AI will use it, and actually do a decent job at planetary development?
Also, are you going to add any hooks to control the starport via this governor? So for example you could tell all your econ/farm planets to build transports, all your research to build constructors? I'd much rather the old govenor got removed in favor of this style. (based on named govenors)
Also, is the govenor smart enough to not build terraforming when you have free tiles and something else to build? That's something the AI's been doing wrong for a long long time...
I'd settle for a button that automatically resets all mine destinations to the nearest planet. In the middle of an influence rush, I often flip the mines before the planet, so a mine ends up sending to a planet 3 sectors away even though it's touching a newly-flipped planet.
that's a lot easier than trying to reassign asteroids from across the entire map. you have to find the planet again each time, and if while mousing around you accidentally click on something else, you have to go back. i know it's not the highest priority in the world, but i think because of how difficult it is to work with them they were sort of an underwhelming addition when DA came around. just my opinion anyway.
I had mentioned in the "Things you'd like in 2.0" thread, that a scheme like the ctrl+click/drag to box a group of asteroids(like you can with ships/SBs) and assign them as a group would be a massive help in dealing with them. Seeing as the ctrl+drag scheme is already there for ships and such, it seems to be possibly the easiest way to institute a management system for asteroids.
You are quite right. When I was writing the strings I kept wanting to spell "governor" as "governer." And I'm the team's English major. For shame.
I've noted everyones suggestions/concerns and will be looking into proper solutions. The planet population/farming/morale situations and the ability to swap empire wide improvement production seem to be the major points...we'll see what we can do
I havn't read what everyone said, but if you mean the ability to 1) make sure the slider is always at least breaking even and 2) telling it so move the slider so a certain persentage of people are happy, then that'd be great.
Currently, when the Governor auto-upgrades factories or labs (or other planetary improvements) it queues them up in a random oder. It should take into account the bonus titles so that a factory on a 700% title is upgraded first followed by 300%, then 100%, and finally those on non-bonus titles.
Also, the Governor has a strange idea what an upgrade should be, for example, trying to update a Yor Collective to a newly unlocked factory type with a lower yeild and higher m. cost.
You mean to tell me that a 'general scope' governor should also have the ability to detect the multiple variation present in 12 different race trees?
And, keep track of all possible trade_ins_outs between AI and *you* the human player, and still find the most efficient macro-management handling of planetary upgrades when & then, the algorithm has to react to new available values?
If SD coders pull that one off - we might as well surrender to the very first AI that is smart enough to stage a war against our brains.
I play the game, the game doesn't play me. Less tedious is fun, being automatically fooled around *by design* is different.
blablabla
i do just mean THE TYPO in the screenshot, nothing else !!!!
Next Monday was yesterday. Where's the next announcement?
This single change may be enough to push me to purchase TA now. My only other major gripe- micromanaging starbases. If that's the next improvement, sign me up! I'm continually amazed at Stardock. You guys rock.
To clarify, I think Boogie mentioned being able to dynamically shift production empire wide, correct? If that's true, it would really help responding to Mega Events. For instance, if a disease is a new event and the fix is to do research, being able to shift production in addition to more resources toward research would be sweet.
I can easily see something that handles planetary improvements to be identical to how ships are governed. Examples:
Now, if you had the time and it didn't add too much complexity, it would be sweet to assign your planets to a group and then have the governor only do something to that group. So, if I created a group of planets called Research Sites and a group of Planets called Cash Cows, I'd be able to shift their current production or existing planetary infrastructure in the methods described above. Less micromanagement in the long run and more time for fun and strategy.
Boogie- bring on that upcoming update info!
https://forums.galciv2.com/324811
Yeah, yesterday was a bit crazy....sorry for the wait.
L.Reliant: I think you'll enjoy this one!
That's great, BoogieBac! I was hoping it might just function identical to mining stations, but this seems like a reasonable compromise. My only two ideas are:
*Will you be prompted if it tries to construct something and you don't have enought cash?
*Could we create custom build queues? I guess I'm not exactly clear on how I should customize that list, but I could see saving a queue list and then having a drop-down to select from so I don't have to shift up and down production everytime.
Once again, nice work.
As always there are about 20 different ways to implement something like this. We went for the tightest, most straightforward approach for all new features so more time could be spent on additional goodies
Can I just add how happy I am that you added the largest map size with the TA expansion? It seems like that helped to highlight a lot of the pain points that GC2 suffers from- overt micro-management. And addressing this with the new planet and starbase queues should go a long way in making the game more manageable (at least, it would seem to be that way). I always found it odd that the only governor initially was for ships and not also other things that could use them.
One thing I'm not clear on, will we be getting the ability to dynamically change production like I mentioned? (changing production of X to Y, etc.)? That would really rock!
Thinking about the game play of GC2, you really start on a micro-management level, but later in the game, you want less and less focus on micro and more on the macro level, which is what you're helping to address. When I have 100 planets, do I really want to be spending time adjusting what planet X is producing? No! I want to spend time on my strategy. Now, what planet X produces can align with my strategy, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the major decisions I'd like to make instead. All that micro-management gets in the way of fun and getting toward the good stuff (like conquering the galaxy!).
For GC3, if you can build in more abilities to automate/customize from the start, it will truly be an epic and enjoyable game throughout, both for small as well as gigantic galaxies. I hope Not-MoM has some of these management tools in it, as well.
OK I know this is so late in the game BUT... would it be possible to have a list of your starbases similar to the planetary screen? Left column shows its name, then type, then just the number of available modules that are non attack / defence followed by the attack and defence for the base.
I alwasy build a bunch of economy starbases but tend to lose track of them; both where they are and which are fully loaded. (The icon view will show a ship insead of the starbases if there is s ship present).
This would not only show where i need to send constructors but would also allow for the locating of bases since highlighting a bse and hitting "close" will bring you to that base as it does for planets in the planetary screen.
BTW I intended this for resource starbases as well.
While I'm asking.... could it also show available resources, like below the list of the player's star bases?
i thought they showed up in the ship list?
tiny suggestion to game balance: change the base hull SBs use to a huge instead of large. maybe boost some of the attack/defense modules too.
ummmm what ship list is that? Have i been missing something in DA all this time?
it's either F1 or F2 to open it, can't remember which off the top of my head. i pops open a window on the left side of the screen. one lists planets and can be sorted by various criteria. the other lists ships. i think SBs show up on that list somewhere, but as i'm at work, i can't verify this ATM.
Some folks call it things like "mini planet list" in posts. You can also display it using the leftmost button in the center group, and when it is open it has buttons you can click to toggle between planets and ships.
There's also a Starbases button, but unfortunately it shows *all* starbases, not just yours. The info does show base offense, defense, and hitpoints, but it gives no specifics about open module slots.
a big reason i rename my starbases immediately after contructing them. then at least the alphabetical sorting helps me a bit. but the info you mentioned would be a nice addition.
the way sorting works on the mini lists could use a slight tweek IMHO. on the planets mini-list, for example, there are many useful ways you can sort the list, but the sorting option itself would work better as a pull-down list. it can be frustrating using the left/right arrows to cycle through the various options, especially because i don't always remember the name of a particular option, and IIRC they're not in alphabetical order anyway.
I rename my mines & most finished bases, but that's not really necessary if you are OK with scanning the thumbnails--I mostly play Thalans with their standard ship style, so our stuff stands out pretty clearly in the list w/o needing to read. The problem with the Not Our Bases in the list, for me anyway, is just the clutter that means more clicking to finish scrolling all the way through.
I use the Planets minilist pretty heavily for the "strongly encouraged" spending after my income gets well over 10k per turn. The sort there would be *much* better if it put the Nothing planets at the top or bottom instead of in the middle of the alphabetical sort.
If I'm understanding how the feature will work, I'd agree that the name is a bit of an exaggeration; the term "governor" does imply that the thing would be making some choices on its own somehow, at least through a set of decision parameters that BoogieBac already says are too tall an order for 2.0. But the more accurate alternatives might have just sounded to dull to the devs: "Custom Build Lists?" "Colony Development Plans?"
If I'm understanding how the feature will work, I'd agree that the name is a bit of an exaggeration; the term "governor" does imply that the thing would be making some choices on its own somehow, at least through a set of decision parameters that BoogieBac already says are too tall an order for 2.0.
But the more accurate alternatives might have just sounded to dull to the devs: "Custom Build Lists?" "Colony Development Plans?"
I think he meant that it is spelt wrong in the tabs - it should be Planetary Governors, not Planetary Governers. Could be wrong though.
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