Author Topic: Give me a reason to expand  (Read 4915 times)

Offline ZarahNeander

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #15 on: July 15, 2009, 12:59:32 pm »
Like darke said, the Simple map types are intended to solve this particular problem.  If that doesn't work for you, let me know, but zoom in the galaxy map is something that I worry would be more challenging to use than would be problem-solving for most purposes (since often connections would go far to the side, outside of where you are zoomed in, anyway).
I wasn't thinking about zooming the ingame galaxy map, just enlarging the lobby. Ingame I hit pause && study the map. But the lobby is really tiny with 1980x1028, lot of wasted screen estate (the background image is nice but still). I have trouble reading the bonus ship type && have to manually count wormholes cause the text is unreadable..at least for me.

Kind regards..Pia Kraft

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #16 on: July 15, 2009, 01:44:38 pm »
the number of techs increases, the amount of knowledge does not.

X could always make the "Knowledge per system" subject to a start-of-game factor from 0.0x to 5.0x, to scale all knowledge gains. You want more knowledge? 5.0x is 10,000 per planet. You want fewer and a bigger challenge? 0.5x is 1,000 per planet...

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #17 on: July 15, 2009, 01:52:28 pm »
Counter spy is obnoxious

I dislike how it insta-kills a scout starship as easily as a scout. :(

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #18 on: July 15, 2009, 01:55:34 pm »
Convinced! I ditch my AI6 game && go AI7. To my excuse: this is the first RTS which holds my interest for longer then 30 min. In approx. 30 years (yes I'm that old :D)

I thought the general belief is that Dune II (from the early 1990s) is the first "RTS" in the modern sense. I remember playing it while in college.

I've only been computer gaming for 27 years, sorry. I don't know if you'd count the Odyssey from the 70s, though, in which case I can join you in 30+ years of gaming. LOL

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Offline x4000

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #19 on: July 15, 2009, 02:59:16 pm »
Like darke said, the Simple map types are intended to solve this particular problem.  If that doesn't work for you, let me know, but zoom in the galaxy map is something that I worry would be more challenging to use than would be problem-solving for most purposes (since often connections would go far to the side, outside of where you are zoomed in, anyway).
I wasn't thinking about zooming the ingame galaxy map, just enlarging the lobby. Ingame I hit pause && study the map. But the lobby is really tiny with 1980x1028, lot of wasted screen estate (the background image is nice but still). I have trouble reading the bonus ship type && have to manually count wormholes cause the text is unreadable..at least for me.

Kind regards..Pia Kraft

I see -- that's definitely a factor of resolution, which I don't have an easy fix for with the lobby.  It's based on scale so that as low as 1024x768 can see it...
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Offline x4000

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #20 on: July 15, 2009, 03:01:36 pm »
the number of techs increases, the amount of knowledge does not.

X could always make the "Knowledge per system" subject to a start-of-game factor from 0.0x to 5.0x, to scale all knowledge gains. You want more knowledge? 5.0x is 10,000 per planet. You want fewer and a bigger challenge? 0.5x is 1,000 per planet...

Cheers!

Adding this to the future DLC list.

Counter spy is obnoxious

I dislike how it insta-kills a scout starship as easily as a scout. :(

Cheers!

That is a mistake, the scout starship is supposed to be immune to insta-kills.
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Offline Admiral

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #21 on: July 15, 2009, 08:01:52 pm »
That is a mistake, the scout starship is supposed to be immune to insta-kills.

Well maybe it was insta-killed by something else, but I didn't even see the sector when I sent one in after my (ordinary) scout was insta-killed.

Why do I always get the random impossible AI types? LOL

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Offline x4000

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #22 on: July 15, 2009, 09:26:02 pm »
That is a mistake, the scout starship is supposed to be immune to insta-kills.

Well maybe it was insta-killed by something else, but I didn't even see the sector when I sent one in after my (ordinary) scout was insta-killed.

No, I meant it was a bug, sorry for being unclear.  It was indeed insta-killed by that, but it shouldn't be insta-killable by anything.  The counter-spies are insta-killing anything cloaked in the current version, even stuff that is immune to insta-killing.  That will be fixed in the next prerelease.

Why do I always get the random impossible AI types? LOL

:D
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Offline darke

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #23 on: July 15, 2009, 09:48:29 pm »
Why do I always get the random impossible AI types? LOL

Someone has to. I'm using up all the quota of random impossible map configurations, so your sacrifice returns balance to the universe. :)

Offline x4000

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #24 on: July 15, 2009, 09:55:10 pm »
Someone has to. I'm using up all the quota of random impossible map configurations, so your sacrifice returns balance to the universe. :)

One interesting thing is that, like most any pseudo-random seed generator, this is time-based.  Not for things that have to be synchronized within a map, obviously (stuff that is procedural instead of pseudo-random), but things like the actual map seed it gives you, or the AI type that you get on a random start, are actually fully pseudo-random.

Anyway, I bring that up because it makes me think of the "misery loves company" adage.  It may well be that this is just an unfriendly date/time for certain types of random with this particular algorithm.  So several people are suffering now, whereas it might get better later. 

Of course, given the variability of the Mersenne Twister algorithm that I'm using, that's really just a bunch of hokum because it gives very randomized results over the entire target range (as opposed to the .NET Random built-in class, which tends to clump horribly), but I still found it a funny thought.  Like these were the Ides of AI War, or something.  But those ides would change from millisecond to millisecond, so that is highly unlikely to really be true.  It's just a funny picture to me. :)
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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #25 on: July 15, 2009, 11:06:06 pm »
One interesting thing is that, like most any pseudo-random seed generator, this is time-based.

Note to self: Definitely don't create my next universe while I am hearing howling going on during a full moon.

Offline x4000

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Re: Give me a reason to expand
« Reply #26 on: July 15, 2009, 11:09:49 pm »
 ;D
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