I can see the logic in that (still haven't gotten it yet...*sigh*. I WILL tonight!) Four should be the minimun, but wouln't that severely lessen both your and the AI's economy? The game would just be as long because you wouldn't have the same amount of ships churning out of you factories and...stuff. Well, there are my thoughts.

good call deadly, i didnt know that. i'll have to give it a few test games to see what a good fun minimum is. (provided it works)

It was mentioned a slider would be better!

but thats the point of the custom screen...

having multiple ways of preforming the same action is not a bad thing

My current fav is:

AI Hard
20 planets
5 solar systems
7 races

What are you guys plaing on?

ima just post here what i posted on guruclan.com:


EDIT1: i changed min planet to 6, then custom galaxy with 6 planets 1v1, the game ended up with 5 planets, 3 asteroid planets and 1 dead asteroid planet... iirc that's 9 planets, not 6 , this game took me exactly 1:31, i was hoping for only 6 planets though, ima try 4 planet min, maybe i'll get what i want

EDIT2: tried 4 minimum, turned out to be 7 planets total, map was slightly unbalanced (one side had 4 easy planets, the other only 3), i think they would need to work on making decent small maps 4-8 planets total, anyway 1v1 hard comp, won in 00:59:20, that was straight caps, didn't build a single frigate save 1 flak to take the first planet, i've been building only caps simply because hard comps just pile on the frigates so i didn't want to bother matching them


my summary: the auto-map creator obviously wasn't designed to create strategically fair, aesthetically pleasing, or even accurate maps with a low planet number. i really really really would like to play on a 4-8 planet map, 2-4 planets for each player, those games i think are going to be the most fun for me (and, no offense to anyone, but from previous rts games, it does seem to be the n00bs that prefer the huge huge maps, im looking for quick-thinking tactics and tight strats, games that keep you on your toes every second of the game). i hope a dev reads this and tweaks the auto-map maker to create decent low-planet maps (one suggestion would be to move all the planets closer to the star, right now i think the large default distance is skewing the planet placement and space lanes).

basically what i'm saying is, i'm not gonna be playing this game if i can't fit a game in under an hour, i'd prefer 25-35 min games for short range stuff and maybe 60 to 90 (at the max) for larger games

apparently the system defines the planets as "planets not owned, or not designed to be owned"
i.e. not your home planet, and not the nice little asteroid behind it. I've run into the same problem.

yeah...

you can mod that on your own.

Improvements to game setup are in the pipeline I believe.

@Yarlen...or anyone else who might know,

In the single player game and galaxy setup is the marauders option referring to the pirates that guard unclaimed planets? Or will there be marauders that well...actually maraud? ATM the toggles for marauders and bounty don't seem to do anything =\

Change the Bounty option to Start with/without Bounty to be more clear on that point Kryo.

your true identity has been revealed!