ProtocolXVI

Game crashes on startup, never gets to any actual screens. Alt-tabbing out works fine, and shows the message 'Saved Minidump: E:\DOCUMENTS.... ' with a full file path. Is there an easy way oto upload the .dmp file here, or is that even necissary (aka is this a known issue)? I did a search and browsed through a few pages of posts, and didn't see anything to this effect.

The pacing does need to speed up a bit, its almost like the Phase lanes sorta make the game have 'turns' If movement could be increases, or at least moddable it would really make this seem more like an RTS. I disagree, simply because it makes fleet positioning much more important than it would otherwise be. The ability to actually attack your opponent where they are weak, and have it take time for them t

While I really like how flimsy bombers are now, especially now that flack frigates work, I think that their damage output should be increased accordingly.

There is an easy way to get around this problem; 1) build some broadcast stations yourself 2) Destroy your enemy's broadcast stations I like the fact that you can't simply rush in and take a colony the instant you bomb it to pieces; it makes culture absolutely critical for an assault. The only thing that I would change is having culture begin to disappear on it's own if the enemy has no more broadcast stations, if for no other reason than to speed things up a bit.

Irritating... I don't seem to have permission to edit my posts...

The slowdown leaves the moment the red (or blue) movement lines fade away, or if I zoom out far enough so that they aren't rendered; otherwise the game tends to be as smooth as glass. Specs: AMD Athlon 64 2x 4200+ 2gig DDR2 600 Radeon 1950x pro

Errr... I have to say, I really don't understand the argument that the pirates don't have an incentive to bomb planets and the like. Isn't a 125k bounty quite enough incentive? They aren't going after the trade ships because they aren't getting their money from the ships themselves, they are getting it through funding from other nations.

Whenever I issue a trans-system movement order to a large number of ships, I tend to experience a great deal of slowdown if I am close enough to actually see the blue "movement lines."

I've had some time to think about this, and I have come up with a few more ideas on how damage modeling might work. First off, I am going to assume that the general 'feel' of combat will be staying, in the sense that we aren't likely to see a dramatic increase in weapon damage. Furthermore, I am also going to assume that the way armor works is not going to change. Unfortunately, the combination of these two factors makes RoF a nearly inconsequential statistic (Assuming of course a static DPS.) <

I think the biggest issue with coming up with a "good" battle mechanic is somehow getting around the limitations of the hitpoint model. Hitpoints have a large number of inherant flaws that make them an almost uniquely poor choice to model combat. For example; you only very rarely see 'concentration of fire' used in any sort of real battle the way one would use it in an RTS. The reason why it is used in most RTSs is because of the hitpoint model; units go from full functionality to zero

In response to the idea that RoF is not important unless you have armor that stops some number of damage: Why don't we use the heavy cannon on a main battle tank to destroy unarmored soldiers? It is certaintly accurate enough, and it virtually guarantees a kill. The reason is simple; it is overkill. Use of small arms is more effective because you can make many, many more shots, and less of the 'damage' you can inflict is wasted. I would like to see the larger ships armed with weaponry