richterm

In the saved game that my buddy Gary and I are playing now, he's trapped behind a wormhole that one of the AIs keeps sending a massive fleet to hold. We're playing on one of my custom maps, there are 6 empires total and the star system has (if I recall properly) 45 or so total planets/planet entities. He's stuck with 3 colonizable worlds until I can break him out and meanwhile, I'm thrashing the AI closest to me, who wants back his volcanic world that is at a handy crossroads and that I needed t

[quote]Weapons are similar, a 10% damage upgrade to one weapon type isn't very much if you only have a few ships, and not all of them have that weapon type (Vasari phase missiles are a possible exception due to the first upgrade being so cheap and Assailants being so much better then Skirmishers).Personally if I'm going to upgrade early, its to unlock a couple of ship types (LRM, Flak), and then on the defensive side. The first hull upgrade is pretty cheap, and works on everything you make. The

[quote]My apologies, I was thinking of the initial structures to obtain metal and crystal. Yes, I wait on the refineries.This proves my point about how you can't listen to any loser on the forums willing to dispense advice. -HM[/quote] Extractors. Yes, if you don't build those immediately, that's bad. Now, to continue the discussion... 1. do you invest in the tech to make the extractors pull more metal and crystal or 2. do you research better weapons?<br

[quote]On the right hand side a window should appear saying what the upgrade does, with something like "Logistical Slots 14 > 18". That means you have 14 now and will have 18 after the upgrade.I wandered about that, cheers Finally, thanks all! - noted about building refinarys to early! Too much good advice to go through it all but everything mentioned really sets me in the right direction as to comming up with strategies. Im away to play a game now[/quote] I think the refinery advice il

I've never seen any pirate ships other then based on TEC designs. Do note that pirate ships lack special abilities, so they don't "age" well as the game goes on.

Gotcha. A fully patched and expanded World of Warcraft eats around 7-8 gig, so another few gig for better graphics is probably not asking much. I just shake my head a bit sometimes...I remember the first hard drive I bought after I got married, was all pleased that I paid $1/megabyte. (got a 120 MB IDE for $120)

Vasari, more for the mood. Although I like the B5 vibe I get from both the TEC and Advent (come on, the Advent Are the Mimbari. You know it's true)

32 gig? Thirty two gig? 7 conventional DVDs worth of data? Please tell me that that's the uncompressed size. How freaking big is the download before it explodes to 32 gig?

What's interesting is that random maps often have more than one pirate base...depending on the settings you use for planet groups, you can end up with 4-5. I've also seen the map generator end up with no pirate bases. For the custom maps I build, I generally ensure that each star has at least one planet group set to have a guaranteed pirate base. Last night, my buddy and I ended up with 3 at our star system and an unknown number at the second star. We had to save and quit just before I

I hear what you're saying, warrenkc. I'm actually very lucky - I make my living as a Linux admin in a big corp and just got my RHCE. But the cold harsh reality is that Linux isn't viewed seriously as a gaming platform. Heck, the industry doesn't want to view WINDOWS seriously as a gaming platform, many companies would much rather go console. Linux is fantastic for many uses and does have a collection of reasonably good native and ported games. However, asking a small company to

You don't get an overt notice...it's easy to miss when a mission has been completed. Also, you'll never be able to do all the missions. You either won't be able to get to the target or the missions will contradict each other. Pick the guys you want to be friendly with, do their missions if you can and ignore the others.

[quote]Why do people still think minidumps are THE ISSUE?[/quote] For real. They should issue a patch for folk who don't get it that just disables the minidump entirely and lets the error fall through to the usual Windows "Yeah. You crashed. Deal with it" message.

Pretty sure that if you pick Custom Map, there is a slider for each planet group that determines the average strength/number of neuts. Try setting it all the way down and see what happens?

Damn, I must be fooling myself that Sins is a good game. Thanks for setting me straight, Vin. I'll contact my buddies that I was going to play with tonight and tell them to forget it.

To be honest, I play using ICO but have no interest at all in public games. Instead, I found a mature clan on these boards and also have some other friends I know from real life or other games. I play private games with this group of people, solving two big issues: 1. People don't get all mad and drop if they are losing 2. We don't have issues with trash talking and all that other crap, since we're playing for fun and all know each other. We don't need to prove our manhood by kickin

[quote]I have a suggestion that isn't related to balance:Make maps auto-uploadable. That is, if i make a map in galaxy forge, i want to be able to host a match with that map without having to force everyone to pick it up online.Without this feature, i realized, the map editor is pretty useless for people who play exclusively online.[/quote] There was a dev post that I remember recently where they said that they wanted to make sharing maps easier. That would pretty much cover that.

Are you talking about your profile? That doesn't stop you from starting new games and picking whatever race you want. Rather, the profile determines the icon/color for your stuff on the map and what your portrait will look like (based on which of the 3 races you pick)

[quote] I'm glad they're balancing units, but they really need to do something about this ability. Now that Vasari is "back in the game" as far as their econ is concerned, RA is going to return again as an overpowered problem.[/quote] Maybe I'm just really bad (yeah, probably) but actually getting RA and having the weapons techs to take advantage of it...it just seems to take a LOOOONG time. You need to actually build all the research labs while also running the rest of the empire.<br/

What strikes me as awesome is that thecaptain_ps is able to change the combat system more to his liking, since Ironclad has been cool enough to open the game up to mods. That's a pretty smart thing for a dev to do. Coming from the whinefest and bickering that is the World of Warcraft community, it's a huge breath of fresh air.

Heh. A week. What a pleasure! I'm used to the endless waits for World of Warcraft patches. Nice job, Brad. I bought the game a week ago and haven't played anything else since. I do both single and multi, so thanks for the considerations.

Actually, the pirates are an element that adds a bit of fun to the game...making things not so predictable. Learn to deal with their shenanigans. Spend money to have them attack your opponents and use their weak ships as fodder to level your cap ships up. Take over the pirate system before the game ends and win the Pirate Baron achievement. Or you could turn them off, I guess.

Clearly the solution is to list games that are running and players that are in games in a different color. No, you won't be able to interact with them in any way, shape or form, but at least you'll feel better seeing them.

I played a medium 4 person game against 3 normal AIs and found out: 1. Hanger defenses help. Build at least 2 around important planets. 2. If you forget to bribe the pirates, you'll regret it. 3. You can probably focus on making nice with at least one AI. Complete the "give me creds and mats" missions and then try to do the destroy missions. If you can get a cease-fire signed, that AI will actually help you. Sign a peace treaty and you can win the game as an alliance.

Furries.

[quote]SDC resumes on its own, I believe.[/quote] Awesome! Thanks for the fast response.