- Never Play an Immense Map without 'Em -
Published on September 12, 2008 By ScottTykoski In GalCiv Journals

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!

 


Comments (Page 4)
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on Sep 17, 2008

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.

on Sep 17, 2008

ummmm what ship list is that?

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.

on Sep 17, 2008

There's also a Starbases button, but unfortunately it shows *all* starbases, not just yours.

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.

on Sep 17, 2008

a big reason i rename my starbases immediately after contructing them.

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.

on Sep 17, 2008

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.

on Sep 17, 2008

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've taken to keeping the number but renaming them by 'sector' for a given region, with a suffix for type - i.e. "Thalan 1032m" for a military base in the Thalan sector, except for resource bases which I get a little more descriptive on since there's so few of them "Science Station Galileo" "Fuel Depot IV" et al.

Renaming is the only way I get good use from waypoints too - I pretty much keep one waypoint with the same name on every Starbase, then switch transport outputs as required, with a couple 'at large' waypoints for things like fleet formation.

Jonnan

on Sep 17, 2008

Bugger, double post, dead edit button - apologies - Jonnan

on Sep 18, 2008

please don´t forget to make the governors prioritice on bonus tiles with the right buildings e.g. when i have a moral building and a factory the govenor should place them on their correct bonus tiles.

on Sep 21, 2008

This improvement looks fantastic.  Thank you .

on Apr 21, 2009

I think the governor's should be "real people" with an AI. they should build wathever they want , supervised by the ruler. I dont want to check every planet if they got what they need. Maybe, the ruler should give a budget to the governor's.

on Dec 21, 2009

The governor queue does not auto-update with new tech as BoogieBac has indicated in his original post as of 2.03.

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