HydroAC

Reply to Iconian AAR in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

M - thanks! More to come. Hydro

Reply to Iconian AAR in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

January 2227 Boy, the turns seem to slip by. Of course, I’m only shoving colony ships around. My little fleet of 5 survey ships is on auto and they’re busy snagging all the anomalies they can. So far they’ve done a terrific job of supplementing my treasury and, of course, the occasional increase in my racial abilities. I haven’t been keeping track, but it will add up even if it is only 1% at a time. I love anomalies that speed research, particularly if I have a project with a long lead

Iconian AAR in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

Iconian AAR I picked up GalCiv 2 after an 8 month hiatus when I got an e-mail from Stardock on the upcoming expansion Twilight of Arnor. ToA looks fantastic, and just thinking about how much fun GC2:DA has been was enough to pique my interest again. So I got online, upgraded DA to 1.8g, and off I went to get reacquainted with the game. After playing a few games with the Krynn I recalled how much fun the AARs were so I decided to continue the effort. I went through the list of

Reply to Alpha Centauri For GC2: TA in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

A few more thoughts. It may be easier to treat the Progenitors as they are in GC2: mostly long gone, but still somewhere behind the scenes. Frankly, you could have them have almost the same back history as the Ancients in GC2. We know the AC Progenitors are an impossibly old race (billions of years), that they are in a ideological and fratricidal war, and that elements of their billion year old works (such as Manifold 6, which they’ve managed to ‘forget’ about!) are just lying about the

Reply to Alpha Centauri For GC2: TA in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

An interesting project: SMAC in space! The key question is how to integrate it into GalCiv2. Here are a few ideas: • The Progenitors return and evict Humans from Manifold 6. They seed the major factions on other planets for reasons they don’t tell us about. The factions discover FTL travel at about the same time (a Progenitor-engineered coincidence? Or some loose lips by a Zakharov researcher? Artifacts with the secrets of FTL on the planets?) and then the race is on. <br/

Reply to Sci-Fi Books - Shaped my perceptions in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

the Star Fleet Battles I loved that game. I still have all the bits and pieces hidden in a closet. No one would ever want to play with me unfortunately . I loved it too. My SFB stuff is squirrled away in my attic. A friend passed away and his family gave me his SFB stuff, so I have two sets. Lucky me. Finding a group to play SFB is tough, and I just don't have the time... Hydro

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

In addition, there are many things that are not directly testable via the scientific method, such as the age of the Earth and the origin of species, so I would hesitate to label them as being true science. It's my opinion that science should deal with what is directly testable and observable - it's the testable and observable stuff that gives us our technology, inventions, and advances. Actually, the age of the Earth is well known via radiometric dating.

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

IMHO, science simply a way to explore our current physical world. It cannot and should not interfere with religious beliefs. I do not believe it conflicts with religion. I would agree, and in many cases there is no reason for conflict between science and religion. In fact, my mentor (head of the geology department where I was an undergraduate) was a devout Methodist who had a very spiritual life, and is a man that I deeply admire. He was a paleontologist

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Word of mouth was used to carry the story through the gap. And of course it got changed by that. Things got exaggerated and glorified. Interesting assertion. Unfortunately, you were not there to witness this, so I would therefore classify it as a hypothesis rather than a fact. Actually, there is a great deal of evidence for the mutation and self glorification of religion since religious doctrine was originally a manifestation its oral histo

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Why would the arrival of aliens destroy religion? So long as we are saying "what if there are aliens", what if those aliens are religous? Having them show up may even prove a group right. What if they got off the spaceship and started to pray to Mecca? If Aliens Landed on Earth and said they started life here on Earth,,, then who started life on the Aliens planet? All that happened is that the question of the begining of life has not been answe

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

However Paine fails to account for a key concept and virtue: sacrifice. What animal sacrifices? What law of nature defines this as a good survival tool? Within the fullness of my reason why would I sacrifice myself? Sadly animals make preprogrammed decisions, with some of the higher orders being able to store more complex behaviors in their brains. I argue that dying engaged in aggressive behavior is not sacrifice, these are survival strategies. The leopard that would

Reply to Torgalian Domination -- Defeated! in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

To put it in perspective, $20 is the cost of a good pizza. If you put the cost of games (or anything) in Pizza Equivalents you’ll see that the game and its excellent updates are good enough that it is well worth 1 PE for the joy of having the game at any point in the future via Stardock’ download utility. It is a bummer if the SN goes missing, though. I feel your pain since this has happened to me, too. Or consider it this way. Almost all other games require a CD to play. CDs eventuall

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I just find it sad that someone would not believe in SOME type of "afterlife" or God. The most depressing thing I can think of is that there is nothing beyond or better than the life you have now. Some would argue that "nothingness" after death is no problem, and I would venture to say those people have had a very tough life or are extremely wore out with the day to day grind of living. Claiming there is no God and nothing but blackness as your brain shuts down when yo

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

There was a study that was done that people that were prayed for, fared better in an illness. In any case the death of one person, however tragic it maybe of course, might be the cause of salvation for many others. God might decide to take that person close to Him for that reason. We have free will but God knows every possible outcome of every possible variable so He knows where each action leads. Prayer means faith in God and He can indeed be swayed by His Love to

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I believe there is a God. Look at the balance of evidence between the existence and the non-existence of God. On the one hand, there are many people throughout history that claim to have seen angels, even talk with God. There are people who claim to have come back from the dead and give detailed descriptions of the afterlife. There have been miracles in countless people's lives which are beyond modern science's ability to explain, and which are best explained by th

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Further, science does not always "work". A friend of mine some years ago was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. Due to the early stage of it, previous patients wiht similar conditions and the resources availible she was told that it would be a quick fix and a full recovery. Four months later she died in the hospital, after two months of agony and torture from both the cancer and the "cure". Science works, until it doesn't. God works, but has the bigger picture i

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I’m a happy agnostic sitting on the fence. Religionists can keep their tortured (literally!) theology and ideologically twisted science, and the atheists can try (forever) to prove a negative. Good luck. As to answering the pesky ‘why’ questions, I’ll read lots of science and science fiction. It is at least as illuminating and generally more creative as any religious myths. Heck, Hubbard has his own religion, so why not the Church of Clarke? Or the Temple of Asimov? Hmmm. Personally I

Reply to How can we all be athiests in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

Religion would be functionally irrelevant if so many folks weren't so compelled by their faith to indoctrinate others, by force if need be. Almost by definition religion isn't neutral and can't live-and-let-live. Expand, adapt, grow or die. There is a strange evolutionary symmetry to this that I find to be sadly amusing. Hydro

Reply to Be smarter than everyone else-have the facts on your side! in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I seem to recall an article in the Skeptical Inquirer that compared the Wikipedia to established encyclopedias on common topics. The selected panel of experts found, to their surprise, that the when they fact checked that the Wiki performed about as well as the authoritative encyclopedia. They speculated that the few wacko posters get shushed by the bulk of the contributors, many of whom are experts or lay experts, and since many eyes can catch occasional mistakes and typos. But don’t t

Reply to Ship Nomenclature in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I base mine loosely on Star Fleet Battles nomenclature, with a suffix for speed and variant. Tiny – frigate (FF) Small – destroyer (DD) Medium – cruiser (CA) Large – dreadnaught (DD) Huge – battleship (BB) Scouts have an ‘S’ that replaces the second letter. A survey ship is a GSC (galactic survey ship). Colony ships are “Col” and Transports are “Trans” and “HTrans” for heavy transport. So, my fourth version of a medium hull that is speed 5 would be: CA

Reply to MORE Mega Events! in GalCiv II News GalCiv2 Forums

I like a Civil War event. In general it is like the Fundamentalists, but more severe. See this thread: https://forums.galciv2.com/?forumid=247&aid=153145#1218688 Quick summary: * Would impact a single race and result in ~half your worlds forming another AI * Also, half of all your assets (ships, starbases, etc) would also defect - if the planets revolt but have no guns they are dead meat * The new AI is at war with the original race * Will be triggered by a CIV that

Reply to Anyone seen this happen before? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I’ve occasionally see ships freeze in place if they out of life support range. They can make it back, but there might be a reason (obstacle?) that prevents the AI from moving them. This happened once when my influence overwhelmed a Yor planet, the ships were ejected, and just stayed there. Or the AI might want them right where they are! Hard to say. Hydro

Reply to Tech Trading AI cheating? in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I can understand and agree why the tech trading system allows inter-AI preferential treatment (an exclusive AI Tech Club), and I can see how it is necessary to keep the game balanced. That said, it does suck the fun out of that portion of the game for me, and I do get more than a tad piqued when I scroll through the debug.err files to see what and how the AIs are trading with each other. This puts me in Evil Stormbringer’s camp. I turn tech trading off more to avoid the irritation. Yes

Reply to CIVIL WAR in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

I guess my idea was that the ‘points’ are cumulative. Sure, a player or AI can try to game the system by reducing taxes to get a short term moral bump – BUT, the oppressive taxes for the other 99 weeks count as a negative. In a way it is like the alignment system where you steadily build up a ‘reputation’, and your citizenry reacts accordingly. I hadn’t thought of losing an election as being a factor or a trigger. Perhaps this is because I’ve never lost an election since this is THE ea

Reply to Sunny days and game development in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

Flame wars and nasty visitors can sour the milk. I recall this happening to the developer forums for one of my favorite games, SMAC. The environment got so caustic that the devs simply abandoned it and it eventually sank under its own weight. That said, the vast majority of folks here are polite and helpful, and the forums are well monitored. It is unfortunate that cranky folks can be so oblivious to common decorum. The only cause I can think of is they have an easily triggered Big Red