Not a bug, just thought about planet quality bonus. I did some checking yesterday and it seems to me that, due to the way the planet quality bonus is calculated, this bonus ability is extremely overrated. If you go with 7% planet quality bonus you give up 80% of your bonus points and what do you get beck? Not much because of the way the Galcivs (both 1 and 2) do the rounding, i.e. 1.9 gain in quality is rounded to 1 (and consequently, in Galcivs, 1.1 loss is rounded to 2, mean, mean stuff). This means that the 7% planet quality bonus will bring you actual increase in planet quality only if you colonize planets of quality=15 or better (planet quality 14 times 1.07 = 14.98 = 14). Now, in Galciv I your home world was quality=15 and common sense was that you do not colonize planets of lesser quality unless you wan outposts. So, this option would give you some improvement (still overpriced in my opinion, but, hey, it's only my opinion) in majority of the cases. In Galciv II, since the majority of the planets is in 4 to 10 quality range, this extremely expensive bonus in most cases gives you – nothing.

Also, the concept of terraforming is somewhat weird. If I got it right, (all three) phases of terraforming are available only for the planets in the 11(?) to 17 planet quality range. I don’t think that I’ve seen quality 18 planets capable of terraforming. This leads to somewhat weird situation where it is, in the long run, better to colonize quality 17 planet than the one with quality of 19 because planet with quality that equals 17 at the beginning can be improved to planet quality 20 while planets of quality 18 and higher stay where they are.

And the tile bonuses do not help this planet quality mess. Planet with two or three bonus tiles is worth more than the planets that are a point of two higher in quality but without tile bonuses.

All said, I don’t want to rub it in (or just a little bit maybe) but it seems to me that the entire planet quality (improvement) concept is transferred from Galciv 1 to Galciv 2 a bit to linearly. I think that removing range limits for terraforming and applying standard rules of rounding of decimal numbers (it works for financial people and whatever I think of them they still make more money than me) would help. Although I am aware that this rounding thing might take out some of the fun for some irresponsible individuals but I don’t want to go there for the reasons well known…

And one question. I have seen only 200% tile improvements so far. Are the 400% and 800% tile improvements in the same category as the planet quality improvement resource that I read about in the manual for GalCiv 1 but have never seen them for all these years of playing the game?

Popup Target,

You have to save your racial abilities if you want to have them in future games. If you just press 'done' they are valid only for that particular game.

I do save them. Sometimes they go poof for no apparent reason, usually when I go in to tweak something, but not always. I probably should report that as a bug.

The other bug that I'm reporting is that for the first time in 4C, I'm to the point that I've got the Hyperion Planetary Fleet achievement, and it didn't work. It would create a one-ship fleet in places that I knew I had three ships stationed. I'd get to see the battles, even though I checked the box for only showing fleet-vs-fleet battles, so I know the fleet is being created, but I also know I have two or three ships at every planet. For further testing I created the lesser fleet manager to see if that worked (the one per civ for a single planet version, and I can't find the one per planet unlimited planets version), and it worked, and then the Hyperion version started working. This isn't going to be something that I can reproduce easily, though I'll check it every game I make it that far.

Yes Popup Target, something is definitely going on. I was changing some of my race abilities (and saving the changes) when I noticed that instead of Technologist I became Federalist without messing with political part of race abilities at all.

Also, again not quite a bug but…In the description for Iconians it says:

The Iconians were the creators of the Yor. They are highly inventive and proud race, they consider themselves heirs to the Dreadlords.

And then in summary of their abilities it says:

+ strong diplomacy
- weak research skills

Highly inventive and weak research skills? Is this my English as a second language thing or are some things out of sinc here?

On the second thought, proud race and strong diplomatic skills might be a bit out of sinc but it seems to be a more of a philosophical issue.

UP event - planet x is now habitable who should get it? well ME of course, except the planet was Wisp and belonged to the Altarians and didn't come with a colony tile, so I couldn't do anything (well except kick the Altarian fleet out). perhaps event a little too random?

A mentioni was made of saving the political party and abilities after setting them up. How do you do that. The save button on my screen is greyed out and cannot be pressed. Every game I have to reselect everything.

Uh, oh! When I said 'my English as a second language' I ment - my. This if it wasn't already obvious (that English is MY second language)...

the damage indicator in the combat screen isn't working properly it seems - it is supposed to fill up with red until the losing ship goes boom, but I have seen plenty of situations where it seems to fail to indicate damage at all in a combat session and the losing ship pops and the indicator stays undamaged

there's a ship movement bug.

if your ship has four moves and you move three squares and then attack, if you win the battle you will come out with four moves again.

if the same ship moves three squares then goes into orbit, you can launch right back out of orbit with all four moves again.

had an interesting moment when my fleet (1 ship, i troop carrier) invaded a torian planet and completely bypassed the torian fleet. captured planet with a torian fleet in orbit, but when the torians counter-attacked, the orbital fleet became mine - the fleet combat screen went orange in the background, which was kinda cool cos i could see all the missiles and shiled more clearly, but i'm sure is not the intent.......

1) If you display the planet list immediately after a United Planets vote, your income displays as zero. Everything else looks ok.

2) Have an example of the Altarians surrendering to me without my knowledge. The game autosaved and everything was ok. I then saved the game as a backup copy - just in case. I then loaded my saved game copy and found that the Altarians had surrendered to me. I still have the 2 saved games if you need them.

3) Destroying a shipyard while it is still producing does not remove the production item.

 

Not sure whether this is a bug or not, but here goes ...

A week ago I was reporting on various UPC oddities, but had to leave town for a week. Now that I'm back I've reloaded my saved game, and have gone through 3 senate election cycles with no UPC events. Aren't they supposed to be more frequent than that? Other than loading from a saved game, another thing that might have turned off the UPC is that the Yor declared war on me and then surrendered, so I'm now down to only the Korx as opponents.

couldn't edit my previous post, but just wanted to add the ship movement thing only happens with fleet battles.


homeworld morale seems a little messed up. all colonies will be between 100-100% but the homeworld will be 35-50%. the popup that shows how it was calculated never adds up correctly either.

My game hangs allways the same point. Here is couple last lines for debug.err file

Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_1
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_2
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_3
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_4
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Button_5
Debug Message: HeadlineWnd: Cannot find OBJID Headline_Tech_Improvements_Title
Debug Message: StarportWnd: Cannot find OBJID StarPort_Planet_Logo_Image

I just joined the beta so if I'm doing something wrong tell me

A few bugs and critiques:
I get no sound whatsoever while playing the game. I've turned the volume up to full and only makes my speakers buzz threateningly at me.

Whenever I send a ship somewhere after it finishes it's move for the turn it turns around and faces the galactic east (lower right of the minimap). It faces correctly when it moves, until it stops again.

The game crashes whenever I try to resume after using the windows key or alt-tab. ( I know this was already mentioned just thought I'd mention it)