Just a head’s up that the Dark Avatar beta is now up for anyone who’s pre-ordered it.
We also have media copies we’re sending out for anyone who covers PC strategy games.
The game play changes are pretty significant (main info here http://www.galciv2.com/darkavatar). The changes to gameplay go way beyond what’s on there though. If you’ve ever seen the change log on one of our updates, you can imagine the changes that would go into something that we charge money for. It’s immense.
Just a pet peeve, but it always irritates me when I see stuff like this. Unlike a paper form, a computer is darn well capable of figuring out if a word needs an “s” at the end.
For people with TGN subscriptions are they automatically in the beta? Also I got an email about my free tokens are going to be cancelled by the end of december, will I be able to use them for Dark Avatar?
I like the sound of the epic generator, and the special worlds. The super ability sounds pretty neat, is it going to be something you can put points into when creating a race, or you just choose one?
I got this e-mail too, and went to see what was available to just burn them on since there hasn’t been a ton added to TGN that I really wanted (aside from Space Rangers 2). I was pleasantly surprised to see them allowing pre-orders on both Dark Avatar and Sins of a Solar Empire.
I got the same email, and immediately dropped three tokens on a DA preorder, so yes, you can use them. I’m planning on using the remaining five on Sins of a Solar Empire, assuming nothing better hits TGN before 31/12.
The problem is not with English, but the other languages that GalCiv supports. Plurality works differently in other languages and it’s not a simple 1 to 1 mapping. Unless you have a phenomenally gifted multi-lingual programmer on your staff, it’s much easier (and safer) to allow the localizers to indicate that a piece of text can be plural than try a programmatic solution that could make things worse.
Yes. So how does the combat engine work? I have a large ship with 5 Blammo Beams, I get to fire 5 times, rolling 1-10 damage each?
Ok, so how does defence work then? If I put a Deflector shield on, I stop 1-8 damage from beam attacks, say. Can I put on more than one of the same type of defence, assuming I have room? Can larger ships field heavier defences, or do they just have more hitpoints?
Think of it like each weapon being like how a ship was treated in GC2. It attacks individual defenses and wears them down in order of most optimal defense to weakest. Then it starts doing damage.
Before, players could just build swarms of small but deadly ships and own dreadnoughts and such because the dreadnought only got one shot per round. Now, it gets N shots per round where N is the number of weapons on the ship. It’s a MUCH more satisfying system.
Preordered it as soon as I heard about it earlier this year. Got tricked into buying 10 Totalgaming tokens, love your download system!
Sad thing is that I’m so swamped with work right now that I’ll wait for the final version before downloading. Just gotta be strong.
With this done, get to work on a Master of Magic spiritual successor, just use another name if needed. As long as its close to the old one and has the small armies battling each other, you’ve a buyer in me. Or Society http://www.societygame.com/ really wonder or you can make it work where many others failed. Would be ace!
I mean you can always enjoy X-mas when your retired and such!
Hmmm I do sound like a viral marketing person now… really should look into getting paid doing those positive posts.
What do you mean by “wears them down”? Would a shield generator give me 20 points of protection against beams, and once I take 20 beam damage (over the whole battle), it’s on to the armour? Or do defenses subtract a fixed or random amount from each weapon hit?
Edit: I’m asking about the defenses because if weapons get split across multiple attacks, and you didn’t change defenses, it seems as though it would be too easy to make a ship with a high probability of completely stopping any weapon of near-equivalent tech.
Nice! The preorder is still available, and Stardock was nice enough to send me an e-mail with a $5 coupon. That makes $20 instead of $30 for the expansion. :)
I just uploaded Galactopedia 1.6.0 with support for the Dark Avatar expansion. There are some broken links between entries which I guess is due to the expansion still being in beta, so I won’t try to fix them now.
Also, you can now reload all data files while the Galactopedia is running. That happens automatically when a data source is changed, or you can trigger it manually to reflect changes you made to user ships or other XML files.
