Random thoughts and rants...
Meat's back on the menu boy's!!
Published on March 14, 2007 By Neilo In Galactic Civilizations II
FOW fixed? SDC is showing.072 this is what we have been waiting for? 'Bout to find out!


Comments (Page 5)
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on Mar 16, 2007
If you really need a dev to take a look at a topic on the forum, then send them e-mail. The forums may be a great place to gather information and discuss, but they are large and it's quite easy for a topic to become quickly submerged by newer stuff.

If you want to be super-efficient, then run a topic linking to topics with issues needing attention, and point at that.
on Mar 16, 2007

The defense issue is in the database and is high priority.  Kryo does a really good job of pointing me at the bugs that you guys report on the forums, and a lot of you do a good job of sending in your reports to the bug database as well as posting them on the forums.  So kudos to all of you who help us help you! 

The bugs that we have fixed so far were higher priority and we wanted to get the update to you sooner rather than holding on to it for another week or more.  The defense issue is scheduled to be fixed in the next update. 

As for the standalone updates, we can get them to the majority of our customers most quickly via SDC.  This means that we can make small updates more frequently to address the highest priority bugs. 

If you have a portable hard drive or a flash drive, you can download GalCiv2 on a computer with internet access, copy the files to your computer that doesn't have internet, and then activate using the offline activation method:

https://www.stardock.helpserve.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=447&ratingconfirm=1

 

on Mar 16, 2007

If you have a portable hard drive or a flash drive, you can download GalCiv2 on a computer with internet access, copy the files to your computer that doesn't have internet, and then activate using the offline activation method:




Sorry, but that doesn't work for people who don't have the admistrator rights to install Stardock Central onto the computer they're using to DL the patch. I myself had to fork out $140 for a wireless rig since I wasn't able to just simply DL a file from the public system I have access to. It's ended up being a very expensive game for me, and the wireless internet connection I have now is so crappy, a very frutrating one too.

Though I'm much happier now that the unexplored fog is fixed. Thank you.

on Mar 16, 2007
My gripe is only when you have someone post a about something (like this) and then, ... [snip]


Hey wait a minute, you're a manager. Managers aren't allowed to have gripes.   
on Mar 16, 2007

My gripe is only when you have someone post a about something (like this) and then, less than a week later, having users start to impatiently say "I can't believe Stardock hasn't fixed this!" As if, by magic, a post on a forum trsnaltes into an update a week later.


Ok fair enough, impatient we may be. But posting on the forums about bugs as aposed to emailing to bug reports is about 3 times more effective. Now i understand you guys are busy and all, but when posting on the forum you get,

1) Help and advice from other players,
2) A quick and informative response from Kryo(among others),
3) Known awareness of the issue at hand

and finally a suitable place to vent your frustration about the issue in a constructive and non confrontational way.

Now i understand that emailing bug reports is Stardocks preferred method of bug reporting, and i know many people use it, but when the forums offer these advantages which you cannot get from emailing, you can understand why so many people will prefer to use the forums over the emailing choice.

Granted one should not expect magical things to happen, but it has been shown that the best way to try...is here on the forums.

The forums are the best place to garnish the newest information about the game, for the players...and for feedback for the devs.




There is one more advantage. Sometimes, you are not sure if something is really a bug or some quirk of your local system. Posting on the forums can confirm/deny whether it is just you.
on Mar 16, 2007
A couple of things...

1. You have a bug and support forum...I would hope it's monitored or used to get bugs to devs! Saying you're not aware of a bug that's been heavily discussed here is kinda wierd.

2. Why the secrecy about patch notes lately? Even if an update only fixes one metaverse issue it'd be nice to know what the update is doing. The game is getting stellar reviews and most of us know that Stardock patches aren't just about fixing an utterly broken game which is often the case with other games and devs. I'm sure posting new patch notes on the front page every week might alarm the clueless - but you could at least put them somewhere within the forums so they can be easily found (as opposed to getting stuck in the middle of a post by a user like this one about the patch). Patch notes in human readable terms might be nice too. I'm a programmer, so it doesn't matter to me, but non-programmers probably don't want to know which functions you've fixed.

on Mar 16, 2007
1. You have a bug and support forum...I would hope it's monitored or used to get bugs to devs! Saying you're not aware of a bug that's been heavily discussed here is kinda wierd.



You've got a point there....
on Mar 16, 2007
2. Why the secrecy about patch notes lately?


While 1.5X2 and 1.5X3 were not posted in the dev journals section, the history log in SDC was actually updated. To read that directly you can just go to this link.
on Mar 16, 2007
All the update logs are available to view as soon as they are uploaded, normally with the update itself. To view them simply open SDC to d/l the latest update and once you have clicked DA you will see the game synopsis in the bottom window. Simply click 'Game History' to view all the info on the current update and all previous ones.

D
on Mar 17, 2007
1. You have a bug and support forum...I would hope it's monitored or used to get bugs to devs! Saying you're not aware of a bug that's been heavily discussed here is kinda wierd.


Seems Kryo and Cari were aware of it. Lack of communication between team members?!
on Mar 22, 2007

The defense issue has been addressed for the next update.

This is how it will work

When a weapon is fired, the defending ship's defense in that category is decreased by the attack roll until the defense in that category is depleted.

Once the defending's ships primary defense against that weapon is depleted (or the ship did not even have that defense type), further attacks of that weapon type will decrease the defenses in the next highest defense category until that is depleted, then follow on to the nex t category.  If the defenses were the same value, it randomly picks which gets decreased.

For example: (Fleet A attacks ship B )

Fleet A
Ship A1 (  Attack: 10/0/0 Defense: 0/0/0 )
Ship A2 ( Attack: 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A3 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A4 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A5 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )

Ship B ( Attack: 1/0/0  Defense 10/5/3 )

Fleet A attacks this round:
Ship A1 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 8 ( B's defenses are now 2/5/3 )
Ship A2 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 4 ( B's defenses are now 0/5/3 )
Ship A3 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 7 ( B's defenses are now 0/0/3 )
Ship A4 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 6 ( B's defenses are now 0/0/0 )
Ship A5 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 9 ( B is defenseless until next round )

 

on Mar 22, 2007
The defense issue has been addressed for the next update.


When is this due out and will it also address the CTD issues that some of us are having since updating?
on Mar 22, 2007
This is how it will work
When a weapon is fired, the defending ship's defense in that category is decreased by the attack roll until the defense in that category is depleted.


No off-type bonus? No defense rolls?
Or was that just an inaccurate example?
on Mar 22, 2007
Questions: when the attack destroys one kind of defense (as in the second shot in your example) does the damage immediately spill over into HP or does it get dropped into the next defense category? Also, how exactly is the off type defense bug being fixed here? In your example, it looks like the other types of defenses are being treated just as though they're on-type...
on Mar 22, 2007
For example: (Fleet A attacks ship B )

Fleet A
Ship A1 ( Attack: 10/0/0 Defense: 0/0/0 )
Ship A2 ( Attack: 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A3 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A4 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )
Ship A5 ( Attack 10/0/0 Defense 0/0/0 )

Ship B ( Attack: 1/0/0 Defense 10/5/3 )

Fleet A attacks this round:
Ship A1 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 8 ( B's defenses are now 2/5/3 )
Ship A2 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 4 ( B's defenses are now 0/5/3 )
Ship A3 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 7 ( B's defenses are now 0/0/3 )
Ship A4 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 6 ( B's defenses are now 0/0/0 )
Ship A5 fires lasers and rolls an attack of 9 ( B is defenseless until next round )


Well as you know, lasers normally only roll from 0 to 1. This means that there's usually no chance for a bleed through to the ship's hitpoints unless the defences are very weak, roll poorly, or are non-existent. If instead each ship in the above example has a pair of high-end phasors, they might do quite a bit of bleed-through damage provided they roll well against the defences.

In the example above, weapons firing at a defence which has been collapsed will do damage to other defences. Thus, defences are no longer tracked individually and an attack with one weapon type will weaken a ship for an attack by another weapon type in the same round.

I would assume that bleed through will happen at any point where defence rolls less than the attack value and is thus overwhelmed. Because an on-type defence is eroded preferentially to other defences, it still performs a useful function.
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