I finally got to watch the Crusade preview stream last Friday night.
One of my questions was answered: Administrators are non-recoverable when lost. So burning an administrator to build a constructor that's used to make a shipyard means we trade an administrator for that easier-to-get shipyard? Not a good trade, maybe, but games are about choices.
This raises another concern, though. Will b-lining to weapons techs allow me to build an early attack ship I can use to cripple nearby AIs at the beginning of the game by killing off their colony ships, constructors, and possibly unarmed early survey vessels taking an administrator with each one? Will the AI attempt to do this to me? Will it be taught to provide effective escorts to prevent this strategy?
Other unanswered questions from a previous Crusade dev diary: (Edit: CRUSADE DIARY 5: Spies & Saboteurs )
I'm so thrilled for the fans to get their hands on this soon. It revolutionizes GC3 and is easily the best expansion Stardock has ever done!
I'm happy to relay what information I can about gameplay, if anyone has questions!
I'm anxious to hear what interface improvements, bug fixes, optimization, improved ship blueprints, diplomacy changes or anything else that's being worked on for release with Crusades that isn't part of the big parade of (much appreciated) game changing features.
I will buy Crusade, but I'd want to hear what the expected 2.1 is bringing without it.
If colonies cost administrators then conquered colonies also cost administrators?
So through conquest I achieve a net negative administration that I have to offset before building my next starbase or colonizing that extreme world that has been waiting for the tech unlock? Is this how it works? Is conquest factored into the new balance and not hamstrung by administrative caps?
And last question- Can you unequivocally state that these lines of code:
<!--Each time you research a tech in any tree the cost of all techs are raised by this exponent-->
<TechInflationExponent_All>1.01</TechInflationExponent_All>
<!--Each time you research a tech in any tree all techs cost is increesed by this multipyer.-->
<TechInflationMultiplier_All>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_All>
<!--These values allow us to further inflate techs on a per tree basis, this is to discourage the
player from drilling down a single branch of the tree too quickly, and over specializing.
I have removed the exponent, and have only a small multiplier, since it is added to the overall inflation settings.-->
<TechInflationExponent_Tree>1.01</TechInflationExponent_Tree>
<TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>
GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml lines 907 to 916 are effecting the AI's research rates as well as the players? I"ve messed with modding this to change research pacing and I suspect that these values are effecting the player only. I did one set of tests, but there's too many variable to consider anything conclusive. Can give you the saves if you like.
Thanks Kristy and enjoy your vacation.
