I’ve ready a lot of comments on Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes AI.  I feel confident in saying that most people seem very satisfied with it overall. But I think most people would say it’s not quite as good as GalCiv II’s.

In some respects, the GalCiv series is an anomaly.   I’ve been programming AI on GalCiv games for 20 years.  Let’s put that on the table for a moment and consider the ramifications. Can anyone think of a game, any game in the history of game development, where the same individual programmed the AI for the same franchise for 20 years.  That’s why the AI in the GalCiv games is so good. I’ve had 20 years to digest people’s ideas.

Similarly, a couple weeks ago we released FE: Legendary Heroes 1.3.  As many have observed, the AI improvements in it are nothing short of spectacular.  But that’s not because I suddenly became a better programmer (I wish! <g>). It’s because I’ve had just that much more time to play the game, read the forums, watch “Let’s Play Videos”.

Probably the biggest advantage the LH has had in AI is that pretty much everyone has multicore setups.  I can’t promise this but I think LH may be the first truly native multicore AI that’s been developed (it certainly won’t be the last).  That is, every AI player gets its smarts spawned out to a different CPU core.  That’s why the turn times are much shorter than in most games even though the AI plays pretty well without having to cheat.

Why we don’t like cheating

I’ve gotten a lot of email from people asking why I don’t just have the AI “cheat” on the challenging and normal difficulties.  And I think there may be an age thing.  People of my age (around 40) really really hate cheating AI.  I think it hurts the game. I think it hurts the game because when I play a game, I want to feel like the AI is playing the same game as I do.

Even on the harder levels in Legendary Heroes, the AI doesn’t just conjure up units out of thin air. We just give them more gold or more HP and other things that players can understand and react to.  We don’t, for instance, spawn enemies out in the FOW (a very common trick on our industry). The AI has to have the resources, even on “ridiculous” to create those units. That matters because players want to be able to knock out iron mines and stables and know that this is going to impact the AI’s ability to create those units (same for wiping out shards and spell casting).

What’s next

I still think of Legendary Heroes as a new game.  New DLC is in the works, new updates (1.4 and 1.5) are in the works.  The success of the DLC allows me to pay developers to keep enhancing the game. 

So how do we make the AI better?

There’s just no substitute for time on this.  When people play the game and post, I read. And I conspire how to thwart their plans.   Like many of you, I enjoy playing the game and thinking of ways to wreck it.  I’m a lucky guy that I get to spend time with you guys and brainstorm new strategies for the AI.  I do feel bad for the amazing experts who won’t get to see the expression on those new players who suddenly see the AI doing something clever.

But I think, you and I, together are doing something really fun for next-generation gamers who will realize that 4X games are, actually, pretty darn amazing.

Cheers!

In October 2013, Stardock will be turning 20 (incorporation date). The first software product we made was…Galactic Civilizations. 

I began working on it in early 1992 while in college and it went into public beta at the start of 1993.  It was “published” by a guy going by “Advanced Idea Machines” who also designed, ahem, the box.

Galactic Civilizations for OS/2 box (we had nothing to do with this..box)

I was going through my stuff today and found a shrink wrapped copy of Galactic Civilizations for OS/2.  This has to be about the worst retail box I have ever seen  in my life. But there it is.

A couple years later, Stardock made a sequel for OS/2 (Galactic Civilizations 2).  This time, we designed the box ourselves using Corel Draw. Mind you, we still didn’t really have any resident artists.  My long-time friend who I met during Orientation at college, Bill Zalenski, designed the GalCiv aliens.

Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2 box

Of course now, boxes are starting to become rare. In the digital age, why would you put a computer game inside a piece of dead tree? But I kind of miss game boxes.

So what kind of firearms do you have? Any?

I've got a CZ-75 P07 0.40 pistol.  This one my favorite pistol.

I've also got a S&W Model 28 revolver which is my favorite handgun overall even though it's just a 6 shooter and has a 6 inch barrel.

I also have a Mossberg 500 pump shotgun and a Benelli M4 semi-auto shotgun. I have a few others but I don't tend to use them anymore (not enough time to practice)

In terms of rifles, my favorite one to shoot is a 10/22 but I have a SIG 556, a LMC AR-15 Defender and an ACR but I haven't had time yet to put them through their paces.  I've got some other files (a Ruger Mini 14 which I don't like).

Ironically, I do not own a 9mm pistol. I'm thinking of getting a Glock 19.

As pressure mounts to raise the wages of fast food workers, advocates may want to take note that such wage increases eventually pass a threshold where it makes financial sense to simply invest in automation. As Grocery Store cashiers learned, these jobs are not a given. We are all competing not just with each other but with robots. 

One of the primary reasons that the gap between the rich and poor has increased so much in the past 20 years has been the rise in IT.  Once we purchase a computer, robot, etc. its capabilities – its output and productivity are owned by the buyer which increases the wealth generated by that person.

As people demand McDonalds pay workers $15 an hour and the government insists that they also provide health care, restaurant owners are increasingly evaluating whether to simply replace their work force with machines.  

Naturally, in 2017 when today’s “living wage advocate” is ordering their Big Mac from a friendly touch screen and having it delivered momentarily by a robot they’ll make no connection between how their beliefs resulted in more people living in poverty. Instead, they’ll blame McDonalds. They’ll blame greedy restaurant owners. But they won’t consider that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to price people out of their workforce.

More reading:

http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/

http://www.thestar.com/business/2012/11/29/automatic_burger_machine_could_revolutionize_fast_food.html

About a year ago, I wrote “The lights go out: What happens if the grid goes down”.  It talked about what would likely happen if the power went out and works through the first 4 weeks.  In short, it’s not a pretty picture.

Doomsday Scenarios

Below are my opinions and just my opinions. They’re based on reading and researching these topics in my spare time out of morbid curiosity.  I define a doomsday scenario as a scenario where the civil society could potentially break down as a result.  The break down of civil society (law and order) would, in turn, activate the “preppers” various bug out / bug in contingency plans.

Scenario #1: Economic Collapse

I consider the likelihood of this happening to be basically zero.  It seems to be the most discussed, most feared scenario I read online. At the risk of alienating preppers right off the bat, I consider this scenario largely baseless.

Scenario #2: EMP attack

This is the scenario where someone sets of a powerful electromagnetic pulse that fries the power grid and many low voltage dependent systems.  There is a lot of debate on the level of damage this would do.  My opinion is that any EMP attack worth considering would, at the very least, wreck the power grid for an extended period of time.  However, I don’t think it likely that it’ll take out cars (even modern cars).  While the computer systems in cars are sensitive and a car isn’t a true “faraday cage” I am highly skeptical that an EMP would take out most cars, modern or not.

Nevertheless, an EMP attack would probably cause many millions of people to be without power for an extended period of time.

The odds of this happening in our lifetime I think are pretty low.  If I had to guess, maybe 1 in 100.

Scenario #3: Solar based EMP

Sometimes called coronal mass ejections, these solar based EMPs could truly wreck our day. We’ve had them before (Carrington Event) which occurred in the 19th century. Had this hit us today, we’d have a huge issue (I’d guess worldwide power outages that could take months to repair).

We had one in 2013 on July 16th…well, almost. It missed us by a solar day.  So this isn’t a question of if, it’s a question of when and how bad.  The electrical grid in most countries is hooked up like an extra fragile Christmas tree.  It would not be inaccurate to describe it as “cobbled” together.  It works but it’s not very robust.  It takes remarkably little to knock out the power for huge swaths of territory.

The odds of this happening in our lifetime are pretty low also. I’d say 1 in 50.

Scenario #4: Cyber based attack

This one worries me quite a bit because few people are aware of it. Some people have heard Stuxnet and other weaponized computer worms that have been used to slow down Iran’s nuclear program.  But few people have given much thought of how vulnerable the United States and other western countries are to this kind of attack. 

In 2003, the Northeast of the United States and Canada went without power for about a week, affecting 45 million people. It was largely caused by a software bug at a single power station in Ohio.  Imagine a malicious attempt to wreck the control systems for the power grid.

The odds of this happening I think are a lot less remote than people think. Probably 1 in 25 in our lifetime.

Why losing power is such a big deal

Overall, I’d say that the odds of something causing a national, extended power outage to be about 1 in 10.  Anyone under 50 probably has no experience of just how recent electrical power actually is.  A century ago, most people didn’t have electricity and even 75 years ago, it was considered pretty flaky.  Yet, today, we are totally and completely dependent on it.

Let’s walk through a few of the things that would happen if we lost electrical power for an extended period of time.

1. Our logistics system would be trashed.  We are now very dependent on “Just in time” infrastructure. That is, we don’t keep huge warehouses anymore. We deliver things just as needed to maximize efficiency.  To put things into perspective, you could cripple our economy just by wiping out the computers at Fed Ex and UPS. 
2. Little food. Your local supermarket relies on daily inventory replenishment. Even if the trucks and trains and such are still running, the ability to deliver food would be severely disrupted. 
3. No gas. Our capacity to refine, deliver and distribute gasoline would be curtailed dramatically. So while I don’t personally think there’s a realistic scenario where your cars and such would be directly affected by a viable doomsday scenario, your ability to drive might not last very long.
4. No money. How much cash do you keep on hand? No power, no credit card processing.  Let’s focus on this a second. Next time you’re out doing something, consider what would happen if you no longer had the ability to use a credit/debit card but instead had to rely purely on the cash on hand. How would that work out for you? Imagine a cyber attack that disrupted the merchant account services sector and nothing else. What about ATMs? Nope, they’re down.  How about going to a teller? No power, they can’t tell you how much you’ve got in the bank. I think we’d be able to quickly adapt (i.e. write things down, as long as you have an ID, but it would slow things to a crawl).
5. Water. Water is something I think we would probably do okay with. We’d soon run out of running water but barring a truly worst case scenario, this is one area I think the government could help large %’s of the population with (distributing water). But if you’re in a more rural area, it would get sticky and our ability to produce and deliver food would still become a huge problem.  I’m just saying I don’t think water would be the “SHTF” trigger in a likely doomsday scenario. At least, as long as the government is up and running and can coordinate with local producers/distributors of bottled water.
6. Habitation. God forbid that this happen in the Winter.  Natural gas would likely flow for a long while but you wouldn’t be able to do much with it if there’s no electricity. Similarly, our ability to store food (no refrigeration) would be reduced.
7. Communication.  Our ability to communicate would drop to nill. I think much of the Internet, powered through extensive backup systems (depending on the severity, a really powerful EMP might wreck the ability of natural gas based backup systems to function) would be ok.  But our ability to connect to it would be greatly reduced. I’m not confident my local cell tower or Comcast would be up for the duration.

There’s probably more I am not thinking of here. In, fact, I’m sure there are.  Moreover, the severity of the points above really are dependent on how resources/handy you are. The big question though is how long would modern civil society be able to last without electricity?  How habitable is a modern American city without electricity? Would/could order be maintained?

The big assumption I make here is that our vehicles would still work.  I can envision EMP based catastrophes that are bad enough to fry most cars. My problem with those scenarios is that they’re about as likely as us being hit by a extinction level asteroid/comet or a mega volcano or a super plague at which point, all bets are off.

No, to me, the big question would be maintaining civil society.

The thin veneer of civilization

For the purposes of our discussion, things don’t really “hit the fan” until civil society breaks down. In my opinion, the most likely trigger for that would be lack of food.

I have a high confidence in our government’s ability to obtain and deliver water for a long period of time.  I also believe that state and local authorities could obtain and distribute food for an extended period of time – a month for instance. But without our modern logistics system up and running, after a month, food shortages would become very serious. 

There have been many documentaries on how our food is produced now (manufactured is probably more accurate). It’s a very complex industrial process with a lot of moving parts.  It’s not like we would stop producing any food at all.  But our ability to feed 300+ million people daily rests on our modern manufacturing and logistics system which is dependent on electricity.

So for me, the big question is, how long, without electricity, would most people be able to obtain enough food to feed themselves and their families.  Once the ability to obtain food without violence disappears, so too does civil society.

So what do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Also:

Check out the Ultimate Bug out Vehicle.

Wow! Lots of PMs and tweets regarding yesterday’s article on what would happen with the collapse of the grid.

Let me first say that I make no claims to be an expert on EMP.  There are a lot of people who are convinced that a reasonably strong EMP would disable modern cars.   I don’t happen to agree with that view. Hopefully we’ll never find out. I’m going to assume that the most likely doomsday scenario people will likely face will be a long-term power grid outage that leaves cars functional.

And by doomsday scenario, I mean one where civil society breaks down and electrical power is our Achilles heel.

What happens when civil society breaks down

Food is the link that becomes the limiting factor first. I don’t think that an American population of >300 million can be fed without a reliable power grid. I think state, local and federal authorities could hold things together sufficiently for a month without power.  I think beyond that, things would begin to fall apart because simply put, we just wouldn’t have enough food to go around. And that’s when things get really bad.

The Ultimate survival vehicle Specs

Each person has his or her own opinion on what would be ideal for surviving in the event that civil society breaks down.  Below are a few basics requirements.

1. It needs to be armored against small arms.

2. It needs to be all terrain.

3. It needs to be able to handle lots of different fuel sources (if it requires gasoline, it won’t be viable).

In my mind, those are the 3 minimum requirements.

For me, the purpose of a survival vehicle would be to transport goods and people around safely and securely. That’s because I think people will need to work together in groups (call them tribes/micro-societies/villages/whatever) until order can be restored. And being able to provide a survival vehicle to a group would be invaluable.

Here are some candidates for that vehicle and why.

Candidate #1: The Knight XV

http://www.conquestvehicles.com/knight-xv.html

I’ve seen a lot of “prepper” folks talk about this vehicle. It’s basically a suped-up Ford F550. It’s heavily armored and designed to take a lot of punishment. The interior is somewhat lavishly made.

I don’t find this vehicle terribly practical as-is because it’s too focused on combining luxury with armor.  It has relatively little storage capacity, is immensely expensive >$600k. But damn, it’s cool looking.

Candidate #2: Terradyne RPV

I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen people talk about this vehicle. I had to do a lot of digging to find it.

http://terradyneinc.com/pdf/GURKHA_RPV.pdf

It is similar to the Knight XV in many ways. It isn’t clear how easy it would be to obtain for civilian use (though I suspect you can get it, these tend to be modified Ford F550 trucks).

It’s a turbo diesel, definitely off road, and can take 40 gallons fuel.  Like the Knight XV, it’s armored. What I like about this one is that it’s also a pickup which makes it bit more practical for moving cargo (like food and supplies).

Candidate #3: Oshosh Tactical Protector Vehicle

The Tactical Protector vehicle targets law enforcement and homeland security.  I’ve seen it mentioned elswhere and like the others, it’s a modified Ford F550 with a V8 diesel engine. I am not certain how well it would perform off road (I suppose as well as the others). 

It comes with a number of interior options so it could be made to support a lot of storage.

http://www.oshkosh-tacticalprotector.com/index.html

Candidate #4: Custom F450/F550/Chevy/Jeep

If you’re mechanical (I’m not) you can probably build your own ideal survival vehicle. 

This guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpxvSVg0vT4&list=TLRGgVRIE_DVM has done that.

He purposely made his vehicle look inconspicuous and he has a point. The other vehicles I talk about draw a lot of attention. One could argue that the best bug out vehicle is one that meets the 3 criteria I mentioned earlier but doesn’t look like it. 

Candidate #5: Unicat UL 15-DK-HD

Technically I’m cheating on this one as it’s not armored and it already weights so much (over 32,000 pounds) that adding armor to it would be ludicrous. But it has one advantage than none of the others have: It’s a portable, self-contained shelter.

When I first saw this, I thought “Wow, I bet the Walking Dead people wished they had had this and not that crappy camper!”

Besides being reasonably well equipped to go off-road, it has showers, stoves, electrical generation, vast water supplies, a real toilet. In short, a true bug-out vehicle.

http://www.unicat.com/ua-en/info/UL15DKHD.php

Candidate #6:  Oshkosh S-ATV

I’m really surprised I haven’t found any sites discussing the Oshkosh S-ATV.  Ignoring the picture (highly unlikely you’re going to get it configured with a gun turret, especially for the civilian market) it’s most definitely off-road friendly.  It supports Diesel, JP-8 and Jet-A and I suspect it would be able to be modified to handle additional types. JP-8 fuel is nasty stuff (think kerosene) but it makes me think that the engine can probably handle some pretty scary stuff in a pinch.

It’s also a lot lighter than the other trucks weighing in at “only” 10,000lbs.  What makes this vehicle exciting is that it has a ton (4 tons actually) of payload capability and is truly off road capable.

I’ll admit that this one is my favorite.  That’s because it can haul a lot of stuff and doesn’t have to rely on roads to get around but would still do well against small arms fire.

http://oshkoshdefense.com/products/28/s-atv#lit

What’s the point?

It really depends on what the point of your vehicle is.

Nearly every “prepper” blog I’ve read seems to focus on one of two plans:

(1) Bug out. They take their vehicle and go to a secure, remote, well prepared location. The vehicle is there to get to the bug out location.

or

(2) Bug in.  Their stuff is in their home and they work on making it defensible. The vehicle is there to safely get supplies and people and bring them back.

I don’t think either of these plans is viable on its own for most people.  In my opinion, the only viable plan is one that helps create a group of a couple dozen adults with you providing skills or physical assets that justify you being part of that group.

Hence, the ideal bug out vehicle is ultimately going to be something that can safely and reliably (and securely) obtain and deliver supplies and people to different locations.  That means a vehicle that can withstand small arms fire and can avoid the inevitable road blocks that gangs will put up on roads.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments area.

It's a big galaxy out there!  Share your ideas for new alien species you'd like to see in a new Star Control game!

We're referring to the Star Control games made in the late 80s/early 90s as Star Control classic to help differentiate them from any new Star Control games.

Here are a few of our favorite sites for discussing the classic Star control games along with where you can purchase it.

Star Control 1/2: http://www.gog.com/game/star_control_1_2

Star Control 3: http://www.gog.com/game/star_control_3

Star Control fan site: http://www.star-control.com/

Ur-Quan Masters site: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Precursors: http://www.medievalfuture.com/precursors/main.php

Starcontroller: http://starcontroller.com/

Greetings!

Our story so far...

Long ago, Paul Reiche and Fred Ford developed an amazing game called Star Control that was published by Accolade.  They formed Toys for Bob and it was well received.

A couple years later, Toys for Bob made Star Control 2 and it was an instant classic. 

When it came time to do a third one, Toys for Bob opted out and Accolade contracted development to a third party to create Star Control 3 which, while not a bad game, was no where near as well received as Star Control 2 was.

Star Control 3 was released in 1996.

..Time

   Passes...

Accolade was eventually acquired by Infrogrames which in turn was rebranded as Atari. But no new Star Control game was forthcoming.  

This Summer, Atari filed for bankruptcy and Stardock, developer and/or publisher of Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire and Fallen Enchantress acquired Atari's rights to Star Control with the intent to make a new Star Control game.

And that's where we are now.