Lots of exciting things happening this year.  

Stardock is actively hiring software developers to begin revamping all of Object Desktop.  You will begin to see the changes starting in mid November as new and old things alike start being added.

A few things on our plate include:

1. Updating SoundPackager.  The sounds in Windows 10 are a bit annoying.  Stardock has a lot of audio talent here that we plan to use to revamp the sound packages that it includes as well as put dev resources into updating it.
2. Updating Keyboard LaunchPad.  This is mostly about updating the UX and feature set to support modern apps as well as changing the defaults short-cuts.  Sorry WinAmp fans!
3. DeskScapes 10.1.  We are going to be integrating in-app Dream creation (not just DreamMaker but a full on mini app for creating really cool effects and dreams!).
4. NEW APP.  I can't talk about this yet but it should show up within the next month or so.  It's the biggest new customization app we've put out in years.

And that's just by end of this year!

Stay tuned!

Greetings!  

We are pleased to let you know about the exciting changes in v3.95 of Galactic Civilizations III.

This is a big one so stand back!  

Gameplay

• New game option: On Surrender, transfer all planets.  Defaults to OFF
• New game option: No FOW in your territory. Defaults to ON
• "Ascension Victory" no longers requires you to control a majority of the crystals.  
• Common and Abundant asteroid frequency increased.
• When a planet gets colonized or a shipyard gets made and it sees if there is a shipyard nearby that would be in the green zone (no penalty), planet automatically becomes a sponsor.
• Eliminated the map size limitations on map sizes as long as you have at least 8GB of memory.
• "Nanite Transmitter" now has limited uses.
• "Nano Fabricator" now gives 100 manufacturing overflow.
• "Nano Fabricator" now gives a +10% Max Manufacturing bonus to the planet.
• Dodge value on high-end thrusters reduced by 3%.
• Tactical battle maximum final dodge increased from 10% to 20% (i.e. a ship always has a 20% chance to hit you).
• Base relationship penalty for approaching ascension is -2 instead of -1
• Ascension close to victory threshold lowered from 66% to 50% as there tends to be a feedback loop on accumulating points.
• Space Rockets moved from default to Militaration tech
• Retribution: Civilization capital max population increased from 8 to 10
• Race Trait changes
• Base Game: 
• Reduced the effect of the "Popular" race trait
• Crusade and up
• Research techs for Drengin no longer have maint cost.
• All:
• Port of call is one per player instead of one per planet to align with Retribution balance
• Productive1 trait now provides 20% instead of 10% social production boost
• Production2 trait now provides 10% instead of 5%
• Clever1 now provides 15% research boost instead of 10%
• Influential1 trait now does 40% influence boost instead of 15%
• Influential2 trait now does 15% influence boost instead of 10%
• Economical1 now provides 15% gross income boost instead of 10%
• Handy1 now reduces Colony Maintenace by 50% instead of 20%
• Handy2 now reduces Colony Maintenace by 30% instead of 15%
• Popular1 tourism per planet boost reduced from 2% to 0.4% (it's still pretty huge)
• Popular2 tourism boost reduced from 1% to 0.2%
• Traders1 trade boost increased from 20% to 40%
• Traders2 trade boost increased from 10% to 15%
• Brutal1 increases soldiering from 20% to 50% now
• Brutal2 increases soldiering from 10% to 30%
• Courageous1 trait now boosts resistance from 20% to 50%
• Courageous2 trait boosted from 10% to 30%
• SharpEyed1 increases ship accuracy from 20% to 30%
• Sharpeyed2 increases ship accuracy from 10% to 20%
• Agile1 increases jamming (dodge) from 20% to 30%
• Agile2 increases jamming (doge) from 10% to 20%
• Observant1 increases sensors from 25% to 50% 
• Observant2 increases sensor range from 15% to 30%

Interface

• Moved the "planet build queue" over to give the improvement list more room.
• Moved "Word on the Street" window to the Govern screen.     
• Tourism on a planet displays decimals if it falls below 1%.
• The game now provides feedback when you can't select a tech because of an "Age" restriction

Bugs

• Fixed a rare bug that prevented planets and ships from spawning in the campaigns
• Fix typos.  Hat tip our discord fans for their help
• Ambient music no longer plays during the victory movie.

When it comes to dogs my views can be summed up by this incident this weekend...

I am at the store and I need a USB-C cable.  They're $9.99.  I call my wife and tell her "I dunno, $10 for a cable, can you just bring the one we have downstate with you?"

However, before I had left the store I bought a $9.99 "Super Premium" dog bone.  

Priorities.

Post your picture of your dog here.

We have two dogs.

First, the new puppy:

This is an "English Creme" retriever.

And this is my baby girl with our 8 year old Entlebucher, Bailey.

What an adventure...

So I built "Frog-2019" and this time I bought a Fractal Design case that has a USB-C port on the front!  Great.  Well, my first motherboard, an ASROCK X299 Tachi said it had a USB-C front panel on it but when I got it, the actual header on the motherboard was missing.

Ok.  That gets swapped out with an ASUS and now Windows 10 wants activation.  And this was a ridiculous situation.

It said I needed to reactivate.

Ah but there's a link that I changed my hardware.

No go.

I now spend the next HOUR on the phone with Microsoft that involves, I kid you not: Giving them control over my PC so that they can do the following:

1. Verify I purchased this new motherboard (going to Amazon and seeing it).
2. Verifying that this is the motherboard in question through looking at msinfo32.
3. Generating a new key.

Now, mind you, this guy on the phone was pretty technical and professional which means he's probably not cheap to employ.  Similarly, suffice to say, my time isn't cheap either.  Yet this was all wasted over something that everyone else (including Office365) has figured out how to do with regards to licensing.

So now I'm all set.

But wait, not quite.  My front panel USB-C is working on the new motherboard...but the USB 3.1 Gen 1 (i.e USB 3.0) is not working. Why? So I take a look at where the 20 pin connector goes and realize it can't quite get in all the way because the header next to it is too close.  I order a 20 pin extender.  Not because I need an extender but because it's connector is skinnier and hook that up.

Now I'm all set.  I load up my tools, start to debug.

Blue screen.

But I'm getting closer than ever!

by Brad Wardell, Founder and CEO of Stardock

@draginol on Twitter

Discuss this issue here: https://forums.stardock.com/496950/stardock-magazine-september-discussion

## Contents ##

• Editorial: Working on Cider v2.0
• Siege of Centauri
• IndieDev: How to talk to the press
• Fun with Start10

## Editorial ##

Stardock is working on v2 of its game engine, Cider. Cider is powered by Oxide’s Nitrous, a technology that allows our engine to be super fast and core-neutral (no easy task).

Just because Nitrous makes it possible to be truly core neutral, it doesn’t just magically make a game core-neutral.  We developed Cider specifically to make it easier for us to create strategy and simulation games with Nitrous.  By narrowing down the use-case (i.e. Cider wouldn’t do anything special for a first person shooter for instance), we can then begin to optimize every frame in a way that makes sense for a strategy game or simulation (i.e. handling lots of entities, AI, physics, decoupled sims).

Every millisecond counts.  In the above picture, we have 25,000+ space ships (see below) battling it out.    Our job is to make sure the engine can do as many things in parallel as possible.  In the image above, each row is a thread.  Our goal is to have as many rows going at once and in doing so shorten the overall frame time.

This way, when we bring this down to a measly 4,000 space ships, you can get over 1000 frames per second:

A key factor for Cider 2.0 is that AI and gameplay elements are now handled as Lua scripts rather than compiled C++. What this means is that it is much easier for us to iterate on gameplay and AI (no recompile needed, just edit the script and refresh).  It also means that modding becomes much more powerful since the scripts are just in plain text.  Don’t like our unit AI? Tweak it, or write your own and share it. 

We also decided to standardize our asset format to be more in line with Ironclad’s Sins of a Solar Empire.  In our internal Cider v2 test, we used Sins assets that the engine auto-converted.  The assets needed a little bit of work to support physically based rendering but as the screenshot above shows, they work well.

It’s going to be awhile before we ship anything with Cider v2.0.  The target platforms for v2 include PC, Stadia (which we already support via Cider Cloud), Linux, Nintendo Switch, XBO, Mac, PS4 and Apple Arcade.  Cider isn’t something we’ll be licensing, but rather it’s designed to give Stardock’s games and software a way to stand out in an increasingly crowded market.

## Siege of Centauri ##

This month, we released our take on the tower defense genre – Siege of Centauri.  This game takes place in the Ashes of the Singularity universe where you are in command of the defenses of Earth’s first interstellar colony and are being attacked by an unknown enemy (spoiler: It’s the Substrate from Ashes).  

The v1.0 launch of this game has been interesting to watch, since it attracted a very different player demographic than Ashes of the Singularity and dealt with some market changes since Ashes’s release (namely, video cards are running hotter and hotter and Nitrous pushes the video card a lot harder than other games do).  So after a bumpy launch (crashes from overheating), we were able to quickly update it with some of the tech we developed for Star Control so it didn't push the hardware so much.

Many hardware enthusiasts can tell you that even a single frame per second can have a huge impact on heat. This is one of the reasons I tend to under-volt my video cards.  I am happy to lose literally a couple frames per second (i.e. like 95 to 93) in exchange for a 20 degree difference in temperature. But I digress.

I think the reason people like Siege so much (at least those who didn’t run into a technical issue on release week) is that the game really shows how much the tower defense genre can evolve when coupled with modern tech.

Being able to create and share your own missions with people is something we take for granted in other games, but most tower defense games were released prior to this becoming mainstream.  Similarly, having 1920x1080 resolution as the norm means we can have screens that allow players to configure their towers before missions.  None of these kinds of things on their own are earth shattering but when you put them together you have a game with a lot more depth and replayability.

Get it here: http://www.siegeofcentauri.com 

## IndieDev: How to talk to the press ##

For over twenty-five years I’ve been interacting with the tech and games press. A lot has changed over that time, but the fundamentals have not. The tips here will benefit you in all your communication whether it be to colleagues, a business partner, or potential lead.

Here are the 5 rules I try to remember:

1. Don’t waste their time.
2. Don’t editorialize.
3. Make it convenient for them
4. Do your research
5. Know your audience

Let’s walk through each of these.

Don’t waste their time

You get, at most, 250 words.  If you go over that, you’re too long.  Keep it short and to the point.

Don’t editorialize

Just the facts.  Don’t tell them how great your product is.  Give them information as if you, yourself, were conveying it as objectively as you can.

Make it convenient for them

Use formatting (bullet points, numbered lists, etc.) with links to more information.  You have a post, a change log, a set of screenshots? Link to it.  Treat a screenshot as being worth 100 words. So if you put in a screenshot, you should have 100 fewer words in your email.  Give them something to link to if you’re looking for coverage.

Do your research

What is it they cover? What are their interests?  Make sure what you are sending to them is relevant to them. 

Know your audience

Generally, unless you have a strong personal relationship with them, don’t be goofy or jokey.  Be professional.  Invest time into understanding what their area of expertise is and make sure you write for that specific person.

Doing these things won’t guarantee that you get press coverage.  Think of them more as a prerequisite. In my case, I enjoy talking to most of the gaming and tech press, so even if they don’t cover us, it’s still worth doing. 

## Fun with Start10 ##

If you don’t already have Start10, you should get it.  It’s available stand-alone or as part of Object Desktop.

When I set up a new machine, there are certain things I have to have:

1. Start10
2. Fences
3. Groupy
4. Search Everything
5. Office

These are the 5 things I need on any PC before I even start to focus on whatever I’m doing on that box (developing, graphics, etc.).  Office and Everything aren’t made by Stardock.

Start10 isn’t just about restoring the classic Start menu - it’s about giving you control over it. Most of our customers for this are companies looking to standardize their start menu across the company or reduce training costs. But really, every PC user should have it. It just makes getting things done quicker.

That’s my Start menu.  What does yours look like? Send a screenshot to me @draginol on Twitter!

That’s all for this month!

Let's talk about Stardock Magazine's September issue!

Don't have a subscription to Stardock Magazine? Visit www.stardock.com/subscribe to get it.

One recent feature of Groupy that I appreciate is that I can now specify how long I keep one window on top of another to group them.  Originally, this was instant but I found myself often grouping windows when I didn't mean to.  I think I'll request a half second option just to be difficult.

www.stardock.com/products/groupy 

For the release week  bnof Villains of Star Control, I absolutely had to show off the Scryve. Ah the Scryve.  How I wish we had thought of them before.  Thirty years ago, when I was 18, I came up with the Drengin Empire.  They are a pretty good villain for the Galactic Civilizations universe.   But the Scryve? Ah, there is something magnificent about a race of demigods whose species is slowly dying out.  An empire that was once as idealistic as any college freshman's utopian dreams but has become malevolent for no greater reason than time.

They say time heals all wounds.  That phrase has a darker meaning to it.  Because what it really means is that given enough time you just won't care as much about whatever wound you suffered.  The Scryve are the personification of this concept.  A race of immortal beings who have ruled for thousands of years has a hard time empathizing with the brief flickers of life that represents the span of time most species exist.  

If you are planning for the long...long term, like the Scryve do, it becomes perilously easy to become callous.  Combine that callousness with the arrogance of vast experience and you have the Scryve.  And like I said, they're dying.  And now they're in Galactic Civilizations III.  This AAR will tell you a little bit more about them and help provide more insight into how an evil vs. evil game plays.

Doing what needs to be done to protect you since before we had agriculture

The beginning of the end

The Scryve, like the other 4 civilizations that come with the DLC, get their own ship styles, unique ability (in this case, their ships get tougher and tougher based on the size of your empire when in their own territory) and dialog.  Their home system is very similar (intentionally similar) to that of the Terran Alliance.

The Scryve starting location

A couple of weeks into the great expansion something comes up:

It is their duty to go on a colony ship...no matter the cost.

Choosing the Aggression ideology results in a ship. 

One comment I have is just how far the art for Galactic Civilizations has come.  We originally shipped GalCiv III four years ago!  And since then, we've really learned how to use the engine. 

The Imperial government choice (from Intrigue)

In this particular game, I got lucky with a great set of planets and no immediate neighbors.  As a result, I was able to grab a lot of good stuff quickly.

The Scryve also get their own starbase style.

Future Ward Species

The Scryve consider themselves at a higher level than other species.  Being immortal, their rationale is how much wisdom can someone amass in a handful of years?  There are also some species that dislike more than others.

The Xraki.  Give up trying to be buddies.

The Scryve's good luck continues as they find a Precursor world to colonize.

The Scryve choose the benevolent choice for a change. Hard labor is benevolent...

We are nearing the end of the initial colony rush as we don't have the population yet to continue (we've sent most of our people to other worlds). But we have 3 candidates:

Let's recap:

Harrison I:

Has a Preumbral Beacon.  These spawn space monsters in target locations which can wreak havoc on enemies.  However they don't really do much for me. 

Harrison II:

Not as good as the other two but has a Nanite Transmitted artifact.  These spawn Overlord ships which can be a life saver (spawn one when a planet is about to get conquered).

Harrison III:

Has 2 food which is nice and has the same production benefits as Harrison I.

Which one?

I think I'll go with Harrison I.  Two extra tiles is too much to pass up and the artifact can still be handy.

(It doesn't ultimately matter, the Phamyst got all three -- we were just too far away).

Lesson learned: Build Hypergates early and often.

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on the villains of Star Control DLC for Galactic Civilizations III. You can see the...unpleasantness that took place in part 1 here. Mistakes were made.

In Star Control: Origins we wanted to make sure that humanity's opposition wasn't simply a set of cartoon bad guys.  Each opponent has a pretty strong motivation and a rationale...except for the Xraki.  The Xraki are insane.  They're not "evil" they were driven insane by events in the distant past and now simply destroy anything they come across.

In this game, I will play as the Xraki against the other villains and see how things work out.

It Begins

We get a pretty good starting location with a number of habitable worlds.

We soon have a couple of colonies and it is time to form a new government.

As you can see here, each species gets their own unique portraits for citizens.   They also get their own names.

War is quick

So let me be clear, playing with malevolent civilizations is rough. 

I had a colony ship on its way to a planet they wanted. So they killed it.  No warning. 

The Xraki's technology is based around control of singularities. So at the heart of their ships tends to be something freaky looking.

The Phamyst arrive at around turn 50 in this game.  So far, it's just been the Xraki vs. the Scryve. As it should be!

The war between the Scryve and the Xraki is endless skirmishing combined with subtle expansions.

However, the Xraki find one of the best locations to build a starbase that I've ever seen.

And at last at turn 57 we meet the Measured.

And here is the power rating of each civilization at this stage:

But in the background of all this, there is war.

The Scryve and the Xraki continue to hammer it out.  We are both equally matched more or less.

The Settlement

With the right payments, the Phamyst and the Measured went to war with the Scryve which resulted in a peace settlement between the Xraki and the Scryve.

This allowed a period of uninterrupted internal growth.  Through careful planning, for example, I was able to build Kimberly's Refuge in just the right spot to get a huge boost for it.

Balance of power

The Phamyst and the Measured together were still powerful enough to deal with the Scryve.  We had pulled out ahead thanks to our internal buildup. By turn 120 (and thanks to some new multithreaded techniques on AI pathfinding, the turn times are less than half as long as what they were in 3.8) there was a balance of power in the quadrant.

The problem with a balance of power is that some malevolent bastard always wants to upset it.  In this case, everyone.  By turn 140, all the powers were at war with everyone else.  The Scryve quickly took the lead with a coordinated attack / invasion right into the heart of our empire.

Scryve thrusts into my empire.

But we had not been naïve enough to think we had peace in our time.  One of our internal improvements was the research of weapons and defense technologies.

We had transports escorted by entropy class frigates which were deadly in numbers.

While a single Entropy couldn't take out a mighty Scryve battlecruiser, they could overwhelm one thanks to each Entropy having very good defenses and a sharp sting.

...Time

Passes...

Many months later, the war continues with back and forth battles.   At one point, the Xraki homeworld is conquered by the Measured which has emerged as the super-power of the quadrant.

We have fallen far from our early lead.  But we aren't dead yet.

The Chaos class battlecruiser should be able to take on any single ship out there.

It would get its first test in a very important battle:

The Measured had succeeded by using the same strategy the Xraki were.  Not too many large ships but lots of deadly small ships.  However, unlike the Xraki, their ships had virtually no defensive capabilities. They were designed to be cheap and efficiently mass produced.

The Chaos class ship, however, was massively defended by barrier fields.  This would be a good test of offensive investment vs. defensive investment.

The Xraki strategy had succeeded.  Other than a tiny disintegrator class ship and a first generation Entropy, the fleet remained relatively untouched.

(Many hours later)

At turn 236 the galaxy remained on fire but we had recovered our lost territory.

Here is the status of the quadrant:

The Xraki ownership and happiness joy region has been reclaimed.

On the other hand, this region represents only a small part of this medium-sized map:

The Xraki are not close to being the most powerful.

However, we are well situated going forward as the Scryve are somewhat over extended and many of their outer colonies are pretty isolated.

Some final thoughts

Having played through the "evil" civs as someone who  usually plays as neutral or good, I will tell you that as cool as the unique abilities of each civilization are, they really don't hold a candle to the varied gameplay that you get from the combination of opponents you pick.   Playing as a malevolent civilization in a galaxy filled with malevolent civilizations changed the dynamic a great deal.  I hope if you're reading this that next time you play, try playing the opposite ideology as you usually do and put in some evil civs.

As the old saying goes: Evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

Greetings!

For this After Action Report I'm going to be playing Galactic Civilizations v3.9 with only the Heroes of Star Control civilizations. 

I'll be pointing out notable and interesting things as I go along.

The Setup

I'm going to play as the galaxy's classiest cannibals, the Phamyst.

The Phamyst have the Ravenous ability which results in them receiving food after every battle which can be used to build cities.  However, this food spoils after 25 turns so use it or lose it.

My opponents:

The Scryve,The Measured and the Xraki. 

So it begins...

The new civilizations in Villains of Star Control come from Star Control: Origins, sharp-eyed players will notice that the art style has been slightly altered to conform with the Galactic Civilizations style of a bit more realistic.

The villains of Star Control are, as you might expect, pretty malevolent.  I normally play Galactic Civilizations as a neutral or neutral-good against a mix of civilizations.  This is one of those rare times where it's going to be a bunch of evil civilizations thrown in together.

Each civilization has a very unique ship style.  The Phamyst have a very minimalistic aesthetic.

A feature definitely not talked about enough is the fact that each of the four new civilizations provides a ton of new ship parts.  And as you can see, we didn't scrimp on them.

I'm going to play the Phamyst a bit darker than I normally play.

Below you can see the unique aesthetic in action.

Phamyst battle cruiser.

First meeting with the Xraki.  If you click and zoom in, you can see the subtle art style difference between Star Control and GalCiv in action (if you look at how the Xraki are depicted in Star Control).  I.e. we didn't just port them directly from Star Control, we updated their look to match GalCiv's. Look at the veins!

This is probably even more obvious with the Scryve:

I probably should get universal translator.

Starbases (mine and the Scryve's).

What you can't hear (obviously) is that each civilization has their own music track and their dialog was written by the Star Control team.

Scryve Cruiser up close.

A fair trade scary guy.

The War of the Scryve

It was inevitable I suppose.

The Scryve and the Phamyst were neighbors and both are pretty evil. 

However...

The Scryve have better ships but my ships are designed specifically to counter the Scryve's favored weapon type (energy beam weapons).  So it's not quite the walk over they thought.

One of the changes we've made in recent updates is to make defenses a lot more effective.  Not only are defensive values higher but they don't get reduced nearly as quickly during battle.  So defenses are a good thing to have on a ship.

Just in time for me to have researched Orbital Manufacturing which allows for the construction of much larger hulls.

The war expands

The Measured have joined the Scryve!

Unable to take on both empires at once, we are forced to grovel for an armistice with the Scryve.

Meanwhile, we had just finished the design of a new battle cruiser, the Ravager!

The Measured have conquered most of my planets but we are slowly making our way back thanks to the Patriot.  The Measured ships are very business like (see screenshot below).

Defeat

The Scryve and Xraki ultimately declare war on me as well.

I learned something today.

Evil civilizations put into a shark tank is rough.

And so the Phamyst go down in flames.