A couple years ago I looked my nose down on gated communities. Bunch of scaredy cat snobs. Think they can hide from us commoners behind their gates and fences? Like they're too good for us?

My attitude has slowly been changing. I am coming to appreciate why some people choose to live in a gated community (some not most). Each year my activities on-line get more and more attention. Most of it's good. But not all of it. During the Starforce copy protection thing, I got some some scarey calls to my house. I don't know who they were from other than they had a foreign accent (I don't think they came from the Starforce people).  I've had people occasoinally call my house on all kinds of issues simply because they could. And I have gotten some pretty occasional and sometimes quite specific threats.  Each year, it gets a little bit more intense.  I guess I should be happy that few people read my political rantings or else it would really get bad.

My point is, I'm a nobody. I'm a flea. A pissant.  And if I am dealing with this kind of crap, I can't even imagine what celebrities, even minor ones, deal with.  Not just movie stars but professional athletes, local TV personalities, etc.  I could definitely see why they might want to have the security of a gated community. Sure, it won't keep the real crazies out, but it might keep the casual harassers away.

Anywya, just my 2 cents.

I've heard the term "conspicuous consumption" thrown around over the years but it's never properly defined.  Because I like to label everything, just ask my critics, I'll label it: Conspicious consumption is when a person has something that is greater than 4X in size or value of what the typical American has.

Let's play a game with that:

The typical American car now costs around $25,000.  A $100,000 car seems really over the the top to a lot of people.  The typical American new home is 2,500 square foot. A 10,000 square foot home seems ridiculous.  A typical wedding costs $10,000 day.  A $40,000 wedding seems excessive.  You get the idea.

Why is the 4X important in this discussion? That brings us to the second part -- the difference between the richest people and the middle class is determined almost purely by the amount of regulation there is in the economy.  The more the government regulates the economy, the less of a gap there is. The upside is that we can get endless reports of how the system is "fairer".  The downside is that the overall standard of living we all enjoy grows at a slower rate because the mega producers in the economy are disincented from doing what they do best. 

Right now, the economy is less regulated than it was 10 years ago so the gap is growing.  But in the United States, since Reagan the economy has been much less regulated which means the gap between the middle class and the richest 5% is pretty significant.  How significant?  According to the IRS the top 1% average over $1.1 million per year (pre-tax).  The next 4% average $210,000 per year. Leaving the average American household earning around $40,000 per year.

See the problem yet? If conspicuous consumption is spending 4X what the typical American has on something and the top 5% are earning 5X or more than the average American then you are going to have people who are merely spending the same ratio as everyone else on things behaving conspiciously.

So why is that a problem? Because the people who really get upset about conspicious consumption are usually the ones who make class wafare arguments or demand much higher taxes on that top 5%.

For example, one leftist blogger put it like this (from here):

I'm enough of a believer in CPI bias to want to say "real compensation for male nonsupervisory workers has stagnated since 1973"--I think it has grown, but only very slowly, and much less rapidly than productivity.

On the other hand, I'm enough of a touchy-feey sociology-lover to believe that a good chunk of the utility the rich derive from their conspicuous consumption is transferred to them from the poor: the happiness America's working poor and middle class derive from the compensation distribution--given their compensation, the compensation of the rich, and the lifestyles of the rich and famous--seems to me to be certainly less than that of their counterparts back in 1973.

Note the premise: That the wealth that the top 5% have is essentially stolen -- transffered to them -- from the poor.  That's right, the bottom half of the populatoin are the ones really generating that wealth and the top 5% are just taking it from them.  Which, to anyone with any understanding of the economy, is utter nonsense.  Anyone who thinks that economics is a zero-sum game is clueless.  Joe Rich Guy's wealth does not hurt Bob poor guy.

But if that's not explicit enough, he then writes:

"The easiest and most important thing the government can do to neutralize the adverse consequences of rising inequality is to make the tax system more progressive, not less. A reality-based government would react to growing pretax inequality by taxing the rich more, and subsidizing the poor more (through policies like the EITC) as well. "

This is a total perversion of what the founding fathers had in mind.  It is not the role of government to re-distribute wealth.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Not only would such a policy be immoral in my view, it would be damaging to future generations.  As we enjoy our various luxuries today whether it be computers, the Internet, movies on demand, much higher quality housing per square foot and per cost, etc. one should ask oneself where those benefits came from. Who came up with it?  It doesn't take a historian to note that the biggest improvements in the way we live have come when taxation was relatively low.  People are much better at spending their own money than a government agency. 

The minute a person starts to think that there is something morally wrong with one guy having a big house or fancy car or private jet or whatever and another guy "only" having one TV -- and not HDTV and living in "only" a 1500 square foot house is the minute they've given up on the American dream.

Once you give up on the American dream, you might as well start thinking like that guy who followed up his post with:

I wrote that one reason that America's rich today live the expensive and ostentatious lifestyles they do (rather than spending much more money on charity, or philanthropy) is that it is a way of making other people feel small and unhappy...

Which is about as logical as saying that the motivation for a middle class person to buy a new home is to make homeless people feel small and unhappy. Class envy is a venomous thing in a free society. Let us hope that it never becomes too widespread. The citizens of Soviet Russia got a good taste of what happens when class envy takes over.

As part of my regular polling research for The Political Machine 2008, I have come to the conclusion that the Republicans are going to lose control of the House of Representatives in November and barely hold on to the Senate. And you know what I think of that? HAH! Serves them right.

The congressional Republicans don't represent the values or principles of their constituents as far as I'm concerned.  Worse, they haven't even managed to accomplish anything in the past 2 years.  Go ahead, list out what they've done in the past 2 years. I'll wait.

Done? Yea, that's right. Nothing. They've done nothing. It's truly a sad state of affairs.  Let's do the check list of things they could have done that would have saved their rear ends:

1. Secured the borders? Nope.
2. Pass immigration reform? Nope.
3. Lowered taxes? Nope.
4. Balanced the budget? Nope.
5. Put together an energy policy? Nope.
6. Cut down on waste? Nope.

If these guys were in the private sector, they'd been fired a long time ago.  Now voters will get to throw them out in November.  Sure, the Democrats may be no better and maybe even worse. But saying the other guy is worse is not going to be enough to bring out Republican voters in an off-year election.

I got into a debate with some friends of mine over the NSA wiretapping program. There is a great deal of question over whether the program is legal or not.  They felt it was illegal, I think it may be legal but that not enough information has been presented.

For example, there is apparently a lot of misconception over who is being targeted.  They said that the program included targeting Americans where both parties were in the United States.

However, the facts, as we know them presently is that the program is designed for cases where one party is not in the United States.  However, because of the nature of cell phones, there have apparently been a handful of cases where both parties were in the US. But that is not the intent of the program. This was reported in the New York Times in December of 2005.

Some people have probably noticed that I don't blog as much on politics. That's because right now, so much of it boils down to Bush-haters vs. non-Bush-haters.  And at that point, there's not much to discuss.  I will discuss the principles of taxation or universal health care  or minimum wage laws or other things where things can be debated. But I have no patience at all for debating things that really about interpreting a law or whether something was good or not.  Even the war in Iraq, hey you don't think we should have gone, that's fine. I am glad we went and don't think things are going badly relatively speaking. We don't have to agree on that but there's no point in arguing it because it's so subjective.

Windows Vista is Microsoft's long-awaited sequel to its most successful operating system of all time -- Windows XP.  Released 5 years ago, Windows XP is really a tough act to follow. It delivered on the promise of Windows NT based technology in a mainstream form.

Windows XP, in hindsight, was about 3 things:

1. Delivering a mainstream operating system that was based on the NT code-base instead of the ancient Windows 9x/DOS legacy. This enabled developers to create far more powerful applications because the OS was far more robust.
2. The bundling of a myriad of minor tools that we take for granted today such as Instant Messenger, Compressed Folders, Remote Desktop, Windows Movie Movie Maker, etc.
3. A friendlier environment than Windows 2000/98.

(a full list of features can be found Here). So what is the big deal about Windows Vista? Well here's my best guess at what the bullet items will be looking back:

1. More Secure.
2. New underlying architectures (Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET part of the OS).
3. Cleaner user experience.
4. Desktop is a 3D surface allowing for applications on the desktop to use 3D acceleration to do visually interesting things.

The purpose of these blogs along with the site VistaBlogging.com is to provide a place for users to discuss their Windows Vista experience, suggestions, etc.

We have created a new site called http://www.VistaBlogging.com where articles on the subject of Vista (and forum posts) will automatically get syndicated.  You can use JoeUser.com or Wincustomize.com (create a free account) to create an article that is of the type Personal Computing->Windows Vista and upon faster moderation it will show up on VistaBlogging.com.

The 3rd bi-annual GUI Championships is about to start. The website is open and the events announced.

WindowBlinds skins, IconPackager themes, and wallpapers are the categories with over $12,000 in cash and prizes in the pipeline.

Visit www.guichamps.com to learn more..

Welcome to the third bi-annual GUI Championship contest.  The previous two times we were called the GUI Olympics but for trademark purposes we have renamed it to GUI Championships.  For the past 6 years, leading graphics designers from around the world have come to this specially created site to compete for thousands of dollars in cash and prizes and to show off their skills.  Many past winners have gone on to create user interface designs that have been used by such companies as Alienware, Warner Brothers, Nintendo, Microsoft, Blizzard, and countless others.

When the first contest began, it was put together by a handful of relatively new sites that were emerging as leaders of their particular niche.  Those sites included deviantART.com, Neowin.net, Betanews.com, WinCustomize.com, and Lockergnome.com.  Today, those sites have grown to receive millions of visitors per day and have become highly influential not just in a niche but for the entire technology industry in their own way.  Despite their success, they come together once again to help bring to you this inter-website contest.

This year's GUI Championship will have 3 categories that will provide a challenge to graphics designers of all kind. The first category is the WindowBlinds skinning competition. WindowBlinds is a program that can apply user interface designs created by anyone. It is flexible enough that users can move buttons, change border sizes, etc.  This gives designers the opportunity to present their own visions on how the desktop user interface might look like.  The second category is icon packages.  Icon designers will compete to put together their own alternative set of icons for Windows. Using the icon design tools of their choice and packaged together with IconPackager, designers can display how they think the OS icons could look. The last event is a bit more light hearted -- wallpapers. What makes a good wallpaper? Almost anyone can create one but it takes true skill to create an image that one would use as their background. 

A panel of 5 judges will then select the top, second, and third in areas of most original, most usable, and best overall.  Users of this site will be able to vote on skins themselves to help us narrow down the most promising entries.  The winners will receive a share of the over $12,000 in cash and prizes including Xbox 360s, software, and some special high end prizes that we will be announcing in the coming days.

Good luck to all and if you have any questions, please comment here.

Stardock is proud to announce the release of Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords v1.3.  The new update has hundreds of new tweaks, features, and other enhancements to the existing game based on player feedback.  We've updated the computer AI, we've made changes to game mechanics based on player requests, we've made some enhancements to the user interface and we improved some of the planet graphics.  But overall, what we have tried to do is go through the mountains of suggestions people have given us over the last few months and found ways to implement as many of them as possible.  Unlike 1.2 and 1.1, this new version isn't so much about a handful of major features but rather dozens and dozens of tiny changes that we think when combined help make the game even more fun for players.

Galactic Civilizations II is at most retail stores in North America and Europe so if you don't already have it, you should be able to get it locally.  You can also purchase it directly from GalCiv2.com via TotalGaming.net and download the entire game while your box is shipped to you.

We hope you find this new version to be as fun to play as we had making it.  We've had a good time going through and making some of these changes and finding how even the smallest tweaks to game balance can add new dimensions to game play. You can download the update either in the Downloads section here or from Stardock Central (which enables users to re-download the entire game no matter where purchased even years from now).

You can read all the new features here: Change log.

 

This new version of Galactic Civilizations II is dedicated to PC gamers everywhere who have ever bought a game, really liked it but after some months of play had put together a list of things they wish were tweaked or altered but knew would never be because the developer had long since stopped making new updates.

Galactic Civilizations II v1.3, like our other updates, is designed to add new features and make changes based on player feedback. While there are "bugs" fixed, many of them are ones we introduced during our own beta process.   Our goal was to do an update that went through and tweaked and changed those little things that would help make the game more enjoyable and give it new life.

Here's what is new over v1.2:

+ AI will play harder in campaign at lower levels (AI was designed to be somewhat nerfed on the early missions of the campaign to give players a gentle introduction.

+ Various improvements to the Terran Alliance and Arcean AIs.

+ Made some tweaks to show ships are designed such that even if they prefer to build ships with a particular weapon system, they will also bear in mind what types of weapons they have already researched (i.e. they may WANT to put beam weapons but if they only have Laser I but have Black Hole Generators for mass drivers it'll still build Black Hole Generators on their ships rather than just tossing a bunch of lasers on a ship simply because they prefer beam weapons at that point. It did this before but now it has a better algorithm)

+ CPU for AI algorithm option enables AI ships to be re-designed twice as often.

+ Terran Alliance based AI players will put early priority on factories as the first thing to build rather than star port.

+ AI players will not go to war for military reasons unless they have enough military forces to deal some immediate pain.

+ Colony lights on dark side significantly enhanced. Now based on population and uses a smart algorithm to fit the land masses. There's a ton of changes associated with this, it's probably overkill but it's been on our list for awhile to make the city lights on planets look better.

 + NEW! Diagonal Edge scrolling for those who prefer to use edge scrolling instead of using the left mouse button to grab the screen and move it.


 + fixed intelligences displaying incorrect value on Foreign Stats screen

 + fixed beta 1 bug where fleets would not have an icon in the stacked ships list

 +  fixed beta 1 crash in moon graphics code

 + fixed bug where freighters would in some cases revert to normal size after an ALT+TAB (very weird behavior)

 +  Updated AI so that it won't launch a transport with too few troops on it.

 +  changed behavior of fleet battles such that if fleet was in a battle and survived with one ship, the moves left for that ship would be not the expected number

 +  tweaked UI to support tech centering on selected technology when the tech tree was maximized and a new technology was completed

 +  listbox scrollbars support maximum entries.

 +  tweaked regional settings that was causing the messed up planet surfaces, missing components on ships, etc.

 +  improved keyboard entry for non English characters

  +  fixed beta 1 memory bug caused by loading save games (save games saved with 1.3 beta 1 cannot be fixed and you should delete them)

 +  the tech dialog that is brought up by right clicking on a tech in the trade screen or in the maximized tech tree viewer will now accurately list techs that become available when researching the selected tech. Also, the headers in this dialog will now only show up if they have something

 +  fixed random crash when starting/loading new game from within a game

 +  planet and ship list entries are no longer created as the planets and ships are restored from the save game

 + Made it so that if you played as one race and then started a new game as a new race, the previous race did not have the expected intelligence.

+ Changes in values to planetary improvements and starbase modules

+ Starting population now 8 billion on the home planet

+ Morale on home planet gets a 20% bonus

+ fixed first turn after load zero production behavior!

+ AI better at managing colonies

+ More difficulty levels: Dunce at the lower end, Godlike and Ultimate at the higher end.

+ AI intelligence levels above and below "Intelligent" adjusted in difficulty (so i.e. Normal will be tougher than it was because there's a new easier difficulty level and Incredible will be easier because there's two higher difficulty levels).

+ The overall difficulty levels have now bee tweaked to have a 1 to 1 relationshipo with the AI intelligence levels so "Challenging" means all AI intelligences set to "Bright" rather than a weighted overall value. Many higher level players would find that they set the difficultly level to Crippling only to find that 2 or 3 of the players would be set to "Fool" (and do very little) while the others played very well.

+ Difficulty setup screen tweaked to work better.

+ changed size of TriStrontium so that it's bigger than TriStrontium2; previously the definitions were identical.

+ fixed error in translation code for raceconfig (homeworld)

+ fixed error in translation code for UP issues.

+ fixed bug that reset the cheater's flag, allowing cheater games to be submitted normally.

+ fixed some exploits in raceconfigs for metaverse games

+ fixed missing image in Rename Ship dialog

+ fixed error in AbilitiesBonus.xml file that didn't show 20% bonus to Loyalty

+ reduced the Custom Race's default value of Loyalty to 15% so that it would not cause negative ability points

+ added code to clear the planet/shiplist between games so that it wouldn't keep old pointers (should prevent a memory leak and potential crashes due to bad pointers)

+ made it so that you can select a race by clicking on its icon on the Foreign Treaties screen

+ made it so that the seleted planet or ship in the planet/ship list is saved so that changing the sort variable or filters will still keep the selection.

+ added code to let you right click on a tech to bring up the tech description dialog when the tech tree window is maximized

+ fixed error where fleets of ships could still attack freighters protected by galactic privateer

+ Reversed direction of the moon revolution (yes, Earth's moon now rotates around the Earth the right way)

+ added a check in the Direct 3D code for vertex and pixel shader versions

+ added code to make foreign policy window try to select a non-dead civ

+ made sure that the civ manager only has to parse the entry definitions once

+ made planet screens refresh after removing or adding troops

+ fixed numerous typos and spelling errors in various files

+ changed it so that the difficulty on the OpponentWnd slider changes all of the selected races' intelligences

+ changed it so that when you enable a race, it automatically sets its intelligence to be at the level of the difficulty

+ Fixed bug where lines on Treaties screen would point off-screen if you were a custom race playing against 10 enemies

+ D and T buttons will now toggle the details and rally point screens on/off instead of queuing up multiple instances of them

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed

+ When running in full screen mode (Release build), the mouse will be clipped to the game window to prevent accidentally clicking outside of the window.  You can still use ALT+TAB to activate other windows.

+ added function IsProtectedMiniFreighter to check for valid target

+ added code to clear selected rallypoint from minimap to prevent crashing when the rallypoint is deleted

+ added code to clear rallypoint destination when rallypoint is destroyed

+ Added a debug assert if the required technology for a ship type is not found

+ Fixed bug where ships on auto-explore that were put in a planet would immediately start auto-exploring once launched from the planet

+ Fixed a graphical bug where if you had 1 ship with moves and it attacked a planet with a fleet manager, the fleet would remain on top of the planet if the attacking ship was killed.

+ fixed memory leak caused by too many references to ship design listbox entries

+ fixed possible crash when saving std::strings in save game

+ cleaned up code in PropertyBucket class to make it more efficient.

+ Fixed a crash in the scene graph

+ Added ref counts to scene nodes in battle processes to prevent “random battle crashes”

+ Kills some battle related processes as soon as they are finished so they don’t stay in memory when no longer needed  

+ AI will tend to try to "finish off" its enemies

+ Changed difficulty to be based on the AVERAGE AI intelligence rather than the highest AI intelligence

+ Torian AI significantly altered in what it builds on planets.

+ Torian AI will raise taxes as long as morale is high

+ Terran Alliance AI will lease less often (stunted early growth)

+ Drengin will build more scouts to expand faster

+ All AI will tend to mobilize for war now BEFORE going to war (i.e.  start to send ships near the border rather than declare war and have months of phoney war. We have ideas on making it even better in the future.).

+ Starbase modules give more boost earlier and less later as you add modules

+ Fixed weird issue where AI would turn off social production between projects and then the AI would see that it has no social production and would then pick the cheapest (rather than the most appropriate) improvement to build which (wait for it) would tend to be economic improvements.

+ Morale ability has more diminishing returns at the high end. It still is powerful but a 200% morale ability is not twice as good as a 100% morale ability.

+ Integrated concepts from other AI personalities into Terran Alliance personality

+ Fixed several crash bugs we added during the betas.

+ Fixed some typos

+ Fixed beta bug where new city lights took away clouds

+ Some additional text polishing

+ Changed some of the planetary improvement values and costs

+ Tweaked some of the values in starbase modules

+ made entry field selection show up

+ added tech report to trade screen

+ Tweaked text and dialog in teh campaign and in some scenarios

+ fixed save games not showing up in save game window if there were other files with the same extension.

+ Custom window sizes work now

+ fixed error where mod subfolders PlanetDescriptions and TerrainColorScheme didn't work

+ fixed error where Terrain query images + ship component thumbnails did not show up even if they were in the correct mod subfolder

+ Tweaked the minimap where it didn't draw all of the ZOC

+ fixed destination cursors not being visible after loading save game

+ added checks to make sure that dead civs are ignored in the UP

+ Added strings for moralists event

+ fixed typo in Singularity Driver IV's name

+ Removed redunant use of short civ name in battle messages in GNN

+ changed FindShipInSensorRange to use a predicate function

+ Sentry/Guard should work better now

+ Made it so that clicking on a ship will not cancel guard/sentry

+ changed it so that the ship list does not do a full update so often (should help move times)

+ added option to not prompt to pay cost of a module if you have enough money in your treasury

+ Changed missing turn button if a rallypoint is on an uninhabitable or uncolonized planet

+ fixed bug where there was a 1 turn delay before ships would calc a new path after swapping rallypoint destinations from the governor

+ fixed bug with trade screen where dialogs did not hide when switching civs

+ fixed government bonus strings so that they now show the bonuses as implemented.

+ updated ship designs that wasn't using correct ranges

+ Re-did UI so that where clicking on the minimap couldn't accidently click on the find or turn buttons

+ Updated calculation of alliance victory status string

+ tweaked locale code so that it doesn't change so much, which should fix some performance issues and some crashes.  Have verification that display and entry of German characters is working, but would like confirmation from other languages also.

+ Changed auto-attack behavior; When a ship is set on auto-attack, it will attempt to find a nearby ship belonging to a civ it is at war with. If it can't find a ship that is not hidden by fow, it will cancel auto-attack to avoid causing the missing turn button bug.  To avoid slowdown, it does not attempt to pick the 'best' target, it just picks the first valid target it finds. 

+ added additional debug messages to activation code

+ Updated screen on OpponentWnd where the civ name was not using the displayname field.

+ made rallypoint wnd sort rallypoint names alphabetically

+ Terran Alliance should now start with the correct intelligence

+ Addressed playability issue where the last non-custom race you played would be loaded when going to customize the custom race (You may get this the first time before you load the correct custom race config or clear the LastRace string under CustomRace in the Prefs.ini file)

+ Changed Ctrl+B where hitting CTRL+N when playing a Custom Race started a new game using the default Custom Race config

+ Fixed bug where planet quality and number of tiles did not match after choosing Neutral alignment

+ Updated Invasion behavior to avoid invading a planet with a planetary bonus multiple times would cause more tiles to become available every invasion

+ Added tool tip on planet screen

+ Fixed bug where info icons would appear jumbled together at the top of the screen if there were too many.  Now, new icons will fall as soon as the existing icons have been cleared.

+ Improved the graphics management system for better compatibility

+ Dead Civs no longer show up with voting power. We realize not counting dead people in voting makes game less realistic... JK.

+ Fixed "Specialized Ships" stat on Foreign Stats/Military page to show correct number of ships

+ Tweaked where starport icons on planets on main map were not updated after using the Civ Manager Governor to change what starports were building

+ Changed behavior where first turn after loading a saved game would show a dip in the manufacturing history graph

+ Updated Combat viewer to change where ship icons in combat viewer did not show the correct amount of damage if the civ had HP bonuses

+ Fixed an API that made the AI like you more than they should

+ Syncronized relations code that caused the AI and Human player relations to be out of sync

+ Hooked planet data to economic engine. Where planet data wasn't refreshing after changing spending sliders

+ Updated UI structs where intelligences were reset without updating difficulty level if you went back to a previous screen

+ Made decomission of planetary improvements never take more than 1 turn.

+ added code to make sure that decomission 'improvements' can't be built on empty or non-functional tiles

+ Our system now suppports tab keysin entry fields

+ added dialog to warn if you're using an invalid race config when playing a metaverse game

+ fixed bug where starting a new game after having started/loaded a game and left the ship list open causes a crash or empty game screen

+ added code to delete shipcfgs from My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\ships (or metaverse\ships) folder that do not have an xml file.  This will help keep the folder clean and cut down on save game sizes (and time to save/load)

+ rallypoints will no longer show up in the stacked ship context area, since they now show up in the context area in the bottom left corner of the main screen interface

+ Fixed bug where sometimes, after an alt-tab, freighter ships would not appear to be the correct size.

+ Fixed bug where planet quality penalties were applied in the case of an invasion that ended in a draw

+ fixed crash on foreign report if no race has any ships

+ fixed bug that didn't read in modded conversations or flavor text

+ fixed bug where last custom race wasn't loaded

+ Tweaked it so that tooltips will now show up for the lower row of ships in the Ships in Orbit

+ fixed it so that if you select a ship in the Ships In Orbit area, it will deselect the previous one, even if it's in another row.

+ SizeMods now use only the base capacity of the hull, not the max capacity (the capacity after miniturization is applied)

+ Made changes to font manager to fix the slow-down on foreign language systems.

+ Added option to disable city lights on the dark side of planets

+ fleet upgrade overlays always update properly

+ Tweaked ship weapons/defenses

+ Tweaked more planetary improvements

+ Changed the way planetary invasions penalties work when a draw (extremely rare)

Hope you like! Here are some new screenshots...

 

  

 

 

 

Introduction

For thousands of years the Drengin Empire and the Torian Confederation have battled over this corner of the galaxy. This small parsec, measuring a mere 4 by 4 sectors,  has been home to the Drengin and Torians along with several other galactic players for some time now.  But on the Planet Aeon, a new power was emerging.  The Galactic Coalition was looking to make their own mark in the galaxy.  Led by Gil Sanders, The Galactic Coalition had ambitions far beyond their capital world. The year is 2225 and this is their story.

And so it begins...

The Galactic Coalition was quick to expand their sphere of influence. By June of 2225, they had colonized 6 planets. Aeon was still the most populous planet with a population of 4.5 billion citizens but they had also founded the planet of Martzia III, a class 12 planet that showed real promise.

Meanwhile, the Drengin Empire had expanded to 5 worlds while the Torian Confederation had taken 5 themselves.  The Drengin Empire had a total population of 9.2 billion people while the Torian Confederation had a population of 11.2 billion. By contrast, the Galactic Coalition had a population of 10.3 billion.  The population differences could probably be explained somewhat by the differences in morale. The leading civilization, the Drengin Empire, had a morale of 72%.  This could probably be explained by their tax rate of 52%. The Galactic Coalition had a tax rate of 59% which resulted in an approval rating average of 68%.

By the end of 2225, only 2 planets were left to be colonized.  The most powerful civilization in the parsec, the Drengin Empire, now had 8 worlds. Their military might was 0.  The Galactic Coalition was at peace. They looked towards a bright future.

Darkness Rising

The war that eventually enveloped the galaxy in fire started when the Drengin Empire declared war on the Torian Confederation in May of 2226. The Drengin Empire had 1.4X the military might of the Torians and had built 10 of their new "M1-HeavyFighter" which they called the Kortak'Ra.  The fighter was equipped with 2 Laser-II canons for an attack rating of 2 with a defense rating of 0.  The Torian Confederation had only 8 ships with attack power. The battle was on.

It was in early 2227 when the Galactic Coalition joined the war.  The Drengin Empire had been slowly grinding down the Torian Confederation.  The Torian high point was when they had 7 worlds. Now they only had 5 worlds while the Drengin Empire had 12 worlds now. 

The Galactic Coalition's most numerous military platform was the F-2 Thunder heavy fighter. Armed with the Vulacani Ltd. Railgun Mark IV, the ship packed the punch rating of 8 while its total defense was rated at 0.  The Galactic Coalition had assembled a fleet of 4 ships and sent them into battle (screenshot).

(Screenshot of the F-2 with specs).

Obliteration

By the end of 2227, the parsec was in flames. The Galactic Coalition was the leading civilization now overall. Its military was ranked #1 and its technology rating was #1 and its science rating was #1. It was at war with the Drengin Empire who had a military rating of 90 (the ratings are like IQ's, 100 is normal, above is good, below is bad).  The Galactic Coalition had a military rating of 150. The Drengin Empire was losing its war to the Galactic Coalition. Where the Drengin Empire once had a military might that was 1.12X that of the Galactic Coalition, it now had one that was only 0.56X of the Galactic Coalition.

The Galactic Coalition had successfully invaded Kwilas II which had been owned by the Drengin Empire in May of 2227. The situation for the Drengin Empire was starting to look grim.

The Drengin had designed the M2-Frigate which they called the "Vel'Ka" which was equipped with deadly plasma weapons and had Titanium armor for an attack rating of 12 and a defense rating of 4. (screenshot of the M2-Frigate with specs).

The Galactic Coalition countered this was the construction of a new and more powerful heavy fighter called the F-10 Death Hawk. Equipped with Heberling Singularity Drivers Mark III,  each of the 15 constructed F-10 Death Hawks had an attack rating of 10 and a defense rating of 0.  The Drengin Empire only had 3 of the M2-Frigate ships.

The Drengin Empire made peace with the Torian Confederation in November of 2227. The Galactic Coalition continued to steamroll over the Drengin Empire throughout the year until the Drengin Empire surrendered (screenshot) their forces to the Galactic Coalition. The war, was over.

End Game

The Galactic Coalition and the Torian Confederation enjoyed trade to the amount of 45bc per week. This trade combined with the military might of the Galactic Coalition and a general agreement on moral philosophy (The Galactic Coalition was a morally Neutral/Good civilization and the Torain Federation was a morally Neutral/Good civilization) led to them having close relations. 

In 2229, the Torian Confederation accepted an offer of Alliance with the Galactic Coalition creating a united parsec.

Conclusions

Gil Sanders who led the Industrialists on Aeon had much to celebrate. The parsec was now united under a political alliance. Their military was ranked #1, their economy was ranked #1, their research was ranked #1, and their approval was ranked #2. It was good times for the Galactic Coalition.  The F-10 Death Hawk had served the galaxy was and Fleet101, which consisted mostly of F-10 Death Hawks had helped make the galaxy safe for those who were Neutral/Good.

In the end, the Galactic Coalition was recorded in history as a civilization that generated a total of 11,101 points. Their opponents were Challenging and with a total population of 31.3 billion the Galactic Coalition was now a force in the galaxy to be reckoned with.