We have talked about AI art.  But the ChatGPT stuff is pretty amazing.

Here are some screen captures.

So this Spring will mark the one year anniversary of the release of Galactic Civilizations IV.  And we have some really big plans for it.  We've been working hard on a major revamp of the entire game.

Here are some of the areas we are making big changes:

1. Totally new combat system. Beam vs. Kinetic vs. Missile as a rock paper scissors mechanic against shields, armor and point defense is going away.  Instead, various types of weapons will have their own pros and cons in areas like costs, sizes, effectiveness, and on map benefits.  This will give us a lot more nuance and open the door to having a lot of new types of weapons and defenses in the future.  
2. New ship design system.  You won't be choosing Hulls anymore. You will choose a general class of ship which will determine how much mass you have available.  This will eventually let us have many types of classes (Frigates, Cruisers, Battleships, Dreadnoughts, and other types) rather than be limited to a number of types based on what words we can think of to describe sizes (uh, so um super gigantic mega hull?).
3. New invasion system.  We are going to move a bit away from the binary "you need a transport" system of invading plants that I've had in GalCiv since I was in college.  Instead, the time it takes to invade a system will be affected based on the conquest rating of your fleet.  So having an invasion transport with you would greatly increase that obviously.  But you won't need one to conquer some piddly little world just because of "the rules".
4. New ideology system.  Your choices will no longer give you points in a particular ideology.  They will simply make certain ideological choices less expensive to acquire.  So if you always play as an evil bastard, the evil bastard ideology choices will be cheaper to get but you can still go against the grain and live a life of self-deception.
5. Updated research system.  So instead of only having N techs you can research, you instead will be able to research any tech you want.  HOWEVER, you will be presented with N techs that scientists are on the verge of breakthroughs of which will be 50% cheaper to research than other techs.  So while you can choose any tech, it'll be very tempting to go with the ones that are on the verge of breakthroughs.

This is only a small list of changes that we think players will really like.  We're also doing things like adding a tutorial, improving the graphics further, making performance improvements, new map setup changes, etc.  We'll have more news soon.

What changes would you like to see?

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[confluence title=""]https://stardock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SUP/pages/1471414278/GalCiv+IV+Supernova+Dev+Journal+Links[/confluence]

When I say “Learn to code” I really mean it because man, ever since Covid hit we have just been behind the eightball on getting things done in a timely way. We need more engineers.

Star Control: Origins on XBOX Series X is in Certification, Galactic Civilizations IV is about to get a major overhaul, Sins of a Solar Empire II just had a technical alpha update and we have a huge new game in development that hasn’t been announced.  And this doesn’t even count for the software side that makes things like Start11, Fences, Object Desktop, Multiplicity, etc.  We are spread thin. 

We promised a GalCiv III v4.5 and we mean it and so here is what we’re working on.

So without further delay here are the changes in GalCiv III v4.5 (now released):

Note: Most of these updates are for the latest expansion: Retribution.  It is the ultimate version of GalCiv III and has gone through a lot of improvements since its first release.

• AI’s will now merge with the weakest other civ if they are hopelessly behind after 75 turns.
• Turns before an AI can surrender changed from 100 to 75 but odds of surrendering in a given turn reduced..
• Yor Fusion Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 2 to 1.
• Yor Anti-Matter Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 2 to 1.
• Yor Quantum-Matter Matrix improvement pop cap benefit reduced from 4 to 1.
• Earth planet class increased from 12 to 16 (4  additional starting tiles to build on)
• All other starting planets also given +4 starting tiles.
• Yor (Synthetic civs) can now build more population starting turn 1.
• Yor manufacture population now only requires Durantium.
• Yor starting base population cap reduced from 16 to 8.
• All players now also start with a Scout ship to help get exploration moving a bit faster.
• Most starting trade resources on planets require Promethion to upgrade. This was a bit of a newbie trap before where new players could find themselves with several things to start building on their planets that have little near-term benefit.
• Theocracy Government Colony Limit increased from 5 to 50 to make it more attractive.
• Unity Government Colony Limit increased from 7 to 32 to make it more attractive.
• Republic Government Colony Limit increased from 16 to 32 to make it more attractive.
• Emergency Coalition Government Colony Limit increased from 12 to 50 to make it viable
• Empire Government Colony Limit increased from 36 to 72 to make it more attractive.
• Several other government types tweaked slightly.
• Like with planetary Trade Resources, most artifacts found on worlds now require Promethion to upgrade to avoid the newbie trap, new player overload.
• Going over colony limit from government penalty reduced from 25% to 20%.
• Capital World raw production points increased from 3 to 5.
• Capital World raw gross income increased from 10 to 12
• Strategic Command now provides general manufacturing instead of just Military and provide Manufacturing bonuses to adjacent improvements.
• Basic Factory improvement cost increased from 30 to 40 but has been moved up in the tech tree so players get it earlier.
• The Bank…is no longer indestructible.
• Several other banking and financial buildings are no longer indestructible.
• Entertainment Center tech requirement moved from Cultural Exchange to Universal Translator.
• The Mega resort is no longer indestructible.
• However, Paxton’s Emporium IS indestructible now.
• Carriers are more powerful but now require Large Scale Construction tech (moved far back in the tech tree).
• Updated many of the event graphics with new better looking ones.
• AI Trade offers are much, MUCH better.
• So many bug fixes.
• Fixed bug that caused AI to “see” planets the player could see even though it was in that player’s FOW.
• AI much better as handling taxes
• AI much MUCH better at choosing what technology to research which should make it far more effective when at war.
• AI better about offering treaty trades
• AI will abort offering a trade to another player (AI or human) if it determines it’s a really unreasonable trade.
• Crusade: Durantium requirement removed from bigger hull classes to match Retribution.
• Base ship speed increased by +2
• Large hull HP increased from 80 to 100
• Large hull cost increased from 400 to 500.
• All Engine upgrades get +1 more moves (if you are putting on hyperdrive you should get more than 1 extra move)
• Tiny hulls get +1 moves.
• Lower end weapons no longer require a special resource (i.e. particle beams don't require Elerium).
• Root threshold of faction power before surrendering changed from 25% to 20% (AI slightly less likely to surrender).

There’s lot of incidental fixes, tweaks and optimizations in here as well.  But we think you will find this update to be a major improvement in pacing, AI behavior and general gameplay.

This thread is dedicated to recommending a book you read in the past year.  One book (per comment anyway).

Here is my 2022 recommendation: Hail Mary by Andy Weir.  I really enjoyed his other books such as The Martian and actually liked this one better.  Would make a terrific movie as well.

I am ashamed (not real ashamed but a bit) to say that I have been making my own AI based wallpaper to use and in most cases prefer it to other wallpaper I find.

Here are some examples:

Show off your AI generated art!

Not surprisingly, I will start with these:

Frog of the year..

I believe 2022 will be the year that we will look back on as the year General AI started to show up.  We have seen a lot of attention paid to tech like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and other art generation AIs but we they really don't hold a candle to the other areas AI are starting to become powerful.

I recently used an AI character called AskMeAnything to help get up to speed quickly with Neolithic and Bronze Age techniques for making clothing and what devices could be used.  I use an AI medical assistant to help me diagnose a problem with my knee (I followed up with a doctor and the diagnosis was confirmed).  I have used storyteller AIs to help get ideas on creating backstories on games.  We've even used AI to help on website design, info graphics, and help us understand different employee insurance types.

None of this existed (for the public) a year ago and it has only gotten better in the few months it has been available.

Stay tuned!

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Control II.  Join Stardock, Paul Reiche, Fred Ford, and others later this month for the celebration here on StarControl.Com.  We will be releasing some new content for Star Control II fans at the celebration.

In meantime, please visit the forum and share your memories of Star Control II.  We will be sharing some of these as part of the celebration.

We have some exciting plans this month for the 30th anniversary of Star Control 2. Paul Reiche and Fred Ford, the original creators of the game along with the gang working on UQM2 and Stardock are teaming up to celebrate! 

In the meantime, if anyone wants to share their memories of Star Control 2 please share in the comments here!

Introduction

Many of you have been with us for a long, long time.  We have been doing “early access” since 1993 when we put out the pre-pre-alpha of Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. Back then, it was a radical idea to put something out for player feedback that was unfinished.

These days, games are frequently put out in “early access,” but they are typically very late betas or even demos, where it is far far too late for players to have any meaningful impact on the game’s direction. That isn’t the case here.

Here, we want to put something out early enough where we can make pretty dramatic changes based on player ideas and feedback. This also means we will be trying out some things that just won’t work. 

We need your help communicating to others that what is in a given build may not be in the final release.  We need to be able to try out ideas that may end up not working without fear that people are going to misrepresent the entire game based on this.

In this article, I'm going to give a few minor examples of things that we want to try, but may or may not work out.

Setting expectations

For starters, we need to set some expectations for the Technology Preview series of builds we’ll be releasing this Fall (2022) and Winter (2023).

This is a new game engine

You guys probably already know this, but most people don’t: there are very, very few new video game engines being made today.  Almost all games now use either Unreal or Unity. Neither of those engines would work well for this particular game. Sins of a Solar Empire II is built on a new engine. It’s a rewrite.

Because there are so few new game engines, the GPU makers (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel for instance) tend to focus their optimizations and compatibility efforts on the major engines. This means a new engine is likely to have problems that we won’t know about until it’s been out there for a while.

The first public builds of this game will be trying to answer a simple question: does it work?  We don’t mean, "is it fun?" We mean, "will it load up on your PC? Do you end up with a bunch of purple graphic artifacts? Does it just randomly crash? Does it make your PC get too hot?"

So if you’re joining the Technical Preview hoping to get a “fun game” to play, we highly recommend you not do that.  Go get Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion and play that. It’s going to be a while before this is anything close to a “good game."

We have some new UI ideas

In the original Sins of a Solar Empire, there were no “space buildings”. There were no asteroids to mine. Until late beta, when we did add asteroid mining, they eventually ran out.   

The first public alpha didn’t even have phase lanes!  Yea, imagine Sins where you could travel anywhere.  It was whack-a-mole.  Back then, there were no Streamers, YouTubers, Twitter, etc. to spread the word that our game wasn’t fun. Because of this, we were able to try out different ideas with our community until we hit on the ones that worked.

We are trying out new ideas with the technical preview - not just in terms of UI design, but also the UI visuals.  Everything is on the table.  Skeuomorphic UI? Monochromatic? Fly out menus? Docking based UI? We’re going to be trying a lot of things, and while almost none of these ideas will work, we need to try them to get to the ideas that do.

Gameplay

The first goal of Sins of a Solar Empire II is to catch up to where Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion was. We want to get to that point and then grow beyond that. This is a new, core-neutral, game engine that can handle thousands of entities simultaneously.

If you have a question regarding gameplay, our answer will probably be: “We don’t know yet.” We’re not in a hurry. It’s been 15 years since the release of Sins of a Solar Empire, and Sins of a Solar Empire II will become the basis for many years of expansions, improvements, new ideas, etc. 

Graphics

We are trying out different art styles.  We have already tried several even before announcing the game.  We want to try out more, but that only becomes possible if we are allowed to fail gracefully.  That means when we release a build that uses Pink Space Pony anime ships and it turns out that was a bad idea, you guys communicate that to us, but at the same time not just assume that Sins of a Solar Empire II is going to be a doomed pink unicorn game. 

Let us try things out. Let us make mistakes. Let us work together together to make the best game we can.

Conclusions

We are really excited to share our ideas with you, but we are also more than a little bit nervous.  We know that Sins of a Solar Empire became such a classic because we were allowed by the community to try out a lot of ideas that turned out to be terrible and then fix them.

Sins of a Solar Empire was made during a time when we could attempt new things that didn't work using a public early access program and know that we could then try something else without there being a “social media narrative” because those things didn’t exist back then.

It is unavoidable that we will have some early access participants who will play a build and see bad UI, gameplay, graphics, or something else and be on the Internet in moments to spread the word that, "this is a disaster - and don’t forget to like and subscribe!” 

This is the world we live in today.  What we are hoping is that enough of you remember the process that made Sins of a Solar Empire a classic, and help communicate that this isn’t a demo. It’s not a late beta. This is a collaborative effort with the space strategy game community to make something truly special.