I usually play games *straight through*. I don't save and then come back in, I sit for the entire time (well I take bathroom breaks;o), which my wife does not like, lol; no I didn't update in the middle. It is all a moot point now; because the game is gone, had I thought or waited to see replies before playing another game I would have saved it in another folder and sent it in per the suggestions in here. Hey on another note what is the deal with the supposed *free* demo? My cousin wanted to try this out; but when he went to the download page it took him to file planet and they want almost $7 a month to allow the download if you just sign up for a single month or $4 a month if you pay for a full year. I think a lot of people will refuse to try out the game demo on principle; because *ALL* demo downloads are suppose to be *free*. Or at least I though so.

You can download from Fileplanet without being a subscriber, you just have to take a number and wait for a download spot on the public server.

During my 1st full game yesterday, I found that if I'm in the research window with the tree expanded and the descriptions hidden, right clicking a research item will pop up a description.

Lots of fun.

Same here, I don't know why people edge scroll at all.

I played 10 games before I knew you could   

What a waste of time..

1) Did you know that you can use planets to speed you along to your destination, if your planet is between you and where you wnat to go, you can orbit the planet, and then go to the other side of the planet using L for launch in direction you want to go, thus saving you travel time....this can help you save weeks in travel time.....you should do these types of manuveurs after all other ship movement though, since its a pain to jump into a planet only to be whisked to another ship when you still want to move the one that hit "orbit planet".....

2) Did you know that you can hit CTRL G to put up a movement grid along the entire map to help you figure how far stuff is, and if you can reach it...CTRL G also gets rid of it....

3) Did you know that you can repair your ships by upgrading to the exact same ship

Did you know you can design tiny ships for cheaper transports,colony ships... if you want one with engines, you can use smalls for that. You'll save production time and money if your just buying them outright designing your own ships......

if your civ doesn't have the room in a tiny then you might have to work up minituarization firs....

actually found out you cannot auto repair ships by upgrading to itself, has to actually be an upgrade....it won't take if its repairing to the same type of ship unfortunately....

Something I always missed, and found out I can do now (1.6 beta 3 upwards):

You can zoom out in the techtree by using the mouse scroll wheel. No more endless dragging around, just zoom out all the way and you have the complete overview.

Yep, that's always been in DA. Can't do it in DL, though.

There is another edition to your thread, brad.
It's kinda like a cheat but it isn't considered one(no cheat flag).

If you select an AI's planet and go in to your domestic policy screen and adjust your taxes or spending. The planet will display how many turns left into building the next ship. It won't give you the name of the ship but at least you know how many turns until the next ship produced on the planet. I use it it to check if its safe to move my transports in. You can test it too.

I'm sure Kryo and Frogboy will be on this like bees on honey.

It's tested and approved on DL. Never tried it on DA though. BUT IT EXISTS. It is a bug, that works to your advantage.

-Scot

Yeah, I've lost games by not watching that. End up > $2000 in the hole and can't recover in time to save myself.

Haha, I was doing it on my first game. I also learned to use the scroll wheel to zoom out, left click scroll and then zoom in.

However, the mouse over for influence is going to get tested when I get home.

I think you can select the fleet and click "Manage" which should appear on the bottom of the screen to the right of the name. Then you can click individual ships within the fleet and click "upgrade" to the right. Note that the fleet can't move if one ship is upgrading.

btw I don't have DA yet, but this works in DL.

I think this is a feature, sort of.

You can move the ships manually, but once they are moved that turn, whether manually or left to automation, they've used up their move points and cant move until the next turn, either manually or by automation. It does help to use the automation to move ships into the vicinity then take control for finer directions.

I beleive this DOES work...if you go into shipyard and change the LOCATION of a system on the ship first, like life support.

drrider

That is great information to know. I'd like a few clarifications if I may though. What bonuses does an added human player lose? Racials? The assigned Ability Ala normal player picks?

I suppose I could set this up myself to test but- Does the Added player gain control of the entire civilization? Or just the ships? I would assume the former since actual "piloting" is a fairly minimal aspect of the game, IMO.

It's a shame that GC2 doesn't have integrated multilayer w/o some heavy lifting. A few of my friends and I are die-hard 4x/hotseat players. The scope of this game is soo epic; we've always been very saddened that it's not a feature.

No, you don't. There are two methods of upgrading single ships in fleets.

1) Click on the fleet and then select the required ship within the fleet. The "Manage" button will change to "Details". Click this and you will bring up a menu within which you can upgrade the ship.

2) Simply click the "Manage" button when you select the fleet to bring up another menu which will then allow you to select individual ships for upgrading.


P.S. I only have standard GC2, so I don't know if this has been changed for the expansion pack.

I may continue the list:

-Use the colony list! Since version #idonno you are able to do almost everything you can do by clicking on the planet right out of the list. You can change priorities, buy or build buildings and change what the starport is building. You may know that, but what really disturbed me is the fact that you get to the beginning of the list when you click "done" in the building window. I lost the overview where i already bought something quite quickly. But yesterday i discovered the solution to my problem is not closing the build window in the planet list. Just click on the next planet, the window content changes to the selected planet and you can easily modify planet after planet. The colony list is THE feature for managing bigger galaxies. Clicking on a planet in the list and closing the info screen will directly teleport your Screen to the selected planet - a nice option to find planets. I just wish an option to rename planets out of the list and its perfect.

To the beginner:
Just really experiment with the given functions until you understand how they work. There can be no good game without the use of rally points for example. Check the governor screen and see what possibilities it offers to manage your Civilization. Just check all tabs and try to understand how the game works. The developer have implemented a lot of options to make galactic life easier, you just have to find them

I ignored the colony screen for a while when I started playing, but it really is supremely useful.

Sentient species taste better...

I haven't played DL in a long time, but in DA and above all you need to do to select the fleet. You can click on the individual ships in the fleet that are displayed in the center bottom area(it shows what ships are all in the fleet)

The button that said "Manage" will change, click on what it changed to and you'll only be looking at the description for the selected ship. You can run upgrades and every as needed.

Yeah, I ignored Colonies and Governors at first, but they're actually really helpful.

Small things sometimes take very long to be discovered. Did you ever have been in the situation you want to get a planet full with buildings of the same type? You click on build a few times but until now i do not understand what determines whether you can click the button multiple times or only one time and then it is greyed out. (MAybe someone who knows can explain that to me). But last game i realized doubleclick on the building just adds it to a randomly selected free tile. Having that discovered i can create specialized planets very quickly, without needing to select the tile i want to build on.

Here's something that I didn't know until today, although it may already be on this list.

The rally point minimap can be zoomed with the mousewheel and panned by holding down the middle button (which depending on your mouse, may double as the mousewheel).

Is there a way to get a transport to automatically launch with 1 passenger? I hate dragging the scroll bar all the way to the left and then having to go back and click the other side of the scroll bar to add 1 passenger. If one passenger is the minimum required to launch, then the scroll bar should only go down to 1, not 0.