Update next week

Proving once again that Stardock rocks!

Thanks!

That's excellent news! I haven't been playing long enough to encounter this bug, but am very encouraged by the developers' engagement with the issues here.

Good to hear. Always knew it was a feature and not a bug, it just needs some tweaking. Perhaps the research "inflation" weighting should depend on whether tech trading is on or not?

Kay, that's real nice to hear.
But, does this imply we may also get some of the "Please slam my game!" numerous suggestions added in? If we're lucky!
And if so, which ones get a priority or not (MCC, Constructors?!)?
Assuming lots more would be worked on for the v1.92 release also.

Going to address these?

https://forums.galciv2.com/311560

Thank you, thank you, thank you.... whew. Much appreciated Stardock. I hope you know we Gal Civ fans truly appreciate the love. I've always been a loyal fan and always will be in hopes that Stardock won't forget it's roots. Gal Civ is easily one of my fave games of all times. Thanks again guys.

Yeah great news Frogboy....

You are only 7 weeks to late and totally ruined the name of Stardock.

Not only that, I got the feeling you got 2 programmers and a hamster at your office, since it is obviously not possible to put 1 programmer on TA, shortly after its launch.

I can now rant on why I think this all happened, and what exactly went terribly wrong, but it is to much time wasted on people who dont deserve it.

Just know this, you made me from a loyal customer, some-one who bought all your expansions of this game without even thinking about it, to some-one who will never ever buy one of your games again.

And I am pretty sure, with all negative reactions + the emptyness on the forums from late, I am certainly not the only one. Good job in screwing up your reputation guys. A really good job. Be proud of yourself

What?
Because they decide to release a patch for a game that tweaks it slightly to make the end-game smoother you deside that it's the end of the world and star-dock is to blame.

The "bug" is not a game breaker in any scene of the word.

Ether justify what you have said (for there is very little that I can see in your post) or leave this community a better place, i.e. without you.

P.S.
Flame for a flame I always say

I agree the Research problem is, well, a problem, but I hope these changes don't swing things back in the other direction. I for one like very, very slow research. What I didn't like was that the same tech would cost 10 weeks of research one turn and then 20 turns later would cost 15 weeks even though I actually had more research points by that time. Is that the bug that is being referred to here? If so, then please go ahead and fix, but please don't alter things so that slow research is again "not slow."

I don't think that inflation is the right way. Why should a simple tech require much more time to research after several years?
I think it would me more efective to just put in an even slower research speed to choose from. (Isn't much work, is it?)

But please do not make the techs too cheap. My recent gigantic game is going well and in the older versions i didnt like the fact i got the full tech tree researched long before the end of the game (even in normal speed). I like the idea you cant research everything in the game, so you have to know what you need. In my opinion increasing tech costs just alter the way you have to play, providing a new challenge, that might be too harsh for some, realizing that the old strategy does not work anymore.
The best thing might be a research difficulty setting for the cost increase or a difficulty-dependency of it, so advanced players have the possibility to deal with it. It is not easy to make a game fitting to all players, that is whay it is called "balancing".

Seriously, Fluxx? Seriously?  :p 

After the hellish crunch to get PM2008 done (multiple all nighters - which we've posted about) we decide to spend our first free weekends on 3 months on GC2 bug fixing (bugs that, may I add, can't be that game breaking, with TotA rating an average score of 95%) and you come up with that post?

Enough of that brand of trolling will certainly kill our drive to make the game better. Go away before you ruin it for players that appreciate hard work.

Hear hear. That was totally uncalled for. You know you put out a quality product, and so do we. People like that are nothing but little chattering monkeys flinging their own poo.

Thanks for all the hard work.

O yeah! Keep the updates coming!

Well, that post is more than a bit over the top, though it has a point. As a development/research oriented player, I've put the game away pending a fix and am glad one appears to be forthcoming. As for citing the reviews, that is a bit disingenuous. The research bug seems to become noticeable and serious later in the game, especially in larger games. How many reviewers do you think played deep enough into the game for it to become apparent? That ToA got as much attention from major review sites as it did is a testament to the quality of the game, given that these sites give the vast bulk of their space to big budget RTS and FPS games. But they don't spend sleepless nights playing the game like it was GTA IV or Crysis (this is unfortunate, but true). Finally, like many others here, I am willing to cut Stardock a fair amount of slack based on past perfomance and the poster was out of line, at least in tone. Nonetheless, flaming your customers, even if somewhat deservedly, is not a good practice.

I'll be honest. You guys did use up some of the goodwill you've built up over the years. However, you guys were in a tough spot- you had to get PM out, but your flagship title was hurting.

You did explain such, which is why I could remain patient- usually gamers will steam a bit, but as long as there is communication, and the support delivers in the end, gamers can be forgiving. You got a lot more benefit of the doubt then most companies would, which is largely thanks to the efforts of the past, which have been appreciated. Those actions should be looked at by other game companies on how to handle things in a similar situation- you saved yourself a ton of trouble.

The one suggestion I'd make in the future- is I would have used a few man-hours to offer a back-patch to the last known version without the bug. Assuming you archive your previous patches- which I know you do- you would have been able to put that out pretty quickly. The one thing I'd like to see feedback on in this post is why this didn't happen- I'm sure there's a good reason, I'd just like to know why.

This is where your history and policy of true support and legitimate communication has probably paid the most dividends for you guys. Despite a near-critical bug, people have mostly remained calm, except for a few trolls, and have even been willing to give you time to get your business that needs to be done handled first. If this has been some other company, this forum would have turned hostile- look at the Total War forums for an example of how doing the opposite leads to mass hostility. That said, I got some time to enjoy EU3:IN, which is fun game from a good company as well.
(Paradox is really your rival in the games industry- you two are so similar in many ways)

I'm disappointed with Stardock it seems like we got shafted because Stardock wanted to release PM2008. It's been 7 weeks since launch and we're now just getting the first bug fix patch.

If we had the bug fix patch (even if it just cleared some of the obvious holes/problems with the tech tree) a week afterwards I would have waited 2-3 months to see what came in the major patch as I know it'll be great and will add alot to the game.

Stardock built it's reputation on great after launch support. I don't want this to end up like Crytek. (Crytek released patch 1.3 a year after the release of Farcry that added HDR support and some better online features kind of like Stardocks support with DL and DA. This time round with Crysis they have stopped all patch development with Crysis and are releasing a money spinning expansion just a few months after release.I'm tempted to believe their success has ruined their fan base support) Don't let this happen to you Stardock.

In all honosty the only one to blame is your teamleader since you had to rush PM2008 and got no free weekends.

If you just step back 1 second and look at it objectively, you will see it is quite awkward to plan the production of another game immediately after the launch of another game without any staff to support the former mentioned.

It is bad directing to put your entire staff to 1 project. Your guys working your ass off, is ofcourse apreciated but doesnt in any way justify the way this went. If I try hard I can find some other posts of devs 3 weeks ago who said you would hotfix it immediately after the launch of PM.

Oh and to the people claiming it isnt a gamebreaking bug. Except that half the tech tree is useless. You can easily win by researching a defense against the type of weapons your computer uses. And you win the game. Since the computer never ever researches anything anymore.

So yes, you might have done alot in the past, and you have shown a great support. However now Stardock is growing "big" and there is apparently this kind of mentality, shows me this support will go down fast and with that the strength of your company.

Wow... just... wow...

I suppose even Stardock has to attract some of the selfish, assinine, me first, frell the rest of the world type gamers out there, but Fluxx, you definetly represent the cream of that crop.

Do the rest of the community a favor and take your lame-ass, self-absorbed, ungrateful jackass presence somewhere else, because you certainly are lowering the average post quality around here by several orders of magnitude, all by yourself.

To the devs, from a long time lurker, thanks for the extra effort in getting this fixed as time allowed, definetly looking forward to the next big patch you are able to kick out once PM2008 is released. In the meantime, don't forget to take a little time off to yourselves... no good having you guys get sick, exhausted, or kidnapped by aliens before you can sweeten your games up even further *evil grin*

I quess I must be stupid. For hundreds of thousands of years, technology sat stagnant in the galaxy. Nobody designed anything new. Then fifty or so years ago, the Arceans give the Terrans the blueprints for a Stargate. After fifty years of research the Terrans come up with the Hyperdrive. Now people are bitching because it takes them more than two years to research their entire tech tree. The only bug I see here are the ants in yer pants. Good research takes time and money. If you need the high tech crap that bad, just edit all the prerequisites to Hyperdrive and get it all at the start, (just tell yourself Janeway came back through time and gave it to you).
The only problem I have with research is that I can't have more than one project going at a time, thus I accept the accellerated rate that it has now to compensate for that.

Also note that frogboy didn't call it a bug. He called it an annoying behavior that needed to be tweaked. Bugs are game crashers, or video anomolies or crap like that. This is just a change that wasn't well accepted by the muttering masses, just like most of the tech tree issues people are complaining about. The rest of the idiot races couldn't research their way out of a paper bag for hundreds of thousands of years. The fact that they are given any advancements in their tech trees is amazing, that is why I like the individual tech trees, it gave Stardock a way to put them back into their state of arrested development.

And here we go again with this , "You can't talk to a customer like that" crap. Yes they can, and do . They do it alot. It is good for idiots to be told to pipe down. The customer is not always right. These folk seemingly bend over backwards to get us something fun to play and when problems crop up they do their damndest to correct it as quick as possible. Since I updated to TA, I've had not one crash or video anomoly. This leads me to believe that they have a done a good job. Whan I updated to DA there were crashes and video anomolies, I waited , they fixed, I was happy (no bitching was necessary). Just like research, things take time. Strangely enuff, it takes research to find the giltch so you can fix it. So if Boogiebac or Frogboy or any other Stardock employee wants to cut loose on a bitcher, let them, and don't try to reprimand them, you aren't their parents or teachers, they are big boys and girls now, and they get to snap back at their protaganists. Alas I have ranted long enuff myself. Good-day.

Perhaps trying to crunch out two major strategy titles in such a short time was poor planning, but I can only imagine how frustrating it is to the developers to get flamed for being lazy while they've been working their asses off for 7 weeks. Personally, I'd be livid.

Of course, now that PM2008 is out of the way, I can only presume that Stardock will be back into their regular pace of post release support (especially with some of the stuff planned for the 2.0 release). Hopefully, they'll avoid such scheduling nightmares in the future, but I'll hardly begrudge them the delay given what a freaking awesome product TA is.

I've honestly never seen much problem with the bug... might be because I like medium/large galaxies and slow research, but simply having research go slow isn't game breaking in ANY setup... after all, your opponents are in the same boat as you. At the very worst, you just have to try a different way to win than overwhelming technical dominance, like industrial or economic power.

I just dont get it.

Lets say you would buy a washing machine with a manufacturing problem, and you go back to the shop the next day to use your garanty. When you come there you get the message, yeah sorry we know there is a problem, but we are busy creating a new washing machine. This will take about 7 weeks, but after that we will surely fix yours.

What would you say? "Oh ok guys, no problem. As long as you are working hard and you will make a nice washing machine in the meantime".

I know nothing of any bugs since I don't own that expansion. I'm new and this place, players and company seem to be nice people overall.

I can only offer some general advice concerning what anyone perceives to be a troll.

IF YOU DON'T FEED IT, IT WILL GO AWAY.

See ya in the Metaverse!

If we were "big", then we'd have more than nine people to develop two games (that's including Brad and an intern who just started this past month). There's no big "new mentality", just a small group of people working as hard as they can in a difficult situation. PM08 has been scheduled longer than TA, and unlike TA it couldn't be delayed.

It's been just over five weeks (I don't know where the seven weeks mentioned by one came from) since TA launched, and Brad said *at that time* that we wouldn't be able to get a patch out until now. So it's hard to see how some people can take such grave offense at something which was already planned and announced some time ago. We've been nothing but open about exactly what's going on.

It isn't a washing machine, it didn't come with a guaranty. It is a game, it comes with support from good people, and as Kyro said they did tell you at the time of release that it was going to be sometime in June before they would get to the first patch. Hey look, its June and they did it just like they said. Grow up Flux, learn about reality. Your washing machine would go to the shop, where some nitwit repairman would screw it up worse, you would have to take it back and this would go on for months before they finally replaced it. The new one would have the same problem as the first one. Thats what a guaranty is good for. Nothing. Stardock will look into it get it working, to their satisfaction, and most of their customer bases satisfaction. Once again, Good-day.