Actually the whole Elemental debacle gave me more confidence in parting with my cash early here rather than less. Because while I agree the release version of Elemental was not up to scratch, Stardock went to great lengths and expense to ensure I not only got my money’s worth in the end but in fact more than got my money’s worth.

£75.99 as it is in the up is a lot of money for a Game but when you add in all the expansions and DLC I feel sure will be produced it’s a bargain. Plus I enjoy these Alpha and Beta situations and watching the game slowly take shape.

So for me buying the Elite Founders edition made sense, but I can understand why not everyone would agree with that.

Which is good   Never trust someone who is trying to sell you something

 

Indeed, I share your pain and then some (Assassin's Creed 4)

 

Perhaps you could look at this dark spot from different point of view. Short of one free game from EA for SimCity failure... Which developers have actually given a crap about you as gamer/consumer once they got your cash and managed to stick the game on your lap regardless of it's condition.  Ok, Rome2 gave us one free miniDLC. For a limited time.... Feel sorry for anyone who did not notice it in time.

I had to fight with Ubisoft customer service for over a month to have my game refunded when it started destroying savegames. Over a bloody month for something that obviously was broken and even they admitted it. Only once I started pulling big guns (EU consumer rights organization) they yielded.

Let's compare our experience with Elemental to that. Elemental was not broken as such, it was playable. Not quite what promised but it did work.

And without any fight or argument we were given compensation in form of nice game.

I would not call it dark spot but mark of honour, namely because some other companies have handed me steaming pile of turd and then essentially told me to suck it up.

My sentiment exactly well said.

I suppose my biggest concerns have yet to be addressed. Yes, does sound interesting to have infinite galaxy sizes; but what is the point if I can only access them via modding? Furthermore, my experience with Stardock games in the past is that they are not very patch friendly. A game in which I've invested tons of hours into can be rendered worthless with one little 5mb patch, which breaks the old save entirely and forces me to restart. I've restarted GalCiv2 and Elemental more times than I can count and that still worries me.

So at this time, I'm still very much on the fence and I'm not really leaning toward the supportive side either. Elemental and Demigod has left me with a lot of trust issues.

I had trust issues with Stardock too after the release of Elemental WoM. 

I was so sure it was going to be awesome I bought it blindly right on release day.

Sadness ensued.

But fast forward a couple years later and they gave me FA and LH for "free" to repay my initial "wasted" investment on WoM. Very few companies have that kind of integrity. 

I played a good hundred hours of FA: LH, this makes it a good game in my book. I wont play most games that much.  I would say FA is probably one of the best 4x to have been released since Civ IV. I may not have played them all but that still put Stardock as one of the best current maker of 4X games imho. And they have certainly learned from their past mistakes and I trust them to make GalCiv III right. From early indications they seem on the right track.

If you doubt, then wait for the Beta is probably best. We will know more about the game by then and you do not have to put such a big initial investment.

I think it very likely you will need to mod for custom galaxy size and broken save games can always happen depending on the scope of the patch. 

To be honest if those as you say are major concerns for you I would say the alpha and betas aren't for you and that you wait and see if the final release version has enough other merits to be worth your while. 

And as I say while I think they more than made good value for money wise for the early adopters of elemental in the end it did take longer than expected so I can see how that would put someone of as well as encourage others like myself since I used to game company's taking the money and running and no one could accuse them off that. 

What are you looking for Vanadrom?

You initially asked if GC3 would allow you to make a scratch disk so it could handle huge galaxies. When people tried to explain that because of the way 64bit Windows manages memory, a scratch disk will do you no good, and Windows will automatically adjust to allow you to play as large a game as you want, you accuse them of flaming and being condescending. When Frogboy posts, assures you that what others were saying is correct and 64 bit Windows will indeed support as large a game as you care to make, you respond by essentially saying you don't believe him. What could anybody possibly say to reassure you?

I don't think any answers we have will help you.  If you want the game to play outside its normal  excessive limits, but you don't want to mod it, what is supposed to happen?  I am a fan of huge galaxies as well and do not foresee any issues with that subject.  I fully expect to either use some interesting setting in game or pick up somebody else's neat little mod.   I fully expect to be able to create galaxies bigger than my OCD micromanagement compulsions can actually handle.  Yay, overdose!!  It seems to be a case of what you believe and trust.  And you do not seem ready to follow our levels of belief and trust. That is, of course, your right.

And save games often break upon new versions.  I offer no sympathy on that point.   It seems to be an unavoidable consequence of any significant changes.  Anything I think I know about game design suggests it is actually unavoidable without extreme effort.  The only way I know as a user to avoid that is to wait until the games's final version, then buy it.  I have done just that with several games.  It is often cheaper as well.  In the long run, that is my advice to you.  I don't think you are willing to be happy any other way.  I am probably wrong.  I haven't been wrong yet today and that puts me way behind quota.

One thing that's really going to help with getting mods more easily distributed and making them easier to find is steam workshop that was really useful for finding sorting and applying Skyrim mods and I think it will be the same here.

I honestly can't imagine trying to play a map bigger then twice as big as galciv 2's biggest map.  Actually 40x40 is more then twice as big as 20x20, it's 4 times as many sectors.  So you'd have a hundred+ planets, research would be absolutely flying by, influence and military victory conditions would be nearly impossible.  Technology victory would probably be too easy, you'd be halfway there by the time the expansion phase of the game finished.

The bigger the map goes beyond that just gets even more wonky.

Though I gotta admit I'm a bit wary about this whole operation myself.  The alpha is sparse, granted they warned us.... and looks/plays a lot like galciv2.  The adjacency bonuses seem to be the biggest change so far which isn't something I personally like.  I always sucked at simcity.  The delayed ship editor preview isn't exactly reassuring.

Frankley the delay in demoing the ship designet is irrelevant.  As someone who has been involved in software development I can tell you issues leading to minor delays and demos failing are very common and not at all indicative of a project failing.

The alpha is an alpha its mostly meant as an engine test the games still a year away from release and they made no bones about the fact the alpha is not feature complete and uses a lot of place holder art.

I agree with you about map sizes past a certain size they can get silly. But you could always turn of all victory conditions other than conquest.

I will agree with this. That said, one thing I would greatly appreciate is the ability to turn off "autoupdates" in the final version. In our current days of steam where autoupdating is the norm....it would be nice to finish up a game before I activate the upgrade.

But yeah beyond that I would never want the dev spending lots of resources trying to keep saved games synced up with new patches...I would rather they just work on those new patches!

You can do that in Steam already. I think it is right click -> Properties and then somewhere there.

Yes you can turn of autoupdating on any of your steam games. Of course some games that are heavily online may then refuse to let you play until you get the latest client version but it's doubtful that will be the case here at least for single player.

deleted, was already answered.

Im sure someone will make a mod for uber large galaxies when the game is released! No need to mod it yourself. Just wait and install the mod!