this may incorrect, but I understand that some system items are not written to a file immediately , but are held in memory and when written to a file then the security issue is encountered.
I had this same bug happen about 115 turns in…the funny thing is that I was also attacking Dayamun or had just retreated from it (I don’t think this is related to the bug). In my case I think it had more to do with changing a ship design and then saving the design outside of the campaign. But I did get the strange numbers showing across the maintenance and cash display, and could not buy anything from there on. An interesting tid-bit, I did advance a couple turns and it gradually cleared the garbage numbers from main. and cash, but on one of the turn advances it erased all my ships and fleets…and at that point it did allow me to build something. But I decided to go out and delete more of the unused ship designs that kept clogging the buy display before proceeding with the campaign…or starting over. Another bug, is that I tried to delete the campaign, and it will go through the motions, but not delete anything.
Cliff, I disagree with your thoughts that this may be a write issue. I am running Windows Xp and so the OS security is more limited than Windows 7.
First of all, Amazing game, the Galactic Conquest is brilliant:D:D! Here are a few little ticks and tocks that might help make it cooler:).
There’s a few slight logic issues with the attack/defend mechanics.
- If I control Planet A, and I get attacked by Planet B and win (destroying all of B’s attacking ships), it seems logical that the forces at Planet B should now be much weaker. Yet when I attack the next turn, it’s suddenly back to full strength :(.
- When I get attacked by the Swarm from Planet B, my instinct is to design my fleet so that when I attack Plant B, I can defeat a swarm fleet. But when I do attack back, I suddenly find it occupied by the Alliance…o_O?
- Currently, when two planets attack each other simultaneously, each battle happens separately. This gets annoying when lauching an all out attack, because there are no defenses from the lauching planet, and it is automatically lost. It would be awsome if instead of 2 seperate battles, there was one major inter-planet battle in space, where the winner gets both planets!
Possible new ideas?
- Maybe instead of you vs the galaxy (green vs red), make it like a mulit-player map, with different colors representing the various races vying for galactic supremacy. Maybe make it an option to chose how many races will be involved in this galaxy and which one. so we can chose for example, to have a 3-way galaxy of Federation vs Empire vs Order. Or something similar
- ALLIES! If you impliment the first one, maybe we can set diplomacy, so that its become a team campaign (Empire + Humans vs Order + Swarm) etc.
- Random starting planet? It would have to be a super planet:D.
I’m just now getting the white campaign background that other people reported earlier - thought it was fixed?
NivMizzet13 comments I complete agree with.
Should not the game AI have to select/build fleets that can be produced by it’s maps shipyard/factories/cash.
The case of Monirian;
It has only 1 path for reinforcements from Metagoros. Monirian has no production ability;
Yet I occupied Metagoros, checked Monirian found a large force of swarm frigates (FG) all of the same type .
Started building a fleet structured for a FG attack. But before ready;
I am attacked from Monirian by a mixed force of rebel type FGs, was able to defeat them ( it was close).
So I then attacked Monirian and found a large fleet of mixed Cruisers (CR) and FGs.
This causes gaming the system solutions, example:
If one does not like a enemy force,
exit the game and then start again and the force may have changed.
I hope this changes and may be on the list of later improvements.
Same here, Tohron. I was stuck with it for a while; it went away when the latest patch came out; now it’s back. Disappointing and weird, as I hadn’t changed my Galactic Conquest install on my computer. I want the proper background again.
Many thanks Darkstar. There’s alot of programming that would be needed to up the AI of the system, and that might be asking very much of our good host Cliffski. I always feel guilty when pointing out a bug unless I provide solutions too:). Player suggested solutions helps the game progress:).
We all hate it when we’re 3 turns into the game, and our tiny fleet meets a 20 cruiser fleet. However I have two possible solutions, each using different ideas:) and would safe cliffski some typing:).
- Timestamped fleets.
Whenever a fleet is created by a player, itis given a time stamp (ie what turn it was created in). When playing campaign the system can chose from fleets which are within the actual time of the player’s game. For example, If i’m in turn 3, then any enemy fleets i encounter will be chosen from the list of all fleets with timestamps of 3 turns or less. If i’m in beginner mode, then maybe the timestamp limit can be a few weeks behind. For example, if i’m in week X, I’ll encounter fleets built at week X-5 or less. If I’m in hard mode, then the timestam limit can be ahead by a few weeks. Ie, If i’m in week X, I’ll encounter fleets with timestamps up to week X+5.
Benifits: This will produce very acurate time equivilant fleets from other players, as if you’re playing with them, and encountering their fleets as you both develop. Its also easy to program (I hope!), adding just one parameter to the fleets, and a few checks when selecting enemies. It will also allow the game to get progressively harder as the weeks increase.
Drawbacks: The all-out fleets and the temporary fleets might skew the selection. The all-out fleets being the times when you mass EVERYTHING you have into a gigantic fleet for single attack, and the temporary fleets being those tiny 1 ship fleets you momentarily create when shifting ships around. This methods doesn’t stop players from building extremes of fleets. IE using just pilots to produce masses of 50 squads of fighters that chew up every fleet like parahnas.
2.Pilot/Crew Limited Fleets
Every fleet that is build has a pilot/crew number. The system can use these two numbers to create a fleet cap to be used when selecting enemy fleets. For example, if my fleet total is oh… 50 pilots and…1000 crew. The system can select fleets with similar numbers to oppose me:). For cadet mode, maybe the enemy fleet could have…70% max of my total…Captain can have 100% of my total, and the hardest level can have 130% of my total:).
Benefits: This will make your fleets face similar fleets, regardless if you make the extremes. A fleet of 50 squads of fighters will face similar fleets in this system. It allows the player to decide what kinda of battle to have…ie mass fighter dogfights or cruiser slugfests.
Drawbacks: The difficulty level and complexity will not progress unless the player progresses as well. The player may choose to play coward…and stick to tiny fleets, so that he faces only tiny fleets.
In an ideal world, the solution would be a combination of the two. However I’ve done some programming and logistics and I know it’ll be a nightmare trying to fews those systems together (unless done in series one after another). Kudos and lots of it to Cliffski for his games! I hope these suggestions help!
I should point out that the game will artificially ‘push-back’ against over-aggressive starting startegies. If you encounter a fleet that seems to completely ovewhelm you early in the game, you can always back-off (in territory terms) and things will settle down.
The enemies also notice the size of your fleets and their location, so although it might be tempting to stick a huge fleet on the border, this will scare the enemy into building big counter-fleets.
You need to do more of a ‘churchill’ style tactic, and keep larger fleets back as a flexible ‘mass of maneuver’.
(Still reading his WW2 diaries…)
NivMizzet13
having given some thought to your comments, let me suggest a method for the AI to select
fleets using those ideas.
Assuming
- A Data Base (DB) of fleet designs with assigned values like cost, crews and pilots
- A star map where there are enough shipyards (A/B class)s to represent each race.
- a number planets/systems are grouped around each shipyard A/B and called an Empire
- The AI for each turn keeps a running total of production for each empire i.e.
cash, crews & pilots, etc. But builds nothing.
At start of a “a player game”
- Player selects a race and is assigned one of the empires.
- as now, the player builds ships/fleet using home planet/empire production.
- When a player attacks a planet, then the AI does following;
A. using the current race empire production totals and selects a fleet of assigned race.
B. This AI fleet size is adjusted for the player fleet size, game turn, game level etc
using the ideas of yours & others
C. The total (adjusted) cost of AI fleet is subtracted from running total.
D. Note; at beginning the clearing of home planet empire is special case,
more random but using the players race as AI’s fleet ships. - All Fleet battles are resolved and new turn starts with 2.
Game artificially “push-back” production problem.
This explains some AI actions;
I like the idea that the game acts with a real “people/alien” action.
And this should be in the AI methods.
But the current star map is too limited to allow for a free use of the raid tactics
(due to limited paths. choke points & productions centers )
I realize this is just a beginning in size, so is hard to prove a strategy or not.
The problem is the AI seems to have unlimited resources and can use all paths to you.
This gives it the possibility of grinding you down with constant ever changing attacks.
which you must plan against.
i.e. the players production can not keep up with losses while
AI just keeps selecting fleets of different design and races and numbers
and is not limited by production or location or types/race.
i.e. hard to build a type of fleet against every changing AI fleets, except by
size (having a lot of everything).
or have I missed something ???
i have to agree with dark star
AI always cheats,no matter where and how… its not limited by any of the flaws of the flesh as we are 
the AI needs some sort of limitations in place, else its just a giant epic struggle against impossible odds… AI should be only allow to field a fleet which it can afford,and the fleet should stay there,not dissapear and have a new one pop out instantly
It seems to me that the real problem with strategy in the campaign is that the AI fleets are never defined - you could fend off a MWM spam fleet then find yourself trying to fend off fighter spam with the same forces. In order to plan ahead, there needs to be some consistency to the AI’s unit composition, so that once you know what kind of ships they’re using in a region, it will be a while before they change that composition. The AI should rate compositions based on the kind of ships they contain, which could be categorized by the modules they use. Here are some category suggestions:
Rush Cruiser (cruiser engines, short-range weapons)
Anti-rush Cruiser(minimal engines, short-range and possibly mid-range/long range weapons)
Long-Range Cruiser(minimal engines, exclusively long range weapons)
Anti-Fighter Cruiser(few engines, heavy armor, lasers & tractor beams)
Long Range frigate (few engines, long range weapons)
Short Range frigate (several engines, short-range weapons)
Anti Fighter frigate (significant armor, tractor beams, pulse-lasers or anti-fighter missiles)
Laser Fighter
Rocket Fighter (rockets or target-painters)
If the suggested “empire” planet-grouping idea is implemented in some form, each empire could have an assigned priority for each type of ship, which affects the attacking and defending fleets which are drawn from the challenge pool, and which changes slowly over time based on the computer’s categorization of they compositions you’ve been using to fight it.
So, did I leave out any major ship categories?
The problem is, there is a finite number of enemy fleets in the database, as no modded ones are uploaded, and no spammy ones are either, and people playing with just the base game are limited to just those 4 races. Add to this the need to not see the same fleets too often, and to have fleets at lots of different sizes, plus ones with and without fighters and cruisers, due to anomalies… And there may not be that many for the AI to choose from.
Hence, splitting it up more, to account for similar tactics might be a step too far.
The graphic for the Qualkat system reduced by 50% weapons range does not show the minimum range (red) reduced.
unless the min. range is not reduce by 50% which could be a problem ?
please implement Dark_Star and NivMizzets suggestions!!! This is like the fourth time I’ve seen people suggest the “empires” idea… I would love to see some consistency in the races you’re stacked up against (based on which territory you’re invading or something).
The difficulty isn’t too bad, but perhaps make it so AI is capped at producing fleets of 150-175% of your fleet size. That seems somewhat reasonable 
Also, cliffskis comment about the “churchill strategy” makes so much sense now that I think about it… I couldn’t explain it earlier, but it always seems like I got attacked twice as much when I was using massive defense fleets as opposed to not defending a planet at all… I thought it was pretty odd until now.
Dark Star, Thunderbird, et al. have made good points. Right now, the AI appears to be able to field fleets unrelated to its potential production capacity. After having destroyed numerous enemy fleets from opponent #1, somehow massive fleets from this same defeated opponent appeared simultaneously at both of my occupied planets. I managed to destroy both of these, sequentially, but only with massive losses. At which point another fleet appeared and wiped me out at my home planet. The only way this would be reasonable is if I was fighting an empire with 3-5x my productive capacity…but this was early in the game, I was only fighting one opponent (pursuing the “cautious” strategy recommended above). Not provoking anyone.
I believe the problem is that this is a campaign feature bolted onto an underlying (quite enjoyable) game system. Some bugs clearly need to be worked out.
Speaking of bugs, my last game crashed quite impressively. Suddenly, both the income and cash balance boxes at the top of the screen devolved into gibberish. After two turns of that, even the computer couldn’t figure out what they meant, and the game simply stopped working.
Also, frequently, when I am retreating from a battle the game crashes. FWIW.
P.S. The white background showed up today, too.
After using auto deploy, when dragging ships off screen into holding area, they just disappear, but not gone
Can make re-appear by using autoDeploy again.
Been playing the campaign a lot lately, have yet to finish a single one. Each time the campaign would eventually come to a turn that fails to end, and on reloading, the error repeats. There have been other error-related causes to not finishing the campaign, I’m clueless as to why they happen. But I’ve noticed a number of things in playing the campaign repeatedly:
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When the game crashes for whatever reason, including returning to the main menu, the threat level of bordering worlds increases by an amount roughly equal to the ‘normal’ threat level. This means that, if on a given turn you scout and no other battles take place, and the game crashes while you retreat, when you end that same turn when the game is reloaded every bordered planet is roughly twice as likely to be attacked, and if it was attacked, the attacking force will be about twice as strong. If the game is closed or crashes, say, three times in one turn, all of your bordered planets are going to be invaded and by a force four times as strong as it would have normally been. This does not not seem to happen with Kasheemun, Rana II, or Sullgobah. The cause to this seems to be that in loading the game, it starts from the beginning of the turn, before adding up threat. When the game is saved, that threat has already been added. The planet’s displayed threat does not change when the game is loaded.
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As mentioned before, fighters who retreat may go to a world where fighters aren’t allowed. In line with this ‘bug’, enemy fleets which are recurring (a defensive fleet that ends up attacking) ignore these rules. Given that there aren’t many fleets available to use yet, at least the range affecting planets could set auto-range to attacking fleets, so that they’re not crippled. Most notably, Qualkat is an exploitable fortress choke point so long as the player recognizes what works well at half range. That half range makes fighter torpedoes and rockets completely unusable.
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Perhaps its intentional, but recapturing planets after they’ve been taken without a fight is far better than trying to defend. Generally, defending at all is a very bad idea. The garrison left behind from a captured planet with no defense is very weak. The player gets NOTHING for a successful defense, except perhaps to save a turn. Even retreating to attack the same fleet the next turn is better. Possible solutions include: weakening the fleet that the attack came from greatly, have an undefended world result in that attacking fleet making another attack either the same turn or the next, or reward the player with a % of credit value of the attacking fleet for collecting salvage from destroyed ships in defense.
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Please display the speed of a ship in the ship selector on the deployment screen when you hover the mouse over them for campaign battles as they would be in non-campaign battles.
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Please have the ship selector auto-scroll to remaining ships when it would appear empty.
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Ships with repair systems can go back to full health (if they have the supplies, and if they went into battle with no damage) if the player waits after the battle ends for the repair systems to do their work. But a self-repaired ship that goes into a battle with damage and fully repairs will return to the same damaged state when the battle ends, assuming that it was not more damaged at the end of the fight. (Alternatively, could damaged ships with self-repair systems get a fixed amount of damage, # of modules, or % repaired per turn?)
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Enemy ships repair themselves after battle, assuming they survive. But damaged fighters self-destruct…? A damaged fighter will not appear when the same fleet goes to battle again, making a sacrificial anti-fighter fleet perfect for scouting and wiping out most of a fighter-heavy fleet by merely damaging them.
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Merging fighters into a fleet on the same turn that they were built will allow those fighters to move. Make fighters that cannot move on a turn be merged into first, rather than merging the smallest squads into others.
Hmm an actual bug now. I was fiddling with the mods, and decided to start fresh by uninstalling GSB and reinstalling. When I opened the campaign There was a strange saved campaign there (which I did not create):
First Try (9:34) 03/26/1675
Lol Apparently, someone created a ‘First Try’ back in March 26, 1675:P.
Small suggestion: when we create multiple cruisers or figates, why not stack them in the fleet overview, and in the deployment screen like fighters are. The only difference being that every time we deply them they deploy one by one per click.