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I was wondering Bam-Bam, could you give us a bit more information. I know I am not exactly the type of person you have directly addressed this to, but I am interested. I only have the bit of Maso experience, so I was wondering if I could get some details before I decide to join, if that would be ok.
Thanks
        
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Sounds interesting Bam-Bam. Are you intending to have everyone run from the same starting position?
Like ABT, I'd like to see the next batch of information before committing. 
BTW, great job with the SGs. Helped me get to grips with the game a lot. 
      
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Sounds interesting. I think you will find a lot of players for this, and I would like to be one of them. 
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| I wanted to test the waters a bit with limited information. |
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I would love join in
   
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Sirian! Its been some time since I think anyone has seen a RBer.
On AP, we have been messing with bugs for some time, I think the version is at Q right now, and there have been some interesting changes. So yes, I'd say that the bug hunt has taken longer than expected. Also, the Stardock staff has been working on The Political Machine quite a bit, that is finishing up the public betas I think. But I am pretty certain TPM will be gold before the end of July, and AP should go gold soon.
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#285
by Veteran Gerakken - 6/3/2004 3:58:13 PM
AP is gold now! But, to the real question:
| Wow. Did they use the extra time to add a lot of features, or has the bug hunt been long and rough? |
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Gerakken's no-hold barred recap based upon what I have seen:
A lot of initial time was spent getting the scale of the expansion right. There had to be a certain level of support for a certain number of features. Less support, less features. There was an initial reluctance to go AP among some because the real gung-ho players wanted a commitment on the spot for a full sized expansion that would hit the store shelves and Stardock was not going to agree to that out of hand. AP ended up being direct order or as a part of Drengin.net, what I would call a medium sized expansion.
Brad is a practical guy and he'll tell you flat out when you can catch him what it costs him in programmer hours to make something happen. He did not see the player pre-order support to throw on a ton of people toward the project and take the risks associated with the retail market. The retail market takes a publisher and a lot of capital risk. It takes months to get the money back that way and if the boxes did not sell, it would jeopardize other projects.
There was also an AP delay because of Political Machine. That project had a higher priority at times while the AP testers that were there were putting the earlier betas through their paces. More testers (which would mean more support) would have accelerated the process. So bug fixes for AP were not always in the forefront when a totally new game could generate new sales in short order.
AP has new races, new techs, new ships, scenarios, map editor, but it is still at its heart the Galciv we are used to under the hood. This is good for most of us, but, from what I understand, RB wants a real rewrite of the AI and that just is not there. And any rebalancing of the Meta to compensate for Maso madness is not in the cards as well. Not here, not now.
I like AP myself, I am a happy camper, but RB is basically asking for Galciv II from the looks of it and AP is not that. Nothing wrong with setting your sights high, but I cannot in honesty say AP is the answer to RB's prayers. I do not feel qualified enough to get into a full review. I have played several AP games, but I have not been diving into the nuts and bolts counting all the little differences. I can just say that I was satisfied enough to upgrade to Drengin.net for AP and the then in the works Political Machine back in November.
   
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Exar, I'm pretty sure that's dead, since he hasn't been around for quite some time. Icho's got one going over here:  Link
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ooh a RudeBoy......
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