I don't think the game has a way of showing it in-game. If it's in there it's too subtle for me to notice. I'm only playing two player games right now cause I'm trying to earn achievements and learn the subtlety of each race. A way that will help you is to tap the player info on the bottom left and look at the opponent's influence bar. Using that and checking their money bar + sectors with money producing planets you can figure out how many moves your opponent can do without going bankrupt. Not ideal at first but it's also helped me wrap my head around the scope of the game. Hopefully that helps.
Possibilities: You can only have one drive at a time so you need to replace your nuclear drive. You also need 2 energy for the fusion drive so you need enough energy. When you upgrade you generally only get to add 2 components, did you already add 2 things to your ships?
And then the game pops up a dialog "Select planet to send colonization ship" but only the 'X' is enabled. If I can't chose that action the why the heck show me that in the first place?
The X is always enabled cause going back is always an option. You can't hit the select button because you haven't selected any planets to colonize. Selecting nothing is not a valid option, hence it's dimmed. You can colonize at any time during your turn for free though so you can still put them down if you missed an earlier chance. Just tap the the colonies button under the Science bar.
Is says "Select planet" so you can either select one and then press Accept or press Cancel without selecting any.
After a player has passes, their icon in the bottom left of the screen has some lines through it. It's pretty subtle, but its there.
Just bought Talisman and think I want this too. I'm probably just being cheap or worried I won't play it...like Starbase Orion, that I bought over a year ago. Also hesitant after hearing about frame-rate issues on ipad3. With all these board game ports I would think an AD&D app would be sweet! Guess its a lil different genre but seems doable. It would be an instabuy for me
I'm on an iPad 3 with 6.1.2 and have no frame rate issues. The frame rate was during zooming in/out but I posted a page or two back that it was actually the game switching between graphic sets. I haven't heard of any issues during combat or anything else, let alone experience any. BDC is also one of the best board game devs on iOS so if there are issues based on specific hardware or firmware, I'm sure they'll iron them out ASAP
Some Eclipse (board game version of course) strategy links and a combat simulator. http://taogaming.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/five-thousand-words-about-eclipse/ http://www.boardgamestrategies.com/blog/eclipse-board-game-strategy/ http://codesavior.com/space/simulator.php http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/759867/some-strategy-tips-for-galactic-conquest http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/740382/virtual-fleets
Getting the hang of this now after a few games last night and today (8 games-ish) and enjoying it more each game. I'm getting the balance now of when to stop. One wish would be for some extra info on the research requirements. Sometimes I have enough science, but the items remain greyed out. There's tons of room there to put a bit of info about requirements (when you tap to get the description of the item), so I can backtrack and see what's missing. I'm sure I got some other questions... I'll be back!
There are no requirements other than the amount you have to pay for it. At the beginning of each round in the board game the techs you can research are randomly drawn from a bag and placed on the research table. The ones that are greyed out haven't been pulled yet. In this digital version the computer does it automatically and shows you the drawn tiles on the "Round X" screen before placing them in the search area (such a nuisance in the physical version) That's why some techs have a two on them, because that tile has been pulled twice.
One of the alien techs you can find is: 'Ancient Cruiser: place one of your unused Cruisers in the hex.' What is meant by 'unused'? Is it an extra Cruiser I have in some other sector? or the Alien Cruiser I just found? If it's the latter shouldn't the message be: 'Ancient Cruiser: place IT in the hex.' To me 'unused' sounds like a ship I might have sitting in some hangar or mothership waiting to be deployed to a sector. Also any ships I build in a sector are not 'unused'. They are all either battling or 'guarding' sectors until they are moved to another sector. Some of the messages in this game seem like they were intentionally worded to confuse or mislead the player.
Remember that it's a board game—those cruisers are actual pieces that come in the box. You have four of them. What they mean when they say that is that if you've already used all four cruisers, you don't get to do anything (except take the VP).
I think it means that you get an Ancient Cruiser (an addition to your current fleet) to place in that hex. This is because I had all my ships deployed (there is no way to NOT deploy them as they are deployed when they are built) and then after I chose the Ancient Cruiser, I had one additional ship in the game.
As Plynx said there is a hard cap of 4 cruisers. If you had 5 or more cruisers then it's a rule error that BDC will have to fix. Speaking of... I've also noticed a rule error: After attacking enemy colonies the game allows the opponent to recolonize if it has any unplaced colonies. This is not allowed as the rules state you can't place colonies on sectors with enemy ships present.
I didn't have 5 cruisers. I had 2 which I built, then I got that Alien Ancient Cruiser which gave me 3: two where I originally built them and the new one in the sector where i discovered it. Also +Plynx. Now I understand what you men when you wrote that it's a board game. Now the rules make more sense If I know that they were written for a physical board game. There weren't really revised for an electronic game or there are still a lot of board game type references in the rules & tutorial.
If during the upkeep, that's true. During the main action phase it's allowed so long as they have influence in the sector (like the turn after a failed orbital bombardment).
They probably meant to keep it as faithful as they could. On the other hand, the UI strongly suggests that the game is one of sliders and bars, increasing the income bars at the top and increasing the abstract influence "cost" for doing so. What's actually going on is that you have these physical population cubes and physical influence discs. You actually take the influence disc from your player board and place it on a sector to be able to gain the benefits (such as the right to colonize, build, explore nearby, etc.), and underneath where the disc was it reveals the new upkeep cost you'll have to pay. Same with actions, what the lines above each action button are are the influence discs moved there from the influence bar up top. So you are trying to move your physical items (population, influence, and even ships) onto the board. It's rather elegant physically, but in the fgame it's not animated or made graphically clear, so the direct connection between things like actions and sector control isn't as immediately obvious.
Heh, yeah, I thought it was quite obvious from your comments in this thread that you weren't aware that this was a pretty straightforward digital adaptation of an existing physical board game. ^_- As for your post, though, it depends on what you mean by "revise"; I assume you mean statements that you feel could confusingly refer to the literal physical board game, as the actual rules themselves aren't going to change just because of the change of platform. It's supposed to have a lot of "board game type" references, though, because that's exactly what it is and is meant to be: a board game, not a 4X videogame. This is intended to be a faithful adaptation of the physical board game, not one of those bastardised "enhanced/compromised" computer boardgame arrangements that used to plague the genre a few years back. Reading the rulebook for the physical game should allow you to play this perfectly, and (in theory) the manual and tutorial in this app should also let you handle the board game.
