Frogboy,
I've supported Stardock heavily in the past, even with the disaster that was Demigod. But after the one--two punch of Demigod not living up to it's promises and being kicked in the butt by League of Legends; then having the release of Elemental being very short of all of the proposed promises that were declared when it was announced; I admit, I became wary of Stardock. I shelled out $75 for my edition of Elemental during Alpha, and eventually yes I got my payment's worth but that took perhaps nearly four whole years to materialize.
I fell in love with you guys with GalCiv II, bought every expansion as well. You guys have been quite kind and trying to make up for your mistakes, and there were quite a few. But now GalCiv III, the Founders Pack anyway, is a startling $100 investment for another Alpha. What worries me, will it take you guys another several years to fully flesh out GalCiv III into a workable masterpiece? To me, GalCiv II is always been the king -- will GalCiv III live up to it?
I'm interested, but I suppose I'm not sold just yet. I'm not asking you to sell me either. I just have one important question though.
Since GalCiv III will likely be huge, I wonder; when I run programs like Photoshop, Aftereffects, and even movie rendering studio software -- I can assign a portion of my hard drive space into a Scratch Disk. In a 4x Game, there is a lot going on -- and I like my 4x games to be crazy, crazy huge. Generally I always set my galaxies to the largest option, and still it feels too small. Most 4x develops say that the game becomes very unstable beyond a certain limit of systems, and indeed this is true -- I modded Endless Space to go to crazy lengths and it crashed after about an hour of play because it just couldn't handle it.
So here's the question: Will GalCiv III supply a similar system where as I can assign a portion of my hard drive to offload large portions of data during game play, in short using the assigned space like virtual RAM to allow for larger more expansive galaxies without having to go into the XML files to mod the game heavily to my liking?
Granted I like the XML files, but you guys gotta admit you were way too dependent on them for the first Elemental release. I really want a game that will allow me to have a vast sandbox to play in, and truly occasional encounter other species if I'm lucky. Yes, that's not the ideal setup for a 4x game, but hey -- we all play the way we like.
No hurry in responding.
Jeremy ~
PS: If you don't remember me, I'm the guy who sent the office bunch of cookies during the Demigod launch because I knew everyone was stressing out over the rocky start.