I'd be in favor of morphing the "Epic Generator" into an "AAR Generator". What I'd like to see is:

1) Granularity: let us choose the level of events that get logged
2) AI Reasoning: Whenever the AI makes a major decision (war declarations, switching victory condition it's attempting, refusal of trades, etc etc) put up a line explaining why
3) Player Log button: as mentioned before, on the main screen and in all other windows and screens, let the player write some stuff.
4) Screenshot: let players save a screenshot and add a link to it on the AAR so that we know what goes where.

This would work both as a permanent record of all our games for ourselves, and as a "template" that we can edit to put up on a webpage somewhere. Maybe limit the number of screenshots per AAR, and allow each player to upload ONE AAR to their metaverse account, viewable by all on Stardock's servers.

Until we see what the EG looks like, I think your complaints about time wasted are unfounded.

If in fact the EG turns out to be mostly fluff and crappy, instead of an actual freature like lets say hmmmmm "multiplayer", then I'll side with you.

But I'm biased what can I say.

I hope it dont get cut,its the only reason i even thought about buying the expansion. If its cut i may decide not to buy it. So lets hope its not cut

If cutting this feature means better gameplay, I think it's hard to argue against removing it.

This is a nice feature, but I can't imagine people would be too terribly excited about using it. The fun would probably pass.

I'm going to go with the "log things" side of this. Unless the logging is the problem.

This is THE key feature I was waiting for.

Personally, I hope that the EG doesn`t get cut. I have no idea about programming, so I don`t know about the problems involved. I must admit, I haven`t played for a while (since football manager 2007 came out!), but DA has been what I`ve been looking forward to to get back into GCII. I will still buy the expansion because I love the game, but the Epic generator was one of the main things I was looking forward to. That aside, keep up the good work!

I'd like to restate what some others have been saying, along with a couple additions:

1. It's a very cool idea, but very hard to do (as you have found out). So if it's taking too much time, cut it as a feature.
2. Leave logging in. Preferably, in an XML format so that everything is easily parsable.
3. Log EVERYTHING. The more the better. Log the starting maps (stars, locations in some coordinate system, planets, etc...), log every ship movement, every fleet creation/change, every battle (maybe not which ship shot which, but maybe that would be nice too), what buildings are being built/finsihed, what ships are created, ship destinations, damage of ships and repairs made in orbit and normal. At end of every turn, log all the galaxy settings (each race's rating for economy, military, production, research, etc...) Basically, log so much that people can write some automated tools to replay the game.
3b. Allow the user to determine what granularity the logging happens (default = no log).
4. Allow for screenshots, and in the log would be an indication that a screenshot was taken, and what the file name of that screen shot is.

While I realize that XML logging would be very "wordy" (aka "big"), it can be simple to create filters to remove portions that you don't care about, or transforms to turn the existing XML into any other format you want.

Basically, this logging wouldn't be for a regular person to just look at and say "Oh yeah, I did this and then this and then this." It would be made in a way that tools can be created for it.

Just my 2 cents.

2nd the request for latest Stardock take on the EG. Is it dead yet, on life support, or getting a lift from the greedy best wishes posted here?

This must be the calm before the storm. Or something.

Everyone must have had last week off. Not that I blame them since the week of Thanksgiving was very busy. I will be interested in hearing more about the EG since it's been a couple weeks and that was when a decision about its readiness would be made.

Oi, Kryo, the observant folks *know* y'all are working too hard. But couldn't the four aptly snarky words have been about the EG's status?

So, when do Stardock staff take time off? Geez! You guys are intense.

It will be interesting to read more of your exploits these past few weeks. There have certainly been a lot good ideas floating around in the forums recently regarding DA.

Yeah. It sounded like that quite a while back. Will logging still be on, though? That'd be helpful to the community and not a complete loss.

Thanks for the info. Good luck on polishing!