Shipyards v2 for Galactic Civilizations 2 

Introduction 
============
Shipyards comes with many updates to the base Galactic Civilizations 2 
along with the ability to design your own ships from scratch as opposed 
to having use the pre-made ships that come with the game. 


What you get
============
Galactic Civilizations 2.11 (GalCiv.exe)
* Enhanced Governors that will automatically build social projects 
  for you and eliminate the constant stream of "News" dialogs. 
* SDS/AI 2.11 (SDSAI.DLL) which brings a new level of depth 
  and challenge from the computer players. 
* Playability enhancements to increase the game's enjoyment such as 
  increasing the amount of sound and music played. 

Shipyards 2.0 (Ship.DLL) 
* Design your own ships from their very components 
* See how well your Shipyards Corp. competes with the other Ship building 
  companies in the game 
* Turn on and off the Computer AI's ability to design ships giving you an
  advantage 
* Turn on and off the ability to build normal ships(the pre-packaged ships) 
	
Item Edit (ItemEdit.exe) 
* Change the values and power of the components you work with. This gives
  you unprecedented control over the game. 

Getting Started
===============
Once you run Galactic Civilizations with the new Ship.DLL properly 
installed you will see a new button on the iconbar (after you start 
playing). This button allows you to get to the main Shipyards dialogs. 

The Main Shipyards Dialog 
=========================
Shipyards Dialog allows you to create or discontinue ship designs. It also 
allows you to turn on and off the computer ship building AI (so that the 
computer players can't build custom ships also). If you only want the 
players to use the custom shps you can turn that on and off from here as 
well. A button that lists the other shipyard companies in the game is also 
available. 

If you want to create a new ship, just click the "Create" button. Be 
aware that once you have used up all four slots, if you want to create 
a new slot, you will have to discontinue a design. When you do that, any
ships using that design are discontinued as well. The dialog will tell 
you how many ships you have using that design. Generally, you will rarely 
have more than two ship designs in heavy use as designs become outdated 
by your enemies designs and the resulting casualties quickly decreases 
the number of obsolete ships. 


The Design Dialog
=================
At the top of the screen you will see the different categories of 
components. From weapons to shields to engines. You can have a primary 
set of weapons and a secondary set of weapons. 

Displayed underneath the category buttons are the various components 
available. As you research new technologies, new components will show 
on the screen. For example, when you begin a new game, you only have 
a few components to use from and they are can expensive and take up 
a lot of space. Each component will have its own unique strengths 
and weaknesses. Some will be powerful but may be expensive or take up
a lot of room on the ship. Be sure to look at the calculated statistics 
at the bottom of the screen. Many a new player will design a powerful 
ship only to learn that it has a grave weakness such as a high 
maintenance cost. 

At the bottom of the screen you not only have the ship design's 
statistics but also controls for deciding what the ship is going to 
look like as well as choosing its size. The larger the ship, the more 
room it has to fill with weapons. Unfortunately, the larger the ship, 
the more expensive it is to build. 

The amount of room on a ship is critical. The player will quickly learn 
that the limiting factor is not just the price or maintenance but 
running out of physical room on the ship to put new items. You may want 
your new cruiser to have 8 photon torpedo banks but unless you have a 
very large ship hull, you won't be able to fit them all. There is a 
science for building larger ships as well and you won't be able to 
build large ships right away. Technologies such as large scale 
building, Battleship technology, etc. will make larger hulls available. 


Using Enhanced Governors
========================
Galactic Civilizations 2 added a new time saving feature -- governors. 
They automatically set up your resources on a planet. However, many 
new players have asked for the governors to be able to build your 
social projects for you so that you are free to concentrate on the 
government and not micromanaging the planets. Enhanced governors 
brings automated social project building to Galactic Civilizations 2. 
Now, you can decide the order in which to build by going to the 
Foreign Policy dialog on the button bar and giving orders to your 
governors. When you want a governor to take care of a planet, click 
on the "Govern" button on the star dialog (on star systems you own) 
and a small checkbox will appear. Click on the checkbox to begin 
auto-building social projects. If you add new colonies to the star 
system later on, you will need to start the first project by yourself 
so that the governor knows you want to build social projects on 
that planet. 




How Battles Work
================
In order to build the most effective ships, it is important to know 
how battles work in Galactic Civilizations 2. Every ship has 3 very 
important variables. Its ATTACK, DEFENSE, and STRENGTH variables. 
When a ship attacks another ship, the Attacker rolls a random value 
between 0 and its attack value. The Defender rolls a random value 
between 0 and its defense value. The loser loses the amount rolled 
by its opponent from its Strength variable. Once Strength 
(hit points) goes below 0, the ship is destroyed. 


Hints and Tips from Stardock
============================
We confess that Shipyards was made partially for our own enjoyment 
and as a result we have many many hours of experience in playing it. 
We have found that building ships that are fast can make more of a 
difference in the game than a ship that is super powerful but slow. 
The attacker in a battle has a significant advantage in GalCiv2. If 
your ship can attack several times per turn it will do more damage 
than a ship that can only attack a few times per turn (a kill is 
a kill) and then be destroyed by a counter attack. The SDS/AI has 
been significantly enhanced over v2.0 which shipped with GalCiv 2.0 
and it will likely have a numerical advantage over you. Use tactics 
and good ship design to counter this and you will have the final 
victory. 


Support
=======
If you should run into problems with Galactic Civilizations 2.11 or 
Shipyards, you can contact Stardock via is CompuServe forum (GO 
STARDOCK) or via the internet: support@stardock.com

Stardock WWW site:  http://www.stardock.com      Phone 313-453-0328

(c) 1996 Stardock Systems, Inc.
(c) 1996 Bradley Wardell
