L&P Spore (expansion) announced

[J. M. Pescado]

Are you going to apply your modding talents to Spore and make mods to do stuff like this?

If possible. Splotch is nowhere near as responsive to mods as Sims is, though, given the lack of any apparent internal scripting: Everything is hardcoded with only numerical properties being tweakable.

I was thinking more along the lines of being free to demolish any irritating force empires you come across because you don't need their weapon discounts. They shoot at my ship and then demand 1000000 sporebucks?

I doubt this will change unless you personally care to subscribe to the Force philosophy yourself: Given that the superpowers of the Force philosophy range from "Meh"(Mini-U) to "Totally Useless"(Raider Rally), this may be the ONLY perk of subscribing to Force if such a thing could be made! Mini-U isn't the worst perk out there, but it's hardly amongst the upper perks. At least it's useful in a space dogfight, since it's an allied ship that doesn't bitch at you when it dies.

[Dopp]

Actually, I do play with the Warrior archetype almost all the time, despite its non-awesomeness. This is because I enjoy exterminating everything. The raiders are used on my own homeworld to get the bodyguard badge, extra sporebucks and free laughs.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, but the Sporebucks from dead raiders only applies if you personally kill them, not if they are shot down by turrets. It is also not very much money, probably much less than you could get by vehicle-eating. All in all, it's a useless power that exists only for lulz. Also, it can annoyingly accidentally fire due to its occupation of slot 1, although I have an Undiscovered Shiny aimed at resolving some of that. The Bodyguard badge is basically useless.

Exterminating everyone is nice, though. I Ur-Quan-styled my way through a huge sector of space, destroying all their colonies and enslaving their homeworld. You can cover a lot of ground that way...a lot of now very desolate ground. Seems space is much smaller when you're not trying to colonize every system, and I now go for speed-kills on how fast I can wipe the floor with an empire. Average time to exterminate a Level 3 empire is about 15 minutes now. I maxed out my ship just from looting and burning. I actually got the Large Cargo Hold upgrade from COLLECTOR instead of MERCHANT! That should tell you how much BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE was involved.

[Dopp]

Bodyguard badge gives you mega photon missile with having to declare war on anybody, useful for when you do start declaring war on everybody. You can wait just outside the pirate portal and take them all out with a splash damage weapon the moment they appear. The fighters only have 50-100 hp and the bombers about twice that. 1-2 pulse/missile should do. But yeah, basically the raiders are for laughs. The first thing they do is attack you anyway. Some superweapon.

Enslaving the homeworlds? How do you keep them from recolonizing when you don't have those planetary slave shields?

[J. M. Pescado]

Bodyguard badge gives you mega photon missile with having to declare war on anybody, useful for when you do start declaring war on everybody. You can wait just outside the pirate portal and take them all out with a splash damage weapon the moment they appear. The fighters only have 50-100 hp and the bombers about twice that. 1-2 pulse/missile should do. But yeah, basically the raiders are for laughs. The first thing they do is attack you anyway. Some superweapon.

Yeah, but the photon missiles themselves are basically toys. It's never actually NECESSARY to shoot at anyone when you're at war with them. In fact, this is counterproductive: It is far easier to evade a defending swarm when they are all bunched up than it is when you've killed some and they respawn piecemeal and come at you again from random directions.

Enslaving the homeworlds? How do you keep them from recolonizing when you don't have those planetary slave shields?

By conquering them? I don't actually do anything special, I just take over the planet. All non-homeworlds are simply burned down for the cash.

[grig]

Personally I ain't all that surprised that Eaxis are already pooping out a new EP/SP

Back in the days of Maxis on its own the EP's/SP's were just as useless as the newer one's but they took longer because Maxis was small. Now that its Eaxis they've got the manpower to bork the game with useless crap that much faster

We can make it faster... junkier... crappier... which says a lot about me 'cause I'm ape for the game... don't it folks?

[Parsimonious Kate]

Now here are some words I never thought I'd say together in any imaginable context but 'in EA's defense' (WTFness), this game has been in development for 11 years, a lot of the stuff Maxis had planned to put into EP's is already complete or near completion. In that respect there's little or no advantage to holding back complete packs for any great length of time. I understand that the whole project ran massively over budget (not surprising being 3 years late), in that respect I can understand EA's keenness to claw back some of their investment early to help bolster their legal departments budget for dealing with the many class action lawsuits they are and will be facing over their illegal security protection.

[EsotericPolarBear]

Now here are some words I never thought I'd say together in any imaginable context but 'in EA's defense' (WTFness), this game has been in development for 11 years, a lot of the stuff Maxis had planned to put into EP's is already complete or near completion. In that respect there's little or no advantage to holding back complete packs for any great length of time. I understand that the whole project ran massively over budget (not surprising being 3 years late), in that respect I can understand EA's keenness to claw back some of their investment early to help bolster their legal departments budget for dealing with the many class action lawsuits they are and will be facing over their illegal security protection.

How is that a defense?  Removing or withholding content from the base game so you can sell it seperately is not a defense.

[kazebird]

My guess is that they had glitched content, that needed cutting, because they needed more time to fix it than they were allowed. This happened with weather and cars in The Sims 2. Can't fix it now, add it later.

[Mootilda]

How is that a defense?  Removing or withholding content from the base game so you can sell it seperately is not a defense.

I believe that the "defence" was that Spore cost more to create than EA can recoop with one release at standard game prices, so releasing it in pieces allows EA to charge more for the entire package.

Perhaps this is not a "defence".  But it is a viable business strategy.

[J. M. Pescado]

What difference does it make? Spyware is spyware, no matter how it's packaged. Pirate Cat doesn't pay for his downloads.

[MrMugg]

You can tell that EA purposely left stuff out.  When you go to make your creatures, you'll notice A LOT of empty spaces where parts should go.

I imagine the next "parts pack" will be building/vehicle based or something.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

No, all of the part slots are filled once you have played enough to have all of them unlocked.