Well when I get a new computer I will have to look at both games.

Rock on!

I was playing GalCiv II TOA last night so I'm glad to hear it is still being updated.

I need to replace my old 32bit computer with a new 64bit model before I can play GalCiv III.

Looking at the C++ code sample above, why are you passing the object instance of PclassStarShip by value rather than as a const reference?  Only the primary types like bool, char, short, int, long, float, double, etc. should be passed by value; otherwise, you are performing unnecessary object copies.

You can see by its use later on in the function that pShip is actually a pointer, so PclassStarShip is probably a typedef

Any chance the source code for GalCiv 2 will be released once GalCiv3 is final?

Your right it is passed as a pointer and the code assumes the pointer is not NULL.  Thus it would have made more sense to pass it by reference that way you could be certain you wouldn't be referencing a NULL pointer and get a crash.  I only use pointers for things that need to sometimes be NULL, like optional parameters that default to NULL if not passed by the caller.