What do you want in an expansion?

I want to see the abilty to make class 0 worlds like a super manufacturing world like Fondor in Starwars Also carriers would be nice and i want an even bigger hull design i want my super star destroyers!!!. It would be neat to colonize moons too they would boost your manufacturing ability Imagaine how much industry you could put on the moons of jupiter or saturn. Astroid belts would be cool too I would imagine thats where pirate bases would be.

I dont really care about MP you can add it if you want but i would rather have a better AI

I also want to see custom design starbases deep space 9 anyone?

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1. Tactical combat
2. Galcivopedia
3.Several new races
4. Existing minor races to have a bigger role. A little planetary expansion, using the techs they have better.
5. Each race to have their own unique hulls including the minors
6. More ship jewelry
7. Ship designer a little more user friendly
8. A few more diplomatic options

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1) Option to play against Custom races you design.

2) Option to play in different Universes - kinda like the Neighborhoods in The Sims.

3) Truly alien Races that you can't communicate effectively with and will misinterprit your actions a lot

4) 'Starflight' type quest scenarios to save the galaxy

5) Ability to share a planet with Opponents. They have one continent and you have another.

6) Anomolies that appear all game long.

7) Enhanced UP. Meets more often, more wheeling and dealing.

8) Ability to trade portions of your Resources.

9) More Jewelry. More basic ship hulls, i.e. Arcean, etc. Ship jewelry specific to race hull type.

10) Enhanced trade. Ability to form Convoys with freighters. More frequent pirate activity against trade routes. Player Privateers ala Civ 3.

11) Don't care for realtime Multiplayer. Hotseat and PBEM would be nice, but only if it does not take away from SP.

12) Play variations - i.e like One System Challenge, or All War, etc like in civ4.

13) Enhanced Espionage.

14) No tactical combat - but Tactical Combat Chioces ala Planetary Invasion model.

15) Starbase Bulding Governor to automate the upgrade process of starbases.

16) Starbase Management Screen

17) Hypergate Technology you can research to make your own Wormholes.

18) Anomolies and resources on '0' class worlds. Need to make them more fun.

19) Make Galactic Guidebook and Survey sensors more useful in all size maps.

20) Tone done sensor techs - make it harder for the human player to get a huge sensor range advantage as the aI does not take advantage of these techs enough.

21) Make Influence victory a bit tougher.

22) Slavery option.

23) Ability to capture enemy ships, not just destroy them.

24) In game sound playlist. The games music is great, but it would be nice to have the ability to add your own playlist.

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I'd like to see more emphasis on exploration. Currently this 4X game is missing 1X, as far as I'm concerned. The initial "colony-rush" phase is vaguely interesting in the way the distribution of your colonies sets the tone of the rest of that game, but I wouldn't characterize that phase as exploration. It's more like "wander around stone-blind and hope to god you find enough useful planets before the computer ties up everything else"... It kind of skips eXploration and goes straight for eXpansion.

I've been trying to put my finger on a way this might be corrected. Maybe the computer's ships shouldn't roam so far and wide that I run into virtually every race within four or five turns, even on Large games. I would like to say there should be better reasons to put more time into developing the first few planets you colonize (that is, de-emphasize the colony-rush by slowing down exploration), but it's hard to imagine how that could be done without deep, major changes. Or maybe colonizing a planet should simply take a very long time and be a lot more expensive than it is now. Perhaps colonization should be a multi-step process. Send constructors, then multiple colony ships until you hit a certain threshold, at which buildings become possible, etc.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but of the X's in the 4X tradition, I'd say eXplore is pretty poorly represented, and fixing it would go far to change the one phase my friends all agree is mostly just annoying, into something more interesting and long-lasting.

Heh, and maybe the "all ships can survey" wonder will finally gain some meaning

I agree. PPerhaps one way would be to reduce the distance you can travel from your colonies in the early stages. This would make life support more crucial (or a network of refuelling starbases).

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I think that there should also be a tow-ship, a ship that could move a starbase around, pretty slowly

It would be easier to simply offer a late-tech-tree starbase engine module with a move rate of 1.

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Hero figures would be an interesting idea to implement. somewhere between the governors of moo2 and the great leaders of civ4.

Alternatively they could be somethig like the heroes in Warcraft 3 and they get better over time.

Gajj - couldn't agree more. terraforming those useless planets is a great idea.

moving starbases around is also cool, but unlike the AI i don't churn out ships like there is no tomorrow, i angle for defence and speed so i'm winning with less ships( which means i can build more+faster constructors). it might just be easier to build anew starbase where you want to put your new front line. I include them in my forces when i'm rampaging accross the galaxy

capturing and carriers would only really be feasible if we had tactical combat and all the arguments that come with it. I'm all for it, but there seems to be quite a lot of people who aren't, the best/frequent argument is that it would be too easy to beat the AI, so why bother with all the effort. Ha! I half agree with them in that if it was too easy then it wouldn't be a good idea, but it is definitely worth the effort to try and make it work well.

The trading system we have in gc2 is pretty lame when compared to the finely tuned effort from the last two civ games ( admittedly they have had 4 iterations to get it right ). I feel that resources should be split and should not be cumulative in benefits-

attack bonus/defence bonus for the red
influence/diplomacy for the blue
the green could be money/social prod./military prod.
yellow - morale/better foods(increased pop limit per farm)
purple - research/actually can't really think of anything usefull here

there should be more of them scattered about and we should mine them and be able to trade surplus for a limited amount of time. the value being what level of extraction we are at with each resource. the monopolied goods can still remain where it is. but this is just an idea.

Are death stars really making a comeback? hope so, it'll definitely save time in conquests

Super projects allowing for a second/third capitol

a terraforming tech that allows us to use some of the ocean tiles - i mean who wouldn't want to have a holiday in atlantis

Minor races - personally i like them - if i find em. they buy my low grade tech my low tech ships and when i don't need em anymore i swallow them into my empire one way or another, but its a major mission keeping them alive. In the original game they sometimes outperformed us in the xpansion, but here thay are just food. If a player wishes to have them in the game then they need to be beefed up a little. how about a level slider for them:

level 1 for fodder .... level 5 for "Oh my god they've got more planets than me!"
the number of minor races in the game should reflect the galaxy size doubling each time maybe.

Privateers - at the moment when we attack trade ships they die, how about having some honest to goodness homemade pirates that ransacked the freighter and give us cash money instead. the higher the value of that paricular route the more money we get.

-what i'd like to see is the two abilitied to be separated so the ai can be very intelligent but not get 200% economic bonus

good call! this is a great gameplay idea.

There are some really good ideas in the above posts and i'd like to see most of them implemented, but if you can't get them all in the first expansion i'll just wait until the 2nd one. great game, still want more.

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+ "Hero" units with different stats, ability, bonus, gift.
+ Comets, asteroids, and anomalies that require higher-level sensors to find them/anomalies that regenerate
+ espoinage mission
+ More silly stuff that happens
+ More moral decisions and maybe some could have important impact on the univers. (i don't like the +4 to your soldier skill)
+ Ability to colonize lowest-level planets, or at least to put outposts on them
+ Pirate planets/bases
+ ability to blockade a planet
+ asteroid field. you could hide or build base for mining, research or for building starship
+ survey planet before knowing with it is(could have anomalie, event, monster, pirat/smuggler base)
+ more use of influence
+ put more thing in space. nebulas, neutron star, supernova, black hole, monster, asteroid field...
+ different tech tree for each race or tech tree like moo2 in wich you have to chose.
+ terraformation of class 0 planet
+ tech to colonize uninhabitable world, water world, volcanic world....
+ indigenous life on some uncolonize world. you would need to fight. like a planet investe by dangerous creature.
+ more event/moral decision when colonizing a world (or invading it)

for ground combat.
1: you would have to train soldier, not use the population
2: for specefic world(ice, volcanic, water, dune like)
option a: you need to research the underwater/overwater invasion(not colonize) training to invade a water world. this would anable your soldier to invade.
option b: you need to research the spec type of world then train the specefic type of soldier to invade
ex: research water world. so you can colonize water world and train water millitary regiment.(compose of ship, submarine, aqua soldier...)
option c: you need to research the water spec type so you could colonize and invade water world
3:have some heroes that are really usefull for invasion (general, sergent, veteran..)
4:you could chose where you invade on the planet. like a mini boardgame.
5:environement should play a large part of the invasion. (meteo, ashe strom, volcanic eruption, strom, snow strom)
they would have different impact. like, snow will slow your progress and reduce dammage(low visibility)
6:use your soldier for mission like hijacking space ship. infiltrate pirate space base. to raid a planete before the full army come in...
7:put more invasion option.(maybe the most realistic wish)

that is what i wish, mostly i'm dreaming but......

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i too cast my vote for carrier modules . as has been said, it would be cool to see many tiny ships swarming around in tactical.

since those tiny ships would travel at the same speed as their "mothership", they won't require any engine modules. the possibility of excluding them from the max logistic value has been mentioned as well. the repair rate for those tiny ships could be increased while they're inside the carrier.
hmm battlestar galactica pops into my mind..

and the anomalies should be cooler. it was fun in GC1 when they improved your survey ship with weaponry etc - was possibly removed due to balance issues? but as of now, i seem to discover only those abstract and not-too-intriguing "X% racial bonus for ability Y" anomalies - that is not exciting! oh and a few times, i got some money... but there could be so much more diversity, which would make exploring thrilling again. (just watch a few star trek episodes to get tons of new ideas)
as has been said, anomalies should re-appear over time - more likely around uninhabited solar systems and away from the densely populated centers of the universe.

oh and i miss space monsters.

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Ability to have the computer add jewelry to your ships. I (possibly the only one) don't really like designing the ships. I just select the components and leave it at that. I would however like them beautified by the computer

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I want to see a system by which you have alien populations of the worlds you conquer with penalties that can become assimilated aliens (but never humans), with a potential to revert to bieng unassimilated aliens if they get too miserable.

Evil civilizations should have the possibility to enslave or use extermination to wipe out every single last alien on the planet.

And even dead civilizations (minor and major) should be able to ressurect from revolting aliens.

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Wish List for expansion:
1.Carrier module (credits and thanks to the guy who came up with it!)
2.Mecha planets, planets that are all artificial but take a insanly long time to build depending on the amount of spaces.
3.Mecha planet techs and ship module so it research can improve your planet construction(adds to mecha planets)
4.New hippie civs that detest violence and espionage(could be minor races)
5.New super cannon perhaps that are built on planets and take 10 space that can destroy other planets but has risk of core explosion(can research techs that reduce risk)
6.Barbaric races that have very powerful ships but only a few like reavers in the show "Firefly"
7.Certian races can use special powers such as Thalans having the ability to rapidly expand the population by billions once in the game

My ideas hope you like!

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I'd like to see more emphasis on exploration. Currently this 4X game is missing 1X, as far as I'm concerned. The initial "colony-rush" phase is vaguely interesting in the way the distribution of your colonies sets the tone of the rest of that game, but I wouldn't characterize that phase as exploration. It's more like "wander around stone-blind and hope to god you find enough useful planets before the computer ties up everything else"... It kind of skips eXploration and goes straight for eXpansion.

I've been trying to put my finger on a way this might be corrected. Maybe the computer's ships shouldn't roam so far and wide that I run into virtually every race within four or five turns, even on Large games. I would like to say there should be better reasons to put more time into developing the first few planets you colonize (that is, de-emphasize the colony-rush by slowing down exploration), but it's hard to imagine how that could be done without deep, major changes. Or maybe colonizing a planet should simply take a very long time and be a lot more expensive than it is now. Perhaps colonization should be a multi-step process. Send constructors, then multiple colony ships until you hit a certain threshold, at which buildings become possible, etc.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but of the X's in the 4X tradition, I'd say eXplore is pretty poorly represented, and fixing it would go far to change the one phase my friends all agree is mostly just annoying, into something more interesting and long-lasting.

Heh, and maybe the "all ships can survey" wonder will finally gain some meaning.

An idea that was foated a while ago (I know because I floated it!) was an option of tying number of colonies allowed into some kind of logistics ability, either the existing one or a seperate 'planetary logistics'. This would essntially mirror the way a fledgling empire only has the infrastructure to maintain a small number of planets, whereas a large galactic empire can have many. It would also avoid the odd situation whereby research must be expended to find ways of banding ships together, but a limitless number of worlds can be colonised right from the start. This would also introduce some intereating tactical decisions.

You are right about the missing X of exploration. Respawning anomalies would help to an extent, although anomalies are hardly the most exciting part of the game. The problem is there is never anything truly awe inspiring out there - no ancient precursor homeworld, gateway to another dimension, nebulae, etc. Having 'events' tied into exploration as they are with colonisation might also help, but something needs doing to stop space exploration being solely about acquiring real estate.

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I like that. You're right, logistics would make a lot more sense applied to planetary control than fleet organization. That's an excellent idea for controlling the problem, I think.

Regarding the broader question of making exploration more interesting, and not just a land-grab ... I suppose if they were feeling enterprising, a number of separate mini-storylines might be introduced. You find an anomaly or a planet with some interesting clue which leads you to the next step, and so on. Maybe arrange it so the computer doesn't ever trigger/find these (given that the point is to stimulate the player to think it through and figure out the next step, versus blind resource acquisition).

Good ideas, col80.

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I want a system where you can have alien populations on world you conquered and the possibility of them rebelling and even restoring dead civilization in an expansion pack.

A revamp of the political systems available would be good aswell and a revamped political system for elections and parties and leaders aswell.

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1. Greatly expanded espionage.

2. More ship sets so each race has their own style.

I'd be happy with just that. I don't see the need for more races, although Frogboy's suggestion would be cool.

If I could have anything else I'd go for unique heroes and artifacts that can be hired/found.

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How about races you create yourself?

I.e. create a custom race, save it, then play against it.

Im all for playing against custom races. Ive been wanting to do that since my very first game. Also wouldnt it be great if you could play against multiple custom races at once. An all custom race game! Ahh total conversion comes to mind

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Space Vixens!

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As has been mentioned enhancements to the exploration part to give it more of a "going where no one has gone before" feeling rather than a real estate increase. Imho, the Stardock team has really nailed the last 3X's in a 4X game. Great job!!!!! However the exploration X does not seem to have been given the same extensive effort.

Many good ideas have been posted, such as putting the resources or anomolies on class 0 planets, requiring advanced sensors to probe some anomolies, or pirate bases to find and destroy.

Perhaps some kind of defense to be overcome before mining a resource or getting a super class planet, left over defense system, precorsor outpost, or something so a weaponless ship can not get the resource or treasure during the initial space expansion.

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Why I am a bit disappointed about GalCiv2....
(criticism=wishlist for updates or expansion)

All reviews praise the AI and the replayability. However, I have stopped playing now. It is too much appraisal in my opinion.

Why? I have managed to understand the economic system and win easily on tough now. Well, I could chose higer difficulties or to change my playing style. But I don’t want to. I want to go for the conquest victory through economic domination.

GalCiv2 has a great AI, sure. No doubt, impressive.
GalCiv2 has a great new feature: ship design is really cool – but in the end it is only jewelry.
These are the most outstanding things to me, but there are more good things, I know.

But once you have managed to run the economy, this is not enough, I think. There is not enough to do, not enough strategical depth!

What are the shortcomings?

1) The so called “design decisions”...

- no older buildings can be built – Why? ... please don’t argue with realism... everything can be used against you!
At least there could be a “basic infrastructure” ship modul allowing to build one basic factory.
Imagine:
We have now Warp 4 and are able to build a technological capital, and industrial sectors. Unfortunately, we cannot develop a new/conquered colony because it is now too expensive and we just don’t remember how to do the cheaper stuff. This forces me to grab all the planets I can as fast as I can. WHAT??? WHY?

- no planetary bombardement – Why? ... please don’t argue with genocide... erasing the whole population with conventional warfare is not better!
Imagine:
I’m at war with Drengin and Torians, The Torians growing fast and threatening me with their influence. The other AI, the Drengin, attacking me with good ships. I would like the option to destroy some Torian colonies without having to conquer/defend them afterwards and so losing parts of my population (=my future) and be able to focus on the Drengin with all my fleet power instead. And I just want to be able to hurt the Torians where it hurts them and really helps me. This could be implemented with diplomacy/influence penalties for the agressor, of course. There could also be targeted attacks on certain tiles/or the standing army (if implemented!) only. This should be possible if my fleet is dominating the planet’s orbit!!!
Why should planetary bombardement be the cowards option? Why are air strikes so helpful to end wars? They are cheap and not so dangerous for the attacker! However, I would not want to talk of cowards.

- all people fighting – Why? ...I don’t see why this is necessary. The standing army concept would be great, giving more variety of strategies. The civilians would not all die and the conquerer should be capable to deal with alien populations and if not face constant rebellion ,for example.

2)... and other things

- no REAL ship design – ... the lack of tactical combat does not necesarily have to imply boring military technological progress: Laser1, Laser2, Laser3, and after that the weapon formerly known as laser1/2/3... What about stealth/cloacking/kamikaze/boarding/little fighters/different weapon range/stasis fields/special abilities because of experience and and and ... all has been said by many posters.

- the plain galaxy - ... while it looks cool in general, do the resources have to look like colourful geometric toys for babies? Where are the nebulas where ships could hide from scanners? Black holes? Temporarily stable wormholes (for a random amount of weeks) for more fun with exploring/sneak attacks/risks (if an important fleet was send through a before stable wormhole, for example)?

- the class 0 planets - ... they could be used at least as the home of anomalies - or for colonization in the end game (with certain techs) or from the beginning (“Silicoids”)

- heros – to help your planets or fleets... a known concept from many other games.

- espionage/counter-espionage - ...known issues.

- diplomacy actions - ... ask for removal of fleet from the area of own influence/ near boarder (some squares from the boarder) and threaten with war if not... and other known issues.

- In GENERAL: more uncertainty for more suspense!

Fortunately, the game´s potential is really great and I personally hope that the devs will listen to the players and make a real legend by improving this raw diamond. However, right now, in my opinion, the game is not less, but not more either.
I am aware that the AI has to be able to handle well potential new features, but I would appreciate (and pay) the devs to try their proper implementation.
But I confess, I had expexted more by now.

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I would like to see a tech that would allow you to attack without causing a war. Say you could build long range high yeild anti-matter missles and you could make the missle look as though they came from another race or like they were just flotting around forever until they found a target. You could build them like ships and put multiple warheads on them to increase damage. No I am not sure how you would do this. You may need some kind of cloak or stelth ability so they are not detected or you need to spend alot of spying to be able to coverup where the missle came from.

The missle would be able to destroy mutliple ships if armed well but would also be destroyed its self. you could not form fleets with these. although they would be great for Starbase defense. I see these things being quite expensive to build as well as you would need to be funding spying quite well. You really would need a very good economy.

There would always be a chance though that you would be discovered and you would be at war, but maybe not ready for it yet, so there would be some risk.

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for an expansion i would realy like:

1.more unusual ship parts like the nano ripper (instead of researching say phasors II and getting just the phasorII component you get a scaled up versions of the tech

2. more techs both millitary and none military (I would like to see the return of the medical techs from the orginal game) and have different unusual propulsion methods instead of just one continous popolusion tech

3. have a ship appearence for every civ including the anornians and the dread lords

4. better and more varied special effects in the battle view

5. a much better planet invasion battle view with lots of varied units and a real caotic look to it like real warfare

6. when you put a ship in orbit around a planet instead of having a symbol you can actualy see the ship if you zoom in, in the same way you you can see a freighter after a trade route has been establised

7. a lot more diplomatic and spying options

8. for evil civs bring back the TERROR STAR and give the good civs give them their own version of the terror star call it the BRIGHT STAR that instead of destroying the planet incases in a gaint force field leaving it unharmed but unusable for the rest of the game

9. ANOMALIES RESPAWN instead of just having a few at the begining and the running out (with the rare, coomon, abundent rating being how often they respawn).

10. make the MINOR civs a lot better give them larger role with say their own version of the UP that is able to make demands of the major civs (say if you attack one of them the others send you and altermatium saying you either make peace or they all declear war, but give them a better millitary so this is more of a threat)

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What do you want in an expansion?

Or, What would you pay to play?