Oh dear. I've actually read this whole thread, though it has taken a great deal of time and many browsing sessions. There are some simply amazing ideas, and many of you have the same thoughts I do on a lot of little tweaks that would make this game truely one of the classics.
I feel compelled to start off by saying that I really do like this game, and I'm sorry if this seems like one gigantic laundry list of things to fix. It *is* a gigantic laundry list of things, but nearly all of them are just little fixes for small things that occasionaly make me nuts. Great job so far -- and thanks once again for asking for user input to keep improving this game. I hope you view the massive volume of feedback this thread has generated as what is is: a sign that requests for input are what the gaming community in general, and players of this genera in particular, are *exactly* what we want. I, for one, am very appreciative (I show my appreciation by making lists, okay?)
Now, since there are so many suggestions here (most of them copied straight out of previous posts -- I just want to add my "vote" to these options. Not that I'm under the illusion this is a democracy, mind you.) I've developed a ranking system, using the number of *'s to represent how important the change is to me. It breaks down like this:
**** -- "Please please please please": Send me an address, and I'll keep enough caffeine supplied to the coders that they won't NEED sleep until this feature is implimented and hand-delivered to my door.
*** -- Very important: This is the type of missing feature or bug that has me reading these forums and creating huge lists when I could be playing. Thus, it's probably in *both* our best interests to get to this quickly.
** -- Important: Definately a helpful fix, but not one that criples game play. Most likely there's another way to get what I want; I'd just like this feature implimented to make it less of a hassle.
* -- When you get a chance: Impliment this feature when it is convinient -- convinient being defined as "Sometime immediately after you impliment the fixes I've listed with higher priority, and somewhat before you impliment the changes requested by everyone else."
Of course, this breakdown of priority is purely for humorous purposes. I don't really expect you not to sleep until the *whole* list is finished. (half will do. Okay, okay, just kidding again.)
One final note before I begin: I've made only minimal effort to keep up with the beta 1.1 releases, so if some of these are already implimented there (I'm still playing 1.X) then GREAT JOB!
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1 (**) Add a notification for when someone declares war on you
2 (**)When you set a ship to move on autopilot, a reading somewhere of how many weeks it will take to get there would be nice.
3 (*) A display in the trade window that shows how much techs cost in beakers, so that we can better gauge trade values.
4 (**) Make the mini-map have the same focus as the main map, so that scrolling the main map also moves the minimap.
5 (*) Make it clear what Influence starbases are doing. I do not see their effect on any planet where there is an influence starbase close by and this is REALLY hurting my ability to know if they are even working. That's a big one, far more so than any "tweak."
6 (***) Make some auto-reset or reset-button to set the races back to default so we don't have to delete files manualy to get the original races back...
7 (***) Somehow make more transparent what's going on with customization of the default races - right now, I'm quite confused about which abilities suddenly vanish when I change something and which don't. Also reveal any "hidden" bonuses (e.g. the diplomatic penalty of the Yor), and if at all possible, make these configureable for the customizable race.
8 (**) Having an "old quicksave" just like the one for autosaves would be nice.
9 (***) The "extra" turn when loading a saved game is annoying - maybe there is an easy way to remove it?
10 (***) Finally, a BIG second on being able to see starbase influence zones around constructors BEFORE you hit 'construct'. Having to quicksave/load is a hassle.
11 (***) Make saving ship designs "optional" -- a checkbox on the screen saying "make ship available in future games" would be great.
12 (*) Put in diagonal edge mouse scrolling
13 (****) An option to disable automatically selecting the next ship without orders.
14 (**) I have no idea which waypoint corresponds to which ship. Find a way to highlight the waypoint of the selected ship.
15 (***) Maybe easy, maybe not: I really dislike the side-scrolling choice boxes (ie: how to sort the techs you have available to research). It can be cumbersome to click 3-4+ times through all the options, just to get to the sort you want, then click back through to get to a different sort. A "drop-down" box where you see all choices, then click on one is much nicer. I was happy to see that this type of box was added to the Trade screen.
16 (***) Civ. Manager: I think it would be nice if you could see and modify a planet's focus from this screen (Military production vs. social vs. research).
17 (*) Civ. Manager: how about a graph or display of some kind that shows food production vs population? Maybe tack on there the theoretical plantet max population for kicks.
18 (*) Add an 'Auto Explore and Survey' button for scout ships, that will allow them to automatically explore the galaxy as usual, but will stop exploration to survey an anomaly when it finds one.
19 (***) Add an option to *NOT* show the tech tree and homeworld build queue every time I load the game. Actually, make it apply to starting the game too.
20 (***) How about a ctrl+A hotkey that forces all ships on autopilot to complete their moves before the end of the turn? Then you can cycle through those with remaining movement.
21 (*) The ability to zoom out on the tech tree via scroll wheel would be nice.
22 (****) An undo button on ship design
23 (**) Ability to prioritize planet tile upgrades. If I have researched stock markets, and then industrial sectors, the upgrades will finish faster if I upgrade to industrial sectors and THEN stock markets. But right now, either I have to re-arrange every planet's build queue, or research them in the order I want built.
24 (**) Here is an easy one that I think people would love: IF your espionage level is high enough then during the Galactic council meeting that races vote is displayed BEFORE you vote.
25 (*) There should be a chance that if the human player's espionage is high enough they get a heads up that that race is preparing for war against them, or another race.
26 (*) A slider in the galaxy settings to adjust the number of planetary special tiles
27 (***) Starbase summary screen along the lines of the colony summary screen showing name, location, main function and whether they can be upgraded in new weapons or a new module for their primary function (2 seperate items, I'd want to know if the upgrade is for just weapons/defence OR a module relating to inf/econ/ship assist depending on the base)
28 (*) When upgrading a starbase, have weapons/defence and modules on seperate tabs or have some kind of filter.
29 (*)I don't think you get the tech details screen when you trade for a tech, you should.
30 (*) The colony manager screen should show you if a planet has open tiles.
31 (***) Please fix the ship hardpoints.
32 (*) I think that rather than 4 sliders - one for "overall output", and three for Military/Social/Research balance, a simpler system of 3 sliders would be better in every way. 0% to 100% output for each area, and forget the "overall output" slider.
33 (**) Context-sensitive 'view battle' option. Right now I keep having to turn 'view fleet battles only if both sides are fleets' on and off, because for taking on precursor ships or fortified starbases I want to watch and see how my ships are actually stacking up. But when I'm taking out freighters, transports, that sort of thing it's a total waste of time. What I'd like to see is a 'View Battles if Close' option, that would have you watch fights where both sides(or just yours) are liable to lose ships.
34 (**) Less predictable "who fires first" option in the game menue. As is, attacker fires first 100% of the time. What I think would spice things up is to change that to 66% of the time, plus or minus 8% for every point of speed advantage that either the attacker or defender has. This would make getting the jump on lumbering lucky rangers easy, but for that lucky ranger to sneak up on a squad of fighters almost impossible.
35 (****) The ability to set a new home planet for a freighter. Basicly, I'd like to be able to build Freighters at my man capital instead of my eco capital, as it usually takes ages to build ships in the eco capital
36 (***) The ability to reopen the GNN News after you close it.
37 (*) On the foreign policy screen it would be GREAT if I could just click a button to automatically get the max amount of money the AI player will give me for what I'm offering. That way I could sell them a tech and not have to fiddle around with the money bar to get the max BCs out of them.
38 (***) Please explain all underlying game mechanics. Manual is unclear or wrong about almost all of them. In particular the combat, influence, stat bonus, and tech progression elements of the game are at least wildly inaccurate.
39 (*) In the foreign deplomacy window under "treaties" have the ability to click on the empire icons and select them as the current empire. Just an ease-of-use thing.
40 (*) Some mini-map zoom modes do not show the complete 'ownership' when playing at 1024x resolution.
41 (***) Map scrolling speed when the map is scrolled out is too slow.
42 (****) Some way to show what planetary specials are affecting a planet! If I have a +60% to starship production on a planet, that's something I need to know, and it's something I'm going to forget the next time I load a game. . .
43 (***) I wish that when I selected a ship out of the ship viewer, it didn't then snap back to the top of the menu. I am looking for constructors, there they are, I click one and launch it from orbit, and now I have to scroll down again for each one. In bigger games, and I probably use too many starbases, its a real pain. This is just as anoying in the planets list.
44 (*) I'd like to see a numeric value for the scaling slider in the Ship Designer. Similar to some on the sliders in Options. It's tough to create like designs and match the scale by count the ticks.
45 (***) I would like to see anomalies respawn so that i can continue to find them and have use for research ships. all to often they run out way to early. and id like to be able to continue to discover them even if they only occasionally reappear. A slider on the galaxy settings screen to control this rate would be great.
46 (**) A slider to adjust the abundance of resources (the type mined by starbases) on the galaxy setup screen would also be good.
47 (***) When a ship build event occurs on the GNN it would be great if it also said (Starport now Full) if that was indeed the case
48 (*) Change autopilot navigation so that ships prefer to move diagonally (across the coner of a square) first. As it is now, they waste moves going around obstacles.
49 (**) Please: a view on the mini map or any map when on the planet screen. There is no way I can remember where each planet is when moving through them from GNN or whatver.
50 (***) The ability to 'de-emphasize' an area of spending on a planet (with the remaining 2 areas getting more spending) in addition to the current ability to 'concentrate' an area at the cost of the other 2. Being able to do either from the colony mgr screen would be helpful. - Not sure if this impact AI or not, but would sure be helpful....
51 (***) more of a bug fix, but when you have the ship list up (on the left side of the screen), it disables all left-edge scrolling. The engine should still react if you hit the mouse against the left edge of the screen regardless of what windows you have open.
52 (**) Rings and moon indications -- what they do for production on the planet (if they do anything; I only have the outdated manual as a guess) should be listed somewhere on the planet
53 (***) Upgrade ships with planetary production rather than buying the upgrade -- a la MOO2.
54 (***) How come the "Overall" score has no relation to any other score in the game. I find that there are many times where I have already eliminated a major race from the game, beating them soundly in every category, but their "Overall" score beats mine by 3x or more!?!
55 (****) The End Turn button needs to go somewhere else. I've clicked on it about 5-8 times trying to navigate the map.
56 (***) I would like a GNN entry when a planet that was building a wonder or trade good can no longer build that project due to a rival completing it.
57 (*) Tell us how much bc each Social improvement costs, like you do with military.
58 (**) Fix the forums, its a nightmare to do anything in here. (Specifically: The back button on my browser requires double-clicking... most times. "Bonus rating" floats about the page at random. etc.")
59 (***) When moving projects around on a long social build queue (longer than can be displayed at once) the list re-focuses on the top-most item. This is extremely frustrating if the project was on the BOTTOM of that list and is now completely out of view. Please change the control to re-focus on the selected project instead.
60 (*) Allow us to play with 10 races in the game as there are 10 races in the game! 10 races + our 1 custom race!
61 (***) I like the possibility to add a custom portrait for your race. But in game you only see your logo everywhere - i would like to see the portrait for example in Civilization Manager - Stats & Graphs! There is the Name of the Leader with the Logo on the left. If you could display the portrait there instead of the logo - i would be happy
62 (***) Please remove the little “lighting flare” to the upper area of the mini-map. I assume it’s there to give “depth” to the interface, but it’s obscuring my ability to see information under it – ship range in particular.
63 (**) PROBLEM: Ambiguous starbase icons in 3D tactical view, unable to tell what resource type it is. (have to zoom in a lot to see, which is troublesome). Add the resource type to the starbase name.
64 (***) When you double click on a social project and it automatically goes to the next tile, it should *NEVER* go to a "soil enhancement" tile unless that's the only thing left for the planet to build.
65 (*) If a minor race claims a resource, it won't show up as an option for me to trade for it on the trade screen. Minor races shouldn't claim resources (or they should be willing to trade them if they get them). Apparently, minor races don't offer to trade ships. -- Note: In my last game, nearly 50% of the resources were claimed by minor races! With no other options available to them (e.g. colonizing) resource aquisition was their only priority.
66 (**) Please increase the maximum allowable sensor range from 15pc to 30pc. Or heck, even documenting that there is a maximum sensor range, and indicating it in the build screen, would be handy.
67 (**) Sort the GNN list in some way. Mostly, I just want big, important things up top (such as building a technological capitol) rather than sifting through the dozens of small factories and what not opening on dozens of worlds)
68 (***) Apply excess social to the next item in the build queue.
69 (***) Apply excess military production to next ship desired.
70 (*) In the Ship Builder, it'd be great to have mock Engines, mock Weapons, and mock Modules available in the 'Extras' tab. They'd use the same models as their real couterparts, but be just for show.
71 (**) Starbase affects should not overlap in an addative way. That is, two economy starbases should not *both* add affects to a planet that is under the influence area of both; only the highest value should apply.
72 (***) An option in the galaxy generation screen to not start with the two free ships.
73 (*) Allow longer names for ships and starbases, like 50 characters; I like 'em as big as they are complex. I really hate not being able to give my starbases ridiculously unwieldy names.
74 (***) When you build a new ship the launch should default to launch this ship. Not the one you have left there to protect your planet
75 (****) A "sentry until wakend by me" option for ships.
76 (***) The game says "with advanced espionage, no futher spending is needed". Then why do you allow the player to spend more on espionage after receiving "advanced" level? Turn off that spending in that case. (I thought you needed to keep some espionage spending if you wanted to be able to steal tech?)
77 (***) Option to have a ship pause during a move if an enemy comes into view.
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Well... that was a bit much. And most were repreats of previous posters, of course. And some, no doubt, are implimented in the beta and I just haven't read about them yet.
GalCiv2 Forums
Either scroll the zoomed mini-map in synch with the main map, or auto-unzoom it when I hit end-turn. Its useless when zoomed in on someplace I was a while ago.