A couple more thoughts for simple additions:

When you start to construct a new starbase, you should be able to see and outline of the region it covers on the map while you're answering the dialog "Do you want to build a new star base?" Just so you can confirm it covers what you want to cover.

Accelerate the speed of the camera over the map when "grabbing" and dragging the map. Or, better, have an option on the options screen to set "grab and drag acceleration." As it stands now, its slow, and i don't feel it needs to be very precise. Generally, mouse motion acceleration schemes work on a curve anyway, allowing a balance between large movements accelerated a lot for big changes quickly and small movements to be accelerated less for better precision. I want to move around quickly!

I commented earlier asking for the GNN screen to work like a to do list. But I understand how to use the the green and blue icons on the right of the screen better now, so never mind that idea; however, the other part of my comment still stands - update the alert that goes with those icons so that, even if when it was generated i was building "Nothing" on that planet, if i've added something else to the queue since, and I mouse over the icon, it should reflect the change.

The little panel on the main tool bar which has the amount currently in your treasury should also have a little up or down arrow and an amount indicating how much your treasury will increase or decrease after this turn, based on current settings. That's basic enough information you shouldn't have to open a menu just to find it.

thanks again!

Please extend right click functionality - if you click planets or vessels to have a context-sensitive menu.

For ships - orders, rallypoint selection and such.

For planets - production orders, shipyard orders, launch all orbiting vessels, maybe change military-social-research ratios, cancel pruduction orders and such.

Please allow upgrades within a class of ship if the basic type is the same (Warp Mk1->Mk2, but NOT Impulse -> Warp or Warp -> Missile)

When selecting a ship to build and then clicking on 'go back to planet' it cancels the ship you selected to build and when you click on done it takes you out to main map. This is a pain when you have lots of planets and you clicking on next to go through all of them to manage the building then you select done and you have to keep clicking next to get back to the planet you were just at. So basicaly can you either make it so when you select a ship to build and click on back to planet it puts that ship in the cue or if you click on done it takes you back to the planet?
Also a way to select all starports to build a certain type of ship? And a way of selecting all the ships of same type on the map in orbit or not? If I have 40 planets and each one is pumping out constructors I want to be able to selectem all at once! Oh yean and make the lights actualy emit light! or even blink... and can we get a disco ball as one of the extras?

There are so many suggestions, I can't be sure this one wasn't already put forward. But here it is:

When you reload a game it would be nice to receive a message relevant to the current state of your game at the beginning. As it is now, the robot just gives the same message he gave when you started the game. Buddy, I know that Earth creatures have given us hyperdrive and the galaxy awaits...but are we at war with the frickin' Drengin in this game? Are they "slowly grinding us down" in a terrible war?

This feature was implemented fairly well in the original GalCiv, so it shouldn't be too difficult to include in DL.

Just two things, really:

1) A way to access the individual functions of a ship when it's part of a stack, without having to move the ship off to an empty space. By individual functions, I mean "Upgrade, Sentry, Guard, Disband, Construct, etc". Sometimes I move Constructors in fleets but I can't get the constructor's abilities until I both disband the fleet and then move it out of the way.

2) When I click on a different ship without specifically holding a key like SHIFT, please automatically unselect the previously selected ships. So many times I've had situations where I've clicked to move some ship out of a fleet (mainly for individual functions or to rearrange the fleets) only to have elements of the fleet follow along and prevent me from doing so.

Actually, more things:

1) A way to cycle through Starports, specifically. I find that when I change a ship building order and then click "Back to Planet" (in order to move tot he the next port), it doesn't save the new order. So my only way of doing this is going to the port, changing the order, then clicking "Done", then cycling through the planets all over until I get to the next port.

2) Some way to view how many troops exist on the planet?

This one's kind of a minor issue:

- in the fleet battles, the ships kinda drift around like deadwood. Is it possible to give them a flightpath (even if it's static), or at least have them strafe from side to side?

Here's one, but not from me:
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=348&AID=102514

Look for DeviousToasts post on altering the way the three forms of weapons and armor relate to each other (he uses an altered form of Rock,Paper,Scissors). It is a very good suggestion and I would love to see it in game (I'm pretty sure his description is not how you do it now).

(Edit: I believe it is comment #14)

Also maybe a ship sand box where you have full access to all techs to build ship models with weapons and save them for use or import into the game.

I would absolutely love this option. I can imagine myself just playing with the ship editior for hours that way.

Random opponents option for sandbox games.

This would be sweet. I like the idea of playing in a completely unknown galaxy.

A global reset of the civilization back to the default (for hull and interface colors and for racial advantages).

Yes, please! I can't tell you how much I've already screwed up the default races!

Nova bomb, a super weapon that will cause a star to go nova destroying everything in the sector(ships stations planets everything) of course if you use it every single race in the game will instantly declare war on you

Oh my, this is a huge thread...

My idea is very simple and reduces micromanagement!

Add the ability to see and change planet focus (military vs social vs research) on the Colony Management screen. Done.

Some way of monitoring the effects of economic starbases would be nice. So on the trade screen any routes being affected by starbases could have a little number in parentheses indicating value added, and on colony screens there could somewhere be a readout showing the numbers for economic starbases having influence. The more hard figures are presented to the player, the more they know how effective their strategies are in my opinion.

in the ships list, make all the ones in orbit have a different background color or some such so one can tell at a glance which ones are in orbit or not w/out having to re-order the list.


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I second the 'no tech trading' game option (like CivIV has). Or perhaps an xml option somewhere to flag each tech as tradeable or not (so you could even set it up such that early techs are fully tradeable, but later ones are not, or even just set it up so that certain more game imbalancing ones are not, or so that just the weapon/shield techs are not tradeable, etc...).

Can we have a optinal toggle for a 'Turn End Notification'?

When i'm playing, I click end turn, and it often doesn't seem like its doing anything at all. I'd have better peace of mind if I could see that the turn was indeed finished, and click a button before doing my moves for the next turn.

There's not enough sensory input to the player, for me to feel satisfied after a turn has ended.

When I pick red, it doesn't stop the drengin from also bein' red, which makes it confusing on the mini-map. Would be nice to still have the drengin in the game, but have them change their color to some random off-color if the human player happens to pick red. Same goes of course when the human player picks the same color as any of the other races as well.

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When I start a turn a ton of ships/fleets that are on auto-pilot just sit there and won't continue along their path until I hit end turn. Sometimes I want them all to do their thing *before* the turn is over because I wanna know how many of the ships on their way to point X will make it before the turn is out, or if planet Z will get defended before the turn is out, so that I can then make adjustments w/other nearby ships *before* I end the turn. So somethin' like a hotkey, say control-m, to 'move all', w/out ending the turn, would be nice. =>

When I start a turn a ton of ships/fleets that are on auto-pilot just sit there and won't continue along their path until I hit end turn. Sometimes I want them all to do their thing *before* the turn is over because I wanna know how many of the ships on their way to point X will make it before the turn is out, or if planet Z will get defended before the turn is out, so that I can then make adjustments w/other nearby ships *before* I end the turn. So somethin' like a hotkey, say control-m, to 'move all', w/out ending the turn, would be nice. =>

YES, YES, YES! We need this. We need the ability to have autopiloted ships move BEFORE a turn ends. I want to do the same things as the quoted poster. Please include this!

Ship Building

A) Would it be possible to implement a main menu shipyard? This shipyard would have all base hulls and jewelry available. All designs created through the main menu shipyard would be made available within any game started using the relevant base hull style once the appropriate hull tech is researched.

This way we wouldn't need to access a saved game with the appropriate style selection and completed hull tech researched simply to play with the shipyard. In addition shipyard creations would be available in all games using the relevant base hull style instead of only games using both the individual race and relevant base hull style. The designs could be automatically saved in an entirely seperate folder to facilitate trading designs between players quickly and easily.

I got about one quarter of the way into designing a very complex and detailed hull before I realized it would only be made available in games using the same race and base hull style. The idea of recreating the design in full for each race is immensely daunting, needlessly inefficient, and theoretically unneccesary.

A button to clear all installed equipment. Weapons, defenses, and modules would all be removed with the click of one button assuming no attached hardpoints were utilized.

C) More camera control. I think the easiest implementation would be to allow the selection of hardpoints as the camera focus. You could then use all the default buttons/controls to adjust the camera around the selected hardpoint. The current default zoom/angle button could reset the camera to the original position.

Here is my bug/tweak list for GalCiv 2. I'm using 1.0X, the latest version.

Where is the "create rally point" icon? I couldn't find it anywhere. It should be prominently displayed on at least 4 screens: the colony shipbuilding screen, the main colony screen, the governor screen, and the main map. (I finally found it. It's in the lower-left corner of the main screen. It was well-hidden and not mentioned in the manual.) Also, the colony screen and colony shipbuilding screen should both indicate the rally point destination.

A starbase that needs more modules should be automatically listed as a potential rally point for a planet that is building constructors. This rally point should be automatically disbanded when the starbase is maxed out (based on the player's current tech level) and the player prompted to choose a new destination.

The "maximum modules" display on the starbase add module screen should reflect both the absolute maximum modules and the maximum based on the current tech level. Currently, it only displays the absolute maximum.

On the diplomacy screen, where you have the graph indicating which races are at trade/war/alliance, you should have the ability to show only trade relationships, only wars, etc., by clicking on the colored boxes to show/hide certain sets of lines. This ability was present in GalCiv 1, and somehow didn't make it into GalCiv 2. I have a hard time reading this graph, especially since I'm red/green partially color blind.

On the colony governor screen, one of the columns should list if the planet has a military/social/research focus, and the focus should be changeable from this screen. The colony governor screen should also list the rally point for each colony.

When trading with the AI, I could not get a single BC in exchange for trading a ship, even though the AI was begging me for ships to help it fight a war. Also, the "pay on installments" option appears to be gone on the diplomacy screen. (I.e., trade for 50 bc over 10 turns.) If the AI is desperate (i.e., losing a war), it should be willing to have defecit spending to buy ships. I couldn't even get a single influence point in exchange for a ship, which seems like an obvious bug to me. (I tried a new game without the +diplomacy racial ability and didn't have this problem.)

When you build a trade good or galactic achievement on a planet, it permanently uses up that tile. It's like a permanent -1 to planet quality penalty for building a trade good. The trade good should also grant abilities equivalent to the appropriate social project. For example, frictionless clothing should also act as an entertainment center on the planet for which it's built; diplomatic translotrs should also act as a +influence social project on that planet. It just seems aesthetically wrong to be penalizing a planet for building an achievement.

If you move the mouse cursor over your military/social/research production, a popup should display the breakdown of where all the points came from.

On "cakewalk" difficulty, some of the nastier random events should be disabled. For example, playing my first game on "cakewalk", I got the "Yor president assasinated -- you're at war now" random event. Don't do that to someone playing on the easiest difficulty.

For the technology screen, you should be able to "queue" several techs at a time. I should be able to save/load my path through the tech tree for use in future games. (The tech governor should, by default, nominate whichever tech I picked most often in previous games.)

On the turn summary social production screen, when you're given the option to "go to" a planet, the summary screen should then indicate that you've already visited that planet and updated its production.

You have a maximum of 10 ships that can orbit a planet at one time. When a planet's shipyard becomes full, a dialog should pop up warning the player, rather than having the planet silently change its production to "nothing".

The default ship designs that come with the game should be better. On my first game, I didn't realize that I needed to design my own ships to take advantage of improving tech. Don't require a player to design ships on their own in their first game; give reasonable (but not perfectly optimal) suggestions.

A ship orbiting a planet with a shipyard should be automatically upgraded when a new ship design becomes available, with the cost paid for out of military production rather than paying cash for the upgrade.

When an upgraded social improvement becomes available, warn the player rather than silently adding this to the build queue for each planet. When you get "soil enhancement", have the game say "we're automatically building soil enhancement on all planets that can use it" rather than silently doing it. The tiles that become usable only after "habitat improvement" should be visible from the beginning of the game, rather than only after gaining "soil enhancement".

In the colony screen, make it easier to insert projects inbetween two existing projects in the queue.

In GalCiv 1, anomalies would occasionally re-spawn on the map as the game progressed. I did not see this behavior occurring in GalCiv 2.

When the AI proposes a trade, it should occasionally propose trades that are more complicated than simple tech-for-tech trades.

On the trade screen, the player should be able to just list what they're offering to trade and ask the AI "What do you think is fair to give me in return?" The amount of BC to balance out a trade should be automatically displayed, rather than making the player manipulate sliders until they turn green.

This was a bug in GalCiv 1 and I think it made it into GalCiv 2. The trade bonus that economic starbases apply to mini-freighters should be calculated based on *ALL* trade starbases, and not just ones in the same sector as the mini-freighter. By requiring the trade starbase to be in the same sector as the mini-freighter, you artificially bias things in favor of horizontal or vertical trade routes. The correct way to do the calculation of starbase trade bonus is sum(1/ (squared distance to starbase)) as the extent to which each starbase affects the mini-freighter, with some kind of cap or decayed weight so you don't get ridiculous bonuses.

On the "starship rally points" screen, it should list the number of planets currently sending to that rally point.

On the rally point governor screen, when it says "going to a" should be changed to "going to b", the "going to a" column should only list rally points that currently have a ship or colony going there.

Where is the "rename rally point" option? Where is the "disband rally point" option? If you create your rally point under a starbase, you can't disband it.

In the "set rally point" planet screen, you can't scroll down if you have lots of rally points.

If a ship has 3 movement points and is 1 movement point away from its destination, hitting on "end turn" while green ends your turn, rather than letting you use the final 2 points of movement.

In the "metaverse login" screen, I'm not allowed to type '+', but that's in my user name. So I can't use the Metaverse.

Ship Building

D) The ability to choose a secondary palette upon race selection and the ability to choose between the two palettes for each piece of jewelry while designing through the shipyard. It would work like the size slider. Select the jewelry, move the slider to adjust size, select the primary or secondary palette. Once the jewelry is attached to a hardpoint the settings are locked. I really, really, really would like the ability to make certain pieces of attached jewelry stand out from the rest of the hull for visual impact.

I think a 'The' Pulldown/Checkbox in front of Race/Leader/Home Planet Or Renaming text boxes would be keen. To explain what I mean, I can reference 'City Of Heroes' where when creating a character you had a chance to grab a 'The' from a pulldown menu before the name to add to it. It would add the The before the name, textually, but also, perhaps, change a few bits of dialogue where the tense is off. Let's say I wanted to name my Race 'The Consortium' to sound cool, well, if I do that, it calls me 'The The Consortium' but if I just call it 'Consortium' it only sometimes uses the the. A the pulldown menu for name boxes would be cool so it wouldn't use a double the. Example, if I wanted my homeworld to be named 'The Source' it could do the same thing. I think it shouldn't be too hard and would add, certainly, to my name. Firstly, because it allows you to make a cool, monlithic sounding race, secondly, I hate when text boxes mess up the tense of my names.

#1 Gal Civ Encyclopedia. Need to know how to play in order to really play.

Minor races starting with all known techs shouldn't be allowed.

If minor races have no influence, then why do they build influence starbases.

AI considers their starbases to be their home worlds. I had war declared on me because their influence starbase was in my territory. They warned me forever, but their planet was on the other side of the map from me. It couldn't be further. However, because of their starbase they continue to think that I am infringing on thier culture. Then they declare war?? Look into this please.

Also, in Cal Civ I there was a way to see the influence breakdown of every sector. I can't find anything on this game that lets me see that. Ya the borders are cool, but what is actually effecting this. And because nobody really knows the effects of multiple starbases in the same area, I am just taking shots in the dark.

If there is a tech that the AI wont trade for anything, it gives a strange little bug in the diplomacy screan. As soon as I go to offer money, the screan turns green. But once I hit send it, it turns red again. Only happens for techs that the AI will not trade.

What do the difficulty levels mean? Can we have an explanation?

Did I mention encyclopedia?

I would like to be able to click on the GNN battle entries (Yor Fleet 1038 defeated by Drengin Fleet 1123) to get the Battle Report screen that comes up at the end of the fleet combat movies and the play-by-play that scrolls up during the battle view.

As it is now you get a concrete benefit from watching your fleets fight because of this report at the end and because you can watch what each ship does in turn. Turning off the movies for fleet battles is therefore unwise if you want to continually tweak your fleet compositions, when this should probably be simply a cosmetic feature in my opinion.

I still enjoy those movies, but in some games they can take a long time to load when logistics get up into the 30+ range. We should be able to get that valuable information even if we don't want to go through the eye-candy step.

Here's my 2 cents worth:

*add an in-game date-stamped log/jounal you can type notes in so you can review your progress later, and export it as text (also great tool for fan-fiction). A small but great touch I think, for us creative types. Could be dumped to a simple text file.

*make the ship building screen with the ship in bigger, and possibly the ability to save screenshots

*add a button to 'continue building same ships' to the main screen instead of having to go to the options menu

* the ability to join major hulls together so we can have HUGE starships.

* last but NOT least: (deep breath) Fighter carriers? advanced modules that can transport fighters (tiny hull ships).
Reason? The carrier has the range but fighters dont. Great for strategic projection of power, adds a new element of planning.

WOW! Great stuff here.

We're going through this and compiling what will be in v1.1.

We have to do the demo version next and then on to 1.1.

You put in Tab functionality! You just made my day. Thanks!