First, I don't have time to read all this, so I don't know what has already been said 100 times. There are many things that "could" be improved, but let me go over my top choices.

1. This has been beat to death, but I believe it is critical for many of us to be able to continue to enjoy the game: Add a "No Tech Trading or Selling" option for setting up a game, or at least "no selling tech for cash" option. This is by far my number 1 choice. I would imagine that this is challenging because you likely have to tweak the AI to adapt to this.
2. You had made the AI a little better about not trading and buying tech so easily, which does help some. Tech whoring still is allowing you to play up 3-4 difficulty levels beyond that if you didn't do it. Please take one of the many suggestions for limiting what the AI will buy from you. It just seems so "broken". Before I learned to do this, I could barely win on challenging. Now painful seems painfully easy much of the time. I suppose if the AI would at least do equal whoring, it would keep up, but apparently it does not milk it like I do.
3. There is still some "funkiness" with fleets/ships being selected where you can have multiple ships in a stack, you move one of them out, yet both (or more) stacks are selected. You have to click on something else before being able to select 1 ship. You should be able to always click on a single ship, and always have only that ship selected. It often results in moving many ships when you intend to move 1.
4. There is still times when ships mysteriously loose movement.
5. If you pass for a turn on a ship, it looses its movement. Civ4 changed this so you can still go back and move that ship later. This would be a very handy feature.
6. Please display the net turn income next to the BC total on the main panel. I am very tired of having to check in the income screen every turn to check this.
7. This may be more effort than you like, but it would be great to have a line from a ship on auto-pilot to the destination. It can get difficult to remember where everything is going. It would also be great if it could figure out how many turns until the ship arrives, and display that next to the "auto-pilot".

Standard apology for not reading all the previous posts

But here are some suggestions

Double clicking:
After pressing Load on the main menu, you could be able to load a savegame by doubleclicking it.
Doubleclicking the background in the techtree viewer could switch between More and Less states.
Doubleclicking empty space could center the view where clicked.
Doubleclicking a civ portrait in Foreign Manager (F5) could be the equivalent of pressing "Speak to" with that civ selected.


Scroll wheel
I noticed that I can scroll through the custom maps when setting up a galaxy for a new game. I can even do that while the dropdown box isn't dropped down. But when I do this, it's upside down (i.e. "None" is at the bottom of the list)

When I am in Audio options, my volumes can go from 0 to 10000, and the left/right arrows change the selection by 1... I can even use the scroll wheel to turn my volume up or down... by 1. This needs changing, make it a percentage from 0% to 100%, and the step in 5s or so.

Other stuff:
I can't select to have no anomalies in a new galaxy?

The escape key should close current open windows.

The "Sort by" option in planets list (F2) - I'd prefer a dropdown box over the left-right selection thing.

Autopilot destinations on the minimap should update as soon as you set a ship's destination.

Sorry, I did not take the time to read this entire thread, so if this is already listed, I apologize.

In SWG they had an option to set a timer, for either a specific time of day or a specific time period, i.e. 10pm or 1hr 30min.

I think this would be nice to have as I have almost been late for work on a few occasions, either due to me forgetting to set an alarm clock, or leaving my cellphone with alarm set in another room.

If this is already in game, I have not come across it yet, but I have only had it a few days.

Great game by the way.

Edit: Had a timeout error and then did not see my post so resent it. So I doubleposted, sorry, now I know and knowing...

- Cloacking and countercloacking technologies.
Ex: A ship with cloacking device mark 2 should be detected on the map by ships with with counter cloacking mk 2 and above within their sensor range. A ship with cloack mk 3 cand be detected by a ship with anti-cloack mk 2 at it's sensor range - 1.

- Ability to make patrols using waypoints. For instance i want all the ships/groups that arrive at waypoint 1 to automatically go to waypoint 2. Then i want to be able to program waypoint to to automatically redirect the ships to waypoint 3........

- Ability to tell a planet to send all it's fresh built ships to go to a certain waypoint. very usefull for starbase constructors, fleet gatherups.....

- The lights you can use to design your ships (general tab) do nothing. Thy don't blink, they don't even look like lights, they look like spheres. I would like them to look like real lights!

- Space anomalies shoould sometimes appear during gameplay. After you initially cleaned up the map there is no point in having survey vessels......

- Fleet debris should sometimes result from a large space battle. More work for that survey vessel....

- Some more drastically random actions to bring more flavor to the game like:
- a huge empire that is about to conquer the galaxy splits in two to due to civil war,
- sometimes when a new minor race appears they should not colonize just one planet but several of them and they should also bring in some heavy firepower and technology to defend themselfes.
- a plague that wipes out 90% of the population in the galaxy
- some ship types (an entire class of ships) descovers a design fault and they all decide to drop to speed 1 until you get them into a spacedock or to a starbase
- some ship (trader or such) is in need of some sor of assistance (oxygen tank failure ot something.... ) you must reach it with another starship to save it

A couple of suggestions: The "available builds" list in colony management always jumps to the top when you build something (both when double clicking and using the "build" button). It would be nice if this could be changed, it would allow for more convenient queueing of items down the list.

I'll second this on several of the scroll lists. It's frustrating when you are working down a long list of planets making changes to have to keep scrolling the list from the top because it has reset to the top of the list.

Skip the "Do you want to upgrade this starbase?" screen and simply add a cancel button to the module selection process.

Second, since we're skipping the "Do you want to upgrade this starbase?" we won't get the annoying Yes, followed by "Sorry, no more module available".

[For 1.1 beta]

On the "planets" popup (F1), you should be able to view "foreign" sorted by race. I.e., if I want to see "foreign AND Altarian",

I should be able to do this easily.

The ship designer should automatically propose suitable upgrades for me. For example, it should notice that I always build a

constructor with one constructor module and the best engines. It should auto-design and offer to upgrade for me when

appropriate. It should notice that I tend to build offensive ships with 1 point of armor, 1/3 of the space devoted to engines,

and the rest with the best lasers available. Such a ship should always be proposed for me by the AI whenever I get a new tech.

The AI should also always notice that I design a ship with one or two transport modules and the best engines, and propose

alternatives for me.

There should be "ship design templates". I should be able to specify "use 30 space for my best engines, put on 1 point of armor,

and put the rest in lasers" and automatically get a new ship design whenever I get a new engine, armor, laser, or miniturization

tech. You should be able to specify "absolute space", "% space", "# points", and "rest of space". This is necessary because,

for example, your miniaturization ability differs from game to game; you can get random events that raise your miniturization

ability. Because my miniaturization ability differs from game to game, it is impossible to for me to reuse ship designs

optimally.

When a ship is orbitting a planet with a starport, I should be able to pay for upgrades from military production, rather than

paying cash.

The shipyard around a planet should hold more than 10 ships. Make the limit logisitics-based. You need a better "shipyard full"

warning if a planet stops building due to "shipyard full".

There should be an option to optimize ship movement. Either "don't animate ship movement" or "don't animate ship movement when

ship isn't visible onscreen".

When the AI invades one of my planets, the invasion technique the AI uses should be clearly displayed on the invasion popup.

The rally point dialog ('T') should also display the # ships and # colonies currently going to that rally point.

Constructors should have an option "go to nearest starbase that needs a constructor", with this option settable as a rally point.

With multiple ships set to "auto explore", they should not all go to the same square.

Anomalies should not disappear when the game is loaded. Anomalies should respawn on the map like they did in GC1 (or make this

an option).

My survey ship set to "auto survey" can detect anomalies located in the fog of war. A survey ship set to both "auto survey" and

"auto explore" should first go for anomalies, and then go auto explore if it doesn't find any more anomalies.

When you click "end turn", if ships set to move have movement points, you can move them now. However, the "end turn" button

disappears when this happens, and you have to hit "tab" to highlight the ship with movement points left.

You should be able to trade or disband or upgrade a ship that is a member of a fleet.

Some dialogs still refer to "years" even though game time passes weekly.

I am done creating a technology tree if you wish to see which technologies build which ships. It will show the heirarchy and the cool stuff that comes with each techonolgy. Email me if you wish to recieve a copy Email: [email protected]

I am done creating a technology tree if you wish to see which technologies build which ships. It will show the heirarchy and the cool stuff that comes with each techonolgy. Email me if you wish to recieve a copy Email: [email protected]

If you want to rename a planet, treat it like the ship designer : don't delete the whole name if you press any key. If you only want to change the end of the name, that's rather annoying. I like to put in parenthesis what specialisation I decided for the planet, and if that planet is a capital and so and so, but only at the end of the name. The way it works, if I want to name my planet Lemur II (res), I have to re-write it entirely instead of just adding (res) at the end.

Purely cosmetic, but how about in the battle screens the ships (especially the larger ones) don't dangle about like toys on a string. Maybe have them graphically maintain a consistant course during the fray simply hovering amidst the faster, smaller fighters only moving ever so slightly during combat? I love the game of course, and again this would be cosmetic and obviously not a real concern, yet might give the cinematic battles a more mature element. My two bc's worth, anywho?...

Thanks for your time and attention, and for having the aspiration of making an already great game even better,

Jarl Dagstyrr

Keeping this hopefully simple, in the 'Ship Build' option and Quick Build List, I am finding the graphic for the ships are being scrambled. (the graphic 'strips' are out of order).

1. A "launch all" button that would enable me to launch all of my ships that a planet has produced; instead of launching all of them individually.
2. Computer notification when the AI declares war on me.
3. A solution to the problem that I have with upgrading my custom ship designs; I have the same problem that everyone else does with the Beta version.
4. The ability to set a ship or fleet to "patrol" a section of the galaxy so that I don't have to build an expensive starbase or move those ships around all the time.
5. Stardock's shipping address so that I can send them a case of beer for producing the greatest game that I have ever played since Civ II. I've even convinced my friends to purchase copies.

Easy tweaks huh?

1. I wish we didn't start the game with a survey ship. It makes unlocking the technology to build one pointless, not to mention that why would you bother building another one anyway and also there is no reason to build the "Guide Book"(can't remember the exact name) wonder. Starting with a scout as opposed to a survey ship would add a hole new strategic path for us to follow at the beggining of the game.

2. I would like to see ship ranges reduced. Even in a gigantic map I can make contact with everyone (9 players) even before the colonization phase finishes. I almost never have to use starbase as relay point to extend my range not to mention I never used life support, ever. Reduced ranges would make the early game a lot more interesting and the choices you made more important in the long run. It would also add a lot more weight to starting placement, as isolated races would actually be isolated for a while.

That's it.

1. I want the cosmetic parts you can stick on to ships to go transparent/wireframe look if they're too big. Currently they just block the view so you can;t see where to stick it to.

2. United planets need to be improved. An easy way would be to let us have some indication on what the others are voting for(maybe tie this into espionage level?). I'd also like to be able to bribe the others into voting for my choice.

That's all for now.

In the trade screen : When you hold down the mouse over the arrow that the money will go up automatically instead of clicking it 100 times.

Here are my proposals. They are not all easy tweaks, but they should all improve the gameplay.

1. Option: Choose max number of drives per ship from 1 to 3. 3 should be total max for balancing reasons.
2. Option to limit sensors per ship to 1 or max 2.
3. Navigation from one starport/orbit to another (button next ....)
4. Stellar cartography marks habitable planets.
5. Option: Trade techs only if researched first
6. Zone of control and open border agreements depending on influence area
7. Tech trading screen as in CIV 4
8. Reduce morale resource bonuses

If the AI would use speed and sensors as some human players do it, it does not improve the gameplay. The game would only consist of raiding attacks accross several sectors in one turn. So this has to be limited both for humans and the AI in my view.
If you apply 10 motors in a car it will not be 10 times faster. So it should be logical to limit it and/or to change the calculation, so that as a proposal 2 drives give 1.5 speed and max three drives give 2.0 speed.

-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.

-Make entering text for ship descriptions more like a word processor; I shouldn't have to press the left key 50,000 times to get into the middle of my 15 lines of description.

-More stable trade income or an indicator of median income (I don't get the X bc a month thing, since you make much more than that each week off of trade). I dislike not knowing what the most stable income level is.

-Allow queing of ship production.

-Change the Tab key so that it only selects ships that have movement points left. Cycling through every vessel you own can be a chore.

-Have the UP require military 'peacekeeping' missions, so to speak. e.g. if a major power jumps a minor race, the UP could vote to have the others deploy forces to protect them.

-Allow players to propose UP resolutions every once in a while; maybe have more infulential power get more voting time?

-Have minor races get less ridiculously good planets. Having five class 10-15 and coming upon an ackwards-bass race with a class 26 just isn't fair. (happened three times; three!)

-Allow time-limited/per-turn trading. Maybe I want to give someone my Alloy for, say, 25 turns in exchange for 1 bc per turn?

-Limit tech-trading so that you can only trade tech the other civ has the prerequesits for.

-Allow specialized treaties instead of only Alliance, such as special trade privleges, cooperative research (get a bonus when researching a tech the other knows), construction assistance, etc.

-Have experience give broader bonuses. Maybe each level provides a percentage bonus to all stats, instead of increasing just HP.

-Allow extra time while producing a ship to give it experience bonuses, to represent especially indepth training of the crew. (Could be just a little checkbox)

-Let you see an empire's tech levels and ship designs at Advanced espionage level.

-Be able to infiltrate the UP and minor races.

-Allow spending to thwart enemy infiltration.

-In the colony screen, after ordering the production of an improvement, it should select the nearest open tile.

-Allow espionage to damage enemy, eg. apply minor penalties to research or production, etc.

I would like to see all Attack, Defense & Hit Point value in the game scale up by a factor of 10 or 100 so that all those 1% & 2% Military bonus can make a difference. Otherwise, these bonus just got round down to nothing.

For example, in the early game I mine a military resource for 15% Military bonus, which is useless unless I got ship with Attack or Defense rating of at least 7. (i.e. 6 + 15% = 6.9 round down to 6).

Link

Only one major comment.

Colony production. When advanced structures are researched, or stolen, the game automatically upgrades the production screen to produce those newer buildings instead of the older ones. This is no good if you are just establishing a colony or rebuilding after an invasion as they can then take 100's of weeks to build.

Can a pull down box be added for each colony structure type to allow the quicker structures to get built before the more advanced ones. For example I'd like to be able to build Xeno Factories before Manufacturing centres but if that technology comes along I don't have the option.

Thanks for a really great game - I think my work suffers a bit from it

Wow, long thread and I might be to late on the suggestion. There seems to be no good way to tell if colonies are focusing production on any of the three areas. How bout highlighting the bcs spent number in the Civilization Manager/colonies tab if the colony if focusing spending in that area. Would make my colony management easier in the larger galaxies.

I think the tiny icons around foreign fleets is a superb and helpful suggestion, as we get arount planets. Perhaps something along the lines of:

Red dot at top: enemy fleet
Blue dot: this fleet contains a troop module
Yellow dot: presence of weapon-bearing ships (basically to tell if it's a trooper, or an escorted trooper)

Most of the above are good sugggestions, but personally I like the mini-map not recentering - a simple back-forward scroll roll sorts it, and we've all got scroll buttons, dont we?

And yeah, cursor keys should move main screen. On my comp only a small section of the sides are sensitive for scrolling, will this be extended, possibly to allow diagonal scrolling?

I rename my planets with a C, R, F etc at the start for cash, research, and factories - this makes viewing them in the colony manager section of the civ manager page easier, they're grouped into sections. May i support a prior post re planet names being treated like ship names for renaming purposes? Also the ability to scroll toe main map in the background when the 'rename planet' pop-up appears - if i set a col ship this target 10 turns ago, I dont know which part of my empire exactly it's at, and therefore what my needs are. Also a 'rename planet' option within the planet view screen would be nice, saving me from going through the 'details' screen first, and then back again.



Ta muchly.

Would it be possible to make it so that troop ships (and I think colonisers, too) do not automatically disembark their population when moved into orbit of a friendly planet? I can see times when people might want to keep a loaded troop-ship in orbit, where that planet's fleets can protect it from enemy attacks.

That said, I realise this is also open to abuse - for example, people could just stack a load of fully-laden troop ships in orbit of key friendly planets until the population is developed enough to sustain them... Hmm...

*Ponders*

When more than one transports are in a fleet or square, display the total amount of troops the fleet carries, just as it is displayed when you have just one in a square. Currently you must go to the manage/details screen for each individual ship to see how many they carry, and add the numbers in your head. Very clunky.

Also would be nice to see how many troops each carries in the ship list.