It's hard to believe that not many people mentioned this before. But I tend to design a new custom race including ships every game. I find it very annoying having to obsolete all the previous designed ships from other custom races. I played one game as normal Drengins and they didn't seem to have the ships I designed as a custom race. So it just seems the game handles the custom races as one race when saving your custom designed ships. It's just silly having to obsolete all sorts of funky looking ships that were designed with another type of hullstyle enabled...

You can simply delete all designs in your "My documents\My games\GalCiv2\Ships" folder. That's what I do.

1) Make "Lucky Ranger" event perhaps 20X more rare, and only let it occur in certain situations (after the leading race has X military power, for example). It utterly breaks the game, especially on a tiny galaxy when nobody has much tech, to gain 2 rangers - either of which can destroy a grand alliance of all opponents.

2) Replace the current economic sliders.
Current: "Overall Output" + "Military, Social, Research Ratios"
Desired: "Military Output" + "Social Output" + "Research Output"
(better named as "Shipbuilding Output" + "Colony Improvement Output" + "Research Output")

Justification (reposted):

I really dislike the current system. You cannot effectively have planets specialize. For example, I wanted an industrial planet and a research planet. I made them... and the research planet had no spaceport. Unfortunately (disregarding social), that meant that I was always wasting half of the capacity of my research planet when Military was 50%, and half the capacity of my industrial planet when Research was 50%.

On the other hand, 2 identical planets, half labs - half factories - one starbase, would be using 100% of their capacities. Which means that generalized planets are always going to outperform the same number of specialized planets, so you should never make specialized planets, but rather make all your colonies identical clones. Which is boring.

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.

I don't think that the ship designer should keep track of hardpoint rotations since the list can get long. What'd be simplest is just being able to resize & rotate an item after it's placed on the ship. Plus, I think there needs to be one more type of rotation so you can "twist" it.

Plus, have that list of ship modifications put the important ones before the extras. So if you want to, for example, remove your engines you don't have to scroll across the list to find them.

Keep up the great work.

Some ideas

1) If you click on a ship/fleet, then click on the radar, the game should remember that you're trying to move your fleet.
2) Have a map setting for locating resources on the radar, and make them more visible. I miss many resources that way
3) Perhaps a shipyard option that takes the components on your ship currently, and updates them to the latest version automatically?

There are so many great ideas in this thread! All i want at the moment is an answer from the devs which of all those ideas are they considering, both short and long term wise. Wanna fill us in?

I'd like to see Arrow buttons in the Planet screen so i can quickly cycle thru all my planets WHILE still in the Planet screen...like up by the Planets picture 2 buttons that let me just click->next planet (do my thing Click-> next planet...so on and so forth....just an idea..(i'm sure it's been said before, in that case (i second it)

Hi

I did not read every post so some things that i want are already wished for. My 2cents are:

- Put the values of the things you get in the Tech tree (not just laser but laser cost, size, damage)
- If you build on a square with bonus show the bonus in the building on that square.
- Some chance to disband fleets when another unit is in the same spot.(maybe i just dont find the button then )
- An option in the shipyard to decide if you want to take that ship over to the next game you play (if you start a new game you dont need every ship you have done before, especially minimal updates)

Hi!
A not so short list of wishes:
Ship design window:
- right click or DEL button removes selected component,
- compact view on ship design: a component is displayed only once, but has a number in a corner that tells how many are there,
- pressing done button, but design not saved should ask if I want to save it, and bring up a proper dialog to do that.

Diplomacy window:
- decration of war notice,
- a prompt if I wish to ally , when AI wants that.

Planet window
- please eliminate the waste of social production when nothing is actually build!
- ability to downgrade farms,
- autolaunch new ships checkbox.

So far for now. I've just finished the second campaign game, so expect some more. But so far game plays very well on my Celeron 733 with Radeon 8500LE, 450MB RAM and WinXP.
BR, Iztok

1) 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.

2) Disable the end-turn function when certain full-screen windows are open, I've accidently ended turn while viewing a planet or building a ship (by hitting enter) several times and it's a pain in the butt. Also, I've had a lot of inadvertent end-turns after clicking 'Done' on certain screens and popups and then accidently double-clicking while my mouse was hovering on the End Turn button; maybe if it'd ignore clicks for a split-second after closing those windows, that'd prevent that.
In times of war this can be a major issue, I literally lost a planet whereas if I'd been able to play out the turn as I was planning to I would've intercepted the lone un-escorted transporter with ease.

3) Maybe some sort of diplomatic 'balancing' when it comes to Influence Base Rushing. The AI will do it even if they wouldn't dare start a war with you, but even though it's a basically aggressive act for them to build those bases, if you blow up one you'll start a long and costly war. Either they need to forgive it easier and allow a peace treaty under some circumstances, or, you need to be able to threaten or cajole them into stopping the construction of them in your territory.

Also allow us to overwrite 'core' ship names, or add a number or something to the core ship names to free up names that we might want. I was pissed I couldn't choose to build a Destroyer, or a Missile Boat. If the core ship design was called 'Destroyer (Core)' instead, then I would've been able to have my Destroyer, and Battleship, and Missile Boat, and other names that I honestly wanted to use in my last game playing the Terrans! (I was following a theme of their space navy harkening back to their ocean navy, so I wanted to use the 'basic' names for several designs)

Some seconds:

- A 'What would make this deal work' option like in Civ IV to speed Diplomatic negotiations.
- The ability to zoom out on the tech tree window.
- A preview of Starbase radius when you click on a constructor.
- Arrow keys move map, not ships
- A 'No tech trading' option.

One minor thing, that may be on the list already: When I have a starbase and rally point in the same space, it is impossible to select the rally point to edit or delete it. If I move a ship there, then the stacked ships interface appears and I can edit or delete the rally point. But I can't if there's no ship there.

It's hard to believe that not many people mentioned this before. But I tend to design a new custom race including ships every game. I find it very annoying having to obsolete all the previous designed ships from other custom races. I played one game as normal Drengins and they didn't seem to have the ships I designed as a custom race. So it just seems the game handles the custom races as one race when saving your custom designed ships. It's just silly having to obsolete all sorts of funky looking ships that were designed with another type of hullstyle enabled... You can simply delete all designs in your "My documents\My games\GalCiv2\Ships" folder. That's what I do.

What if I don't want to delete them, but just don't want to use them for that custom race? It's just silly that every custom race ends up with eachother's designs even if they are not usable because they are designed using a different hullstyle...

Two more suggestions:

1. Computer AI use of player designed ships
The game is big on customization, and another neat feature could use our created ship designs for the computer players.

Let's say I go through a game as the Thalan, and I create and save several custom ships along the way. In a different game against the Thalan, I think it would be cool to see the computer using those same ship designs and ship class names that I crafted. This would add a whole new element of personalized game play. If you thought your Thalan battleship was awesome before, see how you manage it when your computer Thalan opponent is wielding that exact same looking and named ship!

2. Combat Simulator
Ship battles look great! How about a simulator button added to the design screen that allows you to test your ships vs. all known enemy/ally ships? This is not really a strategic addition, but it's more "candy" so to speak. It would be nice because that way you could see how your ships might fare against your allies without having to actually engage them in battle.

Thanks!

1) Give us better and easier control over typing text. As it is now, I usually end up with my cursor at thebeginning of the word (no matter where I click) and have to hit 'end' or use the arrow keys to get to the end so that I canthen delete the word. And then I can't usually delete a letter to add a new value, say I want to rename my ship from Viper Mk1 to Viper Mk2...nope, I have to type the whole thing over again because backspace usually deletes all the text.

Annoying as all hell.

2) Better colony control of military/social/research...maybe a slider like the empire/domestic controls. Maybe I'm missing something, but I hate to only have like 3 options. Something like 4/6/4 or 12/2/2 or 3/7/4...why is it broken down into increments like that? Maybe I'm missing something?

3) When I try to upgrade a ship, I get options of upgrading things I made obsolete in the build ship area. Like I only have 1 'missile' labeled ship, but when I go to upgrade, I usually see the last 2-3 models, which is confusing.

4) As stated...TECH TREE DESCRIPTIONS. For all that is holy, why would you not have this!?

5) Finally, we need more hull shapes!

Haven't read all 4 pages, so this might be here already;

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

Colony Ships and Constructor core ships to upgrade engines as your tech level in them increases?

The ability to reopen the GNN News after you close it.

I'd like to see a 'sandbox mode' in this game, where the player could choose not to have any opponents. You can have no opponents in Civ4, and I've found that useful at times to test a strategy without an opponent introducing a variable.

Thanks for the asking for input, btw.

-crowbraid-

I know all of these ideas have already been posted in some form or another on some thread or another, but here's my list:

Launch All button for ships orbiting a colony

Tabs for ship-types on colony launch screen (e.g. All, Cargo, Small, Medium, Large) so that I can launch based on hull size.

Right click menus for stacked ships so that I can still have access to the "construct" "upgrade" "guard" "sentry" buttons that you lose access to when ships get launched.

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.

More keyboard reactions on menus. Specifically I'm thinking about the ship building menus, shipyard and research windows. I like to use my keyboard as much as possible.

In the shipyard I should be able to highlight a ship part and then click and drag it off the hull (litterally pull the piece off). I should also be able to use the delete key to remove a piece that's been selected.

Once I've highlighted a ship piece in the shipyard screen I should be able to dynamically resize it without removing the piece, making one the right size and then resizing it.

Also, I should be able to use Shift to select multiple pieces of jewelery that are attached to my ship and resize them all simultaneously (not making them all the same size, but proportionally increasing all of them based on how much I move the slider (i.e. I select two parts, one is at 25% of max and the other is at 10% of max. I grab the slider and it will be at 0%, I'll slide it up to 10% and then my parts will be at 35% of max and 20% of max respectively.

I would also like to be able to upgrade core ships. I'm not that great at ship design, so I'd much rather just take the default troop transport and stick faster engines on it than go through and try to design a whole new one.

I'm glad you put in the recent update to the research screen an item that allows me to see specifically which techs remain for my ships to be built, but it does not currently take into effect ships that require miniaturization techs to fit everything on them.

Also, as I have acquired a large collection of user built ships already, it would be nice if these "techs required" items could expand/collapse with a +/- button.

Search feature on the forums.

Thanks for this thread. Hopefully someone will read this and tally up my ideas with everyone else who expressed the same ones. I admit to not reading this whole thread. There are tons of good ideas in here, though.

Hi

Just to say I loved Dano13's comments on page 2 regarding deep espionage, simple to put into the game, and should add a nice bit of depth!

How about being able to continue the game after a Culture or Tech victory. I was on the verge of finally capture the home planet of one of the enemies and I got the culture victory. Would be nice to finsih the invasion if I can continue.

Population units are confusing. "M" should read "K", or comma should be visually distinct from decimal, or sub-million population should not be displayed. Also the troop / colonist loading dialog should show some unit.

The potential starbase range of effect should be shown for constructors.
It is not clear in advance whether partially blue parsecs are affected by a starbase.

Starbase Mobilization modules are rank "I" and Starbase Projection modules are "III" but there is no rank "II"
A Starbase can build two different "Battle Stations II" modules.

Double-clicking an enemy ship will not show the info screen, but pressing the (i) icon will show it.

Default fleet naming behavior can give redundant messages such as "Terran Fleet 25 destroyed Dregnin Dregnin Fleet 22". The race name should be omitted if it is a prefix of the fleet name.

It is possible to select ships in different parsecs, with no visual feedback that this is the case.

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.

Lack of transparency regarding the game engine is unacceptable, and the cause of many misunderstandings and frustrations. Please post how everything works online. The plaers deserve to know!

The most improtant things to explain:

1. Exactly how all ship combat works. All modifiers, rolls, etc. This is clearly wrong (and not well explained even if it was right, which it isn't)

2. All of the different AI behaviors on all difficulty levels. Particularly involving trading behavior (which is clearly broken), combat optimization, expansion, aggression, treaties, etc.

This should have been done from the start. There is even an area of this very website that's supposed to be for explaining game mechanics! That should have been the first thing addressed!

Instead all we get is cute comments from the devs like "Defence is very important, you'll see. "

I don't care about the dev's cute little ideas if they lead to broken gameplay.

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.

Lack of transparency regarding the game engine is unacceptable, and the cause of many misunderstandings and frustrations. Please post how everything works online. The plaers deserve to know!

The most improtant things to explain:

1. Exactly how all ship combat works. All modifiers, rolls, etc. This is clearly wrong (and not well explained even if it was right, which it isn't)

2. All of the different AI behaviors on all difficulty levels. Particularly involving trading behavior (which is clearly broken), combat optimization, expansion, aggression, treaties, etc.

This should have been done from the start. There is even an area of this very website that's supposed to be for explaining game mechanics! That should have been the first thing addressed!

Instead all we get is cute comments from the devs like "Defence is very important, you'll see. "

I don't care about the dev's cute little ideas if they lead to broken gameplay.

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.

Lack of transparency regarding the game engine is unacceptable, and the cause of many misunderstandings and frustrations. Please post how everything works online. The plaers deserve to know!

The most improtant things to explain:

1. Exactly how all ship combat works. All modifiers, rolls, etc. This is clearly wrong (and not well explained even if it was right, which it isn't)

2. All of the different AI behaviors on all difficulty levels. Particularly involving trading behavior (which is clearly broken), combat optimization, expansion, aggression, treaties, etc.

This should have been done from the start. There is even an area of this very website that's supposed to be for explaining game mechanics! That should have been the first thing addressed!

Instead all we get is cute comments from the devs like "Defence is very important, you'll see. "

I don't care about the dev's cute little ideas if they lead to broken gameplay.

A simple tweak that would be really useful for the large maps.... having a way to scroll the mini-map when it's at 200% or greater.

For gigantic maps, it's impossible to use at 100% so I have to always keep it at 200%. If there were a small arrow button on each of the 4 sides of the mini-map for scrolling, that would be a nice useability enhancement.