My Wish List

Wishes W/R/T Feasibility

from GalCiv2 Forums
1. I want to be able to have more control over my economy. I hate having to watch all my colonies to try and time my building spurts. I want to be able to set spending for Military/Social/Research on a per planet basis. I understand the decision to want to reduce micromanagement, but controlling how your resources are utilized across your planets, while ostensibly "micromanagement" is an extremely critical part of your empire's macro functioning. Shutting down factories to fund research or vice versa is an artificial and counterintuitive throttle on civilization progress. There are also severe problems with built up planets eating up all your resources while new colonies are starved.

This is my opinion as a fairly good 4X player. I was introduced to GCII by a friend who is slightly mentally impaired and thus has trouble with most 4X games due to the amount of micromanagement they usually require. I watched him play several games and, let me tell you, the game's interface did not make things any easier for him. In every game I saw him play he went bankrupt and this is not because he was doing anything unusually taxing. He was playing the game peacefully, he had a few colonies and was devoting most of his efforts into researching. He was not producing any ships and, to be honest, not doing much of anything except letting his research facilities run and doing some basic planetary construction. While the game reduces planetary level control in the name of limiting micromanagement, it trades that off for micromanagement of your economic system. Overall, you don't have to pay much attention to your planets, but you do have to pay a ton of attention (compared to other games) to your economy to make sure you're producing things optimally and not running a huge deficit. I think this is a pretty big problem, particularly for players like my friend, because thinking on the level of the economy is much more abstract than easily graspable things like, "If I build this it's going to cost me 3 coins of upkeep but I'll gain 10 hammers."

2. Reducing micromanagement : Planetary governors and Imperial advisors. At the same time as giving control to players on a per-planet basis, I think the role of the planetary governors should be increased -- Governors should assess your colony's spending on M/S/R and offer suggestions. There should be an option to give complete control over your spending on a given colony to your governor. Furthermore, I think there ought to be some imperial advisors, particularly an economic advisor, who you could empower to automatically keep your government in the black.

3. Constructing facilities at lower tech levels. One of the things I find irritating as I improve in technology is how difficult it is to get new colonies up and running. This is particularly a problem when you have advanced manufacturing facilities because you are always forced to build the latest technology, but it takes forever (literally) to construct some of the more advanced buildings if you have no pre-existing factories on a planet. I would like it if you could browse all your available structures, not just the "most advanced" ones.

4. Technological Trade. The simplicity and rapidity of tech trading makes it extremely problematic, in my opinion. It is a no-brainer to dominate the game through tech trading, but if you do not trade technology you will fall behind. There have been many suggestions for solving this. What I would prefer is (a) Rather than having a single pool that accumulates research points, have each technology have its own pool. That is, you could progress 10/30 points in Stellar Cartography and then switch to Armor Theory, and then resume research in Stellar Cartography and pick off from 10/30. (b) Technological trading specifies a given technology and works much like trade routes, except instead of BC you gain a given amount of research in the specified technology. Science vessels can be intercepted by other races.

5. Add more types of systems to ships. I want to have cloaking devices on my ships that make them always attack first. I want EMP launchers that have a chance to disable enemy ship defenses or weapons. I want displacement devices that cause enemy weapons to miss a % of the time, and targetting computers. I want to be able to place a hacking center on a ship and take control of enemy ships' systems, or deploy marine pods and take an enemy ship over.

6. Espionage and Diplomacy. I want espionage and diplomacy also conducted with freighters. It is strange and unusual that you can conduct trade through the diplomacy screen with races you have not even encountered on the map. You should receive penalties to espionage for races you do not have regular trade relations with. You should get big bonuses to espionage on planets you've got regular deals with. You could also set up an espionage ship outside an enemy's planet to spy on them from orbit.

7. I think planets should always be defended by fleets. You should not have to build a structure to do this, as it just makes it easy to pick off the enemy defenders one by one. Fleets located in planetary orbit should have bonus logistics available. Ships should be able to be loaded up with weapons designed for planetary bombardment, to reduce the enemy population and destroy structures.

8. ?
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
By #5 it sounds like you want tactical combat, or at least simulated tactical combat (like Stars! had). I'd kinda like that, too. It'd require some major changes to the game, though, and we're more likely to see it in GalCiv3 than in a patch. Even for an expansion I think it's a bit much.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, this is just my wish list (as the title says). A lot of these suggestions are made without regard to their feasibility (as the sub-title says), although I do hope that #1 at least we can see in a patch at some point, but I'm not holding my breath. I still enjoy the game but these are just things I'd like to see, perhaps in a future title or possibly in some MODs, etc.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Jeez,
All I want is an end to the save game file corruption bug and a few balancing tweaks here and there.

Such as:
1. AI that knows about engines
2. AI that protects its troop transports and constructors.
3. An option to build a map with "home areas" I mean, fix the randomizer to kind of cluster some of the planets around each homeworld, making it a bit more balanced and producing more playable maps.
4. Probably a slight reduction to the power of military starbase ship defense assists, as it is you really can't fight without them at higher levels.
5. AI that knows about bigger ship techs.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
With regards to number five, a nice option would be the idea of being able to target certain weapons or engines and disable them with weapons. This would be a difficult feature to implement, but using tactics to take away the weapons, defenses, and manuverabliity, would bring a lot of depth to combat.

Just a thought.

Cheers.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
All I want is a retreat button to tell your ships to try and retreat if they are losing
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I would LOVE a retreat button.

Also, large ships that can act as carriers. You can load up tiny and small ships into the larger hulls. That would be awesome.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In terms of the standard 4X convention, I understand that setting your economy at one "throttle" and then leaving it to run can be a bit frustrating. Ever since I first played Civ I, that's the way I've managed my colonies. Those of us used to more granular control enjoy that fine-tuning.

That said, I'm now going to venture onto some very thin ice: I'm going to try to compare the "realism" of various 4x control options for different types of building, etc.

It's at least plausible to argue that, as the head of a Civilization, you are NOT the omnipotent controller of every individuals' effort. The only widespread governments ever invented that have tried to tell all their people exactly what to do have been er, rather disastrous failures.

Whatever motivates a society to do all the things it does, it's not up to the mayor, or the governor, or the President of that country, even with a 100% approval rating!

At the same time, a countries' priorities do change. Without trying to get too abstract (which I probably am already anyway!), it's reasonable to assume that, for whatever resaon, a society might shift its efforts from one sphere into another sphere in a hurry (think of America after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, if you want a historical cliche). This isn't a carefully and surgically controlled operation; it's a massive reprioritization of how a society allocates its resources. Sometimes that reprioritization is more efficient; sometimes it's less efficient, but it's seldom carefully calibrate to ring every last drop of sweat out of every possible citizen!

The fact of deficit spending looms much larger in this game than in most, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing so much as it is just a thing. You can always tell if you're running a deficit, because your currency counter goes yellow. If you're building up your BCs, it's green!

But I think I'm getting lost in the detail. I'd just humbly suggest that, while it doesn't follow the "city-specific" convention that's been in place 15+ years now, it seems to be about as plausible as anything else.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Add more types of systems to ships. I want to have cloaking devices on my ships that make them always attack first. I want EMP launchers that have a chance to disable enemy ship defenses or weapons. I want displacement devices that cause enemy weapons to miss a % of the time, and targetting computers. I want to be able to place a hacking center on a ship and take control of enemy ships' systems, or deploy marine pods and take an enemy ship over.


Why? It sounds more like you just want stuff rather than trying to fit it into the existing game structure, or even thinking about how it will impact the design.

Take your suggestion of cloaking devices. OK, what that means is basically the advantage of being on offense is negated. Well, presumably, a cloaked attacker regains the inititive, yes? In which case now every ship needs to have cloaks. There's no advantage in not having them, because having them gives you a tactical advantage. You certainly can't mount an attack without them, because a cloaked enemy is much harder to kill. And on defense, the cloak either gives you an advantage (if they're not cloaked) or does nothing. And you're certainly not going to let them get away with sending an uncloaked army after you; that'd be silly.

You may as well make every hull cost more and reduce it's space accordingly.

Take your idea on displacement devices/targetting computers. How likely you are to hit/miss is a function of the weapon's attack vs. the target's defense. Effectively, a targetting computer is nothing more than giving you a bonus to this, which is nothing more than adding another weapon of equivalent strength. Displacement adds a bonus to defense.

This ruins the whole tricotomy that the game's combat is based on. It no longer matters what defense you use, because displacement devices are always better. They always work on everything, irrespective of attack or defense type. Same with targetting computers; no need to load up on mass drivers, just take one and a bunch of TCs.

I think planets should always be defended by fleets.


That, I have to say, I agree with. The game is so overbalanced towards offense that playing defensively and trying to win via other means is just not really possible when the AI starts going to work. Considering how long it takes to even be able to build orbital fleet managers (someone could have medium hulls with a couple of miniturization techs by then), and considering the fact that it takes up a slot on your planet (thus reducing your economy compared to your opponent), it's just not fesible to simply let someone attack. On defense, you let your enemy attack you, so they get an automatic bonus (first strike); that's bad enough. But coupling it with the fact that, regardless of your logistics, you can never form a fleet in orbit... well, that's just no good at all.

What it means is that, if war breaks out and you didn't start it, you're already losing. No matter what.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Alfonse, I think you are taking things a bit too literally when you read my suggestions on new types of weapon systems. I suppose I am to blame for not making it clear in that section that I was using hyperbole to convey the 'coolness' factor of some of my suggested ship components.

I certainly do not mean for a cloaked ship to "always" under every circumstance go first. Such a calculation would depend on your opponent's sensor technology against your cloaking technology, etc etc.
As for targetting computers, the idea is to have a component that affects your accuracy, but not your damage -- Obviously such a component is predicated on the ability of the combat system to support it, which it currently doesn't do (as you pointed out). Again, though, the post is proposing ideas without regard to feasibility.
As for displacement devices, their effectiveness cannot really be spoken of in the abstract. They should be worse than the best case scenario of Weapon vs. Favored defense. The trade off could be that a displacement device would not scale well to larger hull sizes -- What might be an excellent defense for a tiny fighter would require too much space and energy on a larger ship.

In any case, I am just proposing these ideas because I'd like to see a combat system with a lot more dynamism than just attack (a, b,c ) vs. defense (a, b, c).
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think planets should always be defended by fleets.


I agree that you should be able to at least defend your planet with fleet=logistic ability. Buildling orbital fleet manager would give it a boost or give it unlimited logistic points.

Starport getting an upgrade would also be nice. Perhaps something that cope with one of the defensive structure. Wouldn't it make sense for a starport to be upgraded so it can manage ships flght time and fleet (orbital fleet manager).

In any case, I am just proposing these ideas because I'd like to see a combat system with a lot more dynamism than just attack (a, b,c ) vs. defense (a, b, c).

But since the game is not about the tactical combat, I think players should just resort to using their imagination and assume those devices come with the a, b, c.