Suggestions For Expansion (Besides Multiplayer)

2. 100% free camera. Why can I only view the map from a fixed angle? I mean, sure, I can zoom in an out as far as I want to, but when I try to swivel the camera, it always goes right back to its original angle.

Turn off "snap-back when rotating" in the interface options.

What I would like ot see, as a complement to the Snathi, is a minor race of Penquins. I don't care if they are eveil, good or neutral, just give me penquins!

1 - Carriers
2 - Space based shipyards
3 - More interactive planetary invasions
4 - Orbital bombardment
5 - Planet destruction
6 - More espionage options (ie - Blow up galactic wonder in civilization A and blame civilization
7 - Espionage victory. (Your forces have completly infiltrated every level of every remaining civilization, while they believe they are free, they are nothing more than your puppets and you hold all the strings)
8 - Marines and the ability to board and capture enemy ships/starbases.

Definitely would like to have carriers, orbital bombardment and eventually planetary destruction.

Also, I think some kind of further planetary defenses, be they satellites, planetary missle bases, fighters, beams, or some orbital mines, etc. It seems a little too easy sometimes to blitz a planet of an advanced civilzation.

Also, I'm be a fan of seeing some new larger class of expensive-but powerful death-star-esque ship, capable of handling the doomsday weapon required for planetary destruction.

I'd also like to see a star-gate like technology late in the tech tree.

I also would like to see an option for more advanced tactical combat, allowing use of different formations, tacticts, retreating, etc. - could be semi-turn based - how often you get turns could be tied to your logistics ability.

I've also been interested in any game like this to see a very late game technology that would allow dimensional shifting - i.e. find a second map or maps of a few systems - could break late game stalemates.

All I want are no multiplayer and improved diplomacy options. Mainly being able to demand tribute or other threats. Also, I'd like to be able to actually find out if someone paid someone to go to war with me or other such diplomacy tricks. Who's trading tech with whom. Etc.

Oh, and of course, more intelligent AI.

1: Better ground combat. Why can't we choose which units to send off to an invasion? Why can't we train ground units? Why aren't there diverse types of untis, beside simply "15000 troops on X Planet"?

Because ground combat is not an emphesis of this game's design. And for the better, I think.

Invading planets is enough of a hassle already. You have to design and build a special type of ship. You then have to launch it and make sure that there are enough people onboard. Maybe you're invading a big planet, and you need more troops than one ship carries, so you need multiple ships together in a fleet. And so forth. And you mysteriously lose those ships once they attack, so you have to start all over again if you want to take another planet. It's all just a big pain. I certainly don't want to see this dull, repeditive task made even more dull and repeditive by the inclusion of added dimensions of repetition (having to build and transport specific ground units, etc).

7 - Espionage victory. (Your forces have completly infiltrated every level of every remaining civilization, while they believe they are free, they are nothing more than your puppets and you hold all the strings)

Ugh. That sounds awful.

Espionage is just spending money. It would be terrible if all you needed to conquer a civilization is to sit around and collect money (and spend it on espionage).

yea but imagine the backlash if you were caught trying to do that, galatic unification against you, etc, etc

Something i would like to see is war made into something closer to a political game. i mean the point of a war should not always be to cause the genocide of your enemy. It would be interesting to see war between civilizations as something of a negotiative means. it works a little bit like that now if you put starbases near someone's planets, and they might elect to go to war with you to destroy those bases because you won't move or demolish them. the problem is, the AI generally that ive seen does not offer for peace unless they are losing, won't accept a peace offer unless they are losing (or if youre losing you pay them a LOT to back off, which you tend to not have because you are losing). now, i am not saying i dislike war how it is, but i think it could be so much more. your people are going to have an opinion of the war, and how things are going. this should affect more than just trade with the one enemy civilization. you wipe out someone, and the other races are gonna fear you. you do it too much, and they become hostile toward you. while at war, your people don't have to hate eachother, and in fact, there could be a use for propaganda centers now to make your people feel more distrust of a civ you are at war with. it would be easy to simply put a value on citizen's trust of each other race, and boost military production (or cut it)to match. i mean, if i have friends in a country that the US is at war with, i certainly am not gonna try so hard to help produce weapons that might ultimately my friends. on the other hand, if i beleive (or am led to beleive) that a certain country is evil, and filled with people who don't deserve to live, i will be much happier making things that might destroy them. this is exagerated of course, but it doesn't have to be in the game. in fact, the ability to make someone trust you more and/or the ability to sway your citizen's trust faster could become abilities added into the game.

just my 2 cents of course.

other things:
i disagree with the ability to destroy a planet. this game is not part of the MOO series, and i think that planet destruction brings it closer to being so. more importantly, the planet, if it has people on it, could be useful to your people, don't you think? makes more sense to invade it, and kill or enslave the native population, while strnegthening your own empire. planet destruction would certainly intimidate your enemies, yes, but unless you are playing a bully, how many enemies are you really gonna have.

expanded espionage would be kinda cool. the already suggested idea for espionage victory would probably be cool if its done right. I would kinda like to see technologies that incerease your espionage abilities. like you develop a small invisibility cloak, now your spies can hide easier. gain +15 espionage. something like that. It would seriously require a lot of money put into espionage to win like this. The AI would need to be able to put money into espionage. I have to wonder what fun could be had on an unsuspecting player if you have deep espionage roots in them and can manipuate them without them knowing.

more invasion options? what in blazes for? choice one: invade or don't invade. choice two, do you plan to utilize the planet, or simply wipe the species there off of it? there are already choices for this depending on your intentions which determines how many planet improvements you destroy, ect. ect. while it would actually be interesting to see your ground units equipped with, say, personal size weapons in any one of the three categories, and have the oposition attempt to use defenses accordingly, that almost feels like that is what the advantage factor is for. you also don't want invasion to become a second ship combat phase. In my unabbreviated opinion, more options for this would prolong it, and make it more of a chore than it already is.

Better space battles ie ships controllable in either real-time or turn-based.

1 - Carriers
they totally own and they would make small ships finally useful

2 - Space based shipyards
military starbases could actually produce those tiny ships the carriers carry (or auto-replace them when a wounded carrier is near)

3 - please done change planetary invasion, its more then complicated enough as it is and after all its a space game

4 - Orbital bombardment
risk destroying a planetary improvement but kill lots of population
maybe make it evil do to so because after all you are killing civilians

5 - Planet destruction
terror stars in GC1 totally owned i'd like to see them again

6 - More espionage options
i'd like to see destabilization again and i'd very much like to see a counter-espionage, e.g. money you spend on yourself to counter espionage effords other civs make
lets say i need to spend 2000 BC to reach high spy level, i did spend 3000 BC already but the AI spent 1100 BC on counter-espionage, then i would fall back to medium
also, being able to manipulate on higher spy levels would be great, like destroy certain tiles or even make fleets change alignment or control them for 1 turn (everything of cause at a risk of being exposed)
maybe even a buildable spy unit would be good like it is used in many 4x games

7 - Espionage victory.
In the end it would be something like the tech victory. spend enough on tech and you win. spend enough on espionage and you win. maybe make the spy victory a little more difficult then the tech victory because you dont need to build spy buildings to spend the money

8 - more advanced diplomacy options. i cant tell the AI thats building an influence starbase next to my planet to piss off, i have to go to a full scale war
demanding tribute doesnt really work that well ... as a warmongering race you should be able to get enough tribute to keep up in techs even if you dont do any research on your own (its what the drengins always did in gc1 i think)

thats about it

geez I certainly don't welcome most of these suggestions. I will agree with some well thought out scenarios and more campaigns (a HOMM game usually had 4-6 scenarios *wink* and expansions would bring just as many. )

Now. Orbital bombardment and planet destruction. NO WAY. Something I wouldn't want. Reminds me of MOO2 cheese.

Why the love affair for carriers anyway?

As a concept, they sound cool, I suppose. Hundreds or thousands of ships zipping around wreaking havok. In practice, I dont think it would add much to the game, and the amount of effort would be staggering to make those who want them happy.

The typical suggestion for carriers that I have read calls for the ability to load fighters of your own design into the carriers, and to allow the carriers to put the players past the current logistics levels. But once you have it, how different would this be from bumping up the logistics level and adding huge numbers of small ships to a fleet?

To really have an impact, you would need to have a way for the carrier to repair or replace the fighters by its self. That means that you would have to specify somewhere what fighters a given carrier can produce. You would also need to provide a mechanism to pay for / manufacture those fighters, which would mean alot more micromanagement just to use the things.

And you would need to implement and playtest a way for the carrier based fighters to interact with combat. If they die first, but are replaced automatically between battles, then they have a signifigantly different affect on combat then just adding more fighters to a fleet. This in turn means having to do a non trivial amount of playtesting to correctly balance them costwise and for when they should be researched.

Now, once we have all of these extra things added to the game, I am betting that most people will probably actually bother to watch the fleet battles invovling carriers about 20 or so times before you just refevert to clicking the button to skip the battle cinematic and just go to the win / lose screen.

For the amount of work it would require, I dont see it adding all that much to typical gameplay. Enhanced diplomacy and espionage features will likely be useable right from the start of a new game. New victory conditions could add new play experiences (Espionage victory sounds intresting, but only if the espionage is more then just moving a slider and spending money). An economic victory method would be intresting, requireing a new branch off the trade tech, and a way to direct money towards it.

I would personally like to see signifigantly ore diplomacy options, and more use for the Xeno Ethics branch of the tree. More alignment based weapons would be ok, but also alignment based terraforming, morale buildings, soldiering, starbases, etc).

END COMMUNICATION

Carries would be nice but you would need to do something like setup drone figheters that consume space on the ship. Maybe make fighters a branch off of the missile weapons tech tree?

I'm a little confused on tourism and would like to setup cruise ships similar to trade only for tourism. Setup up a route for your cruise ships to prowl around your sector of space. Generates income and influence.

Space based ship yards would be nice but you would need a resource to build them on. Say something like an astroid belt or some such thing.

Orbital bombardment would take away from the importance of troop transports, but would be a nice touch to the game. No longer can you ignore fleets that are deep in your sectors. These weapons should be bulky and will require a lot of space.

As with all wish lists you really need to temper them through the idea that *yeah that's great but can the AI do it too?*. It's really easy to say add things like carriers or planetary destruction but for the most part these things are not there now for specific reasons.

All I want out of the next revisions are improvements on what is already here. They've already said that espionage improvement is something coming in a future expansion pack. So that is no biggie I can wait to see what they do for it.

Here's what I'd like:
More ship parts would be nice. More base hulls and bling.
Customized space stations. I want one with fins dangit .
A few nice colony search features would be great. Find out where you had built that hyperion shipyard without having to scan through dozens of planets.
I would like to see the minor races defend themselves better. But beyond that they are called minor for a reason therefore I seriously doubt they'd ever be expanded to do things that the major races do. It's already annoying enough when one of them swipes a bunch of space resources in the early go.
It would be nice to be able to click on a future tech and have a *governor* research the inbetween ones automatically.
A ship build queue like we have a planetary enhancement build queue.
More tweaks and improvements to the AI. And we all know Brad lives for this so I'm positive of all other requests this one will be done.
Expanded ground combat to take into account what I've researched. Personal force fields anyone?

All this stuff would be great. But you know something? I'll be playing this game for a very long time even if they never add another thing to it.

I would like it if really high levels of espionage did some of the work for you. I admit, I'm lazy - how nice would it be if my bot came on screen to tell me that the Torians were researching Harpoon which would utterly devastate my shields only fleet. Instead, I've got to actually rest my eyeballs on the diplo screen readout of what they're up to (told you i was lazy). Would be nice if you could sabotage a ship in orbit for some serious $$$ too . . . maybe have to research a few techs (infiltration/sabotage) . . . naturally, there could be a die roll involved with a failed roll leading to discovery of your shenanigans and - of course - war. Hmmm, maybe this could be an option on diplo too, pay a minor race to try and steal some techs or sabotage a ship for you? The repercussions could be delicious.

I agree that Carriers would be nice in concept, but in the way most would want they would be impractical.

My idea for a carrier would be a Large or Huge hull with a one of three special modules called "Hanger Bays" that would hold say 5 drones each (these would be included in the cost of the hanger bay) the type of hanger bay would correspond to the weapon type for the drone. the drones would only spawn once each battle and could be destroyed by the opponent. The drones would either respawn for each battle, or a drone's HP would count against the ship and as the ship repaired itself the drones would regenerate.

I Agree that this would take a lot of work from the people at Stardock, and many out there would only watch it one or two times before starting to just click through the combats, but I think this would satisfy those looking for Carriers, at least to an extent.

My own personal list of things to add:
- More Hulls (of all sizes)
- More Jewelry
- More Minor races
- More Espionage options
- More Diplomacy options
- Semi-moble Star bases (i.e. Babylon 5)
- Ability to color specific ships differently
- "Stealth" ships (along the lines of a "Cloaking Module")
- Ability to Board/Capture enemy ships and/or Freighters
- A campaign that runs more like a cohesive story, possibly with the ability to carry something over from scenario to scenario
- Orbitals (Ship yards, defense platforms, etc.)
- Ability to colonize moons and "Class 0" planets (even if you can only build one structure other than the colony itself, I have played several maps that had many entire star systems with not a single inhabitable planet)
- A terraforming option that allows you to "upgrade" the "Class" of a planet before colonization by one
- Star systems to have at least one habitable planet each, or an option for such

Well I think that might be more than my 2 bc worth for the day.

CB76

Stargates should be implemented, either as a means to make slow ships move fast, or as instant transportation to help in managing your empire. Lets face it, you cant have a large fleet protecting every colony that the enemy might attack. You should be able to send help without waiting for your enemy to have already conquered your planets.
Carriers should definately be implemented. I have always wanted a carrier in this game when only my larger ships can move fast enough to give me any tactical advantage when fighting a war.
Escape pods would also be nice. A small unarmed pod could be spawned and could be taken back to a starbase to transfer the old ship's experience into a new ship.

My thoughts on carriers -

1- They should be cargo hulls and as such very vulnerable to attack.
2- You have to manually deploy the fighters (which would by tiny vessles), if they aren't deployed when you're attacked.. sorry, they all blow up with carrier.
3- Each tiny fighter counts towards the logistics so you won't exceed your logistics ability.
4 - The main purpose would really be to create tiny vessles that don't need engines because the carrier will take them to the place where they will be deployed.

Expansions only go so far. I dont think they're worth the money most of the time. They're not going to totally redesign game elements. That's what they save for sequels. The only thing I'd expect to see in an expansion that might be worth paying for is Multiplayer, tho that really should be part of the original game. I know this thread isnt about multiplayer but, realistically, what else could they put in an expansion? More ship components, more techs, new campaign, new races. Personally, I dont think taking over the blue civilization with round ships will be 20 dollars more fun than taking over the red civilization with square ships, as it is now. I'm generalizing, but I think my point is in there somewhere. Of course this is just my opinion. Maybe Stardock will go the extra mile and make an expansion that's worth having.

So, from the topic, I guess that would make my suggestion "dont make it lame"