I've been using a number of brain-cycles to think about what could really help this game yet be at least barely feasible for a patch or expansion. And aside from a well thought-out ship combat system and an aggressive AI, which I gather is being worked on, I came up with.. ranges, or a new system thereof. Currently ship ranges become effectively meaningless at best and an annoying bother at the worst a number of turns into the game.

Imagine if you will a system where range is broken up into different kinds of "ranges" (Oh No! It's.. it's... Com-plex-ity! Run for the hills!) Seriously though, first of all you need 3+1 range zones that extend only from clonized planets.

- Core Range (up to 10 squares around a planet, effects include combat stats being increased akin to having a ship in orbit now, movement cost are halfed, ships repair twice as fast)
- "Normal" Range (up to 40 squares, everything "normal")
- Extended Range (always 10 squares larger than the normal range, ships fight worse, don't repair and slowly take damage, movement cost doubled. This also goes for starbases. You can build one, but it'll blow up sooner or later.)

- Deep Space (negative effects from the extended range doubled. sharply and logarithmically increasing chance away from the "edge" for any ship out there "getting lost" and never being heared from again.)

Fractional movements? Yes. GC2 players on average equal or surpass Civ players' intelligence, right?

"up to" X squares? Indeed. Every planet has a counter for every civ what percentage of the max range a planet "produces". The counter increases for the owning civ and decreases for every other so a re-conquered planet gets a portion of its old range back. But if you newly conquer a planet, you'll have to wait until you can realistically move on to the next. This is the main thing that needs to be accomplished and together with a good combat system and AI will add a lot of challenge and fun to the game. Steamrolling the enemy is simply boring and will happen as long ships aren't stopped from moving anywhere.

Now you can go wild with building on that system. Since the distance a range extends is determined by planets and is fixed, the mostly annoying concept of ship range can be scrapped. There may be modules such as a "deep space unit" that lets a ship operate in that zone to some extend, but it'd take up half the hull space. There could be starbases that turn one zone type into another, even for enemy civs, such as a "scrambler" module. Starbases that actually extend ship range could exist, but they'd have to be very expensive to construct and be useful, and starting one near another civ should approach an unprovoked attack to this and every other good and upright civ. Special rules for freighters seem logical, but they mustn't have weapons then, otherwise we might see The Attack of the Doom-Freighters

That should do for conveing my thoughts. I was mostly making up things as I was typing, but after this has been carefully thought through, wouldn't it be da bestest thing eva? Well at least possible and very desirable. After all one can argue that the system for calculating how many turns a ship will need to upgrade uses a similar concept already. There is a "1 turn" range, a "2 turns" range, ... and personally I have no idea how that is calculated, and I also don't care. Give me fun.. whether I understand everything or anything is secondary.

Please fix the fleet manager so that I do not have to disband a fleet to upgrade a ship. And it would also be helpful if you could trade away an entire fleet instead of having to trade each ship individually.

I would also like to see the influence points as a tool tip for each sector (so you know how much influence each race has in a square).

As for the fleet combat, since you're going to update this, why not have a setting in the fleet battle viewer so that the shots and results are in synch. It seems that now the results are flying by while the ships fire at a leisurely pace. I would like to see a ship fire, then the result posted (but allow it to be sped up for those that prefer). And yes, I know you can speed up the battle, but there is no way to get the results with the animations of ships firing in synch.

In the ship builder please allow the weapons to be sorted by damage done (and shields by damage mitigated).

Everything else sounds great!

I hate to sound like a broken record but my previous posts remain unanswered. When is the meteverse going to be retroactively recalculated? It has now been over 2 weeks since the release of 1.1 and we were told the recalc would be done upon its release. All I am asking for is a ballpark figure as to when it might be done. Thank-you

Sweet. You Stardockians are the rockstars of gaming.

Makes me wonder, would it be interesting to "bring back" STARGATES somehow into the game, for exansion.
Could have some interesting backstory potential (improved stargates that are static, but much quicker then hyperdrive).

I am not sure I like the new Fleet Combat they are talking about. It does not FEEL right that ships that are already killed (which won't be shown until the round is finished) are allowed to fire at (and maybe kill) me. There SHOULD be an advantage to attacking (as in the real world), but I have to admit that the present method seems like too much of an advantage. I think this would be balanced out if the battles were in real time, and then the result would more closely match the real world. Maybe 'real time' battles are too much to ask for now, but the ultimate solution would be 'real time' fleet combat. The idea of 'real time' battles in a turn based game has been used successfully in other games.

Whether or not they go back to the original GalCiv battle mechanics, I would like to see the Fleet Combat changed to allow me to choose the order in which my ships fire, and the order in which I attack the enemy ships. I don't like the AI deciding how I attack.

Display two lists (mine and enemy) of the ships with their attack, defense, hit points, etc. and allow me to select the order in which my ships fire upon the enemy. Also, allow me to select the order of enemy ships to attack (which one to attack first, second, third, etc.).

I would make this optional with a button within the Fleet Combat screen to select whether the AI should control my ships, or whether I will control my ships so I can go either way for each battle. That is, do not lock it one way or the other for the entire game. Some battles are more important or critical than others, and it is the critical ones I really want to control. There may be other battles I would be satisfied to let the computer control.

Enyclopedia Glactica all the way for 1.2!! Or for a bit cheaper the Hitchhikker's guide'll do. My biggest feature request is support for lower resolutions. Down to 800x600 or at the very least my TV's resolution 960x720. I would also really like to be able to upgrade ships within a fleet without first disbanding the fleet. Maybe its already possible but I can't find the upgrade button anywhere for fleet ships.