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.

I would like ability to claim resources without Constructor, with my military ships, if it's inside my influence borders.

It happens so often during war for 3rd party to claim resources of my conquered enemies.

Also, call me paranoic, but I really think AI too often blindly finds resources in my territory, that I'm pretty sure he never explored before. So he gets strait with Constructor and claims them very quickly in the game (noticable on higher difficulty levels).

I suspect something similar related to Colonization, but I can't prove it.

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!

Frogboy - Note: Your sphere of influence is NOT your territory.

You keep saying that, but the point remains, if someone was to build a military starbase (or amass a fleet of ships) next to your world, it would be tantamount to declaring war.

ringing a world with influence starbases amounts to the same thing.

there should be a diplomatic way to basicaly tell the AI that a) i know what your doing, and failure to stop will result in war. they can then concede the base (or have the ships deported), or accept the declaration of war.

similarly the AI should understand the proximetry of your planets and avoid sending their armed ships nearby (to avoid the risk of confrontation)

and the lack of 'territory borders' is unrealistic, no sovereign nation would a) not have borders, and allow them to be violated in the way the AI does. this is just invites sneak attacks and being hit in your weakest point.

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

Im torn by the change to the attack/defend.

If now I KNOW I will get to fire no matter what, why not crank out a lot of small ships with no engines and lots of guns with NO defense? Sure, 50% will get blasted but so will thier few capital ships. You would win by simple numbers with wave after wave of massive fighter fleets as they all get to fire even if they are attacked first.

However this would help my defensive fleets so that is a good thing but its still something to wonder about.

I have faith that ballance will be found but Im not sure if this will work as hoped.

Sweet. You Stardockians are the rockstars of gaming.

Okay, these probably aren't reasonable suggestions, but since you asked...(did you ask? ) I apologize if any of these have already been done, I haven't played enough to know. But please tell me if they have!

- I think Trade Goods should require two unrelated techs instead of one to be able to build. This would make them more challenging to obtain and would add for more play diversity, since you would be less likely to have access to the same ones every time.

- I would like to see more high tech possibilities such as:
- being able to destabilize (and later) stabilize stars, since some star types are less hospitable than others. This would be a cool way to create/destroy habitable planets or change PQs.
- being able to gate ships from suitably equipped planets or starbases (hate having to move my fleet across the entire galaxy to attack a minor race with one planet in a corner of the map
- being able to blow up enemy planets with uber-ships, and being able to create low PQ planets with some Terraforming tech (this could be limited to Low PQ planets like Mars to prevent abuse).
- Why not have psychic weapons or soldiers? Why just plasma/beam/mass driver. It would be cool if you could use a planet's population to attack a ship in orbit with mind weapons or something. Or you could make it a type of sensor that radiates from a planet to detect ships.

- If you invade a planet with Core Detonators or Gas Warfare or something, it could be consider a Galactic Atrocity and cause all races to like you less/hate you.

Okay, I've had my walk through the candy shop now.

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 actually hope they add multiplayer in one of these future patchs. I used to be against it as a waste of time but I now have been getting many people into this game that have been wanting to do MP for a while. These people i can actually trust to do an extended long game as well. I just thought i'd mention that.

To sum it up: MULTIPLAYER

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.

In Alpha Centauri before a governors election or some UP council vote was coming up you could bribe or entice some of the other AI players to vote your way during the elections or choices. This would be a nice improvement to the UPC in GalCiv II. It's how I eventally won the planetary govenors seat. It should be expensive, but, at least possible to influence some of the other races or they even the human player. That was something I don't recall the Alpha Centauri AI ever doing was asking for my votes.

Also I am all for the new change to the combat system. It was easy to use a very cheesy tactic of speed to gain first strike advantage over the AI everytime. All ships should get to fire at least once before being destroyed. This makes a lot of sense to me. Although I would like to see perhaps something different later on in GalCiv III as a real time battle and initiative playing a role in the combat sequences. Perhaps tied to the ships "experience" levels. Then even if you attack first you could lose a ship or two to the better experienced combat pilots.

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.

Will saving and restoring a game be fixed to work properly at some point?