I think creating an expansion that focuses on a new campaign as its primary focus is a mistake. I've never been one for campaigns in TBS games, they are too constricting. I'd much rather you focus on improving the United Planets, epsionage and other game mechanics. Having other sides people incorporated into your population mean more would also be a bonus, I'd really like to see say the Drengin in my empire get upset because I was at war with them.

The campaign is not the primary focus. Where was this implied?

Note to self, never mention any expansion pack details until we're ready to release the whole announcement since people will read in all kinds of things.

I agree with previous poster. Campaings is nice but the main thing is sand-box. Slap in some more random events and its golden.

Note to self, never mention any expansion pack details until we're ready to release the whole announcement since people will read in all kinds of things.

Alot of us are just greatfull that you announced even slim details about future plans. Granted now I have to wait many months in anticipation - but oh well. Besides, surely by now you are used to not being able to do anything right (according to forum posters) - flamed if you do, flamed if you don't

Thank you for mentioning expansion pack details

Firstly, thank you Frogboy for posting this - I always look forward to your announcements. This experiment may not have turned out, but I hope it won't discourage you from continuing to push the envelope. I've played games by lots of different developer/publisher combinations, and to say that Stardock in general and GCII in particular are like a breath of fresh air is an understatement. It's more like breathing open air on a Class 26 planet, compared to the air in your hardsuit after living in it for 6 months straight while waiting for rescue in your disabled ship.

Just one question from me at this point. Are there any plans (for this expansion or otherwise) for enhancements that Metaverse players will be able to use? Small things like a new set of anomalies, alternate building icons, an expanded list of star names... Little things that could go a long way toward keeping the experience fresh, and would give your art/design staff something to do.

The campaign is not the primary focus. Where was this implied? Note to self, never mention any expansion pack details until we're ready to release the whole announcement since people will read in all kinds of things.

My apologies, Frogboy! My understanding was that the campaign would be a major focus of the expansion, by including two new races and killing off two more. I assumed that if the campaign was going to be expanded, then that would require the majority of the development time of the expansion, leaving little room for other features. Since this is clearly not the case, I apologize for my incorrect assumptions. We do like hearing about future features, so please don't hesitate to drop more hints soon! Like I said, I will be purchasing the expansion no matter what. If you guys made monkeys dance across my screen until my hard drive crashed, I would still buy it because the monkey AI wouldn't cheat. Keep up the great work!

I can't think of any race I really want killed off. Drathi are the only ones I could see getting bumped off.

My new vote: bump off nobody and just add races like the Snathi...

Wow. Are there that many players that don't like the Altarians too? Their attitude usually annoys me during sandbox games.

At first I thought that it would be the Drengin and Yor that will be destroyed, but... they're pretty much the bad guys in the GalCiv universe, so at least one of the two has to remain. It would make more sense for the allies of the Terrans to be destroyed during a desperate campaign.

Looking forward to the expansion pack, I must say though that I have no interest in campaigns, I have not even played the one already in the game.
What I really want to see added is an improvement on the enviroment (galaxy)

Stars: I would like to see these a little more realistic. Tone down the color saturation a little bit. Larger difference in size, make a red star a giant, white star a dwarf ect. Be nice to see solar flares too.

Planets: This is real beef with me, when a system has a huge planet with a rocky skin a tiny planet with a gas skin it just looks so lame. I really would like to see your code updated so that tiny worlds only get rocky skins, earth-like skins will only ever show up on med size worlds and gas giant skins will only ever show up on large worlds. Would be real nice to have more variety added too.

Galactic resources: How about instead of some radom diamond in the middle of space these resources appear on the useless planets that can never be colonized.

Nebulas: Not the background eye candy but actual gas clouds in the galaxy. Add some eye candy and strategy to the game. My thought was that ships inside of the cloud can not be seen by the enemy, unless they have a ship also in the cloud close to yours, you also would not be able to see thier ships. Could also make it that shields become useless.

Black hole: Make every map include a black hole, get too close and your ships get sucked in and destroyed. Makes nice eye candy and an obstacle ( more strategy) to the map.

Space and Land battles: Would be nice if there was some sort of interaction here. I am not suggesting the ability to fly ships but some interaction would be nice. Maybe some command like interface, concentrate fire on x ship, retreat ect. For retreat as an example, you see your forces are doomed so you order a retreat, give a penalty, say the enemy gets in a free shot before you can run away.

Of course I would also like to see a bunch more jewlery, hulls ect. Well thats my .02 for now.

Quote: "Also, currently when a race surrenders to another, the second race gets their planets. In addition they should also get their starbases, ships, technology, and star maps. Also the fortunes of war should play a role in your race's morale. If you are doing well your moral goes up and if you are losing it goes down; surely losing key planets (homeworld, capitals, and high PQ planets) should lower your morale."

I agree with these ideas and would like to encourage their adoption. In a potentisal GC3, I would still like all present races available for its 'Sandbox' mode, perhaps where you could choose them as minor races. What may need to wait for GC3, IMHO, is the development of Racial Personalities a bit more and the Beefing-up of M.R.'s; although I would not say no to this in GC2.

I'm one of those who hasn't played the present Campaign as yet. I love a lot of the User Mod content, the functional stuff like GC2Builder and particularly the Anomolies Mod from the Metaverse Library. These really enhance a great game and are worthy of total incorporation into the Core-Programming.

I suppose my point is that until I've played the present Campaign ( which I'm saving as a treat for the future), I can't really comment on those issues except to say that obviously it isn't an essential 'Must-Have'.

As of now I know that you acted on suggestions I made, and I realise that I'm probably not the only one who made such requests, but even though it may not have seemed like it, I am appreciative that you have made a great game with GC2 and that you are continually striving for the perfection that we all wish for - so a big Thanks from me to all the development team.

That You want my Cash as a Xmas Present is O.K. by me in return for the Expansion pack.
Keep up the good work.

Note to self, never mention any expansion pack details until we're ready to release the whole announcement since people will read in all kinds of things.

that's about where i stopped reading. you're funny, brad, and right of course.

when i voted in the poll, i voted for the thalans because i assumed two races would be gone from the game entirely. i don't think you implied it, but rather people don't think outside boxes unless their prompted to, which is really only thinking into a different box. anyway, in hindsight i'd change my vote. i was thinking the thalans and korx would be "removed" (rather than killed in a story) because they lack personality (even though, the iKorx bit in the cultural victory movie is GREAT! i love your sense of humor in this game).

however, now i feel the dead races will be based on dramatic value. altarians for sure. you can kill off their empire without killing off the race, vis-a-vis a "reunion" with their long lost bretheren. after that, i'd be at a bit of a loss to guess who'd go. i could see it being the drengin, simply because of the dramatic potential of a foe stronger than the drengin. but they're too enjoyably hate-able to kill off. so i'm going with the yor.

at any rate, does this mean we'll see sandbox games with up to 12 players? i want more players! well, actually i want more trade revenue, but that's beside the point. i'm also making inferences based on something in the 1.2b update log, about improving performance to gear up for really big galaxies...

as far as the expansion goes, i remember you saying there would also be a huge re-vamp of espionage. i hope you also can re-vamp the diplomacy. a lot of people would really enjoy more options, including the ability to make threats and demands. i just dropped a post somewhere about how it'd be nice to be able to specify a duration of certain loans, such as trade goods. i know you, collectively as a group, do catch most of our feedback and wishes.

i was thinking about the art the other day. i have some (more) ideas to improve it. maybe they're too much for GC2, though, but i think they're at least good ideas for art in GC3.

add a color base for windows. i find myself picking many of my jewelry pieces based on the color of the base hull's windows (on most of the jewelry, they're yellow in the drengin model or bluish white in the terran or just white in the other models).

you'd really knock my socks off if you could do this. add sliders for effects in addition to just color: for hull colors, add a dull/shiny slider that wil cause the hulls to reflect other ships, stars and nebulae; for engine and my suggested window colors, add a luminosity slider that renders visual halos.

now that would be full use of shader model 3.0. okay, maybe beyond it, but only if you were trying to render 10,000 ships. it's the battles i really want looking good.

i had an idea the other night for a couple ideas you might consider to streamline the memory and processing requirements needed to render ships, but i don't know how workable it is because i don't know how dependant on hardpoints your ship rendering is.

if you had a protocol for final ship design that allowed players to remove invisible components, it could cut down a bit. i know i can spend a lot of time building very elaborate large and huge ships, and i often use small structural pieces to get everything in just the right place. i never see these pieces.

instead of calculating the position and appearance of every piece connected to each other, might it save some space if a player could remove those invisible pieces before finalizing a ship design, and have the game rander the used pieces relative to the center of the base hull rather than a series of hard points?

you could even take it a step further, by having the game comapct a final design into a single, unique 3D frame and texture. if it could intelligently remove any wire framing and texture that would otherwise be rendered in the visual negative before finalizing a ship design, wouldn't that cut down considerably on system use?

only downside to that would be that upgrading designs later would be impossible. but i've suggested a "prototype" idea in the past, where a hull design can be saved completely free of tech requirements (except for the necessary hull sizes) to be upgraded later. actually, that's my biggest hesitation in creating a new ship design on the spot in a game. if i really like it, being able to use it again in another game is based on having all the same tech that went into the ship. actually done this all ready to a large extent: rewrote raceconfig.xml, gave myself all the component techs and nothing else, and spent a night designing and naming empty but pretty ship bases.

anyway, i know your neurons are all ready firing over there, and you're producing a fantastic product. thinking back to 1.0, the amount of progress you've made in so short a time is quite honestly staggering.

I am aching to announce what is in the expansion pack because I think people are going to be pretty happy about what we're doing. Most of the features are not going to be the kinds of things people would think of at first.

Why does the top of the post say "Sometimes evil wins?" I'm not sure I get that.

Also, up here in Canada, 50.5% does represent a democratically-based majority. If you recall, 50.5% of Quebecois voted not to separate from Canada on October 30, 1995. Based on that result, we retained our national unity. If we had held out for an "obvious majority", we'd all be eating Freedom Fries with our American cousins, singing the Star Spangled Banner, and readying military conscripts for the invasion of Montreal.

Of course, Stardock isn't a democracy, so you guys can say what you will with your polls, I just wanted to point out that 50.5% does represent the majority.

I am aching to announce what is in the expansion pack because I think people are going to be pretty happy about what we're doing. Most of the features are not going to be the kinds of things people would think of at first.

Stop teasing us and hand out the real thing! We're at your mercy already.

ok could gonna be bold here and make a couple of requests for an expansion

i would like to see some more map geography, like stellar nurserys, and quasars mayb block holes preventing starbase construction....ect.

The game is great but lacks strategy based on permanant anomolies, id like to be able to plan a sneak attack, and go thouugh a nebula, or be forced to go round one.

Also if possible, i would like to see slightly more cinematic battles, maybe with fighters strafing more and flying off, rather than the naval style battles we see. Something slightly more energetic. For instance, have the fighers go in close whilst the big gun sit back and barrage the enemy.

Implament these and ill buy the expansion for sure.

I am aching to announce what is in the expansion pack because I think people are going to be pretty happy about what we're doing. Most of the features are not going to be the kinds of things people would think of at first.

Now you made me anxious......

REALLY hoping a map editor/creator is in the expansion.
Any clues?

Chris.

A bit late, but thanks Frogboy for the clarification. Two additional races is always going to be neat, and I look forward to seeing the other things you've got planned.

Although, hopefully not organic hulls and nebula 'terrain'.

The campaign is not the primary focus. Where was this implied? Note to self, never mention any expansion pack details until we're ready to release the whole announcement since people will read in all kinds of things.

I apologise, I never intended to cause offense. Unfortunately the way I read events and your posts lead me to the wrong conclusion and re-reading your original posts tells me perhaps I was hasty in my original assessment. I hope that this does not cause you to cease giving info on the expansion to others because I was only seeking to enter the debate, not end it!

My comments were meant constructively and in no way were they designed to come across as flaming. Indeed I have only said positive things about the game and really enjoy playing it (please see my site www.waitingtoconnect.com to see my review if you care to read it) and I am really looking forward to the expansion no matter what it finally contains.

I am aching to announce what is in the expansion pack because I think people are going to be pretty happy about what we're doing. Most of the features are not going to be the kinds of things people would think of at first.

Okay, now my curiosity is well and truly piqued! I can't wait to see what you guys are going to be including.

By the way, I love the tagline. "Sometimes evil wins." Heh.

Of course, Stardock isn't a democracy, so you guys can say what you will with your polls, I just wanted to point out that 50.5% does represent the majority.

Twelvefield, re-read what I wrote carefully. I said "a narrow majority" and that we really needed a "Super majority". A super majority is commonly referred to as either 2/3rds or 3/4ths depending on the situation.  So I stand by my semantical usage.

apologise, I never intended to cause offense. Unfortunately the way I read events and your posts lead me to the wrong conclusion and re-reading your original posts tells me perhaps I was hasty in my original assessment. I hope that this does not cause you to cease giving info on the expansion to others because I was only seeking to enter the debate, not end it! My comments were meant constructively and in no way were they designed to come across as flaming. Indeed I have only said positive things about the game and really enjoy playing it (please see my site www.waitingtoconnect.com to see my review if you care to read it) and I am really looking forward to the expansion no matter what it finally contains

No problem.  I have the same opinion on campaigns as you do. I almost never play them.  But for those who like the story aspects of the game, the campaign is there to tell the story.  As far as I'm concerned, the only point to the campaign is to help build the fictional universe up.

Personally I'd have liked for there to be a mini-expansion with new ship parts, so I could opt out of paying for that part and still get the real expansion. Unfortunately my interests run counter to Stardock's in this case.

Also, up here in Canada, 50.5% does represent a democratically-based majority. If you recall, 50.5% of Quebecois voted not to separate from Canada on October 30, 1995. Based on that result, we retained our national unity. If we had held out for an "obvious majority", we'd all be eating Freedom Fries with our American cousins, singing the Star Spangled Banner, and readying military conscripts for the invasion of Montreal.

Quick! Build some more influence starbases!

Quick! Build some more influence starbases!

Hahaha.... No worries!

Well, I was excited about the mini-expansion, so that's too bad. GalCiv2 is an awesome game, and more of a good thing is almost always better.

However, I'm sure Stardock will not disapoint us. The patches have been awesome, and those are just bug fixes and extra content provided in their free time at no cost to us. Imagine what they must have planned for a full x-pack that they expect us to pay for. I mean, we're not talking about EA here. These guys actually care what we think AFTER we buy the game.