Game is solid for me. 1.2 is good. It has only crashed on me once and that was when a Windows popup activated, not the game's fault. Pretty rare when a 3D mode application can deal with switching back and forth from 2D. Wouldn't expect GC2 to be able to do that. It's really too bad that PC games are so hard to deal with from a development standpoint. Problem with PC's is so many hardware and OS variables. Hope that doesn't dissuade developers from making PC games in the future.
I'd like to make some feature requests. I didn't see any place specific for that so I'll post here. Hope that's okay.
I find playing a bit tedious toward the end when I have a lot of stuff out and about. I'd like to suggest some things to make gameplay less effort in that regard.
Update 1.2 added the "T" hot key which was a big help. I'd like to see a hot keys tab in the Options section. This would do two things, allow you to customize them to your liking and provide a reference to what hot keys are available. I often forget and need to refresh my memory for which keys do what. Hot keys are great for making the game less effort to play and a ready reference would make them even better.
I'd like to control the amount of screen real estate the mini-map occupies. I find I play from the mini-map quite a bit. The size is fine for universes large and below, but after that, it's too small for my old eyes. I'd love to be able to adjust it bigger and smaller. I'm aware I can just zoom it in and out, but I'd like to be able to use it without zooming. I find constant mini-map zooming too much effort.
I'd like to be able to turn off display of galactic resources on the mini-map. They are always on. Makes it harder to spot enemy ships and I'm always squinting at the mini-map as it is.
I'd like to be able to zoom the main view in and out. I'd like to increase zoom for battles and decrease it for navigation.
I'd like to completely disable automatic focus changes (excluding battles). I can shut them off for the main view, but even when the display doesn't shift, I get a "skip" button that asks me what to do with things like stacked ships and ships not doing anything. Most of the time I don't care and would rather deal with it manually for the times I do. I'd rather not get a prompt for every condition every turn. When you have a lot of ships out there, it's a pain.
When I put ships/fleets in sentry or guard mode, the game often forgets on the next turn compounding the problem in the previous paragraph. When I set a ship/fleet to guard or sentry, it should stay that way until I change it. Also fleets and ships sometimes drop out of autopilot before they get to their destination, again compounding the problem in the previous paragraph.
The rally point interface is not readily available. I'd like to easily remove stale ones without navigating to them.
Regarding the ship editor, I find I have a hard time locating the best items in the lists. It would be good if the lists sorted by position in the tech tree. They seem to sort alphabetically. It would be nice if the best item was always at the top and highlighted. Also, a couple of the most advanced weapons have their lines cut-off in the list making their values obscured.
When a mounted item is clicked in the ship editor, the only indication is an icon. The editor doesn't state what the item is. I have to do an icon comparison. It's hard on my eyes since the icons are not always distinctive. When a mounted item is selected, there should be a mechanism that textually identifies the item.
One note about gameplay, I played a game where I destroyed all the races except for one that I had an alliance with. In my mind I won the game, but the game didn't award me a victory. Why not?
Okay, thanks for your consideration and taking the time to read this rather long post. Great game and I really enjoy it.
- Craig
