I have been playing this game for some time now. I absolutely adore it, as much as I adored GalCiv I. There are a few things I'd like to comment on though, if these things have been covered somewhere in the forum, I must have not stumbled upon them.
I. Fleets and Starbases
What in essence is a fleet? It is a pack of ships overseen by a commander of some sort. If the commander looses ships in the fleet he fills out a report and sends it to proper authorities and new shi;ps are sent to him. This is not how it works in the game nor would I like for this to happen in such way, rather an idea I had much earlier, that creating a fleet in GalCiv currently has only one actual use - to boost attack and defence.
But fleets should be a player’s way of managing the army of his empire. After all, at a point we deal with such a great deal of ships, ordering the fleet in any way becomes... at least to me... dull and non-rewarding. Naming fleets becomes a cosmetic change, as a fleet is crushed and disappears completely. My idea is that fleets could be assigned to worlds and upon the creation of a fleet it would be saved what types of ships it contained. Once a fleet becomes crippled a world would immediately set a queue for production of the vessels the fleet lacks and send them to the fleet.
The same problem is with Starbases and Constructors. The first problem with them, that to fully utilize their power you have to do a lot of clicking and pointing Wouldn't it be easier of you could create an upgrade queue on a starbase so that arriving constructors immediately build the next item in the queue?
And on a side not: why do Constructors carry only one Construction Module? The idea I have connected to this are repair vessels. I mean - Construction module being one, rather small thing, and construction 'parts' being another, so that you can place one of the first more of the second. This way, you could use a single construction to build two upgrades on a starbase. Also, construction modules without parts could serve as something the game lacks completely - repair vessels.
II. Starports and fleets, Invading and Bombarding
"Our planet is currently surrounded by the Drengin fleet. Today we suffered a loss, when the Light Fighter Pounder I+ 9873 was launched immediately after being consteructed."
You get my point? A ship is constructed on the ground (obviously, since it can’t be destroyed during production) and then is launched. There should be two layers of ships being on the planet – especially since when you train like 12 units, it tells you Starport full, and though the ships attacking the planet can thus destroy ships on the Starport, they cannot effectively attack the planet without transports.
And also, when researching orbital defence what strikes me as odd, is that while you need an Orbital Fleet Manager to oversee fleets near a planet, you don’t need them in space.
The only explanation I found for that, is that the battle may not actually take place in orbit, but already within the planet’s atmosphere, above cities, among buildings and thus the manager is needed to avoid collisions.
But we know this is not the case…
So, a simple solution for that would be, to make ships in Starports unattackable, and the ‘Launch’ would only make ships Launch into a planet’s orbit. But, I’ll explain how that could work here:
1.Attacking units would have the option to actually penetrate the atmosphere and start firing at cities. There is a chance that ground units (probably troops with some short/medium range weaponry) shoot them down.
2. The defences of a planet can be on two layers: the starport (not reachable directly by the enemy) and the orbit, in both battles can take place.
3. Attack by armed units of a planet with units in orbit works as it does in GalCiv currently. Perhaps a dialogue could pop up if we wanted the units in Starport to join the battle above.
Respectively, if a planet is attacked and the units are only in Starport they can be launched. If units are not launched then the battle can take place right above cities, with the additional support of our units by the troops, or perhaps AA batteries (if built).
4. As such, Transports and bombarding vessels should be differentiated. The latter is important and would be an excellent way of causing pressure upon the enemy. We may not have sufficient troops, or populated words to dominate him, but we can cause unrest amongst the populace with bombardments. And from this comes another conclusion – we may want to wage wars merely to cripple an enemy, destroy a portion of his cities where he has built a galactic wonder, or we can cripple his economy/ industry or research.
III Boarding parties, holding planets
Alright, the major pain of GalCiv to my mind is the over-simplification of invasions. The time it takes to research that particular tech (planet invasions), is probably the time it takes to convince the populace of your empire, that genocide is nothing bad and is the only way to invade a world. After all this is what you essentially do – take populace from one world, train them within transports as they go, and drop them off on another world annihilating the enemy completely. There are no survivors.
This simplification leads to a certain… unprobability… On Earth, there are nations that clung to their own culture, though they were under the domination of other nations. After centuries they reclaimed independence… Don’t you think a lone Arcean with these Twi’lek horns won’t feel strange among Altarians? Revolts are at some point inevitable.
Cutting that aside, boarding parties is what the game lacks – period. I don’t care about capturing ships, but starbases are a must.
IV Commanders, Governors, Experience
Only briefly here. Planets have some sort of bureaucracy, it’s not like the leader is doing everything. He has some people that govern planets… As such, they can be bribed, influenced, etc. I don’t think I have to cover the implications.
As for commanders, this is something I personally lack. It is connected with what I wrote previously about fleets. They would serve as sort of heroes, you would love to have, hate to lose and love to kill those of the AI. Of course they have to be educated and they have to win battles.
V. Diplomacy
Where is meddling? Building up tensions, causing wars, leading to enemies losing Senat support through dropping world morale?
It’s not a rant – I love the game, and I am sure that with their ideas, agents, different planets, asteroids, Stardock is heading in a very good direction.