Independent Corporations and Smuggler Groups

I think this is a great idea - perhaps a modified minor race could do this. A few different minor race categories would be good -
1. actual new civilizations
2. outcasts and smuggler groups
3. Aggressive and expansionist minor races (Snathi, Dark Yor)

all with different AI algorithims so they behave in a different way. I think the super ability the Drengin have would be good for the smugglers (the one that give you free ships when war is declared) so they would be a bit tougher to take over too. Oh, and also make all of them unable to build construction modules on their ships, so they don't waste time spamming influence starbases everywhere that don't do anything or gobbling up all the resources and not have other civs be able to buy them. This is something I am hoping for in the next expansion.

Espionage already provides a lot of this, but it would be a welcome addition in my opinion. It would add depth and character to the already lacking Minor Races.

Haha minor races are lacking? If you ever want to have some fun, give a minor race two or three worlds... They go nuts! It was explained a while back that a minor race wont really expand on its own. But something about them gaining additional worlds overrides something in the code and they start going for blood!

If I ever want to mess with an AI I give the minor race closest to them some planets and cash and get them to declare war on the major... Entertainment at its best!

actually, I wasn't thinking of minor races to be a smuggler group or a Shipyard corporation, but a new panel with some options.

But the idea of doing it through minor races is nice. It is possible to have a minor race owning only a starbase (let's say military). That would be nice for a Shipyard Corporation. Once it is destroyed, they no longer make deals in that part of the galaxy.

Smugglers could easily have a world (or be part of one)

Uh, last time I looked you could buy ships already.

But I do like the idea of independant corperations etc, just what to do with them ?

Usually an economy works (very roughly) like this:
You arrange your economic laws so that companies can prosper. Then the companies trade stuff, and from the traded value you get taxes.
Currently in GalCiv2 this 'please the companies so their taxes please you'-aspect is replaced by 'more people = more tax', which is a very rough approximation.

Actually GalCiv2 has companies, but they are just text-strings. Remember the screen where you can buy ships and see the price for it? Actually there's a list of offers everyone ignores, and these offers are made by different companies.
A good way to expand companies would be:
At gamestart a number of companies are generated. These companies trade stuff between planets - domestic trade. You get a part of this value as taxes. More people means more stuff means more value means more taxes. You'd basically reduce the tax revenue from the population and replace that part with revenues from domestic trade. If you fail to secure trade (pirates, anyone?) their profit decreases and you get fewer taxes.
That'd put some more use to trade-goods and would make you want to place starbases along certain trade routes between important planets.

Actually there's a list of offers everyone ignores, and these offers are made by different companies.

True, but with those companies, you can buy only a ship created in your shipyard, which mean that you actually have the proper technologies.

My idea was to be able to buy a ship, let's say, with beam weapons even if you haven't researched beam tech at all (concentrating on missiles for example). Could be in a new screen like "Market Place" where there would be a list of corporations with their goods. The list would expand according to the degree of exploration of your Civ.

Well historically corporations always have a national affiliation and aren't able to act as totally independent agents. If you had an independent corporation that had no trade restrictions, it would pretty much be equivalent to a minor race.

I'm with the Eradicator there.
You can't really go out and buy a aircraft carrier or submarine today. There isn't a free market for those things, that's all controlled by governments (mind you, I don't do that kind of business all day, so this is just a 'as far as I know').

So if you want to get some ships from a different branch of the techtree check out some other races. In my latest game the Paolos had some pretty good ships in stock (I was technologically behind because of the colonization rush). If you're good at diplomacy you can get them for a reasonable price and it sure makes for a surprise when you roll in a fleet rocket-frigates when the AI thought it'd beat you by defending well against your beams.
If you want a minor race to shell out ships make it declare war on someone on the other side of the galaxy. Works nicely.

You two have a point.

I would have like though to see a Minor Race "profit oriented". Not war, not colonization, just plain profit through selling ships, techs, etc..

I would be satisfied for the Corporation Idea.

As for the smugglers, any thoughts ?

How about adding that here:
Foreign Relations -> Minor Races -> Black market -> Speak to
They've got techs, they've got ships - and they have no conscience. They also maintain pirate ships and raid trade-ships once in a while, or even capture other race's military ships. You can trade with them and they'll like you and spare you. Or you just pay them tribute. Or you use espionage and gain knowledge of the location of their ships. Or you ask them to attack someone - costs money, but your target won't know who send them.

That actually puts both of your ideas into one that is even very senseful in GalCiv's context. It doesn't require many changes and is still very effective.

Remember, they don't want to introduce too many other ways to achieve victory or to make one way advantagous over another. For example, espionage now has a major upgrade and it "could" be one of the factors in which you can obtain victory. So if you make black markets and so on and so forth, the AI will take advantage of that too or can always take advantage of that to obtain victory. People might forget about researching the weopons and armors. Besides, you can always buy off ships from other major races if you have a high enough diplomacy combined with the "Galactic Bazaar". Now with Dark Avatar, you can always attack the diplomacy of your enemy by sabotaging specific diplomatic buildings with your spies. That way if you can get an edge in diplomacy, you can be able to for example trade sensor technology to be able to in the future build the eyes of the universe and upgrade your starbases with better sensors. There are so many combinations, I think with great timing and with the use of your espionage, you can do alot of damage in different ways to your enemy. Bottom line is I see no reason to create black markets or independent and or special groups since you can "create" them with your new espionage system. Hope you get the idea...

Hope you get the idea...

Interestingly I don't, actually.

I believe you are trying to make two points:
First, if handled carefully you can do everything the black market does, via diplomacy on the 'official' way. So instead of anonymously making pirates attack an enemy you don't want to wage war on yet you make some minor race declare war, pump them full of money, techs and ships and thus also get your military conflict. Or you buy ships you can't build yourself from someone else.
Secondly, there are already quite different way of gaining victory. We should be careful not to create a too wide band of strategies.

Let's assume I guessed right:
On the first one you really do have a point. I'm really considering designing new minor races to get that job done. I will have to dig in a few xml files to see how well that'll work. If that works a diplomacy screen for that black market isn't necessary. However, I still keep on to the ideas of pirates and domestic trade.
The second point is a bit more difficult to comment on. I can see that a wide array of strategies can be harmful to the game if you play a campaign that is designed to be rather short. It is difficult to switch strategies in a short time in the original GalCiv2 (which I modified for that purpose), so if the strategy-branch spreads too far the "Make it or Break it"-part of GalCiv is strenghtened. On a long-time campaign, huge galaxies, few enemies, few stars, few planets, few habitables, many possible strategies are important to keep the game interesting. Every new tool improves the gameplay a lot, because it gives me the ability to play out even more complex plans to domination.

By the way I don't plan to buy DA, because most of it's changes don't fit my playing style. I'd have to rip half the addon out so the gamemechanics are basically the same, just with some new stuff like that nice ship-review screen and some more ship-juwelry.

Another point I want to make about "black markets" is that they are not static. They cannot afford to stay in business for too long at a same location because of the fear of getting caught by the governments etc... So with this new espionage system where you have agents working in enemy territory, well guess what, they can get caught. We might have to move those agents around, because I think these agents are going to be an effective asset to the game unlike before. They can create conditions where we can acquire ships very cheap with timing and by placing the agents in the right places.