What the devil are you talking about? DA added tons of new stuff to build with. In my shipyard I have three tabs for non functional pieces, 'my style', 'generic' (or something like that... bad memory ), and 'other'... again, something along that line. In the 'generic' tab (the middle tab) there are attachment points, lights, insignia 'badges', flags, and other various pieces. If you went and messed with the files like you said, there may be some issues now. However, AFAIK the expansion pack added tons of cool new stuff to build with... as well as 'blank' hull designs, which basically means that you pick an attachment point as the hull and then you can actually use any building component as your hull. Pretty cool stuff in all and I think you might have missed something... what's that saying? "If it was a snake it would have bit you", yeah, that's the ticket. Hope this helps.

I just found it. Thanks, Evil Stormbringer. I only looked at the tabs themselves before. Yeah when I clicked on Extras there were 3 sub-tabs hidden in there. Holy crap, dude, there are tons of stuff here. WOW. Time to get my hands dirty!

Make the random events when checking a planet more difficult to decide. As it is now it's basically Penalty=Good, small penalty-small bonus=Neutral and Bonus=Evil. Like the three examples given:

You find on the planet that an immortal monk lives on the planet's surface. He seems to be a famous activist for the side of good but doesn't like discussing how he became immortal. Good (Let him stay on the planet and do as he wishes)= ++Morale (on planet), +Income (from tourism). Neutral (Ask for any help he is willing to give and let him go on his way)= +Pop growth (people living longer), +Income (it used to be his home). Evil (Dissect him to figure out how he gained his longevity)= ++Pop Growth, -Relations from good races

Alternatively, you find a former military genius that had a tendency to randomly kill off scientists and other people throughout the galaxy just for fun. Good (hold him on trial for his crimes)= +Morale, +Research% (galaxy-wide) (no longer afraid of being randomly killed). Neutral (let him leave the planet after giving some tips for your soldiers)= +Soldering. Evil (Enlist him to your side to help teach your people how to fight)= +Soldering, +Military stat, -Research% (You are enlisting someone who does kill scientists for fun, remember.)

Or a generic event where one side=+Morale/Econ/Prod -PQ, the other side =+PQ -Morale/Econ/Prod and Neutral is do nothing.

One key thing to fix in my view is definately the colony rush. It makes the game too dependent on luck in the beginning and force you as a player only to focus on building colony ships. Make it more expensive with colony ships, add a few techs necessary even to build a first colony ship. And above all: there should be a way to threaten colonies even early in the game (e.g. bombing them). The game would then be more about empire building and less about getting lucky in grabbing the nice star systems in the face of the AIs.

As an option when setting up the game the player could be able to set how much money everyone starts with (for me 5000 is too much).

Why do you always get the best bonuses when choosing evil acts in reply to events? I think the three alignments should be neutral overall as regards the bonuses, and then the actual events in the galaxy and how you react to them will decide how much profit you can make out of it. As it is now you sometimes wonder why you should care to play the good guys if you regularly just get penalised for it.

Trade routes are a good ingredient but it can feel like micromanagement to set up and uphold all of them: would it be possible to include also some other ways for income (not having to build only stock exchanges on all your planets)?

It would be a help if the ship presently selected was highlighted somehow. Maybe it flashes at fast speed or changes color. It is frustrating whem you think you have selected a ship but end up moving a different one.

I have also noticed that if I have atacked a planet with a ship and that ship runs out of steam, the system seems to automatically move some other ship in its place the next time I ask it to attack that planet again. This should not happen, it often disrupts my plans. Only the selected ship should attack. If it runs out of steam, the player should get some indication of this, so he can select an other ship if he whishes.

Note: If the above highlighting proposal is implemented, when the ship has moved its maximum distance, it should be de-selected.

*I'd like to see the spy/espionage with both the DL and the spys together. Also, I think we should be able to espionage minor civs too using the DL version. They should be mutally exclusive, just added functionality.

*The galatic achievements that start with hyperion, dont always affect the entire empire, and ALL GALACTIC ACHIEVEMENTS should always affect the entire civ, otherwise they should be downgraded to civ achievements as appropriate.

*I've seen alot of remarks in different threads about starbase management, and having played a few starbase version games in DL on gigantic maps, I now realize a rally point management screen/ or handling constructors rally/civ rally points seperately would solve this problem. Although I personally favor a management screen where I can review which ships/planets have which ships assigned with ETAs.

*trade revenue should be modified by economic bonuses. Isn't trade the essence of economy anyways? And shouldn't trade and tourism be combined? I've always understood them as different mechanisms for the same thing(i.e. economy)? Therefore, any income regardless of the source should get the civ's economic bonuses applied.

*all military starbases should have a techtree for affecting ship speed (i.e. superisolationist ability) that only applies to the military starbase. Since the superisolationist ability applies to all planets and starbases this seems more balanced.

Opps! That was supposed to be morale (sorry)

*An option in the setup screen to disable spies.

*A map editor + perhaps scenario/campaign editor/builder. It just would be awesome to make my own campaigns and stories.

*A map even larger than gigantic, but not more planets or stars in it. Space is supposed to be very very big and empty.

*Supernova's, or the birth of a new starsystem..

*Economic bonus on planetary tiles

*Better diplomacy options, get out of my territory issue or pay me 10bc/week. Asking permission for trespassing other territories. Automatically enabling this issue for allied races.

*Diplomatical invitiations: invite the leader of another race for dinner, while improving your relations, the other race get's also an intelligence bonus.

*Do something about the tons of constructormodules you need to improve your starbases..perhaps constructors with multiple modules (more expensive and slower, but less ships needed and less micromanagement)

*Maybe something stupid but i like big fights, now we're just sending fleets to eachother, maybe some ability to deliver a message telling the other race the battle will take place at a certain starsystem. You and you're enemy send all available fleets(or only your strongest) there and when they've all arrived(and only then), the battle begins..that way the result of the war would be known within a few turns and not after a couple of hundred. I personally like this idea..or perhaps a less direct alternative. If you are at war the AI sends all it's fleets to the closest and least defended planet, intelligence information would tell you where exactly they're heading.

*As said before: more in depth information/options...concerning: culture, trade(what are we trading with them?), influence..

*perhaps designing starbases

*comets moving like ships but in certain trajectories (shown on map after researchng stellar cartography). A nice add could be to change the trajectory over time so that these comets are on a collision course with ships, stars or planets, destroing them, making them inhabitable..until you discover a new extreme colonization method, or you wait long enough until the natural environment of the planet is restored..(this would be a nice graphic and gameplay addition)

*an option to set your population on a planet to a certain value. For example when you've used a +300% food bonus, the population grows to match the value of you're food production, being difficult for morale to control...maybe if we could set population growth to a certain value, reducing morale problems on that planet to a minimum, people actually start using these bonuses.

These features would be nice addition for me as a fan of an already "superbe" game. I do not really expect you to add these ideas into the game. Just saying that if you choose to, it would make me a happy man.

I would be nice if more options and realism, was added to the weapons.

1: One possibility would be to add a range limit to each weapon. This would allow ships to do battle with ships in other sectors instead of being right beside them. The further away you are from your opponent, the less damage a laser could do for example. Missiles would run out of power at a certain distance and loose accuracy the further they go. Mass weapons would loose speed and energy. Now there could actually be a bigger difference between laser 1 and 5 if range increase is added to the mix.

2: Ships should also be able to fire their weapons at planets to destroy improvements, and kill solders to support ground troops.

3: Military base stations should be able to attack enemy ships that pass within "X" distance from them instead of just being sitting ducks as they presently are. In fact, they are so easy to destroy that I don't waste time creating them anymore. They need more offensive power so they can stand up to a fleet of attackers. Right now it is not "if" but "when" they will be destroyed. When they are under attack, they should be able to ask for assistance from any surrounding ship.

4: Planets should have their own ground base laser and missile defence systems to shoot down attacking ships. They should have a range of one to 5 sectors. This could also serve as a defence against influence station that are poisoning your people. I think that this would increase the difficulty of interplanetary war and require a greater amount of strategic planing for invasions since your opponent could now wipe out your fleet with ground based weapons even if they have no ships in orbit. Intelligence and espionage would play a key part in assessing the enemies "ground to space" defensive capabilities. Maybe radar ships would be needed for ground survey operations.

What ever it is called, artillery, ranged weapons or long ranged weapons, I agree with you that they would be a new type of weapon or new weapon catagory. A ship could be equiped with the existing short range weapons as well as medium and long range weapons. For planetary ground attacks special space to ground weapons would be needed. This way the player would have to develop special ships for each task because "space to ground" and "long range" weapons would be bulky and expensive and would not yeald any improvements over standard weapons in close combat.

During battle if you choose to shoot at a ship in a far sector, you better hope that it,s weapons range are not better than yours or you are toast! Plus they always have the option of getting closer to you if they have hyperwarp capability. I love all the new battle scenarios that ranged weapons could add to the game.

Adding ranged weapons to planetary defence systems would also change the face of invasions. You would no longer be able to wait closeby with your transports, because the ground missile systems could shoot them down from many sectors away.

An other usefull thing to incorporate would be wormholes that could be used by all ships to move between two fixed locations. this would be useful for trade and to travel on huge maps. Random worm holes may be a surprize from time to time as well.

In large galaxies building starbases across your empire is very time consuming. I think you should get rid of some of the micromangement of it. I wish you could put more then one construction module on a constructor so you don't need as many to fully equip a starbase. Increse the cost if you have to so it costs the same, but at least it will get rid of a little bit of micromangement.

Once trade routes are established, I find it difficult to identify free freighters from those engaged in routes. This seems to depend on the zoom factor used.