Here's one. Since it seems that different users have different systems, duh, can we have a game or update that will work across the broad spectrum of user's machines? I didn't feel that my HP was that lacking to begin with, but people on this forum showed me otherwise. I went out and spent some loot to make my system 'more compatible' with this game (shouldn't it have been the other way around? Make the game run on the machine, not build the machine to run the game?). Now I fully expect to get flamed for this, but come on, to have this many issues with no resolutions to them... please. Simple glitches I can deal with but this issue with the CTD's is very frustrating. So since my debug's don't seem to help what will? The only thing that will help, assuming I still even want to play this game, will be to make a version that can be universally used by pc's everywhere, regardless of being an HP, a Dell, a Compaq, or a Sony... even though they are all pretty much the same. Is this asking too much? Should I just give up and admit to myself that I've pretty much wasted a ton of money just for the sake of this one game? Again, my argument lies in the fact that ANY OTHER GAME I OWN will run just fine on my system, even better since upgrading... every one but this one. Why is that?

Just to add:Let us know what you'd like us to do. We are at your disposal!
Brad, this was your comment... so I am letting you know... make this game work on my PC! Or, would it make more sense to have you build a version around my system specs so that the money I spent isn't money wasted? Read this to yourself out loud a few times and see if you don't get where I am coming from.

WAYPOINTS

I've never had the auto explore setting perform very well. My scouts usually go to the same position and it's really ineffective. I would like to set a my own course with waypoints, spanning over weeks at a time, for my ships. The ship would go directly to Waypoint A (in a straight line if possible), then to Waypoint B, and so on. An easy way for the user to access this would be to just hold down a key while setting the course normally, such as Ctrl.

Hi!
In all my DA games I haven't seen an AIs' small hull with an engine. Even on medium hulls is an engine quite rare. What I'd like to see is significantly smaller engines for smaller hulls, and bigger engines for huge. Like:

hull    size change
-------+------------
tiny     40% 
small    60%
medium  100%
cargo   110% (?)
large   130%
huge    160%

This could be IMO accomplished with about halving the base size for all engines, and significantly increasing (tipling?) the sizemod for them. With this chanege small hulls could became faster (more usefull for a longer time), and huge hulls would lose some if its overwhelming power.

BR, Iztok

Default base naming -
Make the default name of bases, both regular and resource, tied to the type of base, like 'morale resource base 1' or 'economic base 1'. That way we'll be able to identify them with a mouse over.

Technology screen-
Show the number of research points generated instead of the amount of bc's spent.

Show remaing number of research points left until current project is complete. This will help with focus management in the colony management screen.

Make the technology screen refresh when it is brought up. Currently when you switch between the colony mangement screen and the technology screen it does not consistently update. You usually have to click around between various screens to get the tech screen to update. This is important because sometimes the tech screen will show one turn remaining to research project completion when it is actually two turns.

Documenting results of ethical choices-
Somehow show prominently on the planetary screens the practical results of of ethical decisions for a planet. For example, if an ethical choice gives you -28% production, show that information. This will help manage colonies more efficiently.

Engin changes:


EXCELENT idea. right now i almost NEVER build tiny or small ships, yet the AI seems to be head over heals inlove with them. i play on tough or cripling and the AI seems to constantly waist time with these little ships. adding this feature would alow them to be more useful, benifitin the AI. and also, it would make me want to use them. It only makes sense that it would take a much smaller engin to power a fighter then to power a dreadnought. giving them the same engin and saying the move the same speed is, quite fankly, rediculous. i know this would alow more to be put on a the tiny ships... so maybe make their hulls even smaller if thats a problem.

also id like to see a supper tiny ships (fighters) with 1 LP. i long for the day when i can have HORDS of cheep fighters in fleets with my dread noughts. a nice idea for Huge hulls only would be a carrier bay. this would allow any fighters (currnetly the tiny class but id like to see a seprate "fighter" class of 1 LP) in that fleet to have the same movement points as the huge ship. this would allow these supper tiny fighters to not need their own engins. this makes perfect sense since a fighter would go no were with out a supporting capital ships... as any star wars fan should already know

GOOD. GOOD. GOOD. IDEAS.

When you save a game in order to quit, I would like some visual indication of how the save is progressing and when it is finished.

Several times after a quicksave, I have quit the game before the save is complete and locked up the computer. Very annoying. Equally annoying, is having to watch the 'activity light' on the computer, before quitting. It always gives an extra couple of blips, just when you think it has finished.

Minor changes to colony management screen. These two changes would allow for much less clicking between screens when managing the colonies.

1. Show tech project and turns to completion.
This would help manage the focus buttons so you could tell if you went from 1 to 2 turns until project completion or from 2 to 1.

2. Show tax rate and allow people to adjust the tax rate from the colony management screen.
This would help manage the morale/tax tradeoff early in the game, especially planets near 76% and 100% morale.

Are you getting all of this? You have a lot on your plate now. My idea is to keep working on the United Planets, the diplomatic area of this game, and the AI. This game is already wicked gnarly cool, but it will become a religion eventually if you keep on working on these area's of the game. I bought Civilization 4 last december because I love 4E games, and I eventually started using it as a paperwieght. The game came with a number of bugs, and the game designers never thought once to update the game. Bravo GC2DA designers! I also suggest using Wyndstars idea's I really thought those were smart feasable balancing idea's. One more idea that was meantioned I would like to see worked into the game is this:
Demographics.

Instaed of the "everyone is wiped out in planetary invasions", thre are seperate policies for conquest for each race

Annhiliation- Simple enough. Evil Only.

Slavery- conquered population porvides bonus production. there is a chance of revolt. Evil only.

exploitation- Conquered population provides bonus tax income. There is a chance of revolt. Neutral and evil.

non-policy- No effect. for neutrals who don't want to bother with revolt risk.

Equal rights- conquered population gradually merges into conqueror's. Bonus influence. Good only.

The revolt risk could be mitigated through the presence of new "police ships" or eliminated with a new "opression palace" improvement.

So please please please use Wyndstars and chipwichs advice

But that's the point of spying, it's supposed to be expensive. If spies weren't destroyed everytime, they would just end up becoming too powerful. At some point you could completely cripple an AI with all your "recycled" spies. Hell you could probably completely cripple all the AIs and walk away with the game if your spies never died. Just crank up the spending and blanket the universe in no time. It would be too much of an exploit.

Yes, it's expensive. At the moment, it's so expensive that it's a total waste of money. My idea would be no less expensive, but you'd get an actual effect out of the money you spend.

It's already set so that the more spies you have, the more it costs to get even more of them. It's just that right now, it's hardly noticable since getting more than a few spies at a time is utterly pointless, and getting any spies at all isn't much better. So, with that being the case, it doesn't seem like spies are very expensive because you never get enough to really see the difference.

That being the case, if spies stuck around, you could get some and actually use them without them being turned into a total waste of money after just 1 turn, but they would also start to get more and more expensive as you got more and more of them. If they're still too cheap despite the ever-increasing costs, they can always up the rate of cost increase to further keep it in check.

As it stands, farming punishes the player. having high tech farms, more than 1 farm, or a farm built on a bonus tile makes the population so large as to be unmanageable. Most of the stratagies revolve around simply not investing in farming.

My solution is simple- Each factory reduces the popuklation max by 500million, representing labor and pollution.