Speaking of which. If I send a Constructor to a base but there aren't any more modules available, the game doesn't even tell me what starbase it's referring to. It just comes up with a generic message that gives me no indication where that Constructor currently is, so I can send it somewhere else. That's not very useful to me.

Another thing that might be nice, I don't always know when new modules are available due to a new tech I've traded/researched. It would be nice if there were an ingame reminder that comes up when it's possible to upgrade my bases. Maybe even a list of the bases the new module applies to.

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.

It would be great if we could lock in our empires's morale rate and let the taxation slider float to compensate. Until my economy really gets going, I set my tax rate so that the overall Morale is 45%, just above going into the red. But quite often I find myself going in and making an adjustment every single turn, which can get rather annoying after awhile. It would save me alot of micromanagement if I could just assign a certain Morale percentage, and let the game make the minor adjustments on it's own. Then I'd only have to bother with making any changes if I see I'm losing money, which wouldn't happen nearly as often.

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!

They already have a green/yellow icon for extreme planets. Just add that green icon to all normal planets, and problem's solved.

BR, Iztok

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

How about a Fighter Bay (for small or tiny ships) mod for Space stations? Something that would allow a space station to form a "fleet" with the ships so that you could assign a wing to defend the station. Not something that would let the space station fly with a fleet, mind you!

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.

I like this, and I have some ideas: Planet-wide segregation or a camp that is different depending on your allignment. And maybe annother evil-only option: genectic reprogramming.

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

The food bonus tiles.

They are damn near pointless.

It can be somewhat useful to have a +100% one on a PQ 15+, but the +300% ones are simply unuseable. Ultimately the game seems designed such that increasing population on a planet with > 15 bil on it is self defeating. Therefore having a farm tile that can allow a pop of like 30 (I dunno, just guessing) is no good, as you would never want that many people on a planet. The same goes for the +100% ones as well, because they will set you up with like pop 18 planets, and those are hard as hell to manage too.

This also ties into the tax is proportional to sqr root of population thing.

Compare the usefulness of farm bonus tiles to any of the others. Frankly they suck.

You could possibly just pull them out of the game entirely, or change the method used to calculate pop anger over pop count.

GOOD. GOOD. GOOD. IDEAS.

I have one quick and fairly simple change. When customizing your galaxy, you can choose the frequency of stars, planets, etc. There should be a bar that decides frequency of galactic resources, the economy, military, morale ones you build star bases on. That would really add yet another level of customization to an already awesome game.

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.

Those 300% food tiles are extreamly useful! please do not take them out of the game. if your looking at the planet from a strictly economic stand point, yes they seem useless. But a stratagy that almost every one in the forums forgets about is to use these planets as breeder worlds for masive invation fleets. what i do when i find a world with a 300% food tile... i build 3 or 4 fertility clinics, and a whole BUNCH of moral buildings. get the pop up near 30 bil or so and send all my empty transports to pick up their loads there. i fill each with 5k soldiars, so that when i go to invade a planet im amost garenteed a win. PLUS i can drop enough cononists to make the planet start working FOR me imediatly. This minimizing the risk of the enemy reinvading, and it keeps that new colony from costing me anything cause im already getting enough taxes from it to pay for itself! Not to mention i can restock planets who have suffered failed invation attempts or low pop recetnly invaded worlds befor the AI can attempt to re-invade! i always have one transport just sittin at my breeder world ready to respond. This stratagy wins me games on cripling! please dont take these tiles out of the game!

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.

How about a slider for planet specials when the map is generated--governing the average percentage of "special" bonus tiles on planets?

(And ditto with the galactic resources slider!)

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

Yet another Espionage idea: recycle nullified spies.

You could make it so that spies still have the same general usage, but when a spy nullifies another one, both are unusable for a number of turns, but still alive. They'd still count towards the cost of making even more spies, but you wouldn't have to constantly pay to replace them. This would allow players who want to do a lot of spying - such as to shut down important planets or just rack up intel levels - to do so without spending a zillion bc on spies that will simply disappear in two turns anyways, while those who don't want to do a lot of spying can just build a few for self-defense and then turn it off.

There could also be new ways (such as techs or new aspects of the Super Spy ability) to reduce the new "unavailable" time, the speed at which intel levels build up, and so forth.


Example sequence:

One of the Player's scouts stumbles across Drengi. Wanting to weaken the Drengin, the Player builds a spy and places it on a Drengin factory. Feeling that holding down the Drengin even more is worth the price, the Player starts on a second spy.

Lord Kona is not amused. First, he decides to contact the Player and demand money while raving about his newest recipe for Baby Torian Back Ribs. Then, he decides to build a spy of his own. After a few turns, the spy finishes and he uses it to nullify the Player's spy.

The Player opens his finances screen to the Espionage section, and sees that his second spy will be done next turn, while he has one spy "in reserve"...but that spy's icon is grey, not red. The next turn, he gets his new spy and places it on Drengi, then starts building another spy. It's even more expensive, since it's his third one (the first being unavailable at the moment, and the second on Drengi).

A few turns later, he's notified that a spy is now available, and checks his espionage screen, where the grey spy has "recovered" and is now useably red again. He decides to put this one back on Drengi again.

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.

I'd like it if food tiles and farms were a GOOD thing.

As it is they can ruin you, you never want to build one unless you're doing fantastic mid to late game and want more taxes or influnece.

You'd think tons and tons of food from a food tile would make people happier, make them fat, expand your coffers, and give you something to export, rather than just making tons and tons of unhappy people who want to boot you out of office.

I find the new espionage system somewhat annoying and unrealistic. What if I just want to hunt for tech or rumors rather than disable an enhancement? And as is, the AI ALWAYS is able to kill any of my spies before they discover anything. The entire spy game feels pointless and frustrating.

Lastly...why is it my espionage bonuses don't seem to do anything? The spies are always neutralized just as fast.

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.

(1) Remove the 300% food bonus title!!!

(2) Have combat ships in orbit auto-fleet to the player's logistics ability (this will help the AI since it parks several ships in orbit).

(3) Fix "Subspace Blaster" and "Subspace Annilator" in the beam weapon branch.

(4) In addition to fixing the off-type defense bug, how about showing damage to defenses during combat rather than just damage to HP. This would have made the off-type defense bug easier to spot!

(5) In mid to late game starbases may be destroyed too easily, so I abandon adding weapons/defenses and instead defend them with ships.
Why not:
(a) Have the HP of starbases increase as you advance your hull tech.
(b) Apply the attack bonus to the starbase's weapons (currently they only get defense and HP bonuses).
(c) Allow starbases to fire their weapons separately like ships now do.

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.

honestly most of the commotion about espienage IMO could be solved by impimenting the already suggested "out comes" of trying to nullify a spy. it is such an excelent idea. right now the spy game is a waist of time, money, and energy. its a nice little curiosity in concept but thats about it. by adding these ideas it would give some depth to the spying game. Yes it would still be a pain and expensive and needs a masive overhaul... but that just means i get to look forwerd a better setup in GC3 i can live with the current set up and maybe even enjoy it if a few things were tweeked like the "outcomes".

however... in general this is an EXCELENT GAME!! not trying to sound pesimistic... just aiming for perfection wich i know SD wants to. so thanks for an excelent game!

ps... interesting idea about the factories... i think i like it. and listen to windstars ideas about tweeks to the "influence boundrys"... or boarders... they should be alittle more controlable...