Things i would like to see:


--Large and huge ships acting as carriers--
Make an appropriate module that can "hold" some tiny hulled ships,without consuming fleet logistics for them (or add a factor to it).It would be ultra cool to have a carrier moving tiny ship swarms to battle(protoss anyone? ).This can have many advantages,like tiny ships need no extra engines, can be repaired faster while inside the carrier etc.Make an extra small tech path from logistics for this module,also having larger carrier modules to be researched.
--MASS destruction weapons
Already said,apart from spore,big bad planet destroying rays(yeah yeah i know it's like death star ),star destabilizing technology(this would be very very far advanced).
--More super abilites
--More orbit space for ships.
--Default fleeting for orbiting ships, orbital fleet manager can add bonuses like increasing logistics on orbit.

Winter (aka. W.i.n.t.e.r) is back...


NEW HULLS
-----------------------------------------------------------
New Leviathan Hull Type -Admiral's Command Ship-
A new one-of-a-type, larger than HUGE ship hull size that will display larger than Huge shis on the map and battle viewer.

-Only 1 of these can be in operation in any civilization's Navy at a time
-Before you can build another one the prior one needs to have been destroyed or decommissioned
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
New Hull sizes
(very easily implementable -but Metaverse incompatible if not done so by Stardock)

- Big Hull (exactly between the Medium (Frigate Size) and the Large (Cruiser Size) Hull- there is a huge gap here that could easily be filled by a Destroyer ship with values laying in between the mentioned Hull sizes values- for a model I'd suggest to use a Cargo-Hull-sized cube.

- Large Cargo Hull (a bit more expensive than the basic Cargo Hull but with a few more Hitpoints (less than that of a tiny hull) and larger hold). Ideal for Invasion ships or large freighters (that should be able to fend off an uncoordinated pirate attack. It should cost more than a tiny/small vessel and have less HP, thus be unattractive for players to replace small hulls with it.
-----------------------------------------------------------

CUSTOM SIGNS (not like Civ Logos but otherwise applicable Textures)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Custom Jewelry Signs for Shipbuilder
I am very happy DA brought along Civilization Emblems to be put on ships. Could you also add an easily modable Jewlry piece that would allow us to add our own textures to it in addition? Simple things like Squadron Markings, a Pin-Up girl, warning signs like [=DANGER=]

This is a compilation of ideas that have been lurking around at Civfanatics:


GAMEPLAY OPTIONS
-----------------------------------------------------------
1.1) The ability to share tiles with other friendly units... (by Neomega)

Civ IV (and Alpha Centauri)... some of the simplist things are the greatest (defend allied planets and/or strike together vs your common enemies)
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
1.2) Planetary Blockades

The player, the AI enemies and pirates lack one dashing feature to undertake. Planetary Blockades. So far, these are nigh to impossible- one would need a minimum of 9 vessels to fully encircle a planet to merely cut it off getting physicaly reinforced from the outside- but that's all what one can do.

In games such as Birth of the Federation the player didn't need to encircle a planet, yet by placing a fleet anywhere around the target planet's orbit, one was able to select these warships/fleets not to bombard or invade the particular planet, yet to stay on patrol in its orbit, hunting down a percentage of economic transphers of goods.

The larger the fleet on patrol, the more firepower relative to their speed (BotF featured Strategic and Tactical speed, on map and in battles respectively), the more successful a blockade would be, leaving you draining wealth from your enemies' veins- into your own...
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
2.1) "Make the newly gained planet(s) or system(s)...

- your colony" (as was so far)
- a vasall state" (i.e. pays taxes to you and assist in war, turns influence points over to you, but keeps 'home rule'- may fall off via independence movement but yields trade/tax bonus over a colony)
- an empty world" (population culled & you move on without conquering, surviving troops back in their transports (UI may ostracise+gain "evilness")
- a free power" (makes freed planet a full fletched Minor power unatached to you or anybody*

In my case one thing that I'd really love to be added would be an option to convert other civilizations into vassal states. Right now, one can either conquer a planet militarily, by influencing it and (rarely) buy it. Another related situation ocurrs when another civilization, Major or Minor surrenders to you and thus you get all the planets "overnight". This, I think, is too simple- maybe I don't even want those two crumby planets in some distant system, in a galaxy far far away... So why shouldn't one get some option that pop up once any one of the above situations sets in?
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
2.2) Minor Civs to go Major

* If a Minor civ gets to own a certain number of planets/systems (random number, lets say 6 planets, or so- the most I've see so far was 5 by the Akilians) there could be a 1% chance per turn that it ascends to become a Major Civ. I.e. if it holds those 6 planets for at least 100 turns it will very likely ascend.
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
3) Invasion techniques should have an impact on one's allignement

When you colonize a planet you are often given your random good/neutral/evil set of choices that will over time define your allignement.
Now, if you however opt for the use of gas- or nuclear warfare when conquering a planet, thus killing billions of innocent populus and severely damaging life-harboring planetary surface... well you know it: Nothing happens apart from that.

-MOO2 ostricised the use of certain weapons and would increasingly make you 'evil', endanger diplomacy and trade with differently alligned races over time.
-BotF included the possibilities of A) freeing or conquering planets (also read entry #1).
---

This said GalcivII should really make your acutal actions have a direct impact on allignement (drop nukes vs. drop care packages) rather than keeping allignement confined to the rather limited colonization 'trick-or-treat'. This way being 'good' and/or 'evil' would have real benefits, especialy to warfare, yet also real impacts to it, while being 'neutral' would make the jack of all trades.
Let other races love or fear you for a reason...
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
4) Improved Planetary Invasions (by Phoenix_56721)

I would like to see planetary invasions improved to allow users to build custom armies and place them (battle plan) before the battle begins, and then be able to watch it unfold in the combat viewer! This would take a lot of work in order for the AI to use it effectively but it would be a terrific addition for an expansion pack! (Perhaps like BotF allowed to issue minor orders to fleets prior to combat. Would be an improvement for land and space battles.)
-----------------------------------------------------------




MAP ITEMS & EVENTS
-----------------------------------------------------------
5) Wormholes in the style of MOO2 and BotF

Add a new module to allow Wormhole Base constructors to establish a checkpoint at a wormhole and tax freighters that use it. Also, you might be given a choice as to open or close the wormhole access...
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
6.1)Space Monsters

Where are they? No crystals, no dragons, no alien invaders...?
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
6.2) The Terror Star (by BlizzardGR)
Am i the only one who wants the Terror Star back???? Bring it back!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
6.3) MOO2-style orbital terraforming

Having seen calls for the terror star it would be adecuate to allow constructors to be able to "glue" together solar system asteroid rings back together to form a new planet out of debris.
-----------------------------------------------------------




COSMETICS and ATMOSPHERE
-----------------------------------------------------------
7) United Planets Quarterly Meetings

instead of Yearly for greater involvement and atmosphere
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
8) On looks on the battlefield (cosmetic):

Attacking a planet with my glorious Imperial Naval Infantry is always fun to do- after all there is usualy the will-I-make-it-or-will-it-take-another-attack? feeling to it. However, and that's a bit sad, the animations (apart from being simplistic, which is ok) show bipedal soldiers- and only such. Why aren't there any Alien looking Aliens? After all Arceans are supposed to be some sort of giant folk, Talans insectoids, and so on.

We have these great looking ships that make identifying with a particular race cozy- please add a little bit to the battlefield as well- doesnt have to be much...
-----------------------------------------------------------


-----------------------------------------------------------
9) Overlay icons and city buildings

Why must a Capital ship icon be the same than the Fleet Icon? Please give us a fleet icon so we know how big the threat is that's comming our way when we are all zoomed out.

City buildings- oh dear. It seems as if time ran out when the original game was made. Some buildings are too large, some to small- and some plain ugly- like the Political Capital (ugly and too small- feeble, really). I hope Dark Avatar will see these issues set right, as your great game well deserves.
-----------------------------------------------------------





NEW SHIP BUILDER MODULE
-----------------------------------------------------------
Some people -actualy a growing lot by now- have asked for some sort of hangar module to build carriers. I won't go into detail here since I don't really know how (or if) something like that is comming our way. If possible I'd second it. My idea now is somewhat related:

10)Command Module

to be placed on large enough ships. Basicaly what this should do is to act as a moveble star base with limited range. Starbases increase one's ship's range. Now a ship equipped with this module would allow smaller craft to operate within the module's radius.

I.e. Most of your fleet cannot reach a far away enemy. So you send out a flotilla attatched to a command ship (with the mentioned command module). The command ship has a sufficient number of support modules on board. The module will make your other ships

a) be able to use the support modules on the command ship
even if not in the same fleet but only in the range of the module (like that blue circle effect radius of a starbase, perhaps with several upgrades to range).

Vessels lacking support systems could now operate far away from your space if supported by command vehicles. Of course, should your command vessel be destroyed your units would be sitting ducks. Perhaps a command vessel could also issue accompanying craft boni during battles- but that's a different story...

Problems: I am not sure the AI could master this.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Have a 4th unique type of defense,

this defense would be called "evasion" and can only be granted by ship size and experience and its applicable against all weapon types.

for example starting with hull sizes could be:

tiny 1
small 0
medium 0
large 0
huge 0

example: evasion = [hull evasion factor] + floor(level/10)

and remove the hit-points increase from leveling,an experienced pilot can avoid attacks easier rather absorb more damage,this also could give a fighting chance to tiny hulls.

Also there could be a an attack bonus from experience levels, an experienced pilot can do more damage by better targeting or firing position(for missiles that have seeking abilities), so there could be an attack type "Mastery" that is added as bonus to all other attacks:

example: Mastery = floor(level/10)

I think the orbital fleet manager should be an upgrade for the starport, rather than a stand alone building.

The main problem with this building is the way the AI works. The way the AI defends its planets is by putting many ships in orbit around the planet rather than by putting fleets around the star system like a human player would.

The AI in its current state NEEDS this building or it becomes useless at defending planets since you can just take out one ship at a time with your fleets. Taking up a whole tile to build this structure disadvantages the AI considerably because they effectively have one less tile on every planet, not to mention the build time.

Obviously changing the AI to use lateral thinking to defend its systems rather than defending its planets one by one would take months and months of coding time, so fixing the orbital fleet manager to be an upgrade of the starport would be a fairly easy way of giving the AI its tile back while still enabling it to effectively defend its planets.

This actually makes alot of sense really. It would seem logical that coordination of orbital fleets would occur at the same location that they take off from in the first place. Much like an airport's flight control facilities. A starport would already be equipped with a certain amount of communication, tracking gear in order to coordinate landings/takeoffs, so the orbital fleet manager would simply be an extension of that.

One more suggestion:

I would like to see a new and more powerful missile defence tech, because “Black hole Eruptor” is simply so powerful that there should be a defence better equipped to balance it. Maybe a component that tracks and traps missiles in sub-space or something like that.

And I know I forgot to say this last time I wrote, but I would really like to take my hat of to all of the devs for creating this truly incredible game.

Yours sincerely Nn’theraq’pss

Also, the Starport sticks out as an improvement (maybe the only one?) that never gets an "upgraded" version for any reason.

The gameplay effects of the current model seem pretty bad. In my game, I finally got into a war with the biggest military power, the Drath... and I'm just annihilating them, easily. Granted, their ships are a bit obsolescent and too light on defense, but there are a lot of them, and they had good production capacity. If they were able to reliably group their ships, they could at least give me a good fight. As it is, I still haven't lost a single ship, and keep blasting theirs to smithereens one by one....

I've got a minor one. In the combat viewer, it'd be nice to see "Above [Planet]" or "Sector [Sector]". That would help at times to know what's going on. Due to my system I keep the map zoomed out and I don't have the camera scroll to where things are happening because it lowers the processor load on the system, as such, sometimes I end up hunting for where a battle just took place on the next turn. Having a location appear in the combat viewer would be nice

I second the starport upgrade idea (after all- it was planend to have several upgrades of it prior to release: The Graphics are in the Game Folders yet aren't used)

This has probably already been said.. but I want Terror Stars damnit.
Yeah, they're pure cheese. But then so are spore ships. The difference being that spore ships aren't cool.

Also, I'd like an option to tell other civilizations to get their ships out of my territory. It really irritates me how some jackass alien colony ship can waltz into the heart of my empire and take a planet just like that. It's silly because half the time the planet will immediately flip over to me anyway.

ON RACES and GENOCYDE

--------------------------------
- A) Planetary Invasions - stop the "eat thy neighbour" gameplay

So far the invasion system has evaded this issue by having a simple rule as standard: There is no trained army but one simply loads ones' populace onto freighters and goes invading. Follows that every Planet is considered as conquered once its native population (which also fights in its totality- aparently even infants and babies and what have we?) is entirely wiped out and replaced by the surviving invaders. Oh dear- what a mess we have here.

Genocyde?: One race vs another till one side is exterminated- jolly!- and one doesn't even get one a bad allignement to wipe out an entire planet's population in close combat butchery. So give us real troops we can train, equip and that we can transport to far away worlds and will wage war - instead of just going and selecting a few billion (very realistic numbers too, btw) random civilian colonists and haul them thru the galaxy so upon arriva they can hack their way thru the bodies of the enemy colonists so as to get their turf...
--------------------------------


--------------------------------
- Miraculous full transformation upon surrender
When, say the Drengin (or any other Alien Race) surrender to anyone, they stop being Drengin! If the race they surrender to are Humans all formerly Drengin planets and population will from now on be labeled as "Human" and be treated with the Human traits just as if there were indeed Humans living on those Drengin planets...

Needless to say this is rather - miraculous - not to say odd!!!

GalcivII should incorporate Races propper and allow conquering and ruling a mix of different races under one flag within a star empire. I know the engine doesnt allow Master-of-Orion-2 style micromanagement (having a screen where one can actualy select, swap, mix, breed and transport population from and to a particular planet, but some basic issues should clearly be observed.

Drengins just do not become Humans- its impossible! This needs urgent fixing!
--------------------------------

This is by far the one feature I would REALLY like to see implemented. Even if we got nothing else (except any issues/bugs fixed of course) but this feature I would be extremely satisfied. Strange how it was never put into the game in the first place.

Two very important suggestions:

First, change the population/garrison system so that population is calculated separately from soldiers. It doesn't make any sense that my troop transports can hold about 4 BILLION people per module. This just isn't physically possible, and it doesn't make sense for me to have to so deplete the population of my planets to stage an invasion.

Second, make starbases autoupgradable. That would eliminate the single most tedious aspect of the game right now. Simply allowing starbases to queue up upgrades would be so much simpler. You could, of course, leave in the option of doing a fast upgrade with a constructor for those bases that just must have an upgrade right away. But most starbases can simply be set to upgrade themselves and then be forgotten.

You're forgetting that not all of the population on one of your planets belongs to your empire. The ones that pay your taxes and fight your wars are. This also explains why new citizens can join the empire at a rate greater than that which could be explained by reproduction alone.

Hmm?! You're not talking about "tourists", are you? If you are, you know the tourism approach doesn't make any sense at all, right? Besides, those that "join your empire" will become part of the planet's pop, and are therefore taxpayers and soldiers.

Technically there are tax dodgers on your worlds who don't contribute to anything and thus aren't counted. But they do exist. That's what the quarterly report on population always says anyway.

Not that I could envision tax dodgers on *my* worlds, tyrannical as I am.
Such people would be caught and ejected into space.

Yep I agree, along with some others; but I understand why the developers resist adding AI statements. First off they have to translate it into a bazallion languages, not to mention changing the code it's self

It would make more sense for the AI to want to keep its ships where they are actually of use. For example, if you were allied with an AI against another AI then that fleet they have next to your planet on the frontline of the fighting actually should be there. On the other hand if there's no war on at the moment, you're not allied, and the AI isn't planning an invasion, it should move them somewhere where they will be useful if a war does break out.

I would like to be able to say something like "Move them or LOOSE them!" The AI of course would need to understand when it is being threatned and when it is just being asked:o)

Sorry if I didn't read all the posts in this long thread, but in case the devs are still reading, I would like these implemented if technically possible ( adding my 2 cents to what's already discussed by other posters ):

1) more diplo options regarding military ships in rival territory= right of passage treaty, and even without it the possibility to ask a rival the permission to pass for attacking another rival ( influence areas to be realistically used ); I always find ridiculous a AI declaring war on the player just because we move ships against another faction; also like civ games the option for the human player to ask a rival to withdraw their ships from its territory, etc....
2) tech trading= though I agree with a severe/limited trading between human/AIs AND a near instant trading just between the AIs ( like in Civ III & IV ), it should be this drastic only in the upper difficulty levels - otherwise even on medium settings, an unbalancing act becomes too irritating with patch 1.5x3 - meaning the player may dominate a map and still be impossibly behind technologically. The AIs are only winning because of their tech trading. So I suggest two things: improving the tech trading option in the set up ( a low-med-high-max cursor ), and the possibility to trade military/environment type techs with friendly races ( not only allies ). On the other hand, it should be even harder to trade with rivals being wary to hostile even for the minor techs.
3) The sense of discovery and distance between the star systems is non existent in this otherwise great 4x empire game....I know the devs wanted to put even more of them in the latest update and that shows, but all of them are now a close neighborhood we can travel faster than a walk to the next room. Abundant settings should reamin abundant, but I would suggest smaller stars and all their planets immediately adjacent to them, for a larger distance between the stars - look, some planets are now closer to other suns than their own..........
4) Dreadnoughts by 2228-2229 are too soon and rendering mid-range vessels almost undesirable by mid game. Please upgrade considerably some tech branches, yet in a reasonable fashion: upper hulls and upper weapons. Also, before getting the ultimate weapon of any of the 3 types ( whatever a gun or missile or beam ), I would suggest getting a certain amount of the other two as prerequisites for an even scientific breakthrough but without prolonging too much an average game.

Hi!
I just destroyed 5 Manufacturing centers on a conquered planet by pressing Del button with selected "upgrade to Industrial sectors" in planet's build queue. That's just plain silly: I wanted to remove UPGRADE from queue, not a BUILDING from a planet.
Stardock, please correct that, and PLEASE INCLUDE CONFIRMATION TO EVERY DELETION OF A BUILDING ON A PLANET in the next patch.

BR, Iztok

I'd like to see range treated realistically. If you have a "range" of Z, then you can go Z turns before you have to put into port, or be within Y of a friendly planet. The Y would be a reasonable distance for ship tenders to travel from their homeworld to supply the ship.

This would keep you from having massive fleets loitering at the limits of their "range" for perhaps the rest of the game. Once they run out of supplies, it could be just like the ship being out of range now - they go "cold sleep" back to the nearest friendly planet.

Also, you could make life support bigger, esp. for larger ships. Make the Faster/Longer question a REAL trade off.

Please allow me to focus an attack on individual ships IN a fleet, not just the fleet itself. And then, try to escape after killing just the focus of the attack.

Of course, there is a disadvantage in this too, allow fleet composition to rig for protection of certain ships.

This is mostly for troop ships, but how about allowing freighter escort, too? Think the US and UK vs. the German Wolfpack. Freighters made a huge difference.

I know carriers have already been "shot down" but think about this in light of the range rules. Carriers could supply fighters that have a carrier-based module for life support. So long as the carrier is supplied, so would be the fighters. Very limited range, of course. Range/speed trade-off again ...

So what you're saying is that planets have a max pop for *tax payers*, and can have an unlimited number of tax dodgers?   

Well it may be hard, but it *has* to be done. I'm sick and tired of the AI trampling over my territory whenever it feels like it. And the Super Isolationist ability just makes things worse, since the AI isn't discouraged from trespassing but now it takes 3 times as long to cross my territory.