What I would like to see isn't a gameplay tweak or addition, but a completly redesigned UI. Reviews and players have said that the game's UI isn't always that great. There are lots of great tools to help us manage the galaxy but they're not always designed as well as they could have been.

---

For example, every graph in the game (wether they're on the main screen or in the "timeline" tab of the civilizations manager) should have a slider just like the one when doing diplomacy with an alien race (instead of clicking thousands of times to add or remove 1 week). The graphs on the main screen should also have tabs on top of it rather than buttons on both sides of it (with the slider underneath it).

---

The little tooltip that explains how you get your influence or morale on a specific planet is great. But why does it stop there? again this a great idea that hasn't been applied elsewhere. For that matter (I know I might be going to far there), why not have a an option called "show formulas as tooltips on mouse over" that would show you every formula you could ever want, from the domestic stats/finance management screen to the spending and income of every planets? I know I've seen LOTS of forum posts asking for these formulas.

---

The planet part of the plante/ship list is perfect, there's nothing more to add in my opinion. The ship part however, needs some tuning. Ships should be grouped by type because you quickly get too much ship to take the time to scroll aaaaall the way down to the ship you want. Once you'd click the ship type you want a new list would replace the old one and you'd look for the one you want there. The little box with the picture could be removed in the new list but more importantly the little box next to it should show the defense and attack of every category with a little logo for each category. More stats could also show up on mouse over. Ships in fleets shouldn't be shown AGAIN in the list (what's the point? ). Also, right now my income is 891bc/week and my expenses is 805bc/week but the planet/ship list show my expenses at 891bc/week as well.

---

Finally, the list in the shipyard or starport should have the attack/defense logo and icons swapped with the comments for the ship (so we can have 4 times as much space to input a comment for a ship)

If this isn't feasible as an update or you simply don't want to do it why not have it as an official download in this website's library? and if anyone else than stardock wants to do it, it'd be a great mod!

P.S: I'd really like to be able to download 1.6 from the website. And anomalies should keep poping out randomly in the unisverse.

Have a option to select which events may occur ( don't like that artifact of power event ).

Give ONE chance to undo a move that DOES NOT involve combat or enemy sighting.

In the ship customization screen. Please give an indication which side is front (good for the truely customized ships) AND (this is REALLY important) offer some sort of measure so you can be sure the ship you're designing coincides with the standard size of it's intended ship hull. Because one ship I made, and presented in this forum, the Centurion class, looked only a bit larger than it's medium counterparts.

Is it possible to import custom base hulls and parts?

Thanks for listening.

I love the espionage system but it needs improvement; we know that you can train spies to either keep them at bay for counter-espionage or place them on enemy buildings to sabotage its functions. Now, we should have a third function that coincides with my previous re-management idea of the order in which we gain intelligence on a race and I think this third function was actually said somewhere before. The third function is that when you have a spy for which you do not want to infiltrate in an enemy building, it should gather intelligence only like low, medium, expert and advance level of espionage for every race. For low level, you need at least 1 spy, for medium 2 and so on until 4. ... as long as you have them and not using it to nullify an enemy spy or place it on an enemy building, it should at least gather intelligence. In other words, if you have 4 spies that are just sitting there, the least they can do is to start gathering intel on other races. With this in mind, you can also bring back the old system on top of the new system where you spent money on each race to gather intel. The more money you spend on a race, the faster the intel comes as long as you have the appropriate number of spies like mentioned above. So this means that the AI will try to create at least 4 spies in order to gather intel on you. For example, if you have 12 spies, you can use 8 of them to either use to nullify enemy spies or place them in enemy buildings. And also, like I mentioned in a before post, every intelligence we gather should go in one area of the game instead of being it scattered all over the interfaces.

Anyway, my wants:


1) Standalone patch. If you are so worried about piracy, despite your internet activation deal, then add watermarking to the patch, so you know who spread it around if it gets pirated. (I know you say you simply can't be bothered to spend the 10 minutes or so to make the stand alone patch, but it really doesn't take very long, as there are programs to make patches like that, it's not like you need to do it by hand)

2) Make the Snathi a major race. They are the only race in the game that doesn't scream "I'm totally generic and lame"

3) Get rid of the numerous useless planetary improvements, or make them userful

4) Make the AI not send transport ships unescorted when they are fighting a war and enemy ships are nearby

5) More planetary terrains - most the planets look alike. Use some sort of fractal generation.

How about some change to ground combat. Like the earlier suggestion with different units. Nothing major, but something like the change to espionage. At least can we change the combat screen itself? It just looks out of place with the over all polish of the game.
Much more minor, I would love the ability to rename ships that are in a fleet without having to take them out. Also while I LOVE the intelligence report on your ships, it does not always show all the information ( EX. If you have more then one type of weapons system sometimes it shows one, or no weapons at all ) Lastly, a way to take out some of the lights and textues on a part in the ship editor. Some things have alot of lines, stripes port holes and what have you. A simple button that would take those off and flatten the texture on a certain part would rock.
Other then that thanks for making such a good game and for actually listening to us... I know I am like the 20th person to say it, but it still needs to be said.

I like most of the suggestions thus far.

Here's my list:

1. I like the idea of repair ships. Give them a module and let them repair every ship in their fleet by x points per turn.

2. Stop whatever it is that's making DA crash when bringing up the intelligence report for ships.

3. In the intelligence report, allow for moving the feature boxes. (I.e. the ones that point to your ion drive and say "Gentle Heaven Ion Drive" or the like.)

4. For custom races, allow the ability to rename the company/manufacturer/model names for modules. A non-Terran civilization at war with the Terran Alliance is unlikely to use equipment manufactured by Lockheed.

5. Allow the removal of races from consideration when generating a game with random races.

6. Allow for easier tracking of starbase development. (I'm running out of sheets of graph paper.)

7. Allow for easier tracking of discovered resources.

8. Allow for the player to diplomatically posture at the AI. ("Hey, you, get your ships off my border."

9. Allow for the player to submit bills for consideration by the UPC.

Things that'd be interesting:

Ground Combat - A more massive, planetary feeling to the planetside combat would be cool. This might be asking for a bit much, but something like a MOO3's system would be cool. It had a ton of invasion tactics, planetary bombardment tactics, and it had a cool 2D map of the planet that showed sectors being taken with a commander giving commentary. It made the invasions feel epic, without being overly complex visually.

AI customization - How about the ability to tweak the AI's tastes in tech? Allow you to choose their bias toward weapon and armor types? Design types? Do they prefer energy, mass or missile weapons, do they ever use others types? What type of defenses do they prefer? How quickly will they adapt their weapons to defeat their enemies? Do they prefer lots of big, heavy ships, or massive fleets of small interceptors and fighters?

Weapon Tech Mods - How about the ability to develop mods to weapons that modify their performance. For example, single hard points for missiles that make them function like they do now could give way to salvo pods that allow multiple missiles to be fired at once. Maybe the ability to determine if a weapon is fired as a beam, a bolt, or even fired in bursts? They could be fire control modules that are used in creation during the shipyard and would allow you to sacrifice that second railgun or plasma cannon for the advantage of making it fire faster, or in bursts which could improve the rate of damage in combat.

It would need to be balanced, but you know, it would make combat deeper.

Ship scaling - In the custom fleet design area it would be cool if we could choose the overall scale of ships in the entire fleet scheme. Let us choose how big a fighter is compared to a cruiser, and whatnot. So that a fleet of fighters and destroyers against something like a battleship would be a bit more dramatic in size.

Carriers - Being able to make carriers that can hold x number of fighter wings based on size would be very cool.

These are my suggestions, they may be a bit much, but I'd love to see them added. That said, GalCiv2 is just fantastic, you guys have done an absolutely fantastic job. Best purchase I've made this year, hands down.

A suggestion for the trade screens, if it would show the AI's value system for trade items, it would make it less tedious to be able to find what you need to give in order to get something you want. For example, each item on the trade screens could have a monetary value shown beside them. If you want an item that is shown to have a value of 5000 bc, you have to give something or set of somethings that is also valued at 5000 bc.

On the research screens, allow us to see the specifications of the things you get with the technology. Like, for instance, seeing what the Embasy from Universal Translator does.

* Slow regenerating defense *

There has obviously been a fair bit of trouble balancing weapons vs. defense in Galciv 2. I think a lot of it is caused by the all-or-nothing nature of defense caused by the instant regeneration.

Let's say your ships have 20 hit points and can deal 20 points of damage in a turn... and you can fleet up to 5 ships. What if your defense can block 20 damage? In a 1 on 1 battle, two ships are basically incapable of damaging each other because every round they block all 20 damage!

But in a battle with several ships on a side, the same defense tech is just equivalent to double hit points because all fleet firepower is focused and destroys at least one ship per round.

If defense gives results this wacky just based on number of ships in a battle, how can you get an ideal balance that takes into account different tech levels, fleet configurations, offensive vs. defensive designs, and so on?

Solution: HAVE DEFENSE REGENERATE SLOWLY.

The way it is in pretty much all other computer games that have shield/armor/health style defense.

Defenses should function like regenerating hit points (that mainly block one weapon type). It should be possible to beat them down over multiple rounds. Defenses might regenerate 1/4 of their strength in a round.

This would prevent players from loading ships up with so much defense that they reach a "threshold of invincibility" where they regenerate so fast that nobody can damage them.

In addition, the 3 types of defences can act like shields. Meaning, you have to drain the ship's shields before making any kind of damage. Think star-trek, once your shields drop down to 0%, then you can start penetrating the halls and making serious damage. But in order to fire, you have to drop down your own shields. I guess this will be more of a tactical combat situation so forget the whole thing ... lol

There's something weird going on with Super Organizer and 'wars of aggression'. As the Altarians, the Terrans were paid to go to war with me (no idea who did it; every civilization in the game has been paid to go to war at some point, so there must be multiple culprits), so the Torians and Iconians (the Drath were there, but I hadn't met them yet) declared war on the Terrans. The next turn, some other neutral civilization (Arceans or Krynn; I had no Thalans) said that the Torians started a war of aggression against the Terrans and they would intervene on the Terrans' behalf! How is it a war of aggression if it's in my defense?

P.S. Super Organizer takes a toll on other civilizations of the same alignment, too; the Torians were the first to be destroyed (surrendering to the Drengin of all people).

bigger map more stars planets if possible

Along the same lines as unpassable borders for war ships, maybe ships can have their own radius of effect such that other ships can not pass or maybe have to at least end their turn there before proceeding next turn. I guess you're relationship to the other group could be a factor, ie. friendlies are ok. So all ships have to stop at an opponents's ship and depending on the relationship, it may continue on its next turn or be unable to cross. This way you can protect your borders and even set up a blockade.