Yes, sexy female leaders!

Perhaps this can be created in form of a mod, but if not: provide a game option to disable rush building alltogether.

If a ship is faster than an enemy ship, it should have a chance to escape a battle.
One could decrease the odds with increasing number of enemy ships around (chances for intercepting fleeing ship get better).

Create standard operation procedure orders for ships to get a least some influence on the tactics used in a fleet encounter.

Improve AI even further.

If not possible already (I am not aware of that option): make starbase graphics customizable like ships.

How about adding an import/export feature for ship designs? That way people could share their designs easily with others.

Yup, get rid of that particular cheese   
Of course, then you won't really need money, and the econ system gets tossed out the window, but...

Allow the construction of sppecial starbases that you design. They'd be stationary large hulls, and you can add everything but engines and other unnecessary stuff. You'd be able to equip it with weapons that can take advantage of the new combat system. You would also need to build special constructers for it.

I'd like to see improved performance.

A big reason why I play indy games is so that I don't have to buy a ridiculously expensive video card. My embedded intel card (GMA850) works well enough for all of the games I play, and it worked fine for dread lords. However, the upgrade to dark avatar made map use unplayable choppy even with graphics settings turned all the way down. I'd like to see some serious work on getting dark avatar working on lower end systems. The graphics aren't nearly fancy enough to justify high system requirements.

i would still like to see civilian ships

and maybe mini miners carring the ore back to the planet from the astroids

Yes. Yes! YES! Please add this. Naming ships as I like to do can get so tedious. This would be a simple way to make sure that my ships are all unique. I draw many of mine from Greek and Roman mythology, and have a huge list I can already type out.

Come to think of it, I'd love something similar for starbases as well. I get tired of constantly typing in new name for those as well, although I'm not sure this would work out so well, since I tend to name them for the nearest star.

Most of the things I really want to see have been mentioned - making the Base/Custom races fair again, controls on 'tech revealation' in diplomacy, and UI tweaks to reduce the amount of clicking (suggested here) Also, a design import/export system would make working with ship designs much more accessible than it is right now. Making the game easier to play is probably my biggest suggestion, and there are a few places where the amount of clicking could be easily reduced.

Allow random variations in the tech tree and other xml files etc.

To do this I would suggest something along the following lines:

In any xml line involving numbers, allow a second parameter after a comma, which would then introduce a random range.

(Subsitute square brackets for "<" and ">")

ie:

[cost]25,35[/cost]

would mean a random cost between 25 and 35.

[logisticsAbility]6,8[/logisticsAblity]"

would mean logistics ability would be set randomly between 6 and 8.

You get the picture?

Also:

[Requires]Hyperdrive,Sensors,Basic Logistics[/Requires]

would mean an evenly distrbuted chance between 3 prerequisite techs.

I envision the variations being generated at the time a new game is started.
However, XML will still work as is if left unchanged. When a game is saved, it will save the seed number used to generate the variations so that on a load, the same variations will apply.

This could add GREAT VARIETY to the game.

I would like the game to have a starting option to remove initial ships.
Also, an option to remove the initial spaceport would be nice.

Here's another idea I had...I can never keep track of where my planets are (Hatch II just rebelled and joined me? Where are they again?) so...How about if on the main map the name of the star system is visible in large translucent letters. Maybe you can make it so it floats "under" the planets but can still be seen. It would make it seem like each area of space really is its own "region" with its own identity.

i would like to be able to know how many ships of each type i actually am building without having to count every time

which of course i don't

On the planet list (particularly UNOWNED planets), we should see what kind of planet it is (Toxic, Aquatic etc) without having to click on the planet on the list to jump to it and see.

I didn't read through all the entries so I may be repeating suggestions. However, basically, I'd like to see some of the feature MOOII had brought into GalCiv2.

COMBAT
1. Weapons range & accuracy. Weapons have effectiveness and accuracy based on distance. This should incorporated in the game. Crew experience can improve accuracy.

2. Mini/Normal/Heavy weapons mods. For 2/3 the cost & 1/2 the size, you get mini-weapons at 1/2 the range & 1/2 the damage. For 2x the cost & 1.5 the size, you get 1.5 the range and 1.5 the damage.

3. Weapons firing rate. Some weapons need to recharge, take longer to aim, take longer to cool. Weapons efficiency tech can improve this.

4. Fighters. Using them was way fun in MOOII. Planet fighters, Starbase fighters and capital ship fighters.

5. Ship capture. You can board enemy ships and take them as your own. If you scrap them, there's some chance you get a tech. This was pretty fun to use too.

6. Initiative and initiative multipliers. Right now, whoever attacks first, gets the first shot. This is unrealistic. Clearly, there should be some advantage to attack, however an experienced crew and fast ships (in combat) should be able to neutralize and even exceed this advantage. Ships could be equipped with initiative multipliers (like combat thrusters). Similarly, combat interdiction tech can neutralize an enemy's initiative advantage.

MAIN BOARD
1. All races breath oxygen and live on M-type planets? Why not racial habitability zones?

2. There are two ways to take a planet: influence and invasion. If you take it by influence, then wouldn't the original race still be there? Why do they automatically convert to your race? If you take it by invasion, then you *completely neutralize* the population (unless some convert to your side). Is there no way to take a planet via attrition?

3. Planets are too far from the star. I really liked MOOII's solution. That is, you go to the star and then you are brought to the solar system level where you settle a planet.


That's all for now....

There is 8 pages so I hope I do not repeat what some has said and I hope my ideals are not consider stupid. I have been told that before.

So Here Goes:
Where you see the yellow color circle is the box that tell us where we are on the map.
I would like to see it Puls or Glow making it easier to see.



This Second PICS. Show how hard it is to see:



Second Ideal
We can Navigate planet to planet show by the yellow color circle:



I would like to see this in the window for the StarBase and MineBase too:



I hope I made myself clear on what I want.If not please ask.

Get rid of the spies!! Seriously though, how about giving DL the same awesome graphics that DA has? I like everything about DA *except* for the way the spies work. How about a feature allowing either turning off the spies, or reverting them back to the way they were in DL?
I am a *very* new player, and I was just getting use to and better at DL when I discovered that I was playing a game that was over a year old (Dang Wal-Mart had GalCivII on the new releases shelf. I have only been playing DL since March 17th 2007, and I was just getting to where I could win some what regularly in tiny/normal and could win some in small/normal and then I got brave and downloaded and bought DL both the download as well as having a CD mailed.
The spies in DL are much easer to manage; because they pretty much manage their self. A button to turn that feature off or revert it back to DL, would make it much easier for me and most likely other beginners. The graphics in DA are a few orders of magnitude better in DA, and I sure would like to see them in DL.
I think having a button to disable or revert the spies back to DL, would be not much different then some of the other options out and in buttons in both games. In any event I will keep playing and who knows maybe I will grow to like the spies; but I doubt it;o)

/}
@###{ ]::::Cyber Knight::::::>
\}

Dang my sword got messed up;o)
From the Desk of Sugien CSK
_____/}
@###{ ]::::::Cyber Striker Knight::::::>
~~~~;\}

This may've been mentioned, but I didn't see it...

I have some issues with flagship behaviour.

When your flagship is on Autosurvey, it'd be nice to have an option where it didn't didn't go for the wormholes. In small maps, this is ok, but in the large ones, it really hurts when after 10 turns, your auto-surveying ship jumps completely across the map and takes the next umpteen years getting back into a position where it can survey again.

On the same token, it'd also be nice if auto-surveying ships didn't wander into the territories of nations that your at war with.

Others have said this, but... starbase repair, YES! It'd also be nice if the starbases took advantage of the new weapons system.

I love the auto-named list idea.

I also liked the ideas of doing away with the genocide every time you knock out a planet. It'd be nice to have mixed race populations. And slaves... yes, we musn't forget the slaves.

Spies:

Give me the ability to spy on minor races. I'd really love to know if they're worth my resources to invade their planet, or if I'm better off just using them as a trading partner... and me being the type of player I am, I want to know where their ships are going.

Having individual agents with individual experience levels would be neat too. Create a naming list for them as well, as was suggested for the ships above.

If I have suffecient spies in a particular civilization, and there is unrest brewing (they're about to split off into a minor race, etc,) have it give me some sort of warning. Likewise, it'd be neat to be able to place agents on your own planets to get some sort warning before say, the jagged knife, swipe your planet.

On a related note, it'd be neat if there was a period of crippled performance after the takeover of a planet that was directly attributable to the amount of influence that that the conquered holds in sector, and the ethical alignments of both the victor and the vanquished. I'm thinking along the lines of the human insurgancy in Battlestar galactica after new caprica was taken.

Fix the custom races, as per above.

More animated avatars!

The moon idea was cool, but I'm not sure if it's a project that's implementable in this patch.

UI Modifications:

I always forget how to get to the screen that lets me change which side of the planet I launch from. That should be something that's easy to find, someplace where I don't have to mull through menus.

In the Colonies menu, I would like a way to sort colonies by their maximum output *IF* they were specialized in an area. For example, I'd like the option to view the colonies by their maximum military capacity, not just what their current output. This saves me from having to go down the colony screen and flip every colony's specilization over to military, and then back to whatever it was before I wanted to run my analysis.

Allow the minor races to do some limited colonization.

Thanks.

>> provide a game option to disable rush building alltogether


> Yup, get rid of that particular cheese
> Of course, then you won't really need money, and the econ system gets tossed out the
> window, but...


I disagree. Money is still needed to build all that stuff. Rush building is so totally off the Richter scale of unrelastic concepts. The colony grabbing at the start of a game is just one of the annoyances it creates. If people so desparately like it, tune it down, e.g. just cut down building time by half and let it have negative effects on economy and happiness, just like the experience with wartime economy during and after WW2.

With AI Ships designs I notice that they ruin the time I spent designing neat ships by sticking in modules and weapons at random all over them, at what I believe is the maximum magnification.

How about having the AI use the lowest possible magnification setting when putting equipment on a ship? That would cut down on the eyesore that this creates.

Could you cut down the footprint of the game a bit?

Given that you don't have to be carrying / swapping the game disk for DRM reasons, GalCiv 2 is a great game to haul around on your laptop. However, laptop HDs tend to be a bit smaller and, in my case, fuller than the home tower system. GalCiv is a big app, and apparently unnecessarily so.

There is what appears to be a great deal of redundancy / duplication in even the nominally integrated Gold Edition. I know for certain that there are 2 complete 5+Mb game manual files, and 2 complete game engines. It also looks like there is a great deal of duplication of libraries and images.

Could you pare it down to a leaner, meaner version, possibly with a single menu interface and both campaigns accessible from the Campaigns button?

drrider

What I meant was the following. This game basically tries to implement a game type (Civ) in an environment (space) where it really doesn't make sense, because it's not humans vs humans but humans vs aliens (the implementation of a background story was the main drive, still some large discrepancies exist). Some concepts that work with humans are not valid when applied to alien species. The concept of money for example might be one of them. The game revolves around the econ system, which incidentaly is quite tricky to get into if you're not familiar with it (because it's a bit fuzzy).
Money is generated by taxes, but they're not really linear, which is odd. You may get money by trading, but what exactly do you trade with aliens? Jeans, cologne, McD?! It's not even the Trade Goods you get eventually... You also get it by surveying some anomalies, another non-sense and partly the motor of your early economy - lame. Money generating improvements, well, those should probably belong to the private sector which we see mentioned here and there.
Money sinks include maintenance costs, which are really weird, since some buildings/ships/bases have them and others don't - that is, it's purely a balance stat, and with the increased costs it can really crash your econ since they have to paid wether the buildings are actually producing or not. Production costs wouldn't really be necessary if there was no econ system, since there's an IU/RU cost to everything, and so an associated build time like in every other game.
Rush buying is indeed a cheesy byproduct. Especially the long-term options in the late game. That there are private sector companies that can deliver in a week anything suited for any race at any point in space is plain ludicrous. Same goes for upgrading in space.
I'm sure I forgot to mention a thing or two. Don't get me wrong, I like to play the game. But all the non-sense and illogical behaviour gets to me at times.
It also seems to me that the econ system, lately, has been sucking the life out of the game.

Some thoughts on tech trading ---

In addition to taking differences in diplomacy levels into account, it seems that the game could fairly easily take into account the relationship level of each race as well. It seems odd that I can often get a better deal for a tech with a race that's hostile towards me than one that's friendly towards me when the diplomacy level differences are about the same for both.

Also, the game should also take into consideration how much research effort is required to obtain a tech. The game knows these numbers. In past games, one tactic I've used is to watch how close a race is to getting the tech they are researching and then (if I have that tech) to offer to trade it when they are one or two turns away from finishing their research. I get just as much money as if they were 20 turns away. Likewise, the AI wants the same amount of money regardless of how far away I am from researching a tech. That isn't right.

In my most recent game, the AI (thanks to the most recent patch) would not sell me, for $16,000, a ship support tech that would cost me just two turns to research. Yet, on the same turn, they happily went to war with another AI for a bribe of $500. This is absurd! (They were hostile towards me and frienly with the race they attacked.) Going to war via a bribe should be expensive and should take into account BOTH relationships involved (towards me and towards the race to be attacked).

Also, in this same game, two AI races were at war. The war was going badly for one. I offered to trade about a dozen powerful warships for a tech I could research in two turns. I was turned down flat! That race died about 3 or 4 turns later. The game does not seem to have the ability to evaluate warships and recognize a "good" deal. I suspect it would have the same problem with planets as well.

Diplomacy would be more exciting in this game if it were beefed up a bit.