All this is quite informative to a noob such as myself that has only been playing since the 17th of March of this year

If we don't use up all the custom points for a race at the start of the game, then we could be compensated with a bit more starting money, say 50 credit per custom point unused. Perhaps we could see how much extra starting money we get on the point allocation screen.

In addition, could we be able to change the starting amout of money for the game directly? But it would mean all major races get that starting amount.

About starship modules, I see the Troop and Adv Troop modules have been "fixed"    but all modules being made size 20 is pretty stupid. Not only do they fit in a small hull, even a tiny with some miniaturization, but they're as big as a low tech weapon! It's ridiculous really...

A little late in the game, I suppose but here are my wishes for 1.6:

1. Earth-like planets that are habitable by all should be marked with a green icon. This would completely distinguish habitable planets from non-habitable at an easy glance. Especially useful with those extremely low-quality planets in the zoomed out view.

2. Collapse the tech tree further into categories, for instance, from what I remember, the Industry techs were separate techs, as were the Economy. They all do the same thing, why have them be separate techs just because the have "unique" names?

3. Bring back the old Espionage slider and combine it with the new Sabotage system!

IE: The new spies help generate the espionage information while they sabotage the enemy, but the old slider is the best, and cheapest way to JUST generate the espionage information.

That would go a LONG way in fixing the Espionage system without changing it too much from the original goal, imho.

4. New super powers to play with would be nice

5. A way to mod in new Super Power that grant bonus Techs/Racial Ability Bonuses/Penalties at the beginning of the game. Of course, it would be nice to be able to modify the old ones too (within the limitation of Tech/Abilities, of course)

6. It would be nice if planetary improvements, starbase modules, ship parts/hulls, etc could have multiple tech requirements, if they already couldn't, that is.

7. If it already can't, it would be nice if the Tech tree could properly visually handle a tech having multiple tech requirements...

8. Essentially anything else that takes something that was previously hard coded and makes it moddable.

First time posting to these boards. I love this game a whole bunch!

Improvements to the game. Please note that I have not been playing this version too long, but I’m a long time fan of stardock and Gal Civ. I still have my “warped” version in a pile of really dusty floppy disks.

More Spy Stuff – I like the way spies are implemented, but they should have two modes of operation – One where they sabotage (like they do now) and one where they are just gathering information. Make it so that if a spy is just gathering information, his discovery is completely based on the planetary approval rating. The higher the approval rating, the higher the chance the spy is detected. This way players can be judicious about where they put their spies to gather information as well as sabotage! Spies engaged in sabotage are always detected (like they are now).

Another Diplomacy relationship – I think there should be some kind of cultural exchange “treaty” that you can engage with other AI players in the game through diplomacy. Having one would increase your civilization’s morale a little bit (understanding the other race, in a non-competitive and cooperative way) and well as increase your rating with that civilization. We have treaties that increase economics and research, as well as resource spots that increase other “global” stats. We need one for Morale.

More Starbase options – A repair module to increase repair rate of ships in area. Build starbases on Moons. An upgrade to make asteroid mining colony to Starbase (A tech added to the end of the Asteroid mining tech tree).

Ship and Starbase combat – who shoots first in combat? I think that the starbase/starship should be based on something concrete in the design of the ship/starbase. So let’s use something that is sort of neglected that would fit: Sensors. I think the ship/starbase who has the highest sensor type should get the first shot. By this I don’t mean your sensor rating.. I mean that if one vessel has Basic Sensors and another has Advanced Sensors… the ship with Advanced Sensors should go first, regardless of how many modules each of the vessels has on them. Exceptions: ties go to the attacker, and the First Strike ability. This would allow circumstances where a person higher on the tech tree with sensors can shoot first, even when he’s attacked. It also allows for starbases to be upgraded and improve their survivability. This would make combat a bit more interesting and not necessarily dependent on “I have to jump you, before you jump me” or have that gawdawful situation where you are just short of reaching your target when moving.


Ground Combat and Invasion – I too would like to see some distinction between armed forces and civilian population when taking a planet. There are a number of ways to do this and others have commented about it, so I won’t elaborate. I also think there should be a period of 1-5 (or some other number range) weeks where a recently conquered planet is operating at 50% to represent the disruption that an invasion causes a world. I don’t think the attacker should gain the all the surviving benefits of the world as soon as it’s taken. This could also be modified by how the invasion was conducted. For example: information warfare allow for a shorter disruption (propaganda is an incentive to get back to work), Mass Drivers allows for a longer time (People have a hard time getting motivated for your civilization when you bombed them from orbit.) – I hope that when Gal Civ III comes out, we can have a more robust strategic combat system for planetary attack.

More Space Terrain – Nebulae (multi-space terrain) that slow ships down and blind to sensors - perhaps with the possibility of containing a hidden star system and planets. Black holes that folks have to go around (small 1 to 2 radius space gravity pull - slows you down if you get within 2 spaces... something like that.)

More Toys – I’d like to be able to design starbases cosmetically to the degree that I can with starships.

More Fun – The DESP……Deadly Evil Snathi Pirates. Put more funky events in the game.

You guys have really done a great job! Keep it up!.

When creating a mod, I want to be able to define negative effects in buildings (these are currently ignored when you try to define them). For instance, I want to include a negative effect in factories with "pollution", by causing a decrease in population growth rate on that planet for every one built.

Defining negative attributes in the race configuration file would be good too.

I would like to see these changes in both DA and DL.

Transfering the posts made in the former 1.5 thread to this one:

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


NEW HULLS
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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
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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.
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CUSTOM SIGNS (not like Civ Logos but otherwise applicable Textures)
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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
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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)
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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...
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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?
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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.
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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...
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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.)
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MAP ITEMS & EVENTS
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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...
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6.1)Space Monsters

Where are they? No crystals, no dragons, no alien invaders...?
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6.2) The Terror Star (by BlizzardGR)
Am i the only one who wants the Terror Star back???? Bring it back!!!
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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.
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COSMETICS and ATMOSPHERE
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7) United Planets Quarterly Meetings

instead of Yearly for greater involvement and atmosphere
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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...
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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.
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NEW SHIP BUILDER MODULE
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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.
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On the new Custom Signs (described in post 407)

-How about a way to launch just the shipyard, to do extended ship design without your computer being burdened with having the full game engine (and a game) loaded....dreamrider

1. First and foremost, beef up the espionagesystem even more, making The Krynns superpower as powerful as the other superabilites. Being able to sabotage certain structures, higher chance of stealing tech and so forth.

2. Reduce micromanagement in building/upgrading Starbases. Instead of a Constructor being consumed every time you upgrade a Starbase, enable to that you can set an auto-route for a Constructor(from planet to Starbase), picking up new modules each time and upgrading the Base when reaching destination, then returning back to the planet.

3. Orbital Starbases. As it is now, you can attack/invade a planet without having to engage a Starbase close to the planet, make it so you can build an orbital starbase that you HAVE to destroy before being able to invade with the groundtroops.

4. Orbital bombardment with no relation to invasion, merely destruction. Being able to bombard to destroy structures and inhabitants, and a very high-tech option, to be able to destroy the whole planet. Only huge ships (or maybe even bigger hull?) would be able to fit this planetdestroying system and it would take up most of the space.

5. More SuperAbilites, more normal abilities and more portraits for customizing races.

6. Research for shipsystems that are not entirely weaponsystems, but boosting combat in their own way, like being able to fire twice before the enemy, systems enabling cloaking and stealthing on ships (not being able to spot them on the map/radar unless you have a high-tech researched) and similar. Being able to board ships (ship to ship), and freeze an enemy ship with a stasis-ray system for a short while.

7. Different governors/heroes giving different stats to a planet (some boost research, others production, influence, economy etc) that you can recruit/rescue.

i agree with michimex0237

there is one piece of jewelry missing and that is a 90% angle

ie you build your ships with the pipes and get down to the end and want to put another pipe at 90% from the main line you end up with a gap and it looking kind of silly instead of neat

1) would love to see all planets use logistics when ships are in orbit, and have the orbital fleet manager perhaps give a minor attack/defence/hp bonus. The reasons are multifold - a) alot of times the AI will stack multiple ships on a planet that could do damage to the players fleet IF they were also in a fleet, otherwise they just become exp farms. from a .. er .. realism standpoint, ships with multiple parsec sensors would probably work together anyhow when thier planet is under assult. and c) although i can see haveing one ship at a time slow down the attacker hopefully allowing back up fleets to come to the rescue on a later turn, the ai doesnt unfortuanately do this much, making it more of a chore, as opposed to a challenge, then anything to clear out the ships in orbit.

id also love to see starbase enhancements that INcrease the sphere of influence that starbase has.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, it would be nice to have defence gauges for the ships in the combat viewer in addition to the HP bar. That way we can actually see how defences hold up during a round of combat.

Here's my idea for improving the current espionage system:

It seems to me a bit unrealistic that spies are automatically detected when placed on a planet. They must be pretty inept at remaining under cover! How about making it so that you have a certain chance each turn to detect the presence of an enemy spy? That chance could be based on many things--morale, government type, tech level, etc.--but a great idea would be to establish a new branch of the tech tree that deals with espionage. Right now, there's really just one thing there, but there could be two extensive sub branches: one for espionage, and one for counter-espionage. A civ's progress down either branch would translate directly into their chances of successfully completing a spy mission, or successfully detecting an enemy spy. And spies should not be removable at all until they're actually "found."

Of course, it should still be possible to detect the presence of a spy by noticing the evidence of their presence (i.e. your manufacturing capital is mysteriously not functioning). And perhaps there could be a special function you could enable when the presence of a spy is suspected (like a temporary shutdown of the planet; increase the chance of spy detection at the penalty of reduced or no production, or sharply decreased morale, etc). But until a spy is actually rooted out, it should not be possible to remove it. This would make the current system far more useful, strategic, and interesting.

I would also like to see some diversity in spy missions. Perhaps let us destroy improvements altogether. Or make it so that the type of improvement a spy is placed on dictates the type of mission: place him on a research improvement and he focuses on stealing tech, on an econ improvement and he steals money, on an industrial site and production for that planet is hampered. Maybe something really interesting could be devised for placing the spy directly on the initial colony site; planetary subversion, perhaps? Who knows? Hopefully these suggestions are actually possible within the current GalCiv2 engine. But I certainly think that they should be addressed by the time we see GalCiv3.

I've already posted my ideas for improving the starbase upgrade grind, but let me add that another possibility is to simply make each starbase automatically contain a gathering point for ships so that I don't have to add them to each base I build. It should also take the same name as the base it's attached to, so that I don't have to name both of them. And if you would allow me to designate a module installation queu for each starbase, then all I would have to do is set a planet to build constructors, set the gathering point for the planet to whatever starbase I want to upgrade, then let the computer do its work; no need to stop and select a module each time a constructor arrives at a base. As Mr. Popeil says, "Set it and forget it!"

Overall, my opinion is that GalCiv2 is a fantastic game, much better than the mess that was MoO3, but several areas of the game seem to lack real strategic depth (United Planets, diplomacy, espionage, government types, and population management, for example). Each update makes the game better and better, though, so keep up the great work.

If I could have one thing that would make the game 100% less tedious - it would be a button so the AI will make their best cash bid for the X that I offered. Why are there even controls for the cash component? I am either trying to give the item for free to sweeten their attitude or I want max value ...

The previous post on spying gives me an idea. We should have to manually "hunt" for any spies ourselves. A bit like a detective game, when we look at our planets there may be clues that a spy is in operation - if, for instance, that planet is not functioning at full capacity. If we use spies for counter-esponiage, we might get tips from them like "I think you should check out planet X - something isn't right" and so on. The more spies for counteresponiage on a specific planet, the more clues we will receive. When we think we know which building an enemy spy is in, then we could use a catch spy button and nominate the building we think the spy is in. We could only do this once per planet per turn. It's possible that the enemy spy, if he's good enough and he was in a building in close proximity to the one where a capture attempt was made, may report back "I nearly got caught" thus allowing the enemy to move the spy somewhere else. Perhaps what distance you can move the spy to (if another planet) make take a number of turns depending on your basic current speed ability.

Perhaps it is too much... but could some extreme acts of war/else affect our good/evil status?

A note on probability: this is not as likely as some might think -- it would be approximately a 64% chance of ascension to major status under those conditions.

Anyway, I have a few ideas myself. First, what about an 'honor' rating for various AIs, setting the chance that they will do things like renege on alliances? For instance, the Korx wouldn't be very trustworthy, while the Arceans would always honor their agreements.

Also, I think there should be a setting for extreme planet frequency. It could be put all the way down (and have no planets requiring Extreme Colonization), all the way up (almost every planet requires some Extreme Colonization tech), or somewhere in between (like it is now).

In addition, people should be able to set initial relations between races, even two non-player races. This could, of course, make the game easier (set up a group alliance including yourself), but it could also make the game harder (set up a group alliance excluding yourself).

Also, though it's a minor detail, leader titles should be able to be set. Now, the game refers to every leader as an 'Emperor', which doesn't fit for some races (the Torian Confederation, for instance) and is redundant for others (Emperor Lord Kona?).

Finally, I have a small issue with beam weapons. They seem to be the only weapon type with technologies that don't actually get you beam weapons (they're just prerequisites).

Things like destroying a colony with pop in it? I'm not even sure why you can actually do it. Kill off billions of your own people. Unless you're evil, but even then it's a stretch. Giving it away to another race, or simply uncolonizing it (becomes a defended independent planet) would sound more reasonable.
I also don't understand why you can destroy your own homeworld. Especially when it's the only world you have - the button should be disabled in that situation.

It would be great if we can convince someone to break off their alliance with another civilization.

i have been thinking about this there shouldn't be any so called minor races with space travel

the only reason for space travel is to expand your civ outward from your home planet which means the so called minor races should be allowed to colonize planets at least in their home system

and yes i know that if you give them a colony ship they will colonize


here is my thought on this one

if/when the united states colonizes mars at least all of the other major countries on the planet will demand a cut so the usa will be limited somewhat by the new income source

A multiplayer mode added, so you can play with your friends

dystopic just came up with a really nice idea that should be pretty easy to implement: Invasion Defense Tactics .

I would really like to see that.

- Ship forwarding for mil starbases
- a repair command for ships and fleets (exponentially increasing with more damage)
- repairs for star bases (maybe the use of a constructor to repair, instead of upgrading)