There is a thread for ideas for the next update, Tell us what you'd like in Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar 1.6!.

I've created this thread to discuss changes that could only be done within the scope of a paid expansion or a major new release (i.e., GalCivIII).


Major changes that need to wait until GalCivIII:

(1) Separate factory and lab output
Strategies of all factories or all labs are sound within the GalGivII game mechanics but no where else. Why can't I fully fund my factories and labs, if I have the required income? Why may I use factory output for research or lab output to build planetary improvements or ships? I hope for GalCivIII they replace the current 4 sliders (spending, military, social, and research) with 3 sliders (factory output, military/social factory output split, and research output). Planets would have focus buttons for locally focusing factory output between military and social but not research. It is unlikely such a change would not appear in a future GalCivII expansion because of all the game rebalancing that would be required.

(2) More United Planets Options
Submitting Proposals before the UP

(3) More choices for weapons and defense
Anyone Miss Space Empire's Weapon/Defense Techs?


Minor/Moderate changes that could appear in an update or expansion to GalCivII:

(1) Allow the AI to play itself
Start a game with only AI players and watch the results.

(2) Dynamic Game Difficulty Level
There have been several posts that the game difficulty level "Crippling" is too easy and "Masochistic" is too hard. At the higher levels, you start the game out way behind the AI players. A decent human player does a much better job of growing his/her economy, developing his/her planets, researching and trading tech., etc., than the AI. So if the human player can avoid getting crushed in the early game, he/she will eventually surpass the AI and find the mid-late game easy. But what if the difficulty level of the AI increased over the course of a game to keep things more interesting.

(3) No buying planetary improvements or ships; instead rush build them
When you buy a factory, lab, or ship, who are you buying from? Since there is no vendor to buy from it makes more sense to rush build. Rush building would build something in half the time at double the cost (round the clock shifts, overtime, etc.)
If I Purchase a Ship, Why Do I Have to Wait Until Next Turn For It?

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

(5) Allow capitals and super projects to be destroyed
After I capture a planet I should be able to destroy a capital or super project built by the AI to free up a title.

(6) Debt Limit Should Be Relative to GDP
The fixed 500BC debt limit does not make sense when your economy gets large!

(7) Ship Designer: allow sorting of ship components based on size, cost, and/or value
It is annoying to have to scroll through a long list of obsolete ship components. By obsolete I don't mean older, an obsolete component would be one that is inferior in one of the attributes (size, cost, and value) and equal or inferior in the remaining ones. For example, Plasma beam weapons would not obsolete Laser Mark V because although they are cheaper and have attack value 2 vs. 1, they are larger. Selecting a checkbox would hide/show obsolete components. Also, visible components should be sorted based on size, cost, and/or value.

(8) Ship Designer: allow viewing but not building unavailable ship designs
Allow the viewing of ship designs that currently can't be built because they require future tech. Based on a toggle button these future designs would be grayed out or not appear at all(current behavior).

(9) Ship Designer: Fix "Subspace Blaster" and "Subspace Annilator" in the beam weapon branch!

(10) 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)
For the AI's sake, why the heck doesn't this game have *automatic* fleeting in orbit?

(11) Allow ship combat to end in a tie
Attacker Advantages are Exploitable!
Fix the bug that causes the attacker to be restored to full health.

(12) Show damage to defenses during combat rather than just damage to HP.
This would have made the off-type defense bug easier to spot!

(13) 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.
( 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.

(14) Allow Star Bases to Attack within their Area of Effect
Star Base Weapons/Defenses Should be for more than for Just Defense
Starbases will only engage in combat when attacked. It is silly that a star base will ignore an enemy invasion fleet on its way to your nearby planet. It would be nice if they allowed star bases to attack ships/fleets within its area of effect; if other star bases are within range they should also join the fun.

(15) Adjust Starbases Upgrade Levels
To get a starbase resource up to 10% takes 3 constructors. How about instead you get 5% when the starbase is constructed (like now), then 5, 7, 10, and 13 for the next 4 constructors for a total of 40%. I hate that the first two mining modules are only 2 and 3.

(16) Link the Techs in the Trade Window to the Tech Tree
This was a nice feature in GalCiv1 AP.

(17) Getting Best Trade Deal = Micro-Management Pain
Please Auto Set Optimal Cash and Influence Points

(18) Round all values to the nearest integer
Brad, "The problem is, a 10% bonus to research is hugely different than a 10% bonus to morale which is a huge difference form a 10% bonus to weapons. I mean, heck, if I have a ship with 8 attack, I won't even get an additional point."
That's because you are rounding all floating point calculates down! If you would just add 0.5 to all floating point calculations before typecasting to integer then you round off to the nearest which I think would make more sense. Then in your example 8 * 1.1 = 8.8 -> 9. Also a non-optimal defense of 8 would have an effective defense of 3 instead of 2 (i.e., sqrt(8)=2.828427)!