I would like to say like everyone that I am impressed. I know this will be a top of the line product because it is from Stardock. I will pre-order soon.

Just one request though: please for the love of God do something about ground combat animation. I am very impressed with the new graphics, the ship battles, etc., but can we have more than atari soldiers, crane tanks, and happy meal shaped mega tanks? Is it too much to ask that ground combat animation be brought up to at least MOO2 standards?

It would be awesome if you could actually see your invasion choices in action. For example, if you paid for the asteroid strike, you could see giant asteroids hurtling toward the battle field. It would be awesome if Drath looked like dino soldiers and not humans. Awesome if the Krynn looked like fish head soldiers and not the same atari graphic human soldiers. Awesome if drengin tanks had all kinds of crazy spikes on them to show just how twisted and evil they are.

Also, like if you researched plasma beam weapons, you got to see your soldiers firing green beams against the oppositions pathetic red beamed lasers. If you researched the tech space marines, it would be so awesome if you saw power-armored soldiers like in Warhammer 40K charging the battlefield.

So much could be done with ground combat animation to make it much funner to watch than it is. Heck, you could keep the same crappy graphics. Just put some variety into it so you can actually see your tech, better soldiers, and invasion choices in action.

The interview mentions that v2.0 will be out BEFORE the expansion. Was that a mistake (and you were instead referring to 1.7) or will we indeed be seeing two patches before the expansion comes out?

I can't describe how much I love being a Stardock customer.

YES FINALLY!! THANK YOU!!

I'm glad stardock is making another expansion pack, but like Stanley Tarrant
I would like to see invasion animation improved. It would be nice if we could have that ground forces option that was rumored was going to be in Dark Avatar. I also like to be able to custom design what are ground forces look like. It would just make more since, especially if the race was say a winged race.

I'd also like to see an improvement on government types. It would be nice if we could even them out so that no single one looks better than the others and other types of government were added in or we could at least custom design the government with in race editing screen. I wouldn't mind a monarchy mixed theocracy for my female dominated angel winged raced or hive form of goverment for an insect race. Also could the game be made capble of differing between male and female leaders.

but other than I love everything that's coming in this expansion pack!

Looking forward to that 1.7 release. It's fun playing the beta, because it can be a different game from the release. And it looks like un-balanced Mega events may be a part of it.

Personally I would like moddable governments so we can change them to whatever we want.

Labor day has come and gone

Can't wait for 1.7[b]

1.7 has been staged for last minute testing. Then it will be available on Tuesday as a public beta.

Killer.

Yeah I second improved ground combat graphics and maybe even customazation if possible. totally agree with the government statements. I dont like how there is line like that, as if to say yeah your evil but dont you want to research star democracy? Uhh no I am evil. There should be levels of government say better forms of Imperial rule for evil factions.

Say something like

War cheif ---> Military dictator ---> Emperor and so on.

Good guys and neutrals could have direct democracy's or representative Republics or perhaps Star leagues and they too would have levels to build on which would give varous bonuses.