I'd wish there was a possibility to fleet your ships with the ships of your allies. Basically all you would need to is open the diplomacy screen, open a dialog called "Fleet Command", and suggest the ships you want to fleet together(each ship would be listed under their respective owner). If the AI accepts then autopilot should pull all related ships to a rendezvous point, and fleet them together. The command of the fleet should be with the one who suggests it. Either party can disband the fleet at any time they choose. The fleet should be only be able to engage targets that are enemies of both parties.

Weren't there quite a few people complaining before about the Drengin and Korath being too similar? Now that the programmers have done more to differentiate the two races, you suggest that the two races should be more similar again.

The feeling I get from playing the Korath is more like the insidiously influential nihilistic Thulsa Doom cult from Conan. Who needs a benevolent civilization when you have mind control technology? If it is felt that every race needs a disadvantage in their starting stats, I think a penalty on trade would be most appropriate to the Korath to reflect their xenophobic nature or perhaps a penalty in planet quality to show their apparent disregard for the enviroment (although this might be a little harsh). At any rate, I don't think alignment and diplomacy are necessarily connected, that would be making assumptions about the alignment of the race your dealing with which is already built in the game anyway.

Of course this would mean that the Krynn and the Yor would also need new disadvantages and possibly all three would need another advantage to balance that out. While I like the changes to starting abilities, I don't think it neccesarily has to apply to every race in game, only when it's appropriate.

On the other hand I have to agree with you on the Thalan. Even given their disadvantages, they should eventually be able to gleen some knowledge from their universe with nearly unlimited energy to manufacture stuff somewhat better than everyone else. I'm not too sure if this should apply to research though, as they are not exactly a creative race.

I suddenly felt that the minor races should have their unique tech-tree, too!

Research, even on slowest setting, seems too fast in my opinion in Beta4. I would like to see an even slower research option. This was not a problem in Beta3d.

I really wish the History tab in the Civilization Manager would list the Ethical, Mega, and the normal Random events when they occured. Seems like something that would logically be recorded in "history", no?

How about:

-Later on in the game on immense size you can have issues where you have max manufacturing tech but many worlds left to colonize. It might take 50+ turns to build a factory on them or 4k BC to rush them. What if a factory progressed through the intermediate steps along the way? So that when the factory has been built up enough it starts producing as a basic factory, obviously it should also start to cost upkeep.

-I don`t know about others but when I am placing buildings on a planet special tiles constantly get in my way. What if tiles with bonuses would be auto selected last as you build instead of whenever you get to them. Also tiles that need to be terraformed should be last over all.

-A favorite buildings tab for planets. I don`t build very many planetory defense buildings for example. I don`t need to see them.

I looked through the other suggestions a bit but I am running out of time. I hope non of these are repeats.

You can build that older, cheaper model of factory by selecting the "old" buildings with the building selection tab and then ordering the planet to build it first. It requires a tiny bit of micromanaging, but it's far from an overwhelming task.

I basically posted this in the other thread but I decided to add it here. I did not see this thread first.

I completely agree with the race emergence suggestion in the other thread. I would also like an option to set emergence cycles and number of races to boot. I also like the startup suggestion but with only one colony ship. I support the idea of a "Go to Colony" command.

I would like to see an expanded UP system and the ability to have "factions" that only races of the same alignment could participate in and have votes on issues. I would also like to set factions relations for other factions at game start. I would like to be able to lend other players money and get paid interest as well.

A really big thing I have always wanted is to be able to specify special bonuses for planet tiles in the CustomPlanets file.

Regarding things that could easily be done by players so these suggestions are not a priority, I would like to see the political parties fully developed and balanced. I think the anomalies should be expanded an order of magnitude at least given all the variables in the game and the same with events.

I would like the GUI interface to scale (let me set the size please) to some degree or at least have a new window with a greatly expanded mini map. I play on 2550 res with immense maps and I can barely see anything on it.

Additionally, maybe I missed something but the majority of planets I colonize in game have a default pop cap at 6Bn. I assumed this is part of the beta but I figured I would mention it just in case.

In a last desperate plea, does this mean we at least get the option of controlling our ships targets now?

Some notes on Abilities and Treaties that I posted in another thread a couple'ish weeks ago...

1. Now that Inter.... er... "Purchase Now Reduction" is a viable ability, it would be kind of nice if it was a Race pick.

2. War Profiteering is an awesome new ability. However, it would nice if there was more granularity in its effect. 5% War Profiteering gave a good chunk of income (~400bc per turn) in my last game. If the same income you can get now from 5% is gotten from 25% or even 30% (and thus, the Mercenary Academy would give 30% War Profiteering) instead, I think the ability would be fine. It could also make a nice Racial Pick at 5% for 2 points (I kinda want to give all Races at least 1% War Profiteering too, though).

At the least, changing the granularity of the War Profiteering ability would make it more useful for modding.

3. I know Influence affects tourism income, but it would be nice if there was a Tourism ability that directly increased the income you got from tourism (ie: if you get 100bc tourism from your Influence and you have 25% Tourism, you would get 125bc total).

It would also create a nice parallel of synergy between Trade/Trade Routes, Economics/Morale(and Max Pop/Pop Growth), and Tourism/Influence in that one ability increases the actual money you get from a source of income, while the other(s) determine(s) the capacity for getting that type of income. In a way, this parallel also exists between War Profiteering/Diplomacy (getting other races to go to war so you can profit from it) too, I guess.

4. A Tarrifs ability that steals income from Trade Routes going through your Sphere of Influence (kinda like the one ability Evil alignment currently gets) would be nifty too.

5. Espionage (if it already doesn't) should be changed to be "free" bc when spending money on training agents. ie: if you have a Espionage budget of 100bc and 25% Espionage, that 100bc you spend each week on Espionage would actually count as 125bc.

6. I love the effect the Luck ability has on attack rolls in combat, but I really think it needs to be weakened. If it was changed to have half as much effect on attack rolls as it does now, I think it would be fine.

7. Courage could act as Soldiering score only on Planetary Defense, and maybe 1/2 or 1/4 as effective as Soldiering on Planetary Invasions. It could also increase the minimum roll possible on a Defense roll in ship battles (like Luck does with attack rolls, but only half or even less as much).

8. If the number of Trade Routes was uncapped, I think I would seriously consider putting points in the Trade Routes ability for the Korx or other Super Trader races. Trade Routes could also influence the number of times a freighter can be destroyed before the route collapses (which could make it nice for non-Korx races or at least for games where the Korx (which are the only source for the new Protected Trade Routes ability, besides that UP event, I guess) aren't present).

9. The UP Event that protects trade routes should probably be changed to give the Protected Trade Routes ability to all Civs in the UP instead of (I'm guessing) the old effect of not being able to attack the Freighters to be consistent with the loss of the Galactic Privateer.

10. Open Tourism and Open Trade Agreements. These would work like the Economic and Research Treaties in that they are one way, can each Civ only has one to give away, etc.

The Open Tourism Agreement would increase the Tourism income the Civ it is given to based on a percentage of your own Tourism income.

The Open Trade Agreement would increase the Trade income the Civ it is given to gets from routes to your worlds by 25% or so.

If Tarrifs ability is implemented, there could also be an treaty that could be given to a race that makes them immune to your Tarrifs ability.

Heck, there could be an Open Espionage Agreement that gives the race it is given to free money towards the training of Agents too.

It is true that you can do it manually but it IS an overwhelming task to match what I suggest. At the end stages of a colony rush in an immense galaxy you are colonizing 1 or 2 worlds each turn. At the end of the 10 turns it takes to build the original factory you have to remember which of the last 20 worlds is getting there and find it in your list of 120. Then you have to select the next factory up in the list and upgrade. I haven't tried it, but I would think it would auto upgrade at this point. It would be nice if it just auto progressed.

When you build a Glactic Wonder why not add a little paragraph explaining what it does.

Some real nice ideas there Zarguon. The tourism, profiteering and intel sides of the house sorely need developing.

I like the graphic tech tree view. I have found that when I've established espionage against an opposing civ, I have had trouble understanding the paragraph form of the civ's technical accomplishments. I'd like the graphic tech tree to be viewable for opposing civs.

Galen

Providing the ship designer as a stand-alone application would be nice. Hopefully this doesn't count as a "major" item.

Thanks, that SMAC to GalCiv2 thread also made me realize another potential ability, though:

Support - Reduces the Maintenance costs of your ships.

With the recent changes to ship maintenance, I think such an ability would not only be viable, but a better alternate (IMHO) to just reducing the costs wholesale to fix the problem... but, alas, TA seems to be feature frozen now... Maybe for 2.0 *wink, wink, nudge, nudge



Suprised no one ever mentioned this before. Certainly would be better than the large block of text we get currently. Probably something that would have to wait for 2.0, though...

it would be great if the begining of turn news window could include an option to launch your newly built ships

Try right clicking on the blue ship icons that scroll down from the top on the right-hand side of the screen.

Or left-clicking on the green arrow icon under those icons to launch them all at once (DA/TA only AFAIK).

Allow ships to carry multiple constructor modules.

This works just as it sounds, as your miniaturization tech goes up and you get larger hulls, you can add more then one constructor module to the ship. You can then build with all of these modules when you build/upgrade a starbase.

Of course if you don't use them all in one shot, the extra modules disappear.

This will remove some of the drudgery of building and managing all these constructors. It will also allow civilizations with high productivity to pump out and replace starbases quicker.

I never even noticed that green arrow existed until you mentioned that.

I suggest addition of a second ”surrender option” in the setup. This would be very simple and say that ”a civ can only surrender to a civ it is at war with” The current surrender option, in my experience, rarely does this. That is OK, but gives a very different gameplay (more frustrating and longer game) than the new addition, and requires a different strategy. The current surrender option could be changed to ”always surrender, if possible, to a civ you are not at war with” in keeping with usual practice. A second improvement would be to have a seriously outgunned civ surrender earlier. (In my latest example, even with no ships and only one planet left, it would not surrender to me, but after a long time surrendered to another civ). It is boring to keep on slaughtering a helpless civ, and unrealistic as well. The real prize is to get some well-functioning planets that you do not have to decimate before taking over.

Whole-heartedly seconded. It seems a bit silly most of what I pay for is the disposable lost part of a constructor. Surely I could throw more constructible materials on the ship at higher tech levels.

No doubt. It seems so illogical to have a limit on those particular parts when not on others.

It is times like these that make me wish we had a way to specify how many of a particular component can be placed on a ship *hint, hint

I didn't want to read through all the posts, so forgive me if it's been suggested.

It think it'd be nice (and relatively easy) to have the ability to sort planets by the amount of influence they're putting out. (From the planet list of course) or at least have it display on the colony management screen.