11. Snathi as a major race.

12. Galaxy shape generator (spiral, circular, etc.)

13. More cowbell.

please fix the STRING NOT FOUND error

very cool Brad!  I have some thoughts for you

1.) maybe a percentage growth per week (or month) in existence with a cap? ie...Route Creation: Route from Earth to Drengia will net between 10BC and 25BC depending on how far along the freighter is in its route.  After one month in existence; gains 10% in value.  Two months- another 5%. Growth for one year, then hard cap.   This makes trade routes more valuable without making them overpowered.

2.) I got nothing for you on this, other than I agree.  But don't overpower it obviously.

3.) Not just that, but what are your thoughts on making the Mining Improvements themselves slightly cheaper?  IIRC, it takes a total of 35 weeks to fully upgrade a single Asteroid to a Level 3 Mine. With just a Home System having 3-4 asteroids, that is 105-140 weeks on just ONE star system.  Halving that would make asteroids a much more valuable and powerful asset.

4.) In what way?  I sometimes find the AI not focused enough in researching a particular goal.  Maybe we're really thinking the same thing but looking at it from opposite ends?

5.) As if Suicidal-Difficulty didn't scare me enough as it is

6.) Okay.

7.) I'm not quite sure what you are saying here; it sounds like you are tieing the Selected Research Speed (Slow, Normal, Fast, etc) to how fast you can research multiple techs.

8.) If you say so.  As a player I've never really had a problem researching them.  Is the AI having a hard time utilizing them?  I can't say I recall seeing an AI ship heavy on defenses unless I've been waging a long war with a single weapon type.  Maybe just increasing the AI value would make a difference?

9.) Good, this means this will definitely be out before January

10.) YES! Its why I LOVE using the Korx and going Neutral (50% off Buy Now purchases).   Just dropping the length of time (not up-front cost) would be nice.

@Schaefspeare:  The 2.0 Beta has a Passive Espionage ability that is being tested right now.

First thing: Integrate the new planetary governors into the colony list in the colony management screen under civilization manager.  For a function of this magnitude, a hotkey is insufficient.  Even pairing usage of the hotkey with scrolling through the planet list brought up by if memory serves F1 is slower than it ought to be, and not much better than simply not using the governors in the first place.

As a note, using the shortcut from the colony list does actually bring the screen up...it just happens to bring it up UNDERNEATH the colony list screen, so you can't see that it's actually working.  If the screen simply came up OVER the colony list, then that should fix the problem there and actually make this awesome feature workable.

As for leases: There is, if I remember correctly, a colonization event that gives a pseudo-random amount of InterestRates ability-I've gotten as little as ~10 or so, and I've gotten as much as >30.  It doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that, given that there are two trees in TA that can reach 50% by themselves, it concerns me that someone might reach the point where buying on a lease is actually cheaper than building.

In addition to this, it would be nice if the 25% InterestRates ability actually worked in DL and DA; at last check, which was not more than a month and change ago, they did not, and to my knowledge neither has been updated since.

I would personally love to see the starbase hopping bug fixed, but Kryo has deemed it not that big of a deal.  I have challenged myself to sit down and play a game abusing the shit out of it to prove it, but I've been a little busy in real life as of late.  In any case, I understand that it's not a high priority.

I have to agree on the mining.  The first level is the only one remotely worth doing.  However, it is also of course possible to make them too overpowered as well.

And while we're at it, please tell the AI to instantly change its currently researching tech when the plague/disease event pops up.  Or if you've already told it that, then make it listen this time.  I understand that the plague/disease are supposed to be big events, but they shouldn't be handing the galaxy to the player on a silver platter, which is what they're currently doing.

Brad, perhaps maybe you could think about the tiny graphics updates we've been wanting for a while?  I've talked to Scott and Cari (and Kryo) about them in the past, and they seemed to be interested.

Different Cloud Maps for the speciel environment planets (i.e. no fluffy white clouds for toxic worlds, more like something swirly and turbulent).

Planet luminance maps so we can show awesome nite effects on the dark side of planets (glowing lava on kora for example).

A field to edit in customplanets.xml to define a planet's cloud map, luminance map, and city light map.

And lastly, to a lesser extent, perhaps bump and spec mapping for planets as well to give them a more realistic look.

I really think these few graphics enhancements would be the perfect edition to 2.0, and as always i'd be more than happy to handle making the new textures as i did the planet textures.  What do you think?

sounds good,

id like to add

Ai needs to create more transport ships for invasions.

large, huge and Immense galaxy maps could use a ship range reduction to make them "feel" larger. being able to reach 20-25% of the map with the innitial ships just seems odd.

when ships are gifted/sold  to other civ's or to the player, have them appear near that civ's home planet, - many times these ships just become decommission fodder for the player, or a draw on resources for the AI, as they are so far out from the theater of war that they are essentially useless. although gifting does not occur too often from the AI to the Player, it does happen pretty often between like-Aligned AI civs. Having said ships appear near the reciever's homeworld would put them in play much faster, and be h more valuable therefore.

likewise, when a planet is purchased or taken over via influence, any ships in orbit of the planet need to have thier "home planet" designation changed, so they dont just hang out near the newly lost/aquired planet forever. 

"upgrade fleet" would be very useful as a check box next to "upgrade all" - also a way to upgrade from the "decomission/leases" screen might be useful.

for mod-testing, haveing the Crtl-L cheat spawn planets with 1b pop instead of 100m would be nice!

some way of being able to adjust starting tech points

anywho, just my 2bc.

Brad - Check to see if your influence starbases are expanding when you add an Influnce Module.  It's not working on my copy of the game.

I was thinking recently that this is a somewhat underutilized form of income. 

Funny...that's what our sales reps say to the executive team where I work.

Brad. Will the MV get some attention in 2.0? Kryo mentioned sometime ago that the MV will be getting some love in 2.0 and i would dearly love for the achievement medals to work properly or at least be explained.

I have heard no mention of any MV stuff in the 2.0 journals i have read so far, is the MV still getting the love?

Just a Couple of minor thougts:

21-Beeing able to upgrade your ships from a list (any of the ship list we have), or create a new list of ships wich allow use to upgrade, but also gives us important information on the ship that we need to know to upgrade the best ships first like, Lv, Cost, Atack,  Defence, Hp, if its currently under a lease or something like that.

22-Computer needs to be a little more organized when it comes to invasions, actually i dont see it as a major problem but sometimes the AI is a little too disorganized when it coes to taking my planets and eliminating my forces.

23-There should be an option so that a race can trade with other race only techs he can research himself, what i mean is that races can trade "Ion Drive" with every other race that have the "Ion Drive" tech on its tech tree, this way you can have tech trading between races but the races that are supposed to have unique tech disadvantages or advantages wont be able to trade it with others, i recommend this becase the main reason i like TA its because of the Diferences between races, Diferences you can almust always eliminate by tech tradin ith other races.

24-Maybe having a governor that makes all planets producing XXX type of ship to make its current waypoint XXX.

This are my 2 cents.

Thanks for listening or reading.

Bad karma ... I hate waiting for something that I like ...

Well with tech brokering off i will still be able to trade tehs, just that i will have to go to the rae that owns it instead of trading it from anyone, so it dosent apply.