The wiki might help you be more comfortable designing ships-as well as discovering what bonuses actually exist where and what they do.

That loophole in spying is still in and to my knowledge there is no immediate intent to fix it, either.

Yes, sensors, logistics, and speed do not operate on a percentage basis, but an absolute.  I can see how this might be confusing, but to be honest it's never been an issue for me.  Technically miniaturization also operates on an absolute basis as well.

Social production, as you stated, no longer goes to waste if unused and is funneled to military (but if you are building a social project on that planet, this doesn't happen).  It's not "excess" production transferred.  While overflow military is paid for with no compensation or return on investment, I have to try to have a game and a setup where this is actually relevant, as I'm not producing ships on each planet each and every turn, but your mileage will obviously vary.

That isn't to say I wouldn't like to see it fixed, but I don't know how high of a priority it is for either the player base or the devs, really.  The simplest solution would seem to be to have only the used military production be charged (for instance a 110 industry capacity world, for ease of example at 100% funding with no bonuses, producing a 100BC ship, would only utilize 100 industry and therefore cause the player to pay 100BC as opposed to 110BC for that planet for that turn).  This would seem to work even when the overflow is on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc turn of a ship build as well.

Interestingly, overflow social is charged as well (building a 50BC improvement at 18 industry a turn will cost you a total of 54BC), but people tend to not complain about it so much.  Perhaps because rush buying an improvement over an existing one takes into account not the improvement cost, but how much production was actually spent on it, but maybe for other reasons as well.

Social, military, and research bonuses all give half of their bonus for free.  I'm not aware of any other bonuses that you would have to pay for.

Many people have complained about the racial spying ability, but it hasn't been touched, either.

As far as bonuses go, it is important to remember that your civ-wide morale bonus deteriorates as a function of your population on a per-planet basis, and planetary approval is then further modified by tax rate, which, while non-linear, is a set amount not modified by your population, nor anything else.

If memory serves, a starship bonus gives ships built on that planet more hp.  If you never built a ship there, or only built a couple, you probably never would have noticed it-particularly if they were tiny or cargo hulls.

It's always heartening to see a 'lapsed' GalCiv player come back into the fold. Sole Sole has given some good advice, per usual, but let me expand a bit.

1) The combat system is *basically* the same, in that there is still the 3 offense/defensive types, but there have been changes. As of DA, each weapon on a ship now fires individually, rather than all at once. As of TA, you have the option to let the game design your ships for you (and it does a pretty good job) until you are comfortable designing your own.

2)Yes. The espionage system has been reworked, and you can now use your spies to attack an enemy. If you place a spy on an enemy improvement, it will disable it. This can be a very powerful skill to a player who knows how to fully utilize it.

3) In TA, these things are made much more clear. The descriptions are better, and there are more, and better popups. Things still aren't perfect; you will have to have to learn what +10 to something actually means, but remember, you have the ultimate resource- the members of these forums. Just ask and you'll have your answer.

You say you have all of the series except DA. Does that mean that you already own TA? If so, then IMO that is the version to play. With it's improved graphics and effects, better efficiency at using computer resourses, improved AI, unique tech trees- the list goes on, it is the most highly polished of the three. It is also the version that is getting all of the meaningful improvements/updates.

Good luck to you, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

he means that if you got 0 spy level on an AI (very low I think it is named)

if you double click his planets, you're unable to see the detailled screen (until you are at least "high" in espionnage vs that particular race)

BUT if you have a spy in reserve, then you can basically use the "spy" button on this particular planet and see all improvements that the AI has made ...

and ... that's still true as of today (not including v2 beta  since I didn't try it out) unfortunately

Starship bonus applies to attack value, not hp.  So a starship bonus of 50% can be a very big deal.  I'll try to build all my military ships on a good bonus planet if possible; if production isn't great I'll just build empty hulls if I need them in a hurry and upgrade them when they're done, the bonus will still apply.  If the bonus planet is in the middle of nowhere I'll build ships with nothing but engines to get them to the front line in a hurry and then upgrade them to combat versions when they arrive.

I just tested this-not that I don't trust you, but you didn't mention if you had tested it or were simply remembering it from previous games-and you are in fact correct, so thank you for pointing out my mistake.

As far as military or military rating/ranking goes, it's definitely a good idea to do it that way, but it will drag down your military score somewhat due to not having the ships around for as long (for instance, building up 50 ships on one planet versus building up 50 ships total on 10 planets simultaneously).  A stronger military is always a good thing, and a stronger military ranking/rating helps keep the AI off your back.  (Mumblefratz has also shown that military rating depreciates with the number of ships you have, so having more attack in less ships is also beneficial for that.) Additionally, if you're already in a war, then building up on multiple planets gets said ships to the war faster, as regardless of your production or income, each planet can produce a maximum of one ship per turn.

Obviously ideally you'd get a number of planets with a starship bonus, but that isn't always the case.

So it's a good strategy for playing and winning the game, so long as you don't find yourself suddenly in a losing position in a war, but it's not so great for score.  Upsides and downsides. 

The game has gotten better from whence you stopped.  However, in a lot of ways it is still lacking.

There are still major balancing problems, the AI still is bad at planetary management, the AI still can't design good ships, and the AI still doesn't defend or attack worth a dam.  (Why do people say the AI is good at all?, Well because with enough bonuses, and if you don't know what you're doing, the AI will overwhelm you)  And I'm talking DL, DA and TOA.

All said, I still can look past these issues and still say it's a good game.  (just crank it up another level once it gets easy)

Oh, wow.

If I may ask, what difficulty are you playing?  I even have them drop them on me on Tough, although they don't tend to do this unless they perceive me to be a threat.

. I would strongly suggest that you learn the optimal way to design your own ships, as this is one of the core stregnths in the game.

Regarding the ship designing, is it possible to modify an existing design? I mean going to the design screen with the components of a selected design there. That's how I used to do it in MoO all the time: After I get a new weapons tech, I'd go change the weapons of an existing design while leaving the rest as it is, and see how large the increase in damage is. Same with miniaturization, you could just check how many more components you can now fit. Any way of doing that?

And how can I see the modules of an existing design anyway? When I got computer generated transport ships, I couldn't see how many troops they can carry before I built one. Same with colony ships. It got somewhat confusing as I remembered there used to be 500 colonists per a normal colony ship. Doesn't appear to be the case anymore, though. Any way of seeing these things beforehand?

Found the intelligence report, thanks.

But I still don't know how to open a ship in the shipyard. I just loaded a game and tried. There were buttons labeled "new", "focus", "upgrade", "obsolete" and "delete". None of them opens up a selected ship in the editor. Double-clicking the ships doesn't help either. I also tried selecting a ship on the galaxy map, double-clicking, etc. but to no avail.

The designs were my own, not templates or cores.

I'll see if that checkbox in the options screen helps. So far this has been incredibly difficult, considering what a basic functionality we're talking about...