Personally I think the life support, sensor and colony modules are all too big and provide too much. I'd rather have the ability to put, say, five colony pods on a ship and haul 100,000 people per pod.

I know it is canon in the game but... we can't build a city on the ground to hold, feed and tend to a billion people. Lifting multiple billions of people into an orbit and keeping alive and happy for an interstellar voyage, only to destroy the resources of the carrying city-ship at the end of the flight, well - that's ridiculous, really. Fun game, but still ridiculous.

Anyway, I'd like to see the life support, sensor and colony module mass requirements and benefits sharply reduced to allow players to better custom-tailor their designs.

As for the colonization and invasion numbers, they are ridiculous. You can explain anything with science fiction, but it is hard for me to envision any technology that would permit these numbers by 2400 AD. At the very least it should be tied to some super-tech to allow moving that many people.

I seem to remember in some game and I thought it was GCI that the first X number of turns were more than 1 week. They started at X years per turn and decreased to months or weeks by end game. This would allow colonizing a more reasonable number and increasing the growth rate per turn in the early game. To take it one step further, it would be neat for the number of tiles to be tied to population as well as PQ.

In the end I think that the devs are more interested in creating a fun and playable game than satisfying my OCDC personality, so I doubt we will see much change in this area.

Oh yeah, in regard to the special event scenes like 1st colony, etc. I can deal with multiple pods etc., but for immersion, I recall how impressive the voice overs in SMAC were. It would be great to have voice overs in GCIII but I guess they are too expensive. I assume they had to hire 5-6 voice actors to do the numerous SMAC voice overs and that would have to cost a ton. 

Glad to see so many responses so soon and most of them favorable; except (of course) for the "it's just a game"er.

On the one hand I'm told that it represents a "Fleet" of ships; I guess that's kind of like Battle Star Galactica. Hmmm.  But on the other hand I'm told that "Fleet" doesn't have the means to support itself without scrapping ALL the ships.  They must've been built by politicians; after all their jobs are "just a game" too.  But I won't delve into that any further.

As I started to say; must of the responses were rather positive (and more or less in agreement).  I made the mistake of reading that last one before writing this and have lost part of my train of thought.  However, I seem to recall it was in response to the ability to use a tiny (or small) ship to colonize a planet.  I would think, though, that you do need more than the module designed to carry people.  A tiny or small ship simply doesn't have the hull integrity to support such stuff.

In "Outpost" you had decisions to make as to what supplies you were going to take.  I don't remember all of them, but there was the number of people, oxygen for those people, the reactor (you didn't use the ships; it just remained in space), a facility for producing oxygen, a facility for producing food, a command center, etc.

But, I'm not saying I want this game to be exactly like that; especially since these planets are already hospitable and a lot of the stuff isn't needed.  The thing is though, it was one ship: not a fleet.  If, however, politicians are running the show and say it has to be an entire fleet and half the planets population should board...  Well, who am I to say different?

I did lose my train of thought and I am curious now: how many ships are in this fleet?

Then again I'm almost sixty; so I guess it's time I stop playing "kids" games...  ...thought this was way beyond a "kids" game; but I see I was wrong. 

So you are just another of the youngsters on this forum (compared to me I mean).  Oh well.  Sometime I hope to meet someone my own age.  

Seriously, giving ideas and making suggestions is just about exactly what this forum is about.  Fire away.   I may not agree, it may not be practical, it may not appeal to much of anyone, so what.  It may just trigger a notion in a developer (they do read the forums!) that leads to something good, or even special.   Ideas in a forum whether early access  or not should be encouraged.   No, that's not it.   Encouraged a LOT.

So thanks for your ideas. They gave me something to think about.

The rest of this post gives some interesting ideas about abstraction, good enough.   But I have to sharply disagree with these statements.   We aren't kids (dang I wish I was again, I can still remember --- back in the fifties), and we jolly well know it's a game.   Discouraging people from posting  --- which is what these comments tend to --- is, well, badly done.   My opinion as always; but respect for people despite the fact that we take exception to their ideas has actually been quite common in these forums; I have been a recipient myself, and am grateful to others for their patience and their good manners.

Course on consideration it I may have gravely mistaken your intent/tone.   If so, my apologies.

I don't necessarily agree it is a fleet. I have never heard a dev say that. I could explain the single colony ship (not the first colony video clip).

The colony ship does not carry the 2.5 billion people. It carries a sizable crew and a wormhole device (We know from the lore that worm hole tech has been used by the older races for centuries) when the worm hole is established the population is transported instantly in containers with 1 mil population per container. This would take a few months to complete, so we will have to give them a little suspension of disbelief as long as turns are said to be a week.

Personally I pay no attention to the claim that the turns are a week. In my mind as I play, they are at least a year. There are no events in the game that I can think of that require that the turn be thought of as a week.

Oh, and don't be offended by Stanley's post, I have read a lot of his posts and he is a good guy. If you have been involved with this forum and other forums you must know you have to have a thick skin. The internet is a great medium for communication but it does not give you the tone of voice of voice com or the body language of face to face. I try not to offend anyone and I try not to be offended by anyone's opinion. It is a game but it is not a child's game. My grandsons kid me for playing turn based games and I kid them for not being smart enough to play.  

I love the idea of extra modules on colony ships!!!

How about adding tile improvements as modules?

The basic module is the colony capital as it is right now,

Then you select, modules that represent 1 tile improvement: factory, research lab, etc. limmited to 1 per type.

As you colonize, you enter the planett screen and just deploy you modules where you like and that's it!!

No point in going back and forth with empty colony ships too much micro.

Also after you colonize you should get some manufacturing in the planet buffer for scraping that ship, based on all modules and parts and hull except the colony ones.

I have no problem at all with a couple of optional colony techs that you can tweak on a colony ship as modules. Maybe one gives you bonus population growth, maybe one gives you some initial industrial output, maybe one gives you a factory from the get go for example.

So you get the choice of building lots of ships or slightly slower but more powerful ones. 

Okay.  New Idea; or an improvement on the original.  So, let's say, we have the hull of the Colonizer left in orbit.  I do agree that returning it rather than using it for something else would be a waste of time.  Thus, I suggest that we move it to the location of where we wish to place our upcoming ship yard and allow it to serve as the core for that structure.

Returning to the modules: Yes, ones that serve as preliminary (and temporary) factories, research facilities, farms would be great.

I'd also like to see an option (at the start of the game) to set the max capacity of the colonization module (for all factions/civilizations).

For kids and Kids at heart this may be just another game; which is why they aren't founders (in my opinion).  For people with IQ's above the double digits it is far more than a game; it's almost a necessity.  It is the "play" that our minds need to cope with the idiosyncrasies of the world; and that is why we become a bit Obsessively Compulsive when it comes to our thoughts on what should be.  The what shouldn't be isn't so much of a problem; if we have the ability to suppress or eliminate it.

For me this is not another "Civ" game.  I do own a few of them and have played them; but they don't provide the "play" my mind craves.  The Total War games do; but not like this one does.

Historically though, most of my posts receive negative responses and there is invariably that added "it's just a game".  Football, Basketball, and Baseball are just games...  But they're for adults not kids!  It is sad that video games are considered Kids only and aren't viewed the same as the afore mentioned sports.  I have heard that some of them are becoming a sport and that's awesome.

I know exactly how to turn a game such as this one into a real money maker for the players as well as the developers...  But the world is obviously not ready for that.  So, I'll go back to keeping my thoughts to myself for a while.  At least until it ceases to be a kid's game.