Jemelby

I really enjoy the first 15-20 turns of every game. The mad dash for planets, anomalies, and resources. Then around turn 30-40, you can usually count on a defensive battle or two. After than, it's pretty much a matter of clicking the turn button until your economic machine cranks out enough credits to buy off everyone, or your research machine cranks out enough tech to win. I'd really like to see something to make the middle-end and end g

Most galaxies are pretty much flat. The phenomenon know as the "Galactic Plane." Most solar systems are also flat. Most planetary satallites, to include rings, rotate around the planet in a flat plane. Having said that, I really like the idea of a one edge popping out on the other side of the map. Sometimes I start 5-6 new games in a couple minutes because my starting placement sucks.

We've got all these pretty colored borders on the starmap, but they mean next to nothing. I can cross them with my war ships. I can engage purple's shipping in red's space. I can pre-position whole fleets on yellow's planets befor declaring war by attacking him. Etc.... Aside from the occational UP resolutioning that taxes starbases in other's territory, and of course, the influence victory, I really don't see any other point to the bord

It's kinda frustrating, really. I am always in last place according to the GNN news. I could have the best economy, most influence, most production, most research, etc and still be last. In fact, it seems that the only thing that determines this ranking is military might. Until I have a flock of medium+ ships, and have swatted down a few of the red's ships, I don't seem to climb on this score. I wish that that standing reflected all my great non-m

I did a word search of the manual. The only refernce I found to the bonusus of "different looking" planets was in the description of all the planetary interface screen items. You know... where everything in the picture has a number, and then there is a chart where it describes what's at each number. Under the description of the moon, it states in parenthesis that the moon gives a production bonus. There is no reference to rings or high PQ bonuses.<

I read this in another post (one with lots of numbers). If this is true, where's it documented, and what else did I miss by not reading it? I'd be really curious to know if there are any other subtle, hidden gems like this in the game.

Here is what I know population to effect: More population means more cash from economic based planets (Anyone know the formula?) More population means more cannon fodder for wars (Troop ships) Too much popluation without enough stims means unhappy population More population means more votes in the United Planets Now... what else does a high population get me? What I'd specifically like to know is if there is any p

I've played a couple different mini scenarios, and can't seem to get an answer for myself, so I'll ask the question here. Let's say I have a planet with an economic starbase on either side of it. Do I get the production/social/military bonus from BOTH starbases? Or is it limited to just the base with the highest rating?

It never fails, I start a game, and as I prosper, my neighbors become more and more disenchanted with me. Inevitably, one of them declares war. My question(s) is "how do I stop this war once it starts", and what do I need to do to prevent it? I immagine that diplomacy has alot to do with it. Is it enough to just HAVE a good diplomacy rating, or do I have to actually interact with the other species to take advantage of it. To

I just upgraded to 1.0x. Now, when I go to upgrade an existing ship from the shipyard, only the jewlery carries over. I have to re-install all the components. Usually, all I am wanting to do is swap for newwer engines, and maybe add a survey module. But I have to completly start from scratch. I can see where this might be a good thing, since it makes you check for newest everything. But is there an option anywhere?

I have a pretty recent version of the Microsoft Intelli mouse. The one where the scroll wheel doubles as the middle button. The trouble with that is that it is NOT a very smooth button. Infact, I pretty much have to lean forward in my chair to bring enough weight down on the button to get it to click. I've got two more of these mice, and their about the same trigger weight. I find it frustrating that I sometimes have to click this butt

So early in the game, a rouge alien colony ship snuck in an colinized a Class 4 planet (refered to as mars from now on) right next to my home world. How to I convince these aliens that they would be better off under my rule? Is the answer: Embasies on a planet near Mars? Influence bases near Mars? Overall influence across the universe? More importantly, how do I tell if any of my efforts are having an effe

Have you ever noticed that when you scroll around the main starmap, that the mini map doesn't move with you? You have to zoom/un-zoom the map to get it to update. Annoying.

Don't you hate it when... You get asked by a race to trade your whatever for their Impulse Engines. You agree, and when you go to check the tech tree, you realize that you already had Warp Engines which you traded from another race a while ago! The obviouse solution for this is to "reject" an offer, run and check the tech tree, then go try and get the same deal. This, of course, often fails because the offer has been take

Don't you hate it when... Your trying to decide what planet to put your Economy Capital on, so you go to the charts and stats screen an look for a fairly good quality planet that is already producing a good income. You find a likey candidate and double click it. You are wisked away to the "planet surface" screen, and decide it's as good as anyother planet to build the capital on. It isn't until a couple of turns later when you get attacked by your

I'd really like to see some tighter navigation control for my ships. Perhaps the option to turn on "range" rings around planets and ships. These rings would be visable when you hover the pointer over an entity. This would serve TWO purposes. If I happen to see what appears to be an enemy fleet heading my way, I'd like to be able to somewhat accuratly predict how long it will take for them to reach my domain. I'd also like to do this without pullin

More: I recently realized that the nature of anomalies is given away in the "destination" information once you have routed a survey ship to an anomaly. the destination is say, for example: "wormhole01." Of course, this does you no good if the anomaly is within the current move range of the ship. It is handy if your ship is out of moves, and you have to decide which anomaly to head towards first.

I'm not real big on saving ship designs. I don't spend too much time designing ships, and would rather not have any of the ships from my previous game saved. So I was a bit miffed when I started a new game, and all the ship designs from the previouse game were listed in the quick pick list on the map screen. ALL of them.. even the ones that were not available yet. and befor you get too excited, you can click on them, but it won't build them. The s

I noticed that all the anomalies have numbered names... most start with 10, 20, 30, 60 and 90, then are followed by a [likely] random three digit number. Is there any way to fathom the value or content of an anomaly from this number?

So what your saying is that once the route is established, the ship is no longer neccessary? Boy. That was a big concept to miss. I build a ship for every trade route, and leave it on the route... one ship per route. So I can build just one freighter and send it a bunch of different planets to establish trade routes? So what happens if you but a trade base on a route AFTER the little ship picture is off doing something else? D

What I mean to say, is that when you are contemplating sending a ship out into the cold, hard vacuum of space, it would be nice to know things like how long it will take to get there, and what will it's projected routing look like. I fly helicopters IRL, and just about every FOB or flight planning room you step into has a large scale map on the wall with a string fastened to that facilities location. the string has black marker lines on it at regular

The music is VERY reminicient of the music in "Rome - Total War." In that game, it was intended to have a very latin (as in Pre-north-american-western-civ) flavor.

Ok... The title of this post was sort of like bait, but now that your here, here's my question: I understand that with a low approval rating, your planets may revolt, defect, etc... I also know that they have some niffty options coming up in the V1.1 that will make approval ratings more interesting. What I would like to know is what else does approval rating effect? Does it have an effect on the productivity of a planet (like mentioned in

If I mine research from a resource in the middle of no where, is that bonus being applied elswhere? or only to planets within the sphere of influence for that base? Also, is there a master stat screen that will tell me what all my universal bonuses are, and where they are coming from?

I researched pretty far into the trade tree one game, and I all ever got was 5-6 BC per ship/route. That's pretty much chump change by that stage of the game. Even multiplied by 10-15 trade routes. Does having a tradable commodity increase that? The only place I've seen that turn up is on the race-to-race trade screen.