You research techs to increase ship customisaiton. You have the jewellery and everything right off the bat, but you research better weapons, better defences, better (bigger) hulls, better life support, better engines, and certain special modules (namely invasion, construction, colonisation, and trade. In the expansion there will also be mining modules).

You can make your own hulls as .x files, and upload them. The game will recognise and import them. https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=117337 is a link to a star-trek mod, where ships have been made and then imported into the game.

You can customise your races dialogue, abilities, history, pictures, anything you want. The data used in modding is all done in the .xml format, which is the basic format of wordpad, so instantly moddable on any windows computer. You can change any of 26 statistics (a few more are currently unused, may be unlocked in the expansion). You can mod the races you play against. You can also mod the United Planets, and make your own issues in the .xml files, which get used in-game.

All technology in game is moddable, as are political parties and weapons. As well as being moddable, you can make your own for all these things.

Basically, as far as moddability goes, this is probably the best game out there.

Yes you start from scratch every time but ships you have previously designed will show up in future games when you get the required techs). There are "core" (pre-designed) but you do not have to use them. Most players obselete them immediately.
Designing your own ships is pretty much required once you're past the "traning wheels" difficulty levels.


Oh and... YES! THIS GAME IS GOOD!

Hey Joey,

If you've unsure of the purchase, you could always try the demo first...it should give you a good idea of how the game plays out...plus it's free

Of course, we HOPE you like it enough to buy the full version    but I know that TBS games are an acquired taste to gamers used to more action oriented genres.

Enjoy!

 

I could not help but notice that you seem to have gotten the wrong idea but the genre of the game. You do know that its a 4x turn based space strategy game (think civilzation in space) and not a space shooter, right?

That technology branch is the beginning of your research into warfare (ground and space) as well as the offense and defensive branches you may utilize. You'll find the game to be quite fun and some of the mods to have advanced past their initial mock-ups to full interactive realms.

I'm currently using the Babylon 5 mod myself and the additional movie add-ins.

Anyone here have xfire that would want to discuss the game and help me out. that would be much appreciated

You could always log on to the irc channel:  irc.stardock.com #galciv

oh doh, Mirc. Can you tell me how to get into the server, i have never really used it.

That's still pretty good. The most replayable game I had before GC2 lasted about 3 plays before I got rid of it. I've played about 15 games on GC2 and I'm still going strong. Should get at least that much again before I'm done with it. Maybe more. Maybe never.

Re: upgrading... Ooops!

Never mind, doesn't sound like you got very far in. Start a new game; there are quite a few threads here about starting strategies if you want some pointers.