BUMP

Sorry for renewing this thread; however I recently purchased Galactic Civ II DL/DA and it is a great game.

Ideas-

Increase the way the game looks graphically. The games looks good but when you make a star system make the suns well 'shine' not a textured ball using a NASA UV/Infared 'I think' picture. Just make the sun look like the Suns do in Sins of a Solar Empire from the tactical map.

- Have the systems have a minimum amount of planets as they already exist. Just better looking a larger. Well like Sins of a solar empire.
- When building on planets I would like to see something that was used in Imperium Galactica II : Alliance - Perhaps a randomly generated MAP for the said planet type. Build like IG2: Alliance making a basic city like say Age of Empires, or Rise of Nations - and allow the cities (colony hub, town center ect) to grow in time with upgrades and population increase - (like Rise of Nations did) - graphically have the city reflect the Alien Races look and feel. Small s--t like this makes the game fun and interesting - hell if its possible have little alien people waling around in the city if you scroll close enough. It helps to develop attachment or if you are the enemy.. a site to watch your stellar marines go in for the kill and watch as the civilians scramble - or explode as you rain death from the atmosphere or toxic gasses.. i hope you get the idea. Make the planets interactive on the surface to AND like Rise of Nations have rare artifacts/resources that play a random 'extra' in the game that can be harvested/traded ect for $ or 10% to this or even an exclusive weapons technology or special armors energy/hull bonus or immunity to a type of weapon.

- EXPLORATION
ok this is probably shallow but its the premise behind a game that is going to become HUGELY popular I believe. Exporing new worlds, finding objects in dead space, discovering races still in the primitive stages of evolution (once again I referece planet surface watching them just do what ever it is they DO) thats a game in itself but lets add another level to that.. an entire planetary eco system cool looking flora and fauna. Just another element to the game. Hey depending on your style of play you could be a treky and not make contact but observe, you could be evil and gas the poor bastards, or you could make contact and even help them to achieve accerlated evolution in thier physiology, technology and now you have an ally/new element to the game a new player AI. I know more code.. I am just a novice programmer/3d max user hobbyist. But imagine all the 4X gamers out there with these options. All you would have to do is improve upon this idea further each time. Anyways back to my point exploration, finding rare artifacts, "new elements" if you want to go into science fiction but its a game and fine by me.. using elements to make new technologies to utilize those elements meaning new ores/gasses example: specialized hulls/weapons/fuels.

the idea itself is already great. just needs a major graphics update although it is far above existing competition that I have seen. Tech tree is great. I like to watch the real time battles take place of the ships I created.. could use fighters like in Imperium Galactica II that come from carriers and a few fighters from capital ships. just not as many as a carrier class. just makes watching the real time battle look even cooler as it unfolds.

- Oh planetary guns - seen it in Star Wars - Hoth - shooting at the Empire from the the planet - and once again Imperium Galactica II.. they should take up a good amount of space on the planet for strategic "building placement" but they should be implemented, forget the argument of rotation of the planet, it made Imperium Galactica II fun and it helps with defense and well.. like IG2 when you watch a battle unfold with the planet in the background a starbase in orbit and a fleet fighting the enemy it just looks freakin COOL. Large balls of antimatter coming from the planets surface hitting enemy ships, the starbase unleashing its fully upgraded fury and the fleets going at it. In full 3d/ on the 2D plane keeping that in mind I think it is a good idea. and of course a starbase in orbit needs to be there for additional defense. just limit slots for contruction/economy/influence/military types and they should only be set in orbit unless its an influence station or a deep space station have to brainstorm on that idea for placement outside of an orbit.

I have a TON of ideas for this game genre but I always play these games and find myself saying "I would have done this" "How cool would this game be if it had this" "This is what this games needs" "When will games like this start including this"

- Im sure we all do that.

Random events and all those pictures explaning, ect, random events with the players input Evil option, Nuetral Option, Good Option. Show us a movie using the in game graphics on the planet surface ect.

Even small things such as researcing a new technology, showing the races scientists in the background experimenting with prototypes as the player checks the status of the research for examples while checking status and show comments made by the scientists needing more funding, or progress report. This just adds to the atmosphere that you are really part of a civilzation. People are reporting to you and you see them going about there functions/ scientists,engineers,ect.

Another thing from X-Com is research of the alien races and there technologies itself - assuming that races have some exclusive techs, including techs/bonuses/atifacts/elements that are randomly generated and found on planets or in space and being used by that race. Being able to reasearch ships alien ships destroyed/captured alien species to research even interrogation - (an espionage ability or the players races funding in espionage allowing inelligence interrogators) all this research of course to find "weaknessess" allowing the players race to be more effective in combat whether in space or on the aliens planet. Example: having fought on the aliens planet we learned that they have mechs capable of jumping long distances using missile based attacks... this being the last known capability the player can research tactics and upgrades to be more effective.

a lot of though but would have to be narrowed down for implementation.

References
X-Com ufo Defense/Rise of Nations/Imperium Galactica II/Sins of a Solar Empire/Spore/Galactic Civs II DL/DA and of course games we havent played yet because these ideas havent been implemented before to be tried and tested.

I appologize in advance but I will re-read this later I got on the topic and kept going. I may even re write and do some major reediting in case I didnt make sense in some parts of the text.

Me I want the invasions to be more like advance wars on the old gameboy, since the planets are already seperated into grid it shouldn't be that hard.  

sorry, didn't see this until i posted...

AWSOME IDEA! TIME CONSUMING BUT AWSOME!

ADVANCE WARS ROCKS AND I
don't really think it would work... perhaps since the invaders have fixed soldier amounts... but then it would be impossible to win because the home planet could blitz you... sorry endless thought sprials...

GREAT IDEA   

I'd like to see more depth overall, but mostly in the combat screen. Other games like Rome: Total War, for example, allow you to choose formations, who to attack, where to go on the battle screen map (in our case space) and stuff like that. With the current galciv battle screen you can't even choose to withdraw if you're losing. If that was available then speed would play a much larger role in the game. Faster ships could engage/disengage at will. This could make for hit and run tactics, which are limited in the current version.

Maybe even add the ability to control a selected ship with your keyboard. If that were to be worked towards there would also have to be new accuracy mechanics, so that maneuvering to avoid shots is necessary. Also, you'd be able to target specifics components of an enemy ship - their shields, support modules, sensors. That could open up another area of the tech tree where you could research new targeting systems that target in different ways depending on the race you're ships are fighting. A cloak ability would also be a cool way to ad combat depth.

Another cool feature to add would be crews. In the ship details screen it'd be neat to be able to view the ship's crew roster, and the more important crew member's (Captains, officers, pilots, gunners, etc.) stats. That way you could give a certain ship an experienced or well trained crew and that ship could then perform better with different tasks.

A small request I also have is to make the size of ships more varied. In the battle screen enemy small hull fighters appear to be the same size as some of my large hull designs, which have crews in the hundreds. Talk about packed in like sardines. Space sardines, to be exact.

Really thats it lol. One more thing though - it'd be cool to have more varied weapons options, and more overall ship abilities. I believe this was also hinted towards ealier. It'd be cool to have ships that could be assigned to trade routes, that go along the routes close to the freighters and protect them. I'm currently using an Escort design but it hasn't seen much intended use because its hard to make sure they're in the right place to protect trade vessels. Basicly just more specifics abilities I guess.

Another ability would be the use of a sort of shuttle bay in larger ships that could launch small hull fighters during battles for support. Or maybe the bay could be used for away missions, where shuttles could take down an away team to a planet under heavy spying that could destroy certain buildings like their factories, or steal technology "blue prints." If that was available there could even be specific missions assigned through some sort of script system.