Things you CAN'T mod in the game at the moment, but wish you could...

Does anyone else want to have planetary development in the game? I always thought this was a big part of the MOO series.

Make the module available as progressive techs after terraforming. The first lets you add +3 to a planet's PQ and tiles, the second a total of +6, the third a total of +9, etc (up to some limit). Planets would need to have this bonus recorded as part of their stats (to make sure a player didn't exceed their technological terraforming limit). Something like this would be nice.

Other than that I'd like to be able to mod the game so that only stars appearened on the map, and any ship could go into a star's square. Once there you could choose to attack/colonize/etc any planets orbiting the star. Rather like the MOO series. Right now the distances between planets and stars is really wonky and it would be nice to make it more realistic. Also I think it would lend itself a bit better to more interesting map designs, as more systems could fit on a map and life support could be decreased in a more meaningful way, imho. Slowing down the colonization race would add a lot to the game, but right now I think it would be too susceptable to bad luck in starting location. If anyone has a better idea than each star representing an entire solar system (complete with multiple planets) I am all ears.

Also a lot of people have proposed more complicated tags for ship components.. I think this is a nice idea, as then you could potentially have a mod that had some weapons (like phasors perhaps) giving defense bonuses and other things. Likewise, making the tech tree display techs with multiple prerequisites correctly would also be a great boon.

I was thinking of a Star Trek mod and i thought: most of the time the ships contain a lot of non combatant stuff like conference rooms, amabasadorial rooms, holodecks, science labs, workshops.....

So here's some components i'd liek to have mut i have no idea if it's even possible to mod.
we shoudl have custom components designed not for combat but for economy, like:

basic lab: ads 1 research pe turm, costs 10 Space Points
enhanced lab: ads 2 research per turn, costs 20 SP
advanced lab ....... you get the idea.......
......
workshop: ads 1% repair bonus to ships in fleet
....
holodecks: ads to ship's range and enhances all others ship's civilian components (by boosting morale on the ship): for instance if you have 2 basic labs + 1 holodeck you should get 3 reaserch = 2 research from lab + 50% morale bonus from holodecks
....
cargo bays: ads a bit to ship's range plus will be required for future missions ( I hope we can create later a mission pack with missions like: transport medicine to an infected planet, etc, etc....)
....
ambasadorial room: ads 1 point of influence to the closest planet. If it's your planet then and influence to your planet, if it's an enemy planet it spreads your culture there.....
....
hangars: as has been suggested before, hangars that should allow a big ship to carry tiny ships.

#3: Ability to create specific techs that would allow moonbases of various function (bonuses to home planet).

That'd be cool.

#4: Wish we had a new development module for ships (constructors?) that could create artificial planets (perhaps one per star?)(assuming proper tech was researched).

Reminds me of MOO2, and Space Empires 4. Both Fun games for the time. The latter ok, the former hard, but great fun. Granted I never could grasp the concepts of it but in SE4, you could build a HALO, or a SPHERE over a Star, which was REALLLLLY COOOL. Granted I never got far to play with em I always lost. I wish you could do that also in GC2, where if there was a System of planets that were all 0, you could either Planetary Terraform the planets to make em livable, or make a Halo or a Sphere over the Star. Granted doing the Sphere will completly make the planets around said Star dead permenantly, As would a Halo (To a extent) Granted, not realistic, but cool You can even add in a "Vote" system where the people determine wether or not you can ruin the EcoSystem of the Star System your gonna "Spherefy" or "Halo"

basic lab: ads 1 research pe turm, costs 10 Space Points enhanced lab: ads 2 research per turn, costs 20 SP advanced lab ....... you get the idea....... ...... workshop: ads 1% repair bonus to ships in fleet .... holodecks: ads to ship's range and enhances all others ship's civilian components (by boosting morale on the ship): for instance if you have 2 basic labs + 1 holodeck you should get 3 reaserch = 2 research from lab + 50% morale bonus from holodecks .... cargo bays: ads a bit to ship's range plus will be required for future missions ( I hope we can create later a mission pack with missions like: transport medicine to an infected planet, etc, etc....) .... ambasadorial room: ads 1 point of influence to the closest planet. If it's your planet then and influence to your planet, if it's an enemy planet it spreads your culture there..... .... hangars: as has been suggested before, hangars that should allow a big ship to carry tiny ships.

Basically, moving StarBases if you look at it right.

More aliens. Non-carbon based, Non-oxygen breathers, Non-corporeals. There was a game in mid 90's called Ascendancy. I loved it then, still love it now. They had 21 Aliens in it, and non were human. Each Alien needed different planetary conditions, it was very interesting. In the late game, you could colonize most planets (your tech was advanced enough) and terraform it to perfection, this game really needs that.

Basically, moving StarBases if you look at it right.

Yes, you are correct, basically moving starbases with these differences:
- they have to have limited space on board
- you must be able to design them in the ship editor
- maintenance cost

I would like to see a ship build points distributed, External (like space Weapons and armor), Internal (would have to be stuff that would give advantiges point to the ship) and then have stuff like engines to use both internal and exsternal points, same whit sensors and some soutch that would be cool and give more focus to tactical ship costruction, unfortunatly i guess this woould mess up the ai at this point

I would like to see a boarding crew trying to take over an enemy ship.

The AI.

Keep in mind that with every new game play feature they also have to code the AI to take advantage of it as well. There are some things that might seem like easy concepts for the human but the computer would take forever and a day to figure out. Think about how much has gone into just making the AI build ships that take advantage of all the ship space with just weapons, defenses, engines, and a few modules to worry about. Now you want to add all those extra pieces. Yikes.

Planetary development sounds good on paper but my guess is that it would make the late game unecessarily long. If you want more planets just play on a larger map or up the habitable setting. Besides according to the GalCiv universe everyone breathes oxygen and is carbon based. Nothing says that isn't how the universe really is. How many sulfur breathing rock eating aliens have you met? Now I will grant you that there are some pretty strange microbial life forms here on Earth. However nothing but theory says those types of life forms could ever exist as higher beings. Also same point to be made as with the ship components. The AI has enough to do figuring out which planet to invade without having to worry about whether or not they can breathe the air.

More aliens for the sake of more aliens really adds nothing to the game. Think about the fact that this game has nine different AIs for the races that are in the game. And now you want them to add dozens more. Sorry but I'd rather they focus on continuing to improve the ones we've got rather then worrying about slapping new graphics over existing AIs. And as for Ascendancy yeah it had a bunch of aliens but they all used the same pathetic AI that added zip variety to all those different faces.