Dirty Tactics, or Drengin Honor

Heh. If they're cloaked, you'll need limits and ways to detect them. For cloaking tech I'd suggest a high cost and moderate size - and them being spottable by specialised sensors (meaning you'd need to use espionage to, perhaps, see if those ships on his planet can see your vessels).

Ships that "look innocent" but aren't are an interesting idea, too. I'd be awesome if my opponent, losing his battle, would start using colony ships to ram into my cruisers or starbases. Or if you could create AI-piloted craft whose sole purpose is to act as a giant missile - perhaps with abilities such as carrying viruses to destroy planetary population without having to invade, or explosives designed to disrupt enemy weapons/defenses - weakning thier fleets just before an important battle.

I'd just love more ways to influence things around GalCiv2, myself. New ways to attack planets (especially without requiring a transport ship - why can't I tell my boys to just bombard a world from orbit?), new ways to influence, disrupt, or create trade (perhaps charge a "tariff" for every trade ship moving through your space - forcing the races to either adjust their route, creating a longer travel time without financial gain, or pay you a % of the trade income), and new diplomacy options like getting races to enact trade embargoes on races you don't like, or telling them to attack certain systems or even merely asking them for a set amount of credits each turn.

Cloaking was in the original galciv, and I doubt very much it'll ever return. Of course, if there was huge demand it might come back, but the demand for the AI to have the ability to come out behind you and trash you isn't hard.

Disguises would be good, a sort of "q-boat" idea, but wouldn't work in practice (you can see a laser)

Kamikazi ships=tactical combat. nooooo.
NO orbital bombardment. It was there, but it's gone for good, and good riddance. The complaints of "AI nuked my planet! OMG CHEATZ!!" aren't hard to imagine.
And there is a tariff if you're evil. Makes up for the lack of trade.

But I love the ideas for diplomacy, like tariffs etc. Perhaps funding arms dealers, or some sort of contracts? it would be hard and probably exploitable, but cool. Like when people tell you "We must work behind the scenes to stop so and so" you say "Alright. I give you the tech, you make the ships, we give them to X, he takes out Y" would be excellent if possible, I would love to see a race say to me about a year after, when they have my full funding "Hah, we've been working with X and Y, and we all say prepare to die!"
War funding would be good, "We hate them, you hate them, so you research this and sell to us on discount"
The thing with diplomacy is, while good, there aren't enough options to use puppet states. I want to be a behind the scenes lunatic properly funding chaos. And maybe alliance meetings? like the UP, but for trade sanctions, co-cordination, and "deals" to be made?

Yeah. Exactly.

But the tariff thing with evil races shouldn't just be an "Evil race" thing. Nor should it just be limited to whomever builds the Galactic Wonder to get it. It's a diplomatic option, not a "only one faction can ever use it" option.

And what do you mean about Galactic Bombardment? It was removed in this version?
I dunno. I kinda like the idea of even having specially designed ships destroying a world's population and infrastructure without having to bother with invading.

If ships were cloaked, then they should be more vulnerable to attack. For example, if cloaking were instituted, a fleet of cloaked ships, if discovered while cloaked, could be attacked and would then have to defend at perhaps half (or less) than their normal strength (or hit points). This is more fitting with the conventional sci fi ideas about cloaking, e.g., can't fire weapons while cloaked, can't use active scanning, etc.

A tech tree addition could be for high end scanners that detect cloaked ships. So an empire would have to anticipate an enemy researching and using cloaking technology, and then it would have to research the counter--scanning technology. It would make for an even greater reason to spy on your enemy, to find out if he's researching cloaking tech, so that you have to counter it.

Which opens up another can of worms with regard to espionage. I think there should be an espionage tech tree addition. Not only can you learn about your enemy, but you can choose between sabotage, misdirection, misinformation, theft, maldiplomacy, etc. branches of the tech tree.

I agree completely.

Well, technically speaking, there already IS a tech tree "cloak detector." If you look at the description for Sensors Mk. IV in the research window, you'll see that it speaks of no one being able to hide from them. Perhaps the higher generations of sensors will also have a cloaking detection added to them? Maybe some additional anti-cloaking benefits from the Eyes of the Universe (with perhaps a balance of a slight range reduction)?

How about this:

Cloaked ships reduce the effective radius that the ship/planet's sensor detection range [eg: 3 squares away]?
ie: a higher tech cloaked ship can still be detected if it is very close to the ship's sensor, but otherwise still undetectable if it's further out (but still within the conventional ship's sensor range [say 15 squares] ).

This way, your same cloaked ship can have different cloaking effectiveness against different races (who has various levels of sensor tech).

In fact, this would start an tech race of higher cloaking vs. even higher sensor tech.
More strategy to the game/ship design.

I like the idea of stealth or masking tech modules that reduces range that an enemy can detect you. However the AI currently already has a big problem keeping itself informed. I am sure it will soon start using Cargo hulls with big engines and sensors but the whole manuvering, focusing forces, and keeping an eye on the opponent it still a big challenge for the AI without even trowing in cloaking.

I garunetee if cloaking got introduced soon the AI would either be crippled by parinoia, protecting all its planets heavily, or it would be vulnerable to sneak attacks from cloaked transports.

Actually the AI is already crippled by parinoia.

Crippled by paranoia makes good dystopian planets.

I do remember someone saying cloaking was in the data files, at least partially, like they didn't finish it and were going to put in more code. And as for both cloaking AND orbital bombardment. It's not JUST the computer being able to destroy you, you can use dirty tricks on them, too. Using the logic of 'having these things is bad because the enemy gets them too' can be applied to many things.

Lets face it, if someone wants to destroy you in Gal CIV 2 in any difficulty above normal, and you aren't up to snuff, you're down. Perhaps orbital bombardment would require a ship spend a turn in orbit ahead of time, or starbases can prevent it, or something, but having stealth or bombardment isn't a bad thing, though maybe if it ever does get in people might want an option to turn it off.

I, for one, am all for more options, and more features, not less. As long as if they are majorly game altering some people can turn them off.

As for innocent looking ships being a bomb, missile, bombarder, transport, or warship in disguise, I don't see why it WOULDN'T work. Not everyone automatically can see weapons, especially if they're 'concealed' or disguised.

Maybe a dirty tactics and espionage tech tree, allowing people to make weapons and bombardment modules that can be 'concealed' for double space. Sure, a warship made to look like a cargo hauler would be not very powerful, but they would never realize it was one until it blasted their sole defender out of orbit since they figured you'd never get past their defenses.

I know I'm getting off track here, but wouldn't it be cool if there were ships patrolling and stopping ships in a time of war when they're paranoid about them carrying weapons?


As for the puppet government, funding rebellions bit, I think that'd rock. More than once (I said this on another thread) I've wanted to control a minor or planet of a major civ without taking it over. Mostly, to take advantage of their innate racial abilities, and force and/or coerce them to help me, or in exchange for protection from bigger bads.

Secondly, more than once i've played a game where a single race dominates everything, everyone hates them, and I constantly have aliens telling me we need to work together to undermine them, yet there are rarely options to do so, I think it'd be fun to fund pirates to harass them, or sabotage things, or rig elections ,etc, anything I can do to cause chaos, and even work with other lesser races to help cause the downfall of the larger, or AT LEAST suck their blood out slowly like a lamprey and profit!!!!! $$$$$

Thirdly: I'd love to just be able to do more colonialish things, fund revolutionaries, fund pirates, hire mercenary ships, privateers, raise tariffs, institute ships who stop tradeships and board them instead of just destroy them, take over planets but install puppet governments so they look to not be a part of me, etc, they'd be cool.

Well, I know most of these are impossible, and if not, very far off, but still I think it's fun to discuss. So don't anyone bother to tell me how silly or dreamish my ideas are, I know, but it's fun to consider.