1/ a standalone patch   

2/ a standalone patch that is not SDC-only

3 and a standalone patch for those whose Galciv2: DA copy is intalled on an offline computer

I went through both lists, and recompiled them here with slightly different wording (since some ideas were mentioned several times but used different language. So it's a melding of all your great ideas - and are just the ones that are somewhat attainable in future patches. Also, the ones that would offer the greatest lift in gameplay mechanics and fun. (grammar and spellchecked too)

* Remove the +300% food tiles (a sure way to tank your approval if you ever use them) or slightly change the morale curve on populations over 19 billion. As it is, under the current morale rules it is usually a detriment to try and use them for their intended purpose, so I ignore them. They are a trap for the inexperienced, however.

* Change and/or fix the way non-matching defense is reduced by weapons fire, so that off type weapons do more damage to defensive ships.

* Change Starbases to huge hulls to increase their hp. Allow constructers to repair a Starbases hp rather than upgrade it if they are damaged.

* Demographics.
Instead of the "everyone is wiped out in planetary invasions", there are separate policies for conquest for each race
Annihilation- Simple enough. Evil Only.
Slavery- conquered population provides bonus production. There is a chance of revolt. Evil only.
exploitation- Conquered population provides bonus tax income. There is a chance of revolt. Neutral and evil.
non-policy- No effect. for neutrals who don't want to bother with revolt risk.
Equal rights- conquered population gradually merges into conqueror's. Bonus influence. Good only.
The revolt risk could be mitigated through the presence of new "police ships" or eliminated with a new "oppression palace" improvement.

* Anything that makes repetitive tasks more automated is good. It'd also be nice to be able to set a planetary production 'queue' (ex: build 2 constructors, then 2 defenders, then shutdown) or at least have the ability to change multiple planets shipyard queues in the civ manager screen

* Lower the cost curve on spies a little bit, so later on it doesn’t take so much to get that next spy.

* Frequency of all Mega-events. Like a % slider for each one. Therefore if we love the Dread Lords event and dislike the pirate event, we could raise the Dread Lord to 30% and drop the Pirate to 10% (have min/max for each so you can't totally eliminate the possibility of an event).

* A diplomacy option that I can use that is the equivalent of "Your troopships are a bit too close to [OwnedPlanet], if you don't remove them it will be considered an act of war." type of thing

* Different kinds of minor races. Some are docile, and some are wildly expansive and aggressive. Give them the bonuses they need to fill out their role.

* Allow the custom race config screen to go negative so we can build in both positive and negative modifiers right in the create opponent screen. I know how to do it via editing, but I'm sure people would like to play with that function too. I'd propose a maximum of -3 allocated attribute points, which would give the race a corresponding 15 + 3 = 18 bonus points to work with.

* Cari said this wouldn't be too difficult to implement... but allow Music to be replaced in \\ My Docs\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar etc so we don't have to over-write music files or drop new ones into the game directory. Therefore the game would check for that folder and use those music files first. It would also make it easier for people making complete customraces, as they would have to direct those music files to be put anywhere outside the \\ My Docs \\ GC2DA directory...

* Tech trading is indeed a bit too difficult now post-patch. It was too easy pre-patch before. I'm sure there's a middle ground there that will be just perfect (maybe the average between the two weighted towards being slightly more difficult).

* Allow non-data specific options to work with Metaverse. For example work like Logic Sequence’s.

* Metaverse - have the top 25 Empires on a 3d globe, instead of just the top 10 on a flat map. It's hopeless for smaller Empires to get listed in the "big time".

* A general issue... When I'm creating military - extremely war-related custom races, they are being pummeled in-game with statistical frequency. I think this is because it handicaps them early game compared to other races because they fall behind the curve early (research and social building) and can't catch back up... ever. Though all their stats may be in soldiering, attack, defense, HP's it generally doesn't do a lot for unless they're in a small map and go to war ASAP.

* Once a minor race is exterminated, that race name is no longer used later on.

* A % chance that if your spy is caught they will know who planted it and it will affect diplomacy. The better the espionage level, the more likely you are to find out who put the spy there. But still have the % chance you figure out where they're from be small.

* Revamp the Dread Lord Mega-event, give them a planet and high soldiering like they have now, but also apply a little of the old pirate event to it (with Dreadlord ships of course).

* Have anomalies randomly reappear once in a while during the game. 3% chance of 1/2x(1-5) anomalies, where x is the number of large sectors in the game. And 1-5 is the random multiplier.

* A little protection for mining bases. Maybe some tiny guns (mass drivers) that stick up, or even a bubble shield that covers the base. It could add one more to the mining line of research.

* Planet invasions not be a massive genocide, that way we have a more realistic play in having to deal two or three different spices living on the same planet.

* Queuing in this game. In Civilization, one can click on an advanced tech and the game will automatically research all the techs I need in between. With GalCiv one could, for instance, click on the last of the Laser techs and not have to go back to the tech screen until those were all done. Just get a notification that one step was completed and the game would continue researching my line, and we wouldn't have to go in just to click the Done button. Also, with unit builds, the ability to select multiple ships that keep getting rebuilt. We like having mixed fleets, but it's such a hassle trying to organize them all. It would be great if we could have, say, a planet build 3 small ships of different types then 1 medium, and have them all rally to a fleet point. Then it would just keep rebuilding this ship order and all we'd have to do is send the ships to their destination.

* The off type defense bug should be a pretty high priority.

* Lower the number of Starbases than can be built per sector. And then make Starbases a bit stronger in defending themselves. This way they will not be so common and each one will be much more valuable and independent.

* Evil races being able to break alliances. That would be cool and would fit with their theme (especially the Yor and Korath) although maybe only on higher difficulties they could do so.

* Fix the permanent fog of war on the outside perimeter of maps.

* A repair command. Maybe it could be done by the survey ship, giving the survey ship something to do when there's no anomalies around. Or you could load it with repair modules, which are produced at home, and then loaded onto the ship... carried to the ships that need repairing, and then used up. That would be a neat graphic. You'd see the repair modules (look like trade modules) and then after the repair those modules disappear.

* Be able to queue research so that it will continue without us having to click a lot.

* Starport Upgrades(Tech/PI): improves the starport by adding repair bonuses to ships in orbit and increasing military production.

* Slow Start option where you begin your game with just a colony ship and that's it. Plus no home planet. More like a Civ start.

* Restrict access to view techs, ships and planets from the diplomacy screen - making them visible only through spies and/or good relations. Never offer techs the AI determine are strategic regardless of relations.

* Don't provide help during negotiations by turning your offer green/red. Provide two or three tries before having the AI break off negotiations. Offer the color coding to be enabled once 'high' level of infiltration is reached or a 'close' relationship is formed.

* Some form of movement for military Starbases. It should be very slow (one square per turn), and should also cost per each move (massive fuel and logistics costs to move it). Maybe 10 bc/square.

* Repair module for military Starbases?

* New impassable zones. Radiation zones (which you can't pass through until you've researched the radiation planetary tech. Gas zones, which you can't pass through until you've researched the toxic planetary tech, and Supernovas, which you can't pass through until you've researched the Heavy Gravity planetary tech.

* Fleets remain intact when their in orbit. (They don't dissolve their fleet).

* Allow spies to be put on enemy Starbases. Having a spy on a star base gives the following advantages. You can see visually in the sensor range of the Starbase. After xxx number of rounds, the spy can remove a Starbase module of their choice.

* somehow reduce micromanagment with constructors, i've seen the suggestion of making constructors like miners, well you could let a constructor upgrade a starbase, just put a certain price on it. have than have the ability to say how much you want it to upgrade + price that you need to pay for it and how long it would take. so i can send a constructor to make 1 fully build starbase with just a few clicks, instead of having to make 20 seperate constructors and get them all to 1 place.

* maybe add a new treaty, so besides having economic and research treaty have a trade treaty, you can only trade with somebody you have that treaty with.
this could go with the territory option, that the AI may not enter your territory without your permission.

i forgot something too...

Visible battle damage to your ships. By this I mean that after a battle some of the jewelery you added will be missing, making the ship appear "broken" and as it repairs those pieces come back as they were before.

Or pehaps adamamaged ship will lose some of its fight ability rather than just its hit points, as in having a damaged rail gun or something.

Many nice ideas already mentionned.
For my part :

0- (the defense thing for non-matching weapon)
1- Allow spies to sabotage starbases (weapon/defense or bonuses).
2- Allow spies to sabotage starports (increasing build time or reducing ships HP for those built on that planet).
3- Allow spies to "convert" starbases (make them yours after a while if not countered). You know, a spy taking control of a starbase after 1-2-3 years...
4- Have planetary space support. Everybody knows that great Ion Cannon in SW
5- Make the asteroid fields bigger. I don't mean to have more mining bases, just to have big unminable asteroid belts (refering to the impassable space idea). Defending/Attacking a planet behind that kind of belt could be great for strategy.
6- Defense for mining starbases (asteroid). Could result in a well armed "smuggling" base.

And finally:
7- Make the starbases more effective. I do find they are a too easy to destroy, even with defense. It is frustrating when one of your best starbase is destroyed by a small fleet. It takes a lot of time to make them strong (a lot of constructor). I might be wrong, but in my opinion, starbases (especially military) are supposed to be feared. I didn't play a lot so far (less than 10 games), but I found that starbases are the first thing you easily destroy before taking on a Civ. And often, you can ignore them because they are military almost useless for your opponent.

8- Planetary shields. A lovely great but expensive improvement that could increase dramatically defense. Could even be a new tech line to research. First improvement could be some kind of rudimentary shields and so on. The last and extremly expensive shield tech would allow you to build a true Planetary Shield preventing any space attack (or planetary invasion) (except from a truly great fleet with huge firepower). Spies would become extremly usefull there to sabotage the shield before an invasion. Having a Shield Gen on a planet could require Power Plants... (multiple tiles next to the other) That would make it hard to build.

I'm dreaming maybe ? Can't wait !!!

When starting a game, I think it would be cool if there was the option to choose the average starting planets' quality. For example, I like playing with a few high quality planets instead of a bunch of low quality ones.

Better sounds, mabey some voice to aliens, or speaking the tech phrases like Nimoy does in Civ IV, more music. Also when you trade for a tech you should get that tech screen pop up on your next turn instead of it getting skiped over.

One of the reasons people love stardock so much!

anyway.. different planet backdrops on the invasion screen, if you attack a Mars like planet - have a dusty red landscape to fight on, and so on. I think you would have to do about six styles (Ice, Water, Earth, Toxic, Barren, Desert). I know its not possible (yet) to do tanks/soliders for each side but the planet backdrop could be done and would make a difference.

It's time to think about the next expansion; other than all the bug issues that needs to be resolved at or before the expansion if there thinking about maiking one, we must think of improvements.

Allow more control over espionage

- When no espionage spending is needed, the AI sais from time to time we might get a breakthrough and steal technology. Well at this point, didn't we earn the right to target which tech to steal? In other words, we get the option to choose and target which tech to steal. I would imagine that some techs would take longer to steal than others depending on the value compare to yours. Also, we should get another option to steal a ship. For example, by putting your spies on factories, we should be able to steal the ship that's being built from that CIV. The same with putting your spies on research facilities, we should be able to steal the tech that's being researched from that CIV. Anyways, these are some ideas, but it's harder than you think since you must first reach advanced level of espionage on that particular CIV and you can probably forget to be able to reach an advanced level on all the players anyways. I was never able to reach advance level for more than 1 CIV unless maybe if you played on the biggest map with alot of resources.

Influence starbases should be eliminated

- Influence starbases are mainly there to built it near other planets so that you can convert their government into yours. Can't your spies do this?? For example, after reaching advanced level of espionage, you can place your agents on approval and inflence buildings. Depending on how many agents you place, it would require less time for revolt and conversion.

* Note.. you should be able to spy on planets that have been discovered only, not the one's that are across the galaxy.

User interface for spying

- Every screen that exits to find out about another race should have to go in the spying report screen. Where every information you gather from another race can be viewed here. Because currently, you can go from the diplomacy screen to view some info and also the management screen and there scattered everywhere. Basically, in the begining of the game, you should have no "stats and graphs" in the management screen?? Because the stats and graghs is currently giving me more hints than what my spies are gathering as information or intelligence level (low, medium, expert, advance etc...)

Example (put all the information gathered on a race in the following screen and no other screen in an organized fashion)...

Spying report

Choose the race (Altarian for example)

Low espionage level ( enables society )

- Race name and description
- Total population
- Number of colonies and classes of planets and names
- Approval for each colony and the total approval
- Total influence compared to yours (show it with actual numbers and bar level)
- Opinion on you and the relationship level ( hostile, wary, neutral etc...)
- Their ethical alignment (leaning good, neutral, evil)
- Any social production bonuses ( % )
- Number of influence starbases and modules (you can now click on the starbase)

Medium espionage level ( enables economy )

- Total treasury money compared to yours
- Total income for each colony
- Economic status (this is a detail global version of their economy just like you see it in your own economic tab ... for example, tourism income, military expence etc... have all the total income of the empire in one column and the total expenses of the empire on the other... and compare it to yours with actual numbers and bars)
- Number of trade routes with any other civs (names and number of routes from each)
- Any economic bonuses ( example, economic ability 80% etc... )
- Number of economic starbases and modules ( you can now click on the starbase )

Expert espionage level ( enables technology )

- List all the technologies like a mini-tree version and which tech currently researched and the time, if a certain tech enables a building list it too. for example...

so far...

1. Galactic warfare - space militarization - research laser -
laser beam I - laser beam II

2. Hyperdrive - new propulsion techniques

3. Xeno industrial theory ( enhance factory )

* Now researching laser beam III (15 weeks left)

- Any techonology bonuses ( example, tech ability 50 % etc... )

Advance espionage level ( enables military )

- Total number of each type of ships ( colony, contructor, tiny attack ships, medium attack ships etc...
- Total number of each type of ships being built and on which of their planets
- Give the intelligence report on the races strongest attack ships and their weakest

strongest large class = ( 9/0/3 attk )( 10/0/0 def )
Fleet of 3 ships = ( 27/0/9 attk )( 30/0/0 def )

Weakest medium class = ( 3/0/0 attk )( 2/0/0 def )
Fleet of 5 ships = ( 15/0/0 attk) ( 10/0/0 def )

- Any military production bonuses
- Number of military starbases and modules ( you can now click on the starbase )

* At Advance level of espionage, you can now click on the planets to see everything and also, you can now click on enemy ships where before you coudn't in order to see their stats.

GalCiv II is probably the best of the current 4x space games but here are some additions that might be nice.

1. Leaders for ships and planets. These characters give more character to the game.

2. A spreadsheet view for colonies to make managing them more efficient.

3. More cool stuff for the good guys to help balance them against evil.

Hey, an official one of these threads! Awesome!

Anyways, my two cents . . .

My favorite parts of the game are diplomacy and the UP. I'd like to see these elements beefed up a little. For the UP, it would be great if you could set its agenda and choose what to vote on. Maybe it could be determined randomly based on a race's influence. I'd like alliances to be more meaningful; your ships should have their movement range expanded from your ally's worlds (stop and refuel) and I'd like to see the starbase sharing be default. For diplomacy, you really should be able to give fleets. A limited tech trading option would also be nice--I typically disable it.

I think spying could also be expanded. It would be cool to drop agents on starbases and sabotage them. Maybe if you accumulated enough agents, you could take it over. Putting agents on enemy ships would also be neat--maybe they would get damaged or eventually explode.

Also got to agree with everyone else about starbase management being a pain. I always loath getting a influence victory because all the constructor micromanagement it requires. Once built, you should be able to set build queues for starbases. Planets or asteroids could beam resources to them to fund the production. Maybe constructors could ferry resources back and forth.

Ship super projects would also be cool. Maybe you could build a special research vessel that would generate research by visiting anomalies or different colored stars. A command ship could boost the attack and defense of the fleet its attached too. Diplomat vessels could boost diplomacy with the races they are near. Maybe even have a special massive haul size as a super project.

Finally, a few odds and ends . . .

A key to randomly select a new track of music would be very much appreciated.

Anomalies should randomly spawn in during the game.

Fix the image stretching for minor races.

Make eyes of the universe a little less potent.

Explicitly list the benefits of worlds with moons or rings somewhere.

Give us a few more race logos and portraits.

Make the good aligment a little better.

I'm new to the game, but there are a couple of things that I would like to see added:

* More options when it comes to United Planet Meetings. It seems far too passive. It would be nice if you could propose some "basic" legislation that could be voted on in subsequent turns. Also, it would be nice if you could choose to defy/ignore UP legislation without necessarily leaving the UP. Perhaps some serious trade sanctions would be made against you (and worsening relations among the other races) if you defy the UP decisions. Trade sanctions and possible war against the other races would be preferable to getting stuck with some of the bad decisions in the UP (i.e. the two module limit on starbases when you're having a massive military buildup on your border).

* As someone else mentioned, making some kind of use for those PQ 0 planets would be great (beyond having them randomly hit by a comet). In the case of my latest game, I randomly ended up with a ton of PQ 0 planets in my half of the map and only 1 asteroid field. It would be nice if we could set up automated mining operations on those planets. Perhaps those planets would still be subject to the random comet hit, so as to increase the tension if one is blown up.

* Not sure if this one is possible, additional planetary defense types would be good. Perhaps some ground based missile platforms or beam bases that could be used to attack nearby ships (like in the MOO series or Ascendancy).

I'd also love to see the Epic Generator fixed up and re-added to the game at some point, that was a major thing that got me wanting DA, and when it got scratched due to lack of time I was pritty devistated, Epic Generator would be sweet!

Just my Two Cents,

Fate,

1) Diplomacy: Add options to tell AI back off my territory (and then possibly add asking permission to send ships through).

2) United Planets: Give advance notice of issue coming up for vote (4 turns or so). Allow a set of options to be brought up by player and AI.

3) Spying: Allow spies to just spy (info gathers only, harder to detect). Also maybe in that line, don't allow players to place spies on a tile right off the bat. First they have to "spy" and then once they've done it for a turn or two, then they have the option to hinder some tile (disallowing cheat spying on a planet just by bring up the option to place a spy). Also allow someway to have some chance to determine who is spying on you and have consequences for that.

4) Automated Research: Click on an advanced technology, and computer auto-researches (just informing each time a new tech is done) upto that tech.

5) Ground Combat: Don't make it total genocide every attack. Have more options for attacking and defending (maybe in a two or three round sequence).

A few small ideas that won't require much testing:


GAME SET UP:
* Allow certain races to be excluded from selection under the "random opponents" option;

* Allow deletion of player created races.


DIPLOMACY SCREEN:

* Make it so that when you double-click on the money or influence sliders, they automatically slide until the text "goes green" or they max/ min out;


UI:

* Lose the glare on the mini-map;

* Fix the routine where the UI focuses on a ship or location when something is going on there (e.g., run out of autopilot moves);

* Fix the Ship List screen so that you can really select ships from it and have the UI focus on them.


SHIPYARD INTERFACE:

* Add button that supresses new core designs, so they are not added to the ship list when they become avialable;

* Add button that supresses previously designed custom designs, so they are not added to the ship list when they become avialable;

* Add a button that changes the list from AVAILABLE designs to all designs currently IN USE;

* On the IN USE list, have a function that permits you to upgrade all ships of a particular design to a different design en masse.


SHIP DESIGN INTERFACE:

* Change the ship design interface back so that orientation is persistent: in GC2, if you took off a jewel, the next jewel you selected had the same 3D orientation and size. This still works for size, but not orientation.

* An auto-update button that will automatically change a system of one type to another type (e.g. basic life support to advanced life support);

* Orange, green, and purple lights in ship jewelry (some already programmed, but not enabled);

* Change the orange/ yellow ship jewels so they use the ordinary hull and trim colors you selected (possibly as an option?).

I've tried to read through everything on this post, but there are only so many hours in the day. My changes would be:

1) A way to view the position of ships when trading for them. This was in Galciv1. At the moment its a tedious process to note down the names of all the ships you might want to trade, and impossible to tell the location of any potential ships you might want to acquire.

2) Some way of telling how much of your trade revenue is due to economic starbases. Unless I'm reading a key readout at the moment there is simply no way of telling how much of an effect these are having.

3) A more proactive AI regarding diplomacy. I have NEVER once seen an opponent try to trade shipsm or starbases, bribe me into a war, or any of the interesting stuff I frequently do to them. They only seem to want to tech trade and blackmail/grovel.

4) An easy way of identifying the value of techs during trade. Civ4 has a pop-up detailing the reasearch points required for any tech, so you know how good a deal is. On the same subject, it would be nice if the AI stopped trying to flog me beam weapon theory for my latest colonization techs

5) Rebalancing of the UP eg the anomalies motion usually occurs when there are no more left. Also more information to help make your decisions - if all starbases in anothers influence will cost the owner I need to know how that would affect me rather than taking an educated guess!

6) Some way of warning opponents off either from trying to culture flip you or from invading. At the moment you can either passively accept or go to war, there needs to be some middle ground.

7) Some work on performance. As has been detailed things are much slower and jerkier than prior to the expansion. At the very least it would be nice to see an option to turn off some of whatever is causing this slowdown.

8) An option at startup to choose what percentage of habitable worlds need colonisation technology.

9) A cleaning up of the planetary invasion interface. At the moment there is too much guesswork as to where all the numbers are coming from and how much weight each has. Again, in civ4 simply hovering over an enemy unit gives a detailed breakdown of how all influences are contributing to the outcome.

10) A return to the GC1 interface changes when you become good or evil. Why was this removed? It really helped with immersion and offerd some differentiation between good and evil.


Thanks for listening!

Wow... this been a heck of a response! I would like to see these two things:

1) Expanded diplomacy options
2) More UP options , let me propose bills or try to lobby something!

I want more tech options for espionage. It's just a little too, eh, little. One tech that grants an improvment that eats up a tile just doesn't fulfill my desires to be a backstabbing bastard. Being able to target a specific tech I'd like to steal would be great, even if it's got really high failure rates.

Also, more xenobiology techs. I'm not really sure how or what, but it seems like a good idea that needs a few more things to make it shine.

An option to crank up the likelihood of getting bonus tiles on planets would be nice, it's kind of a let down to colonize 30+ worlds and not get a special feature on any of them. We can do it with anomolies, asteroids, and planets in the galaxy, so why not?

A +300% morale bonus tile, any kind of economic bonus tile.

i would like to see a patrol order

either ship/fleet order where the ship/fleet patrols your area of influence

or way pooint order where the ship/fleet patrols a certain radius around the way point say the distance of influence that a starbase has


and being able to que ships

i like the fact that the planet will continue to build the ship you tell it too

but i may want all of my planets to build constructers and then is the troop ships if you could que other ships on that planet it would give your planet time to recover pop lost to the troop ships



i would also like to see a dialog change

no evil sociaty would ever call itself evil

Thanks for doing this Stardock, you are the best game company I've ever been in contact with .

As for improvements, I would like to see the endgame.xml thing implemented (Cari will know what I mean ).

Some great suggestions here, but some that I think would be hard to do because anything you add for player fun has to be usable by the AI within reason - and sometimes people suggest things that seem simple on the surface, but that would be a nightmare blend in for AI use.

Of supreme importance:

1. Fix bugs. A given, you'd hope, but it always worries me when discussions of new stuff occur and there are bugs that haven't been fixed for several iterations.

2. AI enhancements/adjustments. I'm sure they'll happen, they always do, and they help keep the game fresh.

3. Fix tech trading - it has never felt right, IMO. Needs to be fair for both player to AI and AI to AI trading (including majors and minors). I liked someone else's idea of a yearly limit on number of tech tradeable, based on another tech tree line, or empir size - something (you could say on diplo, but diplo is so highly cheesable in this game already). You have to limit trade routes to "keep it real" - the same type of limiting needs to occur on tech trading. You could even add more UP decrees to artificially limit as it does with trade and other stuff.

4. Fix war declaration. War can be harsh - it ruins trade, leads to bad relations, slows down empire development, etc, and it's often insanely cheap and easy to get someone to go to war. Conversely you often have no option to get someone to go to war at any price, which is equally ridiculous when you consider the magnitude and radically game altering potential of a large number of random events in the game. You should be able to get someone to backstab their ally if you pay them an exhorbitant amount (100,000+bc, 10+ juicy techs, a few planets - dunno what a suitable bribe would be, but it shouldn't be a non-option).

5. Some elements don't seem to scale well with galaxy size. Perhaps "buying wars" is one of them. 2-3000bc on a smallish map might be a nice chunk of change, but on large and up it's chump change.

Realistic changes (things that wouldn't cause AI seizures):

1. UI changes, like better sorting/display options on the planet screen for structures. Sometimes it might be nice to see only factory type structures, or lump factory and powerplant as "production" structures - some kind of breakdown of types in order of potency, with clear indications of potency. A lot of times when developing worlds in late game I'll build lower level variants of structures and upgrade them in cycles, so they develop in my lifetime - and it's tedious to have to do this manually as it is - moreso when you have to sift thru the multitudes of structures to find what you want.

2. UI changes, like better sorting for ship components when building ships. If I pick weapons/defenses of a particular type, I want them to sorted in a particular order, and the game seems to do something way different than that. I want them in order of damage/defense value (highest to lowest), then size (lowest to highest), then cost. Sometimes it seems to do this, sometimes it does not. Different sort options or consistency would be nice. The likelihood of ever wanting to sort weapons/defenses/engines by alpha is slim.

3. Oddly, I mostly played with missles til recently, when I forced myself to try beams, then mass drivers. The nano rippers were a nice surprise and so different from the usual generic progression. More variance in the fairly linear tech trees (like nano rippers) would be nice, especially in the weapons/defense/engine lines that make up the effectiveness of your ships.

4. Often I have fleets of the exact same ships - maybe it's 5 mediums - exact same design. If there's a way to upgrade all at once, I've missed it. It'd be nice if you could upgrade a whole fleet at once (assuming they can all upgrade to the same ship and you can afford it). If you have a booming econ and can afford sweeping upgrades, it can get real tedious to manually upgrade ships 1 at a time. Maybe even adding a ship upgrade governor could be an option (although, it probably wouldn't see much use since it's rare that you can just flat out upgrade your entire navy at once).

Ideas that the AI would probably have problems with.

1. It would be cool if you could use production to upgrade ships instead of cash. There are several ways you could do this.

a. Mining bases on asteroids could assign production to a nearby (very close) ship which would feed the upgrade. It would require a special module on the mining base. In most cases, you'd probably need a whole field decked out to assign for the upgrade. Probably my least workable suggestion.

b. A ship adjacent to a planet could be upgraded with that planet's military production. Perhpas the planet would need to have a star port AND an additional structure, like a "star drydock." There could still be a small upgrade fee, but the bulk of the upgrade would use planet production. The upgrade time would depend on the output of the planet - so you'd likely have to do it at your ship building worlds. (my favorite suggestion for this)

c. A ship adjacent to a military starbase could get reduced upgrade costs. Make a line of modules for military starbases that reduce upgrade costs by 5% per level. Make it so that you can't add these modules til the military starbase already has a certain number or type of existing modules, or til you hit a certain ship tech level (could add it in with one of the less impactful ship techs - one of the ones that doesn't add new hull sizes or hp bonus). This would make military starbases more useful!

d. Either use constructors, or make a new type of module that can be used to help with, or enact ship upgrades (ties back to planetary production doing upgrades). Merge these with a ship that's upgrading to reduce/defray/refund upgrade costs or do an entire upgrade if the "production value" of the constructor is high enough. If you used a new ship module type, you could theoretically have cargo hulls with varying amounts of these modules to various sized upgrades, and it would probably require multiple such ships to fully upgrade medium or higher ships. You could even have a whole new tech line (or suppliment an existing line) with more and more potent "ship upgrade" modules.

I think the AI would have problems with this whole concept because no matter how you do it, it's more complicated than simply upgrading with cash, and if the AI has to pick between cash and an alternate method, amongst all it's other decisions about what to do with cash or production, then it becomes enough of a programming hassle (requires AI coding and new interfaces/core code for the physical mechanics) that a dev just says, "nah, I'd rather do a simple UI upgrade" (I'm a programmer, I know these things And this is what I was aluding to at the start about implimenting some of the ideas players have.).

Some additional ideas and feedback on the suggestions of others



Excellent suggestion. But there would have to be a way to specify which starbase improvements are automatically built and which aren't, so the constructors don't waste their (and my) time building useless defensive and sensor modules. How about when you construct a starbase, you tell the constructor which modules you want built and in which order.

Also, with such a change constructors should become somewhat more expensive and cost maintenance money (since you only need a few of them instead of hundreds)



I second that. For example the Galactic Guide Book is a Galactic waste of money, since by the time you have it the survey phase of the game is already over

- Change drives to be a one per ship module

The new space and cost requirements in DA for drives were already very useful, but it's still easy for the player to vastly outmaneuver the computer using better and more drives. Also, for gods sake please stop the AI from fleeting ships with different speed



Nice one, I agree. Also, let evil races do some seriously mean stuff like selling the player (or another AI) an economic or research treaty and then attacking



I did some testing with very high defenses myself, and I consistently got better results using matched defenses than mixed or pure off type defenses against a single weapon type. Still, if it is a bug, it should be fixed.



I would suggest a rotating schedule to choose the topic, with the powers with high influence getting the choice more often



That doesn't apply just to power plants, but to all buildings that are one per planet (so starports too for instance). Nonetheless, I'd prefer those buildings to be replacable too



two good suggestions to reduce diplomacy cheese



cool idea, would be another useful diplomacy option



I confess I am somewhat guilty of "starbase spamming". When I think about it though, one starbase per sector might not be a bad idea at all, it would certainly make my space prettier. However, the effect of most starbase modules should be increased a bit to compensate for that. Another effect of this would be to close the gap between good players and the AI some, since the computer frankly has no clue how to use economy starbases

- Give the quartely report better texts. I alternately crack up and groan when I read reports like "The population of the Yor collective has reached 787.4 billion. Considering that it was 787.3 billion one year ago, that is pretty staggering growth". The game should be able to recognize population stagnation. Also in the reports on wars between an AI and the player or two AIs it should take into account who conquered more planets in the relevant timespan and if the computed ratings are similar, the report should say that the war is deadlocked/stalemated at the moment.

- More texts in "word on the street" on the planets would be nice and encourage people to actually read them. They should not always be identical in the same situation, but rather be picked from a pool and include your people's views on a bit more topics. For example, if you are at the losing end of a war against the Drengin, how about the people (especially on planets along the front) say things like " ... is a nice planet for sure, but who know how long that is going to stay that way with the Drengin coming ever nearer"

kudos to the programmers for actually asking what we'd like to see

anyways, for the united planets meetings, when presented with a choice like "how many additional trade routes should we allow" and the choices are, say, 0, 1, 2, and 3, it would be both interesting and logical, at least i think so, if this were done a bit differently.

for, if 2 is selected as a close 2nd to 0, it makes sense to me that rather than have 0 be the verdict, something in between would be the final verdict. this seems to be even more reasonable if all four choices are in nearly equal popularity to one another

I'd like to see content, things that give more warm fuzzies:

1. Animation for Dreadnaught (Huge) class ships, first built
2. Animations for Galactic Wonders
3. Animation for cultural flipped planets (revolt)
4. Even more amusing Ethical Decisions (loved the brain-liquifying one, btw )
5. In the Civilizations Manager screen, a symbol indicating a specific type of
special planet (Heavy Gravity, etc)
6. Easing of the diplomacy nerf of the latest patch (just throttle it back a little)
7. Easing of spy costs
8. A bit more powerful starbase defenses
9. A planetary tile for ECON bonuses

Anything that adds more content such as new animations, racial history, ethical decisions, mega events, or even new races is always a nice addition.

I know I posted already but I got another idea

Give goverment types better bonuses, the even them up. It just doesn't make sense for an evil empire to be allowing their people to he freedom to vote. It would be nice if the goverments granted different bonuses base what they are.