PM8 Crunch time over, about three weeks worth of excellent input from us all...
Do we get to have an 'official' summary, soon?

With cooler-sounding lasers.

First : take your time , I’m more than happy to wait for 2.0 for the changes while playing the game as it is today. That said here is a list of things i have not seen before in this thread but would like to see:

1. no scalling range : in a immense galaxy the range of my starting ships is almost 6 sectors, this makes the range techs unnecessary instead of almost mandatory.
2. planets ecosystem : make the races to have different ecosystems
(human : terran , yor : radioactive , dregin : barren etc. ) with a penalty when they invade a planet for which they dont have the tech (if lord Kona plans to surprise N-1 with a visit: expect his soldiers to drop like flies)( I know Kona does not really care about his soldiers but he wants that planet...)
3. more kinds of anomalies : different levels ( taking 3 weeks to explore a level 3 with a surveyer with 1 module) and the kind of anomaly that if you try to explore it the only thing that gets reported back is : “omg its full of stars” and you have to build a new ship.....with more survey moduls before you can attempt again
4. allow schips to form a fleet with a starbase so that they defend the base even if the starebase has better attack/ defense and is selected first to battle an attacker (if there is a stronger fleet present it should be the one attacked )
5. tech stealing : dont give the compleet tech but only a portion ( “we have succesfully overrun the dreadlords and we found parts of a plan for something with "black.." in its name...”)
Of the things already mentioned in other posts:
Move the popups to GNN ( delay the GNN until after the cultureflips are over and make the GNN recallable )
Disconnect the science slider from the other two ( science range 0 – 100% , social + military = 100%) and with the general slider you decide how fast you go bankrupt when the 1000bc anomalys run out...

And finally :
That summary were you give us a list of the things you want to consider(and if its not on the list we wait until GCIII )

1) Balance the starting perks. Economics, Creativity, Luck and Morale are way better for the points than anything else!
2) Balance the political parties. Is there a reason to use anything other than federalists?
3) Espionage needs to be more involved.
4) Change the planetary invasion screen to something else. The old one was better. Even a blank slate with troop numbers dropping would look better than what's there right now.
5) Let us make custom ship styles right within the game.

Make exploring anomalies more interesting.

Some anomalies adventures should include combat, which requires survey exploxers to be armed with weapons -instead of just a survey module. I'm thinking of all the Star Trek episodes in which exploring missions required phasers; or superior sensors.

It'd be really nice to see one of your finest vessels being used for exploration.

By the way: I can't watch an episode of any of the Star Trek series without thinking, "How can this be reflected in GalCiv2?" I know GalCiv is not suppose to be Star Trek, but when I play Europa-Universalis, I watch the History International channel and think is this refected in EU; when I play GC2, I naturally watch the Sci-Fi channel.

I just lost a long post so I'm very very mad.


Ok:

1. Fix MCC make it so that it does what it is supposed to do
2. Allow us to change the "date" into "turns" (like in civ where you can have it display either 2000AD, turn 740 or even both, whatever you choose in the settings)

3. Make new anomalies appear, perhaps have half or a third of anomalies reswap in semi-random places.

4. Make more different things happen when you explore an anomaly. Thins comparable in impact to what we have now.

5. Make some anomalies, excedingly rare ones, have importatnt effects. If the civ that discovered the anomaly was below a certain tech threshold the anomaly would yield nothing and reapear X turn later on the same spot.

They could be mini mega events, perhaps something allong the following ones:

Planet Killer appears (it would be a mediumly strong opponent) and heads for nearest planet to devour. The creature is artificial so there would be no need to introudce new graphics. The creature could reproduce, by turning planets into asteoride feilds. You see the potential for strategic choices?

You could leave the little bugger to "terraform" a few class 0 planets into asteorid fields, you could tell your scout to leave the area knowing all smug that you have caused the Thalans a headache, or you could just ignore them since it the part of space you have unleashed them is too far from inhabited space (this would be a strategic choice, how advanced do you plan on being once a douzen or so reach you? Or is it better to send the low tech fleet you have to kill the one lone monster).

For blance purposes I propose the following: Class zero planet (most of them seem to be gass giants) destoryed spawns 2 planet killers. A habitable planet (<10) produces one, a planet beyond that is first reduced in quality (one killer spawns), then the process would be repeated untill it falls bellow 10, then the old rules apply.

Each feeding gives the monster XP.

A. Simpler Version
Or if you feel like saving some time, make them star system killers, and have an appropriate number of them appear after destroying a star system (the more planets the more filthy little robots). This could allow you to use the new Terror star code.

B. More complex Version, but insanley fun version

Have them "evolve", each time a critter kills a ship, if the ship has more advanced equipment, it has a small chance of dying and respawning armed with the ships equipment, or its faster engines or protection and full health. Every time a creature feeds on a planet it makes a copy of itself. Survival of the fittest. This would be crazy on an immense galaxy.

C. We are the Borg

No evoultion, each time a ship is destroyed make a small chance the ship reapears under the control of the monsters. Each time a monster reproduces it creates one or several new ships (it takes one of the three strongest ship designs the artifical horrors have enslaved). Have them love fleets and have high logistics to save on AI coding. Or make each reproduction phase clone not just the monster but the fleet it is in as well, and make the logistics smaller to prevent uberfleets. The second variant of C seems easier to code and perhaps allows a bit of backdore evolution minus the trouble of coding presented in B.


In closing this has provided me with more ideas than I tought it could. You know what, if you makes the monsters strong enough you may as well call this a new mega event. Just make a nice picture, no need for a vid. The players will be crazy with joy.

I just came up with another suggestion, that would not be "huge" to implement and I believe would make the game more challenging to the human player.


In a recent game, I met a race, and contacted them in the trade screen. I looked through the techs they had for trade, and noticed that they had Laser 1, 2, 3 available for trade. As this race is a threat to me, I know now that in order to counter their ships, I need to build Deflectors on my ships to counter the lasers.

I think this is almost an exploit that needs to be addressed. Essentially, when contacting a race, the race should never show you what military techs they have researched. Heck, I'm not convinced they should show you any advances down a "tech tree" they have researched (only the lowest level tech branch that the human does not have...)

just a thought ...

Re: ImperialGuard

You can get that same information by flying a ship by one of the AI player's war ships and taking a peak at it. I don't see how that change is necessary given that it doesn't stop the player from designing ships to counter another faction.

Good point OrzInvasion ! I guess it would not accomplish anything then.
Thanks for pointing this out.  

A double post, but I have just realised this is a more appropriate thread for the suggestion.

In Civilization Manager, you click on the building column to bring up the Quick Build Screen. From that you select the building to purchase, and away you go, all fine. Underneath the Quick Build screen the Civilization Manager resets itself back to an initial default state in terms of showing you the list of (whatever).

On the larger size of maps, there is often a considerable surplus of funds per turn depending on an infinite number of factors. Spending that so its not hammered by the 20,000bc limit in the Bank before penalty is obviously a good thing. Doing that in the Civ Manager / quick build screen is very frustrating if you want to purchase more than one building or ship.

Often I find myself having to scroll through (again and again) several pages of entries to get back to where I want to be to make the next purchase. If I am - for example - buying factories on planets, and there is a long list of (say) 5 pages worth to choose from - and I go through the offered list of buildings entry by entry in the order presented - the continual resetting of the civ manger screen after each purchase drives me mad - it wastes so much time.

It would be I would have thought, a simple tweak to reset the default action after purchase of one item to stop the underlying civ manager screen from resetting. It will save huge amounts of time getting back to where I was in the list, and I suspect a good chunk of sanity for many people.

Regards
Zy

Any chance you could add an additional slider(for engines) to the AI built ship thingy?

Its just when I last used that option i could only 'focus' on weapons and defences and the AI that does that just crams them full of weapons and thats it- No engines!!

Which really winds me up! I don't like designing ships but I hate having 2 mp ships alot more.

1) Please look at the costs of the Arnorian Ships in the campaign, it's very hard to get credits when you have some of these ships and even harder if you don't use any kind of economy bonus (race abilities)

2) Do something with the espionage system. I can pump in as much credits as I want the enemy will come to a point where he gets his spy faster and eliminates mine. This is only with one, but you don't have one enemies, most times

3) Fix the space miners. They prefer to travel over 30 turns just to get to one asteroid, which is very deep in enemy territory, just because you haven't discovered the asteroid 3 turns away. Better: Give us an option that they won't travel to far away from your own territory (we actually wouldn't get much from this asteroid)

4) Is it just me (maybe I'm blind) or do minor races really build influence bases? - They do not even have any territory

3-- And while you'd be into that specific section of the code, please do activate them when an upgrading task has to be started - automatically. Since the *Improve_Stop* toggling doesn't react to Space Minings I&II&III!

4-- Obvious waste of resources on their part, extra clutter on maps without function... unless i'm missing some facts about the Minors concept as a whole.

Repost from another thread:

I wouldn't mind seeing a small upgrade to the UP voting system in a future patch. It would be nice to have some say as to what issue is voted on- nominating an issue for voting from a list of possible issues, for example.

Also, consider a multiple choice vote, such as # of starbase modules allowed. If the influence leader votes for no limit and everyone else votes for some number of modules the influence leader can win even though everyone else wants some kind of limit but don't agree on the exact number. Perhaps multiple choice votes can be split into two votes, one to eliminate the two least popular choices, and a 2nd vote to decide exactly what bill is passed. That would make a lot of UP issues more interesting and democratic, I think.

--- Also, I wouldn't mind having space miners stay near my borders. I don't want them trekking across the galaxy to mine unclaimed asteroids unless I'm sending a colony ship along with them...

---It would be nice if all the funding sliders could go to %100, but that might require rewriting a lot of AI code I'd bet. Oh well.

AND, i might stress even further -- completely re-design the whole planetary development schema through buildings (Cost, advantages, maintenance), shipyard framework of loaded capacities aboard ships for a given BC total, balancing out any multiple impacts the self-updating growth or lag as it can be controlled through a number of probabilities (namely, an all factories theory!).

I skipped a few more context driven choices, surely.

Isn't that what they did with the recent expansion?

Oh yeah, and it would be nice if my auto-pilot scouts wouldn't all try to explore the same region of space. Maybe if a ship is auto-exploring a sector it will "reserve" that whole sector for exploration, and the next scout will autoexplore the next sector, etc. Or something, I really have no idea how pathing is coded. I just play the game.

That would be a welcome change. I've stopped using espionage for intelligence, and now I just ask them what weapons they have!

"Hey, what military technology do you evil maniacs have?" :NOTSURE:
"Oh, we have everything up to plasma 3. You can't have it though. But that is what we're going to blast you with."
"Hey, thanks guys!"
"No problem, soon-to-be-slave-race! Want to buy some shield technology? Also, we declare war. Deal or no deal?"
"...DEAL!"

I'd like to see the luck ability removed from combat considerations. As it stands, 25% luck is like a 12.5% weapon bonus that also gives you special events and lucky finds. Luck should be a random, roll of the dice ability instead of a reliable boost to your ships fighting ability... let alone a boost that is a more efficient use of your ability points than putting the same points into weapons!

True. I take econ +30, morale +10 and luck every single time. Its kinda boring.

1. On the end of turn "this is what you've built" review screen let me double click to go to an item and add a "Launch ship" button when it tells you you've built a ship.

2. Add a searchable Tech tree (i.e so I can search for all population building techs) to help us use the new tech trees. (Be nice if you could search outside the game too to before you pick your race)

3. Be nice if when hovering over an item in the alien trading screen if it gave you the monetary value (what they would pay for it) of the item to save the hit and miss of finding the right techs to add up to how much money they have Would also be nice if the techs could be listed in tech order so you don't accidentally sell a tech higher up the tree first.

4. ummm I'll get back to you

This may not be so obvious to some, but having these two options can cut micman by a whole 80% when scanning through the trade screens to get the best deal(s) from race A to Z!
As a supplemental comment to the above, i'd even recommend a sort of 'What would be YOUR (as any AIs responding) maximum offer(s - not only cash, but anything else of value) for item(s) X or/and Y if Z is thrown in to spice up the pot?'... etc.

Huge parsing and conditional functions to integrate but i guess it would be worth to try.

As a player who consistently seeks a cultural victory I would love to see a few changes so that an absolute bloodless victory is feasible. Most of these are greater issues for larger maps rather than smaller ones.

1. Spies should be able to flip or destroy starbases. It is simply too difficult or impossible to peacefully deal with foreign starbases. Currently, the only two options are buying it, or negotiating another race into war. (The former virtually never happens, and the latter does not guarantee it will be destroyed either especially if the starbase owner has the strongest military)

2. Reduce the need for a peaceful player to have the strongest military. While it is logical for a strong defense to deter militaristic races, from a gameplay perspective it represents a greater challenge for peaceful players, especially since a conquest victory is valued more than a cultural one. I've found that on larger maps where my ability to extend treaties and trading routes is more limited (more races), I must have an incredibly powerful army to give further diplomatic bonuses to prevent war(++ military strength) (Note: Krynn don't have a Spin Control Center despite the fact that they are the influence race)

Every game I feel as if it would be easier to just go for a conquest victory. It is not as if I can build a large army and then stop production, in order to maintain a military (and consequently diplomatic) edge, I must continue production at all times while also committing towards military research. (note: I play with tech trading off) Mind you at the same time I'm having to build a large amount of constructors in order to maintain dozens of influence bases.

I would suggest either making a cultural victory more valuable than conquest on larger maps, or giving the peaceful player a diplomatic bonus for having the most influence. (+/++ dominant culture)

3. Peaceful planet take overs (revolts) should give the player a tech just as if s/he invaded it. Flipping planets IS challenging outside of your borders.

4. Make it easier for dominate cultures to project their influence in sectors where they have no planets. In some cases it feels as if flipping a planet is literally impossible even if I have multiple fully expanded influence starbases. For example, maybe a module that not only magnifies but generates its own IP like a planet? I firmly believe that a player should be able to win without ever declaring war. Either reduce the barriers to players outright buying planets or make it more viable for players to flip planets that are in separate sectors but nearby their borders.

5. Expand espionage and dramatically rework it so that it can be the tool of the peaceful (yet manipulative) player. The Krynn have many espionage bonuses that are virtually useless. It's clear the development team has a vision for espionage and peaceful playstyles but it has so far not revealed itself.

So trouncing farms to reduce population to reduce IP generated from a planet and thus making it easier to flip is useless? Yes, that is only an example that can be used on planet with farms, but often times those are the planets/sectors that are hard to flip...high pop sectors.

As the Kyrnn going for the influence victory, I'll use my spies to manipulate either the top dog in mil rating or the second id I'm top dog, just to keep me more formidable looking. Cut their purse-strings and watch that navy flounder. That or help out another race beat down a stronger one by hitting their farms/morale buildings when I see troop ships going that way.

Be the puppet master with spies while selling them t-shirts with smiley faces on it. Remember, they don't know who's spies those are...

No one is saying that spies are useless I use them all the time, but the problem is that the Espionage *Bonus* is useless. From what I understand, and judging from what I've read, the bonus allows you to spend X% "more" on Espionage. Not more efficient, not more effective. In a typical game I'm always producing spies, but don't really have the necessity or economy to fund several thousands of BC into it each week to make use of the bonus.

However, that's not to say spies are all that they can be for a peaceful race, which is where my post was heading. On top of that, espionage bonuses need to be reworked and maybe even the mechanics to make espionages bonuses actually useful. My biggest complaint is that as race that's supposed to be fantastic at espionage, my spies are still eliminated and produced at the same rate as my enemy. (assuming equal expense).

Now, I can't speak for everyone else, but in my experience, spies have a lot of potential, but in the actual game don't amount to *all* that much besides killing a farm. (because the pop decrease is nearly immediate) Spies don't do permanent damage and they're easily nullified.

Yep. And creativity... gives you the research edge every time.