General thoughts

Just repeat to yourself, "It's a game."

You have good points.  Design a game that is based on those points and is fun.  You will be famous,  Maybe even rich. Seriously.  If it was really fun, I would buy it.

In the meantime, I use suspension of disbelief and enjoy the heck out of GalCiv.  I have no idea why being reasonable should cause one to have less fun in life, or gaming.

You are speaking like you know how a theoretical future civilization would work from our fairly primitive perspective.  Its like a bunch of coyboys in 1850 saying that something like nuclear reactors, cell phones that let you speak to anyone from practically anywhere (which was considered really exotic just a few decades ago in the 60s... just watch the original star Trek series) , submarines that can go to the bottom of the ocean, etc. are just impossible.

Also, why would it be hard to find a ship in a cubic light year of space?  You just go to where your sensors say the exotic metal and compounds are.  Its not like that cubic light year of space is filled with rare materials that require the actions of an advanced civilization.  That cubic light year of space is primarily filled with nothing.  Again, us saying it is impossible is like a bunch of coyboys from 1850 saying anything today is impossible.  If you could travel back in time and tell the coyboys what technologies we have now, they would look at you like you were completely insane.

Actually more like 1700's. I agree with a doubling of technology every two years. Remember that the enterprise d shields are 18 gigahertz less powerful than some pc's. I agree that there is no way to predict the future. I think sensors will be able to pull this off. So this eould effectively be a useless war game other than defence.

Exerting influence via a culture starbase was quite believable in GCII with the modules, (concerts, night clubs etc., etc.). I don't recall all of them but it was an impressive list.

When you build a star base with all those attractions nearby a rival planet, it is bound to have a strong effect.

The suspension of disbelief is not required to buy into the effectiveness of the star base, but it is still needed to overlook the high degree of likelihood that an alien civilization would not understand or have any interest in our culture.

Quantum theory is already dabbling with faster than light communication, granted that its in its infancy but it isn't difficult to imagine a universe where the FTL equivalent of radar has been invented using some sort of beam or stream of information to "ping" objects as it were.

The Ansible

Agreed.  Indeed if the problem of propelling massive ships somehow FTL was solved than sending out some kind of massless radar or light waves to detect other ships ought to be child's play in comparison

 The physics of the universe are rather well known.  And so are the distances.

Light only moves so fast.  If you (somehow) move faster, then no one can see you coming.  Like the bullet that travels faster than sound, it arrives before it is announced.

Distances in space are vast beyond comprehension.  Looking for a fleet in interstellar space would be near impossible, not only for the problem of detecting emissions the only move at the speed of light, but the vastness means that meeting for combat would be so improbable that the chances of it happening wouldn't occur before the end of the universe.

Using the 1700s as an analogy, fleets at sea found it hard to locate each other in the proportionally smaller oceans.  Even with radar and satellites it's still tough.

It would be like trying to find a specific grain of sand located between the earth and the sun. 

It is possible to detect reasonably sized and reflective/emmissive objects in the solar system but all those sightings are historical by hours to weeks depending on how far out the object is. 

Even if you had some sort of FTL sensor, distances degrade resolution to a degree that again it becomes useless for general searching quickly.

Battles in deep space simply aren't going to happen.  And strategically you wouldn't want to do it anyway as you'd want to keep your war assets close to whatever is valuable.

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There's no possible mechanism for 'space stations' located in a particular solar system to influence anything out side that solar system.  In fact it would be difficult to have influence beyond the planet it's orbiting.  It's inane for a space story or game. 

These two game mechanics are simply ridiculous.

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The wildest theories on how FTL would be accomplished all point to it being extraordinarily expensive in energy use and requiring exotic materials that don't exist outside of theory. 

So if in the game or story using FTL is common as getting in your car, the game or story going to feel silly and improbably.  Like the early speculations that we would all travel by personal jetpack or have our own personal balloons to carry us about.

Unless of course this is a game based upon 'The Jetsons' and you can flit to another planet in the family car in a few minutes.  Or you're Fred Flintstone and it's practical and desirable to push a cart of made of logs and stone wheels to and from 'work'.

This game simply isn't for you, Emelio.  Nothing wrong with that, BTW.  But f you can't accept the Space Opera nature of the setting, there's not much the debs can do about it.

Of course there is no way that our understanding of the physical universe might change in the future or tech might advance in directions we cannot now comprehend. . .

IMO this is the end result of worrying too much about "Immersion", folks.

I've always taken "Immersion" - and please correct me if my reading here is too harsh - as meaning "make me forget I'm sitting in my room playing a game I bought off WhateverWebsite/From WhateverGameStore and this is as realistic as possible". By my admittedly most likely too strict definition, immersion in 4X set in 2525 (I think that's the start year for GalCiv2, haven't really bothered to check on GalCiv3) is always going to be incredibly difficult - how do we know what's going to be possible 410 years from here? And, of course, fun is often going to take a back seat to realism. Which is fine, but it ends up being too far back. Sometimes as far back as the back row (see discussions over the Silent Hunter games for examples of "realism v fun" arguments).

Rant over.

Immersion for me is more about maintaining the atmosphere and story as I play through a game.  The science doesn't have to be realistic, as long as it's consistent.

consistent like routing everything through the deflector dish solves all the problems?

The problem isn't space opera, it's doing things that make no sense.

Some other neat science issues:

http://io9.com/12-ways-humanity-could-destroy-the-entire-solar-system-1696825692

Couple things via game lore:

1. GalCiv communication is handled via quantum entanglement.  That is why you can talk to the aliens in real-time across the galaxy.  GalCiv for OS/2 (back in 1993) used to have a tech that spelled out superluminal communication.

2. Hyperdrive folds space in such a way where mass reduces the level of folding. As a result, ships effectively move "slower" near centers of mass (like a solar system) than in deep space.  GalCiv II and III both use TSP (Terran Standard Projection) for map display (all hyper drive civilizations use it).  That is why stars don't appear that far apart compared to how far a planet is from its star.