Wish list for GalCiv (or GalCiv2)

... I don't think GalCiv will ever have tactical combat, because at the end of the day, massive fleet combats are so tedious.

I can honestly say I've had fun with combat. Its strategic combat: And rediculously similiar to Risk (I've mastered the "Transport Surge" Its great ) In the long run its more satisfying to play Strategic combat because I've listed absolutely zero reasons, but simply because it's so beautifuly coordinated and you can see it all unfold before your eyes, like a blossom
Tac Combat is a brawl, Strat Combat is art LOL

~SDC~

I would seriously, be totally fine with the combat as it is, if they added some good effects in Galciv 2. I mean like a 3d layout where you watch your ships go at it. I really dont like how the ships basically repeat their little animation and a ship is destroyed. I wanna see some cool weapons being fired, and hull damage, and explosions, and other cool things.

I wish to have at least technology info spoken by computer, when i play i am usually tired to read all the text myself (after whole day at work).
Game should talk to me more... maybe it can be a new technology ? would be nice...


There also should be some more animated sequences (like first colony ship landing).

More detailed report about destabilization progress.

Spying activites should be able to direct target planet,station or sector.

I've got to admit I crave tactical style combat sometimes during important battles. if I could see my Dreadnaught in all its glory with turrets turning, and beacons blinking, beams firing, ahhhh

it was just sort of a fun intermission in the turn to turn flow of the strategic game.

a cool thing would also be individual leaders with bonuses that you could assign to armadas, or ships, or planets (like in Moo2). it just makes you care about a special ship/fleet more, gives it more individuality.

Zones of control for starbases, and some limits on their building perhaps

more personality for the aliens and how they express it, maybe even voice-overs in some robotic universal translator voice.

more races, larger maps, the spirit of this game to me is the interaction with the aliens and between them. more intrigue.

but, in the end perhaps those will fall under 'fluff' probably. it would be good fluff though.

just something that popped into my mind, didn't really think hard about that

ive always wanted to be able to create my own spy division in a strategy game. say i go to the spy window and click to create a organization and i call it storm troopers and i select from a list of options on what type of tactics they use and what level they work at and whether they work as individuals or in teams or any number of things. than you form the agency and you select it on the spy window and you can use it to attack depending on what they are designated to do.

for example the ability to make a good guy like m-16 department that kills people when they feel its justified and works on good terms. with an agency like that youd probably send the person to assissinate other leaders but not perform guerilla warfare like tactics. for geurilla warfare youd make a guerilla warfare agency that carries out your orders.

its just a concept more in depth than assigning money to sliders that reflects how much spying you do....

It would be cool to see more physical changes for the techs that you research. Shields: you see shots hit them in combat. More variation in how starbases look with different upgrades (turrets, landing pads, etc).

I'd like more videos of Angelina J. in the game.

~SDC~

I'd like to be able to rename individual planets.

~SDC~

I'd like to have the game prepare chicken salad sandwiches for me. Can that make the 1.03 patch??? please please

NO NO NO! Galciv 1.03 is the coffee preperation patch!!! The chicken salad sandwiches are slated for 1.05!!!

Will it be able to clean my house in 1.04?

jokeing aside I would like to be able to name planets

Naming planets is good....
....contracting Bruce Springsteen for the soundtrack would be better!

LOL Well, honestly I don't think the Boss would do that....

~SDC~

combat idea? no
coffee idea?HELL YA!!!! JUST LOOK AT MY NAME
individual planet naming?yes
more detailed sping? yes
ship creation?no
thats on your ideas

my idea is to be able to see SB builds in more detail without having to move a constructor over it. just keep the screenthere so you can see whats built and what tings can curently be upgraded. im sure you have moved a constructor on one with intention to place a culture module or ecinomic upgrade only to find out that you have em all there already. i mean lets face it all of us that use them build more than one and sometimes forget what we have on what base.

I am glad you can't build your own ships. It literally ruined MOO3, and it makes for better balancing and less needless micromanagement. The only thing I would think would be OK would be something similar to Alpha Centauri, where you don't have to ever customize but if you want to, the option is there.

Designing your own ships would be a nice touch, I always enjoyed that in other games.

I would like to see the combat in GalCiv be a little more in-depth (not much), and a little less "cute." Right now when a ship goes in to battle it just runs into the other ship and goes "pyewwww!" and disappears with a squeaky little noise and a cutesy animation. IMHO it doesn't really lend to that "epic" feel the developers were going for. I'd like to see combat just a wee bit more gritty.

That, and a more intuitive / in-depth interface for the diplomacy. I think MOO2 and Civ II perfected the diplomatic model many years ago... why mess with a good thing?

Not that I don't like the game, but we're talking wish-list material here.



~SDC~

I think we could be talked into ship design in a GalCiv II.

We actually have some big plans for a GalCiv II game mechanic wise that we think are extremely innovative but more imoprtantly, extremely fun. (but we're talking years from now mind you).

But ship design was in GalCiv on OS/2 in the form of "Shipyards". What won't ever be in is tactical combat or anything that makes combat lengthy or tedious.

Games with ship combat, for those that may have noticed, have star lines or something like that. There's a reason they do that.

~SDC~

He has a good point. I can't think of a turn based game that has had a very fun or well working tactical combat. Think about it, M003 was kinda lame. BOTF wasnt pretty and it was tedious. Star Wars Rebellion was like being tortured. The only game i can think of that had a good tactical combat was imperium galactica because you could speed the battle up and make it go real fast plus everything was pretty. all it needs is some pretty stuff, like animations on the ship like shields lighting up torpedeos firing phasers firing maybe a warp animination trail when the ships move.

what id love is ships that attack a couple squares away, like carriers with fighters and bombers.

More customizable political and socio-economical systems!!! :notsure:

I agree with Frogboy. I think we don't need tac combat. The thing gthey could do though is make the combat look nicer... Someone remember Nectaris? Long time ago... Anyway, it was turn based an as soon as two units met for fighting you could see a screen with nice combat animations (looked really good for the time then). It was a bit like the planet invasion screen in GalCiv, only nicer looking.... You could make sequences were the ships attack each other or something so that you could tell the different designs apart.

~SDC~

IMHO, Star Wars Rebellion suffered from the "what players expected syndrome". Having discarded my expectations, utilizing a PC-Dash for controls (which minimized the horribleness of the interface), and playing only multiplayer online with a friend (because the A.I. was less then adequate), I found the game to be quite enjoyable. Granted, that was a lot of exceptions to something that should have been enjoyable right out of the box, but I made the best of it. And since it was quasi-turn based / real time, you could speed up the game time when there was nothing going on for both sides during slow parts of the game. I liked the tactical battles IN THAT GAME. I only stopped playing the game with my friend when I discovered that he had been using an exploitable bug for quite some time which prevented me from EVER being able to launch surprise attacks on his systems. The bug consisted of setting spys on an espionage mission on each system (or at least the really important one), then immediately cancelling them. This had the effect of showing any incoming enemy fleets, 100% of the time. I can't express the degree of frustration I experienced when he eluded my attacks EVERY time, or had a planet so well fortified when I arrived that I could not win. We are talking a long time, but I could not see that he had any means of "cheating" until the exploit came up in one of those conversations that starts "Did you know...". I'm convinced this was not intended, and Lucasarts support guys confirmed my assertion, though they never did fix it. Since then, we have never played it again.

At any rate, I still concur with what I believe to be the majority on here that tactical combat does NOT fit well into the scheme of GalCiv.

~SDC~

People keep mentioning ZOC, maybe it could be possible to apply it to planets and starbases as a range thing similar to national waters and international waters.

So a planet might have a two square boundary around it (or larger) that cannot be entered/crossed/stopped within unless you are at war/trade/renting with them.
Same for starbases.

And definitely no tac combat. I like tactical combat, but turn based combat is hard to do well and real time allows the computer a great advantage in micromanagement. Just unbalances a civ game.

Moo2 was fun, but the tactical combat made it much much easier to manage.

And the shipbuilding was pretty much defaulted to certain types at certain tech levels anyways. I have fusion beams, refit my ships blah blah. Avoid getting death beams because they make my starbases useless. Etc.
- Not to say I didn't enjoy trying stuff in the beginning...

Heroes on the other hand made MOO2 even more fun. Loved those guys.

That's the one thing I feel is missing from the game; attachment. I'm never attached to anything in the game. I don't have my fave personal ship (the one I spent time and experience to modify and build up), or my fave leader or anything like that.

For the record - VGA Planets does have a form of tactical combat - and no "star lines". Perhaps something along those lines could be implemented (tactical combat, preset tactical options - so combat is done automatically).

Oooo, how about a first-person view in combat where I can pilot the ship and blow up those damn Drengins! J/K

For GC2 -
I'd like to see more major races, after all, the more the merrier!
Ship design would be nice to add, but not tac. combat, it's just not needed.

And the big one - multiple galaxies! Connected through intergalactic wormholes (vs. the intragalactic wormholes that only exist in a single galaxy)

Though I guess the name would have to be changed to Universal Civilizations.

Hey Frogboy,

Can you tell us what is in the realm of possibilities? I think I have a thread like this that I opened a week or two ago, but I'll repeat a bit..

I think most people aren't looking for tactical combat, but a bit more strategic depth would be nice. Once you guys get the military AI working for the existing options (no small task I realize), adding ZOC, real fleets, indirect fire, map anamolies (black holes, nebula), mine fields, etc. would really make this game awesome.
The most important thing right now is to get the AI to intelligently use SBs and attack intelligently, but my assumption is that you'll have that solved in a month or so. After that, are any of these things realistic?

Thanks

Even if they were to implement these ideas would they be in an expansion pack or a full fledge sequal? I wouldnt mind paying some money for an expansion pack that adds in a couple new major races movies scenes units and what have you. i wish there was a type of neutral border around your empire bewteen other peoples empires like in star trek with the neutral zone. and you could negotiate on how big the buffer zone should be and if colonies can exist in it or starbases or military units. in any turn based game when i establish treaties with other empires they always build up huge bases and armiers break their treaty and attack me. the game in which that happened the most was birth of the federation where you form a peace treaty and next thing you know they have a outpost one space away from earth with battle cruisers positioned ready for an attack.

another thing is what that other guy said about making the game more personal. maybe the game could have a more deeper spy system with like characters as spies like in star wars rebellion. a kind of mercenary han solo kind of character blowing stuff up or bounty hunters killing off the enemy leaders.

one thing i think would be really really cool would be the ability to build your own kind of palace like in civ. most of the civs had that. imagine your own palace and there would be neutral things you add in but when you go evil or good you would get evil things to put in or bad things to put in. the bad palace with dancing slave girls or the good palace with uh a golden translating robot?