Things you would like to see in a Galactic Civilization expansion set

from Stardock Forums
I know that there already is one suggestion thread up but I decided to start a second one anyhow. Post any and all ideas that are too outlandish or broad in scope to implement in a commercial patch. Let's see if we can give the developers some evil ideas and maybe, just maybe, improve the chances that there will be a GC expansion pack. I'll try to get this one started.

Things I'd like to see implemented in an expansion:

1) More good and evil technologies
2) Race specific units, technologies and events
3) More events of all types
4) Morality triggered events
5) A new (hard) victory condition only attainable by neutral civilizations
6) Larger than gigantic maps
7) More customization options for maps (more neutral races, better than abundant planets, extra star clusters, more/less anomolies, etc.)
8) A second scenario
9) Two-tiered maps
10) A simple fleet combat system
11) More permenant galactic features (astroid belts, gas giants, ancient junkyards and ruins, etc.)
12) Some additional empire building tools (cosmetic and meaningful)

More technologies and events:
Any expansion to Galactic Civilizations would have to include more of what has already made this game the true, spiritual sucsessor to the Orion series. The event library in particular could be easily expanded to make every game unpredictable and different. Granted, this is already one of the stated goals of the patching process, but what can be done in patches can be 'overdone' in a retail release. :) Adding more technologies for the good and evil civs would also be a likely addition, but would require some compensation for neutrals.

Race specific technologies, units and events:
A familiar idea to an RTS player. An ideal way to introduce race-specific items into GC would be to create 1-3 units and techs for each race, including the humans, and then allowing each player to chose one of each at the start of a campaign. Only techs and units that the player picked at the start could be eventially researched and built.

Not allowing the usage of every racial unit in every game would be a good way to ensure that one race is not automatically 'the best' at any one thing. If the Torians chose their heavy combat vessel they will be able to hold their own against the Drengins. The best part is that the human player will not know what choices the AI races made until later in the game. Did the Drengins decide to activate their Warlord-class battleships (for space superiority) or did they instead chose to use Mutagen bombs (for mutating other species into Drengin hybrids during planetary assaults)?

Neutral victory condition:
Create a United League of Planets and conquer or dominate the galaxy. The catch: The League of Planets cannot have any of the other major races in it -- only minor races (and Independant League) led by the human race. You need at least 4-6 minor races (depending on map size) on-board to win this victory condition. They all must be alive at the end of the game.

It could work like this: Once a minor race is convinced to join the League it becomes an ally of the lead race and every other member race. All member races get military access, shared exploration, trade and diplomatic bonuses with one another. All member races benefit from each others starbases. All minor races belonging to the League give a tribute to the founder but recieve a hefty scientic grant in exchange. League races cannot culture bomb one another.

This would be a very cool victory path. It would be murder build and protect a League of Planets, but it could be a very rewarding endevor. If neutral technologies were to be implemented, perhaps they could be intended to allow this style of victory? The first neutral tech could be League Alliance (allowing member states) and subsequent techs could improve economic and scientic ties between the member races. A full formed League would be an unstable but very wealthy ediface.

Under the right circuimstances, the Arcean Empire may even attempt this. Perhaps one or more of their racial units/techs could be designed with this victory path in mind?

More ahead...
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
#1 Race portraits and animations for the minor races.

#2 Rally points for ships built to form fleets.

#3 Scenarios and scenario editor (Ability to choose scenarios from the main title screen)

#4 Additional background graphics, instead of just stars, stars and more stars. Such as nebulas, black holes, etc.

#5 An in-game encyclopedia that explains about every tech and improvement

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like to see a menu system to pick what events and other user created options you want to be active when you start a new game. I would also like to install mods though stardock central >:(
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Larger Maps and other stuff:
Fairly self explanitory. Larger than giagantic maps with options to add in more star clusters (less empty space). The ability to add in more neutral races would also be helpful for certain victory paths.

Second Scenario:
This would work alot like the accelerated start in Masters of Orion 2. Each major race starts with 2-3 sectors under their control. All major races know of one another (full UP). All races start with one or two tiers of basic technology and some improvements.

Besides eliminating some of the uncertainty of a good or bad start, a second scenario could be designed to incorporate parts of the story. There could be a Terran Colonial faction (minor) that suceeded from the Terran Empire. A league of minor races fighting with the Drengin or any number of other plot points, perhaps created at random.

I personally like the standard campaign just fine, but a different opening situation could be nice on occasion.

Two-tiered Map:
A map where the outermost 1-3 sectors are inaccesable until later in the game. These outer sectors could be considered just beyond explorable space. No ships, influence or sensors would be able to reveal what lays beyond.

X X X X X
O O O X O O O X
O O O X O O O X
O O O X O O O X
X X X X X

All of the major races start in the 'O' sectors. The 'X' sectors could be populated with juicy, uninhabited planets, special anomolies and pirate nations. Pirate nations would possess the ability to move into core sectors but players would not be able to retaliate until later in the game.

New late-game propulsion technologies could allow the major races to move into the outer sectors, triggering a new wave or colonization, exploration, cultural expansion and conquest.

It would probably be good if minor races exerted influence on sectors (like the Independants) for the benefit of both periphery states and League of Planet members.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Well. My explanation of what a tiered map would look like really didn't work. Doh.

Good news that there is going to be an expansion. Is there any word on what is going to be in it?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I'll finish up my explanation here and let this thread float or sink.

Fleet Combat System:
An aggregate attack system for fighter craft would be a nice touch. I made a suggestion regarding this in the official suggestions thread. High-tech fighters should be an offensive threat when employed en masse. Any fighter assault should expect heavy attrition though.

A fleet combat system could also include rules governing stacks of capital ships: heavy capital ships, escorts, fighter cover, carriers. The details of such a system elude me at the moment and I'm not sure it would be in scope for a high level game like GC, but I think it's worth considering.

More features:
Black holes, nebulas, asteroid belts, ancient ruins. Permenant features to break up the open space and provide some more strategic areas. Some features could have structures or outposts established in them (ruins) and others could provide defensive bonuses (asteroids).

Empire Building Tools:
More of a wish list thing on my part. The ability to define provinces and provincial capitals in game. Perhaps sectors that have a provincial capital would be able to support one starbase for free. There would be a minimum size for a province of course.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Good topic.

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
1) I'd like to see stargates maybe introduced. They can be balanced by being expensive to maintain (in otherwords, an empire couldn't build more than a few if at all). It'd help to speed up some of the quagmire situations that can develop from just not being able to send your forces across fast enough.

2) I'd like to see spy missions, like stealing technologies, sabotaging production, stealing money, etc.

3) Counter intelligence slider to counter the spies

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Not sure if this would be in a patch or an expansion but here's my ideas...

1. If at all possible add a waypoint system please.

2. I second the proposal for fleets or at least grouping stacks of ships so that they move together (moving at the slowest speed of course) rather than having to move 50 ships individually.

3. Being able to set a number in the colony/transport screen like you can do now in the diplomacy screen OR being able to hold down the mouse button and not have to click it 100 times...

4. Map editor or a set map design 'thingie' like MOO3 that allows one to make for example a spiral galaxy or one big cluster etc. Good enough to get the map I want, but not so specific I can give the other races like one single isolated star in a corner of a gigantic galaxy.(one of the spiffiest features of MOO3 too bad the rest of the game is not so good)

5. A whole bunch of new events, planets specials, and minor races/monsters of course.

6. The ability to rename individual planets (not that important)

7. Better spying or maybe just something simple such as counter destabilization (works like propaganda only globally and only raises morale if someone actually IS trying to destabilize you so it doesn't get abused)

8. On a similar vein one should be able to counter influence by maybe being able to shift it around but with penalties if you go beyond a certain percentage of what it is normally.

9. Scenario creator where you can set thing up to your hearts content and even put in things like simple scripts or backstory events. Not availible for metaverse of course. (I'm really stretching things here)

10. Better diplomacy vids to replace the boring blinking heads.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
The espionage system could be beefed up a bit.. Technology stealing etc. that forceinfinity suggested sounds good.

~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
These points have no doubt been made by others, but just to reinforce:

The lack of zoom on the mainscreen is really killing this game for me. Even a two tier zoom (like Botf) would be better than nothing. I almost always play at full zoom-out, so I find something that's set on what I perceive as full zoom-in to be frustrating.

Some sort of fast-trade, like in Civ3. "What will you offer me for . . . " and "What would you need for . . . "

Auto-explore mode. You set a few waypoints and your survey ship potters around grabbing the powerups that are visible from it's main path (you have to put some limit otherwise it will just randomly run around :) ). I actually don't like the idea of in-space powerups, but I realise that I'm probably in the minority.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Allow the player to mark a military or social project as "Obsolete" so that it no longer appears in build list. Saves a lot of late-game scrolling for those of us who like to rotate build (ranger, combat transport, range switching) if we can remove useless ship types from the list.

Player ability to control how common random events are.

Sharper contrast on main map between fog-of-war and areas where you have sensor info.

Minimap shading to show fog-of-war vs areas where you have sensor info and where there is fog-of-war.

"Launch All" button underneath the existing "Launch Ship" button.

Add dramatic explosion animation for star system destruction. :D

Combat system change to allow faster ships a chance (proportional to move speed delta) to bypass escort ships and strike at "soft" targets (transports). This would make Starfighters/Corvettes/Phoenix useful in mid to late game.

Combat system change so that AM Missiles aren't default defender in a stack of Dreadnoughts + Starbase + AMM >:(

Modify "Ship found" anomaly to scale with game progress, it is meaningless to find a scout ship turn 200... if it was 10 AMM's then it would matter ;)

Allow "Enter" numpad button to close dialogs (don't remove ESC, just make Enter do same thing).

Add a size modifier to ship detection calculation. Make it hard to see small ships like starfighters, drones, corvettes and missiles, say -50% sensor range. Thus a ship with sensor range 6 would see a battleship at 6 but a fighter only at 3. Sets the scene for some uncertainty and surprise tactics :)

Add a series of Starbase "Detection Array" modules that extends sensor range.

Add a Starbase "Stealth Module" that cloaks the Starbase (reduce sensor profile or completely cloak it). Very nice for those Pirate bases... ;)

During game setup (or optionally through later events) create a few starbases dotted around the map (probably on resources) that are controlled by Pirates and would need to be destroyed to reduce Pirate activity and free up the resource for exploitation.

Leave the X marking a resource on the minimap even if a starbase has been built on it. Saves the player taking lots of notes in Gigantic galaxy games.

Create Minelayer vessels that can create minefields which cause minor damage and movement slowdown (ie 2 MP to enter, single strength 10 attack - maybe more late game). Obviously you would then need a Mineclearing vessel as well :)

Create some map obstacles ie black hole, dense asteroid field etc which cannot be entered. Makes for a slightly more interesting "battlefield" especially for the completely empty sectors.

Create techs that give an "Improved" version of ships that uses the same graphics but has marginally better stats and is cheaper to build. This represents gradual improvements to a ship class (think WW2 tank and aircraft upgrades in armor, weapons etc over time). Rather than try to research new ship types (usually more expensive) a race can then instead chose to improve current tech to get a quality/build-time edge.

Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
The enhanced trade system would be nice, I would like to know just what they would be willing to trade for.

Trading or gifting starships: When ships are given to another race, the shape of the ship should not change, only the paint scheme should change. This way we can determine just where the I-League are getting all of thier ships. This may not be workable, but I think it would add a twist to the diplomacy if Races can tell that ships are being supplied by a third "nuetral" party.
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
What I would like to see is an elimination of wasted production (though this could really be done in a patch).

There are times when I like to favor one economy slider over the other. Say, social for example because I need to build up some new planets. But I often have planets that are better developed than others, and they have nothing in their social build queue. All that assigned production goes to waste on any world without something to build. Seems silly to me. That wasted production should be sent to the other areas on a per planet basis, spliting up the excess based on the global settings.

An example:
I've got social at 60%, military at 20%, and research at 20%.
Planets with nothing in their military queue would spread the 20% allocated to military over the other two others. 15% extra to social (that's 60/80 * 20) and 5% extra to research (that's 20/80 * 20).
Planets with nothing in their social queue would give an extra 30% to both research and military.
Planets with nothing in either build queue would put all wasted production into research.

You might lose a percent to rounding, but it's sure better than how it is now! If I want to pump social fast on a new world I have no choice but to kill my military and research on developed planets, and that stinks.

~SDC~
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
#More events.
#Map/scenario editor (even if only through text files).
#More strategic options, like the ability for each player to spawn an event once in the game. Do it early and it gives little advantage. Those who do will have an edge. Survive and do it later, it will be more powerful. It'd be easy to fit it in the story (there's a huge precursor thingy on your home planet that noone dared explore).
#Customization of number of events occurring in the game.
#Tying some events, invasion tactics, to some techs.
#New starbase dealing damage to non allied ships in sector (reverse of repair).
#More stuff about the back story (precursors...).
#Allow a race-specific tech (would allow for modding scenarios if nothing else): Not tradeable, can't steal or research either.
#Galactic Wonders that trigger events (like causing an enemy star system to become independent or creating a new star system). Again, this one opens wide doors for modders.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
I see my topic has been beat to death a few posts down. Nevermind me. I'm slow. LOL

~SDC~
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
When the chosen project is "Nothing" let spending increase Morale (ie function as propaganda) and maybe a Pop Growth bonus.

This makes sense to me as spending on education, health, infrastructure, the arts etc instead of great planetary projects and starships would work to improve living conditions. This way the player gets something for his money (better pop growth, better resist vs culture take-over, better morale for invasions etc).
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
Probably a bit late for the first expansion....

A late game feature, after the appropiate tech is researched.

Wormhole Science: The ability to enter wormholes and discover multi-dimensional planets,sectors,or even galaxies for mega-games :D . These planets could be fully developed to provide unique technologies and resources.

Other ideas along the wormhole ability....

:DS9 like starbases
:Linked wormwholes for fast travel
:added bonuses
:victory condition-Control X number of wormholes
:victory condition-Discover X technolgy,planet,etc.
:allowing other civs access to your wormhole would provide a diplomatic/economic boost
:wormhole issues for UP
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
More Resoures to build starbases on. Perhaps an initial setting could be added allowing for a variable number of them, much as the one already there for the number of habitable planets.

I would also like to see a printed foldout full color tech chart. I like to have a well thought out tech strategy based on my political party and this would be a valuable resource.

When the vote comes up for the number of trade routes allowed and the vote for an unlimited number is passed by the council, I would like it to be true. I say this because after this vote passed in a game I played recently, I had freighters arriving in star systems being turn back because I had already exceded the maximum number of allowed trade routes. A curious thing to have exceded infinity.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
Very cool idea about the Wormhole Science tech, PhantomAceX1, I second that! (Especially wormholes leading to other galaxies! - Imagine the scope of the game! Aw, yeah!)

I'd like to see different types of Starbases, like Orbital, System, and Deep Space classifications. Each could have their own specializations. Orbital could be devoted to planetary improvements, while System could be to trade and influence improvements, Deep Space could be centered on espionage, resource gathering, and culture spreading.

This could reduce (or increase?) the cost of building SBs because these SBs are tailored to be specialized instead of Jack-of-All trades SBs.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
On the setup screen more options:

1. nasty AI functions enabled

2. number of random events hight, low , no exists etc

3. difficulty of random events: Easy, hard, game throwing

4. Morale adjustement: Hard, Low , You can do whatever you want with me.

5.Slow tech research and blind tech research

6. UP council meets : 1 time a year , every 2 years etc.

At the moment there are ongoing to many discussions tweak this its to easy, tweak that its to hard. Simply let the people choose what kind of game they want to play. If you need it for the metaverse choose a standart setting.

And I really would love to see a long range stealth ship.... :)
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
I would like to see the following:

1) Race specific units, technologies and events.

2) The ability to rename individual planets in a system

3) Morality triggerd events ( I agree this would be cool

4) Rally points for ships

5) More consequences for being good or evil

6) Making techs feel more important.

Love the game and I am glad the devs listen to us and are working hard to continually improve Galciv!