While we are working on the expansion, we are still supporting the base game. The plan is that there will be fixes/improvements that would appear in both the base game and the expansion.   

I would love to hear folk's opinions on what they'like addressed, even if it's been mentioned elsewhere.  

Wait a moment, they want to remove planetary managment with an expansion ?

things i would like addressed personally is

• united planets in large games
• map editor (one that actually deserves the name editor)
• poor AI in combat
• game speed is poorly implemented

to go into some detail

1)    united planets in large games

the U.P. only meets when the player has met XX % of races. On maps with a large quantity of races this can be well into the hundreds of turns at which point you're already in steamroller cleanup mode and nothing the U.P. can do will effect the game

2)    map editor 

the map editor doesn't even deserve the name editor i would instead call it a map creator. calling it a map editor is akin to calling a disposable camera, Photoshop.

https://forums.galciv3.com/470192/page/1/#3646067  here's my original post from when the map editor came out

3) poor ai in combat

while i do not want tactical combat i would like to see the ai take advantage of ship range and speed and not simply have the ships all rushing in to get blown up

a fleet of ships attacking a starbase should have the fastest ships wait outside the starbases range until the slowest ships reach that range and then all rush in at the same time rather then the fastest approach first and get blown up then the avg speed ships approach and get blown up then the slowest ships approach and get blown up.

4) game speed is poorly implemented

when setting up a game there are 2 settings you can change manufacturing speed and research speed. these settings give a malice or bonus to their stat of   50% +/-  (i believe)

the problem is this bonus is applied per planet in the same way that improvement bonus's are. within the first 10-20 turns this may seem noticeable, however as soon as the player has a few improvements or techs under their belt the effect is laughable insignificant. increasing this value would have a major impact at the beginning of the game making it either supremely easy or nearly impossible to do anything but again becomes useless once the game gets rolling.

these bonus's should either effect a planet as a whole after all the planetary improvements are calculated or should effect the base cost of research or manufacturing.

With the "steam model" developers (not just Stardock) really don't put the time and effort into games that they used to.

Anyone remember game manuals? Or even the tech tree maps? No?, I didn't think so....

Heck, I even remember a thread posted by Brad where he was contemplating whether or not to follow the DLC model.

It's a different time and a different market, and the focus is to crank out as much salable content as possible (DLC's, expansions, expandalones, etc)

The solution is to sit on your hands and wait for the product to go gold, or at least wait for a Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas Steam sale where the base game is substantially discounted, and then pick and choose the DLC's that appeal to you.

Patiently waits for the fanboi pile-on...

I would like a shipyard that works as well as, or preferably better than, that in GalCiv2.

I want offsets and angles that don't magically change to different values after you input them. I want angles measured relative to the hardpoint, rather than relative to the ship's orientation, so you can duplicate the arrangement in other parts of the model without a sliderule. I want better organized components, and more basic shapes with fewer lighted windows that commit your ship to be a certain size, and more variety of basic components like we used to have like different size and colored lights that aren't all the designated race light color. It would also be nice if the lights represent windows were all the same color so I wasn't making ships where the crew in front lives in white light, and the crew in back lives in blue.

I want custom parts that work and work every time and don't require a PhD from Gauntlet to make work. I want parts that don't magically re-sizeother parts of the ship, and custom parts that scale smoothly (rather than having one part not scale at all).

I want persistent settings, so that I don't have to re-set all the settings every time I 'pick up' a new piece. I only put functional components INSIDE the model, and having to set each type of component to 10% size and -0.5 y every time is excessive.

I know it is too late, but I really would like it if you could go back, take out about half of the hardpoints on the models (which I assume were added before the 'offset function was imagined), and change the rest so that their orientation makes sense relative to the part (i.e., not sticking out at a 35 degree angle). It is really hard to stick a part on the same place on a model twice when it has 3000 hardpoints.

[EDIT: A number of components need to be re-oriented, as their orientation makes using them, much less altering them, very difficult. I'm calling out all those Yor pieces with the confusing thumbnails that all look symmetrical but aren't...]

And, finally, I'd like to be able to access the ship designer without starting a game.

I am pretty sure that most of these have been brought up before. Some were features of GC2 that are just not here in GC3. But, like the trade-goods glitch, each new update of the game somehow fails to make any headway. Having some of these things worked out would make me much more enthusiastic about Crusade.

[Edit: no, the shipyard isn't my only problem, it is the straw that broke the camel's back; not surprising since I spent 10-20% of my game time there]

But it IS a trade-off. Person-hours spent developing a new expansion are person-hours that could be spent making the original game function as advertised. I was simply suggesting that time should be spent first on making the old work, then on making the new. It is clear Stardock isn't going to abandon regular GalCiv, so it is just a question of relative commitment.

Regardless, it sounds like not many people agree with my original argument, so I guess there isn't going to be any real rush to ask the devs to take a step back. But the thread seems to now be about fixing things, and that is good!

This is my wish. (Christmas is around the corner, the time for wishes to come true!)

I feel the rest is mostly progessing nicely

So, Stardock has not enough budget to polish GC3? It was raw at realize, one and half year are passed and what we have:

1. It is not sandbox game. In my vision sandbox means - it will be challenge on any map setups, but it is seems like in GC3 you are trying to find optional way in setup for that.
2. It is buggy – I like to play on big maps – it is disaster and mazochizm. My steps takes 20 minutes, and I am saving 3-4 times within step - because game can crash. I am saving before trigged turn – because game can crash. Sometimes games hangs on other civilization step – and to move forward the only way for me to declare war for them and reduce/change they ships/planets base.GC3 crashing in so many ways – it is hard to describe. It was buggy in release ok, I have wait till one and halve year and still buggy now….
3. It is so slow, my ships are moving slow on map, the building put on planet slows (it s often takes 4-5 second to put building in tile and reproduce correspondent sound). If ships are stacking manually to fleets- there is chance that they disappears from title, displaying between titled, and to find fleet it is necessary to check empty titles on map.
4. UI usability is terrible. Is seems like we are in 2000’s, so many modal dialog, lists of items and so on… so on…
5. AI is dump. As some one mentioned on these forums - there is no challenge in game. In begining AI is too powerfull (thanks to bonuses) and in the end you are to powerfull - so challenge in the game is missing.

If there are so many problems on big maps – lets eliminate them, say ok – huge size is maximum  that can you use.

It seems like the main problem of product is that the people who are developing/managing/producing it are not playing It or playing on tiny maps. Put you developers to finish biggest map and collect they feedback - you will quickly figure out what is wrong with the game.

In any way I am apologize for all my words to team, they done huge amount of work, invest the best they can to this product. But let look on GC3 honestly - it is bad product.

Additionally what I would like to see is, in conjunction with Stardock's beta program, to get additional customer feed back, instead of negative feedback is...  Provide a closed beta to several trusted founders (when I say trusted, ones that you know play the game and can provide honest feedback and not trash the game).  Give the player and example form on how they are looking the feedback to look, that way it's neat and organized.  Ask them to test specific features that have changed or just the game/games as a whole.  Provide them a timeframe such as "Over the next week by Month - Day would you be willing to test game and provide feedback in this form" After all founders have invested in the game as well, if the game flops or fails then we don't get back as much on our investment either so we want it to succeed and see more and more DLC's expansions as well...

Not looking for free hand outs to do this, obviously no one is going to complain about free handouts if given but, sometimes I feel there is a disconnect with what the player is seeing and experiencing and what the internal testers are seeing and experiencing not because of poor quality testing, just you don't always see things as the average player would.

This was promised pre-release in alpha...  But, then didn't make the release because the battle viewer took 6 months to get it from where it was to where it is, which is by nature a viewer so I didn't understand why it needed this long of time to be worked on?

This was never promised to be in the game, so I'm with erischild if I wasn't a founder I would expect to see this in a DLC/Expansion in the future.

Always been a talk-a-tive CEO but, backlash and harsh comments over the last 18 months seem to have shut down communication.  That and once Galactic Civilizations was no longer the new game on the block, with the release of Ashes, & Offworld Trading it seems that all the focus has shifted away from Galactic Civilizations III and is mostly on Ashes.  With this there has been almost no communication on Galactic Civilizations III in the last several months, other than Crusade is coming several months ago first quarter of next year and anytime anyone has asked for a roadmap update or even what future plans are or an update on Crusade they have been very tight lipped to even say that yes this is coming still on target and we may or may not have DLC's prior to it ect...

My hardware is Asus N56vz:

• Intel® Core™ i7 3610QM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M
• Samsung 850 evo SSD
• 16 GB of ram
• Virtual memory is not restricted

Yes graphic card is old enough, but and GC 3 is not top graphic game, I am playing in map scale when everything displayed as icons. No 3 d model at all. But I have a lot starbases, trying to build up to 12 – 16 starbases around every planet to improve production. So I have 150 planets, 100 shipyards and 700 starbases. The biggest troubles with ships:

• Ship has 90 move – it is moving with freezing (actually it can be usable to turn off o reduce the time of animation)
• Stacking ship to fleets : as I mention above, ships a missing from tiles, sometimes they are displayed even between tiles (lol),
• Ship has big sensor range (40 example) and 90 moves – so then black part of map are opening, every thing slows down.

May be GC 3 is using graphic card for some sub computations, and for big maps it is necessary to have more up to date graphic card, but I see there are topics on this forum, and it seems like graphic card will not help me, may be only ‘Blue Gen mainframe’.

UI

For case then you rule 10 – 20 planets existing UI is OK. But for more than 100 there are many thing which are irritate (one you have recognized that all you are doing within step is switching between UI modal dialogs), Here a list of my thoughts:

• Why it is necessary to have separate window for shipyard? I would prefer to select ship for production in shipyard from global map, I would prefer to assign shipyard to planet by global map, simply by selecting shipyard and planet and apply action from shipyard menu. All these list of ships in shipyard – why I should scroll to find what I am need. Thanks to favored and other filters – but it seems like other can be easily removed.
• All these list of – list of building for build on planets screen. It irritating to scroll them from planet to planet to find the correspondent building. May be icons instaed of list should be displayed with more tabs for example (manufacturing/growing/science military/ special projects  and so on)
• The same for starbases, It is nice to assign them on global map no need in separate modal dialog.
• Improve filter for planets, ships, starbases – actual it is real hard to find planet by name for example.
• Global map – is it possible to introduce filters – to display only economic starbases, or only planets or only ships and so on
• It will be nice to have different colors scheme (or something) for shipyards, starbases – then there are 3 planets surrounded by 16 starbases and 3 ship yards and everything displayed as icons it is easy to get lost.
• Other fraction colors – is it possible to display them in Power tab of map?
• Government -> Colonies – how can I focus global map on selected colony?
• Finnaly I want hardcore option to use icons only on global map (no 3d models at all) – is it possible?

The main goal is to remove or provide alternate possibility to rule all element of the game from the global window, except planet buildings (have not idea how this can be done). There are so many things which need to be polished in UI, that, that – may be GC IV?

And I like you thoughts about AI bonuses, I think it will increase challenge. Now there is point in which AI stops his evolution.

My full time move to GalCiv III doesn't start until November 28.

And I won't be gloating.  That's too easy.  You have a misunderunderstanding of my expectations of good AI. It's not enough for it to win.  It has to destroy you. 

Once I enslave you all to the AI, there will be no more complaining. From anyone. Ever.

In preparation for the fact that I'm an old, cranky man now, we have hired two new engineers to work on GalCiv III.  

I have a lot of complaints. A lot more than you guys do.  I'm not a popular guy around here.  Which reminds me, when this is over, I expect some of you to offer me a place to stay.