Classic vs. Good

1. Tactical fleet combat - no wait! It should be simple (like chequers)and needs not (neccessarily) to have a flash GUI. I would simply tike to utilises numerical and technological advantages on fleets.

2. 'Hero's' Fleet captains who (like ships) gain experience in battle but have thei rown inate skills (sensors, combat, defense etc) These hero's could be combined with ships and then with fleets to add advantages.

3. Something special in the unique 'influence' area - I love this in GalCiv and think its truly unique and exciting. It is quite difficult to say what would make a classic feature here, but something around 'a layer' of subtle cultural influencers - music, the arts, religeon, prejudices, aesthetics, dogma etc that works pervasively across the Galaxy as communication improves between races, affecting fashion, trends (a new toy or music fad) and possibly causing changes in trade or even negative trends (races with bloodsports) slightly increasing chances of wars

4. Planetary developments and surprises. Suprise discoveries of minerals or ancient artifacts - through investing in archaeology or mineral exploitation on planet

5. Solar system developments - could be interplanetary short range trade or transport, sports leagues or cultural events boosting the inter solar system aspects - I really like the concept I pick up from looking at the planets in solar system bview and would love to see links adding value and 'flavour' between the immediate planets - Mars FC taking on underdogs Earth FC at Soccer (martians being bigger and stronger)

anyway fantasising over

It needs more depth. right now I either colonize planets/starbases, build improvements, or attack other civilizations. It needs a couple of tasks to take the players minds away from those three tasks....like:

1. hero unit(not necessarily improved by combat)
2. diplomacy depth(midgame)
3. 26 planets are guarded(earlygame)
4. pirates/raiders/bandits(earlygame)
5. galaxy wide disasters(endgame)


It needs more depth in terms of related, but fundamentally different tasks to work on

I think it's looking like a classic, but I agree some things could be easily added.

Influence is great but works too automatically. You need to feel that you're activally influencing another world to join, not have 4 of them join in a turn. I'll post a seperate thread on this.

Empires need a greater feel of space ownership. At the moment you often have lots of enemy or neutral ships passing through your sectors. Some form of reducing this would be nice. It would bring home the feel of owning the space between the planets. Again a seperate thread will be posted.

Galaxy wide information needs improving. Currently you don't know whats happening between other races enough. There is no sense of you being involved when your allies are at war, or when a minor is being attacked. The option of receiving these messages should be added. See seperate thread.

Paul.

Diplomatic help:

Say the planet of another races has been devastated by a disaster. We should be able to offer food, medical supply or buildings (if accepted) to this planet. This would help the relations.

There a few things i think would improve the game.

1.Leader for fleets and cabinets for humans and aliens which would also allow for assinations.
2.Ground Combat should have a bit more depth i would like them to be built(trained)like ships so you could have different units armor,infantry,militia,special ops.
And also have multiple turned combat for well developed planets that effect planet quality.
3.Minor races should be more important i would give them each a small amount of influence in the senate so each major race goal should be to have them in a protectorate treaty or puppet gov that gives the major the minors influence rather than just conquer that seems the only thing worth doing to a 1 sector minor.

There needs to be more information about what's going on in the universe -- in my last game, the Bradian A.I. totally crushed the Drengin Empire, took over all of their planets, and I didn't even notice until long after it had happened.

Micromanagement reduction and ease of information access are important issues with me.

I spend too much time early on looking through explored space for stuff I can't find on the mini map. (Good planets, anomolies, and resources mainly.) Later on, moving ships about is a major pain.

martinl

I like the game the way it is now.

But I agree Micromanagement must be inproved.

You should be able to setup rules for managing planets and never have to go to each planet between turns.

I would like to see options on the summary screen that comes up each turn.

Options would be to
1)View all planet that completed production
2)Only view planets that completed Military Prod
3)Only view planets that completed Social Prod
4)Do Not view any planets
5)Select (via checkboxes) specific planets that completed production

Anyone else think this would be a good idea?

Great feedback!

Here are some things that are being implemented for 1.0 already and some things that will be in 1.x:

For 1.0:
* A yearly status report. This will be a news dialog that says in plain english what is going on in the galaxy along with some interesting planets.
Example:
In the top right corner of the news report it might list the top 5 planets.

Then in the main part it'll say:

"The war between the Drengin Empire and Arcean Empires continues into its 4th year. The Drengin Empire is slowly weakening the Arceans and rumors indicate that the Arceans are nearing a total collapse. A source close to the Drengin Empire has said that they suspect the Torians have been aiding the Arceans which has damaged their relations."

Each year would bring up a different thing like this. Another year might bring up a report about influence:

Example:
Top right corner lists the 5 most influential star systems with a report:
"Terran Sphere goods and services are becoming so popular throughout the galaxy that that many civilizations, especially the Arceans, are quite concerned. With Arcean children wearing clothing that sports the trademarks of human corporations, many citizens are starting to wonder if they should cast their lot with the humans.."

The year status screen is scheduled to be in beta 3E (Wednesday's build).

Additionally:
There will be a lot of "Random events" that will alter the scope of the galaxy. There has been much work on this but finishing it up is taking a long time.

Beta 3E is scheduled to have pirates.

We HOPE to have the flag ship in by 1.0 but we may have to choose between flag ships and terror stars.

Post 1.x:
Design of your own civilization will become much deeper including the choosing of a political cabminet. The political cabinet will help determine which random events occur. So your cabinet officers will give your civilizations special bonuses but they are more subtle than the +10% to economy.

There will be heroes. Heroes will be very rare but have effect on all ships in the sector they're in as well as being able to explore anomalies and will go up in experience much faster than other units.

There will also be star system mining. In the details screen fo your planets where you can add to the areas you want (social, military, tech) the extra resources of the star system you're in. So that star system with a bunch of crummy uncolonized planets can actually be of some use.

More depth in the espionage system.

An attempt to make the enemy AI's more personable - more like enemy people and less like robots.

The minor race AI's to be controllable - numbers, average intelligence, etc.

Some means to directly affect morale in spending - like a repeatable (cheap) "Celebration" wonder or something, that gives minor temporary morale boosts.

A way in the overmap to locate special resources.

Hmm, that's enought for now.

If you have to pick between Flag Ships and Terror Stars... I'll take Terror Stars!!!

I'd rather see the Flag Ships. Perhaps this is a good subject for a Cyber Poll?

I vote for Terror Stars

Ok, I'll do a poll.

The game need's flag ships more its micro hell atm.

As some have suggested, perhaps a Galactic News Network (GNN) a la MOO, that gives you an update every once in a while on happenings in the galaxy.

Grifman

That'll be in the next beta.

Besides all good stuff discussed, I'd like more diplomacy options.
As an example I'd like to be able to tell a civilization: "I'm crushing you, surrend (planets, ships, starbases, ...) and you'll be fully part of my civilization with voting rights. This would generate an alien party in the senate at the beginning (so I could not swallow too big empires) and then gradually (with integration) fade into a niche party.

also it would be nice to be able to do more specialised sabotage than just destablisation, such as assasination and theft of one of there most prized starships etc.

also perhaps random events such as:

"we have discovered ancient blueprints from one of the 1st races to acheive space travel it is possible for us to reconstruct this vessel which could give us as edge against our competitors, but it will cost an estimated 20billion credits per month for 10 years to reverse engineer the technology to work with our own technology, do you want to proceede?"

or being able to make a joint project with allied races.

or something like a babylon 5 idea, such as the United Planets having a vote on wether to create a space station which will make negotiations and improve relations which will cost the UP members X amount of credits.
any comments?

Also it would be nice when your beating an enemy empire if it tries to make peace rather than just surrendering to another race which is very annoying,

also it would be interresting if the winning party in a war if the winners could enforce the defeated side to pay reperations for the war.

so say an alliance or Terrans and Arcaens defeat the Drengin in a very bloody war for both sides but eventually the Terran-Arcaen alliance defeats the Drengin that they can impose limits on the drengin economy and ship limits and make them pay steep reperations to make it less likely that they will be able to start another war, on the downside of that: it would make the drengin even more hateful of the victors and the drengin civilisation as a whole will want revenge, similar to the treaty of versais i mean.

thats all i can think of for now

I don't mind my enemies surrendering to someone else out of spite. Usually I can make them mad enough to do that! But yes, peace treaties with teeth would be a plus, as would the ability to issue an ultimatum to some pair of warring idiots. That could be a simple diplomacy thing and tied to the discovery of diplomacy. Just have a menu item in the treaties that says "Demand you offer a peace treaty to X" where X is replaced by the name of a civilization the other one you're talking to is at war with....

Once the demand is issued, the recipient must either offer peace or find himself at war with the demander. (The AI's could do this too). If the offer is rejected, it still counts as made, and if an offer is received by the demandee, then he must accept or accept the consequence. In other words, some big stick diplomacy please. It's annoying to have my trade vessels blocked by some brushfire war that I'm not interested in being involved in! Heck, I'm a peaceful sort!
:notsure:

YOu can already do peace treatiest with teeth. Just require them to pay you money per turn.