In theory, helium can be made to fuse. Or at least current stellar development theory is based on that. Hell, everything up to iron nuclei can theoretically fuse. Hydrogen is currently a better fuel source because the energy needed to make it fuse is much lower (by about 2 orders of magnitude, IIRC). The higher helium starting energy is currently not attainable (for that matter, neither is H-H fusion, only deuterium and tritium mixes).

I'm still debating the proper use of class zero planets - not all of them should be useful, or at least not equally so. Solid planets (mercury/pluto) should be a asteroid mine on steroids (double an asteroid's output at each level?) with perhaps a chance at bonus/malus that isn't obvious beforehand, like colonization events now (rare minerals, low metal content, etc). Maybe even put these on a time limit (started poor, found good minerals, minerals ran out) just to piss off the scoremongers who like their output to remain steady to avoid waste

Gas giants could go two routes. Either they get pretty much the same output as asteroids (from mining moons) or as a % bonus like a power plant (from a continuous supply of hydrogen to fuel industry). Pretty much every system is going to have at least one gas giant, so we could base other things on fuel mining.

This type of model might open up a Sins-style resource game (all apologies to those who haven't played it), rather than the simple BCs/tech points/manu points currently in use. Not only do planets need manufacturing to build stuff, they also need metal and fuel. Both are also needed to run research and maintain the planetary population growth. These would be able to be moved around automatically or manually (no actual freighters, either the game automatically evens out excesses on one planet to cover need on another, or the player chooses to stockpile on one planet; "move x units of metal from Earth to Wardell III, move will take 6 turns to complete").

The blockade concept would be worthwhile here, especially if there is any sort of involved invasion scheme or planetary fortifications (starbases could be blockaded as well). Cut off incoming metal and fuel streams to stop manufactuing and research on the planet, and whatever activity the starbase is doing (a military base without supplies can't assist, mining base stops mining, etc.). To counter this, each planet/base would have its stockpiled reserve, so a well-supplied planet/base might be able to run a full game year before supplies started to run low.

This would allow fuel limits to replace life support in limiting range. Ships would consume a low, fixed amount of fuel per turn (based on size and equipment on the ship), and considerably more when moving or in combat. A ship that runs out of fuel just sits there, can defend itself at reduced effectiveness, and slowly takes damage until it is destroyed - unless you can reach it with another ship which can give it enough fuel to get to a port/starbase (assume all ships can share fuel like this, dedicated refueling ships are a bit much).

IIRC, stars fusing helium is a sign that they're on their last legs (heading down the slope to going nova or collapsing into mostly neutronium). But my quibble was about the fact that you have to work at it to make helium dangerous. At least those of us with a terrestrial biochemistry.

Re a notion like a gas giant being a deuterium source, I pretty much expect something like that for GC3. I haven't played sins, but I'm wasting far too much time over on the Elemental boards. The Elemental engine will be the starting point for the GC3 engine, so GC3 should include something like a "resource game" from the start of the dev cycle. Maybe improvements on Class 0 worlds for GC3 will be able to both provide some commodity flows, and 0 worlds without a commodity might be able to provide some non-manufacturing bonuses for research (think McMurdo Station) or even morale (extreme tourism).

From what I know of high-school chemistry, helium is basically harmless regardless of your biochemistry. Well, I suppose it might cause some sort of problem if you had a respritory/circulatory system that could get "clogged" with inert gases, but I do not know how that would work and do not think it is at all possible.

I definately like the idea of different space objects giving you different resorces, but I do not approve of adding a fuel limit to ships: it would make it waaay too hard to carry on a sustained conflict/exploration, and suck up too many turns going back to fuel points. Besides, anything that can thrave FTL is at least going to have a ramscoop.

We have a chemistry expert?

Miners of the 23rd+ century would most probably have everything necessary to use even methane, turn it into Ionized particules, work at the sub-atomic levels, drop a couple of carbonic coals in a huge foundry already aboard... and create a few MPs somehow like Asteroids mining do.

Your...no, wait, sorry, my bad...Uranus?

@Willy

Me likes.  May comment more later.  For now, need to sleep.

wait a minute... don't know about you guys but I still like asteroids...

oh and could someone please put a little bit of code that tells ships to GO AROUND ASTEROIDS INSTEAD OF THROUGH THEM? please I beg of you...

I don't know about you, but I hate asteroids as the mining thing is boring and micro-managerial. Bring on the class 0's!

maybe there should be two types of starbases.  Intersteller and steller.  The intersteller would show up on the map the steller would show up in the steller map if we get that map in gc3.

Thanks for dropping by, nuclear waste antarctic boss!

nothing cos its crap

Yes, post it and THEN shoot it down, not the other way around.

• Planet surface images shouldn't be chosen from a limited library of about 5 images per planet type. For each planet, procedurally generate some terrain and render it into a texture.
• Improve the correlation between what the terrain of a cell looks like on the map, the close up view of the terrain, the terrain type name, and the usability of the cell. No more clicking on the Martian desert and having it described as "prairie".
• Instead of a planet possibly having a single exotic environment type (heavy gravity, toxic, radioactive, barren, aquatic), each terrain cell should have a combination of zero or more environmental hazards (heavy gravity, high pressure, low pressure, high temperature, low temperature, vital chemical shortage, toxic, radioactive). To use a cell, you need to have researched the tech for all hazards that it contains, and eventually every cell of every planet would become usable. A race's homeworld would have some terrain cells with no hazards. Some hazard types would be either present on all terrain cells of a planet or none (e.g. heavy gravity). Some planet types would have certain hazards in every cell (e.g. a gas giant would have heavy gravity and high pressure in every cell, an airless planet would have low pressure and vital chemical shortage in every cell). Different races could breathe different atmospheres (e.g. for humans, a gas giant would also have vital chemical shortage (no oxygen) and toxic for all cells , but this would not be the case for a methane-breathing race). An example: for humans, Earth would have some cells with no hazards, a few cells with low temperature (the polar regions), and most of the cells would have high pressure (the oceans). Colonizing moons should also be allowed.
• A more realistic representation of space. Abandon the idea of representing travel between star systems and travel between planets within a star system on the same map. Have a top level map representing the galaxy, and a map for each star system. Ships would require sub-light engines for manoeuvring on a star system map, and with an optional faster than light engine, a ship could move to the galaxy map to reach another star system. On a star system map, planets should orbit their stars, and moons should orbit their planets. Also, some star systems should have multiple stars, and stars should belong to real spectral classes (not purple or green). There should also be a possibility of a star system having an exotic stellar object (pulsar, black hole etc).

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The first area I would argue could be improved is the mechanics of planetary defence and assault.

On the former, it is ridiculous that, once a proper fleet has wiped out your little defenders etc, all you have to protect your planet with are its population, presumably armed with the far-future equivalent of spears and longbows. Planets should be able to be fortified with satellite defence systems, lasers and shields. The same goes for starbase defences, which I found highly limited and mostly useless in Galciv2. A smart interstellar empire would surely seek first to protect its planets from space, rather than their surface, and not merely rely on an itinerant space navy.

In essence, breaking through a planet’s (or a starbase’s) orbital defence systems should be hard, not easy. And once this is achieved, the advantages of orbital superiority should be more meaningful. If one does not wish to throw billions of population at actually capturing a rival’s planets, why shouldn’t he or she simply be able to despoil and destroy them from the sky? Starships should be able to be fitted with “bombardment” modules, allowing the ship to destroy, say, an improvement or a few million people from orbit each turn. And, of course, having hostile ships raining death from the sky should cause a planet’s morale to precipitously fall.

This change, as well as being more intuitively realistic, would also provide a much greater imperative to defend planets and maintain space superiority. It would also allow tactical wars to be conducted with more limited war aims.