3) Only if there is an area of effect around planets/starbases where this isn't necessary. Otherwise that would cause micromanagement hell with large numbers of ships.

4a) Probably too easy for the player to game to their advantage.

4b ) That would be nice, or at least remove the permanent votes. Make them need to be renewed every year, so you might see several votes come up each session.

4c) Meh, trade isn't the thing that keeps anyone in the UP.

4d) Probably won't matter, as they never have enough votes to do anything.

4e) Sounds complicated, but might be worth it if they can work out how to do it without the player being able to game it to their advantage too badly.

5 (all) Possible ideas, if they can be implemented without too much micromanagement. Keep in mind, these ideas have to work for people playing 20 planet games and 500 planet games.

6) I'd settle for "keep inside current influence border" as opposed to the current "keep outside of other peoples' influence borders". More importantly, the auto setting needs to account for travel time and completion time when it decides where to go. I hate it when I see an auto miner set off on a 30 turn voyage to a bare asteroid when there was a level 1 base it could have upgraded 2 turns away.

7) Uhh, if you mean first contact situations, YOU are the one making first contact. They don't need to see you if you are the one initiating contact. Besides that, I haven't noticed any problems that way.

8) It would be nice, but mostly people aim the autopilot short of the target system to avoid that issue. Or aim past it, that works too.

9) I guess some people care about that. I'd rather see some of the other issues addressed first, but others may have different priorities.

10) It's part of the military rating system. If you have a zero, they're going to hassle you. That information is free to all, you can see their rating as well. Note they base military decisions solely on military rating, so there are a few scams you can pull to get them off your back (hordes of barely armed ships are indistinguishable from worthwhile ships, starbase arrays, SCC, etc).

11) It's an advantage given to the AI to help them against an actual intelligence. Maybe they could make them visible at double your normal sensor range, so when a scout goes past you could see that *something* was there, even if it didn't tell you what type it was. It's all kinds of frustrating when some AI snags the military resource that was hidden in the tiny bit of shroud you hadn't cleared along the edge or something. I've taken to following AI constructors with faster ones of my own, until I can see where they are heading.

12) If I remember correctly, the stargates were massive and highly inefficient, so using a stargate might take LONGER than hyperdrives to get you to the other end. Not to mention each end of one would be about the same cost as a terror star. Also, Frogboy pretty much nixed the idea because there is no practical way to program the AI to use them as efficiently as a player can, so they would end up as a player-only advantage.

13) Or just as a random hazard, so you'd need to be careful about sending unarmed transports or constructors anywhere, even deep in your territory.

14) Mega events are meant to be game breaking, that's why there is an option to turn them off. You'd still get the random war, but the speed limit would not appear.

15) Agreed.

16) There may be a way to do this now. I *think* you can adjust the intelligence of each individual AI without changing the difficulty at the start.

If I remember correctly (I wasn't around for GC1) the systems were set up as they currently are to allow multiple civilizations to occupy planets in the same system.

Planetary and stellar motion might be nice if the AI can deal with it. Or it might be too big a drain on processing capacity to allow less capable systems to run the game (having to recalculate each ship's autopilot path each turn).

Asteroids DO come in clusters. In fact, clustered asteroids are thought to be more common than belt asteroids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_asteroid

How do I make the quote thing work?

If what you said is quoted in this reply, it worked!

There are two posts because I got the "Egads!" screen after posting both of them.

Well I can tell you right now you're screwed on #1 and almost certainly #3 as well.

I thought of something that could be a good strategy altering device.. galactic "terrain". I was thinking you could have things like ion storms, meteor clusters and so forth, and that each terrain could have a side effect, like dimished shield, ecm and missile effect within an ion storm or reduced defence in a meteor cluster, basically i'm imagining terrain that can allow you to defeat superior ships or hide you from sensors. a vague idea I know but i'm sure it could be improved upon

I hope Stardock looks at this thread thoroughly when development on gc3 starts (unless it already has) all the ideas here would make an awesome game

the ability to save certain ship parts as jewelry to later be used on other ships.

yes but you can't put the templates together

Agreed - I'd like to be able to save certain things together as a unit.

Half the fun in this game is using the builder to create a coherent 'navy' - I get so stupid designing ships and 'backstories' for a ship class, but I have fun.

You should also be able to save templates that use no 'specialized' components as a 'common' template that any race can use.

Heh - Now I want to take it a point farther - you could have interstellar corporations that built 'standard' ships, maybe cheaper for their home government, but would sell to anyone willing to cough up the dough.

Actually - For that matter - that would be a cool variant of 'minor races' - interstellar mega-corporations that existed across borders - Maybe a race could 'charter' a corporation when they had a trade good and 'recognize' a foreign megacorp to gain access to it, and although they didn't actually *control* the corps, both sides get some benefits simply becuase of that channel - both sides benefit economically, both sides get a small intelligence bonus (Freighter captains talk) the charter civilization benefits from sensor data from those ships. etcetera, while the mega-corp slowly builds it's own ships when starports aren't in use and has access to whatever technology the charter civilization chooses to allow for 'civilian' use, but don't get to colonize planets, have no influence, can't research (But can have spies!).

That could even be extended into making things like 'pirates' (or 'privateers'!) effectively a special kind of mega-corp.

Actually, I think you could add a lot of depth with this, without all that much muss - it would actually simplify a lot of features.

Jonnan

Oh really nice topic I have a lot nice and can be useful suggestions, but I think these suggestions might will be good for gal civ 4 or 5.) For 3 making it might will be early. 

At first of all might some element of ship suppliment would be nice like fuel, food and breathable gasses. Fuel is most important imagine you have a ship  which can fly so far as fuel allows small ships travel inranges of system. medium ships in range  of few systems larges in 10s fuel.  large can travel far. It should be easy to produce a lot, but from some specific meteor  rocks for example. OR some specific scientific structures on planets. Of from specific science stations near the suns. efficient fuel  more travelling capabilities but it should be always limited for ship supplies  for ships themselves. If fuel runs out ship can not move. Some specific type of ship fuel carrier can be arrenged to pick up at factory and deliver at stations.  some large cargo ships designed to carry large amounts of  fuel supply

About breathable gaases and foods.  Planets and stations  of course would be resuppliment. But on stations they should be brought from habitable and gaseous planets. Such suppliments should be possible to be arranged automatic. If food runs out ship's crew has some time to live if oxygen runs out not to much. Ships stops and becomes lost enemy party can easyly take it 

Planets have different breathable gases(for example 12 main different) so to colonise planet by one race some adjusments to environments must be made. Panets should have larger for classes but more different buildings which are necessary. and on terrains should be slightly diifernt opprortunities possibility. For example near water buildlarge fish farm. forrest can be cut. to terrains mountains can be used for mineral resourses. Terrains for farms and people settlement and star.  Approval should be based on social production and taxes and entertainment and food production altogether. Economy on social production and marketing. social Production on mineral collection and education level of the planet. Military production on draft of population and taxes. 

 The battle s.ystem in galciv2betwen ships  should be something more then just two fleets met, so stronger one wins.(itall comes down into simple weaponry race) It should have some cool strategy element.  Ships number ofcourse in fleet should be restricted by logistics But look into heroes ways in step by step fantasy battling. and logistics can be apllied this way: battle area splited in some large number of crossections. Ships according to logistics take specific number of crossections. one fleet in one corner, one in another. On each one you choose specific move like move activate type of defence put energy from movement to weaponry or to defence or vice versa use specific weapon on ship activate long range wepons or close range weapons, take abroad (should be specific modules or ships for that)   Launch star furies or other little shooters for specific large carriers for examples. the battles like  this can also be at starbases with fleet in it's close range or without. You need tobreak starbase defences destroy it or take it abroad.  Or planet you need to break fleet guarding it and fixed number of battlesattelites if they were built by opponent. specific battle area can be chosen from the main screen if near meteors then on scene some meteors can be slightly moving also step by step. Near sun then slight part of the sreen take sun which affect some features energy power. And near black hole and nebula.

Wormholes should not dissapear after going through them. Opposite they can be both way of passing large distances. but under some strong  warheads  they can be destroyed. Also such element should be as black hole which is dangerous for ships. If ship in pole of range of black hole it getting closer every turn to it until it' destroyed unless ship won't . and it slows down ship. which moving away from it. In nebula sensors of ships are going  down. Easy to hide ship and bases there.

Planet invasions: Planets should be possible to attack by any ship but differnt way . Simple fighter can bomb planet very slowly. Bombard ship faster if you need to destroy planets industry. If not marine forces on transports. the difference is you decide where to deploy forcec on the planet where to bomb.  and what type of forces you brinning on it and which tipe of centers you occupy and planning strategies on defeating resisting forces. How affect it's terrain c So it shoulbe shown on map as we checking it. Also there is a track of  If race using another breathing gases.then you can not set  your race over there unless your perform some environment changes slowlly perform genocide. otherwise you can just occupy them  and take a profit from planet.  

Also such thing as expererience appears for soldiers and pilots, they wwould become more specific Both come from military units option military draft, you put people into it, some taxes, which train in planet military bases and starport and for them set  xp then more fights and missions then more experience. on bases xp grows slowly, but depends on taxes input.Also option due to assault on your planet you can put all people under weapon or use your soldiers forces only. But first will result in large casuaties.

Piracy elements warships if you keep without food long time or not paying them well from taxes can go renegade. attacking supply's  ships and trade ships. building their small bases in different regions of the galaxy map, all of them can take your ships abroad, and has no problem to become friends with pirates from another race .

Bombs capable of blow ing up planets and suns difficult to create. Takes alot of researsch and money. When sunblows up everything in radius blows up ship starbases and planets included.

Roled played element would be extremely nice.

Some changes I'd like to see:

1.  Carrier modules.  Lots of other people have put forth great ideas how this would work.  A ship could contain multiple carrier modules, and interceptors would be player-designed.

2.  Targetting computers.  This is a technology line, with 3-4 technologies, that enable you to put better targetting computers/components on your ship.  I imagine them being similar to sensors in cost and size.  Without a targetting computer, a ship can only attack 1 target per round, but adding the computers would allow them to attack additional targets after the first ship was destroyed, if they still had weapons that hadn't fired.

3.  In fleet combat, ships attack random targets.  None of the old - everyone in the fleet shooting at the same target until it's dead, then proceeding to the next one.  Due to the limitations of time, space, position, maneuvering, angle of fire, and dogfights, real battles require ships to engage different targets, because they cannot all target the same ship all the time at the same efficiency.  Each round, each ship would randomly select a new opponent to attack.  Perhaps technologies could be researched that allow you to give your fleet combat directives, such as "Attack larger ships first", "Attack smaller ships first", or "Each ship should attack opponents about the same size as them".  Such directives would increase the chances that your ships would attack certain targets of the enemy fleet, but your ships would still have some chance of attacking any ship in the enemy fleet.

4.  Ships need to take piecemeal damage, and this is how I would do it:  Say I have a Frigate with 30 hp, and it has 3 engines, 4 weapons, 2 defensive shields and 1 sensors, for a total of 10 components.  In battle, anytime it gets hit for more than 3 damage (which is it's HP/component count) then a component is destroyed.  For example, during the course of a battle, it takes damage 3 times, for 2, 5, and 17 damage.  The first hit doesn't destroy anything, but the second and third hit each destroy one component - which we randomly rolled from the list of 10.  So, if a weapon and a engine are destroyed, the Frigate would now have 2 engines, 3 weapons, 2 shields and 1 sensors, and 6/30 hp.  The hp could be regained relatively quickly even if the ship spends time alone in hostile space, but they would come back faster if the ship was in a spacestation, friendly planet, or fleet with uninjured ships.  The component damage could only be repaired by bringing the ship to a planet with a spaceport or a military starbase with a repair module, and it would siphon off a small amount of the planets ship production to repair (ie, if the component costed 100, then it takes 20 shields to repair it... you get a discount)

5.  Repair modules.  These modules allow ships to repair other ships in the field from damage to their components.  They would have a limited stock, which, once used, would need to be re-supplied at a planet.  Preferrably these would be large enough that you would put them on their own cargo ship... you wouldn't want this taking up space on your battleship.  In any case, it wouldn't allow a ship to repair itself, only other ships.

6.  Starbase constructor module.  These should have a constructor module that allows the starbase to construct modules.  A starbase would start off 1 for free... Thus, it would require only 1 constructor ships to get a starbase rolling.  Additional ships could be sent to build more modules and speed up the process if you wanted the starbase to be constructed faster.  Of course, if your starbases are expanding themselves it would have to reflect a cost on your economy, just like improvements on a planet cost money.

6b.  Persistent Constructors.  This would work alot like freighters.  When you setup a trade route with a civ, thereafter there's little freighter ships going to the planet.  Similarly, when you create a starbase, thereafter there's little constructor ships going to the starbase from the planet the constructor was made at, ferrying goods and people there.  Thus it would be advantageous to starbases with constructors on nearby planets, as you would have a shorter supply chain, with less risk of pirates and enemy fighters.  Multiple freighters could be sent to a starbase, you'd want about 1 for every constructor module in order to keep it fully stocked with construction resources.

7.  Interception control module.  In the end game, some ships can move really fast... the fastest ship I ever made was a troop beamer that carried 2k troops and had 83 movement.  In several games I've played recently, I've adopted a blitzkreig strategy where I declare war on an AI, move in several fast battleships to empty his plannets, then move in my troop carriers and take all of his planets in a single turn... his large fleets dissapear when his last planet is conquered.  This module would provide a counter to this.  Basically, a ship with this module can choose to engage ships during his opponents turn, as soon as they come into his sensor range.  You could use these ships to man a blockade around an enemy civilization, or to form an outer defensive perimeter around your colonies.

8.  Weapons, sensors, life support, and defenses shouldn't require more space on a huge ship than on a tiny ship.  However, engines need to be different for tiny, medium, and huge craft.  Huge engines are made to propel a large amount of mass at a relatively slow speed, reliably over long distances.  Tiny engines are designed to move a small mass around at high speeds for short duration and distance.  Basically, keep doing what you're doing now, but call the engines different names for different classes, and drasticly increase their propulsion for tiny ships, while drastically reducing their propulsion output for large ships.  The same tech could enable an engine that moves my tiny ship at speed 18, but the engine for the huge ship would only increase its speed by 1.  Currently, the bigger the ship I make, generally the faster it goes, as I have more space to pop more engines on the back of it, and engines are cheap.  This would make small fighters naturally fast, but with limited range, while larger ships would be slower, but able to travel deep into enemy territory, giving us a good reason to use carriers to field fighters in enemy territory.

9.  There needs to be more, subtle hints that a war is going to break out.  You might be advised that the enemy civilization has started a propaganda endeavor that paints your civilizations in a negative light -- a sign that the regime is looking for an excuse to go to war with you, but hasn't gotten the people convinced yet.  A civ could enact tariffs on another one as a way of goading them into war.  A civ could authorize privateers  to attack enemy shipping.  A civ could be on the lookout for international incidents with another civ, which would greatly increase the chance of something happening that could be used to spark a war.  (Examples:  A.  Sinking of the Luisitania, while it didn't bring the USA into WWI, it sure didn't help relations, or B.  If you remember in 2000 when our spyplane was downed by china).  Naturally, when the event happens, the other civ could choose how they react, whether they will make concessions to something that wasn't their fault (resulting in poorer galactic diplomatic standing) or whether they will take a hard line (greater chance of war).

10.  Moral decisions shouldn't always have 3 options.  Sometimes there should be only 2, sometimes you could give them 4.

11.  Troop modules should be reduced to only carry 1/10th as many people as they do now, but these people would be soldiers.  When a planet is invaded, only 10% of the population are soldiers, only they actually fight and die, the rest surrender if the soldiers are all killed.  If a person wants to transport large amounts of population, they will need to use a colony module.

11b.  Recently captured planets would be inefficient, as time went on, and the population grows, the planet would get back to normal.  Let's say you capture a planet, and after their soldiers are dead you have a planitary population of 5Bil original inhabitants and 100 Mil of your marines.  Every one of your marines, and every new person born on the planet would count as a loyal citizen.  For every loyal citizen, that loyal citizen and 1 original inhabitant would contribute to production.  Thus, on the onset it would produce taxes as if it had 200 Mil citizens, and it wouldn't be producting at 100% again until it had 10Bil population.  Similarly, social and military production and technology would be double the ratio of loyal citizens to total population, or 4% at the onset in this example.

11c.  Implications of this:  Conquering planets would be very costly on your economy.  Happiness would help your new colonies gain population faster, which in turn would help them become more productive faster.  A colony that has achived it's population cap would convert original inhabitants into loyal citizens at the rate that it would gain citizens were the cap not there.  New colony or troop transport being made on the planet could also only take loyal citizens, limiting your ability to use enemy populations in warfare.

12.  Bigger weapons.  Bismark, a WW II battleship had 8 380mm guns, 12 150mm guns, 16 × 105mm, 16 × 37 mm, 12 × 20 mm, and 8 × 20 mm guns.  The bigger guns were for penetrating enemy battleships (the Hood, a british battlecruiser, was sunk from a single round), but the smaller guns were more maneuverable and thus better suited for anti-aircraft and smaller ships.  By contrast, the largest gun on a destroyer would be about 100mm.  Right now in GalCiv2 my tiny ships might have 2 harpoons, while my huge ship has... 10+ harpoons - but they're all the same weapon.

12b.  Larger defenses.  Each ship could only have 1 defense of each type, so this would mean that a battlecruiser would have a bigger one, and a fighter would have a much smaller one.  Due to building costs, a fighter could probably only afford to carry 1 type, whereas a dreadnought would want 1 of each, albeit the most expensive one should correspond to the enemy's primary attack.  Each defense type would be rolled individually then added togeter against an attack, resulting in a smaller standard deviavion for ships with multiple defenses.  The following might be statistics for 3 end game shields:

A.  Invulnerability field.  Size: 30, cost: 650, defense: 55.  -- Ideal for Huge ship's main defense

B.  Superior Force Field.  Size: 15, cost: 350, defense: 30.  -- Ideal for Medium ship's main defense, Huge ship's off defense

C.  Barriers.                   Size: 2, cost 150, defense 12       -- Ideal for Small ship's main defense, Medium ship's off defense.

Remember, we can get away with only 1 shield because each of the enemy weapons fire seperately against your shields.

12c.  Accuracy would be relational to the size and speed of the ship you're shooting at.  A big, slow carrier would be impossible to miss, but a small fighter could easily zip around, evading lazer fire.  Bigger guns wouldn't need to be less accurate, as since they only fire once per round, with the odds of missing a fast fighter being high, it might take you several rounds to hit/destroy a tiny fighter.  Good players will also equip their ship with a variety of mid size and small weapons to garantee that something is going to get a successful hit.  Anyway, each weapon firing would have to defeat shields/defenses seperately, giving you a real reason to put that monster cannon on your ship, even though it would drastily ramp up the cost and reduce alot of size for other weapons.  Also, since each weapon fires seperately, you can mix and match different types at different size ranges without it being a big deal.

13.  Random number state preservation in saved games.  This was present in Civ VI... if I saved my game, and then had a battle, then reloaded and tried again, the battle would happen identically.  I'm not 100% sure how they did this, but it could be replicated by taking an array of 1000 pre-saved random numbers, and using them one at a time in sequence each and every time a random number is needed.  When a game is saved, you save the sequence number.  This stops people from invading a planet, seeing that they did poorly, and going back to their save and trying it again, hoping for better results.

14.  Enemy troop transports, battleships, and fighters only contain military personel.  Destroying a colony ship with civilians on board is evil!  When attacking a colony ship, the AI needs to decide what terms it's willing to surrender with, and you need to decide what you will do with the PoW's... kill em, send em to your slave pits, send em to prison on your planets, put them on one of your planets, or send em back to their civilization.

15.  Soft tech pre-requsite.  Currently, each tech has a hard pre-requsite.  Sensors II is the hard pre-req for Sensors III.  But perhaps there's additional techs that would make developing Sensors III easier, and more time efficient.  For example, perhaps Sensors III has Medium Scale building and Advanced Computing as pre-reqs.  If you were trying to research Sensors III without knowing Medium Scale building or Advanced Computing then it would require 12 weeks, but if you knew Medium Scale building it would require only 10 weeks, and if you knew Advanced Computing as well it would only require 8 weeks.  This could be used to make it easier to research your second and third weapons/defensive tech trees.

16.  Race specific Hulls.  What I mean is, not all Medium size ships would have the same base cost, capacity, hp, or even logistics.  For example, when the Altarian's research Large scale buildings, they might get access to 2 new hulls, one of which costs 25 more, has 8 more capacity, but has 3 hp less than the other one.  Meanwhile, when the Drengin research Huge scale building, one of the two hulls they get access to is a Super ship with logistics 9 which has 20 more capacity and 15 more HP than the largest Terran ship, but also costs 200 more.

17.  Building prototypes should cost a very small amount of money, ie, 5% of the cost of the finished ship.  So, to design a Medium ship that costs 1000 production, you'd end up paying 50 currency when you save the model to your list of available ships.

Did you read the linked article? Admittedly it's a wiki, but at least in this case it's fairly accurate. The Jupiter Trojans alone are thought to be as numerous as the belt asteroids, and they think Neptune's Trojans to be 10x that number. These groups are much farther away from Earth so they're harder to spot.