- LOTS more automation. If I'm playing as the Korx and I'm raking in 10,000 bc per turn, I want to have an option to buy all of my buildings instead of manually pressing buy for 20+ planets every turn. Options to implement AI on your starships would be great. For example, telling a ship to guard a planet or starbase and automatically attack any starships threatning it. Anything to get rid of the tediousness of the game while still allowing full control of your empire.

- More diplomatic depth. I want to have the option to add stipulations and conditions to my treaties. Or the option to make territorial recessions without giving up a planet.

- More political depth. Have opposing political parties from the start of the game. Make governers belong to different parties, and add more ways to control your political system besides government types and moral. Perhaps mix politics and diplomacy as well. Example: An empire that was dominated by the war party has suddenly had a shift of power to mercantile, and as a result is now to open to talks of peace and trade. Add ways for the player to effect this.

- A more intuitive interface. Instead of having events listed in a popup window, show them on a map with popups and added information. Make the smaller details of the universe more accessible to the player.

- More random events that require a response from the player, but don't neccesarily change the face of the game. Something to keep the less eventful turns interesting, and make the galaxy feel more alive.

yea maybe being able to sit up a planet que that tells the ai what you want built on what ever size planet and it only alerts you when there is a special resource sqare other than agro sqares,.  don't think to many people use them.

I suggest that weapons and armor could be more interesting:

There should be a miss chance based on the craft size and speed.  Smaller and faster ships would have a greater miss chance.  A miss chance would apply to all craft, because you have to target the enemy.  However, missiles would get penalized twice as much, because not only can you miss on your targetting, but the time that the missile is in the air gives the pilot of a fast fighter the ability to maneveur.

Armor would provide a % damage reduction to all attacks, with a bonus against particle (gun) weapons.  On a large, armored ship, only a portion of the armor would be on the outside of the ship, there would be additional armor around the most vulnerable parts (ie, fuel, ammunition).  There would also be internal armor to make sure that when a hole is opened up in the ship, the injured parts of the ship can be sealed off.  Likewise, internal armor would keep the ship from buckling from external explosions (missiles).

Shields are energy vortexes around the ship that absorb lazer fire.  Their energy goes down when they absorb a shot, and can only be re-charged outside of battle.  So, say you have a shield on your ship that's 80 strong, and your enemy shoots a lazer at you that has 50 attack.  Your shields absorb the energy, but are reduced by the square root of the absorbed amount, to 73.  It would likely take multiple shots to strip an enemy ship of its shields, but once they were gone, the ship would be decimated quickly.

ECM would be similar to shields, in that each attack thwarted would reduce the power of the ECM system.  Each round however, the ECM power would be reset to full.  Thus, being attacked by 12 missiles in a single round would be a problem, as your computer wouldn't have time to thwart all of them at once.

ECM would only affect missile weapons, and shields would only affect lazer fire.  Armor would be much more common on larger ships, as putting 6 feet of nano-steel on a dreadnought is alot more do-able than 6 feet of steel on a single person fighter.  Thus, gun weapons would generally favor well against small ships, while missiles would be better suited against large foes.  Lazers would be equally good against large and small targets.

I was reading through the modding section when I was reminded of how weird it is that one starts with a Flagship that one doesn't even have the technologies with which to recreate.  So, you need to fix that!

AND, with that in mind: the idea came to me that scout ships should be able to survey anomlies; except that it'd take multiple turns (like a minor on an asteroid) to complete (until the survey technolpgy is reached).

OH, and I'd also like to see permanent worm holes and/or the ability to create/find stargates.  One way worm holes would be fine and set the game apart from MoO (and in fact wormholes would probably only be one way but I wouldn't know for sure).

In any event, having total control regarding the pace of the game, starting funds, starting techs, ships, etc. should be a key change/improvement!

SK

Especially for those of us who aren't fully comfortable with modding (yet).

Stable (Or at least semi-stable) wormholes. I have to confess, I've never quite figured out the point of the one use wormholes as it stands now;

They're only useful once, they can only be used by survey vessels, they actually *are* distinguishable from the 'standard' anomalies, so early on you are watching your flagship like a hawk to make sure it doesn't end up on the other side of the galaxy, later you have range and you don't care.

The only positive use for them is that if you have the extra production capacity you actually *can* put a surveyor on a tiny hull and drop it on one so you have a ship out in deep space mapping somewhere - but that's basically it. After you have range, they're useless.

All of which would be mitigated if they were more than a one use item that threw you out into deep space with no support. For instance, if they had a small (1% maybe) chance of collapsing per use, but while they were up they acting as if there was no range penalty between the ends? then you could throw a colony ship or a constructor through and build a base on the other side.

But as they stand? They have no real use.

Pug

Now that's an interesting co-op idea. "Plz gimme bigger ship budget, wifey!" "Not until you finish doing the dishes." "oookay."

picked up the game again...

Dynamic Invasions: a whole planet in a week is rediculous. Not to mention if it has a moon to conquer or another planet in the system to support its defense, and if there are trade routes or mining bases connected to the planet theres no telling how many weapons could be smuggled onto the planet to support the home team.

I'd like to see them last an indefinite amount of time. Until the commanding officer of the planet surrenders it or the forces there simply get obliterated. With invasions lasting longer it makes it possible to send in reinforcements via extra transports, or even make planetary bombardment ships to weaken the enemy ground forces (though the enemy can do the same things to you).

You could hopefully view the progress of your invaders by veiwing the planet as its taken over (or lost) each improvement at a time. And of course losing more quality the longer the fighting goes on.

Weapon modifications.

Either a per ship mod or a blanket tech upgrade.

Range

ECCM

Hardened slugs (armor piercing, obviousloy to a level within reason)

Weapons that are not just bigger than the last one, for example:

Laser range 1km damage 2 refire rate 1 per second, Particale cannon range 1km damage 3 refire rate 1 per second, Plasma cannon range 400m damage 6 refire rate 1 per .75 per second, Gause Cannon range 2kmdamage 4 refire rate 1 per 2 seconds.  Not saying these should be final stats, but you can see the direction I am going.  Super fast intercepters with some hard hitting close range weps, generic weps and long range for the big slow lumbering ships.

I suppose this is basically half way between the weapon theories of MOO2 and Wing Commander, but I think they were on the right path.  Not every wep is a boigger version of the last one.  Perhaps a disrupter, somehitng that screws with electrical systems, makes ships less responsive and slow reactions and shield regen rates.

ALSO, being able to refit your ship in a build que.  Say you still have a first gen ship out there, you are currently on the 6th revision, if it is orbitting a planet with a starbase, be able to put it in the build que and it can get a refit, or have a faster repair option.  Heck have a space dock mod for the bases to help with ships.

 , in terms of making a larger empire less ridiculously powerful, you could take a leaf out of the real world, and look at the US.  The United States is BIG, and this bigness brings in some major problems.  First:  infrastructure.  It is a lot more difficult and more expensive to keep roads, bridges etc. up to date in the US, because there are just so many of them.  So, perhaps you have some sort of "generic empire-wide maintainance" fee that increases based on how much space is under your control (sort of the reverse of tourism).  Also, the US has a lot of people, and these people all have different viewpoints and tend to disagree.  A lot.  So perhaps, as your empire grows larger it becomes more and more difficult to maintain a good approval rating, to the point where with a really large empire, you're doing REALLY well to have an approval rating around 50%.  Furthermore, have the whole lower taxes thing have have less of an impact on your approval.  After all, some people will thing high taxes are necessary to keep everything financed (especially during war time), while others thing taxes = bad, no matter what shape they take, and what they're being used for.

Of course, I think that this would mean that population growth shouldn't  be tied to approval anymore (which I think wasn't exactly the best idea).  I think population growth should be based on such things as how healthy your economy is (people come looking for jobs), how quickly your economy is growing (people come looking for jobs), the quality of your planets (people want to live someplace nice), and perhaps even affected to a small degree by how much of the population is employed by the gov't (gov't jobs provide good dental ).

You could also have something where the game tracks what proportion of your population belong to certain political parties, and which ones are "independant," so to speak, and as your population grows the chances of them joining a party that is not currently in power (or possesses a large percentage of the population already) increases.  So, for a smaller empire, it might be easier to maintain political control because there are fewer political parties, and a larger percentage of people are in your party.  As you expand however, the political landscape fragments, so your party could be the largest party, but still only have 30% of the population be members of the party.  And the independants would generally lean in different directions based on race (for example, human independents might prefer more peaceful solutions in general, but fully support a thorough butt kicking if another alien race attacks you, Arcean independants would prefer the whole neutral alignment thing, Drengin independants would often support conquering other races, etc).

Now, I know that in real life size tends to result in less significant party fragmentation, since only really large parties have the kind of finances to fund successful campaigns for national office, when the nation is really big, but for the sake of making the game more interesteing, as well as trying to minimize the "rich get richer, poor get poorer" I'd be willing to let this slide.

This could open up all sorts of fun/annoying potential in the intraempire diplomacy, because if you want your party to maintain a majority, then you may need to do things to court the independents, or try to form coalitions with other parties (though this may be a bit too much).  Or, you could do whatever you want and take the penalties that come with having an unfriendly Senate, and lots of people not liking you (difficulty declaring war, signing treaties, perhaps even rebellions).

Furthermore, depending on the race, you could also start to take penalties (lower approval, rebellions, etc) if your empire continues to be Imperial when a lot of other empires have become republics/democracies/federations.  For example, Drengin might not care so much if all the other "soft" races are using such a ridiculous thing as "democracy" but humans would get all up in arms REAL fast if you're running around as a supreme dictator when just about every other emprie is a democracy of some form or another.

This way, you can't just circumvent all the headaches that would come from a more developed intraempire political system by being Imperial (unless you were Drengin, or Yor, I guess, but then this just differentiates the races even more fully!).

Some of these ideas are probably already posted:

1. Military starbases are the only structures able to build the biggest size ships after researching and building some modules. Once you research a new hull size you should be able to upgrade your starport to be able to build the new hull size. Starports can be upgraded and are only able to build up to large sizes.

2. New hanger modules (up to three?) to add to military starbases, one hanger gives free maintaince for one ship, the most expensive ship first.

3. Constructors- Max number of constructors depends on your logistics ability. The constructor module is now very expensive. Click "Construct" and select a starbase on the galactic map, then select the module you want to build. The constructor will automatically go next to the selected starbase/etc and start to build the module. Can have multiple constructors assisting each other, but the reduction build time is low. Ex. A module that takes 10 turns to build with one constructor, adding a second constructor to assist will only lower build time to 8 turns.

4. "Abandon Planet" option - The population on the planet will decrease rapidly migrating to the nearest planets. Everything including buildings/etc on the planet will remain intact. Needs some contermeasures, can't think of any now.

5A. Barracks (One per planet) - Trains your own population into soldiers. Regiment of troops or units.

5B. New buildings to train invasion troops (all are "One per planet") - One trains regular soldiers/tropps, 2nd building/factory manufactures mech warrior type invasion units. Another new building manufactures tank type invasion units.

Each race has at least three invasion troop types and they're different for each race. Ex. The Korx can hire powerful mercenaries with a special building. The Thalan empire will be able to build giant spider type units, organic or robotic. Each type of invasion unit takes up different space on transport modules. Your own soldiers takes one space, mechs take two spaces (one mecha = 2.5 soldiers), tanks take three space (one tank = 4 soldiers). The more powerful units takes every long to train/build. Once you build the barrack type buildings your planet will automatically start training/manufacturing. Once you research a certain tech the tech is unlock for ground forces. Ex. After finishing researching lasers, laser rifles is available for your soldiers, same goes for armor and defenses.

6. Pirates- Ships can randomly spawn in a undiscover parsec, near trade routes or planets with low approval rating. Pirate bases can also spawn, pirates can send ships and transports to conquer nearby planets.  If the bases are left alone for a certain amount of time, bases will be upgraded. Can establish contact with pirates and tell them to attack your enemies with bribes similiar to Sins.

7. Able to research multiple projects at one. A slider bar similiar to MOO1 where you want to allocate the percent of your your research points to a certain category. Defenses, Weapons, Propulsion etc.

8. Speaking of propulsion, different fuel types? will affect your range along with life support systems.

9A. The star/solar system Stohrm mentioned above was a good concept in MOO3. Less micromanagement on the galactic map. Makes it easier to defend solar systems also. All your ships in the solar system are pooled together in the same system.

9B. MOO3 had system ships etc, ships that can't leave the solar system, they were much cheaper for maintaince.

10. New tech to build space/star lanes, warp gates, star gates on each solar system. Lanes and gates reduce movement between each solar system.

11. "One per system" buildings - Many new buildings, in addition to the above lanes and gates being "One per system" Build one and the bonus benefit all planets in the solar system. If your opponent already builds one before the player, the player can't build any in the same system.

12A. Weapons mounts - Point defense, Normal, Heavy, Very heavy, Ultra mounts

12B. Weapon modifications - Shield piercing, armor piercing, etc (Depends on what weapons, some beams get SP, some mass drivers AP)

12C. Armor mods - Very light, light, normal, Heavy, very heavy, Ultra heavy

13. New weapons - Each weapon is split into at least three types. Beam, Missles, Mass drivers

Beam weapons

I. Surging/focus weapons- When you fire the surging weapon at the enemy ship the beams will stay focus on the ship till it dies or player changes target/moves ship away. Naturally shield and armor piercing. Surging weapons are very effective at taking out large ships with high HP. Once you kill a target it takes a long time before you can select your next target and fire it gain. Ex. After one second your ship might do 10 damage per second, two seconds 30 DPS, three seconds 60 DPS, four seconds 100 DPS, five seconds 150 DPS, etc. One counter for this, is to move out of range.

II. Beam- Regular beam weapons, normal damage and range.

III. Devastator/bending? Beam - AOE beam type weaponry. Ex. After you fire the beam on the left, the beam is capable of moving to the right side if there's a ship.

B. Missle - Energy missle, regular missle, scatter pack (new missle modifications includes small and large, small being harder to shoot down)

I. Energy missles - Anti matter torpedoes, Photon torpedoes etc. Highest damage damage and fast speed.

II. Regular missles - High damage and the fastest speed

III. Scatter pack - One big missle launch can split into 2-3, then the 2-3 can split into 2-3 again when they get near the enemy. Since these missles are smaller size, they're harder to shoot down before it reaches your fleet. Medium damage and medium speed. Ex. one large missle can split a few times into 10-15 smaller missles, or if the large missle is shot down, it splits up into smaller missles.

C. Mass drivers get maybe an "explosive round" mod to deal damage to nearby ships.

14. Heroes -  Can recruit heroes from different races, depends on your influence. Not sure if you want to seperate them into admirals (battle only) and governors (planets only). Each hero has at least three planetary/fleet skills, two system/whole fleet, and at least one super skill. Planetary/fleet skills only benefit the fleet and planet hero is on. System/whole fleet benefits every planet in the solar system/fleet in the battle. Super skill benefits your whole empire.

15. New Techs

A. Anti-beam field - Can only be use once per fleet per battle. Beam weapon effectiveness reduce near area where is it deployed. Can work both ways, ex. it can also reduce your own beam weapon effectiveness

B. Stasis field - Disables ship engines/fleet unable to move for one turn. They can still attack.

C. New special weapon that pulls the enemy near your fleet when used. High cooldown.

D. New special weapon that pushes the enemy back when used. High cooldown.

16. Percent population on planets - Ex. 50% Human, 25% Thalin, 25% Yor on one planet. Good alignment races get bonuses, Neutral ?, evil races get penalties. New option if a planet is multi race, "Destroy <race>" evil alignments will get a bonus after that, ex. morale. Your race's migration to other planets depend on their loyalty.

17. Organic ships - Maybe from a new race? Their ships can swallow other ships and heal, the organic ships can split acid in place of other races' beam weapons and has strong short range melee attacks. Acid has a poison effect. They can also launch mini organic alien ships. They almost act as carriers.

18. AI demonish buildings - New AI lines added to remove useless buildings later on in late mid game to end game. Say add the following line to "Recruitment Center" and other population/temp in PlanetImprovements.xml for each race "<Demonish> yes/no" then follow by variables when it will demonish the building. "<Demonish> yes, Variable one = 75% population, Replace with <specialize>". Makes the AI smarter, I saw the Torians (Ultimate AI) with max pop on planets still with "Recruitment Centers" and a few "Fertility Centers" all on multiple planets. AI will now demonish the recruitment center when the planet has 75% or more pop, and replace it with any building that the planet is specializing in. Maybe each race can have different lines for the same buildings. Say for the Torians you want them to Demonish or stop building the population/temp buildings when a planet reaches 75%, but for another race 90% population. A exception line to a certain faction AI to stop building a specific building or wonder on a certain planet such as the Thalan's building Hyperion Matrix right from the start on their cap with 300% food tile! their cap can now support 48 bil.

19. Spies/Espionage- Spies can now framed other races for sabotage, stealing techs etc. If you place spies on tiles they can sabotage buildings, high cost to repair the building.

20. Food - Different races consume different amounts of food each turn. Races such as the Yor do not comsume food. Farms now feed people throughout your empire, not increase the max population on a planet. Extra food is sold automatically for extra money. One special tech to grow a small amount of food on planets which food can't be grown, such as a toxic planet.

21. Every planet has new ratings (gravity, resources, farming, research, influence) the ratings were previously in tiles from GCII, they are now planet wide, but the bonus is greatly reduce. Planets now all have a gravity rating very low, low, normal, heavy, very heavy, extreme. Many new techs to reduce gravity effects. Resources (manufacture rating) - very poor, poor, abundant, rich, very rich, ultra rich. Farming, on non Earth like planets is usually poor or very poor unless you have special techs available.

22. A new solar system near the center of the galaxy with all high PQ planets, Ex. one planet is ultra rich, one has artifacts for a big research bonus, one main planet has all of the bonuses. This solar system was abandoned by an ancient race for some reason. Maybe this could be link to some event, the ancient race will send scouts/small ships back to their solar system by a portal near the new solar system. The ancient race will continue to send scouts thru portals in nearby systems harassing other races. Every race in the galaxy declare areas around this solar system "Neutral Space". Anyone can freely attack anyone without any diplomatic penalties. As time passes by the ancient race will send more and better ships through the portals. Your race can now research these portals. After multiple research you can build/use a portal of your very own and send your ships to take the ancient race's solar system/galaxy. Maybe in an expansion, the ancient race is in another galaxy fighting a winning war with other races. The solar system you took is just one solar system of many.

23. Team play - Better team play options, able to select teams when starting a new game. Ex. Three or four teams with 3-4 races each on each team.  Say I have two other races on my team I can tell them what techs to research and what planets to invade/attack, etc. Your team's influence/etc is combine if going for an influence victory, etc. If "Tech trading" is check, races on your team will automatically get the techs you just finishes researching and vice versa, except maybe for some special race specific techs. Team play in Civ4 was good.

24. Able to restore a planet/tiles after the planet HQ drops. This takes a long time and players cannot purchase.

25. Five new Housing/Population increasing techs - 1. Tech that lets players build subterranean/tunnels bases underground, increase the planet max population. 2. Tech allowing players to build bases on moons if the planet has one, increases pop cap by a small depending on sizes and number of moons the planet has. 3. Techs that allows huge space stations orbiting the planet to be built. In battle these stations can be destroy and people die, with diplomatic penalties. 4. For only aquatic races such as the Torian, they have techs to build underwater domes/cities. 5. Planetary Reorganization: A new housing plan to better reorganize the planet so it can fit more people.

26. Initial Colony and starport no longer take up tiles on planets. They are infrastructure improvements such as the housing/population techs above.

27. Able to select different galaxy types similiar to different type of worlds in Civ 4. One type of galaxy is flat, the one we have in Gal Civ 2. Second type of galaxy is long, means if you have any ships that are near the left edge of the galaxy they come out in the right side of the galaxy and vice versa. Tall galaxy it's the top and bottom that happens. Round galaxy it happens at any edge of the galaxy. In total four galaxy types flat, long, tall, round.

28. 64 bit only? by time GC 3 comes out I think it'll be 2014-2016, by that time 75-90% of people will be using 64 bit systems. The only ones with 32 bit windows might be really old business computers.

29. GC 3 created with DirectX 11. Time to ditch the 15 year old Windows XP and and 9 year old Windows Vista. By that time I think we'll have Windows 8 and Windows 9 along with the currect Windows 7.

30. New feature to create your own leader with their own abilities.

Ok, probably covering lots of similar ground to the other 1300 posts.....

• ditch the combat simulator - this is rather pointless to me - doesn't really show me much about how my ships differ from the oppositions (pretty obvious just from results) - its an 'extra' that takes up game time, processor power, and dev time, and doesn't add anything to the game for me
• instead, it would be nice to have a combat simulator.  I found the 2d one in MOOII poor, so a realtime, 3 dimensional one would be nice - no need for fancy graphics.
• more ships modules that do interesting stuff.  Sorry to compare to other games, but its easy to do - Ascendancy had lots of interesting modules to add that made the outcome of battles, and even campaigns a lot more fluid.
• shipyard - I find this clunky.  The ship design screen doesn't work well, and even if it was easier, I'm actually not really that bothered what my ships look like, as its a rather unimportant part of the game at the moment.  Again, ascendancy had a nice ship design screen - simple, yet intuitive.
• I actually preferred in Ascendancy having much fewer starships, which could all be different, with names and experience, rather than countless diddy ones.
• 3d star map - so much more realistic, not really that hard to implement?
• also, could save alot of processor power by ditching some of the fancy graphics when you zoom down- doesn't add anything to game for me - just eye-candy - and I should think most galcivII players think this less important.
• orbital bombardment - yabba yabba - I know this has been done to death - but do I really have to invade and control every planet?  Also brings in the potential for planetary force-fields - until they are destroyed by bombardment, invasion cannot take place.  Also potential for fortress structures?
• star base upgrades - the process of construction of muliple constructor ships and sending them to star bases (there are so many potential upgrades) is rather gruelling - another way to do this without the drudgery would be nice.
• orbital defence systems - why have orbiting ships when you can orbiting heavy weaponry?
• star base/fleets - should work in unison when stacked.
• tourism - seems to have a rather too-big effect on economy at the moment, which unduly benefits large empires - maybe a reason for influence starbases, but its a bit of a weak concept.
• oh, just encountered a pre-cursor frigate - ow.  Totally unbalances game - please remove.

Old topic is old.  What people want from a sequel changes in two years.  Or at least I hope so, 'cause I don't much like losing some of the features that people have insisted be removed.

What do I want to see?

Well right now it is june 2012... so what i would like to see is this game being released!   please )

there are some anomolies and frustrations with gc2, But hopefully these can be ironed if if???  please no When the new game is released

I could make a huge lists of do's and Don'ts but the programmers would most likely put in the features and game modes etc, they think would best enhance the game and the gameplay

Just one point i'd like to make GC2 is a tbsg (turn based strategy game) And it's this conception and the mechanics and charecteristics of the game that make gc2 what it is and stand out from most of the crown.So no I do NOT want this to be made partly or otherwise into a real-time strategy game I already have SOASE for that!