I love all of these ideas.

They are fucking AMAZING!!!!

And just to throw it out there for further speculation..........

DESIGN YOUR OWN STARBASE FEATURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Take That Everyone!!!)

Let's try to get the number of replies on this post up to 3 000

If they brought classes into the mix, they would have to assign each class with specific strengths and weaknesses. Many other games have this concept, and I hope they add it in. For example, spearman get a defensive bonus against horseman. Same thing.

So Tiny hulled ships could have Scout class, Recon class, Survey class, Fighter class, Defender class, so on...

Small hulled ships could have Fighter class, Defender class, Corvette class, Skirmish class, Escort class...

Medium hulled ships could have Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Heavy Corvette, Space Tank....

Large hulled ships could have Destroyer, Battle Cruiser...

Huge hulled ships could have Battleship class, Dreadnought class...

But each class would serve a different funtion, and give the ship you make a strength and a weakness. So you could design your own ship with all weapons and no defense, and give it a defender class (e.g. so it gets 10% boost to defense), but that would not do you any good. An additional ship 'cost' would be assigned depending on the class chosen.

Examples of this could be as follows (example strengths and weaknesses shown):

No class - no strengths and no penalties.

Recon class - gets an extra 2 pc of sensor range (even over max range) and +1 speed. All weapons and defenses reduced 30%.

Survey class - allows the ship to automatically be able to detect anamolies even when they are out of sensor range, or in the fog (how it is now pretty much) and gains +1 speed. All weapons and defenses reduced 30%.

Fighter class - gets a 10% boost to offensive firepower when fighting ships Medium-hulled and larger. Receives an additional 10% boost to offense when in a fighter fleet of 5 or more. 10% defensive penalty against Corvette class.

Defender class - gets a 10% boost to defenses. Gets an additional 10% boost when protecting a planet or starbase. Receives 10% penalty in all when assaulting an enemy.

Corvette class - gets a 10% boost to defenses and offensives against Tiny and Small hulled vessels. Recieves 5% boost to defenses and offensives against Medium hulled vessels. Receives 10% offensive penalty against Large and Huge hulled vessels.

Escort class - gets a 10% boost to defenses and offensives when protecting a transport, colony ship, or constructor. Gets an additional 10% boost when in an escort fleet of 3 or more. Receives 10% penalty if assaulting an enemy.

Space Tank class - gets between a (1-15%) boost to offensives and (1-5%) boost to defenses when facing any ships of hull size Medium or Large. -1 sensor range and -1 speed.

Battleship class - 10% boost to offensives against Medium - Huge hulled ships. Offense and Defensive is 10% less effective against Tiny and Small hulled ships.

Maybe they should add a Suicide/Kamikazee class to the mix.

It would range from size tiny-small.

Boom, there goes the neighbourhood.

They should be superfast to, and have offensive bonuses against huge-gigantic sized ships.

Sortof like the Japanese Kamikazee fighters dive-bombing their tiny butts into an aircraft carrier.

See what I'm trying to get at here?......

And it would only be available to evil civilizations.

IIRC, in CG1, a turn would last a month.

Ohh how about player imported music... so say I am customizing a race now I can set up lots of different music for times of war, peace, trade, fleet combat, invasions, etc... Now that would be a cool idea.

Expanded Diplomacy.  I don't mean like Diplomacy 3.1.  I mean like Diplomacy XP (SP2).  No more "he loves me, he loves me not" relations.  Diplomacy isn't puppy love.  I'd like to see at least three scales: Like Me, Fear Me, Trust Me.  The first is affected by stuff like having the same or different Ethics, having multiple Trade routes, and lending assistance in war.  The second is affected by Military and Economic strength, allies, and geographical proximity.  The third is affected by Ethical alignment (not the same way as Like Me; after all, two Evil civs can like each other, but they definitely won't trust each other), previous Diplomatic actions, and following laws or previous agreements / breaking treaties / declaring war without warning.

Trading for non-military Techs would be affected primarily by Like Me.  Trading for military techs would be affected primarily by Fear Me.  Asking them to take Diplomatic actions (declare war, sue for peace, enact an embargo, buy/sell IP) would be affected primarily by Trust Me.

There should be two types of Diplomacy: open Diplomacy (other civs know about it), and closed door Diplomacy (other civs MIGHT find out about it with Espionage, and they MIGHT tell other civs in turn).  Closed Door Diplomacy affects Trust Me (and of course requires a certain amount of Trust Me from your partner).  Also, Espionage determines if you find out about closed door Diplomacy between AI's.  If you find out that A asked B to declare war on C, and you go tell C, your Trust Me score with C determines how much C's relationship with A is affected.  Your Like Me score with A determines how much your Trust Me score with A tanks.  For example.

UP laws should be breakable, but with serious diplomatic repercussions.  Trade embargoes, loss of a UP vote in one session, and other UP laws that are passed that only affect the offender.

Treading in other civ's Area of Influence should not be done lightly.  If the AI notices, they should react appropriately - depending on whether they like/trust/fear you, whether your flagship passed through the outskirts of their civ or you parked several fleets next to a planet, etc...  Building an Influence Starbase in their AoI should be a serious no-no.

Shooting at each other once or twice should not result in immediate war.  For ex: Taking out one of their starbases in your own AoI should make them mad, but not be a call to arms.

In addition to the regularly scheduled UP session, each civ should be allowed to propose UP sessions once every six months (max. twice a year, and a total of two impromptu UP sessions a year).  Requires a vote by all UP members, but not controlled by Influence - each civ gets one vote.  In addition, the proposer gets to pick a would-be law from a short list.  Should be able to buy / trade for a civ's vote on whether or not to convene (possibly even their yea/nay vote on the actual law, but for a Very Steep Price).  Trust Me comes into play, here.  If another civ doesn't Trust you, for example, it might be unwilling to convene the UP at your request, even if it likes the proposed law.  Also, the more recent the last UP session, the less likely the other civs will want to do it again.  And if a UP proposal fails in session, you should't be allowed to propose it again - but another civ can, later.  So it's a balance between waiting for enough time to elapse since the last UP session, but getting it in before another civ proposes one, and picking the right time to get your law passed.

AI civs should be able to do all these things, too, of course.

AI's in wars might ask you to intervene and attack their enemy, or they might ask you to intervene and broker a peace if your Diplomacy is higher than theirs or your Relations (Like, Trust) to both sides are high.  You could also ask another civ to intervene and broker a peace for you!  When brokering a peace, you temporarily see the assets of the AI as your own (so you put the deal together), but your relations to that AI will be affected by how much they like the deal.  When having another AI broker peace for you, you still get to put the deal together, but you use the broker's Diplomacy scores and relations.  But remember you had to give something to the broker, too, to get them to do this in the first place.

Lots more ideas in the same vein, but you see where I'm going with this when I say Expanded Diplomacy.  Basically, I want to see a ton more options in Diplomacy, but I want everything you do (inside and outside Diplomacy) to affect what you can and can't accomplish with Diplomacy.  I want it to be REALLY HARD to form alliances, start wars between AI's, sue for peace, etc...  But in exchange give a ton more options for taking smaller actions to manipulate the other civs in more subtle ways.

One word: link

EDIT: Oh yes, also this one: Link

MINES: Have a "mine module" that allows ships to lay a minefield in a given square (possibly have the module be able to do this only a limited amount of times before having to return to a friendly planet to resupply). That square would then have a high chance of damaging any ship that entered it (although some ships could slip through). Ships with weapons could also take a few turns to clear the field.

Or, better yet, have the speed be controllable by the player, but higher speeds have a much greater liklihood of taking damage, and the damage would be more severe.

>Also, have sensors decrese the chance of damage for the ship (or even fleet)  that has them (each pc. of sensor range = -10% chance of damage or something like that).

>Maybe even have a "Minesweeper" module that makes you immune to the field, and a "cluster bomb" that lets you clear the field in one turn.

>Lastly, have the option of adding more mines to the field using more points from your mine-layer ship and more turns. More mines = greater chance of getting hit, more damage if hit, and each turn of the enemy clearing the field only removes X number of mines. Of course, when a sip hits the field & takes damage, you would lose some mines then too.

Of course to make sure a player does not go crazy with minefields, filling sector upon sector of space with trillions of them, a Minelayer would need to take, say 5-10 turns to lay a basic minefield in it's given location. This would allow players to protect certain areas such as highly important planetary systems, or to help defend mining resources. More advanced techs such as Enhanced Minelaying XI, would allow to minelayer to add more mines to a given area, which would make it more difficult for enemies to clear.

I would love to see a ship editor that allows you to create more realistic looking ships with a much greater degree of freedom in designs. The cartoony feel of the gal civ 2 ships was the only thing that annoyed me... Would be nice to be able to create any type of ship of any size and just have a cost on the size and the Tech, Systems, Armor, Ect. and not have to use pre made parts and hulls. This could be used for everything in the game.. Space stations, Mega Battle Dreadnaughts, Marines, Buildings, Death Stars, Space Mines, Planet Shelds /  guns, Star fighters, bording partys, basicly anything you can think of!

Have an editor that allows the basic components to be modified by power and range, the greater the larger and more costly, and it could be modified by better tech or become obsolete with new tech. Just have tech as a whole so that it can’t be maxed out, just taking more time and cost the further you advance.

Why not add a Downloader like Spore where everyone can share their stuff they made and just let everyone create their own models for things?

It was nice to Be able to semi make your own ships but I dont like being stuck with thoes base crappy hull models. One of the things I most loved was to have lots and lots of classes of ships, like 20 - 50 classes of cap ships made for a great game! But was kind of lame because they all looked the same with a hull and crap plasterd all over them.