I love how one can customize one's own ships in Galactic Civilizations II. However, I find ground battles to be quite boring. I would like to be able to customize my ground troops and vehicles. I would also like to actually watch them fight. How about everybody else? What would you like to see?
Music in games can be become boring quickly, and this spoils the fun. My biggest wish would be runtime synthesized rather than pre-rendered music. I.e. like Age of Wonders. In practise this gives a better listering experience and makes it easier make music more varying (or even dynamically adapt it to game events).
1. Completely redo the economic system. The name "colony" sort of implies some independence, and the whole system of sliders and insta-building really trashes that illusion.
2. Streamline the technology tree. If you're going to have seventeen levels of the same thing, just make it one box and update the version numbers.
3. I think it would be cool to separate technology into two separate parts: Research and Development. The "Research" is basic research into various fields, like physics, chemistry, biology, etc. And it's pretty unpredictable with a variable progression path - so you can strive in a certain direction, but you never know what breakthrough you'll get next, or when it will come. "Development" is more straightforward - prototyping new propulsion systems, weapons, buildings, etc. But which options open up will depend on whether you've researched the proper element. This would make each game develop differently. There should always be surprises on the road to the future.
4. Put some more work into the icons. Sure, the spaceship graphics are cute as all heck, but I'm more interested in the GAME part of the game. Make more types of icons so you can tell what's going on when zoomed out. Add arrows to indicate direction and speed.
5. This may sound weird, but I wish there were FEWER options when you start a game. It's really tough to discuss strategies when everyone is really playing under a completely different set of parameters.
Something I'd like to see are more options for negotiating with other races. For example, an alien race can tell me to remove a certain influence starbase from their region, or face war... I should be able to send the same message to them. And really, it wouldn't be too hard to implement... we can already engage in trade and extortion, and this wouldn't need to be much different in terms of the mechanics.
I also think the various techs in the game should be more alien, from race to race. Turning off tech trading is currently an option, but that's too limiting... but if you have tech trading enabled, then nearly everything translates from race to race, which also seems ridiculous.
everything. this game is great, but there's so much more to get in. space is a big place full of interesting stuff
personally, i'd like to make the game a little smaller in scale - fewer planets but more interesting and more to do with them. when you think of all the different kinds of stuff there could be out there - habitable moons, binary star systems, binary planets, rogue planets, volcanic planets, planets in solar syncronous orbits - and all the cool scenarios sci fi writers have come up with (cloud city, kashykk, etc) it seems a bit sad to whittle it all down to one number for planet quality and a randomly generated image.
i'd like GC3 to have more atmosphere and put some of the wonder back into space exploration. not just the planets, but i'd like there to be more stuff going on in space (if anyone remembers alpha centauri, i'm thinking of the geological features you could find) for example, a region of the galaxy that was highly radioactive due to the collapse of a neutron star, or a huge solar system sized asteroid belt, aliens that swim through space and attack your ship, or stasrs exploding mid game.
i would like less ridiculous stuff like gems-floating-in-space as resources and aliens that look like squirrels. i would like more atmosphere, so that when my civilization is beset on all sides it means more to me.
I'd like to see alot of things. Better beta testing please! TA has several scenario modes which cannot be played because it causes the game to crash on start up. How could they possibly have missed that?
I want balanced races. The Yor are terrible at everything. They start with morale at like 65%. How do I build an economy when I need to dedicate so many tiles to morale? (Not negotiable)
I retract my previous statements about the Yor. Now that I've figured out how to use them, they are literally killing machines. Balancing is not an issue, turns out I'm just STOOPID!
Perhaps production could be affected by morale like in Outpost 2? A happy worker is a productive worker.
I want to be able to adjust tax rates on a per colony basis like in Deadlock.
I'm a big CIV fan, so I'd like an in-game encyclopedia which explains game concepts. I just found out like 10 minutes ago that having a moon gives a planetary production bonus. That was nowhere in the manual.
I want vassal empires, like in Civ4. It would be nice to convice another civ to surrender to me as a vassal instead of having him give half his planets to someone else who isn't even involved in the conflict. (Not too important)
I want a way to convince my two best trading partners not to destroy each other. I can bribe them to stop fighting, but they will just go to war again on the next turn. Then the winner will have such a high power rating he can gobble up everyone else. Vassal system would fix that, as I could offer the weaker civ protection in exchange for subservience.
I want a better espionage system.
Instead of resources being in the middle of interstellar space, put them on planets. We could build mining outposts instead of mining starbases.
I'd like more diverse government options. (Like in CIV)
Put some more effort into the planet manager interface.
Carrier ships?
That's all I can think of for now.
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I have some more ideas.
I want to be able to minimize the game without it crashing. (If you guys could fix that in the current game that would also be very nice... While you're at it, can you fix all the other bugs? I heard the secret police center is still bugged and stellar cartography doesn't show habitable planets different from dead ones like the teaser says.)
I would very much like to be able to set up my troops during a ground invasion of a planet, sorta like in HoMM, but with a spherical battlefield. There should also be an auto combat option so I don't have to do all that fiddling with my troops every time.
I wholely endorse the idea of dynamic self generating music.
Could there be space monsters? Not like dread lords, more like the barbarians in civ. EDIT: They don't have to be aggressive, just some neat little space critters. Some could be violent, but others could just float around. Maybe give us ethical quandries like "Kill them for space leather" or "Open a space zoo".
Make some jovian moons habitable. The large magnetic fields of gas giants protects the moons from solar wind so they don't need to be as large as Earth to keep an atmosphere. (Ewok event?)
It would be very cool if planets and starbases orbited their host stars instead of just sitting there.
EDIT:
Last one probably, I'd like it if survey ships could see the bonus tiles on a planet before I colonize it. That would help me plan out where to put Oxford and Wall Street.
Wow, most of those are great ideas. I especially liked the one about managing taxes on a planet by planet basis.
I would love to see Mac support. I switched 2 using Macs 2 years ago and love them. I generally game on my xbox360 so the lack of Mac games don't usually bother me, but I would love to see Gal Civ 2 or the next one on the Mac. I know I could boot into windows, but the point of switching to Mac was to not have to deal with windows, so I would rather not.
Damage Degradation: a medium hull ship starting a battle with 20 hp but ending the battle with 4 hp has the same amount of guns and speed as at the start of the battle. The ship should be limping away from battle, possibly with an escort as they can't effectively protect themselves anymore due to battle damage taking out some of its weapons
Random Unknown Opponent Personalities: The Drengin are the Drengin are the Drengin. Every time I play. How about not knowing a races personality until you spend some time dealing with them or another race that tells you about them. They wouldn't lie to you, would they?
Negotiation before UNP Votes: When there is a vote which will benefit one race (placement of a UNP facility, etc.), it would be nice to be able to negotiate to find out how others are going to vote and either convince them to vote a certain way or let them buy your vote to make it go their way.
Here it is:
Each race can move to sponsor a resolution. They are can either by written using an in-game editor (it would be pretty basic: just a few check boxes for things like nutral ground and number sliders for things like war tax and starbase module limits) or chosen from a set of them that the game makes depending on situations.
Then, you get to hail each of the races and try to get them to sign the resolutions (you can trade stuff: both the regular diplo screen stuff AND changes to the resolution [those only if you have no races on board] to get them to accept). If you can get X number of races (I'm thinking 50%) onboard, it goes to a vote.
In the vote, the races vote with each race recieving votes based on population. The current influence trading will be scrapped in place of trading the actual IPs that make planets culture-flip. If a resolution gets 50% of the vote, it passes. Each resolution gets voted on individually.
I am invisioning this process actually taking multiple turns. You create resolutions and submit them on turn 1, then three or four turns pass, then you vote. In that time, you get two other diplo items to trade with other races: Vote "Yes" on [resolution that you select from a drop-down menu], and Vote "No" on [resolution that you select from a drop-down menu]. Obviously, if you get a race to agree to either of these, they will vote in that way. If you agree to one, you get to see how the others vote, but you cannot choose which way you vote (becuse it has been predeternmined).
Maybe have the option (both for you, and the AI) to vote against your promise, but take a hefty diplo penalty with all races, and a bigger one with the one you cheated. This also decreases the in-game value of your promise a fair degree.
The only had thing I forsee in this proposal is getting the AI to value resolutions and decide if it likes them or not, and how much. But I'm sure that if it can be done, Brad can do it.
agh, wrong topic.
I like the idea posted above about having a pure research tree and a development tree. Kinda different, and cool. SO not only would the experience change depending on the race you choose, but also each individual game would be different as the tech options would have a randomness factor. Kinda like Sword of the Stars, but I'd like to see even more randomness than they have. I have to keep thinking of how it was done in Master of Orion 2. I enjoyed that model, though mutual exclusion really bothers some players as it doesn't really make much sense....
The tech trees should just stop. When you get to the end, and don't have tech victory turned on, you should be able to continue to research improvements in a specific thread. These improvements can be slight bumps in miniaturation, damage/armor, etc. Just having it stop is kinda annoying, least to me.
I'd like to see the ability to make refinements to techs. Again, I'm looking at Master of Orion 2. I liked that instead of having to move from lasers to some other type of beam, you could spend research making your lasers better. Gattling lasers, long range focused lasers, point defense lasers, etc. So you could improve what you have rather than having to jump to a new type of tech. I liked that.
Most of all, I'd like combat to be revamped. Allow us to target specific ships and ship systems. Let us give the fleets tactical orders. DOn't make us micromanage all the ships. I like that GalCiv2 combat has the feel of a fleet admiral watching the battle on a view screen. Let the individual ship captains control their ships and attempt to follow orders to the best of their ability. Let the captains gain experience too. Ships could start with stock standard, level 0 captains. Then as they gain experience they could add bonuses to their ships. Eventually, if they survive and continue to gain experience, they could grant bonuses to the fleet they are a part of. That could be a LOT of fun.
Planetary invasion.... The GalCiv 2 model was never finished. In fact, to be honest, I liked the original over what was eventually implemented. I'd like to see a map overview that shows the planet in sectors. Then we could watch the progression of our invasion on the map. Let us order our troops to focus on specific sector and make the sectors mean something. For instance there could be a spaceport in one sector and a power generator in another. Add some ground based techs like shields and fortifications with a list of options. Make it interesting and interactive. On the same screen I'd like to see some graphical representation of the troops fighting. I want to see the troops on both sides using whatever tech they currently employ. So that's lots of pretty colored light shows and various types of combat vehicles. Given that we have so many different races and so many different types of tech that could make for a lot of work, but it would be worth it. Make us look forward to watching ground combat. Let us interact with what's going on a bit, and make it visually appealing. Let us watch the results of picking a strategy type like orbital bombardment. Above all, make it interesting and most of all....don't make it repetitive.
Other than these, I guess all I'd like to see are more techs, more random events, and maybe a new race or too??? The story line is already awesome...so just give us more of the same as far as that goes.
Edit: Oh, and Kopema said he'd like fewer starting options. I'm on the other end of the fence. I'd like more, but these options could be moved so there are just a few on the main page and an Advanced screen could offer those like me all the options we want. Just please, put in mouse over tooltips that explain what the options do.
I would like to see, Starbases that could be military fortreses like death stars.With wepons and sheilds and be able to destroy planets instead of stars,you know a ship like starbase.with moduals for everything.
Bigger maps, longer game, more techs, more races.Finetuning and expansion of the Council, diplomacy and negociations.
To the people that want detailed, tactical combat, just...no. This is not that kind of game. Noone complains that you can't target a barbarians arm or head in the Civ games. As the leader of a huge civilization, you shouldn't have to deal with that, that's for your ships captains.
That said, I have an unrelated idea. I would like to be able to set waypoints for a ship. For instance, click on a scout, hold 'W' and right click a series of points that the scout would fly to in order. I wouldn't mind seeing four or so new races with all new tech trees and abilities. Also a larger map than 'immense'. Also, get rid of the robot screen that comes up when a tech is researched. Just a small window showing what you completed, and all the benefits ala Civ would be fine. Also. stop letting the AI's know where galactic resources are at the start of the game. And don't deny that they do...I KNOW that they do, after much observation.
There's a really easy solution to this that Master of Orion 2 figured out 14 years ago: a checkbox in the game options that lets you choose whether you want tactical combat or not.Clearly it can't be that hard or else that game wouldn't have fit on a fraction of a CD...
I, for one, do want tactical combat in some situations and want to leave it up to the AI in others.
The problem with tactical combat isn't implementation. As you say, MoO2 has it, SEIV and SEV have it, and even Star Wars Rebellion (technically) has it. The problem is with the AI. Everybody is aware of the problems that AIs have, and those sorts of problems are greatly magnified in tactical combat.
As for me, I'll just try to list ones that haven't already been said:
1) More realistic population. Even if the exact same numbers are used for growth and taxes and whatnot, come up with some sort of explanation that doesn't involve an empire's population growing by two orders of magnitude in just half a decade of breeding. I have never met anybody whose suspension of disbelief is harder to break than mine, but the population model in GC2 pulls it off.
A possible way off the top of my head: "This 'hyperspace' stuff lets us build some badass new infrastructure that expands faster the more of it there is, pumps out tax money, and doesn't need many people to run it. When it gets up and running, a few thousand colonists could provide as much tax money as 16 billion pre-hyperspace taxpayers. Of course, that income would be reduced when colonists or soldiers take some of that infrastructure with them when they leave." Rename a couple bonuses and buildings, and there ya go: exact same mechanic, but at least it's remotely believable. I'm sure that somebody can come up with something better, but it's a start.
2) A better way of counting military strength. I know it's hard to come up with a way to account for the nigh-infinite number of factors that go into a ship's effectiveness, but it's just plain wrong for the AI to fear a bunch of 1-attack, 100bc cargo hulls under a starbase more than it does a fleet of 2000bc dreadnoughts packing Doom Rays. Simply totaling up the cost of the ships, with combat ships getting a multiplier for weapon, defense, and hp bonuses, would be more accurate than what we have now.
3) Bonuses should say what they actually give. If something gives my ships +1 speed, then it should say +1 speed, not "+10% speed ability"
4) Better alignment balancing on the random events. Right now, even if you plan to go Good when you get Xeno Ethics, it's still usually best to take the Evil option when you get a colonization event.
I may think of more later
Mac OS X support!
there's a lot of interesting technologies for programmers in the new snow leopard, including easy multicore support and OpenCL. and i would love to be able to play it as a native app instead of dual booting (or not playing at all...)
oh please please please?
Make building effects based on ethics. What do I mean?
Say you are the Yor and you have a manufactoring center. Since the Yor by nature are evil, they get bigger bonuses from this if they stay that path.
Pure evil might give 15 industrial points and +1 weapons.
Neutral might give 12 industrial points and +2 research.
Good might give 10 industrial points and +5 moral.
So essentially there are drawbacks and advantages to taking sides depending on the race you are playing.
Actually, implementation of a real-time control system into tactical combat would take an awful lot of work.
Personally though I don't need that. I would settle for a system that let "tactical" skill have an effect on the damage distribution system. This should be pretty easy to implement, and wouldn't require any individual ship AI.
As the system is now, The ships can target any opponent they want, so they always target the ship with the highest attack/defense ratio, and then go to the next in line. And the only effect ship "experience" and civilization tactical skills have is add hitpoints. What that means is that the ship with the most experience drops to the bottom of the enemy's attack que - so all it does is keep itself alive, at the expense of its fleetmates. That's never a good strategy for group survival, and in the long term, it's even a bad strategy for individual survival.
I suggest the following:
1) Go ahead and let ship's experience add to its hitpoints; that's fine, but also
2) Add up each fleet's ship experience levels, along with any civilization tactical bonuses. Then, during each attack phase, 'roll' a random value and add it to the attacker's tactical bonus, minus the defender's tactical bonus.
3) If the adjusted attack success roll is above a certain level, then all attacks would do the same as now and focus on the 'best' target - i.e., the enemy ship with the highest attack/defense ratio. But, at a slightly lower result, one attacking ship would randomly attack a different ship in the enemy fleet. As the number dropped, more and more ships whould have to fire at random targets. Then, if the attack value dropped even lower, one or more attackers would automatically fire at the WORST target (lowest attack/defense ratio) in the enemy fleet.
This system would reflect the ability to position ships in the most effective manner to preserve the vulnerable members of your own fleet, and at the same time coordinate targets optimally against the best targets among the enemy fleet. If you're really good, you'll focus all your shots perfectly, while dancing around and suckering your opponent into attacking the worst possible targets.
Of course if you're sending corvettes against dreadnaughts, you'll still get wiped out no matter how good you are. On the other hand, a comparably equipped but more skilled fleet will defeat the enemy in detail, gradually reducing their firepower while maintaining its own.
i would agree to this one.
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