We're nearing the end of the pre-release development of Galactic Civilizations III. While dev will continue on this game for at least the next 7 years (hence, the choice to require 64-bit, etc.). I want to make sure you guys are happy with the 1.0 launch!
To that end, let me know what your bugaboos are. That is, things in the game that you would like to see fixed before release.
Below is MY list of bubgaboos I've already started working on:
What are some of yours?
7. Filters for the various lists. Especially the planet list, colonized, not colonized, type, etc. And the ability to sort them by name, quality, etc.
Lighting definitely.
Resource system feels kind of weird right now. Its strange that you can trade a resource for a one-off improvement. Maybe make them more like civ5 resources - that is trading is an ongoing act, not a one-off thing.
It would be even cooler if you could somehow unify the trading and resource system. Ie, I want to trade a durantium for a hyperstone. Would be kind of cool if I literally had to make a trade ship, send it from one world to the other. Maybe gives money to both players, as well as swapping the resource.
The lighting/bloom in the ship designer is currently too intense. Some parts actively glow and drown out the features behind them (Altarian parts in particular).
8. Having a list of all non-owned planets that I am aware of, preferably sortable by class, type, owner. This was a godsend in GC II and I miss it terribly in GC III. This might not be implementable by launch, however. The sooner, the better on this one, though.
9. Being able to restrict the shipyard ship list/ship designer list to only show ships of a certain hull size via user choice. I get that the ship list is going to grow and grow and grow as players design more and more ships. But anything that will help cut down on the "clutter" will be helpful. Especially if it is a filter that actually hides things instead of just sorting them.
10. Having sector lines/major grid lines ala GC II. On maps larger than Gigantic having SOMETHING that chops up the map into easy digest chunks becomes more and more important as the game goes on. I understand that the major grid lines might look a little funny when they are intersecting at various points, but that's something I could easily live with. Especially if it was user toggable.
11. The empire size penalty could use tweaking on maps with lots of habitable planets, as it's almost impossible to have Approval above 0% once one gets over a certain number of planets.
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All of the above being said, only the last one is really critical for launch, IMO.
I just played a game yesterday where I was able to offer culture research and trade treaties over and over again to the same AI (as in 50x in one turn) I was able to get all techs, starbases, and resources from everyone I was not at war with. I probably could have gotten their ships but I got really tired of it,,, anycase that might be a bug worth fixing
12. (Unless I'm missing something) Not being able to set the factions I am playing against to random. I really enjoy not knowing who I will face in a game such as Gal Civ, so this is a big deal for me. My ideal fix would be to be able to set some or all slots to random in campaign setup, so I could mix and match factions.
e.g. I'm playing Terrans and want to have the Drengin and three other random factions in my galaxy.
If that's not possible, then maybe a random opponents tick box in game settings?
Since you ask:
I keep trying to zoom out one more level on the map. It's like bouncing into a wall over and over. I'm probably coing to keep doing that as long as the map doesn't fit one screen. Perhaps there could be a transition to mini-map type display?
Minor one, when I double click on a Colonial Hospital, it changes to the terraforming display. Please don't do that. It hursts my eyes.
I just had yet another family discussion on this one, free camera mode needs to be joystick-aware. My twitch finger kids drool at flying a camera through a battle of our collaborative ships. I'd be lousy at it, but they're right. It would be awesome.
A display mode in the Ship Designer that shows weapons fire, shields being hit, even the ship exploding. These are all considerations that affect designs. Consider making this a place to mock up battles between ships, or better yet, between fleets.
More types and varied explosions in the battle viewer, please. I'm going to be watching them literally thousands of times. Don't let the death of my enemies become boring. Spiky explosions, blob explosions, explosions with subtle color fringes from exotic chemicals. It's gratuitous violence and you can never have too much of it.
Since I so fanatically watch all the battle scenes, why do I have to re watch them on map after each battle? If I have watched the battle, can we just make the enemy ship disappear and be done with it?
Thanks for asking.
I'd like to be able to use navigation keys in Free-cam in the Battle Viewer. Dragging using the mouse is either extremely slow, or zooms off into the distance.
More than 18 or so map colors to stand for 100 races, gets mighty confusing when 4 races are yellow and you are at war with one of them.
okay here is the wishlist of things that I would still really like in no real particular order (excuse the grammar and spelling: I am not going to have time to edit this)
When ships are fleeted I would like to see the fleets in the ship list
Sorry to put only links here, I am too lazy at the moment. And perhaps you have already read some of them, so, just take a look at them, or ignore them, at your wish, and see what is possible for launch.https://forums.galciv3.com/463763https://forums.galciv3.com/463705https://forums.galciv3.com/463577https://forums.galciv3.com/463218https://forums.galciv3.com/462885https://forums.galciv3.com/462394https://forums.galciv3.com/462140https://forums.galciv3.com/463875/get;3540453There are more, but I stop there.
Also - Please let us change hull type of a ship thats already been designed! So many times I start out building a medium hull ship and end up building something that looks more like a huge hull, and visa versa.
AI settling planets smack dap in the middle of my territory = free planets for me through culture flip.
Some additional ways to get ideology other than colonization.
Way too many default ship templates every time I get a new tech.
Making sure if the AI declares war of me early on they have fleets to back it up. I will get war declaration early in the game, and simply not care even against godlike AIs...as they don't yet have fleets that can kill my minimum starbases.
A balance pass on ship hulls. Personally tiny doesn't seem to have any real advantage vs small hulls right now to me.
Mouse Scroll on the map...please!!!
Hotkeys need to be in the final game or playing on any sizeable map is going to be very painful. I'm also really worried about the quality of the interface. Text doesn't fit in the boxes provided, the chat window doesn't fit, I'm getting bugs where I have a the same improvement listed multiple times. I'm a little bit concerned about whether some of the sloppy aspects of this game are still going to be here on release.
A bit less important but: the icons that are re-used from GCII on the planet screen but don't mean the same thing are disruptive. It's like changing the meaning of known symbols. Just make new ones!
I would recommend reading this thread https://forums.galciv3.com/463924. It's quite a long read and I can understand if you won't be able to make all the changes (if you think any need to be made) before release you would like that result from reading this thread, but I believe the discussion in it is pretty important. It has to do with the economy system and economy specialization. Thank you.
"Bad" good guys, "bad" bad guys, "bad" neutrals... where's the good guys?The whole universe is populated by jerks?Pet peeve.Where's the "good" guys.
1) Tools to eliminate late game bogging down of constant build orders ( constructor spam)
2) communications with the AI particularly player talking to the AI often we will get messages about our ships being in the AI's territory or the AI asking us to remove starbases but we have no way to do the same.
There needs to be a balance pass over the default ship designs. If you look at the base design of each type of ship you will find ships especially in the Medium size hulls doe not have engines by default. So even with the early movement bonus techs the ships can not keep up even with fighters let alone troop transports.
I guess I'm weird, but I actually enjoy it when the Minor races are a little more active in the game. In GalCiv2, I would ally-up with all of the non-evil minor races. I'd blocade their worlds with constructors to keep enemies from attacking them until I managed to ally up with them. I'd give them ships to use them as pawns in a proxy war. It kind of annoyed me when most of the minor race AIs were utterly incapable of utilizing the resources I give them in order to fight back against their oppressors. Once I had a full treaty with the minor races, I'd basically use them to declare war on the aggressive races by them declaring war on the minor races. It gives me all my smug moral superiority to have acted in the defense of an ally. I usually don't do military alliances with any of the major races, instead wiping them out through defensive wars and influence flipping. I guess my gameplay style in these games is a bit passive-aggressive...
So I guess my biggest bugaboo is completely incompetent AIs for some players in the game that I'm trying to protect. It's OK that they don't try to aggressively expand and keep to their own planet, but when they can't even fight back against the other AIs, it's a major failure to me and ruins the game.
I'd like to have planets that I'm sending colony ships to, to have some indicator on them once I send a ship to it, like GalCiv II does. I'm always sending multiple ships to the same planet (Insane map is easy for this to happen to).
As mentioned by others, I'd like to see tabs just for a list on Colony ships, Scouts, Fleets, etc. Starbases should only be listed in their own tab, not even in the ALL tab..
I'd like to see ships in a fleet to be hidden by default on the ship list, only show the fleet name. We can hover over the fleet name to see what ships are in it. Just trying to keep the ship list less cluttered, and more user friendly.
Hot Keys!
I also want to be able to import a ship from one game to another without having to start over.
I like minors being more active, if there could be an in between what they were in Galactic Civilization II and III. Also right now they are just an easy target, give a reason to keep them alive, like give x bonus if you're allied with them. That and they are useless if you get the ideology trait to flip all planets in your ZOC as they just flip to you they shouldn't flip as they aren't influenced...
[quote who="Edladner" reply="8" id="3540984"]
Yes, we need color combinations or if 5 red races on the map then it should have the colors vary a little so they don't all look the same.
and then my additional points...
Overall, I think you and your company make great games and I have no reason to think that the major issues will be dealt with prior to release
Mentioned in my support thread... but...
It bothers me that it is a total pain to get custom ship designs to play nicely with mods... or actually just that mods can't read custom ship designs in any mod folder... which kinda makes no sense. :/
one last one then I swear I will stop,
the ability to get your star into a game. I named mine after my kids nicknames and if I can get it in the game when I show it off to them (they are 5 and 7) it would be really fun!
okay thats it for me
My one other complaint would be the lack of Linux support, but I don't expect that to change any time soon. It's depressing though. GC3 is the last game I bought before I went over to linux completely, and the only reason that I have to ever reboot to Windows. Because I haven't booted to Windows in 6 months, I haven't been able to play GC3 beta at all, last time I played was in Alpha. I think I will reboot it once the 1.0 release is out though, but not sure how long I'll stay there.
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