I'm wondering why is it a drop-down menu with ~6 options? I'd think people would prefer a slider which determined the number of stars, with the 'rare' and 'abundant' number in use now just determining the minimum and maximum for each galaxy size. Things like planet habitability makes sense to have a few discrete probabilities, but star count not so much.

I really like the idea of what another poster posted in this thread about carriers. Currently carriers don't feel like "carriers" to me as they only deploy 3 (well now 2) fighters. I'd love it if they deployed 10+ fighters that were just much, much weaker. It would give kinetic weapons a thing to be good at shooting, it would satiate my urge to deploy massive waves of fighters from a spaceship, and I think it would help give some specialization to the different carrier modules. What I mean by specialization is that currently the carrier modules don't feel very different from each other. I think the assault module and high capacity assault module should deploy around 10 to 15 fighters but then the drone modules (interceptors/guardians) would deploy anywhere from 20 to 30 much much weaker drone fighters. I believe an ingame description of the techs for drone modules or something talks about there being no risk of loss of life when deploying the drones, I think emphasizing on that would be very cool. 

However talking about fighters brings me to one other question I have, is there any plans to make the differences in hull sizes bigger? Currently I feel like my tiny, small, and medium ships don't have much difference between them scale wise. I also found the large and huge ships kind of underwhelming in terms of there size in relation to each other. Is there potentially a way to mod this myself?

Edit: Also is there anyway to edit what the fighters that get deployed by carrier modules look like? Like can I create a design in the ship designer for them?

I'm OK with the nerf down of the adjacency bonuses (it makes more sense now, as the Man/Research Capitals are now very superior, whereas they were only marginally superior before).  I'm also OK with the new Refinery settings, as (my take) was that you only put this on a planet when you could count on at LEAST 3 adjacent factories, not merely as often as you could get Durantium.   The Data Archive, however, needs a bit of a buff, because it's substantially weaker than a Refinery (in relation).  It's only a tiny bit more useful than a Research Lab (in fact, worse, because you can't upgrade it), and costs Thulium, which is far more scarce than Durantium.

My suggestion is to NOT give the Data Archive a bonus to the base research, but to up the research % bonus it gives from 25 to 100.  That still makes it quite inferior to the Research Capital, but worth it now.  As of 1.02, it's pretty much worthless anymore.

Nice patch!  There are few items that I was hoping might get some attention in the future, if you don't mind receiving a bit of feedback!

1 )  Production Related

A )  Stored production tooltip took me 34 hours of playtime to *notice*.  It is very obscure, but very important information.  Could this be brought out of a tooltip and put in the planet UI?  Also note that this tooltip is inaccessible if you have a full queue of tiles or ships.

B )  Turns to complete a project doesn't account for stored production

C )  Buying out a planet tile doesn't store production for next turn even though the production was already paid for with credits

D )  Buying out a ship doesn't have its cost reduced by currently invested production, though planet tiles do

E )  Could the "Total Production" value of a planet be more transparent as a mechanic/value?  Can we see the raw value listed as a summation of its parts, and then a list of the multipliers and then the resultant "Total Production" as a tooltip somewhere?  I know how to do the math to figure it out but it sure took a lot of study to do so.

F )  Tooltips for the total cost a planet tile do not correctly factor in discounts.  For example, as the Thalans if you rush hive specialization to reduce all tile costs by 20%, they will still show '30', or whatever the normal total cost is.  The only way to confirm that the discount is actually working is to math out the turns remaining vs production, or to look at the buyout cost and confirm that it costs less to buy out.

2 )  Interface Related

A )  Please allow for the escape key to close the shipyard screens, it works on planets but not shipyards

B )  Please allow a shortcut to cycle between planets, the arrow keys would be great for this

C )  If the production wheel could 'snap to' pure research, pure wealth, or pure production when clicking on the icon itself (instead of inside the wheel) it would be a lot easier to specialize a planet.

D )  Please show total approval on a planet as a value, not just the approval %.  Preferably show both values.  Often times when looking at a planet I check how much food it has, how much pop is has (and therefore I know how much room it has to grow) and then I have to hover over the approval value to access the approval total in the tooltip.  Tooltips should show more information about something, like how the value was calculated, or why it is what it is.  They shouldn't *hide* information you want to know all the time.  (see previous section about the stored production tooltip as another example)

E )  When deleting a ship design from the custom ships tab of the ship designer, please stay on the custom ship tab, don't go back to the 'all ships tab'.  Sometimes I want to play with *no ships but those I design my own*.  But the game constantly forces me to look at a *massive* list of ships that I don't care about.

F )  Add an option to not save a ship design permanently, sometimes you only want to build one and only in this one game

G )  Add an option to only store ships in the current save file, not the global ship database.  I have no problem with the AI taking my ship designs, but I don't want to have tons of ships with similiar names pop up (all with slightly different configurations) simply because I've played the same race a few times.

H )  Custom ships don't properly increment their name when you "Use design" on a current model.  Also, you cannot use the 'upgrade to newest version of this design" button on custom ships.  

I )  It would be really fantastic if we could apply filters to the ship designer or shipyard screens.  For example, hide ships of a certain size, or hide ships that have civilian modules.  Or alternatively, allow us to create our own 'tabs' at the top, and assign a ship to a tab when designing it (or even after its designed).  So I could organize my 'support ships', and my 'defensive ships', and my 'offensive ships'.  

3 )  Settings Related

A )  Please allow an option to permit the application to play sound while not 'focused'

B )  Please add information (preferably in tooltips) about what the various settings do.  For example, when changing the game research rate, tell the user *there* what each setting does.  I figured it out by loading the game up 5 times and comparing, but why should I have to do that?  Just tell me in the game creation screen please.  Also why is research +25% on normal but production is +0%?

C )  Please add a global settings option to disable 'auto-upgrade improvements' by default.  Having to turn it off manually on every planet is a bit tedious.

Thanks again for reading these suggestions/feedback.  I want to express how much I have enjoyed playing this game, and how I excited I am for the future of the game as it continues being developed.  This is truly the best sequel to GalCiv2 we could have hoped for (as a framework), it just needs some adjustments to bring it in line with the interface expectations I have for a 2015 game  Thanks for your hard work and I hope some of this can help you!

That is odd. I had just moved them to +3.

Hey Frogboy, I know I made a post about this already, tho with no reply. But please look into adding a slider in options that scales map icons.. I get dizzy and headachy squinting at my screen >.<
https://forums.galciv3.com/466183/page/1/

Go to hell. I've been lurking these forums for a bit and don't have the game yet. I'm keeping track of the posts and will likely purchase it come 1.1 patch. I've been reading Frogboys posts since Galciv 2 and agree with his sentiments. He's a god damn person as well and if it disgusts you to see devs act like real people rather than groveling customer is always right automotons you can shove your mouse where the sun doesn't shine. In fact, I've decided to purchase it now just to spite panses like you. 

He's already retaliated on the steam review: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197994213532/recommended/226860/ 

thanks for your support guys. I know it can be a little unsettling seeing the company founder hanging around on the forums.  I did overreact I'm sure. the Elemental thing is still a very sore issue around here. 

Well put.

As for Suasponte, if he wants to get a game that deserves a neg review looks like- give him Mortal Kombat X on Steam (now that's a game where I want a refund and I'd happily never go back!)

That said, the point about balance being a major issue right now is accurate- but that's something which is solvable with time, and it's common with 4X's at this point in their development.  This game is going to get at least 2-3 years of support, and with 4X's it's the finished product that counts.

I fully expect some features like carriers to be heavily reworked in expansions.

Quoting Tallera257,

reply 66

Just to make sure this has been brought to someone's attention, I'm wondering if the following bug could be addressed in the 1.1 patch for June?  Every race EXCEPT the Altarians has a tech they can research to fully terraform ALL remaining hexes of a specific quality and below.  From what I've seen in the game, it seems like the Altarian tech "Biosphere Manipulator" (researched through the Paradise Worlds project) is intended to do this same thing--simultaneously terraform multiple low-quality tiles.  I base that assumption on the fact that it's very expensive to build, and is "colony unique."  However, that is not how it's working.  It's only terraforming ONE hex tile, and since it's unique, that's all you get out of it.

This puts the Altarians at a significant disadvantage in the mid-to-late game, because all of the other major races can terraform the heck out of every planet they've settled (sometimes adding 15 or 20 useable hexes), while Altarians can only terraform 5 or 6 more tiles on each planet than it started with.  It seems like either [1] Biosphere Manipulator needs to be updated to terraform multiple tiles at once, or [2] it needs to be altered to be non-colony-unique and much, much cheaper to build.  Either fix would appear to bring it more into balance with what is available to other factions.

Just hoping someone can show my favorite faction some terraforming love! 

I thought about that issue too. I'm also playing the Altarians more often than others and found the terraforming to be a real problem to get some planets maxed out. At least it makes it near to impossible to get enough tiles grouped together to profit of the adjacency bonus compared to other factions. You always have to hope for almost perfect planets with perfect continent shapes to get a lot of tiles grouped together by default already.

The Biosphere Manipulator should definitely be fixed because getting only 1 tile out of it just doesn't seem like the way it is supposed to be.