Better technology interface simular to civilization 3.

Make the diplomacy dialogs for offering/asking cash/influence modal, so you can't leave it open, forget to click OK, make the deal, and realise you have just given one nice dreadnought for free instead of 600bc.
Make the AI attack immediately when it declares war. Currently, I attack Torians. They are allied with Arceans. Arceans tell me "well, we are allied to the Torians, so let's go to war". They don't make a move yet. I can destroy one of their ships and then sue for peace (usually for an interesting net benefit) immediately. And they won't even have attacked me yet. That's too cheap. Also, they should either stop going to war every turn or stop accepting peace every turn (on intelligent).

Something I would like to see is species population when a world is your. I understand that when you conquer a world, most die. But what if a civilization surrenders. Do they all die. Ritual suicide. I just think it would be cool if planets had other races on them so there could be a bigger felling of conquest.

A little HISTORY TEXT WRITEUP GAME SUMMARY like Civilization 1 had if
you won the game.

It would have the dates that certain wonders were achieved..dates that you built certain colonies...dates
where you discovered some technology...and dates that
you conquered places.

and a little map too.


That was a really great great feature that game had.
too bad it wasn't in civ2 or any game i know since then.



Douglas


p.s. these days i have take screenshots of my game and
use paint shop pro and notepad to make little writeups
and map summaries of my games

Hello,

I would like to make a suggestion related to how star bases are treated in the fog of war. This has probably already been pointed out, but right now they are treated like ships in that they disappear as soon as a player no longer has any assets in sensor range. I would suggest that since star bases are immobile to treat them like planets where its location and condition, as a player’s sensors last recorded it, stays visible through the gray fog of war and on the star-map. When the player is in sensor range again then the star base will be updated to its current status (grown, damaged, no longer there, etc). I am pretty sure this is the way colonies and its defenses are handled. This would definitely aid the player when it comes to conducting operations in a given sector. (Oh yeah, my scout spotted a fledgling star base tucked away in the corner of this sector a while back, I should check up on it and see if it’s a full fledged military star base before I invade this planet, etc.) Of course if it would be difficult to program then it is not that big of a deal.

Thank you.

Hello,

This is halfway between a possible bug and a suggestion so I thought I would post in both threads. Anyway, I noticed that when you conquer the final planet of another race it plays a nice cut scene, but if you also did other things that create popup windows like inherit a tech from the colony you just conquered then it puts the popup over the cut scene and plays the popup’s music mixed in with the cut scene’s music. This most likely occurs since this cut scene was added later. I remember one time when I used Mass Drivers on one colony I had the Tech notice and the Planet Damage notice popup over the cut scene. Even after closing the popups their music was still playing until I got out of the cut scene. I suggest changing it so that the cut scene plays on its own without mixing with any popups and only after it is closed having the popups occur. If this already has been addressed in the latest patch I apologize.

Thank you.

Relating to the last post NO screen should pop up until the one in focus is dismissed. Too often I hit the close button and the new window pops up over the top of the old one. It looks bad and is distracting.

When closing a window it should close completely, refresh the background and then check for the next pop up screen to be displayed.

Thanks guys (you know you are the best! )

Hello,

I would like to put in my vote for the following items that have most likely been suggested already:

1. A way for the player and the AI opponents to vote for or otherwise influence what will be voted on in a UP council.
2. Adding the ability to request removal of ships, colonies and/or star bases from a sector in the diplomatic audience screen.
3. Adding a screen that breaks down lease costs/schedules and tribute costs/schedules.
4. Creating a hyperlink to a popup description for technologies, ships, trade goods, and star base modules on the diplomatic audience screen and technology screen and the same for social projects on the governor’s screen.
5. A way to conduct a trade embargo without necessarily going to war and the ability to threaten to impose a trade embargo on the diplomatic audience screen.
6. A screen that lists all explored planets and its currently known status with filters for uninhabited planets and such.
7. More treaty options like research and non-aggression pact.
8. Breaking out ship maintenance from military spending on the economy sheet.
9. Adding a screen that breaks out all the civilization wide bonuses provided by wonders, trade goods, and such.
10. Listing how many movement points are left for each ship on the starship list.
11. Rally points for ships.
12. Civilization wide propaganda.
13. Some kind of way to channel unused social and military production.
14. Ability to request opponent starships and star bases during peace negotiations.
15. More control over transport of population/soldiers. (Right now it automatically dumps all of a transports populations onto a system when it is in orbit and it divides it evenly among the planets if more than one colony is in a system.)
16. Ability to change governor names, and possibly add more governors and ability to have pre-loaded governor lists that add in projects automatically as they are researched.
17. Restored games remembering my sector map settings. (right now reverts to default when a saved game is loaded)
18. Ability for Evil races to negotiate with pirates to attack other races’ trade routes, etc, ability for all races to simply pay pirates protection money to prevent them from attacking or pay others for protection from them, and ability for Good races to offer protection from pirates to other races. (or something like that) (Haven’t actually encountered pirates yet so not sure how it really works.)
19. Show Aliens as having stellar cartography at beginning so that it can be traded for and/or make stellar cartography easier to research (only communication theory a prerequisite and cheaper).
20. Wherever possible allow mouse-wheel scrolling. (Some lists don’t have this.)
21. Change Drengin Starship color scheme to be red instead of dull green. This may be a bug only some people have as I have heard some say the color is fine but others mention that it is too close to the Torian color scheme. (Which on my copy it is.)
22. Start up option on random event frequency. (rare, normal, and often)
23. Maybe add a little more graphical flair to the ground combat. (like exchange of fire or something.) Don’t change how it is done just add some more eye candy.
24. Some well-done voice-overs on the cut-scenes, and/or events and/or whatever else would be an interesting addition. I would add an option to disable it for those that hate voice-overs.
25. Cut-scenes for the first Trade Good, Capital, and Galactic Wonder produced.
26. Ability to conduct espionage and destabilization on minor races. (wouldn’t be worth much but would be nice to have the option for completeness’ sake.)

Obviously these are just suggestions to perhaps improve upon an already great game.

Thank you.

I would like to see the tribute part limited far more. It seems every time I meet the Drengins, a turn later they are asking for tribute, and then a few turns later, and then a few turns later, until eventually they declare war. Really annoying. Also, I think you need to start adding more warships, it doesn't take very long to get to the overlord. Also, why is it that the other races seem to be able to research SO much quicker than me when I have research bonuses put on?

There also should be more planet invasion options available as you progress through the game

Just in case no one has already suggested this.
I can see version 1.03 will have a proper tech tree screen. Can you add something to the tech descriptions to indicate what their relative value would be when trading with other civs eg. M2 = Military level 2 (nnn BC to complete resaearch). Also can you change the colour of trade goods and wonders in the selection lists to make them easy to distinguish from normal social projects.

If all the things listed in Abaddon5's list (a few posts above) were to implemented over the next year, GalCiv would be a real gem of a game.

~SDC~

All suggestions to the pre-game setup

- option to turn on/ off the anomalies.
- option to make the map without borders. So flying from the right side out of the galaxy makes your ship appear on the left side. Same thing for up and down.
- slider to set the likelyness of random events from never to very very frequent.

- rally points for ships

(as seen in http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=44652 )

[hmm i shouldn't be posting three things in a row]

What i am about to say is totally NOT important, but it would be fun for an upcoming expansion pack:

A totally new race ! Or maybe even two or three new races. So you can choose a maximum of 5 opponents from several others. I know this is a lot of work because you guys give every race an own AI algorithm but it would give the game even more appeal.

Keep up the good work guys!

Starlanes:

Create jump points between two systems (perhaps with starbase modules) that allow ships to move faster than their normal rate. Once entering the starlane, you can't leave it.

This helps move slow moving ships across the galaxy quickly (like transports), but has the penalty of committing the action.

The technologies to do this would be pretty far down the tech tree to help facilitate late-game military play.

/ds

Normally I like to have ships auto-launch (auto-launching to a waypoint would be nice) but with troop ships and colony ships I don't get to specify how many people to put on if I autolaunch.

It would be great if I could be prompted for loading soldiers during autolaunch, or set it so that all ships except transports and colonies autolaunch.

Thanks,
Redshift

Here's my list of feature suggestions:

- Since there's a penalty for switching social projects, you should be able to queue up a single
social project to start when the current one is completed. This would also help with trade goods
and wonders. Right now, if you want to start a wonder or trade good, you have to rush-build and
then go back to that planet the next turn and select the wonder.
- should be able to see which minor races are at war on diplomacy screen
I like to sell the minor races ships when they're at war, but right now I have to remember which are at war.
- should be able to see social project cost/effect/maintenance on governor screen
- In general, provide better hyperlinked online help. Use Alpha Centauri as an example.
- governors are not remembered from game to game, should be able to save/load from a file
Once you have the save/load governor feature, some sample governors can be provided.
- allow the player to choose more than 10 racial ability points (to lower the overall difficulty)
or, allow the player to choose fewer than 10 points (to raise the overall difficulty)
For example, it'd be interesting to set the AI to incredible, but then take 50 racial ability
points to even things out.
- How about a random event that creates anomalies?
Right now, I don't understand why some higher-end ships have the "explore anomaly" ability.
In fact, when I first started playing, I thought that 1-3 anomalies were added per game turn.
I later realized that I just wasn't seeing them on the main map.
- Right now, the user can choose the habitable planet distribtion at the start of the game.
Also allow the user to specify the anomaly density and resource density.
- On the minor races diplomacy screen, you can set the espionage/destabilization scrollbars,
but they instead affect a major race. The espionage/destabilization scrollbars should not be
visible on the minor races diplomacy screen.
- Add a "summarize uninhabited planets" summary screen. When backfilling the class 15-16 planets,
right now you have to click on each planet to find them.
- Add a "find planet by name" feature.

~SDC~

One thing I'd like to see added into the game is a 'balkanization' option. When starting a new game, you select this option and the map will automatically get generated with a larger-than-average number of minor races. Perhaps this option could make the map default to abundant-planets and could add a few extra star clusters in...

Every once in a while it would be nice to play a game with lots of little guys.

Can we have it where when we are setting up our civ to start a game it also gives us the option to preset the extension part of a ship name? i.e. whenever a new ship is made instead of starting out USS it will have whatever you want.

I also want to rebring up the conventional missile idea, so you can make weak missiles with corvette technology.

I'ld like to have cloaked sensor drones.

"Can we have it where when we are setting up our civ to start a game it also gives us the option to preset the extension part of a ship name? i.e. whenever a new ship is made instead of starting out USS it will have whatever you want."

I second this one. Cari already has this on the suggestion list, but just to be sure I would love to see the last of the hardcoded strings moved to English.str such as:

[Sol] Sol
[Mars] Mars
etc.
[Carinoids] Carinoids
[Alexians] Alexians
etc.

Also the start date (2178?) moved into the English.str so we can make mods in other time periods / eras.

Back to the ship list thing, it would be uber cool to have seperate race ship lists!

At the bare minimum please pull the extension from the ships name in the .ship file (not the title) so if we change Colony Ship to Colonizer the races will name thiers ships Colonizer.

An even better solution would be an override file or section of the English.str where you could put something like:

[Scout0] USS Discovery Class Scout
[Scout1] Drengin Darkblade
[Scout2] Alterian StarSpy
etc.

The BEST and hardest to implement would be ship lists for each race such as ships0.lst, ships1.lst, and so on where each contains lists of random names the game could pool from (ala Space Empires IV) BUT I would want some means of grouping names around classes of ships... I have no idea how but maybe something like:

[surveyship] Survey Ship, Explorer, Hero, Intrepid, Wanderer, Star Maiden, Fardrift, The Ion Flow

hmmm.... maybe a combination of all the above. In the English.str:

[tablealias shipnames]
[surveyship0] Hero, Intrepid, Star Maiden, Fardrift, The Ion Flow, Survey Ship
[surveyship1] Conquestor, Claimer-of-Space, Star Rift, Eyes-of-the-Empire, Space Harvester
[surveyship2] Worldfinder, Moonglow, Watcher, Wanderer, Starmist, Star Explorer
etc.

To make it easy you could not randomize it, but just take the names from the list sequentially and when you got to the last name then just use that name over and over with the shipnumber tacked on the end.

Hmmm... I see possibilities:

[vengenceship] Die Humans!, Manhunter, Starslayer, Vengence is Ours!, Ravager



PS - don't get me started on seperate race planetary name lists...

I would like to add a suggestion on the planet screen:

A larger icon to represent 100's of production/research. It gets crazy trying to see at a glance how much research/whatever you have going on when the 10's icons are running of the edge of area they're supposed to be displayed in.

Regards.
Damian

~SDC~

Scout Ship auto-explore!!!

Apologies, last time I'd checked this thread it was only at 300 posts so my recent thoughts may have already been stated.

I'd like the ability to select which kinds of anomalies a survey-class ship will survey, so I could send out one ship to pick up all the defense/offense/hitpoint anomalies (and become my uber-combat ship), and a couple or three ships to get everything else, as well as being able to choose whether or not ships will go through wormholes.

As well, I'd love to know if a particular wormhole has a stable exit or wandering exit, have the stable wormholes and exits marked (with a link to it's respective wormhole) on the maps.

I'd like ships to take into account stable wormholes and starbases with speed bonuses to work out a 'best time' course to the destination. This would spare me one step in management of constructors and other ships where I have to take them to the edge of a sector, wait for next turn to get the movement bonus from starbases in the sector, then move on.

I'd like the minimap to update to every shift in the main map so it is easier to spot where AI ship movement is located.

A 'find' function that you can use to find a particular planet by name.

Errm... that's the thoughts that cross my mind at this time.

Oh... and the idea for wormhole exits and stability I borrowed from an awesome play-by-email game called Stars! 2. I just hope they sometime come out with Stars! Supernova Genesis (Stars! 3), it would be added to my collection of 4x strategy games... (Perhaps you could suggest a friendly publisher for them?)

Thanks,
Damian

~SDC~