| The expansion pack will significantly alter the game itself (in a very positive way I think). |
Hope GalCiv2 developers are listening. (Long post)
I'm actually one of those who did not purchase GalCiv2, after giving very careful consideration.
Main reason was overly simple ship design that requires almost no strategy. To risk being overly simplistic, just slap on the heaviest damage weapon, your attacking fleet fire first, and you win even with low defense.
I would *definitely* buy GalCiv2 Expansion, if the developers can implement something like below:
1. Ship designs with pre-defined component slots limitations.
Battleship would have more combat-oriented ship component slots (see 1a below), whereas transports would have more cargo component slots and a few "general" component slots that let players choose between putting in a few weapons, a fuel tank for better range, better armor/shield, or simply add in yet another cargo pod. (So no more cheesy morphing your transport into a respectable attacking vessels in a few turns, then attack the unsuspecting planet that it is orbiting...). Oh, and upgrading ships can only be done at starbases with the appropriate starbase component.
The key is the constraints on ship component slots that limit what you can do with it, but at the same time gives you enough choices to have several options/styles of fighting with the ship.
1a. Tech race between Targeting components vs. Targeting-jamming, and Engine Speed vs. manuovering jets.
eg: Battleship ship layout with component slots geared towards *multiple* targeting computers (with diminishing law of returns on), armor, shields, and of course weapons. Engine component slots are actually very limited, forcing players to choose between sacrificing the targeting computer slots for "maneuvering thrusters" that increase ship's speed for tactical advantage in battle. Targeting computers actually increase the missiles/laser's chance to hit, whereas Targeting-disrupting computers decrease their chances to hit.
Or alternatively, another player can put so many targeting-disrupting computers on their battleship that the opponent misses, and the player gets to land that first hit, thus greatly increasing their chances of winning (who first the first salvo is key to winning battleship battles).
1b. Tech race Cloaking ship components vs. Scanner ship components.
A race with built-in cloaking advantages can further capitalize on this by having a very high tech level Cloaking ship component (and sacrifice this slot to have less weapons/targeting-computers). The defending race can fight back by researching for high level scanner ship components, or research for higher-tech cloaking ship components themselves (blind fight agains the blind). Cloaking races with (espensive) fleet of ships attacking together, and defending play's ships are forced to spread out to try to find where the cloaking player's fleet is.
1c. Specialized mine ship hulls with many component slots that dispense mines (finally players cannot zip around at Warp 10 and side-stepping AI defenses). Attacking ships with specialized weapon components that sweep away mines, but can still attack other ships (albeit slightly weaker fire power--forcing you to sacrifice mine sweeping ability for weapon fire power).
2. Race specific ship hulls.
-Cloaking races get specialized cloaking ship hulls, with even more ship component slots geared towards cloaking should they choose to.
-War loving races get specialzed heavy battleship ship hulls that are cheaper to make and maintain per resource unit, much more weapon slots and more slots for targeting computer (to get that important first shot in), more built-in armour.
-Diplomatic races can have specialized ship hulls that follow this theme, you get the idea...
3. More race specific advantages.
eg: Cloaking races have built-in cloaking% that is added on top of the race's cloaking tech level!
eg: War loving races get to fire first, if both sides have the same number of targeting computer components.
eg: Races with built-in tera-forming capabilities that ultimately let them live in more planets in the long run.
eg: Races with very high growth races (and other disadvantages for balancing reasons)...
4. Huge worlds for those who want it--thousand of star systems.
4a. For this reason, I wish computer to settle individual battles automatically --I don't want to fight each and every battle myself (although others can do this if they wish--maybe it's an option for them).
5. Fog of war that prevents you from seeing where the stars are.
Personally, I'm not thrilled that I can see where all the stars are, right at the beginning of the game. Takes away that suspense:
-Will I find a star system?
-How habitable is the star system?
-Is another race already habiting the star system, or are they about to?
