I liked your views. I felt the same about most things, especially the need for some more ship components. Boarding Pods would be fun, to see if you can capture ships, or a Stealth module, or some kind of Stasis weapon (freezes an enemy ship, so it can't move, attack or be attacked).

About your idea, I had a post somewhere about additional ship componets / modules. I think it was in one of these "what do you want?" threads.

Anyway i wont repeat it all here but i was thinking specifically of things like:
A)maneuvering thrusters = evade shots
B)targeting computer = can take out a critical enemy component (so their defence or weapons are lessened for the remainder of the battle)
C)astromentic droids = repair individulal ships after a battle.
D)Command Bridge = adds to courage / luck (this one was someone else's idea)
E)shield generator = bring back a (small) percentage of your defenses afetr a round.

All of which will only change the die rolls of the battle and add to or subtract from the numbers. The battles themselves won't really change.

Well, I just finished my second game. Smaller map, turned up the AI. Still not high enough, but it's definately significantly smarter this time. I fear the day I turn it up to tough D:

I've looked at buying this game for a long time now and finally grabbed it last week. I wish I had done so a lot sooner now. I too am a longtime Master of Orion II player, and I find that Galactic Civilizations II is a very worthy successor, much better than Master of Orion III ever was. What I really like is how one can plan out the development of (almost) the whole planet from the moment you colonize it and just let the planet develop itself without need of a lot of fine tuning. This beats MoOIII's tendency to treat player input as "suggestions" all to Hell.

I especially love the plethora of races in the game and the flexibility in how you run them. My favorite race is the evil Yor, but by the mid game it seems that I have made them into a neutral or sometimes even a good empire. I'm tempted to play with their abilities to see if I can make them appear less friendly to the other races once they've made the shift. I miss the loathesome trait of MoOII for this reason.

The other thing that I like is the fact that I don't have to use the CD to play the game. I play the game on my laptop and it is really nice to not have carry the CD with me everywhere I go. Less chance of it getting damaged that way. It's very refreshing to be treated as a customer and not a potential software pirate for once.

The only thing lacking to make GCII the perfect game is multiplayer. I was a little surprised by the lack, but the strength of the game makes up for it. That said, I would love to see it introduced in a future expansion (as I'm sure thousands of other players have already said before me.)

All in all, it's an amazing game and I look forward to exploring it fully for years to come.

I have to admit I was at first a little intimidated by the ship designer and getting ready to just download a pack of ship designs. I didn't think there was anything good I could make on my own. But now I've been having some fun designing new ships. In fact so much that now I'm getting more annoyed with my huge list of ships. I like them all but I also like making new ones with every game. Adds it's own new game touch to it.

Finished another game. The dread lords are freakin' SCARY. Whenever I see a ship that has a "..." as a weapon power, I really should consider running. Far away. D:

I loaned mine from brother just this week, and already wonder why he didn't give it sooner, maybe he really hasn't played it... But the background is we both like a bit different games, but MOO and MOO2 were something we both played a lot. I'd like to make this even longer and connect to all the other strategy games over the years but...

First first impressions

WOW: MOO2 clone
MEH: Too much opera and too little space (why can't we get those grim and realistic settings like in Alien or Warhead instead of happy music and cuddly poster child latex aliens?)

Second first impressions: 1st game

Played the industrious insectoid (klackon archetype, anyone?) with only a few modifications. Was a bit late in colonizing space but my civilization was otherwise doing fine. Until the day I started building research and industry capitals, without checking the weeks to build time. Well, a few months of stagnation and then start over.

2st game

Medium galaxy with normal difficulty, 3 opponents. I made my own race, basically a diplomatically savvy reincarnation of Meklar - some research bonus and regeneration for the ships. Well, I guess it wasn't exactly regeneration - I love regeneration as an ability already since the times of Movie Monster - but just a bit faster repair time after the battle.

Enjoy the game a lot. The CPU is giving me a run for my money, apparently AI is easy to program for building. And game simplicity is not good only for casual players but the AI as well. I kept researching and exchanging technology with the aliens and found out that technological bribes are good in keeping in terms with them. Eventually I decided to go against the Draht(?) Legion, clearly the strongest party but technologically backward bastards with a colony right in the middle of *my* territory. Besides, they were unprepared for warfare. A few months later I was at their doorstep, having captured a small colony just next to their home planet. At that point I realized I wasn't going anywhere fast: troop transports take long to build, and I had few ready at hand - not nearly enough to take on a major planet, the war had wrecked my economy, the Altarians(?) were beating me hands down in the technological race, and together with Drengin, getting wary about my growing power...

By the way it's nice to get to know what exactly is affecting your diplomatic standings, makes the game a bit less stressful to the player when you know what's coming or at least WTF you did wrong there. Anyway, I made peace, but soon the last planet I captured was about to revolt, and oops, there it went and joined Legion government again. (BTW I think that happened a bit too fast without warning, you could implement some kind of a more extended political crisis when that happens with negotiations etc). Enter the feature called Influence. Apparently you can't just repeat your good old MOO2 Research-build-conquer cycle, and if this is true for the game in general, I'm going to love the multifaceted challenge you get...

Well, one threat out of the game and actually on their way to becoming my ally later on. In the meanwhile, the Drengin and the Altarians had been pummeling each other and keeping up the technolgical race. Before I had the proper time to recover and prepare a new assault, the Altarians had surrendered to Drengin, which courteously informed me they don't like me too much either. Well, given the Drengin population was now enormous, not to mention their fleet, and even the significant technological advantage... things were looking pretty bleak. Panic, panic, all production to starships.

Speaking of ships, the ship design system is nice - the beam/misile/mass driver gives a nice rock-paper-scissors and also you can fit ships for major strategic roles. In the beginning of the wars I used to build ships with good range and mobility, 2 beams and some shield. Later I introduced commander ships - though any bonus modules probably don't exist, and these guys are just loaded with sensors for a few pc extra range - and rapid response vessels - with double engines - both with just 1 beam to make room for the other components. The idea was to use the latter to reinforce planets, starbases and fleets in a hurry, but seems this war wasn't fought around stationary installments. Probably due to the different fleet movement than what was seen in MOO2, where the fights were nicely focused around planetary objectives. The frontline seemed to stabilize to a few predictable locations, so I could leave the engines and the extra life support out of my ships, building slow (but Small) behemoths with good shields and 3 beam weapons.

It turned out Artificial Idiocy - the saviour (and bane) of single player - was the deciding element in this conflict. My fleets with their mobility advantage could outmaneuver the technologically and racially near-invincible Drengin fleets. Although the Drengin have a 1 to 4 advantage in numbers, and I'm not going to engage unless I have a 4 to 1 advantage in hp/def/att figures, it seems I can stall the enemy fleets infinitely because they will go after my fleets and chase them in circles, ignoring planets and my few defenseless starbases... The troop transports come in without escort so I can just finish them off. I suppose higher AI levels play much better, but I don't know if I've ever seen a really good game AI that has been able to focus on the primary goals, press on aggressively, and avoid being outmaneuvered by human intelligence.

At the moment the greatest hurdle in the learning curve may be planetary management. With just soil enhancement researched, most planets feel quite cramped, with little room for any variety, after I've first filled them with factories and research centers... Maybe an option to adjust planet quality in an advanced galaxy settings menu could be helpful. Or maybe a tutorial popup like "Wow, it seems you have filled all available space on your planet. Research soil enhancement, habitat improvement yadda yadda to set you up on the proper part of the tech tree".

The economy settings are nice and dynamic, ignore this side of the development and you find yourself reducing the overall efficiency to keep the budget afloat, or then tax the people heavily, but risk low approval... To me it's a bit of a mystery though why some small/mid-size planets I've conquered have very low - down to exactly 0 - military, social and research productivity, even with billions of population (and maybe a factory even), month to month - no single factor seems to explain that.

The decision to remove (control of) tactical combat is thought provoking for all of us who greatly enjoy that aspect of pretty much any game. It is true that the most important decisions are done in the fleet design and building phase, and fleet battles in MOO2 tended to become mechanical maneuvering to outsmart the AI. In this respect making the battles quick-to-run simulations emphasizes the strategic aspect of the game and is welcome for the nowaday's casual, mature gamers without copious amounts of freetime.

Oh, btw I'm not a fan of random events. Because they're, err... random... and generally mess up with your plans - I prefer to just work on my designs and plan it out with my awesome strategy skills. You certainly need an element of surprise now and then to throw you off and give a new challenge, but you have things like new technological discoveries or somebody allying with your enemies because they are concerned about your power build up. Of course, some events and occurences hang together with the game/storyline though, I think it's a nice touch if when colonizing/conquering you get this "err... Boss - there's people out there already, what do we do?" and can work a bit more flavour into your civilization. Or when the increasing contact, trade and cooperation with alien races brings up new issues. Would also be nice if you could have more decision parameters involved beyond the simple Good vs Evil axis that's been a cliche of the European civilization for a few millenia already. (Eg. political alignment/bonuses - this one will give you more technology, but will make you slightly less popular.)

I really like the freedom wrt copy protection, but of course it can make great business sense for Stardock, as this way more people will try out the game, leading to more of them getting hooked up, the franchise growing over the years and maybe there's lots of revenue to be made with expansions (and sequels, one would hope).

Graphics are not stellar but not bad either, most of the time they do their job. The scanner range may be hard to see on the map against some of the nebulae, some of the camera angles in the battle view are not too informative (zoom missing etc), and there were a few bugs not connected with graphics, I hope they go away when I have time to apply the patches It feels like the game could be in points a bit too simple, leaving down hardcore strategy gamers, but then again that's what mods are for and I already mentioned expansions...

Varis, nice post. A few specific, targeted responses :

Industrious Bug races have been around in SciFi for far longer than the MoO series.

There is warning of planets being in danger of flipping through influence - both a popup when it first enters the danger zone, and an icon (red skull-and-bones) on the planet on the map. When you look at the planets info, look at the IP (Influence Points) entry. It will be 2 numbers. The one in Parenthesis () is the ratio of foreign influence to yours. The magic number is 4 - get it under that and the world is safe. So long as it is 4.00 or higher, there is a small chance each turn of it flipping.

The worlds where all the production numbers just stay at zero are from being world types that you lack the technology to properly colonize. In the upper right of the planet screen, next to the planet size rating there will be a red symbol on those worlds (and some others may have a Yellow symbol, which indicates that you partially know how to colonize them and get a 50% penalty). If you mouse over the symbol it will tell you what type of world it is. Past the "Extreme Colonization" tech are techs for each of the problematic world types. Researching the first level of that type will change those worlds from Red to Yellow, and the 2nd level will drop the penalty altogether.

As for the issues you have with some of the AI behaviors, some of that does get better at higher dificulty levels.