Do not allow Neutral or enemy factions to see each other's weapon techs in the diplomacy screen. Why spy on somone when you can pop open the diplomacy screen and see what all the techs are that they have.

When entering the nickname/password combo in the in game Metaverse login, hitting the tab key should shift the cursor to the password text field.

already mentioned this in its own thread (and am not sure if it's already been mentioned in this one), but can random events be toggled on/off (or even better, toggle them to minor / major)? I hate investing hours in a game and having it completely change by some random event. And the ones in GalCiv2 are biggies.

Ugh, Can Stardock break this thread down into logical and specific sections ... e.g.

STICKY: EASY TWEAKS to make Ship Design better for you

... its takes too long to read the previous 6 pages

1. Dont allow players to see others players starting locations using the "influence" toggle on the mini map. Way too much advantage.

2. Like many others stated - need some sort of route lines to indicate where ships are going.

3. Diagonal scroll would be nice but at this point im used to grab scrolling.

4. Not sure how easy to adapt but some information as to what is actually on a ship of the class you are upgrading would be nice so that we can actually see where the old design needs improvement. At this point as far as I can tell you have to physically remember or write down what you put on your designs.

5. Fix the scrolling problems others have mentioned in great detail. (I mean in information boxes not the screen)

6. A little more in depth info on upgrades in the ship build screen would be cool.

About all I have to offer. Even with the above minor things the game is still top quality. Keep up good work guys.

1. I would like to have ships auto-move prior to hitting the turn button. In galciv 1, we could do this by pressing the space button and all the ships with auto-move would move. The auto-move semi-between turns is less efficient since a ship may have additional moves at the end of the turn remaining and has occasionally been the difference between winning a race for a planet and losing by 1 turn.

2. I would like to be able to put survey ships into a combined mode of auto-explore and auto-survey. Obviously auto-survey mode should take over when any anomolies are detected.

I wish that when I selected a ship out of the ship viewer, it didn't then snap back to the top of the menu. I am looking for constructors, there they are, I click one and launch it from orbit, and now I have to scroll down again for each one. In bigger games, and I probably use too many starbases, its a real pain.

I wish that if I went to the starport from the planet screen and selected a ship, then hitting the "back to planet" button didn't cancel that build order.

Just minor junk like that, if I think of anything else I'll write it, but I am having a great time with the game!

Add additional graphics / movies when using the diff. Invasion Tactics on the war display, instead of just showing the 2 armies fighting all the time. For example with the Mass Drivers tactic where asteroids are used to lessen the home army's strength, it would definitely be very satisfying seeing meteors rain down from above decimating the troops as you attack them!

I don't know if this would be "easy " to do or not... but would help improve the game's visuals for me, and make me appreciate the Planetary Invasions I'm utilizing.

I would appreciate if the "Cinematic" view on the battle display would hold its views for a little longer. Sometimes the camera switches around so much I get motion sick. Each view could linger two to four times as long, in my opinion.

Also, there already IS an option to turn off the display of hardpoints in ship design to see what your ship looks like. it's the round button on the bottom left of the rotate view display and it works exactly like those here have requested.

I'd like to see a numeric value for the scaling slider in the Ship Designer. Similar to some on the sliders in Options. It's tough to create like designs and match the scale by count the ticks.

Little thing, but would be great for me...

On the mini-map, you can see influence of each race. Only problem is, it tells you where they are from the start before you have explored.

It would be great to have it that the influence areas are visible, but only for races that you've encountered or areas you've explored.

It just doens't really make sense to know where they are when they don't show up on any other charts and you can't talk to them yet, etc., etc.


I would love to see it revised a bit, I do want to see the influence on the map ('specially when mine take up about 1/2 or more), but it does show me right where to go from the start if I want contact or war.

Thanks for a great game!

It is surely possible this is already in here, so if it is, just ignore me.

I hate it when I am scrolling through all my different planets, and I go to build a ship, I have to hit "Done" to get it to accept. If I just select a ship (or change what I am building), and then hit "Back to planet", the change doesn't take and the previous project is still there. I have to hit "Done" to get it to take. But this kicks me from the planet screen. I really like being able to just hit "Next" and go from planet to planet, to make sure I don't miss something.

If selecting "Back to Planet" would make the change take, that would be great. If it is supposed to and I am doing something wrong, well, it wouldn't be the first time.

On the mini-map, you can see influence of each race. Only problem is, it tells you where they are from the start before you have explored.

Good thinking! I've spoiled the surprise more than once, by clicking on the influence key in the mini-map at the start of a new game. I'd rather not know who's just right around the corner. Knowing who's next door definitely alters your early game strategy.

could really use a list of all planets i have discovered that are still uninhabited so that i could send a colony ship to, like it was in MOO2, show planets by size and in range.

Sorry if this has been mentioned - I tried to skip this post and didn't see it and there is no way that I know of to search within a post - but the #1 thing I would like is:
1) Random opponent selection

I would like to be able to pick the number of opponents (or maybe even let that be random as well) and have random opponents selected. To me this adds a lot to the eperience as I don't know ahead of time which races I'll be facing so it changes how I would begin the game, explore, etc. Also, I would't think it would be a difficult addition in functionality.

I hope others agree and this gets added. This is a great game!

Well, I claim this might be simple.


There are a lot of complaints about the amount of tech trading between AI's in the
game. Quite simply, tech is traded so often as to make the whole research part of the
game almost meaningless.

Here is an idea to fix it:

Put in a slider with which the player can specify what percentage of total research points may
be acquired by trade. For example, assume that the total research points of all the techs an
AI has is 10,000 points. If the player selected 50%, then at most 5000 of those points could
have been acquired by trade. The other 5000 would have to have been researched by the
AI. The same restriction applies to the player, of course. In this example, for every 1000 research
points worth of techs a cilivization acquired on its own, it could go out and trade for another
1000 research points worth of tech.

Further, AI's will not trade a tech if it is uniquely owned by that civilization. Hence, if a race has the
most advanced beam weapon in the galaxy - it will hold on to it. It represents a major advantage
to that civilzation.

This will give the player an easy way to control how much tech trading there is in any game he
plays. He can set the slider to "100% of tech must be researched" to play a game in which no
tech trading is allowed, or to anything in between.

This should promote the races (and player) specializing in only a few areas, and trading (or buying)
for lower level techs in the other areas.

Another idea is that the % of tech points that must be researched v.s. can be traded for could be
(slightly) modified by a races basic (pre-tech advances) diplomacy level. A highly diplomatic
race could acquire more tech via trade then a race with a lower diplomacy level.

I think this might be easily done since the basic tech trading algorithms that currently exist can
remain unchanged.

Another suggestion which might be easy to tweak: In the ship designer, a button that temporarily turns off the hardpoint colors. When I'm designing a ship some of the items have so many hardpoint attachment points it makes it hard to visualize exactly what the final design looks like.

Easy:
1. In ship design, Make the hardpoints appear Only when the mouse if hovering over the ship with an item for attaching; when mouse is out of preview window or not carrying any item, all hardpoints auto-hide.

2. In ship design, I second the call to add decals

3. For Tech Tree full-screen view, should have tooltip popup to tell us what we get for that tech, e.g. Super Mojo Lasers with 50 attack pts... Maybe also add to the lesser view, a pic of the laser too

Moderate:
4. In ship design, Group the same hull-sizes into a single drop-downlist (since they differ only in design/shape), so that overall list is small and quicker to scroll.
(in fact anything that basically have the same description should be grouped together. like earlier post, the 'extras' can be placed in small square boxes for selection, instead of rows are saying the same useless "for decoration only"-msg)

Hard:
5. Have an online repository of ship designs so that we can easily share beautiful designs like the trekie or bird of prey ships others have designed.

6. Give option to Disable And/Or Reduce Tech-Trading and super-"Espionage"
Now without even spending on espionage, everybody can see one anothers' available techs, ships, etc via the "Speak To" trade screen. This seems ridiculous that there's no secret anywhere at all and A.I. can know everything we have all the time. So it would be great if this can be disabled. Cos I don't want A.I. to know I have this secret super-Mojo Laser weapon, until I use it to crave up their fleet.
Alternatively, give us option to enable "toned-down" mode where you can only know what tech a race has when you've seen them use it. You should Not know a race has a particular ship and particular weapon if the ship is still under construction or not yet launched and under tight wraps in starport. That is unless you've spent an obscene amount of funds in espionage on that particular starport/planet. And if you have info on an enemy race, you can trade it to a friend, o.w. secrets remain secrets

Two things I noticed
1) Even if you haven't met all or even any of the other races if you click on the filter on the minimap to show thier territory it shows you were they are.
2) The computers often make really really really dumb looking ships, like haveing 6 lasers bunched on the front left. They could atleast spread them out a bit.

Modify the Fog of War to show area's I can't see that I have previously seen vs. area's I can't see that I have never seen. When initially searching, it would be nice to know what areas I have not yet covered.

Dragging the research screen around is, well...a drag.

What about implementing a scroll bar or something or allowing zooming in and out of the tech tree?

- As a total beginner to GC2 trying to select what to research, I'm pretty lost because I have no idea what, say, a xeno lab is, or what smart drones do, so it's hard to make an informed decision of what to research. It'd be really nice if I could click on or mouse over any of the modules, improvements, components, etc a tech provides and get a description or what they do and stats for them. I know this is almost tantamount to being a "GalCivPedia" effort, so I could live with just a text file or pdf with the all the components, modules, improvements, etc info that I could print out or alt-tab to for reference while I'm learning the game.
- When I click the retire button in the campaign, it instantly gives me the defeat screen. A confirmation beforehand would be nice; the quit button has one.
- a few more leader picture choices would be nice for the human race.
- Possible bug: The trade routes ability says +1%, +2% etc. Is it really a 1% increase in the number of trade routes, or (more likely) a +1 to the number of trade routes?
- Similarly, is Sensors ability +1% or +1?
- Possible bug: The text description for the war party says "+50% hit points", but the stat says "+25".
- Bigger effort feature: The tutorial videos were nice, but too encapsulated/segmented to really give me a feel for how to play the game. A small tutorial scenario that walks you through a few turns and then leaves you alone to finish if you want would be very nice.
- Maybe this isn't a bug, but in the campaign, I see that the relationship factors with the Drengin has a + for "Our diplomatic skill", while with the Altarians, if shows a - for "Our diplomatic skill". Shouldn't human's diplomatic skill be a positive factor to all the races? Why would it be a negative to the altarians?
- You guys mentioned that you'll be improving the tool tips, but reading the earlier posts, I'm wondering if that means just fixing their odd behavior to get them to pop up. I'm hoping that you'll also be adding more tool tips for all the stuff that lacks them currently. Ideally, every button, status display, widget, etc should have one.
- You also mention the sliders getting bad after 11 hours being fixed: Is that a general imprvement for the sliders or a specific fix for a problem that occurs after a long session? Because I'm finding the sliders finicky and annoying immediately on entering the game. The espionage slider is especially finicky and also only seems to respond if you click on the tiny circle part of it, and not the bigger triangle part.

Sorry for the double post - it seemed to hang when I submitted this so I stopped it and resubmitted, and it ended up posted twice.

Gameplay Change: Survey Ships

It has always bothered me in GalCiv 1, and now in GalCiv 2, that Survey ships seem to play a very limited role in the game. Early in the game, it is easily your most valuable ship. However, depending on the galaxy size and how quickly anomolies disappear their significance dwindles to a point where the ship has lost it's purpose.

I believe I have a solution that might provide more interesting gameplay.

Have all anomolies have exploration levels dependant on researched techs and have new anomolies appear throughout the game. For example, you have say 4 levels of anomolies, the initial survey ship can explore level 1, once you research a tech (lets call it Survey level 2) you can now explore level 2 anomolies - perhaps this invokes a upgrade like a Survey Lab II that needs to be installed on your survey ship. Higher level anomolies have higher levels of payoffs which in turn makes it worth the reasearch time. I would not identify anomolies by level in the game until your survey ship has visited them. Thus you still have to go to the anomoly to see what level it is - after you have been to one, it's level is then associated with it.

This solves multiple in game problems. First, survey ships remain useful throughout the game and actually causes you to build more of them. Second, if the tech spawns a item upgrade, there is a reason to upgrade them. It also may solve a tech trading problem because even if you trade the tech to the AI, the AI still has to upgrade or build a ship to explore the next level of anomlies.

Perhaps I'm off base and this seems like a good idea to only me, but I should would like to hear anyone else's opinion.

I like it. (but then I thought of it).

checkbox option for colorblind players - like the one in Civ IV

I don't know if this has been mentioned...

Can we not have tiles on planets that give +300% to food producation? I acidentally had a single farm on that tile, and I could not ever get that planet happy. I eventually destroyed it. 300% is just faaaar too many people.