1) Suppose you have captured a planet with 8 factories. You want to replace 6 of those factories with labs. The easiest way of doing that is to demolish the six factories and order 6 labs in the queue. But this is also the slowest. The most optimum is to destroy one factory and then build one lab, then destroy another factory etc etc. A real micro managing pain. It would be handy if the demolish order appeared in the queue so that the building didn't disappear until the right time.

Have you tried to build a lab on a title where there is a factory ?

Brainstorming (read, half-thought out)
Ship design:
1). Fliping a hardpoint flips up-down in addition to fore-aft. (already mentioned).
2). Panning is good. But I often have trouble putting an extra on, because I can't get a solid view of the ship. Some free floating camera controls would be nice. I have a feeling there was some discussion of this during the beta, but I can't remember.
3). I'd like to upgrade the existing core designs. I understand, however, that they may have certain incosistencies for the sake of appearances (such as two colony pods but just 500 capacity), that make this difficult.
They might not be technically possible either, kind of a cheat ship to compensate for the lack of certain starting techs. I remember that from the beta, at least.
Perhaps with the advent of say, impulse engines, and better support, the game automatically introduces a Mark Two variety? Perhaps, a hidden, or fake mode for parts so I can design a colony ship equivalent to the base one that looks the same, with a nonfunctional pod since the base Terran design has two but only a capacity of one.

Diplomacy:
1). Tech trades: I'd like to offer an AI or human a technology for about half the normal value with condition they don't trade it to anyone else for say 50 weeks. Perhaps artifically inflating the value of the tech so they don't trade it, like a military tech. Or 80% value for a five week moratorium.
2). Money over time? Either I'm overlooking the obvious or this was removed for some reason.

Colonizing:
1). Ability to launch a ship from orbit with zero citizens aboard. I can't seem to decommision that colony ship from orbit, and even decommisioning a 1 troop ship is inconvenient. Plus, its out of character for a good civilization to jettison 1000 citizens into the depths of space.
2). A variation on the Rally command. Will bring up a list of unowned planets, and set a course in.
ALTERNATELY, just make it (obvious how to / possible to) use the ship/planet listing and focus without selecting or selecting without focusing. Maybe a couple of focus on only or select only buttons?
3). The core colony ship design for the terrans is fairly useless. With the standard starting techs and abilities, I can already stow an extra engine aboard for little expense and no sacrifice of range. Add an extra unit of speed, please.
EDIT: ADD #3

So far, having a good time with the game - but to answer the call....

Suggested Tweaks:

Reitierate ability to go to ship design - outside of game? - and design using all techs/hulls to set up sequence without taking time from game. (Edit - Just saw Duel of Gods workaround)

Ability to save games & other files somewhere other than My Docs folder - have had issues in the past with XP profile corruption which also FUBAR'd the My Docs folder. Add a field in the options screen for the files' location(s)?

Option to display the sector coordinates on the big map, probably along the edge like GC1 rather than a popup - I generally found adding this info to planet names helps with finding & managing them in the larger galaxies.

The ability to 'de-emphasize' an area of spending on a planet (with the remaining 2 areas getting more spending) in addition to the current ability to 'concentrate' an area at the cost of the other 2. Being able to do either from the colony mgr screen would be helpful. - Not sure if this impact AI or not, but would sure be helpful....

Other suggestions  I second the motion on:

Displaying range of starbase effects before the build order is finalized, notification of "We declare war on you", copy core ship designs for springboarding upgrades (for us aethestically challanged), (and the ability to build older designs of factories, etc and upgrade rather than just the newest version - stopping the upgrade process for a tile would be good, too but this is probably outside of the 1 hr limit)

Slightly different ship naming process would make my life MUCH easier. As someone who upgrades ships regularly, I have to constantly rename them. Since I have not figured out a way to edit a shipname without erasing the whole thing (if there is even a way), renaming each one after each upgrade is a pita. Plus, I really hate adding some obsolete ship to a new ultra modern stack, which encourages me to rename them, which is a pita, etc.

Currently, default ship naming convention in the design screen is:

[shipname]
[Description]

and displays in the game as:

[shipname] [shipnumber]

A way that would make life much easier, but may exceed the 1 hour limit:

[shipclassname]
[versionnumber]
[description]

and would display in game as:

[shipclass] [versionnumber] [shipnumber]

When a ship is upgraded, if the default name is in use when upgrade occurs, the [shipclass] and [versionnumber] will be updated, but [shipnumber] could remain the same. If a player assigned name was given, no name change would occur.

Or, if [shipnumber] was a separate field, a player could assign it a name, and have only the [shipclass] or [versionnum] change. Sorta like the various Enterprise versions, and would display as BeamDestroyer C (or D, or E) Enterprise or some such.

Also, why not combine some suggestions here and add two small checkboxes to each ship's listed name in the ship design menu: One check box for Obsolete, one check box for delete. Check all the ones you want obsoleted or deleted, then hit the obsolete or delete buttons, and do them all in one fell swoop.

Plus, after a obsolete command the shiplist should not default back to "all", but stay in the "user" tab. Thats a teeny bit annoying.

Long Term Tweak:

Ability to upgrade ships using a shipyard rather than credits.

I am having soooo much fun with this game. Thx.

A couple of small things I've noticed. On the Galciv 2 website (this one) when I come to the homepage it says "Welcome Null". It used to say "Welcome Doctor J" which was nicer. lol

Also, when I go to my start menu, and then the Galactic Civilizations 2 sub-menu, the small little icon for running GC2 is the same as the Windows ME trash bin. I know that's a dumb thing to ask to have fixed, but it should sort of be an image thing for SD.

I would like an option in diplomacy to tell the AI to get their ships out of my space. Its annoying to see their scouts or something else just parked near my worlds. If I did that to them, they would be annoyed.

I think the whole hardpoint system could be done better (my opinion of course). The modifiers are hard to work with, what would be perfect is the possibility to select a component, then choose it's orientation using some options (up-down-etc).

Someone above mentioned difficulty in removing items from ships in the shipyard. I've experienced this as well, but only when I try to use the boxes below the 3-D representation of the ship to remove them. I'll click on a part, remove it, then click on another part and the one I just removed is back. Removing components by clicking on them in the 3-D view works fine though.

What I'd really like to see on that screen is a checkbox option to hide jewellery parts in the row of boxes, so I can just add/remove functional bits when upgrading without having to pick them out of a long list of extras.

Here's one: make an option to view the grid. Not seeing where the tiles are makes it really hard to move ships around. Or even know that the game is tile-based in its movement...

It is in there. Click Menu. Then along the top select Interface. Under Display Options (furthest left) the second item is show grid.

Colony Management Screen: Ability to purchase the planetary improvement. This has come into play for me alot since whenever I hit a monetary windfall I go through and purchase the first factory on planets.

Lots of good ideas here, though I don't think many of them fall into the "an hour of work" category.

4. Also, even though I understand the link to planetary defense, it seems completely illogical that ships in orbit around a planet cannot retain fleet groupings. This makes them less effective when defending a planet than when in deep space. This one really rubs me the wrong way.

I argued for that in the beta and lost.

5. need a [split fleet] button. Either I missed something, or either I can only merge existing fleets or I have to land them in orbit to get them to separate.

It's in there. With the fleet selected (and unstacked with anything else), you can 1) select disband which will disband the fleet, giving you individual ships, or 2) click the little circled X on the row of an individual ship to remove just that ship from the fleet.

Allow removal of parts while "upgrading" a design in the designer (bug or feature?). Right now if i want to replace those Stinger Mk. IIs with Mk. IIIs in order to squeeze on a new engine, i have to build an entirely new ship.

Bug, was working fine in the beta.

Add fog of war to the minimap!!!

It's there, it's just very hard to see if you have certain options turned on, like ownership.

Suppose you have captured a planet with 8 factories. You want to replace 6 of those factories with labs. The easiest way of doing that is to demolish the six factories and order 6 labs in the queue.

You don't need to destroy an improvement to build something new in the same place, in fact you get credit for part of what is already there if you just build a new improvement on top of an old one, so queueing up decomissioning commands isn't needed. In this case, just "upgrade" 6 of the factories to labs, and it will go even faster than your micromanaged method.

Diplo Sliders scaling for money/ IP. Also the ability to type in a figure.

You can type in a number, if you've patched to at least 1.0D.

The ship design feature is one of the most enjoyable features of Galciv2! The openess of the design is terrific! One minor improvement I'd like to see is the "lights" option. Make them translucent and blinking similar to the ships on Satr Trek Bridge Commander. Currently they are more like painted on spots.

I don't know if this is possible, but the Combat Viiewer is so enjoyable watching your custom ships battle, it would be nice to have the option to save the films like the VCR replays from flight simulators.

I don't know if this is possible, but the Combat Viiewer is so enjoyable watching your custom ships battle, it would be nice to have the option to save the films like the VCR replays from flight simulators.

Tweak: Diplo Sliders scaling for money/ IP. Also the ability to type in a figure. I've been playing on games were aliens had hundreds of thousands (maybe a mil) of influence points asking for trades. Sliding the bar quickly gets into trouble. you can click left or right to decrease/increase by 1 or up down for 10. When its that much I'd like to see 100 and 1000 increments. There's some things I was trading like techs.. once I get their cash or if they don't have any I still try and get some IP out of 'em. Which they will agree to but its frustrating trying to get say 3000 out of a million.

Also, it would be nice if clicking and holding increased the amount (even nicer if the rate gradually ramped up)

I know I'm kind of a freak and try to pay ONLY the amount of credits i have to, but getting it within 1 or 10 can be a pain even when you (or they) only have a few thousand credits/ip

So, I've thought it over. Here's one that should be quick and easy, that I'd love to see.
The ability to color the fog of war/unexplored areas. Right now, I have trouble telling the difference between the black of space, the dark grey of unexplored, and the light grey of explored. I'd love to have the fog of war in say a dark blue or be able to customize that when I create my civilization/race.
Still though, just putting a toggle in the options for a red fog of war would work.

At the moment attacking ships always fire 1st which usually ( not always ) ensures that the attacker wins, sometimes the defending ships don't even get a chance to fire a single shot which smacks in the face of realistic combat somewhat. Would it be difficult to implement simultanious combat so both ships or fleets fire at each other at the same time? I feel that this would add something to the game that it is missing and allow for a besieged side to lay out it's last desperate defences with at least a hope of a miracle. Fleets in orbit, not just ships in orbit. I have noticed that an attacker attacking one of a players worlds gets the luxury of only fighting one defending ship at a time.

Great game btw, I curse you all for the bags under my eyes. My wife curses you, my kids curse you. Keep up the good work

I dunno if this will get the green light now but you can keep it in mind for later if you like it... but I've been thinking about asking for resources to have their own color, habitable planets to be a brighter white than non-habitable. It doesn't show up unless you uncovered the "fog of war" so it doesn't eliminate need for scouting.

I was also thinking you could link it to some techs past Stellar Cartography.. like "Stellar Navigation" "Adv Stellar Navigation" "Superior Course Charting"

Maybe the last one gives a +10 to speed (which in game results ships get a +1 move ) .

Well, not bad eh ?

If Captured Trade good buildings provide no benefit it would be handy if they were auto destroyed when you conquered the planet. As it is I can't get rid of them. The same is true for Captured Manufacturing capitals, tech capitals etc

Dano

May have already been mentioned:
Upgrading:
1). Add a hotkey.
2). You know that "i" information window? Make it possible to upgrade there, so I don't have to seperate my stacks to upgrade.

Renaming (built ships):
1). Stupid blank field! Why allow the arrow keys to reposition the insertion cursor if the very first key I press is going to clear the whole name field? Possible tweaks: 1). Don't clear the name field. Make the player hold down delete. 2). Only clear the entire field if the user presses something such as Control-Backspace. 3). Place a 'clear field' button.
2). Allow renaming to happen via the 'i' information window.

Naming stars and the ability to keep playing after you won.

It's hard to believe that not many people mentioned this before. But I tend to design a new custom race including ships every game. I find it very annoying having to obsolete all the previous designed ships from other custom races. I played one game as normal Drengins and they didn't seem to have the ships I designed as a custom race. So it just seems the game handles the custom races as one race when saving your custom designed ships. It's just silly having to obsolete all sorts of funky looking ships that were designed with another type of hullstyle enabled...

Perhaps all hulls of a certain size could be given the same number of anchor points so that items placed on other items would still connect properly.

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet but one thing I would love to have changed is the function of the "W" keyboard button. As an avid Civ4 (and Civ3, Civ2, ect) player I am used to having that button make the unit wait and move you to the next unit. Its almost habit for me to press it but here it sets your ships off on aut-explore. Its incredibly annoying to have a major battle about to begin and the first unit to come up isnt the one I want to attack with first, so I press "w" to get the next unit and it sends my fleet off, using up the movement points.

More UP meetings, or maybe more than one thing to vote on at these meetings. I find it hard to believe that all the leaders of the galaxy assemble only once every 30 weeks (i think thats right) to discuss just one thing.

Also, the ability to select topics to come up for vote would be cool. maybe if you were president of the UP

The choice of accepting an Influence victory or not.
Currently I find it very hard to achieve a military victory at times as when I stop to consolidate I win through influence!