Ideas for Galciv 1.2

Heh. Well interesting.

I was also hoping for modders also being able to mod in soundbytes or small music files too.

'Nother idea, this time for the GUI. On the Planet screen, it would be nice to either have a popup or option to use scroll wheel for things like factories, research and morale improvements. If you do a popup, you could have them broken into categories:

Factories
Research
Moral
Trade Goods
SuperProjects
GalacticeAchievments

If left as a scroll wheel, click on the improvement type and scroll up or down to pick which one you wish build. Assuming you had all the techs, you could go from Basic Factory to Industrial Sector. Natually, you could do both, right mouse for popup and scroll wheel for...well, scrolling.

You could implement the same type of thing in the shipbuilder as well (more for scrolling on basic type, since you already have tabs).

It's been mentionned a couple weeks ago

A multilayered map with some portals between. In HOMM, it was a huge difference in gameplay not to know what was on the other side (underground). You could have:
- time limited portals
- moving portals
- ennemies appearing out of the blue at any given time
- (farfetched) portals that would open up to an old lost game at the exact time you lost it, so you get another chance for comeback against those damn Drengin... or see them kick you ass a second time invading your new galaxy...

Anyway it goes, I'm sure this kinda feature would add tons of gameplay possibilities without being too much of an assle in AI development

-When I dessign a ship, I often switch between different styles. I would like the ships dessigned under one style to not appear under the others, for they always appear but heavily butchered.
-Rather then having the 3 colour bars for selecting a colour, have a full palet like you would find in any art program
-Permanent Wormholes(also different looking to be able to tell them apart from the temporary ones)
-Have your race image appear in a few windows, giving users more reason to create custom race images.
-Allow secondary races to expand and pose an actual threat
-Allow building/tile placement to have more impact then just carrying a tile bonus. Ex: Two factories next to each other give a bonus of 2%, three adjacent 3%, etc.
-'Storm' event that appears and travels the galaxy map, damaging ships, slowing world production, etc when passed through

You don't think random, super-flexible transport portals would be a problem for the AI?

I'm interested in seeing a standardisation of the GUI across all windows, true floating resizable windows, a forum-standard 'pick what version of factory you want' ability, and an actual diplomacy system, with communication and politics rather than simply trade.

EDIT - ZOMG yes, and a proper colour system. Trying to mix colours is very, very painful, and just a brightness slider would be super-useful.

One of my favorite things in Master of Orion 2 was capturing enemy ships using space marines. I'd love to see these option in GC 2. I would always have quite a collection of enemy ships by the end of a game with MOO2.

PBAR

@Japata: Great Ideas, I would love to see portals of some kind as well, maybe a portals starbase.

I think the portals to another savegame is a great, yet crazy idea. Imagine the AI using that feature. One second you're beating the crap out of some civ, the next a huge portal opens and unleashes that civs monster fleet from 2 games back, looking to save their brethren in another dimension (stargate anyone?)

I'd like to see greater abilities for ships equipped with a "survey" module - like to be able to actually check out a planet BEFORE you colonise it to see if it has bonus squares etc. Also, I'd like to be able to see ALL the potential of a planet - future terraform squares etc perhaps listed in brackets after the "Class." (eg. Class 9 (3) meaning 9 squares and three more when terraformed...) On the subject of terraforming, it would be really cool if you could add a tech along that line that would allow you to construct or buy extra squares for those planets that are going gangbusters, only to run out of space to build stuff on (mainly that planet with 700% manufacturing bonus that you built your manufacturing capital on!)

I'd like custom planets really be custom so that when edit them and give a texture from one of pics in the GFX/planets folder they'll looking that pic both inside when building improvements and outside when viewing it from above.
I'd also like t be able to make better use of the minor races such have as vessels are minions ready jump at you backen call

I’d like to be able to add [ability] tags to hulls. Also, I would love to be able to mod the game so that different invasion tactics only work if you’ve different types of modules...

While they did some good improvements to the shipyard, it is still a pain in the south end to rotate the ship around. This could be done in 2 different ways.

First way would be to use the up, down, left, and right arrows to rotate the model. Having to manually use the mouse to rotate the model with the too small little rotate area buttons is a pain. Having to do that while placing and looking at a new part is real poor way to do this. Also the model needs to stop when the button is released instead of coasting a little further along.

The second way to do this might be a little better. Since there is already code that allows the model to be moved around in the viewing area, it might be possible to just have the rotate kick in by pressing and holding say the "Alt" or "Ctrl" keys while left clicking. Again the ship model needs to move only while the command is working and NOT coast on after release.

For my way of looking at the rotate buttons they work opposite of how it seems they should. European drafting views versus American style I guess. Maybe an invert switch would help here. As I use a large trackball, the intuitive way to rotate is that the direction the ball rotates is the same way the model should roatate. Just as if the model were inside a clear lucite ball.

The addition of the M for move component and the ability to load the "entire" ship (with components) now for updating are good things that I was going to suggest.

The ability to see what planet is focused in what production via the colony management.

I'd like to be able to offer a bid for those races about to be completely taken over. You know! The ones that say they have been beaten and that they are going to give all their rescources and planets to some other race because they made the best offer. Whay can't we see what other races have offered and make a bid of our own if we can afford it. This would make a cool addition to the game. That's if it's possible, I don't know much about modding. Noobie thought!

more jewlery
unique hulls for each alien species, and several more for custom races and minors
revamped minors
more technology
more planetary structure... unique ones for different races
more planetary types and looks
asteroid mining, asteroid construction
an ability to declare war diplomatically due to xxx
a tag line asking the AI to remove it's offensive ships from your influence area via a creation of an actuall physical border ala Civ4...
some of the other excellent ideas written by you people


-N

The further into the game I delve, the more I realize how much stuff is not exposed to modding. Which is a damned shame; why bother using XML if you’re not gonna let me hang clauses on everything?

why bother using XML if you’re not gonna let me hang clauses on everything?

Because that's not what XML is for?

XML is not a programming language. It is not a scripting language. You can't arbitrarily add stuff to an XML file and expect the game to understand what you mean. The game will understand exactly and only what it expects to see.

I have a couple of new items for the shipyard. Once the parts are placed, specifically items like the engines, weapons, sensors and the like, If you are trying to do an upgrade it would be nice for a description of selected item on the ship to appear. This can be done by the selector on the left "jumping" to the item currently selected. As there is a description there that would solve the problem.

Also working with the ship building screen more last night, the little rotate buttons ABSOLUTELY SUCK! Here I am trying to look at a spot and I cannot get the rotate to stop where I want. I think the best solution is to press "Alt" (or Ctrl) and left click mouse and move mouse around to rotate the ship. This will give the best control and viewing while constructing a new ship. This should work similar to the click "move around view screen" that it currently has. Hate to say it but the programmer/designer for this "tool" is not a 3D artist person. Seriously frustrated with it.

In addition I found that a "multiple Item select" would be quite a time saving feature. Say there are 3 items that you want to delete or edit all the same way. I would be easy to do with Shift + click and then do the change wanted.

Because that's not what XML is for? XML is not a programming language. It is not a scripting language.

Correct me if I’m wrong:
eXtensible
Markup
Language

So if I can’t extend, why bother? And I totally get that:

The game will understand exactly and only what it expects to see.

. What I am asking is that the game designers allow the game to understand certain commands that it does not currently understand. Telling the game that any attribute can be added to anything in GC2Types.xml would be a major undertaking, but would certainly not be impossible...

some more stuff...



variety in systems.. i.e. more suns, more/less planet variety...
more planet types
asteroid belts
multi mooned planets
more space events

I think the minor races should just be unplayable races. And when they get a Hyperdrive they will appear on the minimap as a race, and then when a major race dies the strongest minor race will take its place in the UP.

why not give more unexplored planets a light defense force? not much just enough so you cant just send out a explo but first has to have the right research to be able to build some light assault vessels

They need to take a cue from Sid Miers Civilization 4 and create a better way to manage savegames, the current system is clunky as heck compared to civ4.

I'd love to see the ability to use more custom races in a game without having to eliminate the original races.

Also, it would be GREAT to have negative abilities, so races could load up on other positive ones if they felt they could deal with the handicap. Someone wrote a small mod for this, but it doesn't/can't do enough, since there is a maximum of 4 'options' to choose from. ie; there are 4 options of "influence" to choose from already, so any negative modifier would have to eliminate one of the positive choices.
I've tried manually modifying tne My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\"x".raceconfig files, but the game just eliminates the negative entries.

I would like to see transports not dissappear on me after invading a planet.

Is there a way to mod it so they don't? And also, if I construct a battleship with a transport module, does it disappear after planetary invasion still?

Also: Link

I would like to have an planet improvement "colonize other planet in starsystem", because colonizing in huge or giantic galaxy takes too much time.