Suggestions

There was a thread below here with was Suggested list of changes started by IBNobody with several suggestions already present.

When I found a probe early in the game, at the end of each turn the cursor would focus on the probe, even when I was clicked on my scout ship before I hit the turn button. Other loss of focus issues similarly occurred through the game.

Also in my game, one AI built at least 60 Corsairs to attack the Space Sharks. Since my probe was nearby, I got to watch the AI throw them, one at a time, at the shark. The shark barely noticed, but I waited a few minutes before my turn began.

~SDC~

I submitted a thread a few days ago suggesting spending sliders for each planet and/or spending governors for use with different types of planets (high quality, low quality, frontier, conquered, etc.). There seemed to be a lot of support for it.

-Dave

~SDC~

Yeah, I had posted a list of things...

I agreed with Dave's slider idea, but I also put a vote in for "Trade Goods" (i.e. getting a credit refund for unspent paid production). That kind of suits my playstyle better than tweaking sliders on each planet.

- Nobody

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=24113

IBNobody brings up a good point. i was speaking with Cari a few days ago about having a way to convert unused resources (when a planet would normally build Nothing), or some percentage of them, to money or research or something. This is similar to the Capitilization option in Civ3. Cari seemed to like the idea as well.

-Dave

~SDC~

Rally points for newly constructed ships.

The ability to make only partial payments to speed up ship production would be nice as well.

When you have the Planets List up, and complete your turn... please make the list refresh.

Options to filter the planets list to view only:
Uncolonised planets
Planets with idle military/social queues
Ungarrisoned planets

Similarly with the ships list:
Ships which don't have move orders
Ships which are garrisoning a planet
Filter by class, or at show show only constructors/colony ships.

Mongo not speak so good. Me say 'show show' when me mean 'least show'.

Also, while I'm at it ...

Hyperlinks or popup hints to show a brief description of the techs I'm trading (non-trivial, I suspect )

Battles showing up in the events list (the one with completed projects, etc)

Some indication that if you refuse an extortion attempt, the extorter will declare war on you this time, instead of just getting annoyed.

Conversely, a diplomatic option to put 'spin' on your diplomacy. Aggressive, placatory, humble, that sort of thing. e.g. A weaker empire should be more likely to buckle under if you're belligerent with them, but a stronger one would laugh (even harder) in your face.

If this is in the game, I don't know how to do it, but I'd like to set rally points for ships - set it up so that all ship production from planet X/Y/Z/etc goes to coordinate Y. Makes it easier to mass fleets.

Grifman

I seem to have a common problem where I'll select a ship (say, a constructor or a colony ship), click on the map to shift to the area I want to send it, and right click; despite the fact that the constructor or survey ship is still selected (as evidenced by the ship info window at the bottom), sometimes (about half the time, it seems) my first survey ship will head that way instead.

I'd like an indication in the ship list that shows me which ships haven't moved yet, and/or how many movement points are left.

Also, the "autopilot" icon doesn't refresh as soon as you set a course. You have to click another ship in the list, then click back on the one you set to auto-pilot.

Another vote for "getting a credit refund for unspent paid production" - In which I include when you're not building a social or military item but have % of global sliders set to that type of production.

Left & Right Arrows cycle thru planets in "building" screen (you currently have to click left & right arrows. Keyboards rule!

Right click (on "sort by" name) for a pull down list of "sort by" catagories in ship & planet lists.

And as mentioned above - a sortable "colonizable" list would be a big help.

Thanks for the great game! Gotta get back to it.

~SDC~

I'd still like to be able to make starbases stand out more on the mini map, especially since I tend to play on gigantic maps. I know if you zoom in they show up nicely as a "+," but trying while zoomed in to scout a gigantic map for the locations of all your starbases can get tedious. Plus, it would be handy if, on the ship list, starbase listings would indicate: 1) the color of the resource [if any] on which they're parked, and 2) whether a combat ship is co-located with them.

Also, I know I've seen others mention this--the sliders, and for that matter, other places where we enter data [e.g., when you're asking for money on the Dip screen] are way too fiddly. The sliders might be ok if you have a mouse-wheel [I don't], but, otherwise, it's way too hard to adjust them as you want. For instance, once I've got a sizable population on a given planet, if I want to load a colony ship, all I can do is slide the slider to within a couple hundred of the number I want, then, if I want to be more precise, I've gotta click the arrows and adjust it one number at a time. Needless to say, I don't often try to get more precise! And, at least on my machine, the arrows on the money thing for trading/dip are useless. More often than not, I've pressed to increase the amount, and had it decrease instead, or vice versa. And the number space is tiny, so it's a bit of a pain to click in the space and delete and type in a new amount. I know I've seen other games where entering this kind of info was much less of a bother. It seems like the sliders on the original MOO were easier to work than the ones here, and you'd think they'd have gotten even better in the last ten [?] years.

Oh, yeah--one other thing [kind of similar to something mentioned above]: if there were some way to highlight systems with known colonizable but empty planets, it would eliminate the need to keep sidenotes on paper. Since "colonizable" is a relative term, you might have to let the user fill in the blank, e.g., "Show all explored systems with empty planets of class ______ or above."

If these things were addressed, then, for me, pretty much every hint of drudgery would be removed from the game, leaving nothing but the fun, of which there's a great deal.

By the by, I'm basing this on the beta--given the horror stories, I've been afraid to download the game, which is killing me, but I don't want to have to go screwing around in my registry if I don't have to. I may end up just paying for the CD and waiting for it to come in the mail. Anyway, if my points have been addressed in the released version, forget what I said

Ooh, almost forgot: being able to zoom out some on the main map would also help when you're looking for stuff.

Sorry about the empty post :-{

I did manage to forget one thing, which I know has been raised by others in the past: it would be nice if the mini map would remain exposed when other things, e.g., the ship list, the planet list, etc, are open.

Cataleptic:

Filters for the lists are on our list of suggestions, but you do know that for now, you can sort stuff and clicking on the sort text toggles between ascending and descending, right?

Justin:

Sounds like your ships are still in orbit. You need to launch them first.

Ptom:

You can sort by how many moves are left. I'll make a note of needing to refresh.

Hrothgar: what about the tatical map (hit F9).

My list of suggestions has been updated with all those listed here.

At the social governor screen, the ability to "right click" on the social project and get a description of the social project.

Once an area is explored or FOW is gone, I want to be able to find a planet again when I hear about it again, without having to take notes as I play.

For vessels in explored or clear of FOW areas, I should be able to find alien ships I hear about, at least that are "in sensor range".

There are many keyboard equivalents still missing, such as for OK or Done buttons.

In renaming mode (for example) can we select to change, instead of having to press delete or backspace so much? By STC, I mean such as Shift+End to select, then type to replace.

We want "way points" for ship navigation. Sector sweep is nice, but I want custom 'sweeps' or courses. Select ship, hold down Shift, and left click for destination one, left shift click for destination point two, and so on...

For some reason, Auto Survey stops working when there are no objects in sensor range, and the ship just stays still . . . seems as if it should still "survey" when we say "survey"...

The Diplomacy graph is still not connected in my game. I think. Maybe I'm just zero diplomatic, lol.

CariElf:
Yes, I know about the sorting... filtering's not something I need, just something I'd like

Others:
Depending on what the AI does with surplus production, and how closely it micromanages the distribution sliders, getting cash for surplus shields/hammers could seriously throw the game out of whack. Unless the rebate-rate was punitive, well-developed worlds would gush cash. Perhaps something more subtle, like a 10% increase in tax revenue for each idle queue...

~SDC~

Can you construct Space Cities? If not it would be neat to have if you don't have enough planets or something.

If Star Bases are like cities than I apologize in advance.

CariElf: No, it happens even with launched ships. For example, in the game I was just playing, I decided I wanted to redirect a colony ship to a better planet mid-flight; clicked on the colony ship, clicked in the galactic map, right-clicked on the new planet, and the survey ship (which already had an autopilot course set!) changed course to go to that spot instead of the colony ship.

Add in multiplayer. It's sad to think a game with this much potential left out an obviously clear ingredient. Hell, from what I heard of MOO3 one of the few things keeping people going despite the bugs IS the multiplayer.

I'd like Auto Scout for scouts, so I don't have to manually send them everywhere. I find it really frustrating having to explore manually.

Also I'd prefer the Social/Military/Research slider was on a planetary level, or (perhaps better) associated with the Governors so I can have early planets focus solely on Social. I find that often smaller planets can't build _anything_ unless I have 100% social production, but that messes up my bigger planets.
So I like to have a Governor who looks after little planets, focussing on Moral and Environment, being able to make them 100% Social as well would help greatly with avoiding the micromanagement side of colonising less than optimal planets.

ThunderFoot.
P.S. Great to see GalCiv out. Seeing I first come on the scene with it in OS2. Stardock have come a long way. Congratulations.

~SDC~

It's a specialist single player game, Feannag. Why ruin it with multiplayer? (Similar argument with MMORPGs - why ruin them with a single player mode? It'd be a completely new and *different* game).

As for suggestions... Invent a way for a 56k6 modem to download at T1 speeds. ***Please!!!***

Damian

~SDC~