Ideas That Could Have Made My GalCiv2 Experience Better...

from GalCiv2 Forums

- The elimination of those irritating constructors, in exchange for an on-sight Galactic Construction Company, or competing construction companies... that can build the starbases when they get payed or commisioned to do so. Managing the constructors annoys me. It ruins the immersion, and it is a chore of numbers, stats, and clicking in between loading screens. The idea of dealing with grubby, flannalette wearing alien construction bosses with some sort of diplomacy screen sounds fun.

But honestly, constructors are simply not cool enough to warrant such boring twiddling about...


- Instead of putting Life Support systems and such things on the outside of the ship...where they kinda ruin the flow and design eye-candy of the ships.. and are needlessly at risk (immersion again) to enemy fire..... perhaps in the ship designing stage.. there can be a meter on the side of the screen.. that will be near the actual ship... which can be used for interior space objects.

Just pop your life support and armour ball thingies in the meter and be done with them.


- Automated Survey ships.

1+ bonuses aren't worth a slower game. I want the game to be quicker, and I want it to be more fun. And Surveying quickly gets bland, repetitive and boring. And it's not like you're going to awaken anything potentially dangerous and exciting with Surveying anyway...


- More mysticism and quirkiness and the GalCiv Universe. And more maturity in the storytelling.

It would really help enriching my overall gameplay experience. Like throwing some sugar into my coffee.. if you know what I mean. The D-grade Sci-fi should at least be a B-grade Sci-fi. People, imho, don't want the old, lesser sci-fi...but something a little more powerful and intelligent.


- Better looking ships overall.

Smashing unworthy fleets of your enemies.. with deadly and hard-earnt fleets of your own.. is half the fun of this game. Some of the designs and parts I've seen can be described as "Whack". Right now, I'm thinking of more organic and simplified designs. Don't get me started on those Korath ships..



I've currently got Dread Lords and Dark Avatar... and so I'll have a look at these apparent other ones that seemingly appeared out of nowhere...
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
- Automated Survey ships.

1+ bonuses aren't worth a slower game. I want the game to be quicker, and I want it to be more fun. And Surveying quickly gets bland, repetitive and boring. And it's not like you're going to awaken anything potentially dangerous and exciting with Surveying anyway...
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After selecting the survey ship, hit the "A" key. It will then path to the closest anomaly to claim it, then to the next and next...until there are none left w/in it's life support range/the map.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


I like the inside components idea.

- Automated Survey ships.
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Yep, see above for the answer to your prayers. lol you poor bugger... how long had u been moving them manually?

And more maturity in the storytelling
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Actually I really like the tone, there is so little humour amongst sci-fi these days. It reminds me a little of Phil Dick, which is cool for me. Still, I think the writing leaves room for the darker imagination as well, is it a grittier realism in particular you were after? Or just seriousness?

Just curious on this.

People, imho,
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I believe this may be a conceptual error.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there can be a meter on the side of the screen.. that will be near the actual ship... which can be used for interior space objects
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I would certainly use that sort of feature to create the 'original' floor-plans of the real ships found in X-Com for the X-Worlds fleets - that's a given.

But, read on; someone could always create an entirely new set of 'S99' components by designing the whole resource through an external 3D prog (WITHOUT the overly costly 3dMax, btw) & make this system ready for internal patterns processing. Hard-Points included.

Adding anything (via mod folders) is rather easy - the trick is to create such stuff using a coherent method and comprehensive steps.

I was considering an alternate asset for my mod a few weeks/months ago, but the task is either long and complex or not even worth the trouble *because* the default engine wouldn't really handle it (yet, not without taxing the runtime lag in giga-stack values).

Thus in-code changes made by SD-Coders would be essential.

Variety in parts or hull elements can enhance the level of creativity given to players in great lengths.
Including some kind of control over "internals" of ships. I could even foresee a feature driven capacity for additional gameplay options with such resource(s). Troops IN a transport, being just one of many other possibilities.
;)

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
is it a grittier realism in particular you were after?
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Nothing that changes the overall game, but instead enriches it.

I believe the game kinda stumbles because of how it washes away meaning and it's own 'flavor' with pointless chores, repetitiveness, and logical improbabilities. Like..when I was playing Dark Avatar and I had to do the same scenario map twice for 2 different scenarios... only I had to do more anamolies after I cleaned them up the first time around, I had to do more of the same research, re-build the starbases with constructors(sigh), and my previous political reputation with the other races was erased. A space "Shockwave" cannot cause all of this.

The humour of GalCiv tends to grate me after something like that happens. Also, you only need to read humorous text once. The second time around... I really don't care that much. The humor dies quickly.

Also, the "Stronger, more technologically advanced bad guys of the Galaxy are coming to hurt you" plotline has been a staple of sci-fi for almost forever. And I think GalCiv suffers a bit because it tries to do this after the popular Babylon 5 shows, The Stargate shows, Lexx and various other sci-fi have done also this to the death... but with armies of professional writers.. who are able to create more immersive Universes that have more thought out characters, storylines, environments, and bad guys/girls. In sci-fi games, I tend to think that the gameplay and the story, environments..etc.. are tied together.

The cartoonish side of GalCiv asks a little too much from me.. for me to get into the game at times.

I'd rather be in the game, and not in my chair, constantly clicking, and having the imagine all the time.

I wish there was more in the Galaxy that I am playing in.

- Like Ships that have the abilities that were in the game Ascendancy.
- More dialogue variety and complexity in the diplomacy.
- Civilization threatening bad guy antagonists (so many places GalCiv can can go with this).
- Super weapons.. like planet killers, motherships, and star destroyers.
- A pre-game typed automatic individual ship naming system (Capital Ships must be named...but I do not want to do it all the time).
- Allied Civilization Super Projects.
- Small scenarios playing themselves out for me.
- Nefarious Super Projects of Evil and Destruction.


That's all I can think of now...

And sure some ideas may not make the game balanced.. but if they only appeared on a higher difficulty setting... then it wouldn't be so bad. It would also add more re-playability to GalCiv.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Variety in parts or hull elements can enhance the level of creativity given to players in great lengths.Including some kind of control over "internals" of ships. I could even foresee a feature driven capacity for additional gameplay options with such resource(s). Troops IN a transport, being just one of many other possibilities.
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Yeah, having something like the insides of a ship visable.. where you can see little soldiers in their quarters shining their shoes, crewman maintaining the big guns, and the Captain in the command chair sounds cool.

Though, I don't see how anyone is really going to make that happen.. because it doesn't really work with overall gameplay.. unless Pirates are actually going to raid, board and loot...instead of blowing their loot and pay into small bits all over the damn galaxy. A Pirate board and raid minigame that is similar to the planetary invasion screen sounds great.

You should loose money with cargo ships when the pirates attack. And when your ships approach the pirates..the pirates should run and dissapear into their little Pirate Hideout. Real pirates also take over ships so they can later turn a profit. GalCiv pirates simply do not work an many levels.

..hah. What can I say, GalCiv is a long game..and I tend to think.

And I wish I could work a 3-D creation program. But everytime I even look at a program like Blender... my soul bleeds.

And if I could work with one... it'd be about 30 somethin' time lucky.

Who knows.... I may later give it a try. Again.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
- Using waypoints helps to simplify dealing with constructors (and any other mass ship movements). Combine with governors for more ease of management.

- A to automate survey ships, W to auto explore. Double click a ship to see options like auto survey and auto explore, and to see the hotkeys for the actions.

- You can scale down ship components to be practically invisible and/or place them on the bottom of ships to make them essentially invisible. (I don't entirely disagree about having all modules external but I consider this to be trivial or subjective.)

- Ship appearance is entirely subjective. I think the ships look great and I like the diversity of designs between the races. Not to mention you can fully customize and create your own designs if you don't like the stock designs. If you want to play Korath you can always change their ship style to something you like (if such a thing exists). GC2 has a crazy amount of configurability and flexibilty, IMO.

- Story line / depth. I guess you can call that an issue but I think it's also subjective as a lot of folks are into the GC2 lore, moreso than in most games I play and follow. I personally play the game in sandbox mode and the different races are little more than containers for stats and AI styles to me. I have zero interest in campaigns, story, or lore - I just want to crush.