Favourite Events:

Dread Lords - In theory at least. They are usually wiped out pretty fast, if they appear late in the game. Early game though, they can become quite powerful.

Plague and Disease - My favourite race are the Yor. 'Nuff said.

Toursim - More money is always nice. As I usually have the biggest population, I will also get the biggest part of the tourism income.

Econ Boom - Same as above.

New minor race is appearing (Jagged Knife, I-League, Fundamentalists, etc.) - More people to conq... er, talk to.

Hated Event:

Subspace Tear - I prefer playing on Immense maps, so being forced to move at 5pc per turn is quite painful.

Events I'd like to see:

Space-monster attacks

Encounters with unknown vessels

In general, something similar to what SotS has. I want to have the feeling, that there is more out there, than just the major and minor races.

Just to follow up on that .... and kinda finish  off that one, with a lead into this one ... I know this will sound kinda crazy to some ... but, its worth developer reading time as a way of triggering ideas blah blah.

These things aka Jagged Knife are always difficult to conceptualise, if there is no military background (as such at Formation Command Level) with the Developer(s). Go find a few books on WW2 battles - there are lots of them - where the outline of the preamble and aims of a Battle are shown, along with the actions and tactics employed. For example, aka Jagged Knife ....

In Winter of 1944, there was a massive surprise attack by the Germans through the Ardennes Forrest, along the tactical Boundary between the Americans and British, with the main line of attack through a weak American Infantry Division in the Ardennes Forrest (it was there as a "rest" area, no one thought the Germans could mount a Strategic Offensive through such thick forest). It became known as "The Battle of the Bulge"..... and it nearly succeeded in smashing the Allied armies in Western Europe. It took some nifty work by General Pattern in the South, and General Montgomery in the North to counter-attack and throw them back whilst the infamous 101st US Airborne Division held Bastogne in the main line of the German Advance, totally surrounded and outgunned - the 101st did a great job holding out. The weather cleared after 5 days, which unleashed the Allied Air Forces. Pattern and Montgomery counter-attacked - and the Germans were beaten back, but it was a close run thing. All in all it took a month of hard fighting to turn things around.

That was WW2's Jagged Knife on the Western Front.

Now .... lets not go down the historical route mimicking blah blah ..... thats not the point. The point is the developer inspiration that can be attained from these kind of historical actions can be considerable.

In a GalCiv context, The Battle of the Bulge (aka WW2) was their Jagged Knife.

If you are advanced enough to be flying around space you can tell whether a star will go super nova several hundred million years in advance. But, I wouldn't mind if some of those uninhabited systems blew up and caused communication problems, or crop failures or maybe an environmental change in nearby systems. But if one of my systems blew up I would be pissed unless I was made aware, beforehand, that the star was a little problematic.

In terms of events:

Andromeda Strain: A pandemic starts from a planet and spreads. Either research the cure or slow the spread by disabling trade. Researching the cure gives large diplomacy bonuses. Researching it as a biological weapon gives you huge bonuses to invasion fleets, large diplomacy penalty.

Personally I like the Telenanth or alien artefact events more than the rest.  There's a bit of excitement when suddenly one race becomes a bigger threat that they were before.

I also like the events which mess with tourism and trade, making them as important as tax income.

I'm not particularly wild about the Jagged Knife event.

I liked the Dread Lords event but I never get to duke it out with them anymore.

As for new events, I think that it might be nice if there was one that messes with hyperspace travel in a localised area, for instance if a star with no habitable planets were to reach the end of its life and collapse into a black hole, ships might have to go around it.

Its likely this cannot be developed in one go, but could be spread over Expansion Packs enhancing as time goes on. The start point is the establishment of Supply Routes, Convoys and their protection. This fills a major gap in Galciv, the concept of Logistics - what to do in a Game Play sense with the "Rear Areas" and Combat Resupply. At present, essentially, rear areas are left alone - for sure a couple of events - but in the scheme of things, near zero happens - that would not happen for real with Logistics, their Supply and Protection.

The supply of weapons, ammunition and food is key to any invading force, whether they are Ground, Air or Space based. That spawns the concept of Supply Chains, through which the needed supplies flow. In reality today - on the ground at least - that means a constant movement forward of those supplies in land and sea convoys or by air. Transpose those Logistic Principles that exist today in the Real World into GalCiv terms, including intermediary Supply Dumps holding the supplies as forces move forward.

Once you have the base network of Supply Routes Established, that opens the door to much more gameplay in the "Rear Combat Zones" that threaten and /or enhance those supply chains. Those concepts are realistic, one of the issues in any Army is Resupply, and the protection of the resupply routes and convoys.

When those routes are translated into  GalCiv terms by fixed roots between Planetary Systems, the framework is laid for as much (or as little) activity in the rear areas as you wish, such as enemy infiltration and attacks on routes and supply dumps. The scope is near endless once the concept of Supply Chains is established in the Game, and the effect of non-arrival of supplies in front line Units - from a game design point of view, you can turn the tap on or off in terms of Logistics and related Issues depending on the effect you want. The first step is get the concept of Logistic Routes in place to build on later in expansion Packs.

I really hate the spy spam event. Considering that at times I have to deal with 50+ agents, the cost of getting rid of them is too large to handle.

I'm also not fond of the Jagged Alliance event. Sometimes I got lucky and retain core planets, but most times I lose too many core/strategic planets that really mess up the game (plus getting all my tech lead wiped out is not fun specially late game)

New events:

Industrial Accident: Causes a random planet to lose half of its Factory-class buildings, the planet gets "radiated" lowering production for X turns.

Research Disaster: A failed experiment caused a warp bubble that slows down time in a random planet, a wide area around the planet is affected causing ships to slow down and planets and mines to reduce production.

Wheel of Misfortune: Last night's episode caused massive riots, production is halted, people die, but somehow influence grows. Guess There is no such thing as bad publicity. Affects a random planet + all planets within a certain radius. Effect lasts for X turns.

Will of Wills: The Terran known as "Lucius Magnus (PhD)" started a self-help course to overcome fear, unfortunately due to a faulty translator, people misunderstood the term fear. Soldiering increased by 50 points, transports hold 50% more soldiers (per module)

White is the new black: You found a hidden button behind a dusty panel at an abandonded progenitor lab, of course you pressed the button! Resources change randomly their type.

Hardcoded stuff should be kept to a minimum anyway. Game-mechanics should never be hardcoded.

But what's the possibility for events that give side-missions?

May I propose something that would seem a bit heretic in some people's mind?

How about the capacity for the major players to PROVOKE events and major events? Like, be the ones to awaken the Dread Lord; as a form of Godzilla threashold; opening the cage to the monster you have found, to unleash them on your ennemies, as they have more to lose than you.

Or perhaps you are the one who provoke the Galaxy-wide virus?

Except that Realm Divides kind of affect you, and you alone. It's litteraly a reaction of people fearing your ascendency to Shogun.

I was thinking of maybe do stuff akin to Sword of the Stars's secret project. You stumble on a Za'ha'dum-like planet, and you are given the option to start researching its technology to awaken the owners of the place. It'll cost money, and take some time, but you may just delay that decision until you feel it's... necessary.

For what its worth, I think we can look at history for a good set of events / mega events see reply #3 for an example. To look at world history and see what plagues and or (depending on outlook) early biological warfare that played out and reeked havoc on civilizations in just our small piece of the pie would be refreshing. Not to say that we should have the option of giving blankets to a newly discovered alien civilization or anything but one has to wonder at whether or not some of the dramatic events in our own history were engineered. That being said it lends a lot of credence towards a forward thinking player that knows that x plus y will result in z. On the other side of the coin I think that any event that can be enacted due to player influence should carry a %25 chance that it backfires and the player takes end result of event. This mentality should also be carried to the AI, so for instance if an event is likely to be triggered by colonizing planets in proximity to an non-allied race the AI has to gamble on %25 chance that their civ will be adversely affected and be cognizant of such an event. However the AI shouldn't be privy to all the events, just those that are in a sense player controlled.

Or am I completely off base here? 

My desires regarding events, and especially mega-events is how they are implemented rather than specific monsters/disasters/discoveries: make sure that they apply to both the live players and the AI. 

In GCII (and GC) too many times the mega-event was detrimental to the live player, and often was of such severity that it ended the game.  Space monsters and pirates were often unstoppable, and targeted only the live player.  Given that the events were random, too often the devastating events occurred when the live player was still struggling with the AI (that's right, I didn't find the AI a walk-over) and effectively ended the game.

In GCII, a precursor "Ranger" would be discovered by a side (live or AI) that was struggling at the time.  However, the Rangers found by the AI were normally 10X the strength of those discovered by live players, and often were stronger than any fleet the live player could field. 

The result was I often disabled the mega events to avoid such sudden game-ending occurrences.  Hopefully, random events will be more balanced in GCIII.