first impressions

9) Have you try to click on all the buttons located right to the minimap. There is one that display cultural influence. It is the first on the seconf row of icons, the onewith the 3 intertwined disk.

11) Not sure to understand exactly what you are searching: there is a detail screen for each planet, showing all bonuses, imorvement and allowing you to destroy the colony. If you are searching for the formula, I don't think it will be here, since that is the kind of things that will surely be tweaked.

1, 2, and 3) We'll be using mouse-over text to explain some of these things.  Like now, you can roll-over your morale values in the planet screen to see why your citizens feel the way they do.  Or, on the foreign relations report, you get a run-down of why they like or dislike you. More will be added over time.

4.) These have some tweaking to be done.

4.4) Anomalies will randomly regenerate in the final game...this just hasn't been put in yet.

5) You'll end up getting different robots based on your race and your alignment, so that screen still have some dynamics left to implement...but technically it's about the same as the GC1 'Research Complete' screen.

6) When the turn button re-appears that's the games way of saying "Hi, the AI is done and you're free to play your next turn." without being too obnoxious.  If you guys have better ideas though, please let us know...we'll never turn down a good idea

7) These wont change (for AI reasons) but I am trying to determine a way for ships to be able to expore anomalies they pass on the way back to friendly space.

8) We're looking into scrollbars at the moment, but remeber that there's a list of techs you can currently research in the upper left corner if you want to quickly select a tech.

10) Hmmm...I've actually seen a 7 year old build a ship that was reasonably impressive (it was symmetrical, with wings on either side, and engines in the right places), so I tend think that the system can't be TOO hard, but if it is then that's why we'll be pre-designing alot of ships for the player.

11) Mouse-Over the morale value at the top of the screen to get the run-down on how this is calculated.

11.5 - 11.7) The race configs are still being tweaked, and still need to have their political parties set, but should all be fairly even when you start.

12 - 13) Try playing without WinAmp and see if this fixes that sound problem.  Otherwise look in your "Sounds and Audio Devices" manager in the windows "Control Panel" and make sure your sound it turned up to a reasonable level.

Thanks for the feedback!

7) It would be nice for a survey vessel on a long trip back to be able to do more than contact new races, so I'm all in favor of adding the ability to hit anomalies on the way back

10) I don't see what the problem with the ship design screen is. It's easy to put the parts I want where I want them. Might make it a little easier by making the parts "snap to nearest mount point" within a greater distance than they currently do, not all the extras have icon graphics in the pick list, and there's an issue with some mount points not displaying small placed items until you actually click on them. Other than that, the only way I can really see making it any easier is to add a "place pair" button that adds a pair of the selected item symetrically, and make both the place and place pair button intelligent enough to put weapons and engines in reasonable places, if the place button doesn't do that already.

Or maybe instead of "place pair", just make it so that if you place one weapon/engine/whatever with the "place" button, it places the new item on the centerline in an appropriate position and remembers that that one was placed automatically, and if another component of the same type is placed automatically, it could move the first so that the first one and the new one are symetrical. Maybe even hint the mount points so that the "place" button knows what the programmer thinks is appropriate for that mount point.

Hmmm.... Actually, it would be nice to be able to click and drag a placed item (engine, weapon, life support, whatever) from one mount point to another, but that might be difficult to program.

I don't think seperating the ship design into two steps is going to make it any easier. You're doing the exact same thing in both screens, it's just a matter of are you placing things that affect the space remaining/cost of the ship, or are you adding extras. Seperating it would just mean that you'd have an extra step, and that in some cases, you'd have to go back from step 2 to step 1 if you ran out of mount points and needed to add an extra specifically to get more mount points (yes, this has happened to me, I'm glad I didn't have to go back).

This isn't the first time that splitting ship design into two seperate screens has been suggested, but noone has every tried to explain specifically how they're trying to simplify things and how they expect it to be easier.

Re: Survey vessel can it actually be given some degree of weapons, say 1 pt ? I've encountered numerous anamoly that say it will upgrade the ship's weapons 1 or 2 pts and nothing happens. I think the + HP works but as far as attack and defense goes its not doing anything.

Also are there going to be random ships like corvettes, scouts, etc. like in GC1 or have I been unlucky and not seen it yet ?