1 - Building Update Manager, simiular to the Ship redirect Manager. So I can turn off the Autoupdate Option. There are often moments that I get a tech (stealing/invading/researching to buff one/two specific colonies) but don't want to update all planets at once. Having them autoupdating or having to circle through all colonies personally at a later state is time consuming and no fun (depends on number of planets of course). Also TotA intruduced many additional buildings and it would make it easier to switch between diffrent racial specific buildings.

2 - More "alien" planet skins. Except for some race homeworlds most planets use a semi terran skin (green/yellow/brown). I would like to see more of those nice unique coloured schemes. Also planet skin should chance when attacked by spore ships

3 - Fixing the description of the Mind Control center.

Can't think of anything else at the moment, busy playing

What is MCC?

MCC is shorthand for the Mind Control Center. You saw (and responded) to my post on what was wrong before and now with the MCC (its missing the AbilityType line).

In all versions of GalCivII the MCC does not work correctly; however, due to it having a AbilityBonus of 100 it does provide a 100% economic bonus in DL and DA (due to the game engine defaulting to the first ability, which is economics). In TA, it is not functional at all (does not flip planets faster, nor give any sort of bonus) but it still does prevent worlds from culture flipping.

It is more than an issue of just a faulty description, the actual game coding is incorrect as it pretty much prevents (not completely however) planet flipping for the Player or Builder once it has been built.

This is getting so complex and thorough that - well - i think, what we will possibly need is an eventual POLL based on the limited 5 to 10++ final priority choices taken by staff for any good reasons!
Just to comprehend the whole perspective(s).

1.) Something to help with the "cleanup" phase. There comes a point in every game that you know you've won. Whether it's Tech, economy, or military (usually a combination of all three). I know you guys use some sort of rating because one of the popups rates military rating + economy vs neighboring civilizations... have a sufficient difference unlock a tech and allow points to be spent on research?
It can be something as simple as a tech that increases terror star movement rate to something useful for cleanup...

2.) Planetary bombardment? Space superiority giving bonuses to invasion and/or giving some way to reduce a planets population. Use economics to offset this? (cost of munitions/energy?)

3.) Some way to use or be gifted with arnor tech/ships. Maybe a mega event?

That's my list... The expansion is awesome as-is though. You guys did exceptional work.

Lets see if I can list 5 things

1. Yor economy needs improvements
The Yor have a *horible* economy. Because their economic planet improvement "Efficiency Center" (Internal name) has a build limit of 1 per planet, the Yor don't get much income. The only other structure they can use is the "Recruiting center", but its also a 1 per planet improvement.

The net result is, I consider never researching collective techs, and leaving planet tiles empty the only practically way to play the Yor without tech Trading/Stealing other economic techs. The efficiency techs, and charging stalks are not a strong enough of an advantage to deal with the loss of the ability to spam economic structures.

2. Improve starbases defenses
Starbases defenses modules are only good for the short term. I find that the AI will quickly tech up to the point that any form of starbase defenses (except maybe basic) is pointless since they will not survive, and costs too many constructors.

For the short term, I would like to have ships to be able to fleet with any starbase to protect it (like terrorstars). Have the ships be attacked first would almost garentee the long term survival of a protected starbase (unless the fleet dies). Have a few special support modules for the starbase to enhance the ships protecting it, such as repair bays (for any starbase type) would help.

In the long term, I like to have the whole starbase philosophy (defenses atleast) to be throughly reviewed, but having them protected by fleets would do for now.

3. Ethics
Perhaps too late in the development process to fix now, but I have hated the philosophy in random events. The philosophy seems to be: good must suffer the penalties, while evil enjoys the rewards.

Such a view annoys me, and it seems too primative. There is no long term effects in the game (beyond bonuses and penalties). No unlocked techs, no possibility to correct wrongs of other civilizations, and no chance that certain creature or people saved from evil (or suffer at its hands) to come back to repay depts in full.

4. Make the game more modable
There are many things that you can't do with the game for one reason or another. For instance, despite having the ability to create custom troop modules, when placing such modules on ships, they are treated as having Zero capacity for purposes for lauching from orbit (so its likely such ships can't be launched).

Things I would like to be able to do is:
-Create capacity modules (like troop modules, or colony modules)
-Provide more attributes we can change for starbases (I don't believe we can design a module that can provide more hit points to the starbase).
-Unlock hard coded attributes of planet improvements.

If you need a complete list of what adjust, I'm sure the modding community will be happy to provide a complete list.

5. Fixed slidders
Nuff said.

Side_Bar_Off_Topic_Note; Download XW-Planets and you'll get a whole lot more... without the conventional raws - but, i'm working on it.

I really laughed on this one. Nice style of writing.
But Chris, dont be too nitpicking, the planetary improvement graphics are only symbolic - of course one single factory is not meant to do production for billions of people. It stands for military production on that planet. By the way - do you have ever recognized the HUGE, green glowing lines outside your house indicating the border of your planetary tile?
You are right that the style of play in result to the sliders might not be "realistic" anytime in the game, but it is in my opinion just the way the game is (and it is good);besides, you have the option to get a focus on every planet if you want. That is maybe just your style of play that is unrealistic. I personally do not "swap" production between the three sliders, but only weigh them to my need - as it is supposed to.

Just two for me...

1) In the Timeline screen, let me toggle the graphs for a particular race on and off, perhaps by clicking on them in the Legend. I, along with up to 7% of your playerbase (I'm assuming the vast majority are males), am colourblind and I can't distinguish some of the races. Is that civ I'm considering declaring war on the one with the economy 1/10th the size of mine or the one with the economy 10 times the size of mine? :SURPRISED:

2) The economy sliders. I agree with what people above have said, they've always felt a little weird. If I want to build a single colony ship on one planet, I have to cripple all scientific research and social construction in the whole empire.

Frankly, it seems to me that changing the sliders IS the best way to play. If I'm doing research, but not building ships at the moment, having anything higher than 0% on Military Production is a waste. After all, reducing it to 0 lets me increase Research spending, and reduce the amount of time spent doing it. And if I'm not building any Planetary Improvements also, I can reduce that to 0 and make Research 100%.

In other words, if you DON'T change the sliders all the time, depending on what you're doing, then you're being wasteful. Research taking longer than it must because you've got too much money spent on ships you aren't building, or planetary improvements you aren't building. Ships that take extra turns to build because you're also busy building that new morale building. Etc.

I find it faster to actually do only one thing at once, and just change sliders so whatever I'm doing at the moment is 100%. And that kind of micromanagement I not only find counterintuitive, but actively annoying... especially since I have to do it every turn.

I'd like that too. While not colourblind, I have a hard time distinguishing between Korx grey, Krynn gray and Iconian græy

 I didn't read all the post so forgive me if any of these has been mentioned.

Selecting multiple ships should allow them all to move at once, instead of waiting around for a dozen ships to move one at a time.

Allow more characters for naming ships with the ability to put the curser anywhere, like in a text editor, or auto numbering. Star Avenger 1,2,3 and so on.

Set rally points for a planet just by selecting the planet then right clicking were you want your rally point.

The ability to set a keep focus point so events don't jump you around the map. I know you can stop this but most of the time it's nice but other times it's a real pain. You could have it jump to the event but then automatically return to your focus point.

Symmetry in the ship build screen. You select symmetry x,y or z and a duplicate of the component is attached to the exact opposite point.

1) Espionage system needs to be ENTIRELY redone. It's not very good at all right now.

2) MCC not being fixed after 2 years- I don't like that either.

3) Thalan, Altarian, and Drath tech trees need some work still.

4) AI does not know when to break treaties

5) Option for 12 races

6) Agree all-X is stupid and should go- rework it?

7) Like to see events that handle politics and the UP.

These 7 things would make the game almost-perfect.

[quote3.) Some way to use or be gifted with arnor tech/ships. Maybe a mega event?[/quote]

The precursor rangers are Dreadlord/Arnorian ships...perhaps an overhaul to give them the right textures though..

Really a good job, SD people. We appreiate your efforts and skill.

1. Balance the ethical alignments. Fixing the MCC (as per many above) should be taken in context. Since the "evil" players understandibly want the nerf reversed, how about beefing up good and neutral to approach something closer to parity?

2. Starbase management can be really tedious. Boy, it would be nice to change the way they are upgraded. Maybe that is too big of a change for an update.

3. I had not played a crash-free game for a LONG time (both the TA betas and DA games). So far so good with the final release of TA, so here's hoping ... but I would just say keep an eye on stablity.

4. Give everyone at Stardock a well-deserved raise.

5. Give us time to play this game before coming out with another must-have must-play product!   

+1 for this. And by fixed, I mean give it the planet flipping bonus, not the econ bonus. For the love of all that's holy, yes. I must've complained about this a dozen times during the beta. The lack of resource mining modules with any race that doesn't have the standard factories is nearly as bad. It's like I have a choice between indefensible useless starbases with the Thalan, or defensible useless starbases with the Drengin, Korath, Yor . . .

Okay, I'm adding a third to the two I've already given. Forgive me if this has already been suggested (haven't read all the posts above) or if it's already in TotA (haven't had much time to play yet!).

3. Implement serious consequences for breaking an Alliance. They shouldn't be something the player can just make and break on a whim, especially since the AI won't. If your civ is allied to another, then I think it's safe to assume that your citizens would look on the other civ quite favourably. Therefore, possible consequences of breaking an Alliance could be:

- large empire-wide hit to morale, which only wears off slowly over time
- a fraction of your empire decides they'd rather stick with their friends in the other civ, instead of stay with such an erratic leader, and they immediately defect.

Alliances should mean something, instead of just being a tool for the player to screw over the AI.

Again, my apologies if my information is out of date and Alliances work differently now, I've only been able to play sporadically lately.

Forgot to add: Please add a checkbox to disable auto-upgrade of farms without disabling upgrades in general. Or make the game remember that I've cancelled that upgrade. As it is, I have to remember which planets have farms on food bonuses and manually upgrade everything else because if I leave autoupgrade on it'll keep trying to build a new farm.

1. Hard to not want a change to the Mind Control Center. The single most contentious building in the whole game. If you only "fix" it for TA, TA will not be competitive for MV scores however, as long as you can still get the +100% economics in DA and DL. I'm just saying...

- TA is NOT competitive for MV scores NOW, btw, because the MCC does nothing in TA.

2. Allow a mouse over or right click on the ethics choices to show exactly what technologies will be opened up by different ethical choices. The descriptions are vague and out of date after the tweaks to the ethical technologies available in TA. Right now ethics is a matter of trial and error, rather than an informed decision.

3. Allow right-clicking to auto-launch ships in orbit. You click on a planet, you see all of the little ships just sitting there. Rather than clicking on a ship to select it, then clicking AGAIN to launch it, allow auto-launching with a simple right click. You DO allow right click autolaunching from the news item that drops down the right side of the screen, but only on the turn a ship is built.

4. Thalans still seem underpowered to me, in the early game. They colony rush fine, but they just don't research fast enough to be a threat come midgame.

5. Fix the Tournament page from the in-game interface. It currently does not list the top 10 scores for a given tournament, but seems instead to just list any 10 scores (or perhaps its the bottom 10 along with your specific profile characters)


Thanks again,
~ Wyndstar

1. AI and espionage generally

I know this is scheduled for update but my first choice has to be the espionage system. At the moment I just dont like how it works, I think it needs a total revamp but at this stage I dont really have a good answer either. My last few games I have just ended up having to take the hit from agents on my planets because it takes far too much money to nullify them in the end game. almost seems like its best to take the hit.

2. Invasion screen

I actually have to admit I like the old version better, but at the same time I so like what you have done with it. I would suggest a merging of the two versions. So the current invasion screen is that the top and the old version in the middle with the world map at the bottom. That might sound a bit buzy but I think it could work nicely if designed well. While your at it give the old invation window a graphics revamp.

3. Bugs.

There are still a little too many bugs in the game for my liking, as always i think these should take priority, this is probably a waste on my list because I am sure they probably already are.

4. tech trading

Add an option to only allow trading of NON racial specific techs. I would like to have tech trading in the game but allow the civ's to keep their own flavour.

5. What everyone else said.

ok my turn. I have played with the improvements editor somewhat heavily and what I have noticed is edited items do not give galactic bonuses (bonus to civ), at least for me. In fact none of the in game one's work either and I didn't edit those. I tried them on a custom race and no dough. I'm not sure what the deal is exactly but I restored the planet improvements file to normal and I am going to see if I can get these to work if they are normal.

Goodaye,

Great job on TA and particularly the AI. Well done.

1.Redo the Espionage System. It's not fun and there's not a whole lot of strategy involved. Mainly just painful.

2.Tech Trading. Option (as stated above) to only allow trading of NON Racial specific techs.

3.A trading/mercantile focused victory condition. Somebody mentioned possession of all trade goods. Or perhaps achieve a certain level of trade income. Either way, something fairly straigthforward that allows a greater focus on this part of the game. A part which is largely ignored by many players.

4.The planetary invasion process. While I don't mind the current screen(I didn't mind the last either) I think that the 'process' needs some tweaking. There are many suggestions on the forum regarding this and I'm sure Brad has his own.

In a nutshell I'd like to request more user input (of any shape or form) into the whole process which is currently a fairly unfulfilling aspect of an otherwise excellent strategy game. I'd strongly suggest that the player needs to be more 'involved' in a planetary invasion/defence than they currently are.

5. Nope, that's covered it. Keep up the good work.

I don't mean to take anything away from anyone elses comments but I sort of like the current espionage system. You have to take a lot of time wasting an enemy's defensively stacked spies and they don't seem to care to use them to spy on you (fix those perhaps?) but I like the overall concept of it just fine.

Great game but always room for improvement so . . .

1) Rejigging of diplomacy. At the moment you get a free list of ships and technologies with whoever you're talking to, it would be nice if the AI would 'withold' certain information - just like there are some techs it won't trade there should be some techs/ships it doesn't want you to see (espionage could negate this of course). Trading ships could also do with some work - firstly by giving some indication of just where the ship you want to trade actually is (right click - minimap) - it makes a hell of a difference if the new battleship I'm ordering is going to take one turn or twenty turns to arrive, and at the moment there is no way of telling. The AI could also be more pro-active in trading for ships. And planets for that matter.

2) More information available to you in the galactic council. Currently I am voting on issues whose ramifications are hidden from me - issues to do with starbases, trade routes etc. need some information on who has what so I know what the effect will be. Even basic info on my own empires stats would be helpful.

3) More control of colonisable planets on startup. At the moment you can choose number of planets and habitability but there doesn't seem to be any choice on how frequently you want planets with extreme environments (that require colonisation techs) to show up.

4) Some more information on how economic starbases are affecting my trade routes. This seems to be information that is largely hidden so I never know how much influence these are having and consequently whether they are worth building or not.

5) Ethical choices to be clearer and more far reaching. Maybe I'm being thick but I am often unsure whether the choice I'm about to make is going to effect just the named planet or my whole empire, the game never states this clearly. Also the choices are sometimes so negligable (-5 BC, +1% research etc.) as to be strategically uninteresting.

That should do it! As you can see much of what I'd like tweaked is to do with presenting information in a more transparent way so I could feel more in the loop when making decisions. Hope some of these make it into a patch.

Why do you ask that? You SHOULD know, because only some hours ago, in this thread https://forums.galciv2.com/310938 you posted an answer to the MCC-issue: