Stock exchanges shouldn't have less economy bonus than a bank!!!!

Monor Races!! They should be exactly like the other races, only smaller. I am sick of how they can't trade ships, starbases etc. Their units have unlimited range. The suddenly appear with all known techs. They put influence bases everywhere. They are just rediculous the way they are. I love the idea of minor races, but make them normal.

Why is it that race can have a certain tech, but not one that preceeds it. Not only that, they will pay money for the less advanced tech. Makes no sense. A race should be required to have a preceeding tech before it can get the next one up the list.

I can see ships in fog of war!! And no matter what, I can always see the ships in orbit around any planet.

Wish there was a popup after a spaceport is built. That way, I don't waste turns before I realise I can build a ship.

Example: I have a ship called viper 123. It is a viper class ship. I upgrade it to a viper 2. However, it still keeps the designation viper 123. Can't tell what it is by it's name. It becoms confusing.

Transparency!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but it seemed so blatantly obvious that I couldn't risk it not being mentioned:

Racial Attributes. Why can't we give ourselves handicaps in certain areas (ie; -30% in Soldiering for 3 points, or 10% in planet quality)? Alot of the basic races appear to have "weaknesses" as well as strengths, so why can't custom races have the same?

As well, I think we definately need more diplomatic options. Telling an ally to enact a trade embargo on one of your opponents, for instance, or asking alien warlords to help you defend a planet/system against incursion, maybe. *shrugs* I just know as a political animal I'm rather unsatisfied by how little I can manipulate my opponents.

I also wouldn't mind seeing some new weapons/armour types.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but it seemed so blatantly obvious that I couldn't risk it not being mentioned:

Racial Attributes. Why can't we give ourselves handicaps in certain areas (ie; -30% in Soldiering for 3 points, or 10% in planet quality)? Alot of the basic races appear to have "weaknesses" as well as strengths, so why can't custom races have the same?

As well, I think we definately need more diplomatic options. Telling an ally to enact a trade embargo on one of your opponents, for instance, or asking alien warlords to help you defend a planet/system against incursion, maybe. *shrugs* I just know as a political animal I'm rather unsatisfied by how little I can manipulate my opponents.

I also wouldn't mind seeing some new weapons/armour types.


Edit: ACK! Sorry, I had some browser problems.. apparently I sent this multiple times. Delete the others, if anyone can (since I don't seem to have that option.. x.X)

Anyone had a problem like below ? i edit ships a lot, and when i load a saved game the build list for ships, it contains ALL previously delted or obsoleted designs. Any way to make that stop ?

First off, great game, I bought it the day you guys did the release and have been very happy with it.

I read through a couple pages of these user-recommended tweaks but since I am at work, going through all 11 pages was a bit much, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned:

1) On the planet-production screen where the various planet improvements, super projects & trade items are listed, it would be nice if right at the top of the list of this stuff, much like in the ship design menus, there were 3 tabs that said 'Planet Improvements', 'Super Projects', and 'Trade Items'. When none are selected, all the improvements and such are displayed, but when they are selected individually, the appropriate items show up. This would be useful since often when I am checking which planets have what, if I have gotten behind the construction of super projects & trade items, the list gets somewhat overly long and its a pain to keep scrolling the list to add the basic planet improvements.

3) Spying-improvement research (gain +x% per level of research)

3) Negative racial attributes; I am repeating what another poster has said as well, I think it would be a good idea to allow players to select negative racial attributes to gain points they could put in other attributes, with a maximum number of negative points allowed. The only issue is that this would likely force SD to rebalance the AI races.

4) Make a hotkey for going through owned planets in the planet-construction screen, instead of having to hit the previous/next buttons at the top

5) Hotkey for scrolling through 'inactive' ships, ie ships that have no orders such as freighters who arrived at their destination after all the trade-slots are filled.

6) Events log of events, includes planets being taken over via influence, freighters arriving at destinations, being attacked, etc. Its too easy to quickly click the 'ok' button of these event notifiers without seeing where they happened.

7) Playing the campaign and changing the default player stats should not alter the human SD-made race. This is kind of stupid really since theres no way to reset the Human race abilities to their defaults so after I played the campaign, I had to 'make up' new abilities for the humans which was annoying since their settings should not have been altered in the first place. The campaign player race should be its own thing that does not alter anything except perhaps the custom-race slot. This is a must-have, not optional.

8) Custom AI Race Creation, players should be able to create custom races they can play against (ala Space Empires IV) via the same interface they create their own race with, then save it and load it up as an opponent-controlled race in the non-campaign gamemode. Since the AI plays based on its abilities and this is already being done when the player alters the humans in the campaign mode (see recommendation #7) , this should not be difficult.

9) Ship creation screen, this DEFINITELY needs a filter system for the stuff already on the ship. Its really annoying to spend 15 - 20 minutes designing a ship with a lot of asthetic pieces and then when editing the actual equipment like engines, weapons, etc, having to scroll through a long ass list of asthetic objects you've put on it. Just use the same filters as are already on the top of the creation-menu, Visuals, Weapons, Engines, Defense, Modules. This would make the ship-creation screen perfect imo.

10) Ability to mass-upgrade ships such as fleets

Final Note on Spying:
I have noticed that GC2 relegates spies to the sidelines as a passive force in the game, and while I can understand the fustration of players who are undermined by AI spying, I think this really adds a more complex, better element to the game. While not a tweak, I implore the GalCiv2 developers to make spying a more integral part of the game strategy. This includes spending money on counter-intelligence and offensive spying operations against other races which also carries the threat of being discovered and attacked in turn. Perhaps have a toggle where players could say whether or not they want to play with the advanced spying rules when they start a new game. Not an ideal solution, but I'd really like to see more spy-strategy in the game.

That would be fantastic!

Has anyone suggested being able to zoom in and out on the tech tree? Even with things minimized, it can take a lot of scrolling to get from the top to the bottom.

A few things I'd like to see.

1. In the Metaverse - I think it'd be nice to see the top 20 instead of just the top 10.

2. In the Metaverse - I think it'd be really neat if when you clicked on a the occupied terriitroy map, it would have a pop-up with a random individual from the representative Empire. I think thatd would add a lot of character to the whole Metaverse Map and would be fun to just sit there clicking around to see what pops up.

3. I think you should get more points for losing a game. I know it sounds silly, but a lot of people (myself included) will keep re-starting a game to get a favorable start condition. In a bad way, this makes all your games "more similar". If the Metaverse scoring wasn't quite so harsh for a losing effort that would change. You would be much more apt to "play it out" and thus would have a more varied gameplay experience. This suggestion does not apply to badges and awards.... but it would be kind of funny to have achievements for "lost 10 games", worst loss ever (losing a game after 10 hours and 1,000 turns and being pummeled).

4. This one is important: An option to change the scroll wheel sensitivty in-game. I have to scroll my mousewheel like crazy to zoom in/out. roll/roll/roll/roll/roll/roll hmmm about halfway to where I want to be... roll/roll etc...

5. I'd like to be able to have Gal Civ 1 and Altarian Prophecie's music integrated. Though I like the Gal Civ 2 music, it's not too varied (and selections aren't bearly long enough); and adding the old music in (the game could choose at random which variant to play for each race and each situation) would be really nice. I know we can swap it out... but this "integrated" would be nice.

If you decommission a social project and then rush-build on the same square, it builds what was previously there rather than the new thing you just added.

There shouldn't be an absolute limit of 10 trade routes, since technologies and UP proposals raise the limit above 10.

If you have the bonus pack and "collector's edition content" installed, it should say so on the game screen somewhere. I installed them, but I'm not even sure it happened correctly?

- Add personalities to your ships! Have named captain for each ship. War oriented civilizations should have captains with war bonuses, economics civilizations should have captains with trade bonuses, etc. Not every captain is the same, and definitely not all civilization can fight/trade the same.

- When the captain/leader of a ship/fleet wins a battle, he should be awarded with positive characteristics. Being more realistic by making it so that not every battle has to end up as win or die but you can also flee from the battle rather than face total annihilation. The penalty would be loss of moral and negative characteristics on the captain/leader. In the history of warfare, not all battles ended up as win or die unless it's a siege(a planet in this case).

- Allows ships to be savageable sometimes rather than blowing up all the time. Savaged ships should help you research faster in the components/technology that you savaged. There is a smaller chance of it being in good condition enough to repair into operational. This forces you to take better care of your unique ships from falling into the hands of the enemies.

- When you conquered another civilization, you should be allowed to gain all its technology as well as its talented captains.

- Expand the spy feature by making it more useful. Stealing technology, propaganda to gain influence, gaining knowledge of planned attack on certain starbase/planet.

This is a great game but there is also a lot of room for improvement, which is great. Keep up the good work.

Not sure if this counts as an easy tweak, it could be extremely simple or take months of testing to get right.

Multiply Damage, Sheilds, Hit Points, Build Space and size by ten, then allow upgraded components to have a better improvement feel.

I.E. Particle Bean goes from damage 1 to D 10.
the PB2 could go from D1 to D11.
Laser goes from D1 to D12
Laser 2 becomes D13
e.t.c.
Phasor goes from Damage 2 to Damage 20

As a tiny has gone from 6 to 60hp this won't unblance the game, but it will allow us players to feel more love from the tech tree.

With XP I would give a bonus of 5 hp per level not 10, as ships become stupidly hard using the current HP system. I have had Small ships with 50 - 60 hp before (with no bonus other than hull plating).

Also would it be possible to allow crews to move from ship to ship, I don't want to put rookies in my brand new Medium ship I want to take my experinced battlehardend kickbutt crews and give them my latest and greatest military ships, and put the rookies in my older ships to gain experience before trusting them with my expensive ships.

Some minor UI tweaks:

1. The selection of planetary improvements in the colony management screen should not reset every time you choose a new tile.

2. The selection of planetary improvements should be sorted (normal improvements first, then super projects, then galactic wonders). It would also help if the text or background color would be different for the different improvement types (e.g. red for galactic wonders, orange for super projects, or something similar). It would also probably be best to put the non-standard improvements (super projects and wonders) at the end of the list.

3. The production/mining/influence bonuses given by a starbase should be available without double clicking the starbase and bringing up the information window. Perhaps this can be added to the description textbox (the one that contains sensor range, etc).

4. This may take more than an hour, but it would be nice to see the amount of culture on a square when you hover the cursor long enough over it (similar to civ 4's nationality %).

5. Again, may take more than an hour, but there doesn't seem to be a starbase list screen.

6. Perhaps the small freighters that appear when a trade route is established (the ones which have movement 1) should become a completely different starship type (private freighter?) so they don't clutter up the starship list and the shipyard.

7. A small bug on the ship design screen: the icons for removed items don't disappear if they were on the end of the list. I think a similar problem also comes up when you are deleting ships when there are multiple ships on the same square.

I've only been playing for some days, and haven't been really hanging out at the forums much, so these suggestions may have already been made.

And congratulations on making a brilliant game. I've only had it since Friday and I've already lost an entire night's sleep on it (and I should be writing a paper!)