I've been thinking a lot about terrain features.

I suggest these:

Asteroid fields. These are impassable to everything except tiny ships. They are spawned at the start of the map and form (player option) x% of the map.... they're scripted to generally form in long thin clumps, not just appear at random in different tiles. This gives the possibility of a tiny fighter, guerilla warfare tactic both for harrassing deep behind enemy lines and for raids on trade lanes before fleeing back into the asteroid field before the big ships can retaliate.

Nebula fields. These have different inherent properties. They form in blobs covering a number of parsecs. The properties they can have are endless. Some might negate lazer weapons. Some might make ships invisible to radar. Some might cause hull damage. Some might explode if missiles are fired. Some might greatly strengthen defenses. The list of possibilities is endless.

Electro magnetic anomalies. These aren't collectable like the ones in game at the moment. They are also undetectable on the map as they are probably natural forces leaking through from another space time continuum. They can have various effects on ships and may grow stronger and weaker over time.... or may pulse on a regular basis - i.e. turn 1 they have a 2 parsec radius, turn 2 they have a 3 parsec radius, turn 4 a 5 parsec... then back down to 2 parsecs again. The effects could be things like greatly lowering (even killing the engine) or increasing your engine speed. Warping the fabric of space making your fleet appear 10 times stronger or weaker. Randomly transporting you to another area of their pulse influence. Again, I see a lot of possibilities.

Damn, I was going to keep all these ideas to myself and write a big huge post with all of them in the next time Frogboy asked for gameplay ideas! Hey well, I have countless other ideas for practically every other part of the game, so I will keep those for the future!

Where did you find this?

Missed a point to my asteroid field idea and it wont let me edit it.

Asteroid fields would also effectively block routes but would be scripted never to block someone in. This means that a possible scenario is that you are playing in the corner and have two asteroid fields loosely surrounding your sectors. You have a choke point. You can put a military starbase in the gap between the asteroid fields and become a defensive kingdom. The Ai would need to understand that (they already understand the concept of military starbases - I've seen fleets sit a couple of squares outside the influence of a military starbase) and not send constant ships into the killing grounds and instead build up fleets of tiny fighters to approach through the asteroid field to hit on your commerce and planets.

Asteroid fields would also force trade lanes to move around them - again increasing the interest of raiding traders with tiny privateers as they passed the ambush point.

woot, I was hoping for cloak...
on a suggestions note, as I said before asteroid fields, nebulas, gas clouds and such could also replace those completely arbitrary colored resource nodes...
personally I don't like the idea of chokepoints, space is open and any obstacle can be easily circumvented, unlike in a civ type game where there are mountains and such

Where did you find this?

C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Data\English\English.str

Cloaking was in GC1 on some ships...

asteroid fields are rather tiny things on a galactic scale, even if they made up the entire orbit of a star they are still pretty tiny considering the galaxy sizes. Gas nebulas and such are really the only things large enough to really fit on the map in a meaningful way.

Woah woah woah. By adding in miniaturization here (as well as editing the abilitybonus.xml) Miniaturization actually shows up on the list when customizing! The best part is it works too!

Woah woah woah. By adding in miniaturization here (as well as editing the abilitybonus.xml) Miniaturization actually shows up on the list when customizing! The best part is it works too!

Can you elaborate here to link to another post where you?

https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=348&AID=105014
You can add both logistic and miniaturization to the ability list on customization
Don't know if Interest Rates, Crime, Cabinet, or Goverment do anything ingame but they could be added...

I might just make a new thread detailing the steps if it's needed

PS Bombard = teh win. The game needs bombs.

Sorry, because I was told about the English.str, I found a way to get it working. Then I was asked a question about it and provided a link. And yea, I had about 20 windows open between IE, Editing tools, GalCiv2, a few folders, and different text/game files.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the devs say that they decided not to have cloaking in the game? (Even though it was in the engine)