Four: I feel that there should be some choice of government form. After all, one of the reason for Star Wars is the clash between an "evil" dictatorial empire form of government and a "good" republic of federated planets... Somehow, I feel such choices give depth to a game, without necessarily much added complications. There should be forms of governments (democratic, plutocratic, monarchy, theocracy, dictatorship, military...), but also economic style (free trade, mercantilism, planned, ecologic...), freedom style (free press, police state, people tracking, thought control) as well as social issues (cloning, cybernetics, population control...) and civilization values (wealth, knowledge, power, spiritual, nature...) ; these would merge well with the current Ideology trees that are already present. An additional, intriging, depth could be added by having each planet having its own government style and values, different from the central government which the player controls. Government styles give many opportunities in the game: between civilizations they can cause friction (or friendship) ; within the empire, it could cause localized unrest (e.g. a dictatorial planet under a democratic empire) ; races could have preferred styles, for additional bonus.
Five: I believe it would feel good to introduce "mundane" strategic resources ; we have them, but at these are galactic resources with far reaching consequences (at least in GCII.) ; these indeed look more like artefacts than resources... I speak about more mundane resources. Each planet comes with special spots. These spots could be associated with a specific resource that could benefit the entire empire ; for exemple, a bonus population spot might also produce some spice that would be necessary for the research and building of some enternainment. Or an industrial bonus spot might produce some exotic metal that is necessary to produce some ship part. Such resources could even have far reaching consequences, from preventing you from building some ship parts or some buildings (if you don't have any), limiting the number of ships/buildings using such resources that you can simultaneously build (depending on the number and richness of those you control), possibly going as far as disabling some parts of the tech trees that could depend on the ownership of such resources. Once more, such a system isn't that complex to introduce within the game, and it would give each planet an individual feeling and a specific value (that class two planet that has a rare resource might be worth fighting over!) ; it also opens up new possibilities within diplomacy (trading resources.)
Six: The ship design in GCII has always been a weak spot. Its more a scisor/paper/stone game than anything else. It cruely lacks depth. And from what I have seen, it looks like that GC3 has more or less the same (I'm not speaking about graphic, which I don't care about). In effect, there is absolutely no distinction between beam/missiles/kinetic weapons (apart from specific weapons figures size/damage). All are clones of each others (unless I failed to see specific improvements in the tech tree.) ; but there should be! A beam weapon should have a good aim (it travels at ~lightspeed), while a low tech kinetic should have a low aim. A missile would have a good aim. A kinetic can have a long range, but a beam might disperse and become inefficient. A missile is limited by its fuel... Kinetic and Beam weapons might need ship provided energy, whereas missiles definitely don't. Missile specific defenses (chaff) should be absolutely inefficient against kinetics and marginaly efficient againt beam (some dispersion) ; but point blank defenses (short range guns designed to take down approaching missiles) would have no effect against other kinds. Beam defenses (shields) should be absolutely inefficient against missiles (which do not rely on impact strength to deliver their damage) and somewhat efficient against kinetic weapons (slowing them down.) Kinetic defenses (armor) sould be equally efficient against all attacks (whatever means you use, you have to penetrate the armor.) ; after that, technology could provide specific weapons with specific effects (e.g. a beam weapon that does lower overall damage but cuts better through armor or bypasses shields). Indeed, a tactical combat screen would be a very welcome adition, but I understand how complex it can be to add into the game! such a screen would let take range and aim into account in a way that the player could actually understand the effect of his design choices. But even without such a screen weapons should evolve to add the following statistics: range (at least short/medium/long), base aim (as a % to hit, missiles and beam being high, kinetics being low) ; ships should have an evade value (0 against most beams, half against kinetic, full against missiles ; smaller ships evading with more ease) as well as an additional aim value (computers on board for ship movement prediction) for kinetics or beams (but not missiles.) ; and each engagement should last a limited number of rounds, not necessarily ending with the loss of one fleet: there is no reason why a battle should be an all or nothing event. Each round would be at a specific range (long/medium/short), the fastest fleet usually being able to position itself either at its most efficient range (offensive stance), or at the range where the opponent does the least damage (defensive stance)... One could also throw in commanders (which would influence range positionning) or combat scanners (which can track individual ships for combat purpose and could influence both the aim and possible range for engagement...) Well all these are ideas thrown into the wind. I just hope that some of them will take root...
Seven: Planet classes. At this time, all planets have a class which indicates the number of available building spots.) They also have a type which gives some specific bonus. Class 0 planets seem to serve little purpose (iirc they didn't have a use in GC2 either.) : this doesn't feel good. Everything should have some use at some point in the game. There is no reason why utterly useless class 0 planets couldn't be at least mined. They could indeed contain rare materials (see point five) ; they could be used to plant an outpost that could act like a starbase ; given enough tech (which might depend on the type of the planet), it should be possible to expend a constructor to terraform them to class 1. I also feel that not all races should view planets in the same way : an aquatic alien race (do we have one ?) would have a (reasonably large) bonus (in terms of class) on an oceanic planet while a desert loving race would have a bonus on a desert planet. Some planets should have high gravity (large planets) which would be a mixed blessing : it should have a higher class, but in the short term working there goes with a penalty ; or low gravity (small planets) which works in the reverse (easy to work there, but class penalty) ; a planet may lack an atmosphere (and one could be created using the right tech), have a poisonous one (which would require it being filtered), or an acidic one (which could prevent any installation before it is processed) ; the planet itself could be volcanic (so less room to settle there but easy energy for the industry), barren (like the moon, severely curtailing growth for lack of water or ice)... indeed, many combinations leading to varied, but clearly expressed, bonus or malus, all of which can be reduced or offset by the appropriate terraforming tech (and lots of work!) ; as the game is now (and was in GC2), you grab any high class planet that you can. That's fairly static. But if you meet a high gravity oceanic planet with an acidic atmosphere, you first have to bypass it (because you cannot colonize it for lack of tech.) But you'd always know that there is a potential winner (class 20+ ?), provided you engage in the right researches and investment, to settle there before another race ; its still a race for going faster than your opponents, but the race is more complex : now it is just: how fast can I build a colony, how fast can it reach there. With other conditions thrown in, you have to invest into "useless" tech (which do not provide any immediate advantage and may set you back in other areas), build you colony and still hope to be the first. In addition, you have to manage the fact that as long as you don't have the right techs to levy the penalties, you have a sub-optimal colony, that may even be a burden on your budget...
