Well, the word he/she chose was "customize". So I could be wrong and there's no talk about modding there. In such a case, I suppose with time you would just want a faster game with less graphics options. But you would probably have a faster machine too, since I guess that time is not before a year from realease, or close to that. So, in such a case you still have a good performance, even without toggling graphics. Or maybe wait for a "simplified vanilla game" mod(though more possible is a High Resolution one). Or make some screenshots and replace core files with those, which if the game accepts static screens should be easy to do.(GC2 didnt have toggle but accepted both, so you could do it if you wanted, ofc imo that would be more desirable for a gmae like Stars! that wasn't based on graphics too as you didnt expect to see them then. After it, even when I replayed MOO2 I wanted to see the anims, they offered that extra bit of heart and livelyness to the game.).

It would be interesting if the game is challenging for current pc's(imo it will just utilize what we already know like win7-8-9 and dx10-11-12), I can't think how - as modern pc's are monsters in calculation power, but yeah, interesting.

Any plans to organize the founders vault more?

Maybe with some subfolders for what it is along with a button to 'download everything in this subfolder as a easily extracted .7z file' 

I guess once there is more content there, it kinda forces itself to be done

 Also: The "founder vault" link from the main page goes to the 'buy access' instead of offering you a chance to login. Took me a while to find out how to access it.  

Just saw the new Krynn png- outstanding!

Sorry for the late reply, but I think you've been looking for this:

I wasn't talking about modding.  Although I could see why the comments might be understood to imply that.  All I'm suggesting is that i like a game to be as customizable as possible, at the level of game set up.  I prefer games with check boxes (or sliders) that let me turn on or off many of the non-essential aspects.  When you have seen the animated ambassadors from Yor, (or East Burlap), 100 times, its my preference to be able to disable (turn off) those animations. Let me gat back to the game play quicker.  As far as design goes, I agree with Sid Meier, interesting choices make an interesting game.  Turning off much of the eye candy when it has become repetitive gets me back to the gaming and to dealing with the interesting choices.  PC resources are reduced when in a late stage game in a very large galaxy/map, some of the eye-candy is turned off.  it is my preference, and I wish game designers would make it easier (indeed possible) for players to make these choices. 

BTW, I do mod skyrim.  The animations are built into the 'widgets' so its no issue to me.  The artsy part for me is fully realized using the statics.

Oh yeah, I can relate. Jagged Alliance 2 was awesome game. It had pilot character, named Sky Rider. And if you use his services quite often, you wanted to gag the bastard pretty soon. And a bit later you'd wanted to [beep] [skipped] the [censored] out!

I do like "nice stuff", like VO, animated avatars, cutscenes, but in some cases, especially where you forced or have to go through same VO, animated avatars, and cutscenes you can't skip, I start hating them.

So I'd like to see all those gimmicks either switchable, or skippable. All of them.

Founder access not available:

Looking.

Not too sure about the Terran leader (Colonel Bradley?). I'm fairly sure our short-haired-space-marine quota has been used up in gaming thus far.

I must say, I do like the Kryn though. They look very alieny.

DL Bradley isn't just any short-haired-space-marine though. He plays a big role in the backstory. Actually, considering his role, I wonder how long he'll be the official face of the Terran Alliance. First expansion? Second?

Us humans are not likely to have a long haired soldier in charge. i agree its been played out in our military for centuries with a huge number of soldiers. This isn't scscifi it's reality.

We need a game with space age renaissance wig hair styles.

only IE properly downloads the media files regardless of your method of download {save as - save target as - open in new tab - etc.}

I download just fine with firefox.

Same with Opera.

Yeah, and space age hats to protect our space age wigs from space age potty poured out on the space age streets or space age central aisle on space age space ship. Oh, and don't forget space age traps for space age blood-sucking insects too.

Well short haired has been in for a long time, but this is the future and fashion may have changed.

And overwhelmingly it is anglo who is in charge. Hands up who remembers game where humans are represented as single (or at most 2) sides of conflict and human leader is NOT anglo.

Anyone remember for example Reinhard Schmidt as leader? Or Li Cheng?

I would find it refreshing if game companies departed their future vision of humanity to be "Just like USA, with little differences".

Unless humans no longer sweating and need to regularly wash, I bet military style will remain nearly untouched.

Just looked in the Founder's Vault; I liked what I saw and heard. The music is well done. I note that each race seems to have a distinct musical flavor, a decision of which I wholeheartedly approve. That was one of the memorable points of Birth of the Federation for me. Playing as the Romulans felt different than playing as the Federation, largely because of the different music.

Good luck.

The latest brings back memories.

Added something big today.

Took a look at what you added to the vault; looking forward to the Alpha. I know it won't be "fun" in a polished-game kind of way, but I suspect I'll enjoy it in a "mad scientist" kind of way. And seriously, even though it'll doubtless have tons of bugs, etc., for this far pre-release it already looks great.

A good read, here is my opinion on two things.

Generally speaking, while the UI should work at 1280x768 I think it should be optimized
for 1920x1080. Right now, at 1920x1080 the UI seems quite small to my eyes. That
might just be me though. But it seems a shame that the game appears less friendly

End of quote

 I second this. I hate tiny UI, especially with my very poor vision problem. 1920x1080 is pretty much the standard nowadays, if you go to an online store and browse the monitors, the vast majority are native for this resolution ( over 75% on tigerDirect).  Furthermore, 2560x1440  displays seem to be on the rise. I went to staple depot the other day and to my surprise they had several on display. This is bound to be even more prevalent when GalCiv III is released in over a year. Optimizing the UI for Higher resolution now would be a smart move.

Im thinking that Malevolent works better than Merciless. I`ll be curious to hear what the alpha testers think.

End of quote

I agree that it is better, especially when you have ( benevolent ) as the opposite. But then when you think about it for a second. Malevolent is mostly a Fancier way of saying Evil.  Malevolent usually implies a desire or joy at doing harm to things and having generally destructive intentions.  If you aim for something more akin to a desire for complete control and disregard of general population, I would say Ruthless might be a better choice of word.

Right now Ideology looks to be a cross between GalCiv2's good/evil, and Civ 5 Ideology.   That's not as different as I invisioned.

What I'd like to see: have the random events have a chance of random consequences.  (at least in SP)   Choices become more unpredictable, I'd even hide the amount of gains/losses and randomize those.   Maybe 1% of the time those random events end up being/causing super events.  You might get some unique bonus, or it might go wrong.

I'd also like to see random events once you reach an ideology, with options between two traits on the tree, and a third choice to reduce your ideology or turn towards pragmatic.  I do like the idea of ideologies having drawbacks.  Pragmatics should have choices in both other directions.

The downside to my idea is that it would probably require a good bit more writing, and event coding.  The benefit is you get more game-to-game unpredictability which would add to longevity, provided mega events are rare enough that it takes hundreds of games to get them all.  Another potential downside is feature creep/getting away from focus of game, but I think those things are mitigated here.  Ideology is something where I'd want to avoid beelining if at all possible, outside of RPing your race.