GC2 rocks. It really really rocks. I still play that game often and enjoy the crap out of it. But it has a few issues that really shouldn't return in the sequel. These aren't bugs per say, just poor implementation. Annoyances that can't be modded out well. I don't know if they will be relevant to GC3 but if they are or could be I hope to draw some attention to them. All of these annoyed me enough that I had serious thoughts about asking stardock for the source code. Ignoring the fact that they would probably say no, I don't have any way to compile them if they used studio 2005. I still considered it though.
1) Range scaling. I understand why larger maps might need large ship ranges. But this was way over scaled in GC2. It didn't matter how large a galaxy you start with it still feels small. It should also scale with the number of habitable planets or better yet be able to be disabled by user setting.
2) Planetary Governors. You should be able to save them so you don't have to make the same ones over and over from game to game. Also they should specify by improvement type and not specific buildings. So instead of xeno bank, it should just have financial improvement. It shouldn't fill out the planet right away after being selected. It should be selectable from the main colony screen. (I disabled the pop up because it blocks a large portion of the planet, you know the part I use to decide what governors I should use!)
3) Auto explore. Should bring up a dialogue where I can select random patrol, random unexplored patrol, traditional explore. Random would pick a random spot in range and the ship would go. Random unexplored would (try) to pick a random unexplored spot in range and go. Should there not be a random unexplored spot it would just go to random spot. Traditional would be the default explore the 'w' key already does. (Though perhaps you would be improving or deprecating this already?)
3b) Automate anomaly exploration should have the option to fallback to random patrol if there are no anomalies in range.
4) Ship design management. During the game I should be able to save individual ship designs rather than have the game set to same them all or none. I don't need to save every little change I make during a game. Turing this off on the other hand means that I can't keep any of them!
5) Mining governors. I understand you are doing something different then the mining asteroids that were in the previous games. Until I understand more about the replacement I am going to point out that mining asteroids could have used a governor. So that I could have them go to nearest planet still building something, or nearest planet with a star port. Or to a planet of my choice like the home world.
6) Colony list and build queues. They should not snap to the top of the list with every change I make. If I want to purchase a few improvements from the colony list and they are not at the top of the screen, tedium ensues.
6b) Colony list purchase governor. If I have some extra cash and want to buy a bunch of planetary improvements to hurry them along, I would have to go one by one and click and buy until I have them all or I run out of cash. A governor should be able to do the same thing. Auto buy xeno factory until you get them all or run out of cash. (or until a specified budget is reached.) Buy run out of cash I don't mean go into the negatives.