All changes in both new documents are fantastic.  I'm normally just a hardcore lurker - but this definitely gets my seal of approval!

Well if this works, re-use off the ship seems logic 

But yeah that might be a hassle

Folks, a reminder not to directly copy and paste things from the documents here in the forums.

rofl yah i got "fan" mail... Sorry. I misunderstood the quote stuf for being forum quotes.

But seriously give us a privat forum section where to openly talk about em please

PS yah missed the second one = corrected 

I think a private section might be a good thing but on the other hand If i was a non founder but still very interested in the game I sure would like reading the feedback.

Sorry If I was a little rude in the "Fan Mail".   I guess I had a pretty bad day so far.  Hdd of one of my work computers just fried and also just received a 200$ refund request from an Ebay customer because of a lost package. Not off to a good start

I am wondering that too.  I wrote the following ideas in the other relevant thread.

I know you tryed to help protect the spoiling. + I made the error so the 'fan'mail was to be expected.

As for ma all good.

On topic:

If we do get to fill / refill the colony/transports that would make it possible for us to have other strategies.

Likke focus on other stuf then colonyship spam or relocating pop or relocating troops (would only be usefull if we have to train troops for defence besides the offence (wich would make sence))

etc

Ok, on the second topic:

One thing I'd like to see is the choices also lead to a chance of random events based on what you pick, in a way very similar to EU4 (A game I know is one of Brad's favorites)

GalCiv has always been rife for some EU-style events

Example: you pick a policy that makes you militarily aggressive, you might get an event that requires you to declare war on a nearby minor that's annoying you, or face some drawbacks

Pick a more benevolent policy, you might get an event where you gain population from outside wars, etc...

On the first topic:

agree with Wintersong everyone should start with a free starpoint, otherwise it's the first thing everyone will rush in order to rush colony ships.

I'm tremendously happy with and approve both these items, although SY100 is by far my favoritest...

After reading both, I'm pretty happy with the SY100 concept and agree with most of the above. As mentioned above, I would think that maybe a planet-borne starport should have the ability to build *any* unarmed ship.  Though, frankly, there's a loophole there:  you can build a battleship hull, stripped of all weaponry/etc, launch it, then upgrade it for a price to get your weapons loadout. I wouldn't worry about that too much, because, if the upgrade fees are close to what they were in GC2, you'll pay extortionist fees to do so (and I would think it's so expensive that such a tactic would be usable only once in a great long while - I mean, you're looking at upgrade fees in the 1,000s of BC.)

For the second doc (idoc?), I'd re-iterate my desire to see that obtaining certain achievements blocks you from acquiring others.  I can't think this would be terribly hard to implement, and it makes it a *lot* more interesting, because you're forced to choose what you can never have, not merely delay "gratification".  There's at least 5 "pairs" I can list off the top of my head in the various trees that *should* be mutually exclusive; allowing people to have both doesn't make sense, based on the description of what they're supposed to stand for.

So there will be moral! I was wonderin'...

Bringing a completed colony ship back to a planet makes abundant sense, considering the numbers involved. If that many people could already be transported it would make more sense to just ship 'em off to the planet of choice.

Will the required points be increased for larger maps and/or longer play choices? If so, how will those same choices effect such a game? Some of 'em would easily be considered fairly useless.

Also, I'm assuming we'll be mining asteroids; so with that in mind will we be able to directly have those resources sent to shipyards instead of planets? Particularly if we have a shipyard way off in the beyond somewhere? Being able to mine nearby asteroids within a certain distance (in relation to the shipyard) would bring another strategic element.

that is a good question! I suspect the beta feedback will answer that.

The potential problem I see with that is; If the shipyard is not being used. What happens with the asteroid resources linked to them?

Do they get shipped back to the planets or are they lost?

If they are returned to the planets, then to which one? All of them? The closest one only? With a range penalty or not?

If there is no range penalty, using a dummy Shipyard as an intermediary between mining bases and planet  could be an exploit to bypass the distance penalty so that would need to be avoided.

I'm thinking that, as manufacturies, it may be simply easier to combine the shipyard with a starbase. To make it a fourth option. Perhaps begin as a "weak" starbase since its concentration is to be a shipyard.

Asteroids have always been mine-able inside owned territory and switching thier product destinations is fairly easy in regards to GalCiv2.

However, I'm thinking that the asteroid production for shipyards could allow for storing a percentage until used if we allow for the inability of distant asteroids to switch their associated destinations. They could also simply be lost, akin to what already happens to planets that don't produce much, if anything, that still receive asteroid production.

There could also be an allowance for shipyards not producing militarily, letting them refine ores for monetary gain (or some such thing).

Or, they can simply be kept as-is: shipyards that are able to use asteroids within their own sphere of influence. Not allowing those asteroids to ship their production to distant planets wouldn't really add nor detract anything from the over-all gameplay. They would simply be given a further strategic consideration than they had in GalCiv2.

Using intermediaries are a real-world sollution to many economical issues. Always have been. Allowing a player to expend resources for such a "pipeline" would be natural and fit well within the GalCiv framework. That, too, will add further strategic ellements as enemies would seek to target such obvious vulnerabilities while you choose to defend them. Or not.

Some very good ideas in there.  But for the initial implementation of the shipyard feature, this could be kept simple. Just have the mining bases linked to planets like in GalCiv II and not to Shipyards. Like Brad Said, see how well that works in the Beta and then maybe add a functionality linking the shipyard and Asteroids.

Also, there are so many announced features for GalCiv III, the base game is going to be bigger than GalCiv II with all expansions. Add to this the eventual GalCiv III expansions, now that is a TON of potential game features. Some of these ideas might be better kept for expansions. 

Future expansion idea :

Here is a twist of the Space Refinery thing suggested by chuck1es, it could be a new type of StarBase.

Its use would be to be built near asteroid belts that have no planets nearby. Instead of linking those to planets and lose nearly all the production due to distance, Build a Space Refinery Starbase nearby and have the mineral converted to BC instead. 

On cx101

I wonder if when you reach a level, the previous one gets locked, or if you can continue to select more perks from previous tiers.

One thing I noticed on A1 was that even if I selected a particular ideology, I got through events points for another one...

Does that mean that I can be both Benevolent and Evil???

Maybe some perks could block Access to perks from another ideology (even better, block Access to different perks from the same ideology, so you have a non-reversable choice) or perhaps choosing perks from another ideology comes with a penalty (eg: +10 extra points per level/perk) or diminishg effects.

About the diplo bonus, I think it would be better to indirectly cause the "diplo bonus", for instance, let's say that you (and the targeted major civ) get a bonus % from trade, The "+x" bonus gets you a real incentive, (declare war on the other civ and you get a "x%" across the board trade penalty )

about cy100:

colony built ships should be restricted to tiny/small hull sizes and colony ships. In order to avoid the "build empty hulls, upgrade later" strategy you could make colony built ships non-upgradable . Also add a tech limit for colony built ships. After all "advanced weapons/systems are dangerous to be built near colony population centers" (benevolent civs gets a lower threshold, evil a higher one: they don't care too much about a couple million slaves, do they?)

So colony built ships -> basic ships, *very* basic weapons and systems

I don't like the idea of requiring to build a constructor to construct a colony spaceport, I'd rather use the "build starport" concept from gc2,

but instead of using a tile, just construct the port in orbit (for instance the ISS was built from small modules, not a single big ship).

If you want a starport beyond your orbit, you need a constructor though.

Spaceports should be upgradable (defense, ship manufacturing bonuses, maybe even requiring an upgrade to build larger hull sizes)

Does anybody else have problems Accesing some of the Items in the Vault? I do get a link to a "octet stream" instead of the actual Files for some of the things in there (e.g. the 2nd latest File)

Copy and download the second file then rename it so that after the name you have .docx

Same applies to all others, just look at the list, check what extension the file should have and add that to the filename when saving.

Yeah, saving, as in saving to your harddisk, instead of opening straight away in some application.

Great ideas on ideology specific events.

And to Stardock: Great new ideas for stardocks and ideology. Nice to see 2 Level one ideology choices instead of just one for instance.

Topic one sounds fantastic. I don't have issue with the single build queue system but the strategic flexibility of an on map starport is very exciting.

Topic two seems to be underpowered for neutral, where it should be for good and overpowered for evil in tiny/small and maybe even medium maps, but on larger maps the three balance out well. Except the Coercion 2, that's just crazy powerful, far in excess of what the other two ideologies have.

Fate,:beer:

I think that will be the biggest issue about the ideologies. Map balance.

Yeha I thought coersion2 was just kind crazy. I mean just wait for awhile then BAM suddenly 100 ships pop out of no where? That's terrifying.

I had a brief question regarding how you're thinking about implementing distance penalties for shipyards.  Say you've got a planet, you've set it to use 60% of its production for military production, and you've set it to transfer that production to a distant shipyard with a 50% penalty.  Does that mean that the planet can only send 50% of its production rather than 60%, or does it mean that it sends 60% of its production, but half of that production is wasted?

If it's the latter scenario, then I'm a little concerned that this would undermine the possibility of reducing production micro by having a bunch of planets all supplying the same shipyard, since this would mean wasting resources (a generally poor move).  One possible counter-option might be allowing constructors to upgrade shipyards to reduce the distance penalty for supplying production.

I cannot know for sure what stardock has in mind but I assume that this is how it will work. The other option does not make much sense to me. 

I expect the classic scenario is you will have one shipyard for a group of nearby planets, in order to eliminate or minimize penalties.  That still cuts on the amount of micro compared to GalCiv 2.  Say an empire  of twenty planets could have its military production concentrated in 4-5 shipyards with minimal to no distance penalty.