Accumulation of observations

from GalCiv3 Forums

I know some of these comments are duplicates from others; I'm only including them here for completeness of my thoughts.

  • Hot keys: Please don't leave us keyboard-users out! Stuff like DEL to destroy planetary improvements & delete/obsolete ship designs; key cycling through colonies, stations, ships, etc.
  • Resources tab: it's not very useful with just showing the number of resource nodes. Maybe include artifact harvesters & amounts of resources stockpiled?
  • Goto button: not always reliably enabled on ships.
  • Please, please an option to toggle the planetary auto-upgrade, either in-game (e.g., empire setting) or a setting outright. It's handy but not on by default.
  • Related to the previous: I missed turning off one planet's auto-upgrade & it eventually built the Omega Research Building, which was annoying since it was a substantially sub-par planet for such an improvement. Could special buildings not be included in the auto-upgrade route?
  • Research cloisters and galactic stock exchanges can only be built a number of times before not being able to be built any more. Is this intended? If so, could a counter be provided to keep track of the number left available to build?
  • Additional indicators for special limited buildings (e.g., those that can only be built once per empire, etc.) - it's unclear to me whether or not I can build multiple copies of certain improvements.
  • I have had several maps generated that had no elerium resources.
  • And what's up with thulium? I've had maps with none; the few that have had it, it can't be extracted by itself, it shows up nowhere and eventually can't be extracted in conjunction with other resources. Please don't remove it - I love the idea of having the possible utility for otherwise dead planets (just like asteroids & nebula.)
  • Spreadsheet-like views for managing colonies, starbases, ships and such. Sort of a combination of what was in GC2 & MOO2. In my last map, I had 175+ planets, 200+ starbases and countless numbers of ships. The side-bar is useful for monitoring & such, but isn't a robust management tool.
  • Ships with multiple construction modules no longer get zapped when establishing a starbase - thank you! - but they still do when establishing a shipyard.
  • Some sort of "snap" in the production wheel, at the very least the maximal points & the center (reset).
  • Being able to destroy & rebuild power plants & the like is much appreciated - thank you! - but cannot do that with the Omega Research Facility nor an intimidation center that was on a planet I captured.
  • Ability to jump levels of improvement upgrades: e.g., basic factory to manufacturing plant (or what-ever) without needing to go through each & every step (I'm not sure if enabling the auto-upgrade will do this or not, but I'm looking for the ability to do so manually.)
  • Auto-build/upgrade options for colonies and starbases (akin to what was possible in GC2 with starbases.)
  • Colored dot indicators on colonies and starbases for those that have defending fleets when zoomed out to the icon view. Would be nice to scan for unprotected colonies and bases on a grand scale.
  • Carriers are crazy BA! Wow!
  • In my last game, the Drengin (and the Yor to a lesser extent) spent the majority of the mid to late game declaring war on me one turn, suing for peace the very next turn, only to declare war on me the turn after that, etc. Rather annoying.
  • Some sort of different color or other indication on the Turn button for after having manually clicking the end turn and any ships' automoves exhausted. I sometime lose track of whether or not it's the real end of the turn or the end of the automoves.
  • I have been able to build multiple military academies on colonies under repeated circumstances.
  • Scroll-bar on the side-bar is a very narrow target & easy to miss as well as drift out of when scrolling through long lists.
  • Pop-up info panels are great but it'd be nice to have that information available on a click-selection too (so I can read it at my leisure without having the cats knock my mouse pointer off the hover...:)
  • Any possibility to toggle between the current relative positioning & rotating in the ship designer & an absolute positioning & rotating? Could be very difficult I'm sure, but I have had some difficulties in designing ships due to some strange interactions with cascaded components.
  • What about having the planetary management screen mapped onto a sphere that could be freely rotated like the ship designer? Nothing useful, but would maybe look kewl.
  • Ability for users to create lists of names for ships, colonies, starbases, etc. for auto-generated names (just would be handy...)
  • The Terran's currently using TSS as their ship designation but the intro trailer shows the The Crusader as having TASS. :)
  • Another resource type that's extractable from rare stars? Not sure what it'd be for, but I like having to manage more than just money & people. :)
  • Metal-planets as another type of extreme clime?

All-in-all, love the game & have been enjoying being able to contribute in whatever small manner toward its growth into one of the best games ever!

5,775 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Snipping a lot of good stuff, but wanted to comment on a couple of things:

And what's up with thulium? I've had maps with none; the few that have had it, it can't be extracted by itself, it shows up nowhere and eventually can't be extracted in conjunction with other resources. Please don't remove it - I love the idea of having the possible utility for otherwise dead planets (just like asteroids & nebula.)
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Thulium is a planned resource like Elerium and Durantium that Isn't Ready for Prime Time yet.  It's snuck into the occasional build here and there.  Paul said, "Sowwwy". :p

Thulium and Promethon (think that's what it's called something like that at any rate) will be tied to dead worlds and gas giants respectively and help build various still-in-planning-stages things for you.

Spreadsheet-like views for managing colonies, starbases, ships and such. Sort of a combination of what was in GC2 & MOO2. In my last map, I had 175+ planets, 200+ starbases and countless numbers of ships. The side-bar is useful for monitoring & such, but isn't a robust management tool.
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Double ++ for this.  Heck, Triple +++ for this.  Yes, the side bar is very handy.  But having a separate (hopefully sortable) screen ala GC II is sorely needed.  It give a great empire wide look at things that is really hard to do right now, especially if it is a sortable view.  Plus being able to quickly manage shipyards from such a screen would cut down on the micromanaging tremendously, as I could go click click click click right down a field that I had already sorted into a way I liked.

The lack of a single all-encompassing colony screen is one of the few things I really miss from GC2. The other, I'l comment on below. ;)

Ability to jump levels of improvement upgrades: e.g., basic factory to manufacturing plant (or what-ever) without needing to go through each & every step (I'm not sure if enabling the auto-upgrade will do this or not, but I'm looking for the ability to do so manually.)
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Gonna be a hard fight on this one, as the devs don't seem to be leaning in that direction even though quite a few people are asking about it.  But, yes, I've come around to the idea of letting people have the OPTION to jump several buildings if they have the production to do it.

Paul in one of the devstreams noted, quite correctly, that at the beginning of a colonies life, it is in fact faster to do it in the incremental steps.  However, I think, especially on planets with lots of production, it stops being "quicker" once a planet has a decent number of factories on it.

So being given the choice to skip a step or three, with the default being incremental would be welcome as far as I am concerned.  

And maybe it'll stop some of the complaints about production overflow. :p :p :p

Auto-build/upgrade options for colonies and starbases (akin to what was possible in GC2 with starbases.)
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IIRC, autoupgrade is coming for starbases (and can't come a moment too soon as far as Immense map play is concerned ;)).  

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The one thing I would add to this list is something I very much miss from GCII: The ability to see all planets of the galaxy on a sortable list, colonized or otherwise.

Currently hunting and pecking for planets that I don't currently own is something of a pain, especially when it comes to colonization and invasion plans.  Having a tool similar to the Planet List from GC II would be a godsend to my current playstyle. :)

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Spreadsheet-like views for managing colonies, starbases, ships and such. Sort of a combination of what was in GC2 & MOO2. In my last map, I had 175+ planets, 200+ starbases and countless numbers of ships. The side-bar is useful for monitoring & such, but isn't a robust management tool.



Double ++ for this.  Heck, Triple +++ for this.  Yes, the side bar is very handy.  But having a separate (hopefully sortable) screen ala GC II is sorely needed.  It give a great empire wide look at things that is really hard to do right now, especially if it is a sortable view.  Plus being able to quickly manage shipyards from such a screen would cut down on the micromanaging tremendously, as I could go click click click click right down a field that I had already sorted into a way I liked.

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Add a few + from me :), though I doubt it will be done, on a dev stream Paul said nay to spreadsheets in games, but maybe some kind of compromise (at least for colony management). I understand Paul, a shooter with spreadsheets is not a good Idea, but an optional management screen of a turn based game hardly the same.

Ability to jump levels of improvement upgrades: e.g., basic factory to manufacturing plant (or what-ever) without needing to go through each & every step (I'm not sure if enabling the auto-upgrade will do this or not, but I'm looking for the ability to do so manually.)

Gonna be a hard fight on this one, as the devs don't seem to be leaning in that direction even though quite a few people are asking about it.  But, yes, I've come around to the idea of letting people have the OPTION to jump several buildings if they have the production to do it.

Paul in one of the devstreams noted, quite correctly, that at the beginning of a colonies life, it is in fact faster to do it in the incremental steps.  However, I think, especially on planets with lots of production, it stops being "quicker" once a planet has a decent number of factories on it.

So being given the choice to skip a step or three, with the default being incremental would be welcome as far as I am concerned.  

And maybe it'll stop some of the complaints about production overflow. :P :P :P

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I had an idea on this quite some time ago, but I doubt they'll change the current behaviour at this stage of the dev cycle with any kind of weird/improved/better/whatever idea we could suggest, anyway:

The current logic is If I have the ability to make basic tools, then I can make better tools, refining the tools one level at a time. But what if I have enough capacity AND enough knowledge? Perhaps I know how to cut some corners, ignore unnecesary refinements, maybe I can skip a few levels (after all my basic tools will probably be better than a simple hammer)

New colonies must build some infrastructure first, so all colonies start with the most basic "Factory" building, but once a certain hammer threshold is achieved (tied to tech advancement), levels can be skipped.

So if my "Factory" tech level is "5", once I get say 15 hammers per turn on a new colony, I can skip one factory level  (So instead of 1->2, I can do 1->3). Once I get to 40 hammers per turn, I can skip 2 levels

If my tech "Factory" level is "3", I need to get to 25 hammers per turn to skip one level (I have less knowledge, I need more "basic" tools)

Rinse and repeat untill I get max allowed level (quicker with enough production/tech)

However the "skip" part must be limited to one or levels (but more tech means less infrastructure required), otherwise is too unbalanced (screwdriver to nanites, doubtful, unless it's a Sonic screwdriver).

In GC2 I hated to wait for "Sector" factories on new planets, so I *almost* always ended up buying one to get the ball Rolling, this way I can get it Rolling faster...

Still, skipping levels means building with sub-optimal tools, so a small penalty should apply (+10%/+20% hammers needed for skip1/skip2)

 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The incremental vs. one-fell-swoop upgrade doesn't seem to me to have to be a one-or-t'other option. I am ALWAYS turning off colonies' autobuild because - as noted in everyone's replies - new colonies will get killed if they try to build the best building first. GC2 tried to do that if I'd forget to turn off the autobuilld & it's annoyed me ever since. Currently, as my older colonies progress, I'll go through & re-enable the autobuild so I don't have to manually go through each & every tier of each & every upgrade. If the autobuild option were a checkbox or some such on a empire-wide colony management screen, I think I'd be fine with that.

And spreadsheets! Just sayin', cuz, you know... :D

Seriously - half the game's blowin' chit up (stupid Yor) but there's a lot of effort put into making a manageable empire. Having excellent-grade tools for the management part would be so beautiful!

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Spreadsheets and such are absolutely critical for this game if you have an empire of any significant size. I would be actively disappointed and disheartened if I have nothing to help me manage more than the handful of worlds I can have visibly listed on the panel on the right. GC2 did an awesome job and the menus there were more useful than of the Sid Meier's games I've played.