OK, before I get flamed, I just want to throw out some things that I have experienced now that I've thrown a couple hundred hours into playing GC3.  These things are not "re-inventing the wheel" because I think a lot of GC3 is already great, but there have been some things that have really nagged me, personally, so if I am duplicating what has been said elsewhere, please forgive me!

Here are some things that "jump right out" that I think would make the game experience much more fun (and much less tedious), especially for games played on "insane" sized maps where there can be dozens of star bases and hundreds of planets.

So, here we go!

- TOP-OF-SCREEN NAVIGATION OF SHIPYARDS?!

If you go into either the Planet Management or Starbase screens, you can quickly switch from one base or planet to another by using the arrows at the top of the screen, which makes managing 100+ planets or many dozens of star bases quick and easy.  (Thank you!)

But for some reason, you CANNOT do this with Shipyards!  In the interest of having a "common interface", you should also be able to navigate through ship yards the same way you can quickly switch through planets and star bases.

- SORTING OF PLANETS, STAR BASES AND SHIPYARDS  (IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER, AT LEAST!)

I know that this has been gone over elsewhere but here's my two cents. 

First off, the list of planets on the right hand side of the UI is BACKWARDS from the list of planets on the "go to" pop up menu for spaceships.  This is very counter-intuitive.  It took me a couple of minutes to figure out why the planet lists were not the same.  So, the first thing is that these two lists should be listed in the same order as they are on the right hand side of the UI.  It just makes more sense because it would be consistent.

Perhaps "multiple column" sorting is too complicated to implement right now, and that's fine, but at the very least the planet order should be listed  ALPHABETICALLY.  I am trying to manage 100+ planets right now, and not having things alphabetical really becomes tedious when trying to locate a specific planet in the list from the "go to" pop up menu for star ships.  Not having the planets listed in alphabetical order adds a lot of work to assigning ships and fleets to particular planets.  It's tedious on my eyes trying to find the right planet in the "go to"  list and my scroll wheel finger got tired quickly!  (The mouse scroll speed is a different issue altogether...)

- SETTING MOUSE SCROLL WHEEL SPEED IN "OPTIONS"

The second problem I ran into with trying to assign ships and fleets to particular planets has to do with the "go to" dialog box.

When dealing with large numbers of planets, the "scroll bar" on the right hand side of the "go to" dialog box moves through the list of names too quickly, but then mouse wheel moves through the list to slowly!  I found both methods of trying to navigate the list to just added to the tedium of trying to find specific planets in the list to send my fleets to.

Mouse scroll wheel speed should be adjustable in one the main "Options" screens.

(Also, listing items alphabetically in the "go to" dialog would HUGELY decrease the negative impact of both these issues!)

- RIGHT CLICK DISMISSAL OF MANAGEMENT SCREENS

I have another post where I requested that there should be a "right click dismissal" of empire management screens (same as Endless Legend, which works VERY well!) but as I have been playing the game further, I've run into more areas where the use of the right mouse button could help with game play.

This is a feature that seems a little weird to start with, but once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.  Serious!  Try it.

- RIGHT CLICK ASSIGNMENT OF FLEETS TO PLANETS, STAR BASES AND SHIPYARDS

One of the most tedious aspects of a large game is assigning ships or fleets to various planets.  (See notes above!)

If I were going to come up with an easier way to assign fleets to planets, it would be to add a a "right click" menu option to the planets, shipyards and start bases in the list on the right hand side of the screen.  On this pop up menu would be a single option:  "Assign fleet".  This would then skip the whole "go to" menu completely and GREATLY speed up the process of assigning fleets to planets, shipyards and start bases.

How it would work:  Click on the ship (or fleet) on the main map to select it, then right-click on the planet in the list (or on the map?) and click "assign fleet".  That's it!  This would do EXACTLY the same thing as selecting the planet from the "go to" dialog box, but it would skip that box altogether and get rid of ALL of the time spent trying to track down a specific planet in the list.

Again, this issue becomes very apparent on very large maps when dealing with hundreds of planets and ships!

- RE-DESIGN CONSTRUCTOR ASSIGNMENT AND/OR UPGRADE MECHANISM FOR UPGRADING STAR BASES!

Out of all the "large empire management" game play "snafus", star base upgrades is definitely THE BIGGEST problem.  (I am certainly not the only person that thinks this, and I'll try and give some suggestions and not just gripe about it.)

Toward my end games on the insane map size I found myself in the star base management screen more than any other screen and all I was doing was the same thing over and over and over and over again.  It is very tedious!  It was so repetitive and tedious that my arm actually started getting sore from all the wrist and mouse movements. 

What I wanted to do was pretty straight forward:  Build a star base and then upgrade it to all of the technologies I currently have researched!

Doing this should not require 100+ clicks in the UI for EACH BASE.

The word "automation" came into my head almost every time I went into that screen, and every turn I had to plow through all of the upgrades, individually, while keeping an eye on how many constructors I had requested.  After a while I didn't even care what order the star base built things because I was spending all of my time requesting constructors and I just wanted to get out of that screen as fast as possible. Seriously!  The bulk of the work in every single turn in the late game was managing star base upgrades!  About 80-90% of my time was spent in the star base upgrade screen.

UGH!

To make matters worse, all of the constructors necessary to upgrade the star bases took up the vast majority of my ship yard build ques and prevented me from easily pumping out other types of construction like carriers, troop transports, colonizers or even other constructors!

Even worse than that, "Basic Constructors" are so much cheaper and quick to build than regular "constructors" that I started poaching my own star base constructors from the line of constructors flying though space and started re-directing them to do other things like building new bases near resources which works great because basic constructors are so much cheaper than regular constructors, but it ALSO means that I have to go back into that star base management screen and request yet more constructors to replace the ones I picked off to do other things!

Then, to complicate things further, I wasn't sure what shipyard my basic constructors were being assigned to so I could go there and manage the queue, and once i was in the shipyard screen, if I wanted to build anything else with that ship yard instead of basic constructors I had to throw those items at the bottom of the list and then move each ship, individually, one at a time, up the build queue so that I could alternate back and forth between building basic constructors and other useful ships for the star fleet!

For a game that has made everything else pretty easy and straight forward, this star base upgrade mechanism really took it's toll on me.

HOW TO FIX STAR BASE UPGRADES?

OK, all of my previous requests were pretty easy to implement, but "star base upgrade" issue is considerably more complicated (even more so if maintaining the status quo is getting the way of better game design!). 

I can see why this feature is designed the way it is:  To provide a "realistic feel" for star base upgrades!  In REAL life, if we wanted to upgrade our space stations (like the International Space Station) each piece of the station needs to be sent into space, one at a time, and then added on to what's there.  So, I get it!  The game is trying to be realistic.

But this isn't a real life scenario, IT'S A GAME.  I think that's important to keep in mind because any time something becomes tedious and repetitive, it takes away from the fun of playing a game, realism or not, makes the game LESS FUN.  (Like grinding for think leathers in World of Warcraft).

So, here are some ideas (good, bad or indifferent...) for fixing the problems with this aspect of the game:

1) Have ONE entry for "Basic Constructors" on the shipyard list (renamed to "Star Base Upgrades"), and make it work "to infinity" unless there is a ship listed above it.  In other words, treat it EXACTLY like the "economic stimulus" or "research project" items on the planet build lists!

This will make it MUCH easier to work with shipyards and switch back and forth between constructors and other ships, so that the bases don't become completely useless (clogged with nothing but basic constructors!) when doing massive star base upgrades, AND it would make a lot better use of the screen space available to build tasks.  You could kill two birds with one stone here.

NOTE:  The "Star Base Upgrades" build item will NOT appear in the list if there are no basic construtors being built at that shipyard, and will disappear automatically when construction of "basic constructors" completes.  If more constructor items are then ordered for a star base, the "Star Base Upgrades" item will automatically be placed at the end of the build list, like any other ship, but can easily be moved to the top of the list as needed.  (The ACTUAL list of basic constructors would remain the same in memory as it is now, but that list would be out of the way of the player!)

2) Manual assignment of a single star base to handle ALL constructor requests?

A lot of people might not like this idea, and it might be a bitch to implement, but honestly my last game got so big that I thought "Why can't I just pick a shipyard in the middle of my empire and just dedicate that ONE base to do nothing but pumping out star base upgrades?"  Sure, the constructors won't get to their targets as fast as if they were coming from the nearest ship yard, but the upshot would be that it would "free up" all of my other ship yards from being clogged with star base constructors.

It's an idea...

3) AUTOMATE build queues on individual star base screens?  (Set it and forget it).

This is a problem with the star base management screen itself, and this is what generates the most repetitive clicks.

There are probably 100 different ways this COULD be done, which only adds to the problem, so I'll try and narrow it down a bit. 

Right now, every time a basic constructor hits a star base, the star base management screen opens and I have to pick one of the build items off the "improvements" list.  Sometimes there are 2 or 3 items to pick.   Then, that screen gets "greyed out" and I have to wait until the next basic constructor shows up to build more items onto the base. Wash, rinse, repeat.  By the time a star base is completely upgraded, I might have to go into that same screen over a dozen times and click on items hundreds of times!

But what if we could just "set it and forget it"?

For example, let's say I have 5 possible upgrades listed for a star base, and there are NO basic constructors assigned to that base yet.  Instead of building 1 or 2 improvements (from the initial constructor bonus I have) and then requesting a total of 3 more constructors, what if I could pick ALL of the upgrades available, up front, and in the order I want them, and then have the constructors just show up and do their jobs without interference from me.

Yeah, I am sure that a lot of code would need to be reworked to get this to work.  This isn't an easy fix, but it might be the best one.

Summary on Star Base Upgrades:

I think the point here is really the ability for people to "set it and forget it" on Star Base upgrades. 

The mechanism for generating and then sending basic constructors to star bases isn't broken, but the way it is implemented could use a lot more "polish".  There really should only be a handful of steps (not hundreds) for building and upgrading star bases:

1) Build the star base and set it's initial build items.  (Those items that require a constructor will automatically generate one).
2) Select ALL of the remaining upgrades you want, in the order you want them, UP FRONT. (generate a build queue for the star base)
3) Have constructors generated automatically by the "Star Base Upgrade" item in the local shipyard. (see above)
4) Have each upgrade happen AUTOMATICALLY when the constructor arrives at the base.
5) Have a "clear queue" option on the Star Base management screen that will allow a player to clear, and then re-enter the build order. to change it on the fly, or in the middle of a set of upgrades.
6) Instead of having the star base management screen show up EVERY TIME a constructor arrives, have that screen ONLY show up when the base is IDLE.  (The upgrades should happen automatically.)
7) Have a "sentry" option to set the star base to, so that it won't bother the player again when it is sitting idle.

I'm not sure your existing code will allow for all that, but it would make for HUGELY better gaming experience with insanely large battlefields.

Final Thoughts:

Computers were designed in the first place to handle boring and repetitive tasks, so it makes even more sense in game design.

Thanks a lot for reading, and I sincerely hope to see some of these suggestions show up in future builds!

I think ALL of these suggestions that many GC players would agree with.