So far this is coming up to be a Mixxed bag for me.
Love 4x games [+]
No Multiplayer? [-]
Can Design your own ships! [+]
No tactical combat? [-]
No planetary (starbase?) defenses? [--]

I keep going "Wow that's cool"
and then 5 minutes later saying "Well that stinks"

I'm not completely 'bummed' per'say because I have really no idea what to expect. I played the first Gal Civ and wasn't to impressed w/the combat system... so I have that hanging over my head.

Part of Space 4x games to me is being the "Supreme Commander" for the armada. You could make the case to me that as that commander I wouldn't be getting into the nitty gritty bits of the combat... but I'd still like to see it. What's the fun in building a huge armada if you can't watch your 'flag ship' duke it out.

In that same token for Armada Building a ship with no engine's doesn't make sense. Why not instead provide a chasis in the design for planetary defenses. Fighter bays (Fighters in GCII?), Missle Launchers.... basically small military orbital stations.

I always liked it in Moo2 that even if your defense armada was wiped clean, they'd still have to get passed the planetary defenses... which in itself made the planet 1 large weapons platform.

I guess if I could find a video somewhere showing off the 'view combat' screen and of a fight I might be a little more grounded on what to expect.

Deformable ships?
Damage models?
Shield Effects?
etc etc.

FYI, the game is so easily moddable that if you just HAVE to have orbital platforms, you can do it. I just tried it on the gamma, and ti appears to work just fine, barring the fact that the starbase models have no hardpoints to attach things to. If we can get a tutorial on how to add them though, It's just a matter of adding the appropriate hull entry to the game.

Of course, you'll have to restrain yourself from adding engines to the "orbital" hulls, as there's nothing to stop you from doing it and it would be quite unbalancing to have a massive hull like that floating around space in the early game

There it is. Want an Orbital Platform? You got it. I was able to mod one into the game in a few minutes, using one of the existing starbase models. The starbase models have no hardpoints for attaching ship components, so I figured out how to add them and just put one at the dead center inside the SB, so all you need to do is place a sphere-shaped hull addon in the middle and build outwards.

The only hitch is that despite my setting the hull's natural speed to -100, it comes out as having 1 move point after building and launching it. So it appears there's no way to prevent abuse, but then again if people want to cheat, 1) they're only cheating themselves since you can't mod metaverse games, and 2) you can just as easily modify the base ships to have huge values. But like I said, if you want it, you can do it pretty easily.

range: 0.1 sector = not outside your own borders. need some life support to go further.

Kudo's for Amb. Darth Kryo for making a mod example of Galciv 2. I *tried* to get this suggestion of starbases or weapons platforms into Galciv 2 - but it was not to be. I"m right there with ya Citizen Corban - Tactical combat would have been nice.

I've never Liked the defense bonuses of galciv 1 or 2 just for the same reason you mention - they require a starship. Planetary guns, Starbases, Weapons platofrms, Minefields, shoud have been included in this game - but maybe its not in the strategy vision of the creators.

Maybe someone will make a cool mod for Galciv 2 and include this stuff - though I'm not sure how effective it may be. We will have to wait and see.