How about a better combat viewer? Better ship movement, no collisions, etc

Vordrak, there's nothing advanced about organic hulls. Organic hulls would SUCK. Soft, vulnerable to chemical reactions, needs food, etc. Crystalline is bad too, but for different reasons - cracking, weight, etc

I'd like SD to go through the forums and grab all the great ideas that've been thrown around since launch. There are some fantastic (and average ) ideas out there, and I'd rather have a dozen of those than multi.

AHAHAHAHAHA.

An organic ship needs food like a metal one needs fuel? No, the organic ship will need fuel too - but it will fall to bits if you don't feed it. Organic ships can fix themselves like real living things! Except... real things heal very slowly, they can die from disease, are chemically complex thus reactive, etc etc. I'm not even going to ask what you base the idea of an organic turbine, or organic laser gun, or whatever on. You're clearly deep in biowank county, and you'll probably just say 'organic engines/computers/armour is better' and expect everyone to believe it. You even appear to be suggesting entirely organic ships - ie, spacebourne organisms, uncrewed, which somehow travel faster than light and are armed with weapons that would probably kill it in the act of firing. YAY FOR BIOWANK!

But hey, go some more pie-in-the-sky 'lol grow spidersilk' nonsense. Go for it! PS, spidersilk doesn't scale. Can you make a super-strong plate out of it? No, no you can't. Whoops!

If StarDock is going to stick to their principles and say no to multiplayer on general principle, so be it (and good for them). If StarDock is going to conduct a poll to determine if such a thing were profitable and make it if it is, then that's capitalism winning out over principle. But it's wrong for them to make the decision based on a bad poll. Either be serious about it and conduct real market research or don't. Whatever you do, don't play lipservice by generating falacious data to support the position you just happen to not want to take anyway.

I emphatically agree with this statement. I've never come on here and said a word about multiplayer previously. I didn't even know about the poll (though I do check the website weekly for updates), and I certainly can't understand anything that Pnakotus is talking about (it does sound like superflous exaggeration). To me, this thread still hasn't ruled out a multiplayer expansion at all, in fact- the OP specifically states this isn't the final straw on the discussion...

@ Norad: Stardock have hinted at multiplayer being a potential post-release expansion for a long time before GalCivs2 was even released. People have been discussing it for that long, and I definitely had the impression it was a highly likely addition later on in its post-release development cycle when I bought it. It wasn't the reason for me buying it, but it was certainly a factor that intrigued me immensely. And now that it's being put to the community, I'm just trying to establish a fair ground for those in favour of such a development.

Stardock have many market research avenues available to them (I have no doubt of it), and if they really wanted to embrace a wider, fairer audience, I'm sure they can do that too. I sincerely hope they do anyway- and that's all I'm trying to say.

Hence, future expansion packs for Galactic Civilizations II are likely to be digital-only. Humm... not really liking that. Those of us in good old europe doesn't really all have credit cards or want to pay over the net. I hope that Paradox would still be releasing the expansion pack in stores.

What he said.

I think 33% for a 20 $ MP-only expansion is quite a lot.

Before release the lack of MP had also been justified by the fact of a lower price, 40 $ instead of 50 $. This is a 10 $ difference. But now we are (potentially) offered a 20 $ expansion. This is too much for many of us, for a feature many people had expected the game to have by now already (of course excluding the majority of the "true" GalCiv core fans who should be over-represented in these forums though)

I would be very disappointed without multiplayer. The AI (in absolute terms) is not as great as stated in many reviews and MP would be the solution to me.

Hi there,

what I am really missing is A REAL ROUNDBASED BATTLE, where you could use that different ships you built.

SPACE
and GROUND !!!
(Take the 5 star General series from SSI as an example http://www.panzergeneral.com/ they even had Space General

That's it ... make that as ADD ON and I am really happy to contribute my 20.-
Make Multiplayer only if after all other things, it is still possible

It's fun to read more and more posts which are basically 'I want multi wah wah wah make it for me regardless of manpower, economics, or marketing. If they don't they're rogues and cads'. EARTH TO PEOPLE - they AREN'T consisdering it because it ISN'T profitable. That's what this whole thread is about!

They are considering it. They just don't think there is a large enough market to justify it.

Anyway I've been thinking about it and the top ideas I have for expansions are:

1. Political overhaul. The galactic council needs some lovin'. The ability to propose bills would be good. I always find military games more interesting as theres more to get involved in, non-combat routes can feel a little passive sometimes. Maybe the espionage system could be looked at too.

2. Asteroid installations. Back in the early days of development (pre-beta 1) there was a plan to utilise asteroid belts as small colonies/mining stations. You would have large belts scattered about the map which can be mined for X benefit. Space terrain was also on the cards. Nebulae, black holes, maybe better wormholes, and great big asteroid belts. Unfortunately it was realised a few months into development that they could never get it all done in time so it had to be abandoned. But it sounded cool....

That would be hulls made out of human skin; not organic hulls

Hey! Hulls made out of human skin - that would be quite a cool graphic for an evil race ...

Kevlar is organic. So is spider-silk. Both of them have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than any known metal. I can imagine a ship with scales made of some kind of woven spidersilk. Overlapping, and able to be shed and regrown. That'd be pretty good protection.

Looking at this thread and the others I have posted in the general forum, there seem to be a fair few people who would like additional jewellery with more variety. Several people liked the idea of organic hulls and crystalline hulls (and jewellery) as alternatives to the metallic looking ships. You would need alternate graphics for the equipment modules too - that kept with the alternative graphical themes.

That would be a popular and profitable option for Stardock.

Also - lots of us would like Terror Stars too.

Stardock, the "game has five expansion slots and multiplayer would take up 3-4 of them" analogy really got my attention. When you put it that way, I would rather not have multiplayer.

I'm sure you'll get requests for expansion features such as "more ____ ," such as more hulls, more extra components, more races, more random events, more game setup features. Assuming this is true, I'll concentrate my suggestions on features that wouldn't simply be more of the same (although I would really like to see more random events and races).

2) Variety in the planets that can be colonized. Mars-like planets are about the minimum, currently. But I'd also like to be able to colonize frozen Pluto-like planets, hostile volcanic planets, and gas giants. Rather than an initial colony, a resource-gathering module might go down on planets that are extremely inhospitable. Xeno-farming and other terrestial improvements wouldn't be possible, but recreation might (which could boost tourism empire-wide rather than just locally).

1) Bring resource extraction into the game. Aluminum, gold, iron, nickel, platinum, uranium, and coal might be just a few of the resources that could be extracted on the worlds we colonize. Different worlds would have different resources. Resources would provide benefits empire-wide (like tradeable goods) or local effects only (such as on production). Raw materials could be used in conjunction with specific improvements to produce additional goods, such as luxury products.

3) Galactic Stock Market. Goods could be traded on an open market with other civilizations with whom you have contact. Prices would fluctuate according to the current scarcity of the good (a function of supply and demand). My inspiration for this comes from the game Starknights (www.starknights.com), which calls it the Tradepost.

4) Some ship components (weapons, defenses, etc.) would require that you have access to certain raw materials or finished goods in order to utilize them on your ships. For example, a stronger armor might be available if you have access to Titanium and Aluminum, which are produced at an Electrolysis improvement from Titanium and Aluminum Oxides.

5) I'd love to see the makeup of each planet's population (ie, 45% Human, 55% Yor) affect your planetary management and the bonuses of your soldiers (as was done in the MOO series). The makeup of populations could affect planetary loyalty, morale, productivity, etc.

6) Minor races should expand beyond their one planet.

7) Allow players to design planetary improvement modules the way they are able to design hulls. Technologies would unlock the components of modules, but what you actually build would depend on how your modules were designed. There should also be plenty of extras (eye candy). The initial colony and capital improvements should also be upgradeable and designable, since this is where user-design would be the most meaningful. People might not care what their factories look like, but designing their cities might create a LOT of user interest.

Charging to add what is a standrard feature nowadays is an insult to customers

And THAT is an insulting and ignorant statement. Most games have things like multiplayer standard because they have enormous budgets and huge backing by multinational corporations. Stardock has produced an excellent product, independently. How dare you criticize them for not having all the same features as an EA or Sony release?

BTW...Copy protection is also a "standard feature" to most gaming companies yet SD decided against it. It is nice to see a company take some chances and not follow the big publishers (and a few gamers it seems) in what they would like to consider the norm.

Taking chances such as making a game in this genre to begin with. All hail bucking conventional wisdom.