This is a reply I posted on the new patch thread.
It's huge list of things I’d LOVE to see in 1.6 or a new expansion. All these are not necessarily my ideas as I have read a lot of the replies on this thread and I implemented some here.
Race-specific techs. For custom races, we could choose which one we want from the ones the existing races have. (They would be sort of super abilities that would have to be researched).
One super ship per race. Either specific for each race (maybe linked to the race-specific techs?) or to be able to make a ship the "Flagship" and he would get a +300% attack for each category or something. Or Heroes that could go from one ship to another and change the speed, range, attack, defense or sensors or other things of the ship that contains it (they could be found in anomalies (a half-destroyed spaceship or an escape pod)). They could also be assassinated by spies if said spies are left alone for too long. Heroes could also affect planets.
A way to spy your allies/friends without stopping one their planet's building. Maybe this could be the return of the espionage slider (and the spies slider would be renamed to sabotage).
A “Take the homeworld” victory condition. To win you could conquer the homeworld of that civilization. Of course, when this condition is on you can’t change your homeworld. This would make big conflict zones near civilizations’ homeworlds and also make military starbases more important.
A miniaturization, starting world quality and logistics ability to put your racial points in.
Stealth module for ships and a detection module to find them (which would be in the “sensors” technology and that would make them more worthwhile to research). The stealth modules would take a lot of space and would have to be researched for each size (meaning that there would be “stealth” that would give you the module for tiny hulls, “advanced stealth” for small hulls and so on…). Hidden ships would move more slowly and starbases’ sensors would detect them (making these worthwhile to research as well).
More space terrain such as: nebulas that slow down ships and/or diminish their sensor range, black holes that are simply impassable squares, permanent wormholes that would make bridges through space and conflict zones to control them, space poison zones that would hurt ships. They’d make ship speed more important because I usually build a huge army and then go there no matter how long it takes. We would also have to ask ourselves “do I go through the poison or do I circle it and risk having my planet invaded? How much terrain is on the map could be chosen from rare to abundant when setting up a new game.
Star gates. They’re in DL’s intro so we know everyone has the technologies for it. It would be a late tech which would allow you to make a star gate building (and it would take long to build) and it could either connect to any other star gate you possess or it would be linked to only one of them.
No diplomacy hint. The text wouldn’t be red or green or if it was green it wouldn’t be a sure deal. Relations with other races could change like that as well (they’d get upset after a few tries and cease the communication). We could also ask : what would you give me for “…”? Moreover, to be able to turn on and off the “diplomatic relations (“warm - wary”) slider and to have to guess from their speech or to have the slider be a result of your meetings (so you know exactly how bad your last conversation was…)
Restricted view on techs. You could only see part of a given race’s techs which would depend on spying. The agents that would be looking for techs would be harder to find before they can be nullified. Seeing how many replies talk about tech trading, the implemented suggestions should be in a dropdown menu in place of the “no tech trade” button.
Queuing. For techs and ship building (also the ability to repeat a queue like in Supreme Commander).
Movement for starbases in some way. Either for military starbases only or all of them and either through a ship that could push it around or through a module.
A repair bay and repair robot module for starbases. The first one would repair ships that “dock” starbases and the second one would repair the starbase itself. It could make way to some pretty cool space bases where your ship congregate. Starbases should also have their HP boosted with every module built.
Space mines. Not mines as in asteroid mines. Mines as in exploding mines. They’d be ships that would stay in place and damage ships that get to close (the range could change with the number of modules or techs). They could even go stealth (at the cost of reducing their explosion range maybe? It would also make stealth VERY important).
To be able to create a game with one or more technologies already researched for everyone. We’d have the tech tree and simply select which techs everyone starts with.
To be able to put spies on starports and starbases. On starports they would only slow the production however (maybe they could be stacked to reduce even more) and on starbases they would nullify a module (and after a certain number of turns the module would be destroyed).
The United Planets is too limited. A system to have someone (the one with the most IP?) choose the topic (which could have diplomatic relations repercussions) or choose “Monthly, Quarterly, Bi-Yearly, Yearly, Never” when creating the game. Choosing the topic would also make IPs more valuable in diplomacy and in general. Maybe there could be an event or mega-event that makes the UP vote two or more laws.
Negative racial traits like -10% research to gain an extra 2 ability points. A no-super-ability that gives you twice as much racial points could be cool as well. An extra-starting-techs racial ability that would allow you to put more points for your starting techs would create some interesting choices (it could also help make custom races more balanced with preset races). Right now custom races are too weak right now (maybe 20/25 points instead of 15)
To be able to change the color of a race even if they’re chosen randomly, already created, or even for the preset races because it can be hard to distinguish the korx from the yor, the and the .
A galactic wonder that reduces the maintenance cost of ships.
Border control through techs, diplomacy or initial settings. To limit certain races from entering your influence; it could be done through an event, a mega-event or a United Planets vote.
To be able to choose settings for races even if we choose “random races”. I often want to put random races but I realize that if I do I won’t be able to choose their dvanced settings like personalities and so on. Random shouldn’t “wait” for it to be in-game. There should be a randomize button that scrambles settings and THEN we could change some settings.
New way to interact with invaded planets. After having conquered a world (and doing so should also be changed to killing only soldiers, not civilians), you would have a few choices as to how to treat captured citizens that could depend on your civ’s alignment. For example: kill of all prisoners to boost that planet’s loyalty (if evil), enslave prisoners for extra production but risk of revolt (could be reduced with an evil-only building, if evil), leave them choose whether to join you or not (it would depend of on influence, neutral), keep them in prison to boost morale? (neutral), offer them integration plans that would cost you money but increase the number of people that stay on that planet (good), offer transportation to the closest planet to lower that planets loyalty(have a message to indicate which planet it is, some would stay, good). There could be other choices.
Multiple governors that build improvements in a user-defined order just like in GalCiv 1. It’d be a 1-click solution to starting worlds in huge maps.
Seeing how ship design was successful, implement starbase design with starbase only jewelry. They don’t always look right with your ship style.
Scrolling with the arrow keys without having to press shift and at the same speed as when you move your mouse to the border of the screen since no one moves ships with them.
Maybe have some improvements not take a tile in the colony screen. I know I never build some of them because tiles are simply too valuable. Once built these buildings could show up in a list when you click on the initial colony tile. Otherwise, they could appear on squares that are not green, orange or yellow tiles.
Space missiles. These are ships that inflict the damage of the “weapons” you put on it only once. Maybe they would get a bonus attack and speed for being missiles.
Update the tutorial movies. I know a lot of players don’t want this because they already know how to play the game but when I first played it I was REALLY at a loss as of what to do. The manual could also use an update. Maybe the birth of a “Tutorial scenario” (it would show up on you first game and have a specific map) could solve this problem.
In-game notepad. Maybe several of them, as in one per planet or something. They could have a “set reminder in X weeks” option as well.
A “Fleet-command” module for huge-hulled ships. When in fleet with other ships, those ships would get an attack bonus. This could also be another ability of the civ’s “Flagship” Maybe also have huge hulls be slower so we get the feeling of maneuvering a battleship class behemoth (and slow the fleet that accompanies it). Smaller ships could also have a chance to “dodge” huge hulls’ attacks.
Good choices in the random 3-way “morale choices” shouldn’t be bad but only different from the bad choices. Also lots of people think being good simply sucks and that an evil-only building is the only way to win in suicidal.
One starbase class per sector or maybe simply one economy starbase per solar system or sector should be the limit.
Reappearing anomalies to make the Galactic Guide Book useful. There could also not be tons of them at the beginning of the game and have them popup everywhere progressively to make sensors and scouts more important.
A button to move the selected ship to its destination and another one to move all ships to their destinations (the old spacebar hotkey).
A new governor that “sends ship type X to this waypoint”
Different sorting methods in the shipyard and the sorting would be the same on every planet’s starport. The methods would be Cost, Maintenance, Size, Beam attack, Missile attack, Mass Drivers attack, Beam… defense, Range, Sensor range, Modules…. Among others things.
If you get weak in one area such as diplomacy or morale or influence or military production, the party that has those as bonuses gains more votes in the party elections (if that’s not already the case).
Some sort of upgrade for ground combat. Maybe even a ground vehicle design screen?
A new, factory type starbase. It would be able to build faster and faster as you add modules. Maybe its distance to your planets could be limited or it could not be and that would boost the importance of scouts.
A setting to have a race be an “aquatic race” for example that can colonize aquatic worlds from the start but not regular (maybe they should then be called “oxygen”) worlds. That would make less conflict for the initial colony rush. It would also make races more special in a purely cosmetic way.
Wow…. 2,004 words and 9,359 characters…
EDIT: I think the most important for a new expansion would be to work on the diplomacy of the game. It's far too simple as it is right now.
