Opposed to a simple slider, which DOES affect balance as Ron explained, I would rather see a re-shuffling of the Tech Tree, (which iirc is already in the works) and making certain specific techs more time-consuming than others. i.e. the ship prototypes, building types and other core features necessary for ANY empire research quickly, while the empirewide bonuses like damage increases and Resource mining rate increases take a significant investment in time, forcing players to choose EITHER one OR the other, not both. (in the short term at least)

Again, though, these cant be really made into simple on/off options. They need to be hard-wired and balance tested by developers and beta testers. (perhaps a mod could be made. I stink at coding, so Ill have to defer to others here)

Yeah, I am just throwing idea out there atm to try and get researching up to the level it should be. Right now it seems researching does not play as dynamic a role as it should.

I was basing the sliders on GalCiv2, while that is a turn based and not RT4X, it did offer amazing gameplay options and playback ability even though you could only change 6 different areas.

I posted alot about this idea way back before beta 2 started and no one really seemed to take it into consideration. They were too worried about the AI and balance issues and the like. I dont really worry about that stuff becasue I know that it will be taken care of by the time of final release by the devs with input from the beta testers.

I thought the whole idea of beta testing was to try and make the game more enjoyable to a large group of people and providing replayability through the use of simple things, like sliders. Not grumbling about this needs balanced and that needs balance, we need this type of ship and that type. While I understand that this is vital in beta testing I feel that alot of this Epicness has slipped thrugh the fingers of us beta testers, it is up to the devs now, way too late for us...