Suggestions for GalCiv 3

Carriers are in, in some form. We don't know details beyond that.

Me too, although it sounds like totally wiping out a planet's population is out. It'd still be nice to be able to weaken the defenders before an invasion.

Would be cool.

Given how differently the combat works, these would have to be more like ship properties and special effects rather than abilities you can activate, but being able to add custom stuff would be pretty cool.

Stargates were obsoleted by Hyperdrive. There's simply no need to build clunky gates when each ship can go wherever it wants.

That's one side of it. Theoretically, star gates still make sense - if the gates are far enough from each other and travelling through them is instant, you can be much faster than with the hyperdrives. The drawbacks are: star gates are immensly expensive to build and you have no notice at all when someones come through, so an invasion could be mounted without the possibility to intercept the attacker or to summon reinforcements.

Stargates don't work instantly in GalCiv. In fact, they are much slower than hyperdrive:

"A ship going through a stargate would still take months, even years, to go relatively short distances. With the new hyperdrive system, that time would be halved with improvements possible for even greater relative speeds."

Ok, they ARE obsolete.

I think the mistake people make in interpreting the stargates is to think of as much larger versions of the devices of the same name from the Stargate movies and tv series, but they're entirely different. Those are basically artificial wormholes, allowing incredibly fast (though not instantaneous) transit between any two stargates.

In GalCiv lore, however, they act much more like cannons, accelerating ships to speeds they wouldn't otherwise be able to accomplish and then slowing down vessels that arrive at the companion gate at the other end, but with the limitations in energy technologies of the Pre-Human galaxy they never had the power to propel vessels at such great speeds as the Hyperdrive could, also making the gates much larger and more expensive.

Whilst, theoretically, stargates constructed in the modern era would be far faster ad cheaper than the Pre-Hyperdrive era stargates they still have too many limitations and disadvantages for anyone to bother building them.

I would like to see the shipbuilding have design objectives rather than manually clicking and adding each component.  

For example: I could design Battle Axe class as: no less than 3pc/wk speed, no less than 1.3 sct range, no less than 4 sensor radius, then devote 75% of remaining space to weapons and 25% of remaining space to shields.  Then, after you get a new tech, it can auto-update all your designs and you don't have to rebuild all your custom ships.  

If you get Miniaturization IV, it doesn't have to ask you what to do with the rest of the space, it's already in the design specs.

This managed to get me thinking and it would be great if we could design our own modules (in addition to entire ships).  Allow us to design the look and feel of the various modules and save the design(s).

It would also be great if some of the modules were broken down into components.  For example: the Colonization Module should consist of the component that contains the populace to be transferred; and the component that is actually used to establish the groundwork for the new planetary infrastructure; and probably other components (that simply aren't coming to mind at the moment).

I know I used the colonization module to relocate people from one planet to another until I acquired the ability to do troop modules; then I used them.  In theory, these two modules use the same (or similar) component for moving people.

When you think about it, this should also be applied to the research tree; but I'll let y'all do the math on that...

SK

I dont mean exactly the same stargate technology as pre-hyperdrive civs have, but new stargates upgraded with hyperdrive technology. While not instantaneous, they could still be many times faster than even the fastest hyperdrive alone. This would be balanced by high research and building cost, and perhaps by limits (you can build no more than 3 gate pairs, otherwise you risk destabilising the local hyperspace). That way hyperdrive would still stay relevant, hyper-stargates would be just another strategic factor to consider, mainly in the end game.

Another suggestion: Titans, like in Sins (I dont know if Stardock has the right to rip off all the cool things from Sins and add them to GalCiv if its developed by Ironclad, but I would not mind if they did )

I'm guessing this is a post about suggestions you are making and not about all our suggestions there are plenty of posts about that. Don't Galactic civilizations already have planetary bombardment its one of the planetary invasion techs. maybe if you clarify some more on what you are saying. I'm guessing that you want to see your planetary bombardment on the game not just select it as one of the options before you invade.

I can't see a reason why we can't select an anti matter option when you level up. It would be a little different in Galactic civilizations in the sense that it would be something that the ships would have to do in the combat screen. I guess the planetary bombardment abilities would have to be removed unless you give a modified version of this that is not dependent on leveling up maybe you would only pick one option when you build the transport  instead, but there are to many abilities that were used for fleet defense instead of planetary bombardment. You could still give the capital abilities to large and huge hulls if you like whle only the cruisers abilities would be fiven to small hulls, and the frigate abilities would be given to medium hulls. There would be no abilities for tiny hulls. Don't both games still use armor and shields. You could modify this to include chaff, but you don't have to. If you didn't though it would be kind of not fair for missiles.

You know that the asteroids in the asteroid belt is a few million kilometers apart; even though the asteroid belt is on a two dimensional plane created by centrifical force around the sun. There is about 1/4 the mass of mercury with the circumference of about one and a half astronomical units around the sun. Unless the ship was a lot bigger than the death star there should be no problem manuvering around the asteroid belt. Now about the Kepler belt remember that the belt is at least 60 astronomical units wide. The comets are a lot bigger like from 150 to about 3000 plutiods. Not everyone realises how big space really is. This might slow down this may make the hyperdrive inoperable because of the gravity problem. forcing you to use your manuvering thrusters, ion drives, impulse engines.

One small little wish list item I would love to see is the land battles for control of the planet.  Have it a little more detailed and not just about numbers being the winning factor.  For those that want to skip on it leave it the same but at least up the graphics instead of just two clashing armies facing off with the numbers bar determining the winner.  For those that want the option have it a little more played out.