pay grades=rank

as for the cost of refits are they going to charge the crew for the repiars.  maybe the ferengi do but then they are probable getting huge pay benefits for the mission that they are on.

I will say this if you are assigned to a ship that isn't going to get normal leave for five years.  You expect to get paid while you are on said ship but when you retire or change ships then you would probable expect to get paid.  Thus when you are board ship and you buy something personal such as a roll of cloth you would tell the merchant to charge it to you in the name of the ship you are on.  This being taken out of your final pay down the line.

I think it would depend on what kind of society you have. 

The whole capitlism vs socialism thingy.

i was just responding to the post before mine.  in capitlism the government has little control of the economy.  in socialism the government has almost all control over it.

I've played TW for years as well. And I'm not saying I don't want micromanagement, although after re-reading my post I can understand you might think so. I just don't want more micromanagement as far as trade goes. Lets face it. You send a trade ship off. Sometime in the far distant future you find out what it was worth to send it to x planet. But you don't know if it would have been better to send it to y planet. Why would I want to micromanage something I don't even have data on?

I would also like to see the one-screen view. I would also like to see a mini-map of the galaxy so I know where the planet is. I almost always play on Gigantic maps and it gets confusing after awhile trying to remember where planets are when trying to decide what to build.

TA does have a lease/maintenance screen, and I would think they will continue with that. I can't remember offhand if you can pay from that screen, but I think you can.

Which brings up something I *would* like - a built in ability to configure screen information via xml.

The system used in Galactic Civilizations II is great in that it's very customizable, and frustrating, in that it . . . . almost . . . . brings customizable screens within reach of an end user.

but, for me at least, not quite within reach.

Which is frustrating because there are a lot of understandable decisions that aren't quite right for me. There are screens I consistently have to flip from one screen to another with - most recent example, I have five spies - but I have to set F4 to the espionage tab, F5 to the reports tab, and flip back and forth in order to verify who I have very low, low, medium, high, and advanced intel analysis on. Thats . . . kind of a problem, when operating against AI's that will never need to remember what screen the info they need is on.

The same thing is true of a lot of other info - I can see specific statistical info for any rival on the F5, but my *own* statistical data is on the F6 'Stats' tab. It's *not* 'stupid' - there's a definite logical sense to it. But it makes it difficult for me to compare stuff unless I want to write it down or something similar.

Now there's two ways to handle this - one is they can do the same sytem they used before, but with additional documentation about how to pull information into it so that changes can be more than cosmetic, maybe with an additional modding structure so you can play 'official' games with modified dxpack files while leaving unaltered one in place or something similar so multiple accounts on a PC.

The other (and the one I would frankly prefer) would be to setup an internal system for manipulating and presenting data - XML. XHTML, SVG, maybe even a javascript system, but some for of generic internal datamanipulation system with sufficient access people can write their own code to present the data they want on the screen. Literally a report writing system, maybe with an embedded browser engine to interperet the results and so on.

Either would do - I prefer the latter because it would enable me to not have to learn an indepth system that only applies to GC:III, but I would happily take either one if it meant I can see what the drengins military multiplier is in a place that's convenient for me.

Jonnan

I suppose that the collective miiight do things with its drones to keep itself occupied (EDIT: Whoa! THAT came out wrong!!!), but the Borg are supposed to be non-emotional and the individual drones do not care, so I guess the answer is "no". As for the screen modding: Would be a HUUUGE help!!! I operate on a shoestring budget, so actually getting Desktop X is simply not an option, and it looks like I am going to have to have somebody else do the UI for my metroid mod..... down with the DXPacks!!!!

My only true wish for Gal civ 3 would be a semi real-time gameplay with lots of Auto-pause options.

-pause when :

  . a week as passed

  . Encounter a new race

  . A building is constructed

  . a ennemy ship is spoted

  . ect.

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For the other suggestion :

I dont think that tiles based movement is what make Gac Civ so good. But I do think that the oportunity to take one hours the calculate my next move is essential. after all The AI can do it in a fraction of a second so its only faire that we could do it. That was the flaw to Sin of a solar empire You could not even pause the game to read the info of the tech tree.

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Also, to correct the gal civ flaw of 'weird' time line, different action could now take more time to acomplish thus allowing re-enforcment to arrived and change the outcome.

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Traveling in space could be less straitfoward and 'take into acount' gravitational field making flight plan more sinusoidal. Than with better tech, faster but also straiter route could be developed.

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a more "rock paper sisor" for spaceship size and weapon vs defence.

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Wormholes that actualy travel into a new small pocket univers

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An option to set the fleet Vs fleet combat system:

  a) All ship target the biggest treat until it dies than target next ship (as is already)

  Randomize target each round so damage is spread thought the fleet

  c) Randomize after a kill so once a ship engage a target, it stick to it until it's destroyed

  d) Randomize each Gun. So one ship with 12 gun could fight 4 ship at once.

of course some of those option are not optimal but would give a more realistic feel without having to micromanage each battle since GalCiv is not a RTS but a Civ game.

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slower death by starvation.

anyone noticed that before invation a planet with 12G population you juste have to send one spy on the farm and Bang, next week, 4G just die?

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Sorry for the spelling, Im not that good in english and I'm in a rush...

Although you can rewrite (or pick data & values from the assigned functions already slotted by the executable in reserved sections of specific screens... etc) any of the current dxPack files as you wish, python driven assets would make it easier though for some of us. The unused tab of "alternate tasks" in X-Worlds for example cannot be implemented without some code alteration as it needs stack space in memory to allocate procedural calls.

I don't think he is talking about full tactical so much as a series of directives you can use from the start to "program" the combat AI. The battle would still go on "automatically", but ships would behave in a user-determined way. I actually wrote a post about it a while back, let me see if I can find it........

What I meen by an 'option to set the fleet Vs Fleet combat system' is not a pop up every fight. it's a fix option for the entire game just as when you set low research rate or many anomaly. You would set this up for the whole map.

Fight should always be automatic. Else It could become to easy to destroy a toop transport even when escorted by 8 other defenders.

Then you're playing with a complex enough simulation that doesn't allow you decide how to defend OR attack. In pure tactical terms, the AI outwits you and you can't do anything but watch its fleet decide the combat outcome and odds for & against. Meaning, they can algorithmicly cheat using a determistic strategy without your better knowledge over any given battle ruleset.

Heres what I would like to see in GC3..and 2 for that matter. A Stable game that doenst crash repeatedly or leak memory like a SOAB.