I came very late to the galciv2 party and am enjoying it immensely but with the new game on the cards I thought Id like to weigh in with my thoughts on what could be better and what was great in galciv2. Perhaps some of this was covered in mods but Im only referencing the vanilla game here.
-Ship design is great. More please, Maybe add a couple of additional hull sizes to flesh it out a bit more.
-An aircraft carrier type starship/module. Perhaps remove the 'tiny' hull size and start with 'small' then use 'tiny' for groups of fighters from a carrier.
-This would require an overhaul of the space combat mechanics, ie-a carrier typically tries to stay out of range while it sends its fighters off.
-Ground combat/invasions. This was a little bare in gal2, while the invasion support stuff was good, I think Id prefer to be directing units, even somewhat abstractly.
-Which leads into- A variation of ground units would be nice, armour, infantry, artillery perhaps?
-More minor races. Perhaps they can be scripted to expand into mini-empires also, perhaps 3-4 planets max, to give a better challenge if someone wants to conquer them.
-Expand diplomacy. Id like to see more non-warfare treaty options other than trade or research. How about non-aggression treaties to close your space? Have conflicts over borders. My territory littered with other players starbases just seems odd.
-Similarly, greater negotiation options with minors, vassalisation for example might be better than outright conquest in some cases. Might as well add more options like this for majors too.
-While I appreciate the sometimes quirky sense of humour displayed in gal2, a race of giant squirrels???
-Id personally like to see the 'colony rush' style you have to play toned down a bit to a more 'establish one colony then move on' style.
-A starbase should be more rare and a fortress in my opinion. It was too much investment with the endless modules only for them to be destroyed easily without massive investment. Even as a newbie Ive seen most advice steer me away from upgrading starbase defences. Keep resource & economy bases mostly as is but combat bases should be a significant challenge for a fairly large fleet.
-Perhaps expand on starbase type units... Defence outposts, orbital weapon systems etc that have to be attacked directly before invasions can be attempted...
-Id like greater control in space battles also, to be able to direct ships or at least issue general orders to specific ships such as 'try to move out of range' (which would be very useful when one ship is taking a beating) or some other broad orders such as- target small ships/target capital ships/all power to defences/all power to weapons.
-Some method of retreating from tactical battles would be welcome, obviously smaller more mobile ships would have an easier time of this.
That's all for now.