Hi, I don't have the Galactic Civilizations 3 alpha yet, but I have the Galactic Civilizations 2 Ultimate Edition (which is a great game except for the lackluster AI I have played against even though reviews say it should be very challenging).  I have also watched some videos of the Galactic Civilizations 3 alpha.  I was wondering if anyone moves their ships one hex at a time?  Put in other words, does anyone click on each adjacent tile one at a time to move their ships rather than clicking on a hex that is more than one distance away from the ship?  I notice that most people seem to tell their ship to spend all its movement points with a single click.  I would think that it would be somewhat better to move your ship one tile at a time by clicking on adjacent tiles one at a time because if the ship's sensors pick up something you can then think about which tile to move your ship to next with the new sensor information in mind. 

I will present a scenario where a person chooses to move their ships differently in it.  It should show why moving a ship one hex at a time is better than the normal method.  In the scenario you have a ship with 2 sensor range and 4 movement points.  There is an enemy ship that in terms of combat is stronger than yours and will more likely win a battle against yours.  It also has 2 movement points.  This enemy ship is 4 tiles away from your ship so it is 2 tiles outside of your sensor range but your ship has enough movement points to reach it. In the first example if you were to just click once to spend all your movement points and you happened to click on the enemy ship you would most likely lose when it is the enemy ship's player's turn and he attacks you.  But, in the second example, if you were to move your ship one tile in the direction of the ship, and then you clicked to tell it to move one tile more you would see the enemy ship and be able to tell your ship to turn around and move in the opposite direction.  Because the enemy ship has less movement points it wouldn't be able to catch up to your ship and destroy it.

If people agree with me that moving your ship one hex at a time is superior to spending all your movement points with a single click I would like to recommend the developers to have this in mind while designing the game.  For example, maybe the developers could program the AI to try to move their ships one hex at a time so that it has the advantages of that style of ordering.

Thanks for reading this.