ideas

Yeah, I definatly aggree that the moon and rings should do something other than look pretty on the screen.  We have a couple of ideas on the table, and the moon lazer improvements is definatly one of them

As for tiles that arent normally useful, but can be at times....I was thinking it'd be cool to have a very random Planet Tile Bonus (the little white icons) that indicated a "galactic landmark".  This would give you a cultural bonus if you built something from a short list of cultural Improvements there (Tourism Resort, Landmark Museum, ect.)

Think of the Grand Canyon.  It wouldn't be very useful for building a Power Plant or Farm, but you better beleive people from other countries come to visit it on a regular basis.

Limited Building tiles sound to me much better for the majoraty of "Unusable" tiles not just tourist traps but research zones (Volcanic land maybe) Millitary areas (Ala the legends of area 51)

As long as we don't get a lot of extra micro-management I'd love to se some use for those unusable tiles.

I have an idea that might limit the micro-management of planets: Give tile bonus to the tirst TI of the apropriate kind. An example: If a planet has say two tiles with farming bonus, one with manufacturing, and one with research (realistic in the current beta) then the first farming TI gets the best farming-bonus the second gets the next bonus, any other farming-TIs gets no bonus, the first mfg-TI gets the mfg-bonus, second and subsequent mfg-TIs get no bonus, same for research. All this without the player having to place the TI's on the right tiles.

On a map with only a few planets it's ok to plan the planets but with 5+ planets it gets tiresom. Idealy I'd like to be able to manage my planets without ever opening the planet screen.

on of the other ideas of mine was that stargate technolodgy should be on the tech tree. being able to build stargates on starbeses or moons or just open space that would boost trade and allow the owner of the stargate to move thier ships through it would be very cool. also, in galciv1, there were galactic wonders. maybe some of the wonders in galciv 2 would require a certain unusable terain type to build. the same goes for special research and manufacturing buildings. lik some of the unuesable tiles on the moon would offer lower gravity research center.

another idea, if its not to much work. maybe you could put in a real-time stradegy element to invading planets. that way its mor skill than luck whether or not you capture a planet.

on of the other ideas of mine was that stargate technolodgy should be on the tech tree.

If you look at the story line preceding game start, the humans got stargate technology from one of the other races. GC1 has a very nice startup moviie cut that tells about it.

ye but we were never able to use that technology. hyper drive is good for exploring, but stargates would be cool. maybe the tech could be "advanced stargets" or sumtin. all im sayin is it might be a cool game element

all im sayin is it might be a cool game element

Perhaps. But need to be tweaked to ensure it isn't too powerful: Moo1 has stargate in in tech tree. Coupled with the fact that ships can only move from one star to another, this means that if all of your stars where equipped with stargate, you could move all your fleet to the star that will be attacked by the AI. It was very unbalanced.

If you check the back story of GC1, you will see that starship drives are x10 faster then stargate technology. That's why all the races take apart their gates! You can go anywhere with stardrives, and they get you their faster.

What people seem to want are faster ways to get around between their worlds. GC1 hinted at such things with its multi-dimensional techs, but never provided for "instant gating" technology. Instant gates are interesting in the games that have them, but make defending your empire, trivial, once you have them. It's like having all your cities rail-roaded in Civ1.

I agree games like MOO2 and Civ3 do show you shouldn't make such instantaneous (or near instantaneous) travel unlimited in scope. However, just like other things - starbases, for example - I think it could work out if there were limits placed on them, either officially by limiting the number a player can build, or unofficially by making them cost so much it isn't worth building more than a few.

All you have to do in Civ3 is devote enough workers over enough turns and voila, you can travel from one city to any other on the continent instantly. MOO2, all you have to do is research a tech, and voila, you can travel from any system of yours to any other system of yours in a turn. This infinite construction layed on top of the infinite movement abilities given is what truly makes them problematic IMO. One or two pairs of advanced stargates in an empire would not be such a problem, I think; if anything, they would break up the monotony of the map and make a few extra sectors valuable because of your bases there rather than the presence of any planets there; sort of like resources.