Great stuff!  Good luck with the late game issues.  That will be a big help to the game.  

Looking forward to trying the AI stuff out.

Things certainly seem to be on the right track!

WoW this is amazing! Thank you and I look forward to see it!

Am I understanding correctly that there will be a limit to the administrator resource amount, or is it that you will generate N points of administrator points over time with larger maps having a higher base value? If it's the former, I don't think I'm going to like this change.

While I understand your stated reasons for this change, I don't think the benefit of reducing the stress to build starbases outweighs the game changing effects of providing a cap to the amount of starbases you can create. It honestly seems like an arbitrary cap. Limiting what the player can do so the player will not feel inclined to do an action as much should be done only on game breaking mechanics, and building lots of starbases doesn't seem to me to be a game breaking mechanic as it does take time and money. If a player builds tons of starbases they do so at the risk of halting production of other items, which is something the player should have to consider and be allowed to either fail or succeed depending how they've gone about it. It feels like you're dictating how players should play by saying how many starbases can be built.

Another point is that bridging the gap between a small empire and a big empire by limiting starbase production seems like a poor way of going about it. Currently, a larger empire can support a larger amount of starbases than a smaller empire because the larger empire has the production and income to create and support said starbases. And to be honest, what's wrong with that? A more successful player should be allowed to expand as much as he can. Telling the player otherwise does not make for fun game play. This is a game of building an empire, expanding your borders, building larger fleets, creating trade routes, and spreading your influence. It's a 4X game, and expanding is one of those X's. If you are going to provide a limit on how much a player can expand in a category, it should be for a better reason than reducing the stress to expand and to bridge the gap between smaller and bigger empires.

With that said, I do love the game and I am looking forward to the patches this month overall. This reply is just my initial reaction to the administrator resource, and I have no idea how it will mesh with other unannounced changes, so it's very possible I'm not aware of the larger picture.

Any new updates on upcoming expansion "DLC"?

Great work though waiting to see these changes in action.

Looking forward to administrators and endgame changes

But: Currently when not at war we can do nothing but build ships and constructors at our shipyards (and that's very tedious ...). Since building lots and lots of war ships eventually has to stop because of maintenance costs we *must* build constructors to enhance existing and build new starbases. So when that is not possible anymore, what can we do instead (since we cannot just let our shipyards unoccupied; perhaps that has to change)?

That has also to do with endgame boredom. When the first one or two enemies are conquered the player is normally strong enough to conquer the rest of the galaxy, but because the AIs cannot put up a decent fight, that is just a matter of mopping up in a very un-fun fashion (as others stated at serveral occasions already). So the AI must become better at fighting back and we should have more useful things to do when not at war or while preparing to fight the next enemy. E. g. give us more interesting things to discover (e. g. planet with trader that sells unique ships or components, more varieties of pirate bases and their ships, more varieties of anomalies, new precursor artefacts and relics, more (rare) special resources for special, more powerful components and buildings, to list only some of my ideas) or make it so that resources from resource mining starbases must be fetched by transports so that we have supply lines to attack (although that makes only sense when ships and buildings using special resources actually use them up and stop working if there is no more supply. I could go on a while like that

I play only insane maps, so above considerations are only my own and for that style of gameplay.

These sound like great improvements!

Question: in your look at diplomacy, were the various broken treaties and options fixed? Doing so would go a long way to making diplomacy a fun part of the game.

One thing I'd like to see implemented is a means to repair and upgrade existing ships using shipyards rather than cash. This would provide another function for the shipyard that would be useful in the mid-to-late game. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to integrate into the current code--but if it were something that just syphoned off resources from the total manufacturing (e.g., a property that gives a negative value, like -3.5 from total manufacturing for repair--and on the ship upgrade end, it would need a separate payment option, like one button that specifies the number of credits and another that says "use shipyard" that is only enabled if the ship is stationed at a shipyard...), anyhow, I'm sure this is more work than I expect, but it may not be too bad... I think it would add a lot. Just a thought.

Thanks again, Draginol!

 I wanted the AI to do more trading and less "give me stuff please".

It made me very happy to see this.  It annoys the crap out of me when the AI keeps asking me to just give them techs for free, and then has the nerve to get pissed at me for saying "NO".  Especially considering that I can't ask the AI to just give ME techs for free.

I also like the administrators idea a lot.  It is kind of like logistics for fleets.  You can only effectively manage so many ships coordinated together in a fleet; kind of makes sense you can only manage the logistics of keeping so many massive structures in space supplied and running effectively.  Both of which you can get better at by investing research time into making them better.

Really liking the vision moving forward that I am seeing so far.  Thanks much for the update Brad.

I really like that it will not be that simple anymore to drag the AIs into wars just to weaken everyone  - it's too easy indeed.

Nice to see this game receiving more updates!

Hey Brad...

first thank you for all the work you do.    

As you nitpicked the ship designer a bit in this post...   can I direct you to this?

https://forums.galciv3.com/480848/page/1/#3659595


I really wish the game would see a ship design that we upgraded from a pre-existing design as an UPGRADE that we could then go into the ship yard and just use the Build Current Design button.

This UI element currently only works with game generated ships...  and really  who uses those?

<SemanticVersioningPedantry>

Is this update big enough to be called "2.0" or is it actually "1.10" ?

</SemanticVersioningPedantry>

Well this is great work and I applaud you.

Another thing I would like to see is some auto-updates to custom ship designs.

Right now, if you unlock a stronger weapon in a tree (say, a stronger beam weapon) all your auto ships upgrade to them, but not your custom designs. Why not? It isn't too much harder to do it with a custom design than to an automatic one. You just need some rules. As in, fast designs remain fast, high damage designs remain high damage, and so on.

That would cut a huge amount of tedium from longer games where you unlock a lot of warfare tech.

Also, if the faction definition could include a "use this ship design type", then custom factions could be set to use the custom ship designs they come with wihout having to have an actual mod made.

Brad, although I like what I've read so far about the administrators and think it sounds like a step in the right direction, would you also consider changing how the bonuses from overlapping startbase zoc's stack? Please add a law of diminishing returns.... Please? I don't want to see the incentive to have overlapping SB's done away with outright, but the crazy, crazy high bonuses from several feel like a total cheese factor, one that cannot be ignored. Thanks.