Thank you guys, that is exactly the point, i have stopped playing TA for a while now but expecting 2.0 just excites me for the game again and i cant wait to play it with the new features. Your job is an ideal of how it should be with games in general, as you can see both parties profit of it.  

I am curious especially for the new espionage, there were some good suggestions in the forums that made me fantasize what might be possible.

Although what you already presented of 2.0 sounds very impressive i would like to know if this is the definite list of major tweaks. Or can we expect some other major, gameplay affecting tweaks for it? And cant u just drop a few hints what espionage will look like? Please...

Far as I know, any valid design which uses your ship style is buildable.

This update looks really promising, automating the constructors is sure to let the player focus on the gameplay a bit more.

The SB Manager looks like it will be a big help for us big-map fans, and maybe more. My aging wrists thank you very much.

But I do want to try begging just a bit more for some sort of "Don't build" functionality. Perhaps just a checkbox to mark a base as "Civilian" so it does not auto-add attack or defense modules? Many of us almost never put defense or attack modules on econ or influence bases.

Thank you guys for the great support!

What are the negotiation tweaks?

The SB Manager does sound like an improvement, but... has anything been done to reduce the micromanagement of actually getting the hordes of constructors to the starbases?  Producing and sending constructors is what I found tedious, not picking a module once the constructor gets there.

have you tried using rally points?

I suspected DA would get the shaft mostly, too, as that's got to be incredibly complicated- keeping mutliple builds of software all around for later patching.

TA sounds like the real expansion I always wished for.  Sometimes the best "features" are better management and UI improvements.

Speaking of UI improvements- any changes there to speak of?  I really like the suggestion of a Starbase list (thanks, CaptainYar), just like the planet list.  They're important enough to track separately.

Those only take the edge off the pain for some of us. The current rally point UI contexts are not built for quick work with more than four points. You can't resize the windows so you have to scroll down if the point you're interested in is not at the top of the alphabetical sort, and there are no keyboard shortcuts that I know of. More mouse work = slower play, at least for us folks who can touch type...

I still have to send a stream of constructors? Ouch. I was hoping all that would be, finally, done abstractly through investment streams. 

If possible, there should be an option to remove module priorities altogether. That way, you won't end up wasting constructors on modules that you don't need at all. A option to save priority lists and load them quickly on new and old bases would be very nice as well. Maybe even have them persist through different games, like ship designs. Those features, if not there already, would make it close to perfect imo.

the T button.

and i'm not saying it's perfect, by any means; you're exactly right that it only takes some of the edge off.

My apologies for the length of this post.

Minimally quoting relevant portions because multiquoting is still FUBAR'd and I can't be bothered to go through and make it look pretty when my edit button doesn't work.  (Goes back to last post in thread even within 30 seconds, let alone 10 minutes.)  *sigh*

Anyway.

I've said this once or twice before on these forums, and I'll say it again-I personally actually thought the spy system in DA was an improvement from DL.  I won't say it couldn't have been done better, but I will say that I actually like it.  That said, I know lots of people have complained about it and if you've managed to find a way to make them happy, you've probably managed to find a way to make me happy as well.

I take it the random events galaxy setting is for normal, not mega?  Fine either way, as far as I'm concerned-just checking.

From a mechanics perspective, the espionage upgrade is mostly the only thing, so far, of significance here-which is not a bad thing-so I could live with that being the only thing that got backported to DA, although the planetary governors would make things late game much less time consuming.

I know TA is the "latest and greatest", and I like it, but I'm not in love with it like I am with DA.  I made a post on this subject a few days ago, and didn't really get much of a response-mostly people telling me to "play the races as the developers intended them to be played".

Admittedly, I felt roughly the same way when going from DL to DA, but the super abilities finally sold me on it-and, oddly enough, spies were a factor as well.  Initially I hated them, but it became one of the reasons I played DA over DL.

But my primary issue with TA is that there does not seem to be a sufficient benefit to choosing a tech tree OTHER than the Terran (if you're going custom-if not, then you find the closest mix of tech tree and SA that suits you).  In other words, it's too good.  To put it yet another way: It looks like essentially a copy and paste job from DA, except for the layout.  I can understand why it was done that way, both for flavor reasons and to help people adjust to TA, but it still feels to me that TA is substantially less balanced than DA is/was.

Of course, I could go mod the files, and since I have yet to even play an MV game, that appears to be a valid solution-but then I'm not playing the same game as everyone else; and I'd be tempted to "fix" some things while I was there-such as the omega research center (which leads one to believe it is civ-wide, yet it is planet only) and hyper computers (which is at the end of the missile defense tree, well beyond what any rational person would "pay" for 20% more research), for instance.

-

In closing, I know your time on GC2 is devoted almost entirely to TA, and I understand the how and why of giving TA new things that DL and DA don't get, but it saddens me nevertheless.

Incidentally, could someone check to see that the fix for the social and military rounding bug that was in TA (I don't remember exactly when-I could look it up but you guys would probably find it first) makes it into DL and DA?  Because having 39 industry when you should have 40 is annoying (not actual values, just an example)-waiting an extra turn for a ship because you're 1 military shy when the math says you're on the money is painful.  I believe this was intended to be backported for 2.0, but I'm not 100% positive.

And because I'll probably be playing DA until GC3 launches.

I know and use the T key (buttons are things you click with a mouse, keys are things you press on your keyboard). What I'm pretty sure do not exist in GC2 are keyboard methods to scroll and select in the rally point dialogs for planets, ships, or fleets.

ah, got you, and point taken about keys vs. buttons. i do notice how the mouse wheel isn't very well implemented across the game's various lists. and for that matter it doesn't even work consistently on the lists for which it does work. the list of available planet improvements, for example: sometimes the mouse wheel works fine, other times the program doesn't realize you're trying to scroll down the list despite the cursor hovering over that list.

Some questions and comments

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About the ship editor:

-Will there be an option to control the miniturization and/or techs available? I don't know about you, but being able to design ships for the early colony rush (where miniturization can be limited) and early wars (where techs are limited) would be quite handy. Having everything at once can get in my way of designing those ships.

-Some ship modules are not easy to determine how advanced they are. The Terrans can unlock 3 HP boosting modules with their tech tree, 2 of which have similiar names, but are significantly different. The "Reinforced Hull Point" is found early in the tech tree and has moderately good stats. However, the "Hardened Hull Point" has a similiar looking name and is found much later in the tech tree (some time after large hulls) and has better stats. Suffice to say, it might be possible to mix weak, primitive lasers with a high tech HP boosting modules if one isn't careful.

-Some techs may be civ specific (or have other restrictions) and therefore cannot be traded. There is little point to mix and match parts on a single ship (unless you were bored or something) that no single civ could possibly have the techs for (such as evil weapons with good defense).

-The settings I would like to be able to play with is: Pick a civ and note their miniturization score (and other bonuses), pick a tech tree and select which techs you would expect to have when you are able to design the given ship (including miniturization techs, and planet improvements), player set miniturization, what other bonuses you have, and unrestricted (max miniturization with all parts).

-Will there be a universal ship style that all civs can use? I don't know about you, but I have about 10 or so early colony ship designs that have identical stats, but have different names because they one design can't be shared by all civs (variations exist for the Yor and Arceans for civ related reasons).

________________

About starbases:

-Starbase defenses is woefully inadequate late game. Its very possible to design a group of ships, or a single huge one, that can destroy the most well fortified starbase with relative ease. Have you guys considered reducing the number of modules required (with newer modules replacing older modules as installable modules), and/or increasing the overall strengh of starbase defenses.

-Will there be a way for starbases to form fleets with ships? I really hate it when my fleet moves away from the starbase it was defending because I miss-clicked something. Sadly, the guard command doesn't serve its purpose when an enemy ship(s) wakes up the defense fleet and makes it possible for them to leave their possition instead of having them skip their turns like they were doing a few turns before.

-Fortify Position command. We have the sentry command which causes the ship to skip it's turn until another civ's ship comes into sensor range. We have the guard command which restricts the wake up effect to enemy ships. However, we don't have a fortify command that ignores all ships. Starbases, especially minging starbases, are worth defending and we don't have a command well suited to their protection for reasons mentioned above.