This (long) posting is an attempt to suggest more rich multi-faceted combat/tactical gameplay:
Let's face it, most play GC2 for the spaceship combat. In single player mode, diplomacy is only a nice-to-have option, but ultimately most players want to win through combat.
A) The current state of GC2 combat IMHO is quite straight forward and could be more sophisticated.
Current GC2 combat model is:
-Choose one of the 3 weapon tech, stick with it, and keep researching it for more damage.
-ditto for defense--choose one of the 3 defense, and stick with researching it.
There are 2 major tactical considerations for ship to ship combat:
i) choose a (economic) balance between high power weapon ships, vs. durable ships. Ships that have both high weapon damage and high defense are quite expensieve.
ii) players need to choose to make many small ships (and also research the various Logistics techs), make medium ships (and to a degree can skip the Logistics techs). Most games so far don't seem to make it to huge flagship/battleship size vessels yet.
-With no chokepoints in the GC2 gameboard, players in this forum are starting to advocate very fast ships (eg: Warp 9+) that can swoop in to hit-and-run or invade, literally before the computer AI can react. AI defenses are entirely side-stepped.
Chokepoints (or a way to slow down ships to a more reasonable speed) are desperately needed, otherwise this would become an exploit that affects gameplay (especially if/when internet multiplayer GC2 gameplay comes along).
==============
B) Suggestions:
1. More detailed ship component interaction and combat considerations.
1a. Make missile ships (light to medium damage) that can shoot long range, but moves slowly.
Once the Laser ships or Masser Driver ships get in range, missile ships generally lose in close combat.
-make laser ships (medium damage) shoot medium/short range, but moves quickly.
-make mass driver ships (high damage) shoot very short range, but moves even quicker.
1b. Introduce general armor class, that does moderage defense against all 3 kinds of attacks.
GC2 has already specialized defenses against one specific attack (Missile, Laser, or Mass Driver), but at the expense of (much) reduced effectiveness against the other 2 types of attacks.
This is similar to the MechWarrior 3 & 4 series of armor defenses.
[Currently everyone seems to favor Lasers, but what if you are playing against different AI players that use different attacks? One use Laser, another use Mass Drivers, yet another Missiles? I would prefer general purpose armor defense, which is probably cheaper than building a ship that has all defenses (Shields/Armor/Point-Defenses).
1c. More ship components to make ship combat deeper than a race for higher damage & higher defense ships:
-Jammers: Missiles can be jammed by a component in a ship (different classes of jammers according to tech level).
So long range missile ships may have only a few jammers for general protection, while short range laser ships or mass driver ships would have heavy jamming for survivability (missile boats lose easily when laser/md shps get into attack range).
-Battle Computers ship components can help overcome Jammers.
-Laser Boosters: A ship component can be added to further boost total laser damage output, according to tech level.
This further highlights the Laser advantage over missile ships at close range combat.
-Engine speed: Total ship weight vs. # of engines should influence ship speed on the VCR computer-automated combat, further enhancing the dance of death of missile ships trying to stay away from the deadly close range laser shps.
mass driver ships are even deadlier at very close range, so battle/engine speed is critical here.
-Perhaps a certain race can build ship components that can reduce opponents' engine speed in VCR computer-automated combat?
-other ship components such as battle computers to enable your ship to shoot first (various levels of this according to tech research).
***This interplay between fast moving jammed laser ships vs. slower missile boats becomes a tech arms race, hence strategy involved in ship design.
2. Tactical ship movement suggestions:
2a. Chokepoints are desperately needed, to counter the Warp 9+ speed exploit mentioned above.
-Minefields to slow down enemy invaders (but won't slow down the defeneding fleet).
Various types of minefields can be added, such as general purpose mine fields, mine fields that specifically greatly reduce invading fleet's Warp speed, defender-controlled explosive mine fields that can damage invading fleet, etc.
-invading ships can use laser ships to slowly sweep the mine field.
-slowly moving nebula that can hide ships inside it
-asteroid field that small ships can pass through (with chance of % damage depending on how slow the small ship is).
medium size and large size ships defintely gets destroyed by going thru asteroid field.
-I personally don't like the model of fixed hyperspace lanes roadmap that forces ships to have only a few choices to get to a certain neighboring star. It makes defense a bit too easy to defend (the opposite of the current GC2 model of absolutely no chokepoints possible).
-wormholes that slowly and randomly move around the universe. You can invade distant worlds thru wormholes, and computer AI can do the same to you!
-Cloak: tech research component(s) in ships that reduce other players' sensor range. Better sensor tech can further improve range, even against opposing ship's cloaking component. (the cloak/sensor tech arms race).
***The same cloak shp can be totally invisible to Player#1 due to Player#1's inferior sensor tech.
***This same cloak ship can be very visible to Player#2 due to Player#2's superior sensor tech.
***Perhaps one specific race can have some built in cloak ability into its ship?
-Cloaked ships can still be detected at very close range, no matter what the othe player's sensor tech level is.
-Stargates with ship weight limit that can teleport ships to a maximum range (depending on tech).
Overgating can have chance to damage the ship, or even total permanting loss of ship.
3) Race-specific abilities could be incorporated.
Current GC2 AI differences are purely differentiated on aggresiveness, moral alignment, and affinity for alliances.
-Race that has built in ability to cloak (opponents can still improved their sensors tech to offset this), with race-specific cloaking ship components as tech becomes researched.
-Race that has potentially beter stargate technology (needs to be researched) than other players can possibly have.
-Race that can further improve planet by Teraforming tech (needs to be researched), with race-specific teraforming components.
-Robot race that don't have food-population constraints, but its robot population limited by the # of starbases around the planet.
-Race specific ship hulls that are not available to other players. eg: War loving race's scouts are armed starting off in the game, with race-specific superior ship hulls.
-You get the idea about race-specific abilities & ship components--limited only by imagination...
