You really should try the 'Majoring the Minors' concept of X-Worlds (as of now, for DA only... but i will be working on the TA conversion soon after CoSH v05-B is uploaded) -- for another alternative entertaining 'context'. Be warned however that these Minors (even when Majored with the provided extra raceconfig.xmls) have a tricky black coloring schema making them harder to detect. Bye-Bye sensors & fog issues.

The AIs in general seem to be smarter - but I have noticed they seem to look at Extreme Colonization later than they used to.  Good in my book, they tend to go for it roughly around when I do instead of sitting back with laser I and going "yup, that's good enough" and spending the next year getting the advanced colonization techs.

It's flagged as 1.99RC or somesuch.  It's a beta, not the official 2.0.

Yea it was really strange.  I posted earlier that Impulse said all of my GC2 installs were not installed correctly, i assumed this was because i edit files all the time.  But when i started it up the other day, the 2.0 beta update was available so i just hut update on twilight.  It downloaded and installed to the Galciv2 root folder like i said, and i still have 1.96 in the twilight folder.  I'm going to assume all of my GC2 DL files are frakked now because of this.    Dunno why it installed there, but it's an odd bug, need any files for this one?

1.99rc isn't showing up for me on impulse either?

For ship designs, I've usually been able to clear the text quickly by double-clicking in the edit field and pressing DELETE.

But that sort of functionality does seem a bit inconsistent throughout the UI. Starbase name fields, for example, sometimes appear ready to be cleared with DELETE, but other times focus seems to be stuck on the actual starbase and pressing DELETE gets a prompt to confirm that you wanted to destroy the base.

Thanks for the update guys!

Is there any chance of a widescreen loading menu?  I asked about it a while back and frogboy said you might be able to help!  The original loading screen in 1680x1050 is badly stretched in all versions. (DL, DA & TotA)

Some more suggestions for version 2.0:

-Icons for starbase build statis: We get an icon on the side whenever we have ships built, and for spies. Can we get one for when a starbase gets completely filled up with modules? I've played large maps and I have at times completely filled up a starbase, but have no idea where it is. As such, it requires some effort to locate that specific starbase so you could redirect constructors head for it to somewhere else, and to avoid those annoying messages about your starbase is already full.

For this, could we get 3 icons. When a starbase is filled up, could we get a green icon? When we get a tech that allows us to install more modules, could we get a yellow one? For when we send a constructor to a starbase that is already filled, could we get a red icon (preferably once per starbase when constructors auto-move at the end of the turn)?

-Don't build these module types option: The new feature for starbases to automatically install modules is useful, but there are some module types that some people don't use. I consider starbase attack and defense useless, if for no other reason than they have little to no effect end game. As such, I don't want to have such a module installed without me having a reason to make an exception. Unfortunatley, the new feature that governs starbase development doesn't allow you to avoid it. If you have a constructor, and some modules you can potentially install, it will install them when you rather they went somewhere else.

-Meaniful information about AI ship designer updates: Being informed that the AI ship designer has made new ships is handy, but the current system doesn't provide us any real meaniful information. It doesn't say that these ships are new, or have been updated. The only way you can know which ones are new, is to either keep track of what ships you had before, or to check the tech tree (to see which AI designed ships are unlocked by the new tech). It also doesn't tell you what changes were made between this design, and the one it replaces (such as price, miniturization, or firepower).

Wait a sec... is the automatic ship desinger fixed and no longer makes better ships than tech allows? And are Influence points at last usefull?

(I don't use the beta patches ever (again)... last time i did, the frigging thing messed up all the graphics and i didn't have archived released patch...)

+1 for updating all non-widescreen content.  And might as well do up everything in 16:9 while you're at it, from what I hear the monitor and hdtv manufacturers are doing away with the silliness of having 2 different widescreen aspect ratios and 16:10 will be dead soon.

Well, the vast majority of aspect-ratio dependent is largely movies from what I can tell, and that means several versions of the same movie, which would take a lot of disk space.

I would recommend one standard ratio and one widescreen ratio of the movies, and if something is not either of the two ratios, letterbox the movie with the nearest aspect ratio rather than streching it.

It's one thing that annoys me about a lot of widescreen TVs in public areas: They'll be showing some standard aspect ratio TV show streched to widescreen, making everybody look fat. It's pretty ugly IMHO when streching is used. I'd much rather have the black bars.

Oh, but since you are refering to the bink movies... i'd rather get the 'original' fixed ratios & sizes in a much smaller pop-up window than blowing all of these on full-screens (be it at any resolutions).

Events, first occurances, etc.

Not that tough to do, as it only involves an overall of some dxpack interfacing parameters to accomodate 'limited spannings'. As an option would be almost essential as many configurations are possible.

And one more thing:  for the love of all that's holy, give us an option to NOT AUTO-UPGRADE FARMS!  Without turning off autoupgrades altogether.