Some suggestions to UI. I think this game needs improvements in this area, if any, right now.

Ship and planet list.
1. Ship and planet in the list should be selected when one of them is selected on the main map.
2. These windows should be on top after quitting another window until player close them (these windows should be work similar to SoaSE empire tree).

Tooltips.
3. There should be more detailed tooltips all around the game. For example ship tooltip with attacks and defenses, ship destionation etc.

Survey messages.
4. Please, replace the annoying popups about survey operations with simple notifications on the right side.

Ship movement.
5. The game should provide a movement command for ships. Pressing the appropriate button player should see where the ship can go (similar to Civ V solution for this).

Better rally point window.
6. The map on this window is unuseful. Player should manage rally points on main map.

I agree about the rally points.  We could use an overlay on the main map that highlights possible origin points for a rally point, and a set of arrows along the intended path. The rally point menu itself should be roll-down (from the top of the screen) and transparent so as not to obscure the main map too much, and the origin points and arrows should update depending on which RP you currently have selected.  It would be nice to be able to type the first few letters of a rally point name to select it from the list, gives a reason to change the default RP name.

It is asking a bit much, but as soon as there's more than about six rally points it becomes a pain to figure out where each of them is in relation to where you're looking right now (an off-screen arrow would be helpful!) not to mention you have to scroll through that teeny little box to select 'em.

As far as the AI goes, there's some work needed with research strategy.  The AI either spends too much time on supportive technologies such as defences, engines, larger hulls, logistics and miniaturisation or too much time on weapons.  It needs to strike a balance according to the current situation.  There's no point getting too far ahead of the competition in one area while lacking in another area.

For example, my strategy is to first get to the point where I can fit two weapons to a fighter.  It's pretty economical to build ships with this configuration, and gives enough military rating for other races to leave me alone.  At this point if I don't need more military I stop building fighters.  Then, as I'm usually playing Terrans, I go for the integrity grid and fit one per heavy fighter, giving them an advantage even against fighters with better firepower.  Next, I develop better sensors so that I can spot an incoming fleet.  Yes, I know I could just build Eyes of the Universe, but I don't need such a ridiculous crutch.  Ideally after that I go for medium hulls and better weaponry, and enough of a logistics score that I can fit three heavy fighters with a frigate.

The reason why I don't immediately research planetary invasion is because even if I could build enough transports and fill them quickly enough, chances are my heavy fighters (in squadrons of three) will be easily swept aside by enemy frigates.  I need to have my own capital ships and enough logistics to fend off the inevitable counterattack.

After that, a little improvement in each area is necessary.  If an enemy is using missile weapons, then I'm going to research missile defences, but I'm not going to use the spare space on each hull to spam early missile defences, it's a waste of production.  Unless I'm desperate, I would prefer to use a pair of PD Combo modules on a capital ship, or Telepathic Defence if it's available.

The scramble for the end of the weapons tree is understandable but predictable.  By the time an AI has researched one of those, I'm already likely to have the best possible defence against it.  There's nothing wrong with abandoning that first weapons tree and, while catching up to that level of weaponry in another tree, using the old weapons.  Sustained missile fire will burn out missile defences and damage ships better than primitive beam weapons.  When the AI abruptly switches to using its new plasma-based weapons, suddenly I'm the one having to adapt.

This isn't particularly relevant to the discussion at hand, but since this issue has been addressed in this thread by multiple posts, it's appropriate.

Aside from the 5pc/wk cap mega event, I'm actually quite comfortable with DA's speed and engine values.  The engines might cost a little too much, but DL was way too cheap.

I would think that, for the purpose of filling a 16 or 24-MSA, the speed boosters on additional MSBs, allowing for +16 speed in a sweet spot that only takes a turn or two to reach, would be sufficient, without costing you significant additional ships, and without costing you extra time or money in engines on each ship.

It seems to work well enough for me.

wow...how about this for news! I'm actually in the middle of a game right now, fantastic as always.

I'm merely requesting that DA and DL receive their fair share of bug fixes and not be totally ignored.

Hi mumble, Ive always enjoyed your posts, it amazed me how dedicated you were to DL and DA, did you ever end up firing up Twilight? if so...how did you find it?

I second this.

This news is good.  Most if almost all gaming companies would come up with a few patches and move on.  The fact that you are coming back to this game to polish it is excellent.  I bought the Ultimate Edition months ago, so I will be looking forward to additional patches that will make this game shine even more.

Edward K.

Not to be "annoyingly" insistent...

Please *DO* fix the long overdue situation where Tiles terrain naming is screwed when we scan through them (planets) in the usual sequence.

And -- hopefully -- begin work on early development steps of an entirely new GCIII version (Now, that the behemot Civ-5 is out, i think StarDock *must* hit the gaming market with its modernized flagship product once more, asap!!).

Besides making gameplay tweaks, there is at least one highly annoying bug remaining: loading a custom scenario (or one of the scenarios that came with the game) in Twilight unfailingly causes a CTD. I'm really surprised this hasn't been fixed before now. Also, in Twilight, the Dread Lords mega event still sporadically causes a crash, though not all of the time.

It's nice to know you haven't abandoned us GalCiv players. Keep it up.

Wonderful news on the plans to do more updates.

I have held off ToA due to the reports on the ToA forums. Apparantly there is a serious flaw with the evil races that seriously impacts their performance.

A quick scan through the ToA forum will highlight serious flaws that seemingly have gone unanswered for over 2 years?

I'm really looking forward to when ToA will be at the point where I feel I can risk buying it.

DA is too much fun to risk the unique ToA approach and the current AI bugs I keep reading about ToA.

Please let me know if Ive missed a patch that came out and fixed the main bugs that are reported widely in the ToA forum.

This is great news. Twilight of the Arnor is still one of my favorite games.

Here are my suggestions for future patches:

1) There are many spelling/grammatical errors in the text of the game that could be fixed.

2) There's a problem with the priority of dialogue tags that affects the in-game conversations. As a result, many of the prescripted exchanges between particular races (e.g. Drengin making fun of Torian) are never seen, being replaced by the generic alternatives instead.

3) The enemy AI should make use of a wider variety of modules in its ship designs. For example, why doesn't it ever equip ships with upgrades that benefit the entire fleet, like the Arceans' Advanced Fire Control module?

4) I've noticed my opponents are constantly bribing each other to go to war with one another. How come nobody ever offers me money to attack somebody? I can put these offers on the table myself, but I think the computer should come forward with them too.

5) Does the AI ever build terror stars? I haven't witnessed it yet.. If it doesn't, it should.

6) Along the same lines of leveling the playing field for AI and player, there should be an optional rule change allowing AI players to win diplomatic victories. I think it would add an interesting new dimension to the game.

7) The AI neglects researching some really critical race-specific techs. For example, I don't notice the Korx ever bothering to research the Mercenery Academy or that building that gives you persistent trade routes.

I'm delighted to hear that more patches are in the works. I just bought the Ultimate Edition last month and I'm glad that I did. If we're making suggestions for ToA, then:

1) The way that the AI develops bonus tiles needs to be fixed. I'm tired of capturing an enemy planet and finding that the AI has built an entertainment network on top of a Precursor Library square or a farm on a morale bonus square. This is especially crippling for the AI Iconians- who rely on one-per-planet buildings that grant big bonuses if built appropriately (i.e. on bonus squares)- and for the Thalans, whose early research and manufacturing buildings have such high maintenance costs that they usually can only be built  on bonus tiles for the Thalans to remain competitive.

2) The autoupdate feature should improve buildings that are on bonus squares first. If I have five factories on a planet that need to be updated and one of them is built on a Precursor Mine granting a 700% bonus, the factory on the bonus square should be updated first since it will allow the other four factories to be built much, much more quickly.

3) The AI should be more proactive about improving buildings to better equivalents that are not on the same research paths. For example, the Altarians can research Drath Temples and healing pools, which have the same maintenance cost as entertainment networks but are much more effective. Once the appropriate technologies are available, the AI should gradually replace its entertainment networks with Drath Temples or Healing Pools.

4) The AI should look at planets' development potential when deciding where to place capitals and super projects. This means building them on planets with appropriate bonus squares and intrinsic multipliers (like the ones provided by rings, moons, and settlement events) and ideally only on high quality planets. This is especially true for the economic capital, since it should be on a planet that can sustain a high population. The AI should also be more cautious about building super projects and trade goods on planets that are far from their main sphere of influence.

5) I know it's been repeated many times before, but some of the AIs are too eager to research really expensive technologies before they have the cheaper technologies that they need to build up their infrastructures and economies.  For example, the Altarians and Korx always seem to want to spend 50 turns researching Planetary Invasion before they even have Space Weapons or Planetary Improvements, and then they spend all their mps on transports that they are unable to fill (because their populations are so low) or defend (because they don't have any military vessels).

6) I guess this isn't really a bug, but weapon techs seem really expensive to me in ToA, especially when compared to DL/DA. It always feels like a huge sacrifice to spend 8 turns researching a laser that's only one unit smaller than the previous laser, especially when you can research defensive techs four times as fast. On large and huge maps at Tough difficulty the game is often over before any civ can get beyond the first level of Particle Beams/Harpoon/Pulse Cannons.

7) AIs should be more keen to research Sensors and build small/tiny/freighter-hulled survey ships. I usually find that I get almost all of the anomalies that pop up in the mid- and late-games because I'll have 3 or 4 very, very fast survey ships zooming around the map, while the AIs only ever use their flagships (which often get destroyed). I always add weapons, defenses, and HP-boosting modules to my flagship once I have Medium Hulls, since it's often a very strong ship by that point (high level and extra HP from anomalies); it would be great to see the AI do this as well rather than having their flagship destroyed the first time that they go to war.

Deweyjohn, I often see the Krynn researching Terror Stars- they are available unusually early in the Krynn tech tree. The other AIs don't seem to prioritize Advanced Starbase Construction, but if you research it yourself and trade it around you'll be more likely to see terror stars show up late in the game on bigger maps. 

I agree 100% that the AI needs to make better use of support modules. I always design a support ship to throw in with my fleets that carries either a defensive/offensive booster or Fleet Warp Bubbles; it would be great to see something similar from the AI. The  AI should also be smarter about putting transports in fleets together to produce stronger invasion forces; this kind of fleet would be an ideal place for the AI to toss in a small ship with sensors and a Warp Bubble module

Marvinkosh, I agree that an Advanced Mining Module might not be a bad idea; allowing multiple mining modules/ship would be an even easier way of implementing this. I often find that there are long periods between researching mining techs when my miners are just sitting around with nothing to do, though. It might be neat if mining stations required periodic maintenance in addition to constructed improvements; this would ensure that mining ships stay in use throughout the game and would make defending them more critical. It's also frustrating to have your Ultimate Industrial modules destroyed by any passing fighter; perhaps mining ships could evolve into hybrid mining/combat vessels that protect contiguous asteroid tiles and get offensive/defensive bonuses from being stationed in asteroid belts.

I've never seen the AI take potshots at asteroid mines.  I guess it could be because they figure they will control them anyway if they take the planet supplying my influence, or it could be that they aren't Chaotic Evil.  The only time I would take out asteroid mines is if they're providing a significant boost to an enemy planet which I can't capture at the moment.  Otherwise, I wait for them to sign contracts with me instead when planets start changing hands.

What with mining bases self-destructing when a civ is wiped out, I always seem to have something for my miners to do, except in the very late game.  Though Space Mining can be a time-consuming tech to keep having to research, if you control lots of asteroids it's extremely valuable.

seems someone has opened Pandora's box

I'm thrilled to hear that Stardock is planning on improving that already amazing game!  I'm just amazed to see that you guys continue to support a game so long after it's been released.  

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but there is one "simple" thing that would make the UI more streamlined: a quick way to close popup windows.  For example F3 opens finance management, it would be very neat if hitting F3 again would close that window.  In a more general way, it would also help if there was a shortcut that would always close whatever popup window that is currently opened (suggestion: Esc or mouse wheel click).

Thanks!

Oh yeah!!