Already been mentioned before: Strengthen or at least diversify planetary defenses specifically in this case:

1. Orbital defense platforms so the player has something else to shoot at instead of the planet which feels a bit strange (the guns wouldn't even be able to point in the direction of the ships as they would simply shoot the planet from the other side)
2. Fighter and bomber squadrons to be stationed even on small defense outposts as currently the attacked can either shoot the planet via rail gun, or torpedo from a safe distance, or send in the bombers to do as many rounds as necessary until the the planet has been leveled as they are not getting shot at

It has been asked before on this thread but I don't see any answer... are spiral galaxy map types planned?

The reason I was noticing their absence was the fast that it is too easy for an empire to get into a "corner". This is not good in my opinion at it makes the game easier and more uneventful. I think that the map should enable the empires to have several neighbors. This can be enabled by size, share number of enemy civs and the spread of stars. Galaxies are currently restricted to a90 degrees cone from four corners whereas a spiral could go up till at least 140 degrees and no corners if large enough

No current plans, but it's always a future possibility.

Slavers started kicking ass since last week and they seem to be strong enough to present a challenge. A couple of things I have noticed:
1. They never retreat the transport ships from a battle even when they are hopelessly outnumbered
2. They have roughly the same color scheme for the planet names as the Gremak. Considering, that there can be potentially be a lot of empires on the map and only limited color combinations, I propose. that the logo of the empire is displayed next to the star system they own - this would make the numerous minor factions also that more recognizable, as otherwise we only see there logo in diplomacy menu, where we do not see however where they are located on the star map
3. Slavers have a tendency of "overpopulating" their planets with captured slaves. This is fine if it is intended as an added benefit when capturing their planet, but is a bit strange why they do not starve before that. Is it because of moral? The Raider units should take car of that if they are automatically increased with new slaves. Will enemy AI empires be buying some of these slaves for themselves?
4. Didn't see any indication if and for how long the individual slaver factions or bribed. Can we have a counter at least in the diplomatic menu? If the payment only reduces the chance of attack, a parentage value is still useful or a simple if flag if bribed or not. If a flag is used, the payment could be renewed every 15 turns or so via a prompt and make them angry if denied
5. Thanks to these strong fleets I finally saw my first big fleet battle (with over 50 ships). It was fun but I noticed that the ships of the two fleets do not mangle and changing facing direction which might be due to shield being equally strong on all four sides. What if shields would be weaker on the side and weakest on the rear? It would provide an incentive to encircle ships, go behind enemy lines, but would it make sense? Could the AI adapt to that?

Given that Ashdar splinter colonies would presumably have suffered the same collapse of capabilities as Human splinter colonies since the Great War, possibly it may be a good idea to create Teros and Haduir refugee population types and make Ashdar splinters composed of refugees. Rastaban and Ashdar Prime clearly fared better, but I'd not be surprised to see other splinters have lost even more of their technological/economic base.

I think it might be interesting to have a pre-defined system like Tyl to represent the old Sol system, even if the system name is something other than 'Sol'. Even if Humanity has forgotten its old homeworld, presumably its old homeworld still exists- unless it actually got blown up.

nweismuller wrote:I think it might be interesting to have a pre-defined system like Tyl to represent the old Sol system, even if the system name is something other than 'Sol'. Even if Humanity has forgotten its old homeworld, presumably its old homeworld still exists- unless it actually got blown up.

An Old Earth. Probably a Steppe. The native population - Hipsters. The "features" of Hipsters - Wasteful and Rebellious. Wasteful - consume 2 food (to make fancy dishes) and one wrench (yes, -1 - to make 2 new phones every year) each. Rebellious - always rebel, decrease the whole planet's morale (about -20).

In all seriousness, though, I would fully expect Earth to be fully depopulated and possibly not even a Garden world anymore.

I would add a third option (to go along with forced labor and experimentation) to sell enslaved populations to earn money (on an abstracted market) if it hasn't already been suggested.

Current behavior for refits to a class renames the ship to the name of its class. I suggest making behavior inherit old names- as I've been using the name function to individually name ships, I've had to rename my ships after every refit. The new refit to a class (and immediate purchase of refits) makes refits far less of a pain, and I appreciate it.

Would it be possible to link this graph in the Tech window (via an icon maybe in the top right corner)?:
http://stars-in-shadow.com/images/technology_chartmv.jpg

It is such a great overview, and with a little formatting would already be visually pleasing and would fill in the need for an overview in-game
If you would like to go the extra mile, each tech could be linked to the icon, so it jumps to the current tech description when the icon is clicked

Zoom to location for all events
For some events you can zoom the map to the affected location, which is very useful, especially on large maps. This is not the case for all events, though, for example for starvation events you have to "manually" search the planet on the map. It would help to have the zoom ability for all events.

Info on Terraforming, Races and Planet Types
The more advanced your terraforming tech is, the more planet types you can choose from. However, I find it hard to understand how each type would affect the planet giving races living on it and the current improvements. Mostly, I am afraid of investing a lot of resources to make things even worse, and hence hardly ever use terraforming.

I wish there was some more explanation / tooltips / some kind of prognosis on how terraforming to a certain planet type would change the current ecosystem (e.g. overall increase in food generation, increased growth rate for race A but decreased growth rate for race B and C).

Thank you very much for considering this

spitfire_ch wrote:I wish there was some more explanation / tooltips / some kind of prognosis on how terraforming to a certain planet type would change the current ecosystem (e.g. overall increase in food generation, increased growth rate for race A but decreased growth rate for race B and C).

Agree and this flows into a larger topic of how habitability is represented for the planets. As mentioned before, the current system is a bit overcomplicated - needs some streamlining on better visualisation of the habitability zones. Mostly I think what would help is a small icon for each race next to the overall habitability or next to each zone and a number or icon for how compatible they are.
e.g.: Arid icon has 3 races next it, one marked green, two yellow

When it comes to terraforming, the window could show the before and after habit zones, with the race compatiblity icons listed next to each, thus the player could see: this race would suffer and the other 4 would benefit

zolobolo wrote:... Mostly I think what would help is a small icon for each race next to the overall habitability or next to each zone and a number or icon for how compatible they are.
e.g.: Arid icon has 3 races next it, one marked green, two yellow

When it comes to terraforming, the window could show the before and after habit zones, with the race compatiblity icons listed next to each, thus the player could see: this race would suffer and the other 4 would benefit

That seems like an excellent idea; plus "before and after" for every other thing that could change (e.g. food production - I don't even know which attributes are affected by planet type).

Ballistic Shields
As long as the victim does not have force fields, railguns are overly powerfull, often resulting in one-shot-kills. I hence suggest a new shield technology: ballistic shields. They can only block projectile weapons but not energy weapons. Thus, they are lower tech than force fields and earlier available. On larger hulls, they could even be combined with regular (energy) shields.