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FiringSquad:One of the new features of the game is ship design, where players research technology to build ships with. Can you give us some examples of the technologies involved, or how the player will be able to change the ship's appearance?

Brad Wardell:Players will literally research a specific technology such as warp drive or Ion Canons Mark III.

On the ship design screen, the player first picks their hull (they have lots of choices of lots of sizes). Each hull has "hard points", places where things can be attached.

Once they've selected a hull, they can drag and drop items from their weapons list, propulsion list, defense list, sensors, life support, special modules, etc. onto the ship and attach it.

They can even attach what we call "jewelry". These are extensions to a ship that have their own set of hard points on them that allow players to do some really crazy stuff.

Here are some examples. Each of the 3 races are using the same hulls. Just the colors and optons on them are different.

FiringSquad:Is there any chance of tactical combat being implemented, or will it all be resolved automatically on the main map as with the original GalCiv?

Brad Wardell: None at all. It'll be handled automatically still. We want to focus on the strategy elements and stay away from tactics.



FiringSquad:Your new map makes it possible for multiple players to have colonies in a single solar system, as well as asteroid fields or other objects. What kinds of things might a player be able to do with an asteroid field?

Brad Wardell: They would primarily mine them for resources. They also act as a way of slowing down incoming starships.



FiringSquad: You mentioned that gamers will be able to play any of the ten races and design custom ones of their own. What kinds of advantages and disadvantages do these races have?

Brad Wardell: Different races start with different technologies, different abilities in the area of farming, research, industry, military, diplomacy, etc.



FiringSquad: With the addition of unique planets - are these going to be custom-designed ones or that the random generator has more data to work with, and avoids duplicating designs?

Brad Wardell: All the decent planets in the game are randomly generated at the start of the game. So you'll never see the same planets twice.



FiringSquad: Logistics is a new feature designed to limit fleet sizes. How will it work, and is there any way a player can increase his logistical capacity?

Brad Wardell: Essentially different ships require a different number of logistical units to keep it supplied. Your civilization's logistics ability determines how many ships can be in a fleet. If players choose to, they can research better logistics technologies so that they can have larger and larger fleets. Of course, since they're researcing logistics, the quality of those ships are likely to be less impressive.



FiringSquad: Galactic Civilizations II is going to have a campaign - how does a feature like that work in a 4X strategy title? Also, aren't you worried that Wing Commander syndrome will kick in with the "losing" campaign? That players will focus exclusively on the best path and not see all the
work you've put in on the alternate missions?

Brad Wardell: In our case, since we don't have Mark Hammill involved on the project, someone not seeing every last mission isn't that big of a deal. Players can choose to replay the campaign though which I think it a big step up from a purely linear campaign.

The main reason we wanted to have a campaign was so that players could learn the back story to the game. These civilizations aren't just generic ones we've whipped up. I've been working on the back story for these games over a decade.