This is a test to see if the forum works. I have tried repeatedly to post this, but keep getting "processing, please wait...." message.
Why cant I paste the whole message? Is there a word limit? or are you not allowed to copy paste text? ARGH! ok.... I guess I will re-type it all...

Right before I start let me state that I played this game on my friends computer (I want to see how it develops before I spend my money; ive been stung way too many times, also this was based on an older patch so some of these observations may have became redundant).
I had originally wanted to post this on the games website but...

I tried to logon to their website, but even though I had registered on the wargames website... I cant get my password because i get this message "Player with this email address not found." so i tried to re-register and got this message "The email address has already been used for registration." When I try to fill out the problem tracker i have to type in way more information about myself than i feel is necessary (im surprised they didnt ask for height, weight, skin colour, religion as well... am i being cynical in thinking they ask for too much info?) and i cant use the same email address twice??? What an annoying way to do things, im looking at you wargames. Rant over, thank you for your time.

What follow is a list of observation/suggestions/wishes In no particular order:

Research (Ship item updates):
When your research offers you to update your pre-existing ship designs items (engines, armour etc) it would probably be better if the updates for the ship are updates to the relevant item and nothing else, no other changes to ship equipment. If it goes over the capacity for equipment, then remove 1 of the weakest weapon or (as someone else suggested, somewhere else) red flag it as an invalid design so the player can change it at their convenience.

Tech/Item idea
Just an idea, anti fighter rockets? small homing missiles for fighters and or missiles (sorta like the anti missile rockets), not really bothered about this (didnt Moo4 have pd missiles?).

Space Combat:
1)Would be nice to see turn based combat as an option (ie you can choose real time or turn based, some other games have done this, x-com apocalypse springs to mind so does fallout tactics). Maybe simultaneous turns (you choose your moves, then when turn starts the computer ships also move according to their AI). Some people dont mind long combats, some people do.
2)Retreat option
3)Roles for ships. For example long range, short range, run at 50% hull. I would also suggest stand off for missile ships but... the range for missiles is cr... not good, seriously why is the range of missiles so short?
4) Pre Combat fleet formations.

Land Invasion/Planet Assault:
1)An option to either choose how many marines will take part in the invasion or better yet a choice on how many will stay on the planet invaded (maybe 50% to 100% the planets normal capacity for marines, or if no marine base then 05 to 1 per population?) I once invaded a planet with a lot of marines before I realised all remain. Well the planet ended up with 130+ marines... Took me many turns (and curse words) to retrieve them...
2)Local Militia. In Moo2 the planet had the locals rise up to try and fight off invaders. I guess patriotism has died since Moo2.
3)Why cant I invade a planet that has no marines and no population, only buildings? Are my settlers superstitious and afraid of ghosts? This also applies to the enemy. I actually had planets I settled in the same system as an enemy just so I could gift them planets, they were defenceless, the enemy ignored them. So I wiped out the enemies fleet hoping that they would then make troop transports to invade. They did not, they bombarded the planets, wiped out the population. Then when all were dead, nuked the free wonderful buildings that were left standing... ???

Ship Equiping/Retrofiting:
1 )Would be nice to be able to equip/retrofit your stations (One of my station was shooting lasers and had no shields even though I was teched out. However I almost won the battle due to the enemies inability to focus their attacks because of their fits of laughter). You could do this in Moo3 (a much reviled game that I actually quite liked... well when it was all patched up with fan patches and a plethora of bug fixes).
2) Small annoying bug; when you retrofit one ship and move to the next it retains the name of the last ship whih means you have to rename it or click on the another ship and then the ship you want to retrofit... annoying (I started to get a case of repetitive strain).
3) More information on the equipment in the retrofit screen. Especially weapons (show short range, medium range, long range penalties, RoF, DPS with mods, any inbuilt specials etc - could make it a little "tick to open for more information" tab kinda thing), but for all equipment. Pretty sure those futuristic computers should be able to tell you exactly what your getting for your money.

New Games:
1) Option to remove Orion. Why not? Freedom of choice! (I would probably keep it in, but hey, good to have the choice - there was a fan made mod that made this possible in Moo2; patch 1.40).
2) No restrictions on the amount of enemies (in Moo2 you could play a small map with all the enemies present; actually i was wrong there it was capped at 8, but Moo3 let you have the max; patch allowed you to have duplicates... not so keen on the idea of duplicates though).
3) More information on the map choices (basically how many systems there are in the map)
4) More map sizes.
5) Hoping those dastardly Antarans will make an appearance (optional off course; as in Moo2 turn offable).

Controls:
1)More key short cuts (Moo2 had on the colony screen; shift + left/right cursor to change between colonies; this is just an example, there were many more).

Diplomacy:
I think this is still very much WIP (especially since there is no espionage), however this happened in a game I played...
Scenario 1: I was a powerhouse, all over civilizations were feeble in comparisson. The Psilons had one planet/system left. I decided to trade with them. Their attitude to me was "afraid" and in the red. They agreed to everything I wanted essentially. I took them under my wing via alliance. Their attitude was still in the red, but it wasnt afraid anymore (cant remember what it became though). They became utter snobs and wanted a ridiculous amount of money to carry on trading...? So I cancelled my alliance and then (after a period of sulking where the little buggers just wouldnt talk to me) they went back to being afraid and doing everything I wanted... Weirdos.
2) What are the requirements to Cede a planet? I wanted to give away planets, but the planets I wanted to give away did not turn up. It would be nice if there was a way to scroll through all your planets and choose any to give away.
3) Be also nice if i could give away ships (if it went over the command cap of the gifted race then they could scrap weaker ships?, although that could be exploited... so maybe the weakest ships of the gift?)
4) After you make a deal in diplomacy it would be nice to return to the diplomacy window.
5) Trade agreements are silly. 19 rounds of nothing then on the 20th you get money. Make it more like Moo2 (slight decrease in income to both races to start with and then it starts to scope up into a positive income that caps for both races)
6) Never tried the research agreement (the one like the trade one in the above point 5), but if its like the trading then ditto to what I said above.
7) A way to alter a diplomatic proposal from aliens (they can do it with you with the "what would make this [proposal work" option)

Planetary Management:
1) Bigger building cue and for it to be open from the start, instead of having to click click just to open it up fully.
2) When you put on autobuild have it stay on even if you make changed to the building order or buy out the item being built.
3) Autobuild should not build system uniques (i think it is better if you personally choose where to place these; unless off course tha AI is made to make better choices).
4) Autobuild should add items in front of ongoing items as they appear via research breakthroughs.
5) Manage Structures: Make a list for the love of God, do you know how much of a pain in the posterior it is to try and find a specific building to scrap by maneuvering the planet globe?
6) Independant tax levels based on individual planets rather than an all encompassing empirical choice. Basically the planet will start of taxed according to the taxation choice in the Empire menu, but then you can change it in the planet screen to whatever you want. You will need to do this again if you change the taxation level in the empire screen.
7) Building lists you can make for example you can set up a build order, name it and then have it so that it builds 1) automatic factory then build research lab then build biospheres etc.

Empire Screen:
Have the auto order for planets stay even when you leave the screen (also have it so that the order stays when your cycling through your colonies.

Saving/Loading:
Quick save and load with 3 quick saves to cycle through.

Galactic Council:
An option to defy the council (as in Moo2). I always had fun with that :)

Galactic map:
Your races colour to show up on systems you own (just as they do with AI Races)

Turn:
force end turn (had a game where i mass produced ships but was going to leave them for a while, but you cannot do that without going to each ship and either moving them putting them to sleep or skipping, when you have made over 100 ships thats a lot of clicking... Unless there is something vital happening... although peoples opinion on what is vital can vary...

PS: Apologies for the wall of text (also there does appear to be a limit for messages)

*takes a deep breath* and lastly...

planetary bombardment:
not sure about changing this, but i did like old method where you could use lasers, however why cant i blast an unbuilt enemy station with [insert beam/missile/torpedo weapon here], why do i need to bomb them in space...?

oh and one i forgot
Game Creation:
Keeo the same choices you made last time you played (ie Excellence Victory, Diplomatic Victory choices in the Advanced Setting to be the same as the last choices you made)

Another two i missed
Ship designing/Retrofiting:
1) Allow a player to go over the weight with a ship design but give some warning it is overweight, it will save much click clicks. For example, want to add some more weapons, you go over your weight by 1 or 2 points and you decide you will remove a pd weapon. You then have to reduce the new weapon amount by one, go to your pd weapon, reduce it by one, go back to the first weapon and up it by one, a little clunky no?

General:
1) Sort of touched upon this already but... more tool tips! In Moo2 you could right click on pretty much anything and be given full details about what it was you clicked on (maybe this is to come?), this was very helpful with decisions. I mean just taking the ship equipping; some of the equipment choices are pretty much guess work. I mean how effective is the Rockets for shooting down missiles? How effective is the lightning field? What is the base damage of a weapon? What is it's RoF? You get SOME of this information in the research screen, but to have to go there each time to decide on ship layouts...

Another thing my friend has notified me of (since latest patch pre 05-04-16)

Map Seeding:
Friend started a game. Medium/circle map, 5 other races. He was wedged in between an enemy above, an enemy below and three to the right side (the left side was empty...). If he had not moved fast enough he would have been stuck with 4 systems maximum and the top and bottom alien races would have been able to expand to the left of the galaxy while the other three races were wedged into the right side. I think the races need to be spaced out more on map generation.

Custom Races Abilities (yay!)
Kind of like the r-click thing, more information for some of them (most are pretty much self explanatory). Does the Ship Repair choice also have them fix in combat (does not look like it, but would be nice if it did *hint hint*, ie sort of like the cybernetic choice in Moo2)

I hope this post is of benefit.

Also with the real time combat.

It might be worth having a look at moo3 for the real time combat. I know I know, shocking comment, but when it was patched up (with users patches) the combat system was not really that bad. Some things I think could be taken from moo3 with regards to the combat.

Combat roles.
The AI of the fleet was handled by its combat role. I dont think there is a need to go all the way with moo3 here (it had ships that had the same combat roles, you could make fleets of different sizes that had to have x amount of the appropriate combat role ship, plus a few others... a bit icky, just dispose of ships having combat roles, and stick to just fleets).

Also you could only have X amount of fleets take part in a battle. You could make system ships to defend the system (you were only allowed one, the ships were a bit bigger than normal ships and they had no stardrive, increasing their space by more. You could also build defence stations, I think each planet could hold a maximum amount based on size and they were even bigger than a system ship). The system fleet I think you could put more ships into it than a normal fleet.

The Different combat roles:
Short range: dont really need to elaborate... but ships would close into ideal range (close) so that they could unleash their pd/short range weaponry to full effect.
Long Range: kept at an optimal range for their long range weapon.
Problems with those combat roles is the weapon arcs would make the implementation more problematic.

Missile Launchers/Carrier: Stayed well away from combat and launched their weaponry from the other side of the map (off course, they would have needed a spotter unit to find the enemies, which off course is a problem since there is no detection range and the relatively short range of the missiles/fighters, and small tactical maps of m004 - I guess they would be more like long range combat role).

Another thing I liked about Moo3 is you could make a ship with different fighter types (and they could have modifications). Each type took up a different amount of space.

Eh.. I cant, I dont own the game (friend does and he lives diwn south in a strange place called "Engerlund", so I do not visit a lot). I will be buying it when it goes on sale (feeding my wife, two kids and mortgage take priority when it comes to the allocation of funds) because it seems that the developers are listening and acting on feedback (which is always a good idea).

As for my friend, he has got lost somewhere in the streets of Mordheim, with his Skaven friends, gathering warp stones.

Thank you for answering my wall of text though, I will now have to do research and find out whats been changed in the patch :)