Caltrops - Galactic Civilizations

Forum Overview :: Galactic Civilizations

by laudablepuss 09/09/2025, 10:23am PDT

pinback wrote:

Space is large. The game will prod you when you have a ship ready for orders, and will select it for you. However, space is large, and if you end up doing anything else, you won't be able to find your ship without spending 30 minutes scanning the entire map.

"Wait, can't you just click on the ship name and it will center it for you?" No.
"Wait, it says here the "C" hotkey will center the selected object!" It does not.

There is ONE WAY I have found to re-center the ship, which is to DESELECT everything, and then click the "you have ships ready to move" icon again. There is no other way to find your ship other than this. I cannot believe this is still a thing, still complained about, still un-fixed.

Totally agree that the UI is goofy. But I want to mention, they do have a ship list that you can access in the upper right along with your advisors, planet list, summary, list of starbases, and the news network which is events that happened this turn. You can go to your ships that way, or planets, or starbases. It's not super convenient unless you're naming your ships, which is an autistic thing *I* do, and name your fleets, which is an autistic thing *I do not* do.

That area is helpful though because when you fight a defended anomaly, it doesn't show you the combat. You gotta go here to the news network to watch it.

Also, it's much easier to find my ships if I zoom out so they're just icons. I play the entire game at that zoom level, so I had to lol a little bit at "look how pretty!" the previews of Gal Civ 4 were ;)

Second place is: "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO MINE THIS ASTEROID BELT?" Except it doesn't take you to, show you, or indicate in any way which asteroid belt it is talking about. What I do is click "Yes", because if I sent a mining ship there, I'm pretty sure I still want to mine it, but I still have no idea what belt it's talking about, which asteroid miner set up shop there, etc.

Like, it aggressively does NOT want you to know where things are happening and where your guys are.

Yeah this bugs the hell out of me. SHIPYARD HAS NO ORDERS. Where is it? Gotta exit (the shipyard interface) to see where the fuck they're talking about, because I also don't remember my planet names for god's sake. You can say "no" when it asks if you're sure you want to mine the asteroids, and then that ship has no orders and you can zoom to it with the lower right button. But it's just goofy. Also I really really really hate the shipyard MEGA ZOOM OMG that's badass, *dev guy*, let's force people to watch that every time!

Along these lines, be aware that you don't have to interact with events when you click on them. You can usually minimize them (if you don't have money for the option that's less evil, for example, and want to sell some shit) and deal with them later in your turn.