Okay, so I just bought GSB the other day on Steam. I liked it a lot, and now I’ve purchased the Galactic Conquest add-on. Knowing full well that it’s currently in the beta phase of testing, I thought I would be an all-around good person and post the bugs I’ve found in the campaign/make some easily implementable suggestions. Sorry if this post is a bit long… 
Technical glitches- note that I have no mods installed…
- The campaign backdrop has a tendency to turn white. Happens only after a battle. Reinstalling Galactic Conquest fixes the issue, and also lets me keep my saved campaign files. I’ve had this happen several times now…
-I have a habit of dragging and dropping the wrong fleets onto systems (especially if they have the same fleet icon :P). It seems like you should be able to “un-move” your fleet from a system and/or move it somewhere else (from the original system it started from) before you hit the “turn button.” Otherwise you automatically are committed to a battle that you may have gone into by mistake. When this happens the only way I can think of getting out of this situation is to press ctrl-alt-delete, close GSB, restart that turn, then move the correct fleet as I originally intended to do. Very frustrating…
-I found a few systems that you cant retreat from whatsoever. Not sure if this is a glitch or not, but this especially annoying when combined with the above problem.
Gameplay changes-
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It’s really dumb how the computer is able to continually generate fleets to attack you even if you’ve cut off a planet and there are no shipyards present in that system. That makes no sense whatsoever. If they attack you from that system and you destroy their fleet, it should reduce the amount of ships in that system as well. Likewise, if you have cut off and surrounded a class C shipyard, all they could make is fighters or something. The game would be a lot more strategic if this was implemented.
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The game would be a lot cooler if each race had a territory (perhaps each highlighted by a different color around their planets?). Each territory would consist of a clumped group of systems, and ONLY that race would appear in that system/would attack you from that system. When you mouse over a system, it would give you a description of which race owned that territory as well. Once you capture all of a race’s planets, they are eliminated and will not attack you again (maybe a little congratulations message would pop up or something). For instance, it would be very, very satisfying to completely wipe the Tribe off of the face of the galaxy, never to return again (I’m sure many other players feel the same way haha…).
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If you’ve attacked, then retreated from a system with an enemy fleet in it, there should be a count of the remaining cruisers/frigates/fighters remaining in the system (from the last time you checked). This would makes scouting with a small fleet/ship a little more practical. Plus it helps you know exactly how much of the enemy fleet is left after an unsuccessful battle or something…
-It would be nice if the starting position was randomized. Along with the positions of all of the spatial anomalies/shipyards/factories/etc. Then the campaign wouldn’t be the same all of the time.
The next few changes involve difficulty levels/would help introduce newer players to the campaign (rather than have it be played by GSB pros only). My main concern is that some of the easier difficulty levels (note that I’ve only played on normal and easy), aren’t actually easy at all.
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The campaign needs a Save/Load feature. I can understand if one was not included so players wouldn’t save, then attack, then re-load from the last save if things didn’t go well. Nevertheless, I think this feature is needed (perhaps only as a feature in easy difficulty?). Otherwise beginning players are going to get steamrolled. I had a very hard time enjoying the campaign the first several times through because I was always worried that my fleets were going to be wiped out and I’d lose all my campaign progress. I kept having to restart my campaigns until I finally figured out how to survive the early portion of the game. The campaign only really gets fun when you’ve captured a significant amount of planets and have a lot of fleets to play with.
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The computer needs a new way of coming up with fleets to play against. Fleets made up of one hull type should be banned on easy difficulty. No beginner is going to know how to handle spam properly. Also, enemy fleets should be capped at perhaps 125-150% of the size of your defending/attacking fleet. It seems like the computer progressively throws larger and larger fleets at you as the game progresses. No matter how many times you fend them off, they come at you larger every single time. The computer’s defending fleets also get larger. It turns into a bit of a stalemate until they finally come up with a massive armada and wipe you out. Perhaps increase how much factories/academies produce on easy and normal difficulties so that you can build up your fleet as well?
