Remove all galactic war perks..

I'm not entirely convinced it's as simple as that... I wasn't sure what 'celestial activity' meant and had no idea the ai would planet crush a planet... but he landed his com on a sub com controlled planet, so my com and his last com died about the same time... I was awarded the win.

so either since they both died at about same time, I happened to beat him in living for all of half a second... or you don't lose until all subcoms and your com is dead.

personally, it would only be fair if it was that way, seeing as if you kill there faction leader, it doesn't win you the game until you hunt down all of his commanders in the game to.

also, sub commanders share all ur tech

edit: even worse, I -really- hate to think how a 'commander commander' loadout would play out if you don't manage to find a basic unit tech of any kind before your first battle...

I actually just played a game where my first battle was with 3 support commanders and some stupid naval tech I couldn't use. Since the tech tree was so limited, all three commanders built the same horde of units and completely raped the enemy AI at the same time.

Naval tech is something we're looking at, for sure. The same goes for the general difficulty balance. The latter is an especially hard thing to nail, and we're looking at ways to make it better.

I have to disagree with the OP here. I REALLY like the perks and that even after I have earned up a few techs to choose from there is still room to further customize my army.

I'll agree with some of the perks being far more valuable than others, and I agree that the GW is too easy, but I don't see that as a problem with the perks system, but rather future balancing to address.

So far the one thing I'd have to say about naval tech is I think I've found maybe one planet where I could use it. The overwhelming majority of lush planets I find have really high base altitude and there's almost never any trees, much less water. More often than not I'm fighting on 'mountain' terrain across the entire planet.

I really like what you were going for with the 'random' tech, but it could use a little 'help' now and then, such as tweaking the odds of finding certain tech upgrades slightly based on what you have (and haven't) found so far. If you haven't found any slot upgrades and you're on your tenth planet or whatever, the odds of finding a new slot upgrade go up. Keep the random, but weight it in the player's favor.

Likewise, finding three support commanders before you even fight your first battle shouldn't really be possible. Support commanders themselves should probably be rethought in some capacity. With three of them I don't even have to play the game anymore.

OP blames (lack of) difficulty on techs when everyone knows the AI is broken. Until the AI is working we can't give very informed feedback on tech balance, and we certainly can't make a sweeping statement like "remove all passive perks".