So yeah, I'm thinking that getting to the galactic core should yield a little more than the Staff of Life with its limited charges. I'm thinking a little more sandbox control. Like a full swatch of terraforming/terracoloring tools, vastly increased health, stealth, and wealth. Access to the different stages through whatever story mechanics Maxis wants to use. And unlimited tools which had to previously be purchased, such as monolith, creature creator, planet scan, uber turret, etc. Additional abilities, like scanning colony layouts and sending them to other colonies, effectively telling them "build it like this". The ability to "siphon" Spice out of an entire star system from the galactic view, if not simply having it all delivered to your home world.

I mean, where's the next "stage of my existence"? I would especially love to go exploring a wildlife refuge planet in Creature Stage engine, using my space-age creature, or another creature from my ship's storage. Or descend into a Tribal era planet and advance them into Civ Stage, with one of my colonies in the competition. Or maybe send down a squad of my people into the Creature Stage, advancing them into Tribal with my guys "roughing it" against them.

Yeah, I thought once he told me it I was progressing to the next stage in life all the planet editors were going to be unlocked and perhaps I would have more sandbox control... instead... it turned out that the next level of being only involves being given a limited none-renewable tool that made a process that was not that hard a little easier... that's it... woo hoo... Don't get me wrong. I like what happened at the center and I like the staffs... but that's it?...

All I really wanted was for the Grox to be eliminated. There's no reason for them to protect anything after you go there, but they're still hostile.

I think they could have Made the core end result something like a LIFE wave is unleashed. When you exit all T0 worlds the GROX own are Eliminated and replaced with new life downloaded from the server. Kinda like a deus ex mechina of defeating the grox so you can get to exploring

Well, if they made it like this then reaching the core should be much much much more complicated than it is now.

Anything.. But not that cheap ending+achievement and an empire of undestructable Grox... So many of their stars are unreachable! Lets hope for the modding comunity to get something out of it.

Yeah, about those unreachable stars... That has to be a bug as [SPOILER - higlight to see] there's a badge for eradicating the Grox [/SPOILER]. Someone asked about this in the Q&A thread in the General forum so.. I'm pretty sure they'll fix it.

i agree that the reward from the center of the galaxy could be better, but in all honesty getting there is child's play, at least on the easy and normal difficulty settings.

all you need is a lvl 4 engine (3 workds but is harder), max health and energy upgrades, and a bunch of health and energy refills. just click really fast while travelling through grox space, pausing only to figure out where to go next. doing this prevents most of the grox ships from ever getting a shot at you, since they return to their launch planet after they hit a certain distance. if you're quick on the mouse, monitor your health, and dont get lost in the 3D distribution of stars you can get to the center in about 10-15 minutes after you first enter grox territory. to get back just die once since there arent any penalties for it.

what i wouyld really love, though it would make the game much less realistic, is a an option to play in a flat galaxy, where all the stars are distributed across only the x and y axes, and not the z. it would make navigation a heck of a lot easier.