Hey Tarek, here's your answers:
For the music, a long, long time ago we talked about the possibility of including a basic media player so you could choose your own music. That hasn't been talked about in a while though so I don't know what Mike's plans are in this respect anymore. It's easy enough to mod your own files in though - just replace the existing music files in your Supremacy/Resources/Music folder. As long as the new files are named
exactly the same as the existing files, they will play.
The AI hasn't yet been built. This is the one thing that people are always asking for, but the fact of the matter is that it will be the single most complex-to-program part of the game, and it will take time to make. Mike has barely even started programming it yet, as he feels there are other areas of the game that are (Currently) more important to sort out (Such as bug fixes). We're looking at a year minimum before even a basic AI is released. He's already looked at the possibility of acquiring a pre-made AI instead of making one, but this proved to be more trouble that it was worth.
We're already looking at the possibility of toning down the background image or replacing it. Mike has also said he may add in a menu option to physically turn the background image off.
The population sizes of a system are displayed on the left-hand-side of the screen once a system has been selected, just as it was in Birth of the Federation.
The ships in the game are still a work-in-progress; the Cardassians are the only Empire with a fully complete shiplist and stats so far. The Federation is about 50% done, and the other empires are hit-and-miss. I'm working on them myself, but the game editor is currently broke so I can't continue working on it at the moment.
We're going to include new interfaces for the other races in the future. Before the May-update, the Cardassians actually had their own unique right-click menu interface, but this had to be scrapped in the May update because it was buggy. We also discussed the Klingon interface in the staffroom many months ago and came up with some
very nice ideas - I actually preferred the Klingon mock-up interface to the current Federation one. New interfaces will be added as part of future updates, but I have no idea when exactly this will be because I haven't heard of any development in this area since those old mockups all those months ago.
The build requirements for ships are going to be changed soon. We're initially going to reduce the industrial requirements by 90% then make further changes based on player feedback. The current costs were only worked out on paper, but as people are starting to notice, the numbers don't actually work ingame. As for the micro-management, this is one feature that will be very reliant on the AI - we plan to include a system governor that will be capable of building up systems, especially new colonies, for you. All you would need to do is turn the governor on. Since the system wouldn't be automatically, players would therefore be able to play the game in the exact way that they want to. Mike has coined the term "macromanagement" to define this flexible system. Obviously we wil include a manual with the game as well...one day.
The missing icons are missing simply because they haven't been made yet, just as you surmised.
The Diplomacy (And Intel) systems are going to be overhauled in the future. Don't worry about how they work at the moment because Mike has big plans for them.
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