Semi-Official 7.x Suggestion Thread

[Mngwa]

No idea if these have been suggested before, but here's a couple leader related ideas:

1.  Retired/Dead leader temporary storage vault (. . . you can come up with a better name, but for me that sounds cool)
I haven't been playing Aurora 4x for long, but a little digging told me that apparently there used to be a tab for all dead officers, but it was removed.

Having a list (probably accessible from the main leaders window) that would include the name, history and basically everything else there is to know that could be known before death/retirement would really serve no gameplay purpose, but for increased depth and roleplay, I think it should be there.  I'm sure we all want to remember those officers who did something big or survived something dangerous.
Having this list store dead/retired leaders only for a set amount of time (let's say a year by default) and allowing the player to customize the amount of time their info is stored (to possibly help with any technical issues or in case some people who know they don't have a great memory can have more time to check their dead) would prevent the list getting too long and taxing.

From this list (or vault like I originally called it) there could be an option to permanently store an officer and maybe write them an epitaph (although they will probably wonder why are you writing one if they just retired) or a button to store the officer's info/history to a text file for later reading.

I have zero idea on how difficult that would be to implement, but there you go.



2.  Hospital/medical technology.
Pretty straightforward.  Lessen the chance of harmful medical conditions, increased natural life span, so your leaders will die less often.
Also maybe safety technologies to cut down the chance accidents? Gotta remember those seat belts.

[Kytuzian]

It would be pretty fantastic if we had a way to group together alien ships so that they didn't clutter the screen so many when in large groups. Additionally (or alternatively), it'd be nice to be able to simply collapse large groups of alien ships that are in the same position without having to set up groups for the aliens, again to remove some clutter from the screen. So if, for example, you had something like this:



It could collapse that group of civilian Fuel Harvesters to something simply like, "FH x9", and that group of spaceliners to "SS x15" (or however many there are), or, if both were in the same position, "FH x9, SS x15".

[nafaho7]

The ability to build or design star systems in their entirety would make custom scenarios and maps very possible.

At present, if I want to use Aurora to make an interesting system map for another game, I have to either ignore the marvelous system maps, or keep hitting "Generate New System" until I get something close enough.

What I would love to be able to do is use Aurora to handle my star maps (and generate system summaries) for any of several pen and paper RPGs.  The present rules for maintaining different  map information for separate player races fits my needs perfectly, as I can simply update various dummy faction maps as different groups gather more information about the galaxy.

For bonus nostalgia points, this would touch on Aurora's roots in Starfire Assistant, serving as a player aid for arbitrary set-ups and games.

I can already connect systems to other arbitrary systems, and generate populations, installations and ships to make a system map interesting, and this would make my Rogue Trader game simply awesome.  I'll be able to keep track of known Warp travel routes by adding jump points, and only revealing the connections to other dummy factions at my discretion.

[Steve Walmsley]

It would be pretty fantastic if we had a way to group together alien ships so that they didn't clutter the screen so many when in large groups. Additionally (or alternatively), it'd be nice to be able to simply collapse large groups of alien ships that are in the same position without having to set up groups for the aliens, again to remove some clutter from the screen. So if, for example, you had something like this:

It could collapse that group of civilian Fuel Harvesters to something simply like, "FH x9", and that group of spaceliners to "SS x15" (or however many there are), or, if both were in the same position, "FH x9, SS x15".

Go to the Contacts tab and click "Hide Active IDs".

[Steve Walmsley]

The ability to build or design star systems in their entirety would make custom scenarios and maps very possible.

At present, if I want to use Aurora to make an interesting system map for another game, I have to either ignore the marvelous system maps, or keep hitting "Generate New System" until I get something close enough.

What I would love to be able to do is use Aurora to handle my star maps (and generate system summaries) for any of several pen and paper RPGs.  The present rules for maintaining different  map information for separate player races fits my needs perfectly, as I can simply update various dummy faction maps as different groups gather more information about the galaxy.

For bonus nostalgia points, this would touch on Aurora's roots in Starfire Assistant, serving as a player aid for arbitrary set-ups and games.

I can already connect systems to other arbitrary systems, and generate populations, installations and ships to make a system map interesting, and this would make my Rogue Trader game simply awesome.  I'll be able to keep track of known Warp travel routes by adding jump points, and only revealing the connections to other dummy factions at my discretion.

I may add something on these lines for C# Aurora when I get to system generation.

[Kytuzian]

Go to the Contacts tab and click "Hide Active IDs".

Thanks, that helps, but I'm more talking about situations like this, where that option doesn't seem to do anything:

[DaMachinator]

Construction times taking into account if you are building more construction yards simultaneously.

[Sheb]

I may add something on these lines for C# Aurora when I get to system generation.

Wow, awesome! Being able to edit bodies' orbital radius, mass and so on from the system page would be so cool.

[MarcAFK]

I would welcome it, I spend hours generating systems trying to get one suitable for NPR or player controlled opponents.

[Darkminion]

No idea if these have been suggested before, but here's a couple leader related ideas:

1.  Retired/Dead leader temporary storage vault (. . . you can come up with a better name, but for me that sounds cool)
I haven't been playing Aurora 4x for long, but a little digging told me that apparently there used to be a tab for all dead officers, but it was removed.

Having a list (probably accessible from the main leaders window) that would include the name, history and basically everything else there is to know that could be known before death/retirement would really serve no gameplay purpose, but for increased depth and roleplay, I think it should be there.  I'm sure we all want to remember those officers who did something big or survived something dangerous.
Having this list store dead/retired leaders only for a set amount of time (let's say a year by default) and allowing the player to customize the amount of time their info is stored (to possibly help with any technical issues or in case some people who know they don't have a great memory can have more time to check their dead) would prevent the list getting too long and taxing.

From this list (or vault like I originally called it) there could be an option to permanently store an officer and maybe write them an epitaph (although they will probably wonder why are you writing one if they just retired) or a button to store the officer's info/history to a text file for later reading.

I have zero idea on how difficult that would be to implement, but there you go.



2.  Hospital/medical technology.
Pretty straightforward.  Lessen the chance of harmful medical conditions, increased natural life span, so your leaders will die less often.
Also maybe safety technologies to cut down the chance accidents? Gotta remember those seat belts.

I would love to see something like this as I feel it would be a boon for community games and AARs. I would also suggest to add ships to this as well. It would be nice if instead of saving 10k lines of events and swapping out stevefire.mdb backups to find a history of a ship/leader and what happened to them I could just bring up a list of dead/destroyed and view the info as if they were still active. In my current 6.43 game BGreman's aurora raw viewer has helped with this (at least while it still worked). Before updating things I can cut out lines pertaining to fallen leaders/ships and put them in a memorial list and it will have their entire history from commission date to their Nobel sacrifice during the defense of the Denver system. As of right now any chronicling of game histories is delegated to how many lines the event log holds or is dependent on if the player is recording events as they happen.

[iceball3]

Component Suggestion: Offender Field/Flak Field/Interfering Barrier/etc
A variant on the energy shield, which automatically engages detected targets in a certain range. It does this by storing up charges (like a shield), and doing beam damage to all targets, regardless of quantity, only if charge is available and consuming charge in the process. Does not protect from damage like normal shields. Should be big enough to be useless on fighters (10 HS per module perhaps?), and still emit EM fields that broadcast both their strength and effective range.

Techs:
Capacity Per Module: Amount of damage points stored per module on a ship. Similar to shield strength tech.
[Mechanic]: If an enemy ship closes in with a projected field, it only gets engaged as hard as any other missile, but every 1 point of damage consumes 10 points of charge in the field generator. Engaging with an energy shield consumes 20 points of charge per damage point, instead.

Regeneration per 300: Works like normal shields, how many points of charge are stored over time.


Fuel Efficiency: Like shield tech, reduces fuel usage.

Damage Per 5: The threshold in which this field cannot engage a target, based on how many times it was already hit by a field this turn. This applies across all field sources, but field sources engage targets in order of lowest Damage Per 5 to highest, so if you have three ships with DP5 1, 2, and 3 respectively, a target will be hit by the ship with 1 first, 2 second, and 3 third. This should be a steep tech, such that 3 DP5 should be roughly equal to ROF 6 gauss cannons in research points.
This means that a ship or missile will only be take as much damage as the highest tech field it's in range of every 5 seconds, regardless of how many ships it's in range of at the time.
Consideration: Allow fractions of DP5, so a DP5 of 0.25 would be lowest tech and only allow the field to engage a contact that hasn't been engaged by a field in the past 20 seconds.


Field Range: Distance from the parent ship the field extends out from the ship. 60,000 km should be the tech-equivalent of 60,000 km gauss. Being able to engage anything requires an active sensor contact, and ECM reduces the effective range.
[Mechanics]:The field only engages contacts that either ends their turn in the AOE, or missiles that attempt to hit the ship it's mounted on (like final fire (Self) defenses).


What's the purpose of this design? Mainly:
-To incentivize missile armor.
-To quelch or at least make-sane AMM spam against large ships.
-To allow a means of taking the edge off of extremely large, quantitous salvos, where fire rate of weapons becomes nearly irrelevant.
-To allow more fancy formation options, and to allow environments where beam weapons are the best answer as a result. For instance, a mothership that may be in the center of a great citadel-ish formation which would be a surrounding or directional arrangement of support craft mounting these fields. Actually, this sounds like an excellent idea for the swarm, too! Have the swarm queen be protected by such a formation. Giving them a capability like this sounds like pristine grounds to nerf their mesons back to sane levels (focusing tech 12 why oh why ;-;), and it'll also give them another unique output of damage that actually makes armor somewhat meaningful.

[TCD]

Component Suggestion: Offender Field/Flak Field/Interfering Barrier/etc

[snip]

What's the purpose of this design? Mainly:
-To incentivize missile armor.
-To quelch or at least make-sane AMM spam against large ships.
-To allow a means of taking the edge off of extremely large, quantitous salvos, where fire rate of weapons becomes nearly irrelevant.
-To allow more fancy formation options, and to allow environments where beam weapons are the best answer as a result. For instance, a mothership that may be in the center of a great citadel-ish formation which would be a surrounding or directional arrangement of support craft mounting these fields.

I think those are very worthy goals, but the flak shield as you describe seems a complicated mechanic with some contradictions
- Is it targeted? (which it seems to be if it requires an active sensor contact), if so then why should it automatically hit? If not, then why doesn't it hit friendly ships and missiles in range also?
- The damage per five rule seems very complicated and difficult to predict

So I'd suggest a simpler mechanic for a flak field

Ionic field generator
A reformatted energy shield that creates a highly charged zone around a ship. When a physical target enters the field it will collapse, inflicting automatic damage on that target. Once discharged the field will require time to recharge, based on technology level and capacitor level. A newly activated field will also require recharge time to charge. The collapsing field will damage all targets within range, regardless of number. Please note that a charged ionic field will target all physical bodies within range, including friendly ships and missiles.

Techs: Recharge time and range, perhaps also with a slowly increasing damage (starts at 1, with maximum tech of 2 or 3).

So you have a weapon that can destroy any single wave of AMM missiles, but can be easily negated by armoured missiles or by multiple waves. And while active you can't fire any missiles yourself. You'll also want to turn it off before any fighters come in to dock. Should cause lots of additional "fun" with poorly trained fleets as blundering ship captains stray into range of each other. When attacking ion field equipped ships you'll need to use multiple smaller waves, which will of course allow traditional PD to be more effective, leading to a general nerf of small missiles.

[Sheb]

So, a missile-only shield?

[TCD]

Er yes. That would be a considerably more concise way of saying it! Although I think the key would be to make it an AMM missile shield, while allowing AS missiles through. I guess you could do the same by adding in some sort of super armor with a minimum damage threshold, but that would also nerf small beam weapons.

[TCD]

In fact, thinking about this, I think the reason why AMM missile spam is a problem, and why we don't see more large beam weapons is one in the same, that armor is ablative rather than (at least partially) absolute. If higher tech level armours (or a new type of shield) ignored the first point of damage then it would have a dramatic effect on game balance. I guess Steve has already gone some of the way with shock damage, which is a very cool mechanic, but I don't think that removes the sandblasting approach.

Any change like that would also entirely remove gauss cannon as AS weapons though*, and boost particle beams so a pretty big change.

*I'm not sure if that is a bad thing if that your point defense decisions become more complicated.