C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Rabid_Cog]

I have read through that, but from what I saw it mostly pertains to top down ai levels so far. Empire, sector, fleet command, battlegroup, fleet unit, etc. My suggestion was exactly that a 'fire control' ai is added that feeds back into fleet unit ai level.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Make a button that deletes all missiles (and if applicable drones mines countermeasures)  in a system.

This is very useful in single player scenarios where a player is already 100% sure that enemy AI cannot get past his point defence but AI is still shooting 50 missiles per minute that severely slow down the game.

Another option in my opinion far better one is to make AI stop shooting missiles and choose a different behaviour if lets say last 3 full salvoes shot by AI had 0% hit rate (all shot down by PD).

edit: this behaviour could stay until a ship by player takes a damage so there might be a change in PD or/and until AI get reinforcements and/or until some time runs out

sorry for bad english/grammar

edit2: make all/most weapon size techs severely cheaper to research with some numbers rebalance. big cannons should have a slow reload time and another tech pre-requesites to be effective for example capacitor recharge rate. some games just do it wrong where bigger cannons are better and expensive to research and its not very logical compared to real world engineering
I think that bigger cannons should be primarily about design choice (possibly inefficient big cannons or more versatile small ones or more point defence) not about tech levels.

Such a button might be appropriate for SM mode.
C# is reportedly much faster than VB, so missile spam shouldn't cause significant lag anymore.
Missile ship AI could use some work.
Larger weapons already have slower reload times.  Weapon size is a design choice and larger weapons are harder to design and build, just like in real life.
That would be a major balance and mechanics change.  It Steve even considers it, it will be after C#1.0 comes out.

[Ranged66]

Simple game creation setting:

Jump point distance modifier. Default 100% (current). Multiplies how far on average jump points will spawn from system primary.


Medium suggestion:
Give system secondary stars above a certain mass threshold LaGrange/intra system point(s)! Makes those 0.2 ly radius systems a bit more than a novelty.

Hard suggestion:
Allow jump points to spawn against different stars than the system primary.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Something that came up in my current game:  A switch to turn off automatic damage control for a ship.  I have a carrier hauling a severely mangled destroyer back to port for scrapping and the thing is merrily chewing through MSP trying to fix itself.

[amschnei]

I tried to post this as a guest, and don’t think it came up, so apologies if it’s a repost, but:

With the new ability to appoint military academy commanders in C# it would be a nice thing to be able to rename academies like you can with shipyards.  That way instead of assigning your high level general to run earth military academy you could have him run “West Point”, or assign your favored laser scientist to train up new scientific personnel at “Mars High Energy Physics Institute” or whatever fits one’s role play needs.

[Ranged66]

'Skip current order' button please

[Steve Walmsley]

'Skip current order' button please

Not quite sure you mean by this.

If you are in Sol, your first order is Transit to Alpha Centauri and your second order is move to Alpha Centauri-A I, how could you skip the first one?

[Scandinavian]

'Skip current order' button please

Not quite sure you mean by this.

Suppose you have a freighter or survey vessel set up to collect minerals from ten different systems and drop them off in your central mining hub, and one of those systems develops a bad case of unfriendly alien warships. Having to reconstruct the entire order queue for the freighter (and then re-reconstruct it after you've cleared out the baddies) is a lot of tedious clicking just for skipping a single pickup.

If you are in Sol, your first order is Transit to Alpha Centauri and your second order is move to Alpha Centauri-A I, how could you skip the first one?

That would be theoretically fixable by checking whether the second order remains valid without the first order. Perhaps a better way to do it would be a "skip to next valid order" function (so a vessel in Sol that was set up to go to Alpha Centauri, come back, and report to Earth for overhaul would skip the whole round trip to AC and go directly to Earth for overhaul). I'm not sure how practical that is to code, though - that would depend on how easy it is to identify orders that would be valid in counterfactual scenarios.

[Steve Walmsley]

'Skip current order' button please

Not quite sure you mean by this.

Suppose you have a freighter or survey vessel set up to collect minerals from ten different systems and drop them off in your central mining hub, and one of those systems develops a bad case of unfriendly alien warships. Having to reconstruct the entire order queue for the freighter (and then re-reconstruct it after you've cleared out the baddies) is a lot of tedious clicking just for skipping a single pickup.

If you are in Sol, your first order is Transit to Alpha Centauri and your second order is move to Alpha Centauri-A I, how could you skip the first one?

That would be theoretically fixable by checking whether the second order remains valid without the first order. Perhaps a better way to do it would be a "skip to next valid order" function (so a vessel in Sol that was set up to go to Alpha Centauri, come back, and report to Earth for overhaul would skip the whole round trip to AC and go directly to Earth for overhaul). I'm not sure how practical that is to code, though - that would depend on how easy it is to identify orders that would be valid in counterfactual scenarios.

The amount of code that would be required to handle checking every conceivable combination of orders to see if removing the first would make the second impossible would be huge.

You can store order templates very easily in C# Aurora so that is probably a better option than the above.

[the obelisk]

The ability to change the assigned name of another race's ship class in the intelligence screen would be nice, since it doesn't seem like that can be done in the current version.

Also, I briefly mentioned this elsewhere, but I think that being able to eventually establish an embassy on another race's planet, maybe using diplomatic units similar to to archaeological units, would be cool, and open the way to espionage that goes beyond special ship sensors.

[Steve Walmsley]

The ability to change the assigned name of another race's ship class in the intelligence screen would be nice, since it doesn't seem like that can be done in the current version.

You can do this on VB6 and C#. For VB6 it is the Rename Class button on the Tactical Intelligence tab of the Intelligence window.

[totos_totidis]

Planets in c# will have a max population. What about adding the ability to increase the population capacity of planets with research? Adding technologies such as urbanisation tech and/or arcologies would add an interesting dimension to planetairy development.

[TMaekler]

Planets in c# will have a max population. What about adding the ability to increase the population capacity of planets with research? Adding technologies such as urbanisation tech and/or arcologies would add an interesting dimension to planetairy development.

Had asked the same a while ago. You can add pop max with space stations, so no need to add such a tech tree (yet).

[totos_totidis]

You can, but I suggest a tech line for increasing urbanisation as an alternative.

[Garfunkel]

I get what you're going for but it's the same problem as with space elevators and mobility for ground units and bunch of other suggestions, in that it encroaches on the RP side of the game by providing detail that is actually unnecessary for game play purposes.

What's the difference between a space elevator and a level X space port in a game where such things only affect the loading and unloading speeds of ships? What's the difference between a walking tank and a tracked tank in a game that does not model more than 1 terrain type per planetary body nor any sort of tactical combat? What's the difference between researching Arcology tech and building Orbital Habitats in a game where both just add additional population capacity on a body?

The population densities that C# will allow are already pretty generous. Earth will have capacity for 12,000,000,000 people. That's a lot when you remember that it isn't just the physical space that all those bodies require - and you can't stack people like firewood - but also their jobs, their entertainment, their food production, their energy production, the entire trade goods sector and more.

If/when Aurora beings to model the civilian sector in more detail, including food and energy production and consumption, such techs will become useful additions.