Semi-Official 6.x Suggestion Thread

[Whitecold]

Another UI suggestion, an option to collapse contacts at the same spot. So instead of FAC 1-50 you get a single FAC (x50) The same could be done for wrecks and life pods, although these are more likely to be scattered.

[JacenHan]

You can do that already, in the contacts tab. Button says something like "Hide Active IDs". I think it doesn't work on ships with active sensors on, though.

[letsdance]

I would love to see an improvement for Population growth and spread mechanics.

Suggestion 1:
Add a new value called something like Natural Population Capacity for planets, based on how close they are to optimal race conditions and actual available area size of the body.  Geological activity and % water would subtract from the available area effecting this negatively.  This could also effect terraforming so that even if average temperature is 30 deg too high/low outside the acceptable interval there will still be a few areas (perhaps 2% max area) that can be settled with colony cost 0, so the actual colony cost is set to 0 but with a very low population capacity until average temperature is closer to race optimal.  Everything above the cap is treated as normal requiring infrastructure.

This value is supposed to model how many people can comfortably live on a body without major infrastructure investments (modelling "normal" buildings fairly close to ground level and fairly spread out with a good percentage left for farming and industry/jobs for everyone).

For Earth it would probably be a 2000-6000 million (we have infrastructure today and are not living sustainable with food for everyone), but for bodies not perfectly terraformed or smaller, for example Mars (0. 28 of earths area) or even smaller inhabitable moons it would be much lower.

If we say 4000 million for Earth it would be less then 1000 million for all Jovian moons as an example.

Growth % would be a function of how far from this cap you are.

Basically the mechanic means there is a cap on how big population can enjoy col cost 0 without infrastructure, but you can still always use infrastructure (at say cost one or two) to go above it if you want.

I'm not sure if odd gravity should influence how many that maximum can live on a body, perhaps high gravity should at least influence it negatively, what do you think?

i would like that too

[letsdance]

- All magazines, fuel tanks and maintenance to be given a transfer rate.     Ie msp per minute / litres per minute with civilian versions having a decidedly worse rate.     These rates would then be used to make such transfers take time rather than the instantaneous transfers done today.     

+1 (but i read it's already on steve's todo list)

distinguish between self-made infrastructure and civilian.     civilians shouldn't let me ship away their infrastructure, even if the body is terraformed.   

let me somehow move my capital to the top of the system locations available in the Task Groups window.     some sort of ordering would be nice here (alphabetical?)

let me give an order to a TG using "current location" as target location instead of picking one from the list.     for example this could be used if no location is selected.   

automate geo surface surveys.     this would need 2 conditional orders:
1.     if current location has surface survey completed, pick up geo survey team
2.     if current ship has a geo survey team on board, move to next eligible location and drop it there

The ability to edit, delete or obsolete Hull types.     - Easily 80% of the list is populated by types that I will never use, and many of the ones that I do use I would prefer to be able to assign my own abbreviation.   

+1.     that's really annoying.   

i support the suggestions concerning missile and fighter fuel usage (from november and february).     also the missile fire control / ECCM balance could be improved somehow.   

a conditional order "unload 90 % of fuel at X" (let me specify X).     "at nearest colony" is annoying because i never know where my fuel is.    it would also be nice to have a conditional order "unload 90 % of fuel to tankers in same fleet". 

When an officer dies or retires, there needs to be a separate message category for those.     
Presently, Officer Health and Officer Update categories are overflowing with messages.     To see when you need to replace an officer that has been killed, you have to read through a lot of messages.   

+1

research scaling: researching 5 years with 1 lab could give more research points than researching 1 year with 5 labs.    this would give us more decisions.    it's also realistic, that the leader contributes a higher percentage to the result if the crew is smaller.    for example the research points generated could reduce by 1 % for each lab added after the first one (or let administration influence that too).   

[alex_brunius]

Would be nice if the GEO and GRAV buttons on Task Groups (F12) first tab "Task Group Orders" was a toggle on-off instead of just add GEO/GRAV orders ( so you can click them again to remove the default order ).

Would be nice to be able to add/remove Civilian Mining Complexes to colonies with the SM Mods button in Economy (F2) window.

[hyramgraff]

Would be nice if the GEO and GRAV buttons on Task Groups (F12) first tab "Task Group Orders" was a toggle on-off instead of just add GEO/GRAV orders ( so you can click them again to remove the default order ).

You can use the "No Defaults" button at the bottom of the window to clear the default order that the  geo and grav buttons add.

[alex_brunius]

You can use the "No Defaults" button at the bottom of the window to clear the default order that the  geo and grav buttons add.

Thanks. SO many buttons 

[letsdance]

in the Class Design window in the Design View tab, add an option "show all used components".     this shows all components currently used in the design, even if they are obsolete, when obsolete components are filtered out.    that would allow to update old designs to new technology, without having EVERYTHING obsolete in the list.  

[edit] or even better: allow us to remove components in the Component Summary tab.  

group "shore leave completed" messages by task group.  a message that some or all (these 2 should be distinguished) ships in the TG have completed shore leave is sufficient.  separate entries for each ship are annoying.

[edit:] another idea to clean up the events log: for new contacts (also updates etc) make only one line per ship class for all ships that have the same stats. for example thermal signature will usually be the same for all of them, if it isn't: group them.

[letsdance]

i finally have the best suggestion ever!! (altough i'm surprised i didn't see anything like this when i read old suggestions....) what i love most about Aurora is it's usability. there are so many useful buttons, tooltips etc. but the most annoying thing is the turn advancement.

therefore i suggest to make some kind of "autoturn when not interrupted by event". there are 2 ways to do it and i actually think both should be implemented.

1. next to autoturn make an "event interrupts" checkbox. now if i get any not-filtered event message (other than "last time increment") the autoturns stop and i can do something. this would allow us to use autoturns safely.

2. when i hit a time interval (lets say 5 days) but the game proceeds less than my chosen interval (example 1 day) without giving me a non-filtered event message, automatically pick an intervall that moves the time to where i wanted (4 more days in this example). if this new intervall gets interrupted again without giving me an event message, do the same again, until i either get an event message or the game arrives where i wanted it to.
[edit]there would have to be a maximum, like 10 100 intervalls (or let me choose one)

this would make the game alot more fun and, well i hesitate to say "fluent", but something like it. because the issue with smaller-than-planned time increments is not so much that less time has passed and i get a useless line in the event log. it's that i have to click and wait again. and again. and again. it should also be quite easy to do. it would also solve all those "help the game is advancing in 5 sec intervals but nothing happens" issues.

[edit]in any case - also in the existing autoturn option - there should be an event message when the last autoturn has finished.

[Whitecold]

The autofire checkbox should only cause automatic targeting, not completely destroying the FC setup, there is Auto FC for that if you should ever want that.

[davidr]

I don't know if this has been suggested before , but could Steve please add "unload all ship components from cargo hold " ( or similar ) to a vessels action menu.

This is because that when a salvage vessel with numerous salvaged components on board has arrived at the player colony ;the player at present has to individually
click on each component to unload the item.If the salvage vessel has many cargo holds or is in a Task Group helped by cargo vessels then the number of salvaged  components can be many.

DavidR

[IanD]

I don't know if this has been suggested before , but could Steve please add "unload all ship components from cargo hold " ( or similar ) to a vessels action menu.

This is because that when a salvage vessel with numerous salvaged components on board has arrived at the player colony ;the player at present has to individually
click on each component to unload the item.If the salvage vessel has many cargo holds or is in a Task Group helped by cargo vessels then the number of salvaged  components can be many.

DavidR

You can use the order "Unload all Installations" which unloads everything.

Ian

[alex_brunius]

It would be cool if all beam weapons including railguns could be turreted.

Those that can not be turreted for balance reasons today could have the option to improve tracking speed removed, so you can turret them simply for RP ( coolness   ) and for extra armor reasons.

[GodEmperor]

My personal list of things that will never happen but if they did i would fap myself to death over awesomness of Aurora ( even more than i do now ).

1. Pirates - raiding civilian lines, small colonies, lone military ships etc. This would be awesome for some smaller ship to ship action without fighting full scale war.
2. Some sort of internal politics - different gov styles, ministers etc.
3. Rebelious colonies breaking off and declaring independence becoming NPR's. Officers/crew/ship loyalty depending on where they have been produced/trained/finished Military academy.
4. Some more depth in diplomacy.
5. Maybe some sort of "plot" about discovering Precursors origins, Invaders homeworld etc. ( Distant Worlds made me horny for something like that )
6. Some sort of generalization of npr vs npr combat so those dreaded "5 sec turns for a week" would be gone.
7. Some sort of search function to find particular asteroid/moon ( because its a giant pain in the ass )

[Haji]

My personal list of things that will never happen but if they did i would fap myself to death over awesomness of Aurora ( even more than i do now ).

In my case it would be addition of "crazy science" which can be either researched or found. Some examples include:
1. Atmosphere remover, which creates a wormhole to "somewhere" and suck atmosphere out of the body allowing you to easily colonies and terraform Venusian planets (for balance reasons it would be one use item).
2. Gas giant ignitor, which can turn a gas giant or a brown dwarf into a miniature star, allowing you to colonize and terraform their moons that were far too cold previously (always a one use item).
3. Link destroyer/creator that would allow you to destroy an inconvenient jump connection (or to create a convenient one) without resorting to SMing.
4. Superscale habitats like McKendree cylinders, Bank's Orbitals or maybe small (3mln kilometers) ringworlds around those useless white dwarfs.
5. Matter transmuter that would would be deployed close to a star (in the same way fuel harvesters are deployed around gas giants) manufacturing TN elements for free.

Other things I'd also like to see, but are unlikely to be added are:
1. Ability to make a custom star system. Recently I play much less campaigns with all powers starting on Earth and more scenarios with several powers starting in different star systems and getting a reasonable one via random generation is a friggin' nightmare, especially when you want a somewhat specific system for RP purposes.
2. More ways to generate revenue, preferably though some kind of ship component (like solar power satellites).
3. Revamp of genetic engineering. It's a cool concept but through the implementation it's extremely rarely used. It might have been different if my games were actually long, but I rarely get far enough to be able to spend large amounts of research into genetic modifications which are pretty useless on low levels. And if I try to devote myself to the research due to RP reasons, the nation that does so falls heavily behind. So much wasted potential qq.
4. Revamp of underground infrastructure. Another cool concept that is simply impractical due to cost vs. reward ratio.