>> 1) the possibility for the alien to invade other body by using ground forces exactly like the human players have to do.

I think that would require a fairly substantial AI upgrade. Currently, the AI is a bit basic in all areas, and isn't terribly good at the kind of planning that would be required to use ground forces properly

>> 2) Some very very simple graphic symbols for ships, and missles at least. It would improve the attractiveness of the game enourmusly!

I suspect it might make things look a bit messy, quite quickly

A Harpoon-style formation editor would be extremely useful though, especially if it allowed the "zoned" deployments as Harpoon does. It might be a bit trickier to implement though, since Harpoon has the advantage of working with relatively stable techs, and simply has to specify an anti-air and ASW ring. The number of possible fleet compositions / strategies in Aurora far exceeds even the largest and most complex Harpoon scenarios

Coctyte, I have a relatively simple way of dealing with that. I use the titles system to designate what each officer is assigned to (and I don't use the automated assignment system). So, if I have someone commanding the CV Venerable, I put that as their title. If the ships are of a type that doesn't have a name (like a fighter), I will just put the type for the title, e.g. FTR. For staff officers, this might be COps SOLCOM - Chief of operations, Sol Command, or CiC SOLCOM - Commander in Chief, Sol Command.

This becomes less practical as you get more and more academies, since you get a larger influx of officers. But still, it's fairly useful for a very long time.

It also helps me keep track of what positions need to be filled. If an officer dies, I can see by their title what they were assigned to. Not every message reporting an officer leaving a position (dead, retired, etc) actually says what position they had.

Anyway, the end result is that since I have these titles, I can see who's in what ship without a lot of flipping back and forth. As such, I can award a medal to every member of a fleet because I can see all of that data.

Your suggestion, however, is sound. I am just giving you a potential temporary work around.

Steve, would it be possible implement a simple, optional automation for medal reward, to be used in awarding "Long Service Award" type of medals.

There are some cpu bottlenecks like the sensor model(which can be turned off), but optimizing means doing a great deal of bug testing as well, the system as it is is stable if not particularly fast.

Since it is still in VB6, I seriously doubt it uses more than one core.

I think "will ever use one core" is a safe statement

It could conceivably happen in Aurora II, but that seems to have fallen victim to the innovator's dilemma (it's not cost-effective to do a complete rewrite compared to incremental improvements to the existing game).

John

Has Steve said anything about game optimization? Will the upcoming patch finally make the game use more than one core?
The gradually increase of time it takes turns to flip has killed my motivation to play this game.

it certainly makes the game quicker and gives you an edge over the NPRs. You could hit endgame TL pretty quick with a fitting scientists.

Or it will end up the other way around...

To get the bonus you can't keep all labs easily protected in one place anymore but are forced to spread out your population and labs to a much larger degree, meaning they are alot more vulnerable to NPR attacks actually making the game more of a challenge.