Semi-Official 6.x Suggestion Thread

[wilddog5]

a number box on the race creation window for the amount of fast OB creation avalable.

i wanted to do a multi empire NPR start with everyone having just a basic start with no ships/ pdcs but the 4 of them started with 60+ ships and have massivly slowed the game (no wonder the test game takes forever for story updates)

[IanD]

In the F5 Class Design screen - available components - could a column be added to show number available in stockpile? This would be useful when using salvaged alien tech the player race cannot yet build.
Regards
Ian

[davidr]

Could we possibly have a method , on starting a game , of limiting the maximum number of jump points which may be found when surveying new systems. In my previous V6.3 game I regularly found new systems which then had from 6-8 jump points radiating from the system. This creates problems with arranging everything on the Galactic Map.

Just a thought - are the numbers of jump points found around a system related to the number of systems shown when starting a game  - e.g for a 1000 system game will you find more jump points per system than you would in a 500 system game ?

DavidR

[Steve Walmsley]

Just a thought - are the numbers of jump points found around a system related to the number of systems shown when starting a game  - e.g for a 1000 system game will you find more jump points per system than you would in a 500 system game ?

DavidR

System generation is the same regardless of the size of the universe

[MarcAFK]

Steve, Could you make the "Source of colonists", "Stable" options available on bodies below 25 million population?
This would allow people to somewhat mitigate the Colony ship population dumping bug, while also allowing slightly more options for controlling how the CIVs move your populations around.

also

Just picked up the game a couple weeks ago, and have been loving it so far.  If suggestions are still being taken, I have a few.

1.  "Grant Shore Leave" option (similar to overhaul or resupply or refuel).  I'm sure this has been mentioned before, so no elaboration needed.

2.  "Auto Turn NPR Bypass" Make an option for auto-turn to not cause an interrupt when an NPR interacts with another NPR.  I've been getting 1 to 3 day interrupts for a full year of in-game time due to them going back and forth on thermal sensor detections, and it's killing my 70year game.

4.  NPR battle bubble - Currently you are able to select (in SM mode) to make a system bubble, to assist with quickening the pace of battles for small-time increment processing.  It would be nice if there was an option/system to erect a battle system bubble when two NPRs engage in combat if you have no visibility over said battle, and your current selection is on a longer time increment, so the processing time would be greatly reduced.  Make a general "everyone" update every 1 hour or something.

ScottyC

I would love all these to be implemented. Note:

But the game can't "Go Ahead Normally" when the NPRs are fighting.  The combat works basically on 5 sec intervals once missiles start impacting as you have AAM missile fire cycles, point defence cycles and detections etc.  Then there are pauses where you can move by 30 seconds to 30 min and then follows another phase where you are down to 5 second turns again.  There is no "automatic" resolution function that adds up the attack value and compares it between both sides and determines a winner.  The game is built around a 5 s combat turn, and when combat starts it is very hard to get too much away from that.

So you can't advance the time in time segments of 1 day while an NPR is fighting.  It doesn't matter if you are being updated on the battle or not, the database is being updated on a 5 game second basis.

Of course the game still needs to hit 5 second increments to resolve the battles, but what I ask is that the game should continue doing 5 second turns or whatever is needed untill the battle is resolved, without needing any player interaction. Also, would it be possible to have a window popup when turns are processing showing some kind of information related to what is going on, this might help to see if the game has actually crashed when windows says it's not responding. The window could be very simple, a small window the size of those damn error windows, laid out something like;

Code: [Select]

Aurora Turn Process                    [x]

Aurora is processing the next turn, don't panic!
Auto turn: [on/off]  Increment remaining: [N$]
Last increment: [5 seconds]
Event: Hidden Activity  (Tells the player what caused the last reduced increment, with sm mode turned on this might read
 NPR battle or New sensor contact or something)
Progress: Doing stuff (This area could have list status of what the game is doing, everything doesn't need to be listed,
 specifically nothing that would be a spoiler, but this might actually help to diagnose what's causing game lockup or slowdown)
[Panic button]    (An end turn button, please for the love of god let me end the autoturns without having to click that
 tiny checkbox at the exact right time between ticks)

[alex_brunius]

Steve, Could you make the "Source of colonists", "Stable" options available on bodies below 25 million population?
This would allow people to somewhat mitigate the Colony ship population dumping bug, while also allowing slightly more options for controlling how the CIVs move your populations around.

Other ways to mitigate the population dumping problem would be:
- Treat all pop enroute as if they already had arrived for calculating infrastructure demand
- Make the civilian colony ships significantly slower then the freighters ( so infrastructure arrives first)
- Change mechanics so that the infrastructure need is the amount to live "comfortably" and population reduction only happens you have lower then say 80%, 75% or even 50% of the needed infrastructure.

[MarcAFK]

Maybe minor overcrowding could just reduce economic productivity and population growth. A 10% variance should be ok.

[Jorgen_CAB]

- Treat all pop enroute as if they already had arrived for calculating infrastructure demand

Is it not easier to just treat all pop enroute as if it had arrived for both infrastructure AND new population demand. Make sure this calculation is done per ship that load population so that there are not ten colonizers loading population at the same time.

On a side note on population...

I would like for planets that has a high unemployment to get some reduction in production/economic efficiency or perhaps other political effects. Too high unemployment should also result in some unrest. I think there should be more stuff modifying these values overall that you must deal with. It just is too easy to keep people content in the game outside of role-play.

Perhaps if a world don't get enough civilian trade ships (based in their civilian production) they should start to suffer in production/economic efficiency as well, this lower their expectation for trade and soon they reach an equilibrium, once trade ships show up more often the economy will pick up again and start flourishing. These calculation should be done in such a way that it look at how many ships have been these trading in the last 12 month and compared to what the colony would need. Perhaps these calculations would be done once each month, they should not impact performance very much.

[alex_brunius]

Is it not easier to just treat all pop enroute as if it had arrived for both infrastructure AND new population demand. Make sure this calculation is done per ship that load population so that there are not ten colonizers loading population at the same time.

On a side note on population...

I would like for planets that has a high unemployment to get some reduction in production/economic efficiency or perhaps other political effects. Too high unemployment should also result in some unrest. I think there should be more stuff modifying these values overall that you must deal with. It just is too easy to keep people content in the game outside of role-play.

Perhaps if a world don't get enough civilian trade ships (based in their civilian production) they should start to suffer in production/economic efficiency as well, this lower their expectation for trade and soon they reach an equilibrium, once trade ships show up more often the economy will pick up again and start flourishing. These calculation should be done in such a way that it look at how many ships have been these trading in the last 12 month and compared to what the colony would need. Perhaps these calculations would be done once each month, they should not impact performance very much.

Agree with everything. Some very interesting options available for cool gameplay around unemployment and trade goods that would probably not be so complex to add to the game considering how much of the groundwork is already in place.

[Sharp]

Probably not best place to discuss it fully but I don't really think unemployment is an issue, or at least it needs to be more finely tuned, the available workers doesn't neccessarily mean unemployed workers, civilian shipping lines probably use a lot of workers especially as they need a variety of shipyards themselves etc... available workers just means populations not working in government industries and govt has first choice on workers.

Would be interesting to see that if you lacked available workers that maybe civillian lines would have slower growth, and actually show unemployed workers as well perhaps but tbh it might just be an annoying layer of micro-management, would probably just build a bunch of financial centres or a commercial shipyard just to reduce unemployment.

[alex_brunius]

Something I really would like to see:

Extremely fuel ineffective conventional engines. Conventional Engine technology hints towards extremely ineffective Rockets. It would feel much more real if they would struggle getting to a single planet and back even when having 50% of the tonnage as fuel.

Power is not the primary limit today for rockets, but fuel efficiency.

[MarcAFK]

Actually I would like to see that, every time I use conventional engines during teh start of the game looking at the range listed in trillions of kilometers for a few thousand litres of fuel just seems wrong.

[xeryon]

I would like to see Trans-Newtonian Technology be a research item without a research class bonus or a bonus that applies regardless of research class.  At current it is a Construction/Production technology.  If I do a conventional start it's a crap shoot on if it is going to take a couple years or a decade based on my starting scientists.  If it is modified to take advantage of any scientist class I think the RP needed should be increased as 3 years to transition from conventional to TN is kind of quick.

I just made a random new game and I have a 15% A1 CP scientist.  To research TN is going to take 3 years and 45 days.
In opposition to that if I assign my otherwise best scientist, a 15% A6 SFC scientist it will take 9 years and 155 days.

In addition to that, to expand on conventional start options I would like to be able to build conventional industry, ground unit training facilities and research facilities.  The inability to build additional shipyards is an irritant but it is very rare in a conventional start to ever need more than the opening yard. 

Really, I would just like to see expansions on early start options all the way around.  It always feels like the advancement speed from conventional game start to exploring outside the solar system advances at an unrealistic speed without enough things going on in-between.  Unless you are doing a multi-faction start the first 15 years of a conventional start game are, frankly, boring.

[Akhillis]

Class Design - Hide unused
Like the "Hide Obsolete" tickbox, only instead it hides unused designs (i.e. classes where there are no ships in service).

Task Force Assignments
It would be nice to be able to give Task Forces a priority for assignments the same way you can with ship classes.

[Haji]

It would be nice if we could fine tune beam fire control (tracking speed and range). Right now we're limited to about eight choices only for each of those values, and while it's normally not that big of a deal, it's a nightmare to design proper, small and effective beam fire control for fighters, where every 0.01 HS matters.