C# Suggestions

[Vasious]

Mainly for roleplay reasons, but a way to put a ship into a sort of mothballed state as perhaps a museum ship.

A ship kept in a deactivated state requiring minimal crew and maintenance but keeping the ships history, maybe having each Academy being able to host/maintain a Museum ship to limit numbers.

Blame Rule the waves for the idea

[xenoscepter]

Can we have a refit tech line? Something akin to OmniTechnology in BattleTech?

I propose a "Modular" technology having two tech lines; "Modular Ship Building, Weight Margin +'x'%", and "Modular Ship Building, Cost Margin +'x'%"

My proposition for both tech lines would be increments of the following:

5% for tier one, 10% for tier two, 15% for tier three, 20% for tier four and 40% for tier five up to a total of 100% increase in margins for both weight and cost, with both lines being separate to ensure that while some improvement isn't too costly, dedicated refitters will need to shell out RPs to maintain parity.

This would allow some flavor for races who favor refitting over scrapping and would serve as an alternative to those who wish to avoid carriers or missile ships for whatever reasons. This change would make beam ships less constrained by refit rules as well. I see this as being good for Role-Play as a machine or hive race, where they would build "Hulls" and fill them to mission spec as needed via the refit mechanic. I also see this as making beam weapons and non-carrier ships more appealing as they can have some flexibility if you invest a bit into refit techs. Even the tier one improvement would take the current margin of 20% size / cost to 25%, offering an improvement of 25% over the original baseline.

Feedback is welcome.

[xenoscepter]

Also, can we have a way to add officers of lower rank? I want to add ranks of less than Major, like Sergeant and Lance Corporal. It's a pain in the arse right now to do it...

[serger]

Change GF weapons to represent different accuracies of one-shot vs burst fire, so the more shots - the more additional resupply cost.
That's it, LPW might be small and cheap police-and-staff weapon, yes; IPW - with the same Resupply Cost as PW (round-thrifty - during combat - marksman's weapon, so the same RC despite larger size of weapon and rounds), and CSAP - much less round-thrifty than PW (say 12 resup.cost per 6 shots), the same as Auto-Cannons (6 RC per 3 shots), though both CSAP and AC can be quite smaller, than they are now, to save balance.

[serger]

Also, can we have a way to add officers of lower rank? I want to add ranks of less than Major, like Sergeant and Lance Corporal. It's a pain in the arse right now to do it...

You have add-to-the-top-and-rename-all option. That's one-time per company start, so not a catastrophe. Yes, boring, but I do it at every new start.

[serger]

Ow. Let's forbid or penalize indirect fire weapon use during boarding combat!

[xenoscepter]

Let's not, the idea of a boarding crew turning a corner and coming face to face with the barrel of 105mm Howitzer is just too funny.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Some thoughts on improvements to the Mining reports on the Economics window...

I would like to see that the projected Usage of mineral was shown not just in total but yearly as well. We see the yearly production of minerals and having a yearly consumption of minerals would also be very informative. The total can often be very misleading if you have long running industrial project that take decades if not more to finish.

In addition to this I think it would be better if the colour of the minerals should turn yellow if the stockpile change was negative in the last three or maybe six months and not if the SP+Production is less than Projected Usage that often don't say anything. It would be more helpful to at a glance see which stockpiles are moving negatively or positively over a certain time period without having to look at them from turn to turn.... the "Recent SP" line can't always be trusted as resources can come and go all the time.

It also is quite easy to see if the Projected Usage value is higher than the "SP + Production" value at a glance as it is.

I also think the Empire mining tab cold be expanded to show the same type of values in the same way the planetary does but for the entire empire.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Also, can we have a way to add officers of lower rank? I want to add ranks of less than Major, like Sergeant and Lance Corporal. It's a pain in the arse right now to do it...

Not sure if this is what you mean... but in the "Commanders" window you can add additional ranks and rename them. You can model any rank system that you like.

If you need more ground force commanders then make one the leader of your Academies so you get more ground force commanders each year.

[wedgebert]

Also, can we have a way to add officers of lower rank? I want to add ranks of less than Major, like Sergeant and Lance Corporal. It's a pain in the arse right now to do it...

Not sure if this is what you mean... but in the "Commanders" window you can add additional ranks and rename them. You can model any rank system that you like.

If you need more ground force commanders then make one the leader of your Academies so you get more ground force commanders each year.

I think he means that the only way to add new ranks is at the top. So if using the United States rank theme I wanted to add Captains, I'd have to add a new rank, rename it to General of the Army, then rename the existing General of the Army to General, General to Lt General, and so on down the line until I'm finally able to make a Captain by renaming Major to Captain.

So it'd be a time saver if we could just say "Add Rank To Bottom" (or even Insert Rank Above/Below Selected).

Also, there is my tangental suggestion of storing rank/class/system/etc theme files in external files that are read when starting a new game. That way we can easily persist and share our changes.

[wedgebert]

Small QoL suggestion.

If a fleet consists of only a single ship, ships with only self-only jump drives, or is going through a stabilized jump point, double clicking the jump point in the movement orders list should automatically selected Standard Transit similarly to how it works when using the Autoroute by System option.

Of if it's easier, just always have double click use Standard Transit.

*edit typo

[chrislocke2000]

I've noticed that the rates of death in my scientists seem to be disproportionately high at the start of a game when using a non TN start. I suspect this is because of the relatively small pool of military officers, administrators and scientists from which to apply random problems to and often results in me having only 5 or 6 scientists left from a reasonably healthy start point by the time I'm ready to start using them. I wonder if the death rates could be adjusted to reflect the age of the relevant person so that naturally your young and upcoming bunch have less chance of ending their careers very early.

That might also tie well with allowing players to set a normal retirement age to better reflect different starting conditions.

[Droll]

I've noticed that the rates of death in my scientists seem to be disproportionately high at the start of a game when using a non TN start. I suspect this is because of the relatively small pool of military officers, administrators and scientists from which to apply random problems to and often results in me having only 5 or 6 scientists left from a reasonably healthy start point by the time I'm ready to start using them. I wonder if the death rates could be adjusted to reflect the age of the relevant person so that naturally your young and upcoming bunch have less chance of ending their careers very early.

That might also tie well with allowing players to set a normal retirement age to better reflect different starting conditions.

Honestly I want a medical technology that allows you to increase the average lifespan of the population and/or officers.
You could even have a tech that only the highest level alien ruins have that makes your officers functionally immortal (but not invincible).

[Borealis4x]

Subfleets should be more than just a convenient way to organize your fleets. They should have commanders of their own if they have a flag bridge and shouldn't be lost when you order them inside a carrier or something. They should also be detachable while still being considered 'under' the main fleet, benefiting from the bonuses of the fleet commander as long as they are in the same system.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Another thing that is sort of "annoying" is that we can't scrap old ground units and get some of the resources back in the way we can with ships. The only thing we can do is delete them and get nothing back.

I would either that we get the ability to upgrade them to new formations for some extra cost or if we at least can get some resources back when we scrap them.

I would prefer it both was possible but if I can only get one then allow me to just scrap them and get say 25% of the resources back.