C# Suggestions

[kilo]

I would like to suggest something regarding scuttling ships and boarding combat.


The goal of a captain in the navy should be to scuttle the ship so that no useful equipment can be captured by the enemy. This means the ship shall not fall into enemy hands as a hole or in parts via salvaging. To achieve that, I would suggest that captains try to blow up their ships by overloading their remaining drives and power plants causing them to explode.

The same thing should be done automatically when an enemy force tries to commandeer the ship. There should be a certain chance that the crew blows up the remaining reactors to destroy their ship and the invading force before they manage to kill off the crew.


What do you guys think about it?

[nuclearslurpee]

I would like to suggest something regarding scuttling ships and boarding combat.


The goal of a captain in the navy should be to scuttle the ship so that no useful equipment can be captured by the enemy. This means the ship shall not fall into enemy hands as a hole or in parts via salvaging. To achieve that, I would suggest that captains try to blow up their ships by overloading their remaining drives and power plants causing them to explode.

The same thing should be done automatically when an enemy force tries to commandeer the ship. There should be a certain chance that the crew blows up the remaining reactors to destroy their ship and the invading force before they manage to kill off the crew.


What do you guys think about it?

This isn't really accurate for real-life wet navies, as historically prevention of salvaging has rarely, if ever, been a priority. Admittedly this is partly due to the fact that salvage operations for wet navies are relatively more difficult than they are for Aurora navies, but really the value of salvage is not so much as to justify the added expense, complexity, and risk of equipping a ship to totally obliterate itself beyond what is needed to render it wrecked.

Mechanically, I don't see this being added as it's really just not a fun mechanic to deny the opponent salvage. If the NPR can use the mechanic, it's not fun for a player, and if the NPRs can't use the mechanic it's yet another advantage for the player and I don't see Steve coding a mechanic purely to give the player an advantage over the hapless AIs. I can't recall if you can 'Abandon Ship' while being boarded, though I know people did this in VB6, but if you can I think that should be sufficient for RP purposes.

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: Buff ground surveys.

Presently, ground surveys are so minimally beneficial that it's questionable whether they're worth the vendarite to build + fuel to ship around the galaxy. The reason for this is that the actual benefits of a survey are quite small in practical terms: on one hand, finding new mineral deposits is not very useful because they are usually at minimal (0.1) accessibility; on the other hand, raising the accessibility of an existing deposit most frequently ends up raising a low-accessibility deposit by 0.1 or 0.2 accessibility, which rarely if ever raises a body to "worth mining" status. In practice, it's quite rare to find a surveyable body which was already worth mining and then to get a strong result from the survey.

As a suggested revision of the mechanic, I would suggest keeping the existing probabilities for survey results (for Minimal, Low, Good, etc. survey potential ratings) but increase the accessibility of any findings - I don't think it would be imbalanced if new deposits had an accessibility of 0.5 and raising accessibility gave +0.5 instead of +0.1. Even 0.7 would not be unreasonable, given the probability of finding a mineral type you don't care much about, but I think 0.5 would at least be sufficient to make ground surveys worth the investment.

[QuakeIV]

That seems reasonable to me personally.  I usually dont bother with it unless an already-mineable place is surveyable.

Honestly I feel like it used to be that pretty much anywhere could be surveyed, which did cause me to do it more often because my mining worlds at least could usually benefit from it.

[anomaly63]

The Scrap Component button should scrap the top-most component if no component is selected.   Alternatively, there should be a 'Scrap All' button.   

[TMaekler]

Mass Driver ship module

Wouldn't it be nice if a mining ship fleet also could have an additional ship with a mass driver module that can send mineral packages to a base planet or space station to collect minerals? Or if you could build a mineral collection base close to a jump point, set up a small transfer line to a space station on the other side of the wormhole and continue mineral transport from there?

[TMaekler]

Choke Point circumvention via temporal wormhole

How about a new type of temporal wormhole generator ship module? With that module, one can create a temporal exit point on an existing jump point connection that is up to 10bkm away from the regular jump point exit. This temporal exit will be open for a few days only and needs at least two years to generate. It also can be archived in the target system once every 20 to 30 years (so no temporal spamming).

Maybe it can be included with a tech line to generate it quicker or keep it open for some days more?

The goal is to archive two things: of course, avoiding jump point slaughter as a key strategic element of surprise in a war situation (but to avoid overuse have it limited as described). And deploying stealth ships without them being detected when coming through the default jump point exit.

[Demonides]

Mass Driver ship module

Wouldn't it be nice if a mining ship fleet also could have an additional ship with a mass driver module that can send mineral packages to a base planet or space station to collect minerals? Or if you could build a mineral collection base close to a jump point, set up a small transfer line to a space station on the other side of the wormhole and continue mineral transport from there?

↑ This ↑

[Demonides]

Choke Point circumvention via temporal wormhole

How about a new type of temporal wormhole generator ship module? With that module, one can create a temporal exit point on an existing jump point connection that is up to 10bkm away from the regular jump point exit. This temporal exit will be open for a few days only and needs at least two years to generate. It also can be archived in the target system once every 20 to 30 years (so no temporal spamming).

Maybe it can be included with a tech line to generate it quicker or keep it open for some days more?

The goal is to archive two things: of course, avoiding jump point slaughter as a key strategic element of surprise in a war situation (but to avoid overuse have it limited as described). And deploying stealth ships without them being detected when coming through the default jump point exit.

Or maybe something like a jump bridge with EvE-O?

[idefelipe]

Hello Steve!

First off, thanks again for the amazing work you are doing.

Recently I have found a "new way" (for me) to play Aurora and it is slow, tasting each 5 days pulse, creating a diary with the events, roleplaying the characters situations, the orders from the goverment, giving background to each of the steps I take, etc. This is a very slow pace for the game, in 15 hours I have advanced 27 years or so, but I found that incredibly the game gets a new level of deep and complexity.

Thanks to this diary I am creating (in an excel, of course, hahaha) I can follow the careers of the characters. I always have considered the characters in the game as a key feature of Aurora and it gives to the game a new level that no other game, of this style, has (maybe rimworld or dwarf fortress are at the same level). I really love how you implemented the characters, the careers, the records of their achievements, the medals and how they affect to the characters career, the traits...

When I learnt how to "include" all this in a somekind of diary and background, the histories crossing different characters started inmediately. Rivalries, families and dinasties, using the promotion score to find the best and more capable officers when graduate, friends, etc.

I say all this because there is one thing that is a bit annoying (I don't know if that is the correct word, excuse my english I'm spanish). When a character dies, he/she automatically is removed from the database and I can't take a last look to his profile and remember all the things he/she have done in the playthrough. Now, with my diary, I have a lot of things and with a quick search I can remember the most important events related to the character, but I would really love to take one last look to the profile and get a pic for the records on those best and more reknown officers.

I understand that keepin all the characters in the database is insane and will affect dramatically to the performance, so I have though that you could implement somekind of "Grace Period" of, for example, 30 days pulse (for those who plays with that pulse), before the character is removed. I am not programmer and don't know if it is possible or it is a crazy thing, but that would allow to those crazy players like me, that are following the careers of the officers, to take one last look to the profile and give that small though as final tribute to the characters that have been starrings of the history for many years.

What do you thing? Is it possible?

Thanks!

PS: Yeah, it is possibly the same as the feature that includes extra weight for custom installations in ships without in-game benefits and not many players will use it... but, you would make some of us very very happy

[Vivalas]

If there was a feature where you could issue an order to every ship in a naval admin command (and the same for standing orders), that would be a complete godsend and an amazing organizational tool.

E.g., refitting your fleet in waves. For example, I have new, more fuel efficient engines, but only so many shipyards. I can issue a "admin order" or something to Explorationary Squadron 1, so every ship returns to earth to refit in that fleet, and then I can send them all back out as well and re-set their standing orders much easier (in addition to combined "admin orders", any standing orders issued to a naval admin command would also override every fleet's standing orders below it, for easy organization. So instead of clicking 4 boxes on 10 different fleets, I click 4 boxes on the admin command and voila). After Squadron 1 is done and outbound again for the stars, I bring in squadron 2 and rinse and repeat. Far less clicking and headache.

[papent]

A minor suggestion and an expansion of the Misc component Idea

Miscellaneous Ship Officer Stations
You design the components on the Create Research Projects window by:

• Choosing a size (from 1 HS to 10)
• giving the component a name
• Choosing an Officer Type ( Naval, Ground, Admin, Scientist)
• Choosing an Officer Skill That will be the Primary selection Criteria
• For Naval/Ground/Admin only: Rank Required (Racial Min +0/1/2/3/4)

Cost is equal to size in HS and the mineral requirements are split between 20% Duranium and 80% Corbomite. The HTK is equal to the square root of the size. additional the officer improves the skill required by the ship station up to 1% or 1 per year per HTK of the component. [ballparking some figures]

two example Officer Stations

Code: [Select]

Internal Security Control
Cost 100   Size 100 tons   Crew 15   HTK 1
Officer: Ground Force Officer
Rank: Major
Skill: Ground Combat Defence
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Duranium  20    Corbomite  80   

Code: [Select]

Civil Logistic Liaison
Cost 200   Size 200 tons   Crew 30   HTK 2
Officer: Civilian Administrator
Rank: Admin Rating 1
Skill: Logistics
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Duranium  40    Corbomite  160   
thoughts?

Edited: Change Rank Idea with RougeNPS input.

[RougeNPS]

I really like your idea but i have one thing to add.

Have no restriction on what rank you can make for it. Just as a way of eating up extra officers if you have a massive pool of them. Although i guess it would make it harder for them to stand out if they are in a position doing nothing. It would make more sense.

[StarshipCactus]

I think it would be great if one faction could contract another faction to tug shipyards to different planets.

[bsh]

My list of suggestions (or wishes):
- some kind of search function on the galactic map, to center on a given system. also zoom would be great again. (iirc there was zoom in VB6 version?)
- possibility to delete connection between two jump points and make them undiscovered again. (iirc this was in the VB6 version?) without having to delete and recreate the jump point(s) itself.
- sector colors
- automated commander assignments for sectors and admin commands as well.
- possibility to exclude certain bonuses when searching or assigning admins. for example, i don't want to use any colony admins with population growth bonus.
- scrapping of unneeded installations
- returning prisoners to their own race, (maybe for some extra DR boost.)
- an optimized algorithm for civilian contracts would be good: it should consider nearby but busy ships as well, calculating when they unload their current cargo and become available and how long they take to get to the pickup location, instead of just picking random idle ships from the other side of the galaxy who literally take months and months to even get to pickup.