4.1 Suggestions

[Erik L (OP)]

Subject: UNLOAD ORDNANCE at Designated Colony or Space Station or Missile Base

i cant found an order to "Unload ordnance" from Collier Squqsroon windows orders..

ive been missed?

if arent pls Steve consider to make in ur list of priority
ty very much!

I believe you can do this already. At least to a colony.

[Erik L (OP)]

Have the event log recall the # of lines set. I've got it sitting at 800 lines since that is right about the proper length to show 1 5 second increment with all the combat stuff.

[Erik L (OP)]

I've noticed that while targetting AI ships, the F8 screen shows the designations I give, but the Event log shows the AI names for the ships. Event log should reflect the Tactical Intel window.

[Erik L (OP)]

This might be for version 5... But I'd like to see ships select a new offensive target when their current one gets destroyed. Ideally in the same group the previous target was in.

[Erik L (OP)]

It'd be nice when a ship runs out of ammo, the ship is automatically set to "Cease Fire"

[sloanjh]

Subject: UNLOAD ORDNANCE at Designated Colony or Space Station or Missile Base

i cant found an order to "Unload ordnance" from Collier Squqsroon windows orders..

ive been missed?

if arent pls Steve consider to make in ur list of priority
ty very much!

I believe you can do this already. At least to a colony.

Just checked, and I don't see it.  For a fleet with a single collier, there's a "load from colony" and "reload own fleet from colliers".  There's a trick, though - If you set the default load-out for the collier to "nothing", then the "load from colony" command has the effect of unloading the collier at the colony.  This is how I move missiles from one world to another - I load the missiles I want to transport by hand at the source world, then do a "load" command at the destination.

John

[sloanjh]

Post pickets (as appropriate) at WP during NPR generation, rather than placing them at the homeworld and then moving them to the WP.

Twice now, I've jumped into a system with an NPR, and then a while later seen an NPR fleet coming right at the entry WP from the home world.  The first time the WP happened to be moderately close to the home world, so I thought that maybe they just had REALLY good planetary sensors.  The second time, however, it was a LONG way away.  It appears that what is happening is that all the NPR fleets are generated at the home world, then the NPR realizes that it has WP in the system and wants to picket them, so it gives a fleet a "move to" order.  A more "steady-state" situation would be if the fleet were already sitting on the WP - that would make the initial combat transit MUCH more interesting  

John

[schroeam]

So, for the past several years my ships and civilian ships have been transiting through a system directly adjacent to Sol that is a Quadranary system (A is the primary, B orbits A at 1.8 Trillion K, C orbits A inside the first jump point, and D orbits B).  I just realized that everytime a ship enters that system the SM gets a message about alien fleets.  There are only two planets orbiting A and none around C, but B has many with three between 2.0 and 3.0 for colony cost.  I'm not sure, but I think there is either an NPR or Precursor in the B system.  Not having built any hyper-capable drives yet, and still building up for the eventual conquest of two separate precursor systems, and having a distance of over 1.8 trillion k to travel, this got me thinking about the physics behind where the jump points are located.  I understand they are determined by the primary star, but if the secondary star is far enough away couldn't it have it's own jump points that are as completely random as any other system.  This would give hope to those who don't regularly use hyper drives and run across systems too far out of reach but full of potential treasures.  Any thoughts?

Adam.

Edit:
One more 5 day increment and my scout crossed paths with a three ship squadron that appeared to be performing survey actions.  Time to call out the cavalry.  

My thought about jump points around distant secondary stars still applies though.

Adam.

[Erik L (OP)]

So, for the past several years my ships and civilian ships have been transiting through a system directly adjacent to Sol that is a Quadranary system (A is the primary, B orbits A at 1.8 Trillion K, C orbits A inside the first jump point, and D orbits B).  I just realized that everytime a ship enters that system the SM gets a message about alien fleets.  There are only two planets orbiting A and none around C, but B has many with three between 2.0 and 3.0 for colony cost.  I'm not sure, but I think there is either an NPR or Precursor in the B system.  Not having built any hyper-capable drives yet, and still building up for the eventual conquest of two separate precursor systems, and having a distance of over 1.8 trillion k to travel, this got me thinking about the physics behind where the jump points are located.  I understand they are determined by the primary star, but if the secondary star is far enough away couldn't it have it's own jump points that are as completely random as any other system.  This would give hope to those who don't regularly use hyper drives and run across systems too far out of reach but full of potential treasures.  Any thoughts?

Adam.

Edit:
One more 5 day increment and my scout crossed paths with a three ship squadron that appeared to be performing survey actions.  Time to call out the cavalry.  

My thought about jump points around distant secondary stars still applies though.

Adam.

Civilians maybe?

[schroeam]

So, for the past several years my ships and civilian ships have been transiting through a system directly adjacent to Sol that is a Quadranary system (A is the primary, B orbits A at 1.8 Trillion K, C orbits A inside the first jump point, and D orbits B).  I just realized that everytime a ship enters that system the SM gets a message about alien fleets.  There are only two planets orbiting A and none around C, but B has many with three between 2.0 and 3.0 for colony cost.  I'm not sure, but I think there is either an NPR or Precursor in the B system.  Not having built any hyper-capable drives yet, and still building up for the eventual conquest of two separate precursor systems, and having a distance of over 1.8 trillion k to travel, this got me thinking about the physics behind where the jump points are located.  I understand they are determined by the primary star, but if the secondary star is far enough away couldn't it have it's own jump points that are as completely random as any other system.  This would give hope to those who don't regularly use hyper drives and run across systems too far out of reach but full of potential treasures.  Any thoughts?

Adam.

Edit:
One more 5 day increment and my scout crossed paths with a three ship squadron that appeared to be performing survey actions.  Time to call out the cavalry.  

My thought about jump points around distant secondary stars still applies though.

Adam.

Civilians maybe?

Ahh,
Thanks for the cheerful thoughts, but no... it seems the precursors from the next system over have migrated.  When I was able to I.D. them they came across as alien ships I had already scanned, fifteen years ago.  Much to the chagrin of my now dead scout ship crew.  The good guys are marshalling for a little vengeance, but space is a big place, and they are just three iddy bitty ships.  The reason I say precursors is because that's what race they belong to, or so says Aurora.

[Paul M]

I'd like to suggest that the act of both repair and refit include automatic maintenance overhaul.  Either through turning the clock back automatically to 0 when either action is complete or else having it do the overhaul function at the same time.  I find it hard to understand why I need to do either a refit or repair and then an overhaul to get rid of time on their maintenance clocks.  Unless of course this is a bug...?

[SteveAlt]

I'd like to suggest that the act of both repair and refit include automatic maintenance overhaul.  Either through turning the clock back automatically to 0 when either action is complete or else having it do the overhaul function at the same time.  I find it hard to understand why I need to do either a refit or repair and then an overhaul to get rid of time on their maintenance clocks.  Unless of course this is a bug...?

This is a common request . The problem is that a refit or a repair might be a fairly minor task. If you change the EM Sensor for a better one, should that rewind the maintenance clock for the whole ship by potentially ten years?
You can do both at the same time though. Start the overhaul and then start the refit/repair.

Steve

[welchbloke]

I'd like to suggest that the act of both repair and refit include automatic maintenance overhaul.  Either through turning the clock back automatically to 0 when either action is complete or else having it do the overhaul function at the same time.  I find it hard to understand why I need to do either a refit or repair and then an overhaul to get rid of time on their maintenance clocks.  Unless of course this is a bug...?

This is a common request . The problem is that a refit or a repair might be a fairly minor task. If you change the EM Sensor for a better one, should that rewind the maintenance clock for the whole ship by potentially ten years?
You can do both at the same time though. Start the overhaul and then start the refit/repair.

Steve

I understand your logic and I agree with it.  I have found it pretty frustrating though, of course I didn't know you could overhaul and then refit/repair.  That makes things much less annoying.

[sloanjh]

You can do both at the same time though. Start the overhaul and then start the refit/repair.

Ummm actually, that code seems to be broken (at least for me).  From what I've seen, while in an overhaul+refit state (which is correctly displayed by the ship name on the TF window F12), the maintenance clock advances, even if you're in orbit of a planet with sufficient maintenance facilities for it to be frozen.  This is also the case in a pure refit state, btw.

For example, if I have a Nelson III in orbit of my home world (i.e. enough maintenance facilities) with zero time on the maintenance clock and put it into a refit that lasts three months, at the end of the three months the clock will be at 0.25 (years).  If it has 0.5 years on the clock and I put it into overhaul, then put it into the same refit, it will have 0.75 years on the clock at the end of the refit.  I logged this near the beginning of the bugs thread, but wasn't sure at the time whether it was a bug or working as intended.

BTW, do you remember how quickly the clock unwinds in overhaul?  I thought it was 4x, but I also have a vague memory of combatants and non-combatants unwinding at different rates.

Thanks,
John

[Paul M]

I would be just happy to have it not advance.  Currently any ship under repair or refit has time accuring on its maintance clock which doesn't make sense as there are maintance facilities present.  My personal feeling is that it should be an overhaul when you put a ship in for repair and just time stands still when it is in for a refit.  But having both rewind the maintenance clocks like an overhaul would work for me.

It doesn't make sense that the clock continues to advance while people are working on the ships.  Yes the rewind to zero is exploitable and I did think of that.  I don't think that overhaul then refit results in the clock rewinding either but I'm far from sure of that, I know you can't send ships into overhaul if members of the task group are refitting.  I have several ships under refit and repair currently so I'll have a look in more detail.  But I have seen exactly the same things John reports.  I put a ship with zero time on the clock into refit and it comes out with time on the clock when it is done.

I keep noticing John that you and I end up running into the same issues!  Must be the pre-TNT start  I keep thinking to write up some fiction but it would fairly dull reading as 50 years and basically only building, researching and exploring has been going on.  Two pre-curser groups found so far (including one on a nice colony world) and about 25 systems probed with 17 fully surveyed.  I've got about 10 years worth in the research queue even...trying to get a number of the racial techs up is really slow going, 15% done on 280 research/annum and that will be a good boost.  I'm mainly working on a automatic mine strategy to get resources flowing back to the homeworld...the minearls are out there, I know where they are but I have to work out the best approach to getting them.

I'm pretty sure there is a difference, non-military ships seem to overhaul about 1.5 to 2 times faster then my military ships.