Author Topic: Semi-Official 7.x Suggestion Thread  (Read 169160 times)

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Offline MagusXIX

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #30 on: December 27, 2015, 11:52:36 PM »
Is anyone else annoyed by constant interrupts due to civilian construction, or is that just me? Interrupts when there's a *new* mining colony are fine, but I don't need to be interrupted for every new civilian ship or when there are extra mining complexes added to an already existing colony.

Low priority, sure, but annoying enough to post here.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #31 on: December 28, 2015, 12:00:22 AM »
Perhaps something else to add to the don't interrupt list. That list is getting pretty
Big compared to the first version played. It's pretty smooth going these days.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
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Offline metalax

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #32 on: December 28, 2015, 07:47:43 AM »
These three were brought up in an Aurora discussion on another forum.

Tech-line to increase the efficiency of crew quarters.

Tech-line to improve the effect of Engineering Spaces at reducing the incremental failure rate.

Tech-line to reduce the maintenance supply cost of each repair, effectively increasing the efficiency of each supply point.

The primary reason for these changes is that it seems abnormal that practically every other area of technology has the potential to advance over the course of a game, but these are stuck at the level they are at at the game start. More, as tech for other components increase, typically also increasing their size, there is less and less mission payload available to each ship of the same size due to increasing maintenance and crew requirements.


An option in game setup to disable all missile tech for player and NPR empires for that game. Possibly leave it in for Precursors and Invaders to make them truly challenging threats. This would enable beam slugging matches to really be an option and make planetary invasion to deal with hostile worlds more of a requirement instead of just bombing them into submission(Mesons could still be used if you really wanted to destroy a world from orbit).
 

Offline Rich.h

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #33 on: December 28, 2015, 08:20:30 AM »
In light of a thread asking about how folks organise the galaxy map I think an overlay feature would be nice. So on the galaxy map you have a filter you can apply that will show up squares and/or hexagons. This way you could have a visual way of setting up sections of space like quadrants etc.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #34 on: December 28, 2015, 09:07:19 AM »
An option in game setup to disable all missile tech for player and NPR empires for that game. Possibly leave it in for Precursors and Invaders to make them truly challenging threats. This would enable beam slugging matches to really be an option and make planetary invasion to deal with hostile worlds more of a requirement instead of just bombing them into submission(Mesons could still be used if you really wanted to destroy a world from orbit).

You need to be a little careful here. With beams only, as soon as one race has higher speed and longer ranged beam weapons, he can't lose.

This is one of the reasons I restrict beam ranges (in addition to the light-speed issue). As they have unlimited ammo, they can easily destroy any opponent with shorter-ranged weapons. Even if the opponent is faster he may still be in trouble unless he can get in range reasonably quickly.
 
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Offline metalax

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #35 on: December 28, 2015, 02:10:15 PM »
You need to be a little careful here. With beams only, as soon as one race has higher speed and longer ranged beam weapons, he can't lose.

This is one of the reasons I restrict beam ranges (in addition to the light-speed issue). As they have unlimited ammo, they can easily destroy any opponent with shorter-ranged weapons. Even if the opponent is faster he may still be in trouble unless he can get in range reasonably quickly.

While mainly true, at least in the case of two ships fighting with no other consideration, this isn't quite as clear cut as it first appears.

For example, assume equal research points between two empires, with the first having a 1-2 tech level advantage in engines and beam fire control range. Due to how research costs increase greatly for each tech level that leaves the second empire with a load of research points. Say those points were put into ECM and shield regeneration techs. In order for the first empire to take advantage of it's longer range, it has to be maintaining long range and so will have low damage and low accuracy. The improved shields and ECM of the second empire mean that the first is now unable to drain the shields of the seconds ships before they reach the firsts colonies and land troops/use a meson bombardment.

A second example, assume a similar setup to above but this time the second empire puts its extra research into boosting its industrial/shipyard capabilities, and designs ships that utilize a higher percentage of tonnage for engines in order to beat the first empires speed. While it will prove expensive in resources and crew the second empire could then overwhelm the first through using sheer numbers to get into range.

A different alternative would be to use tactics such as luring the attacking ships by withdrawing those under attack while sending out flanking forces to envelop the faster ships. Alternatively bait the faster ships to follow through a jump point where a network of ships is set up to catch them whichever range they jump in at.

In the case where two empires do not have an equal level of research, it generally will make sense that the disadvantaged side will have a harder and harder job matching the superior until the gap is wide enough that it simply can't be bridged.

Basically, I believe that having the option offers the opportunity for interesting conflicts and scenarios. Can it be gamed against the AI? Certainly, but so can the current system.

N.B. Italics aren't emphasis, merely a counter to the forums overzealous anti-scripting. I I hope that gets sorted out soon, it was a pain finding out what was causing the 403 errors.
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #36 on: December 29, 2015, 07:20:03 AM »
I would like to request some changes in the civilian shipping companies ship generation algorithm.

Basically, in this game I had yesterday/today, my shipping line started launching ships but no matter how much I funded it, it would still launch only colony ships. No freighters at all. Before I threw the game because of alien interference too early on, this was the situation:

Earth main colony
Mars, 230 infrastructure brought by me and 1.5 million colonists (so there was a demand for infrastructure here)
Multiple orders of installations and infrastructure to be moved from earth to mars. I think it was 200 infra, 1 mass driver, 10 mines and 10 construction factories which I requested to be moved.

The shipping line had over 20000 funds, given by me. And after 8 years, it had 9 colony ships, 3 space liners and 0 freighters. That is very bad in my opinion, because for colony growth I generally rely on the civilian infrastructure trade goods instead of building it manually (a must in conventional starts! You can't really afford to build infrastructure early on).

I do not know how the algorithm works, but with demands both from civilians and from myself, shouldn't it have built at least a few freighters? Perhaps a more balanced approach is needed ... Not to  mention that the colony ships were not doing anything at all so I don't understand why it was building them so much.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2015, 07:23:17 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline MagusXIX

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #37 on: December 29, 2015, 07:59:54 AM »
Zincat, I've noticed in my games that civilians don't construct certain designs until after I've already designed my own version.  It seems you only need to *design* the ship type you want them to build, and that you do not need to actually build it yourself.  I had the opposite problem as you in my last game, where my civies were only building freighters.  The moment I designed my own colony ship (after I got fed up with waiting for them to build one) they cranked out a bunch of their own.
 

Offline Zincat

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #38 on: December 29, 2015, 08:05:06 AM »
Zincat, I've noticed in my games that civilians don't construct certain designs until after I've already designed my own version.  It seems you only need to *design* the ship type you want them to build, and that you do not need to actually build it yourself.  I had the opposite problem as you in my last game, where my civies were only building freighters.  The moment I designed my own colony ship (after I got fed up with waiting for them to build one) they cranked out a bunch of their own.

But I did obviously have a freighter, I used it to ferry the first infra I built to Mars... and it still did not help >_>
« Last Edit: December 29, 2015, 08:19:39 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #39 on: December 29, 2015, 09:02:36 AM »
I would like to request some changes in the civilian shipping companies ship generation algorithm.

Basically, in this game I had yesterday/today, my shipping line started launching ships but no matter how much I funded it, it would still launch only colony ships. No freighters at all.

I was starting to think there was a problem with the civilian ship generation because my shipping lines seem to be building nothing but freighters!

Colony ships are more likely if the shipping line has plenty of wealth. However, in normal circumstances freighters are more likely because the shipping line may not have enough wealth to afford colony ships when they check for a ship to build. In other words, subsidising makes colony ships more likely while normal operation makes freighters more likely.

 
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Offline MagusXIX

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #40 on: December 29, 2015, 09:09:32 AM »
Would it be feasible to add some if checks to civilian ship creation?  Before a shipping line decides what to build it should run a check, something like ...

if there are no civilian (shiptype)
  build (shiptype)

That way there will always at least be one of each type.  It'd help relieve some early game frustration and it seems pretty logical to me.  Do we know what the odds of never getting a civilian FT/CS/FH over a reasonable length of time (say ... 5 years) are?
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #41 on: December 29, 2015, 01:14:29 PM »
Would it be feasible to add some if checks to civilian ship creation?  Before a shipping line decides what to build it should run a check, something like ...

if there are no civilian (shiptype)
  build (shiptype)

That way there will always at least be one of each type.  It'd help relieve some early game frustration and it seems pretty logical to me.  Do we know what the odds of never getting a civilian FT/CS/FH over a reasonable length of time (say ... 5 years) are?

Yes that sounds sensible. In fact, a more complex version of that is what the NPRs do :)
 
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Offline Haji

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #42 on: December 30, 2015, 06:08:42 AM »
I'm not sure making the shipping line build everything is a good idea. I once tried to create a campaign where the 'main' power was very small and forced to get most of its funding from trade. The problem is that the shipping lines were launching approximately 50% colony ships which were useless as I had too small population to do any colonization. Most money was in fact coming from luxury liners which were built in great numbers in the beginning and then just stopped. Freighters were providing good amount of money but in the end too few of them were being built.
I don't know how difficult it would be to code this (or how much impact it would have on performance) but once shipping lines have some vessels they should be running checks what provides money and what does not, so if there is no colonization going on they would not build colony ships. Other than that I had very few issues with the lines building only one type of vessel.
 

Offline db48x

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #43 on: December 30, 2015, 01:18:52 PM »
Is there any reason the habitability of a planet doesn't factor in anything other than the atmosphere and gravity of a planet? It'd make sense to have an extra cost when there's no hydrosphere, for instance.
 

Offline Ostia

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Re: Semi-Official 7.0 Suggestion Thread
« Reply #44 on: December 30, 2015, 06:18:19 PM »
I am either missing the option or we are lacking a "Transfer Survivors/POWs/Cargo to other Ship" button.

Keep my survivors on my tiny S&R shuttle when their MS has 10k cryo space is meh.