Semi-Official 7.x Suggestion Thread

[TMaekler]

One thing that bugs me about Aurora 4X is that a world, once completely habitable can have a pretty much infinite number of people and installations.

There are pros and cons to changing the actual system. What I have seen so far the "only" problem arising out of an infinite population is the infinite income spiral. At some point money becomes no more a limitation of production etc. And limiting the population growth would introduce micromanagement of planets which is unnecessary for the main complexity focus that Aurora has (although you can find that kind of micromanagement in almost all 4x games).

My suggestion for a solution would be this: if too much wealth is accumulated the population becomes angry with the government and an empire wide unrest starts. This can be overcome by a new factor called: tax rate. So you would have to manage the amount of wealth you have with the tax rate you can set. This tax rate should be per colony - and differences between the colonies should not add to the unrest factor.

So in the end there is no need of limiting pop growth and any unnecessary micromanagement. But we would be able to limit wealth overgrow. Also, in times of war, where much production is needed, an increase of tax rates can help being able to increase war production... . Having one or two colonies with high populations in the backhand would then be beneficial for planned war efforts.

[jem]

A counter to see how many active contacts you have.

[Sheb]

Is the income spiral that bad? I mean, sure, population grow exponentially, but so does production.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

tax rate would be lame when you can just slap an increasing inflation penalty on income when wealth > GDP

[sloanjh]

I'm aware that minerals may be mixed together in real life.  But in Aurora, each mineral is treated totally separately.  Why is all of the Gallicite mixed in with only 0.5% of the Duranium?

Point of history:  Originally (as in v0.1) each minerals was mined at the initial accessibility until it was gone, at which point it stopped.  I pointed out that this seemed a bit unrealistic, and that it actually made planning harder as well because your flow rate got hit with an abrupt change.  So Steve set up the current system to "tail off" minerals as they ran out.  I don't remember seeing any technobabble from Steve as to the original reasoning for the behavior Byron pointed out - I suspect it was along the lines of "they're digging at a TN vein that can have multiple components", without having thought through the subtleties.

John

PS - This is beginning to feel like it should be split into a separate thread....

[iceball3]

Just gonna drop a link to a Plasma Carronade discussion thread, which has some suggestions in it.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8383.msg87145#msg87145

[QuakeIV]

Given that maintenance is getting some love, any chance mothballing can be added in some capacity?  Some way to bring ships to a super-low maint requirement that requires them to go through overhaul (or something) before they can do anything.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Many people consider using PDC hangars to be the rough equivalent of mothballing.

I briefly experimented with a scheme involving replacing expensive components that were going to be refitted in the future anyway, with very cheap very large components to keep the tonnage equivalent.  This drives the maintenance cost way down, and the ship is useless until reactivated by refitting with modern equipment. 

[iceball3]

Idea for railguns:
Reduced Size Railgun Tech - reduces railgun size in exchange for reduced salvo size and power requirements. The railgun size reduction is slightly less than the tech reductions, so that full sized railguns are still more efficient in damage-per-HS. Railguns with a burst of 2 or less can be turret mounted.
I like to think of this like a backwards-spinal mount tech, and makes railguns occupy some more fancier niches without overextending over the presence of lasers.

[jem]

A "move to and kill" order. Or a default order to move to nearest enemy.

[Thineboot]

Commanders > Civilian Administrators > Search by Ability or Location > Rank: Civilian Administrator
There are Min/Max radiobuttons but Civilian Administrators have no textual ranks. Instead they have Ax ranks. It would be really handy to use these Ax ranks for Min due Population and Sectors are limited to minimum ranks (Ax).
I know there is Ability A: Administration Rating. But with Ability B not really working there is no chance to search for specific abilities for high ranking administrators (sectors, terra-like worlds).
Individual titles would be nice addition, too.

[iceball3]

Make shielding and CIWS make it harder to board ships they are mounted on.

For CIWS, make them take shots at boarding parties before they can land on the ship, the boarding party speeds ranked based on how fast their parent ships were moving.
For shielding, make boarding parties deal damage equal to their defensive stat to the shields (this stat is combined if multiple are being launched at once) directly to the shield. If this fails to bring the shield down to less than the Attack power of the boarding parties, make the parties essentially "fight" the shield multiple times simultaneously until either the shield breaks or the boarding parties are killed before entry. The "fight" treats the shield as having Attack, Defense, and Morale equal to it's power. If the party defeats the shield, then it moves on to the insides of the craft.

With these two points in mind, it may be more viable to buff the boarding chance of such craft at low speed, as they're not a simple kill-switch against slow craft that don't have onboard marine-headquarter brigades.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Suggestion: Passive Sensor Suppression (SM toggle)

This would disable passive sensors in a system.  It's mostly for processing combat more quickly in situations where both sides are engaged with actives but sensor checks are chugging increment processing times.

Alternatively, it could suppress the str1 passives possessed by default.

[iceball3]

Suggestion: Passive Sensor Suppression (SM toggle)

This would disable passive sensors in a system.  It's mostly for processing combat more quickly in situations where both sides are engaged with actives but sensor checks are chugging increment processing times.

Alternatively, it could suppress the str1 passives possessed by default.

To be honest though, we could very well do without the str1 passive sensors by default, seeing as one could make a size 0.1 or 0.2 sensor, and it would be considered commercial, too.

[firsal]

In the Survey view of the Galactic Map Window, it would be nice to have a breakdown of the system bodies surveyed.  For example; rather than just a mere "System Bodies: 72/145", it'd show a breakdown of planets, moons, asteroids and comets.  This would help a lot in survey efforts since it's hard to tell if a planet-only or comet-only geological survey of a system is complete.