Semi-Official 7.x Suggestion Thread

[bean]

Really? You're the expert on such things, so I guess that's something else I can chalk up to how amazing technology is these days. In that case adding turret tracking speed to intelligence reports seems very reasonable.

Pretty much.  They do clever things like identifying ships based on doppler resulting from their roll (inverse synthetic aperture radar, where you basically build a profile of the ship from slices, working out the height of each slice from the doppler) and identifying aircraft from blade count in their turbines (non-cooperative target recognition).  Suggesting that you could work out how fast a turret could turn is not beyond the realm of possibility.

[ChildServices]

I want SBMHAWKs

[83athom]

I want SBMHAWKs

That is a thing. Make a less than 1000 ton "ship" design with nothing but box launchers filled with missiles that are equipped with active sensors (and a fire control). Have a ship with hangars deploy the "pods" and jumps them (they can jump using another ship's jump drive), have them launch the missiles at a waypoint close to JP as they come in, and the missiles will seek out enemy ships in their range. A perfectly viable tactic and design already possible in game.

[ChildServices]

That's an interesting idea. I rushed max jump efficiency in my game so it should be doable right now with the tech that I have.

[83athom]

That's an interesting idea. I rushed max jump efficiency in my game so it should be doable right now with the tech that I have.

The 1000 ton pods don't need jump drives. Any ship with a large enough jump drive acts as a Jump Gate when parked on a jump point (up to the max jump size of course). And the squad size is only for squadron jumps, so you can jump as many pods through as you want with the standard jump.

[ChildServices]

My efficiency rating's at 25, so personally I'd rather make pods that don't require the launcher to be directly ontop of a hostile jump node.

[Ostia]

Since Steve is messing around with the Name Themes:

Can the Themes be separated from the DB? So we simply have 4 more sub-folders : Class Names, System Names and a Rank Names and People Names.

The first 3 are as usual: Filename.txt with one entry per line. The Filename is what shows up as the the Theme name.
The names are as following: FilenameM.txt, FilenameF.txt and FilenameS.txt. Male names, female names and surnames.

This would make Theme management far easier and unburden the db a bit. Only downside I am seeing is a light increase on start up time for file reading.

[bean]

Thinking about the turret ID thing more, I'm not sure it makes sense to have the turret have the same size as its MSP.  Classifying things requires having a resolution significantly greater than their size.  Detecting that something is there is often easier than working out exactly what it is.  A good rule of thumb is 3 to 4 pixels is necessary to do anything, so treating the turret as having a third to a quarter of its MSP is probably adequate.

[iceball3]

Thinking about the turret ID thing more, I'm not sure it makes sense to have the turret have the same size as its MSP.  Classifying things requires having a resolution significantly greater than their size.  Detecting that something is there is often easier than working out exactly what it is.  A good rule of thumb is 3 to 4 pixels is necessary to do anything, so treating the turret as having a third to a quarter of its MSP is probably adequate.

Missile Size Points? I'm having a hard time grasping what you're trying to communicate. Most ship components are measured in Hullspace, and overall ship size is often in that granularity, except for fighters.

[Soralin]

An indicator on the system survey data chart/screen that the body has had a ground survey performed.  Once you abandon the "colony" it becomes increasingly difficult to remember which bodies you surveyed with a geoteam.  This could be something that shows up in the lower window when you click on a body rather than an additionaly column.

Yes, this please.  For instance, in the F9 system display, where (blank)/S/M indicates survey+minerals status, add 'G' to flag ground survey completed (supersedes 'S') would be very helpful.

This would also be useful to add to the geological survey report screen, along with a way to filter results for surveyed/unsurveyed objects.

The geological survey report in general could use a couple of improved search options, like specifying minimum accessibility/amount for additional elements, or being able to search or sort by the total (sum) of accessibility of elements.

Also, given that mines will mine all elements, it would make more sense for the Total row on the mining screen to give the sum of accessibilities for the object, rather than the average.

[bean]

Missile Size Points? I'm having a hard time grasping what you're trying to communicate. Most ship components are measured in Hullspace, and overall ship size is often in that granularity, except for fighters.

I meant HS, not MSP.  I don't know why I typed MSP.  Oops.

[Paul M]

What would be useful is if the "formation editor" allowed for the distance 5,000 km as the minium interval.  So I can tell a ship be 5,000 @ 30° from the protected ship as opposed to the current minimum interval of 10,000 km.

I would also suggest changing "Final Defensive Fire" to be at 10,000 km for a ship shooting at inbound missiles targeting itself but at whatever the the range to the ship being hit by missiles this 5 second turn for the other ships in the formation.  So a ship 20,000 km away will engage the missile hitting its consort but at a hit probability calculated by the range to the consort (in this case 20,000 km).  Based on what I saw this may be the way that Final Defensive Fire is working but not having to pack all your ships into a sphere 10,000 km across with the primary target in the centre would make formations easier to use.

[iceball3]

What would be useful is if the "formation editor" allowed for the distance 5,000 km as the minium interval.  So I can tell a ship be 5,000 @ 30° from the protected ship as opposed to the current minimum interval of 10,000 km.

I would also suggest changing "Final Defensive Fire" to be at 10,000 km for a ship shooting at inbound missiles targeting itself but at whatever the the range to the ship being hit by missiles this 5 second turn for the other ships in the formation.  So a ship 20,000 km away will engage the missile hitting its consort but at a hit probability calculated by the range to the consort (in this case 20,000 km).  Based on what I saw this may be the way that Final Defensive Fire is working but not having to pack all your ships into a sphere 10,000 km across with the primary target in the centre would make formations easier to use.

Isn't that what Area Defense fire is for? It's less convenient than final fire, sure, but I guess that's the cost of positioning your ships that far from each other. Formations still have a use, at least, it's just harder to "final fire" for something so far away.

[Paul M]

Area Defense and Final Fire are two aspects of "point defense" but, I'm guessing due to programming issues, are split appart.

Area Defense requires the missile stop movement inside the range defined by the area defense value that 5 s turn.  It will not fire on a missile that passes through and impacts that turn.

Final Fire requires the missile impact that 5 s turn.  It will not fire on missiles that stop movement in range even when no impacts are occuring that turn.

This means in general you have to split your ships/mounts/weapons between the two setting depending on the situation.  This is ok to me because the alternative is to ask Steve to program an aegis missile defense system; I think the reasons to not ask for this don't need to be mentioned right?  I am also not sure "Final Fire" for supporting ships doesn't fire out either to the range you set and or the ships weapons max range as it stands now.  In which case nothing needs to be changed except making it easier to use the "formation editor" to bring ships into close proximity to provide mutual support by adding in settings for 5000 km and maybe some other values (eg 15 000, 25 000).  I can specify a follow range in 1K km intervals but the "formation editor" is limited to 10K steps.  And that is a bit too coarse.

Ships with a range of their point defense weapons of 30k km should be able to support other ships up to 30K km using "Final Fire."    As I say, I think that may be working.  What may "not be working" or "working as programmed" or "working as intended" is that mutual formation support may not happen.  So ships from 7th Squadron will support a ship in the 7th Squadron but won't support a ship from the 8th Squadron.  I will have a better idea what is happening as I review Jabberwocky during the write up this week but my first impression is that "final fire" support was only coming from ships in the same squadron.

[ChildServices]

In the ship combat screen we have a way of marking ships that are presently targeted by either empire or task group, can we have a checkbox for contacts that aren't presently targeted but do have a volley of missiles already on an intercept course with them?