C# Suggestions

[Alsadius]

For the research screen, I'd like to see a couple more sorting options. In particular, sorting by research field and sorting by scientist skill would both be nice sometimes. Also, I want the option to see future techs, like VB6 had.

Prototypes are really awesome, but I have occasionally felt limited by the lack of them for some things. Can we get the option to create (FP) items for the non-researched components, like flag bridges, cargo shuttles, fuel tanks, and so on? Also, prototype ground units would be kind of nice.

The default organization of ship components in the build menu is a bit chaotic, IMO. I'd love to see some options to re-organize them. Something like the new fleet interface would be nice, with drag-and-drop and user-defined categories, but I know that's probably overkill. Even just having checkboxes for showing military and commercial components might be nice, though, so I can ignore all the weapons etc. on my freighters, and ignore all the cargo bays etc. on my battleships.

Crew-Served Anti-Personnel on infantry provide 6x the firepower at 2. 4x the cost and 2. 4x the size compared to Personal weapons making them the overall more efficient option.  I think it would be a better trade off if they cost 6-8x as much instead making it a trade off between taking the more resource efficient personal weapons or the more space efficient Crew-Served Anti-Personnel.  Nerfing the AP of CSAP to 1 less than personal weapons could also be another option for balancing.

It's not as obvious as you might think. A 12-ton machine gunner has no more HP than a 5-ton infantryman, so they lose 2.4x as much cost and 2.4x as much combat power when they're attacked. Equal-sized forces of PW infantry and CAP infantry are almost equally matched. 100 machine-gunners can kill 600 riflemen=3000 tons (ignoring hit chances, tech differences, etc.), and 240 riflemen can kill 240 machine-gunners=2880 tons. The machine gunners also use more supply in the process.

When re-training scientists to a new field their research bonus is reduced by 75%.  However this lets you generate scientists with bonuses which aren't a multiple of 5, could it be changed so that it rounds (or rounds down) to the nearest 5? Given scientists gain bonuses in steps of 5 it would stop them from being permanently 'the odd one out'.

Alternately, I'd like to see them go to a multiple of 5% the next time they upgrade. Just change the chances accordingly. For example, if a 15% scientist goes to a different field, they'll become a 4% scientist. The next upgrade should bring them to 5%, but because it's 1/5 the size, it should be 5x more likely. (This may be too much work, but if it's practical, it satisfies both my OCD and my desire to prevent obvious loopholes with the rules)

[Father Tim]

Alternately, I'd like to see them go to a multiple of 5% the next time they upgrade. Just change the chances accordingly. For example, if a 15% scientist goes to a different field, they'll become a 4% scientist. The next upgrade should bring them to 5%, but because it's 1/5 the size, it should be 5x more likely. (This may be too much work, but if it's practical, it satisfies both my OCD and my desire to prevent obvious loopholes with the rules)

I'd rather see all scientist bonuses go up 1% at a time -- and probably also more often as a result.

[JacenHan]

Would be nice if Governor death would cause auto turns to stop and would be easily differentiated from other officer deaths. After all these are rather important events from game play and RP perspective

Admin commands should auto-assign.

While I would also like admin commands to auto-assign, I think that a similar notification as suggested above for governors would be a good feature if people are against the idea of it in general.

[Alsadius]

I'd rather see all scientist bonuses go up 1% at a time -- and probably also more often as a result.

That seems like it'd be a bit spammy, tbh. If you do that, I'd really want the Event window to be clearer, with the "Commander Experience" entry replaced by "Scientist Experience" (or Army Commander/Navy Commander/Administrator, as appropriate).

The other way to avoid odd-man-out syndrome is to make the promotions random between(e.g.) 3-7%, instead of a flat 5%.

[Agoelia]

Unpopular opinion: I don't like comets.
Furthermore, I feel like they visually clutter some system, especially Sol.
We have options to hide everything, from gas giants to planets and moons to asteroids, but no option to hide comets, I wish there was one.
Secondly, there is a "min comets per system", but no "max comets per system", altough I think I'd be one of the only ones to use it.

More importantly, after some testing I found out that "all jump points already stabilised"  in game options doesn't work if enabled after game start.
I think it should be moved from "options that can be modified at any time" to "options that can be modified at game start"

[Randy]

Is there a way to provide custom ship names and/or ship class names?

There're already mechanisms for adding custom flags, racial portraits, and naval leader names; adding the ability to provide custom ship names and ship class names would create the potential for "Race packs" to customize starts. 

With a tweak to folder layout, you could allow coherent 'Races' to be created:

Code: [Select]

Races
  Race
    flag.png
    ship.png
    station.png
    portrait.png
    Medals
      medal###.png
    Names
      commanders.txt
      ships.txt


And add in medals.txt to define the medals, plus GU.txt to set up default ground forces organization... 

[Awazruk]

After playing for a bit now i realised we could use more standing and conditional orders both in the amount of commands they use and amount of them you can set.
RN with Geo and Grav survey equipment being military gear I (and i assume many others) just put both on the same ship.  Everything is fine with that but you start running into problems if your surveyors are carrier based.  Now you have to either pick one type of survey as primary standing order and return to carrier as second one and divide parasites into those 2 duties or set all of them to both survey types and have to order the return manually.

We also could use some other orders like 'Until Fuel full - refuel from (pick Fleet)' - used for tankers hauling fuel from sorium harvesting stations.
In general being able to pick exact destinations or fleets in standing/conditional orders would be great.

[Droll]

Unpopular opinion: I don't like comets.
Furthermore, I feel like they visually clutter some system, especially Sol.
We have options to hide everything, from gas giants to planets and moons to asteroids, but no option to hide comets, I wish there was one.
Secondly, there is a "min comets per system", but no "max comets per system", altough I think I'd be one of the only ones to use it.

More importantly, after some testing I found out that "all jump points already stabilised"  in game options doesn't work if enabled after game start.
I think it should be moved from "options that can be modified at any time" to "options that can be modified at game start"

For clarity, the VB6 the equivalent "all jump gates" option also didn't stabilize already discovered jump points but made it so that any newly discovered ones were "stabilised". Are newly discovered jump points not being stabilized with this option for you? I don't play with that option so I wouldn't know.

[joshuawood]

A standing Orderer for "Explore Unexplored Jump Point" which finds the nearest unexplored jump point and well. . .  explores it. . .  Would be amazing!

This along with overhauling that refills supplies would allow me to FULLY automate exploration hahaha, i can't see that going badly. . . can you?

[Droll]

I've been thinking about the whole ground unit replenishment thing and I think I have some ideas.

This has been suggested before but I want to parrot it since it will become relevant later. Ground unit construction can be made to behave exactly like how industrial construction with factories work. Each ground unit facility would add to an annual construction rate based on the tech that already exists and would go through a queue. If a player wants to build units in parallel they can use construction %modifier like with factories.

So the main issue that Steve has already said that he wants to implement is formation auto replenishment. I would suggest that the player can decide to specify a "target" template based on what has been designed that each formation tries to adhere to. So if the player wants to replenish/modify an existing formation all they'd need to do is press a button and the necessary GU construction would begin.
There are two main cases to consider that I can think of:
1 - The target template will have units that are not in the formation we are modifying
2 - The modified formation will have units that are no longer supposed to be in the formation as they are not in the target template

Suggested solution for 1:
So as said at the top if GU construction is handled like with factories then this can be solved by creating a temporary template comprising of the additional units that are needed and adding it as a construction order. This is more convenient with this new GU construction because we do not have to consider there not being available GU training facilities - we just add the new order to the queue.

Suggested solution for 2:
a - Similar to solution for 1 but instead we generate a new "surplus" formation with all the unnecessary units in it. This would facilitate not only auto-replenishment but also allow a player to modify an already built template. It would probably be easier to handle if this is done the moment the player presses the "set to template" button or something - that way the game doesn't have to track any construction orders.
b - This is much more involved. You could make it so that every planet has 2 "theaters" - "Active combatants" and "reserves". The active combatant is just what we have right now, all the formations organized according to the OOB. The reserve theater acts as one massive undeletable formation, regardless it is all the spare loose units on that planet just organized into a pile by unit class. In order to solve problem 2 you would simply move the "surplus" units in the formation that are no longer needed into the reserve formation.

Solution 2b is probably a bit unnecessarily complex for the problem as it opens a whole new can of worms but it has interesting possibilities, some balance considerations that pop into my head:
1 - How do reserves behave when there's combat?
2 - How do reserves interact with orbital bombardment?
3 - Can reserves reinforce active combat formations during combat to replace casualties?
4 - How do reserves interact with transports?
5 - Can I create templates without ground facilities by pushing reserves to the active front?
And most certainly issues that I cant think of

For 1 I would suggest that reserves do not perform attacks on their own. As for their target-ability by enemy ground forces the best I can think of is to either make the reserves a rear-echelon only formation or create a new reserve line that is even further behind the rear-echelon position. Maybe make it so that only long-range arty and Air-attacks can target them but I do not think it would be a good idea to make them only target-able if there are not active combatants.
For 2 I would recommend that Planetary and naval bombardment should impart casualties to reserves but their probability to be targeted should probably be weighted so that active troops are more likely to get bombed. Orbital bombardment support should maybe be restricted to active combatants or simply more biased to targeting active combatants relative to the other bombardment options.
1 and 2 could probably both be solved if you regard reserves as completely irrelevant for the combat itself. You can have it so that if a template has not seen any combat for X amount of time (X would be up to Steve but it could be a production increment for example) it is allowed to draw from reserves.

For 3 as mentioned earlier each formation can have assigned a target template that it tries to adhere to - during combat a unit might receive reinforcements from the reserve based on multiple factors:
- Amount of casualties as % of the target template: more heavily beaten formations likelier to get reinforced
- Amount of damage taken last combat round: A formation taking massive amounts of damage might be more or less likely to get reinforced
- Enemy breakthroughs: A formation that has been broken through is less likely to get reinforcements (could also make it so they don't get reinforcements)
- Total formation size (whatever is left alive so a lone surviving soldier isn't going to get a full reinforce) - this should also affect the total amount of reinforcements that a formation can receive
- Reserves total size: A reserve pool can mobilize a % of its total size to reinforce but not more - % could be affected by tech or maybe a new logistical unit class
- Position of formation: Do frontline formations get priority to reinforcements? Or do further back support positions get more reinforcements because it's easier for them to receive?
- Tot no. of casualties last combat round: Maybe only a % of casualties every combat round can be reinforced, maybe % influenced by tech or logistics
And more

Edit: I am a moron and forgot to write for after 3.
4 - Transports could have an additional "load units from reserve" that would allow them to load lets say X many of a unit that exists in the reserve. Unloading these troops should land them in the reserve position of their destination
5 - This would mostly need UI shenanigans to make sure it works smoothly but failing that using the features I discussed here you could just make a dummy template with 1 infantry unit and once built set his formations target template to whatever you want to add from reserves.


Any reserve reinforcements pushed to the front should start at no fortification and a formation should only receive reinforcements if it has an assigned target template to reinforce too or maybe give the player control like a "combat reinforcement" checkbox for the formation. Incoming reinforcement could also have a morale penalty based on the morale state of the formation they are headed to.
All reinforcements should either be handled at the beginning or end of each (or every X) combat round(s).

Apologies for the long one.

[Froggiest1982]

A standing Orderer for "Explore Unexplored Jump Point" which finds the nearest unexplored jump point and well. . .  explores it. . .  Would be amazing!

This along with overhauling that refills supplies would allow me to FULLY automate exploration hahaha, I can't see that going badly. . . can you?

I would agree with your only for one reason: Once we explore the jump point the nomenclature changes making it very hard to remember which one was closer etc:

Explanation:

If you have 3 unexplored jump points they will appear as follows:

Unexplored jump point #1
Unexplored jump point #2
Unexplored jump point #3

When you explore the jump point 2 for instance (because a ship is closer or just arrive before the one you have sent to point 1) the Unexplored jump point #3 changes to Unexplored jump point #2

Bottom line: having that feature will ensure the ship always moves to the closer one, however it might be intricate when you have multiple scouts moving together as there should be a line of code to avoid scouts to move into the same location.

[The_Seeker]

I'm not sure if I missed something, but I can't shift or ctrl click ships to move groups of them between fleets, I can only move them one at a time, that'd be a huge QoL improvement.

[Vivalas]

Discussion came up in Discord about two new conditionals that would be pretty handy and maybe easy to implement:

1. Refuel when at range to nearest refueling hub. (give or take 10% to be safe)

2. Resupply when MSP is at max repair cost.

Both of these would be more reasonable than guestimating percentages, at the cost of perhaps slightly more complex calculating.

[Desdinova]

It would be really nice to have a warning when you have a tanker class design without a refueling system.

[peli082]

Be able to recolor the background of a text just like the events tab to separate different sector command, Divisions, departments, etc.  for us who like to have complicated OOB would be nice.  Thanks for your hardwork!