C# Suggestions

[Migi]

Speaking of commanders, within the commander search area, could you add a filter to only show unassigned commanders?

[ChubbyPitbull]

Finally discovered medals after how many years of playing and going a bit nutty. Loving the conditions for automatic award of medal conditions; would be nice if there could be a medals for #s of Worlds Terraformed, for those Terraforming ships or bases.

[nuclearslurpee]

In my current game I've run into an NPR only two systems from Sol, things have gone sour (they shot first!), and both parties now have large fleets camping both sides of a jump point, where my side happens to be Sol itself.

You would think that the NPR, knowing that it's at least a heavily-populated system of mine based on their response to my "Request Leave Urgently" (they didn't, but they said they would...R.I.P. their survey fleet) would reasonably presume that I'm camping my side of the jump point with a fairly sizable force, particularly given that they're doing the exact same thing on their side. However, they keep sending in small fleets which seem to consist of a civilian ship or two with some military escorts, which I have been shredding like clockwork with my triple laser turrets. Particularly, you'd think they'd have learned the first time they did that, or better yet before then when their survey fleet tried and failed to make a break for home.

As much as I enjoy turning Rindao scum into space dust as just punishment for being stupid (also, for shooting at me), maybe the AI would be better-served realizing that if it is literally camping a jump point, the other guy might be doing the same thing, and sending salvage ships through might be a bit premature if not an outright Bad Idea™.

[Froggiest1982]

this was in the changes discussion but as it turns out I am making a suggestion out of my answer.

Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.

I remember I did once played a game humans only+ spoiler races no NPRs and where I have disabled all mineral techs (capped at 10) and every mineral source found would have to be reduced to 0.1 access and increased to 100,000,000 tons.

The point of the test was not to have mineral difficulties, as after a while in Aurora it hardly is because the issue is mere a logistical one, but to face bottlenecks due to a scarcity of minerals directly in the stockpile.

I don't remember if it ended up because I got bored or because there were too many interruptions...it may have been both.

I think, while having the minerals to mine is a great thing, we should have also some sort of limitation in game to avoid piling up minerals to the point that find new better sources are almost useless. Beware, this is mid game problem as when you grow big then you need access to more minerals either because the one left behind have been depleted or it would take simply too long to transport.

I was thinking maybe we could get a sort of stockpile mechanic? I mean a physical one. So let's say that as we have capped pop related to planets, we could have the same on stock. For instance Luna would be able to "stock" 1,000,000 tons of minerals (you can expand through a dedicated structure) while Mars and Earth more as they are bigger. This would impact the asteroids which are small and making collection centers more of a thing. To reflect Aurora Mineral mechanics the cap should go per mineral and not on the total so the 1,000,000 will be divided by the amount of minerals available and not summed up. So if you have 2 minerals on Luna you will have 500,000+500,000 stock otherwise if you have 10 it will be 100,000 each.

As this could create issues with load and pick, considering we already have the wait until full order an unload until empty one could be added?

[Droll]

this was in the changes discussion but as it turns out I am making a suggestion out of my answer.

Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.

I remember I did once played a game humans only+ spoiler races no NPRs and where I have disabled all mineral techs (capped at 10) and every mineral source found would have to be reduced to 0.1 access and increased to 100,000,000 tons.

The point of the test was not to have mineral difficulties, as after a while in Aurora it hardly is because the issue is mere a logistical one, but to face bottlenecks due to a scarcity of minerals directly in the stockpile.

I don't remember if it ended up because I got bored or because there were too many interruptions...it may have been both.

I think, while having the minerals to mine is a great thing, we should have also some sort of limitation in game to avoid piling up minerals to the point that find new better sources are almost useless. Beware, this is mid game problem as when you grow big then you need access to more minerals either because the one left behind have been depleted or it would take simply too long to transport.

I was thinking maybe we could get a sort of stockpile mechanic? I mean a physical one. So let's say that as we have capped pop related to planets, we could have the same on stock. For instance Luna would be able to "stock" 1,000,000 tons of minerals (you can expand through a dedicated structure) while Mars and Earth more as they are bigger. This would impact the asteroids which are small and making collection centers more of a thing. To reflect Aurora Mineral mechanics the cap should go per mineral and not on the total so the 1,000,000 will be divided by the amount of minerals available and not summed up. So if you have 2 minerals on Luna you will have 500,000+500,000 stock otherwise if you have 10 it will be 100,000 each.

As this could create issues with load and pick, considering we already have the wait until full order an unload until empty one could be added?

I always tend to gravitate to something similar to this. The initial scarcity problem is a very compelling one to navigate but once it stops being a problem not only is it not hard to find new sources, it becomes tedious to do so.

[Borealis4x]

I've suggested this previously, but I'd really like it if Steve added a larger Formation Template Constructor. My smallest formation is a company, so to make Regiment I need to train 16 companies, and thats not including HQs or Logistics. It'd be really great if I could just create preset Regiment templates out of existing smaller templates.

I suppose this would have to change how Ground Unit Construction Complexes work, seeing as right now they only train one unit at a time regardless of size. I think they should work more like Construction Factories and generate a number of Ground Unit Construction Points a tick to contribute towards building ground units.

[spartacus]

this was in the changes discussion but as it turns out I am making a suggestion out of my answer.

Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.

I remember I did once played a game humans only+ spoiler races no NPRs and where I have disabled all mineral techs (capped at 10) and every mineral source found would have to be reduced to 0.1 access and increased to 100,000,000 tons.

The point of the test was not to have mineral difficulties, as after a while in Aurora it hardly is because the issue is mere a logistical one, but to face bottlenecks due to a scarcity of minerals directly in the stockpile.

I don't remember if it ended up because I got bored or because there were too many interruptions...it may have been both.

I think, while having the minerals to mine is a great thing, we should have also some sort of limitation in game to avoid piling up minerals to the point that find new better sources are almost useless. Beware, this is mid game problem as when you grow big then you need access to more minerals either because the one left behind have been depleted or it would take simply too long to transport.

I was thinking maybe we could get a sort of stockpile mechanic? I mean a physical one. So let's say that as we have capped pop related to planets, we could have the same on stock. For instance Luna would be able to "stock" 1,000,000 tons of minerals (you can expand through a dedicated structure) while Mars and Earth more as they are bigger. This would impact the asteroids which are small and making collection centers more of a thing. To reflect Aurora Mineral mechanics the cap should go per mineral and not on the total so the 1,000,000 will be divided by the amount of minerals available and not summed up. So if you have 2 minerals on Luna you will have 500,000+500,000 stock otherwise if you have 10 it will be 100,000 each.

As this could create issues with load and pick, considering we already have the wait until full order an unload until empty one could be added?

I like this idea, the only caveat I would add is a mechanism to discontinue the mining of a resource once the stockpile for it was full.  I have played games with stockpile restrictions before where the resource in the ground continues to diminish every turn due to mining even though there is no place to put what is being mined so it just teleports into an unreachable dimension.

[spartacus]

This is an idea that would probably take too much work for Steve and may not be well received, however I just wanted to throw it out there.  I have seen many posts about weapons systems that are only useful for roleplaying and similarly if you are really trying to win in the most efficient way you research these techs and build these ships etc.

What if there was a small but significant amount of RNG put into the various techs at the start of every game.  The idea being that in one gameplay the lasers might well be the way to go, however the next time with the same exact setup it may be plasma or mesons etc.  The player wouldn't know before actually doing the research how effective any one weapon system would be in that particular game requiring one to experiment and find a different path each game.

I think this would be great for roleplaying as well, those who like to assign different preferences to different groups in the multiplayer starts would no longer feel constricted by considerations like well this isn't right because now this group has the weakest weapon system because you wouldn't know beforehand who had what.

I know this would be very difficult as a range would need to be arrived at for each system so that the weapons were not useless on the bottom end and not superpowered on the top end.  This would have to be balanced enough however that the value of the systems would change in relation to each other depending on where they were assigned in the range when the game was generated.

Perhaps a check box could be added at game setup for those that preferred the current system as opposed to this proposal.

[RougeNPS]

Im not even sure if this is a good idea or not but a communications array/module or whatever you want to call it, that would increase the chance of successful communication between species.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Im not even sure if this is a good idea or not but a communications array/module or whatever you want to call it, that would increase the chance of successful communication between species.

Diplomatic module does this if you assign a CO with a communications bonus.

[nuclearslurpee]

This is an idea that would probably take too much work for Steve and may not be well received, however I just wanted to throw it out there.  I have seen many posts about weapons systems that are only useful for roleplaying and similarly if you are really trying to win in the most efficient way you research these techs and build these ships etc.

What if there was a small but significant amount of RNG put into the various techs at the start of every game.  The idea being that in one gameplay the lasers might well be the way to go, however the next time with the same exact setup it may be plasma or mesons etc.  The player wouldn't know before actually doing the research how effective any one weapon system would be in that particular game requiring one to experiment and find a different path each game.

I think this would be great for roleplaying as well, those who like to assign different preferences to different groups in the multiplayer starts would no longer feel constricted by considerations like well this isn't right because now this group has the weakest weapon system because you wouldn't know beforehand who had what.

I know this would be very difficult as a range would need to be arrived at for each system so that the weapons were not useless on the bottom end and not superpowered on the top end.  This would have to be balanced enough however that the value of the systems would change in relation to each other depending on where they were assigned in the range when the game was generated.

Perhaps a check box could be added at game setup for those that preferred the current system as opposed to this proposal.

Without giving the player some sort of indication, what you're suggesting basically amounts to a player getting randomly screwed by their research choices with no way of predicting that this will happen, no way of actually knowing if they're on the optimal path (if I start with lasers and they are 5% stronger than normal, there's no guarantee that I'm not missing a better weapons system at 15% stronger than normal), and the only way to elucidate the mechanic is to dump a massive amount of precious early-game RPs into weapons research, or else pick one and hope you got luckier than the NPRs.

Presently, while some weapons are pretty clearly optimal all of them except maybe plasma have a place in a well-developed doctrine, and even plasma is cheap enough RP-wise that you can slot it into most doctrines as a short-ranged "bomber" weapon if you want to. The thing is that not every weapon or more accurately combination of weapons is suitable as a standalone armament, as really only missiles, lasers, and railguns can be used as standalone fleet armaments as these have both point defense/AMM and anti-ship capabilities. In this sense, the "optimal" play is to pick one of those three weapons systems and use only that weapon to minimize RP investment which maximizes RP available for other things like engines, however going the "RP" route of using additional weapon types is not much worse than this "optimal" route and in fact for the RP invested can give overall stronger ships since other weapon types are more specialized - for example, a laser-based fleet can benefit from Gauss turrets for more effective point defense or HPM secondary weapons to deal with shielded opponents against which the armor penetration of lasers is otherwise mitigated.

Aurora is always going to have a fairly boring "optimal" path, as is the case for nearly any strategy game that revolves around maximizing the efficiency of limited resources...this is why metagaming exists in nearly every game since the dawn of gaming. However, Aurora generally does very well at ensuring that the "optimal" is not too far ahead of various other, more interesting strategies so that players can pursue fun alternatives without being heavily underpowered, and I think this is a better goal from a design perspective than trying to add opaque randomness into the game just to upset or eliminate the meta strategies.

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion, unrelated to the above post:

On the Galactic Map, it would be neat to have a faintly-visible grid behind the system balls to help with aligning systems neatly. For example having lines every x or y = +/- 140, 280, 420, ... as this is the increment the game uses by default for new systems. The current snap-to-grid button seems to snap systems to the nearest increment of 20 in x and y, which is a good amount but having a visible grid would be helpful for more complex arrangements, most prominently anything involving diagonal lines.

[Garfunkel]

this was in the changes discussion but as it turns out I am making a suggestion out of my answer.

Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.

I remember I did once played a game humans only+ spoiler races no NPRs and where I have disabled all mineral techs (capped at 10) and every mineral source found would have to be reduced to 0.1 access and increased to 100,000,000 tons.

The point of the test was not to have mineral difficulties, as after a while in Aurora it hardly is because the issue is mere a logistical one, but to face bottlenecks due to a scarcity of minerals directly in the stockpile.

I don't remember if it ended up because I got bored or because there were too many interruptions...it may have been both.

I think, while having the minerals to mine is a great thing, we should have also some sort of limitation in game to avoid piling up minerals to the point that find new better sources are almost useless. Beware, this is mid game problem as when you grow big then you need access to more minerals either because the one left behind have been depleted or it would take simply too long to transport.

I was thinking maybe we could get a sort of stockpile mechanic? I mean a physical one. So let's say that as we have capped pop related to planets, we could have the same on stock. For instance Luna would be able to "stock" 1,000,000 tons of minerals (you can expand through a dedicated structure) while Mars and Earth more as they are bigger. This would impact the asteroids which are small and making collection centers more of a thing. To reflect Aurora Mineral mechanics the cap should go per mineral and not on the total so the 1,000,000 will be divided by the amount of minerals available and not summed up. So if you have 2 minerals on Luna you will have 500,000+500,000 stock otherwise if you have 10 it will be 100,000 each.

As this could create issues with load and pick, considering we already have the wait until full order an unload until empty one could be added?

I like this idea, the only caveat I would add is a mechanism to discontinue the mining of a resource once the stockpile for it was full.  I have played games with stockpile restrictions before where the resource in the ground continues to diminish every turn due to mining even though there is no place to put what is being mined so it just teleports into an unreachable dimension.

If you want infinite minerals for a turtle game, you can just use SM to add 100 million tons of all 11 minerals on Earth and if you do happen to mine it all out, rinse ^ repeat. It's really not difficult.

The stockpile limitation idea is a bit bonkers. Population density at least makes sense and is based on human demographics vis-a-vis Earth. But that's because humans require space and food and water and air = minerals do not. You can literally stack them on top of each other endlessly until the mass reaches singularity or something. Million tons sounds like a lot but it really isn't - it's peanuts. In 2019, we mined 7921 million tons of coal alone on Earth and I don't remember seeing giant piles of coal anywhere. This means that either the limits are ludicrously small, like in some 4X games where a planet can inexplicably only hold a handful of buildings, or they are "realistically" sized which makes them completely pointless.

[spartacus]

This is an idea that would probably take too much work for Steve and may not be well received, however I just wanted to throw it out there.  I have seen many posts about weapons systems that are only useful for roleplaying and similarly if you are really trying to win in the most efficient way you research these techs and build these ships etc.

What if there was a small but significant amount of RNG put into the various techs at the start of every game.  The idea being that in one gameplay the lasers might well be the way to go, however the next time with the same exact setup it may be plasma or mesons etc.  The player wouldn't know before actually doing the research how effective any one weapon system would be in that particular game requiring one to experiment and find a different path each game.

I think this would be great for roleplaying as well, those who like to assign different preferences to different groups in the multiplayer starts would no longer feel constricted by considerations like well this isn't right because now this group has the weakest weapon system because you wouldn't know beforehand who had what.

I know this would be very difficult as a range would need to be arrived at for each system so that the weapons were not useless on the bottom end and not superpowered on the top end.  This would have to be balanced enough however that the value of the systems would change in relation to each other depending on where they were assigned in the range when the game was generated.

Perhaps a check box could be added at game setup for those that preferred the current system as opposed to this proposal.

Without giving the player some sort of indication, what you're suggesting basically amounts to a player getting randomly screwed by their research choices with no way of predicting that this will happen, no way of actually knowing if they're on the optimal path (if I start with lasers and they are 5% stronger than normal, there's no guarantee that I'm not missing a better weapons system at 15% stronger than normal), and the only way to elucidate the mechanic is to dump a massive amount of precious early-game RPs into weapons research, or else pick one and hope you got luckier than the NPRs.

Presently, while some weapons are pretty clearly optimal all of them except maybe plasma have a place in a well-developed doctrine, and even plasma is cheap enough RP-wise that you can slot it into most doctrines as a short-ranged "bomber" weapon if you want to. The thing is that not every weapon or more accurately combination of weapons is suitable as a standalone armament, as really only missiles, lasers, and railguns can be used as standalone fleet armaments as these have both point defense/AMM and anti-ship capabilities. In this sense, the "optimal" play is to pick one of those three weapons systems and use only that weapon to minimize RP investment which maximizes RP available for other things like engines, however going the "RP" route of using additional weapon types is not much worse than this "optimal" route and in fact for the RP invested can give overall stronger ships since other weapon types are more specialized - for example, a laser-based fleet can benefit from Gauss turrets for more effective point defense or HPM secondary weapons to deal with shielded opponents against which the armor penetration of lasers is otherwise mitigated.

Aurora is always going to have a fairly boring "optimal" path, as is the case for nearly any strategy game that revolves around maximizing the efficiency of limited resources...this is why metagaming exists in nearly every game since the dawn of gaming. However, Aurora generally does very well at ensuring that the "optimal" is not too far ahead of various other, more interesting strategies so that players can pursue fun alternatives without being heavily underpowered, and I think this is a better goal from a design perspective than trying to add opaque randomness into the game just to upset or eliminate the meta strategies.

I understand your concerns and that was why I suggested an option at setup to use this or not.  However I do believe what you characterize as a player getting randomly screwed is actually how things go IRL.  Today I just happened to be browsing through a list of failed aircraft, both civilian and military that were designed and built with high hopes and just didn't work out as planned.

Something that we are all probably familiar with today that speaks to this is all of the vaccines that are under development some of which are now out for use but some of which are failed and no longer being pursued.  I don't see this as the player being randomly screwed I just see this as more of a situation that exists where you don't know exactly what the return will be on the research path you choose and you will either live with pushing down a certain line of research even though there may be a better one or more broadly pushing several paths to get a feel for which might be the best way to go this particular time. 

If research and development was as cut and dried as we find it in games than every country would field basically the same tanks, planes and ships.  This is not the case because real research has a huge degree of uncertainty and results are often not what was anticipated when the project was begun.

[dag0net]

Yes, but a part of gaming is people trying to wrap themselves up in the illusion of a simple, orderly & predictable environment where they can exercise a level of control lacking elsewhere.