C# Suggestions

[pwhk]

So with RP changes large ship are even more practical now. But... able to build large ships quickly always irk me.
As one play with reduced research speed games, shipyards can often grow very large while waiting for research to finish. Same goes to facilities constructions too, later just find myself having too many construction factories to think of what to build.

Can we have an option to set the factor for shipyard build speed, shipyard modification speed and perhaps facility construction speed, like the one we have for research speed and terraforming speed?

[liveware]

I always assumed that the shipyard production rate was also affected by the construction speed multiplier, but I have never actually tested this.

[nuclearslurpee]

I always assumed that the shipyard production rate was also affected by the construction speed multiplier, but I have never actually tested this.

Even if so, this is I believe a race-specific modifier so it will set the player behind the NPRs which may not be quite what is desired.

[liveware]

I always assumed that the shipyard production rate was also affected by the construction speed multiplier, but I have never actually tested this.

Even if so, this is I believe a race-specific modifier so it will set the player behind the NPRs which may not be quite what is desired.

I'm pretty sure there is a global modifier and also a separate racial modifier.

[nuclearslurpee]

I always assumed that the shipyard production rate was also affected by the construction speed multiplier, but I have never actually tested this.

Even if so, this is I believe a race-specific modifier so it will set the player behind the NPRs which may not be quite what is desired.

I'm pretty sure there is a global modifier and also a separate racial modifier.

Nope. Global game settings only have Difficulty, Research, Terraforming, and Survey modifiers. You might be thinking of Construction Cycle Time which is not a difficulty modifier.

Racial settings include Population Density, Population Growth, Research Rate, and Factory Production - only the research rates overlap between both settings groups.

[QuakeIV]

I would also personally prefer if shipyard size and construction speed were separate characteristics.

I think the size of the ship vs how quickly you want to be able to build it should be a strategy choice (for instance I could then plan how quickly ships are built so that shipyards don't spend as significant of a time idle).

e: One way to maintain gameplay balance would be to start shipyards as they are now with 1/2 of their BP dedicated to build capacity and 1/2 to slipway size.  So for instance, if you expanded your shipyard from 1000 ton capacity to 2000 ton, that operation would cost half of what it does now, but the BP/cycle would be half of what it is now (and ships would take twice as long to build as now) until you made a corresponding investment to build rate (at which point it would be equivalent to what we have now again).

[liveware]

I always assumed that the shipyard production rate was also affected by the construction speed multiplier, but I have never actually tested this.

Even if so, this is I believe a race-specific modifier so it will set the player behind the NPRs which may not be quite what is desired.

I'm pretty sure there is a global modifier and also a separate racial modifier.

Nope. Global game settings only have Difficulty, Research, Terraforming, and Survey modifiers. You might be thinking of Construction Cycle Time which is not a difficulty modifier.

Racial settings include Population Density, Population Growth, Research Rate, and Factory Production - only the research rates overlap between both settings groups.

You are quite right!

[Ektor]

I'd appreciate if shipyards were more flexible, now that we're talking about it. Many naval shipyards IRL build several types of ship of different sizes and classes. I always have short bursts of intense shipbuilding where I can't seem to have enough capacity, and then long periods where those tens of millions of shipyard workers are just sitting there doing nothing. I think shipyards should just have capacity and slipways, and you could build any ship that was under the capacity, with more efficiency the closest the class size is to shipyard capacity, so you'd need smaller shipyards for your smaller ships and larger ones for your big ships.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would suggest to change the way we can use sensors on missiles and the targeting of missiles on general.

Given that it is relatively easy to guesstimate the amount of missiles you need to fire to either disable, destroy or severally damage a ship then sensors on ships have a very small reason to exist on missiles outside mines. Having to use way-points to calculate where to fire in order for a passive to lock on to enemy ship is just tedious boring work.

Given how expensive and inefficient it is to use sensors on missiles we should be able to target and guide missiles versus passive or actively spotted enemies. When you loose the sensor lock on a target the missile should still travel to the last known coordinate. If you require the sensor lock (passive or active) then the fire-control should be able to direct the missile against the new position again.

If a missile don't have active guidance of a missile fire-control. It either is out of range or there are no passive or active sensor on the target the missile will use it's onboard sensor to target anything that it can see... if not it just travel to the last know coordinate if its intended target. Missile should not even need sensors to require a new target if their initial target is destroyed before it arrives... the fire-control could very well use the random mechanic to target a new ship as long as you have some sensor on the target (passive or active) and a fire-control is guiding the missile.
Sensor on the missile should probably also give some bonus on the to-hit function of missiles as well, that just seem fair. To be frank, missiles without sensors should have trouble hitting anything to be fair.

In my opinion this would make the stealth game of missile combat allot more interesting and using inefficient large long range missiles with sensors more meaningful. It would give us more options in terms of missile warfare. When we look at the economy of scale large missiles with sensors are just really bad, we should make them more viable. It also would be more fun if missiles just suddenly appear on the radars and we had no clue there even was an enemy out there.

Perhaps the AI will not be able to take full advantage of this, but there are so many other ways to abuse AI designs and mechanics in the game I don't think that matters much, I'm more interested in this when playing with multiple factions. Right now I can fire against a point in space and I also can make sure the opponent end up inside the envelop of the missile sensors to simulate this, but I really don't think that we should have to do that and it also make sense that missiles worked like this.

[SevenOfCarina]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but can we please have a "No Commander" checkbox in the class design tab? Commanders seem to get assigned to fighter CO posts before XO/TO/CE posts on larger vessels regardless of class priority, and I'd rather not use up 90% of my officer corps crewing swarms of expendable fighters.

[kilo]

@Jorgen

Missiles are completely OP right now, given that everyone is using reduced-size or even box launchers. Requiring sensors would have a terrible side effect when it comes to AMMs, as these would have to bring a .25 size active sensor on top of the .25 requirement for ECCM. Taken into account that the sensors need a power plant we end up with horribly ineffective AMMs, as more than half of their tonnage is electronics.
Don't get me wrong. It would be a fantastic change for ASMs to be able to fire at enemy ships without having to rely upon active sensors, but Steve would have to rework the electronic warfare or the detection side of combat to make it counterbalance it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

@Jorgen

Missiles are completely OP right now, given that everyone is using reduced-size or even box launchers. Requiring sensors would have a terrible side effect when it comes to AMMs, as these would have to bring a .25 size active sensor on top of the .25 requirement for ECCM. Taken into account that the sensors need a power plant we end up with horribly ineffective AMMs, as more than half of their tonnage is electronics.
Don't get me wrong. It would be a fantastic change for ASMs to be able to fire at enemy ships without having to rely upon active sensors, but Steve would have to rework the electronic warfare or the detection side of combat to make it counterbalance it.

That is NO problem because I already use both in my own multi-faction campaign with no issues... I do have some limitation on how box launchers can be fitted to ships and the amount of fire-controls as well. It just make larger missiles more viable and larger AMM is also needed most if the time. In my campaign I MUST fit at least .25 electronic on AMM if they are to engage something with better range than a size 1 resolution 1 sensor (against size 6 missile) can see them for example, any missile that engage something beyond a size 1 resolution 100 must have at least .50 electronics. This work just fine... (I have also increased the yield level one step to compensate a bit for less force in missiles otherwise). In addition to this I also flattened the missile agility technology to be within 80-130 as this technology have too much of an impact on the effectiveness on AMM. So early AMM is allot more viable.

As missiles get slightly larger there is no problem with larger AMM as well either. I also don't see a reason why the active on AMM could not be smaller than .25... I think it should be able to be smaller, there could be some new rules for how this would work.

If you cram in all the box launched missiles on your ships that is on you to abuse the game mechanic. I want this functionality so I can use sensors without micromanagement with way-point which is just a weirdly annoying way to use sensors in a way they should be able to be used.

I also would not say that missiles are OP... it is the box-launcher mechanic that is OP and it is on the player if they abuse it until Steve decide to change things. I have already outlined in other threads why using massed box launchers on big ships are unrealistic in the first place. 

I think the game would do well with a surface mechanic and that there is limited space there as well for certain components as well as shock damage would be way more likely to happen to these components, even that it require much less damage to the armour in order to damage these exposed components. If the normal shock chance is damage/HS in size these component would be more like damage*4/HS in size or something.

[Droll]

I also would not say that missiles are OP... it is the box-launcher mechanic that is OP and it is on the player if they abuse it until Steve decide to change things. I have already outlined in other threads why using massed box launchers on big ships are unrealistic in the first place. 

Even reduced size spam is very powerful thanks to how little fire rate matters on ASM launchers. On the other hand, AMM launchers can't take advantage of reduced size as much which gives somewhat of an advantage to missiles.

I do somewhat understand why missiles are tactically OP though as they are the only weapon type that creates a logistical and strategic burden on the user. But beam fleets have always felt weak compared to their missile counterparts as the missile ships can fire without fear of retaliation.

[SpaceMarine]

[quote author=Jorgen_CAB link=topic=10640.msg149258#msg149258 date=1613823736
I also would not say that missiles are OP... it is the box-launcher mechanic that is OP and it is on the player if they abuse it until Steve decide to change things. I have already outlined in other threads why using massed box launchers on big ships are unrealistic in the first place. 

Even reduced size spam is very powerful thanks to how little fire rate matters on ASM launchers. On the other hand, AMM launchers can't take advantage of reduced size as much which gives somewhat of an advantage to missiles.

I do somewhat understand why missiles are tactically OP though as they are the only weapon type that creates a logistical and strategic burden on the user. But beam fleets have always felt weak compared to their missile counterparts as the missile ships can fire without fear of retaliation.
[/quote]

On the last part this isnt completely true as for every weapon activation (thats not for PD) theres a 1% chance of a beam weapon breaking same with a missile launcher, while this wont break the bank it can in certain circumstances such as orbital bombardment where three days of bombing can burn through tens of thousands of MSP

[nuclearslurpee]

[quote author=Jorgen_CAB link=topic=10640.msg149258#msg149258 date=1613823736
I also would not say that missiles are OP... it is the box-launcher mechanic that is OP and it is on the player if they abuse it until Steve decide to change things. I have already outlined in other threads why using massed box launchers on big ships are unrealistic in the first place. 

Even reduced size spam is very powerful thanks to how little fire rate matters on ASM launchers. On the other hand, AMM launchers can't take advantage of reduced size as much which gives somewhat of an advantage to missiles.

I do somewhat understand why missiles are tactically OP though as they are the only weapon type that creates a logistical and strategic burden on the user. But beam fleets have always felt weak compared to their missile counterparts as the missile ships can fire without fear of retaliation.
[/quote]

For what it's worth, Steve has gone on record saying that he feels missiles are underpowered if anything right now...granted I'm not certain how much he accounts for the box launcher spam in that assessment, which I certainly agree is ridiculous if a player chooses to exploit it.

I've said before, a significant issue with missile vs. beam balance is that they do not scale with each other across all tech levels. Discounting ECM vs. ECCM, missiles have really only one way to improve their ability to avoid PD which is to increase speed. This can be done principally by improving the engine tech as well as the maximum boost tech, with side-effect gains from improved agility and warhead techs. However, the boost tech line ends fairly early with the 3.0x modifier tech capping out at I believe 15k RP. So for a race that invests into missiles, speed increases roughly quadratically* with tech up until around MP drive tech, and then only linearly* after that. Given that most players seem to start with ion drives this is quite early in the game.

*Disclaimer: "quadratic" and "linear" here are simplifications, since the actual tech levels do not themselves increase linearly, but for the sake of argument this should be clear enough.

On the other hand point defense tech improves at more or less the same kind of rate throughout the game. AMMs for example gain the same benefits of any other missiles, plus improved hit chances due to agility tech and so they will consistently improve relative to ASMs at every tech level. For beam PD the question is more complicated, at a basic level of course capability increase is linear* due to improvements in ship/BC/turret speeds, but generally there are ancillary boosts which give beam PD an increasing edge as tech level increases. All beam PD benefits from the missile tracking bonus which is tied to active sensor tech. Gauss PD also benefits hugely from increases in ROF tech which is probably the largest cause of missile effectiveness drop-off at late-game tech levels.

There's not really an easy solution to this - if one even considers it a problem, which it might not be as having a progressive shift of technology over time is more interesting than a static balance at every tech level. Most any solution would require changing the core mechanics, which Steve generally doesn't like to do it seems.