C# Suggestions

[nuclearslurpee]

While we are on the subject of Commanders, I would like to have some additional ground combat commander bonuses that reflect the terrain bonuses that are out there.  I was thinking about this the other night when I was playing - I always create a 'Federation Marine Corps' who have boarding and low-gravity fighting capabilities.  When I'm fighting wars, these are the guys I usually send after any Low-G colonies the enemy might have.  I have also recently created 'Raider Battalions' - Marines with High-G capability.  I think it would be great if we had a '<Capability> Modifer' so that certain commanders are adept Jungle, Desert, Low-G, or Mountain Fighters and that the auto-assignment code is biased to place those Commanders into formations with those capabilities.  It is a smaller thing but I think it would reward some specialization of formations by having dedicated commanders who are expert in their capabilities.

I also think something like this would be nice to have.

It's an interesting concept, but there are a couple of caveats for its inclusion into the game:

• Redundant mechanic. Simply put, we already have capability modifiers so this is really just doubling down on a bonus that already exists.
• Given the variety of terrain and other modifiers we have, there's a serious potential for the listing of commander traits to become quite long and unwieldy.
• There is potential for this to make the choice of assigning a commander basically pointless because for a high-G or extreme temps formation you will always want to assign a high-G or extreme temps commander, rather than choosing from several commanders with different traits depending on the mission the formation will have. The easy way to avoid this is to make the skill so rare that players don't really get to use it. The hard way to do this is a lot of tedious balance testing.

The combination of the first and last points I think make me worry that this mechanic would not really add anything to gameplay in terms of new and interesting decisions, rather just add a bit of RP fluff at the cost of potentially railroading some decisions. That's not a trade I would consider good to make for the design of the game.

[liveware]

Maybe it would be better to differentiate species and races as was done in VB6, so that one 'race' could contain several species each with a different environmental bonus.

But that seems to be in the 'not yet implemented pile'. Steve I hope you decide to bring this back!

[Droll]

While we are on the subject of Commanders, I would like to have some additional ground combat commander bonuses that reflect the terrain bonuses that are out there.  I was thinking about this the other night when I was playing - I always create a 'Federation Marine Corps' who have boarding and low-gravity fighting capabilities.  When I'm fighting wars, these are the guys I usually send after any Low-G colonies the enemy might have.  I have also recently created 'Raider Battalions' - Marines with High-G capability.  I think it would be great if we had a '<Capability> Modifer' so that certain commanders are adept Jungle, Desert, Low-G, or Mountain Fighters and that the auto-assignment code is biased to place those Commanders into formations with those capabilities.  It is a smaller thing but I think it would reward some specialization of formations by having dedicated commanders who are expert in their capabilities.

I also think something like this would be nice to have.

It's an interesting concept, but there are a couple of caveats for its inclusion into the game:

• Redundant mechanic. Simply put, we already have capability modifiers so this is really just doubling down on a bonus that already exists.
• Given the variety of terrain and other modifiers we have, there's a serious potential for the listing of commander traits to become quite long and unwieldy.
• There is potential for this to make the choice of assigning a commander basically pointless because for a high-G or extreme temps formation you will always want to assign a high-G or extreme temps commander, rather than choosing from several commanders with different traits depending on the mission the formation will have. The easy way to avoid this is to make the skill so rare that players don't really get to use it. The hard way to do this is a lot of tedious balance testing.

The combination of the first and last points I think make me worry that this mechanic would not really add anything to gameplay in terms of new and interesting decisions, rather just add a bit of RP fluff at the cost of potentially railroading some decisions. That's not a trade I would consider good to make for the design of the game.

I think terrain based commander skills should only be earned if the commander actually spends combat rounds fighting in that terrain. It would make sense that a commander who fights on the frontlines of a desert planet will overtime become better at commanding troops in the desert.

Alternatively instead of just having troop capability, it might be cool to have elements "acclimatize" to various planet types as they spend combat rounds on those terrains. This would create situations where you have certain formations that are desert fighters, amphibious specialists, mountaineers, rangers, or jungle fighters because they spent a lot of time fighting in those environments. It would be a cool way to marry story telling with gameplay.

[serger]

In addition to the previous - there is a problem with current terrain GF specialization: it's nearly useless mechanics, because there are too much terrain types, so very small chance that some good part of current terrain-specialized formations will find another planet with the same terrain to be conquered before this formation will become outdated, and so terrain-specialized formations are really nearly one-time things. Combined with their cost and the fact that cost modifiers are cumulative - it is inevitable that players have no desire to use these specs.

I see several good ways to resurrect terrain specs:

1. Reduce their cost. (I'd consider to add, say, forest-spec to some of my first line formations, if it's cost will be no more than 10%.)
2. Make it's cost reducable (down to zero) by the terrain of home planet and the terrain of decent garrisoning / combat experience.
3. Add unit update mecanics, so we'll have a way to remove specs, that are useless now, and add what we need with the next big battle.

[JacenHan]

Related to the above, perhaps ground units could get free/reduced-cost specializations matching the planet they were built on? It would be interesting to build special training facilities in harsh environments. I also like the idea of unit acclimatization through combat/garrison experience.

[anomaly63]

A button to copy the current fleet's orders to all fleets in the same system under the same naval admin would be useful.

[TMaekler]

A planetary fuel limit that prevents fuel transports to completely empty a planet from fuel. If any other ship refuels at that planet it can freely do so, but any fuel transport should not be able to empty the planet of fuel. If possible the same should apply to any space station that has a refueling hub. Only normal ships should be able to empty that spaceport.

A super nice bonus would be that the user gets a log warning message if a space station or planet is emptied to zero; and/or if a tanker or ship isn't completely refilled so you can check if that fleet is eventually run out of fuel in the future.

[nuclearslurpee]

A planetary fuel limit that prevents fuel transports to completely empty a planet from fuel. If any other ship refuels at that planet it can freely do so, but any fuel transport should not be able to empty the planet of fuel. If possible the same should apply to any space station that has a refueling hub. Only normal ships should be able to empty that spaceport.

A super nice bonus would be that the user gets a log warning message if a space station or planet is emptied to zero; and/or if a tanker or ship isn't completely refilled so you can check if that fleet is eventually run out of fuel in the future.

Piggyback/alternative: Allow a maximum fuel loading to be specified when a Refuel order is issued. I like to keep my tankers empty unless I'm absolutely swimming in fuel to make sure my planetary stocks can continually refuel my commercial fleets, so if I need to send a tanker off to support a fleet that only needs a third as much fuel as the tanker can carry I don't want to spend an extra month in port loading it up all the way, but other than calculating the loading time and firing a message from an idle ship there's no good way to accomplish this.

[TMaekler]

Piggyback/alternative: Allow a maximum fuel loading to be specified when a Refuel order is issued. I like to keep my tankers empty unless I'm absolutely swimming in fuel to make sure my planetary stocks can continually refuel my commercial fleets, so if I need to send a tanker off to support a fleet that only needs a third as much fuel as the tanker can carry I don't want to spend an extra month in port loading it up all the way, but other than calculating the loading time and firing a message from an idle ship there's no good way to accomplish this.

My issue is with the regular fleets coming by to refuel - directly after I filled a tanker for a mission. It then happens that in the regular fleet halve of the ships get filled and the rest swims along with tanks not refilled. They then can get stranded on their tour - which is annoying. I sure can manually equalize fuel - not nonetheless annoying.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Piggyback/alternative: Allow a maximum fuel loading to be specified when a Refuel order is issued. I like to keep my tankers empty unless I'm absolutely swimming in fuel to make sure my planetary stocks can continually refuel my commercial fleets, so if I need to send a tanker off to support a fleet that only needs a third as much fuel as the tanker can carry I don't want to spend an extra month in port loading it up all the way, but other than calculating the loading time and firing a message from an idle ship there's no good way to accomplish this.

My issue is with the regular fleets coming by to refuel - directly after I filled a tanker for a mission. It then happens that in the regular fleet halve of the ships get filled and the rest swims along with tanks not refilled. They then can get stranded on their tour - which is annoying. I sure can manually equalize fuel - not nonetheless annoying.

Agreed. Tankers really, really need an equalize fuel command.

[TMaekler]

Recently run into the fighter refit and got stopped by the program to do so due to the 20% size difference limit. I think the idea behind being able to refit fighters is the minimization of micro. Great idea. But the 20% limit is limiting it too much at that low tonnages. Maybe, Steve, you can think about changing it? Lifting it for anything below 500t or expanding it?

[papent]

maybe a 20% or 500t whicher is larger rule?

[Black]

I don't know, idea that I can refit 125t fighter to 500t design just because both are under 500t does not sit well with me.

[xenoscepter]

I don't know, idea that I can refit 125t fighter to 500t design just because both are under 500t does not sit well with me.

 - Yeah, I was thinking this too, refitting a 100 Ton / 125 Ton ship into a 500 Ton vessel is like turning a little Prius into a friggin' Mac Truck... Just build a new one at that point. There should be some way to transfer crew to a new design though. Although to be honest, using the SM Mode to just... up the crew rating would fix that, since you could handwave it as, "We put the veteran fighter pilots into new ships."

[papent]

Personally I don't see any problem with Shipyard refits as at that small size point the entire spacecraft is smaller than LRU's for some larger vessels. Why not allow it? 

[IRL example]

Off-Topic: show

It does happen on RL designs for heavy/small military aircraft and small boats. I once had the pleasure of crewing an EC-130H that was a former WC-130 and before that spent time as a HC-130 that started it's USAF life as a slick C-130E. all those variants and the added mods in between had significant weight differences between them and greater than 20% of previously modification weight. That isn't even considering some of the franken airframes that make up the KC-135 fleet or B-1 fleet.

The U-2 various Electronic packages makeup over 50~25% of dry weight depending on package and that's a field level swap.

same can be said of ocean workboats, as they often do get refitted drastically when acquired by a different owner or for a new project. 

- Yeah, I was thinking this too, refitting a 100 Ton / 125 Ton ship into a 500 Ton vessel is like turning a little Prius into a friggin' Mac Truck...

i would compare it to a camper conversion of a truck or van. or bulking up a cruiser bike for a long trip.