C# Suggestions

[Stryker]

Steve, when a civilian mining colony plays out, there is an event to tell you and then the colony shuts down.

However, a player's own mining colonies are different.  Right now you have to go through each colony one by one periodically to make sure they are still up and running.

If when a player's mining colony plays out, the name of that colony on the mining tab of the economics screen could be highlighted in red, that would pop right out at the player and make identifying empty mining colonies much easier.

[Droll]

Minor suggestion that may have been made before.

Split the current "fleet fire at will" into "fleet BFC fire at will" and "fleet MFC fire at will". The names should make it obvious, but I find it annoying in beam-oriented fleets that have AMM escorts, as the escort AMMs will be also set to fire using the current command and I have to turn off every single MFC very often.

[serger]

If when a player's mining colony plays out, the name of that colony on the mining tab of the economics screen could be highlighted in red, that would pop right out at the player and make identifying empty mining colonies much easier.

It is also a thing, that both CMC and "governmental" mining colony could (and nearly every one would) run into inefficient mode, where remaining accessibility is too low to continue mining really.

For "governmental" colonies we have an option to remove it, but it's not an available option for CMC.

So, I think it will be very cool to have 2 new simple mechanics:

1) Yellow and/or orange color indicators for any mining colony (both commercial and governmental) running at low and/or very low accessibility levels.

and

2) An obligatory or optional (by button) closing of CMC and moving it's complexes to another, more abundant sites.

[Garfunkel]

A universal tick box for commanders that stops them from being relieved of their current post after promotion. I like to manually assign all my commanders and it's annoying having to put them back in their positions after a promotion.

[papent]

An option that will force commanders on to ships, regardless of skill mismatch. I would prefer for my Junior naval leaders to work as subpar XO's or command freighters than not have a job at all.

[nuclearslurpee]

An option that will force commanders on to ships, regardless of skill mismatch. I would prefer for my Junior naval leaders to work as subpar XO's or command freighters than not have a job at all.

This would require also a functionality to replace unqualified officers with new ones when new officers are generated or promoted, otherwise your 125 crew training LCDR may not be able to get an XO job because some nugget with no skills and 45 political rating is loafing on the job instead.

[papent]

This would require also a functionality to replace unqualified officers with new ones when new officers are generated or promoted, otherwise your 125 crew training LCDR may not be able to get an XO job because some nugget with no skills and 45 political rating is loafing on the job instead.

I'm legitimately okay with not replacing underqualified officers and surely anybody else that clicked that option because like myself they just want bodies in seats.

[ArcWolf]

This would require also a functionality to replace unqualified officers with new ones when new officers are generated or promoted, otherwise your 125 crew training LCDR may not be able to get an XO job because some nugget with no skills and 45 political rating is loafing on the job instead.

I'm legitimately okay with not replacing underqualified officers and surely anybody else that clicked that option because like myself they just want bodies in seats.

also, officers will gain experience where they are stationed, so a "nugget" with no tactical skill serving as a tactical officer after a year may very well have a 5-10% tac skill.

[Density]

This would require also a functionality to replace unqualified officers with new ones when new officers are generated or promoted, otherwise your 125 crew training LCDR may not be able to get an XO job because some nugget with no skills and 45 political rating is loafing on the job instead.

I'm legitimately okay with not replacing underqualified officers and surely anybody else that clicked that option because like myself they just want bodies in seats.

also, officers will gain experience where they are stationed, so a "nugget" with no tactical skill serving as a tactical officer after a year may very well have a 5-10% tac skill.

I have yet to see a serving Chief Engineer or Tactical Officer gain experience in their respective skills (nor have I seen a CO gain Engineering or Tactical). As far as I can tell, those skills are only trained by Naval Admins that use the skill in question, or by academy commandants and unassiged commanders getting random skill training.

Meanwhile, I have a naval officer who picked up Xenoarchaeology while waiting for an XO position, and the top officer of my ground forces learned Diplomacy and Intelligence during his stint running an academy.

[ArcWolf]

also, officers will gain experience where they are stationed, so a "nugget" with no tactical skill serving as a tactical officer after a year may very well have a 5-10% tac skill.

I have yet to see a serving Chief Engineer or Tactical Officer gain experience in their respective skills (nor have I seen a CO gain Engineering or Tactical). As far as I can tell, those skills are only trained by Naval Admins that use the skill in question, or by academy commandants and unassiged commanders getting random skill training.

Meanwhile, I have a naval officer who picked up Xenoarchaeology while waiting for an XO position, and the top officer of my ground forces learned Diplomacy and Intelligence during his stint running an academy.

I don't keep track of every officer skill increase, in fact i usually hide them from the event log because it clutters it up, but i've defiantly seen officers serving as COs of Minning/Terraforming stations gain skill in that field while on station. I assume that is true for all officer roles.

[Garfunkel]

The question is, do they need to have that skill or not.

It's true and easily verifiable that any officer in a command position will gain relevant skill if they already have it. Thus, captain with survey 5% will have survery 40% after they've commanded a survey vessel long enough. But can you put a captain with no survey skill in the same position and eventually they learn it? This I am unsure of.

[Borealis4x]

A universal tick box for commanders that stops them from being relieved of their current post after promotion. I like to manually assign all my commanders and it's annoying having to put them back in their positions after a promotion.

Or at least only promote commanders not current out in 'the field' so they don't teleport back to Earth while in the middle of exploring the far reaches of space.

[Droll]

A universal tick box for commanders that stops them from being relieved of their current post after promotion. I like to manually assign all my commanders and it's annoying having to put them back in their positions after a promotion.

Or at least only promote commanders not current out in 'the field' so they don't teleport back to Earth while in the middle of exploring the far reaches of space.

This is the worst when I intercept NPR commercial shipping and a bunch of them surrender and the production increment rolls over. Now I have to go to every surrendered commercial ship and teleport out all the officers that just teleported in because if I press "abandon ship" I then have to rescue these dumbass commanders.

I just want to have an "exclude class from auto-assignment" button for ships so I don't have to worry about this.

[Density]

also, officers will gain experience where they are stationed, so a "nugget" with no tactical skill serving as a tactical officer after a year may very well have a 5-10% tac skill.

I have yet to see a serving Chief Engineer or Tactical Officer gain experience in their respective skills (nor have I seen a CO gain Engineering or Tactical). As far as I can tell, those skills are only trained by Naval Admins that use the skill in question, or by academy commandants and unassiged commanders getting random skill training.

Meanwhile, I have a naval officer who picked up Xenoarchaeology while waiting for an XO position, and the top officer of my ground forces learned Diplomacy and Intelligence during his stint running an academy.

I don't keep track of every officer skill increase, in fact i usually hide them from the event log because it clutters it up, but i've defiantly seen officers serving as COs of Minning/Terraforming stations gain skill in that field while on station. I assume that is true for all officer roles.

It's a reasonable assumption (and it's reasonable to hide experience spam in the log). But I didn't say on-the-job training isn't a thing, I specifically called out Engineering and Tactical because I expected it to work in those two cases and I haven't seen it do so.

[Density]

The question is, do they need to have that skill or not.

It's true and easily verifiable that any officer in a command position will gain relevant skill if they already have it. Thus, captain with survey 5% will have survery 40% after they've commanded a survey vessel long enough. But can you put a captain with no survey skill in the same position and eventually they learn it? This I am unsure of.

I haven't tried it with survey, so I can't verify that specifically (and survey clearly works differently than other skills; +1 vs +5 or 10, and science officers don't seem to get trained in CO skills while other secondary posts do).
But in general, they don't need the skill to get it. This is probably most common with Reaction and Crew Training, where officers get posts from some other skill (logistics for freighters, etc) and eventually they'll get one or both of those skills from being a CO even when they didn't start with them.