C# Suggestions

[dsedrez]

No... Because if there was no resource cost attached to it you would be able to pay just 20 resources to convert them to full TN Construction Factories worth 120 resources.

Ah!
So in order to make it fair, you could make it, that conversion basically costs the same as a full construction factory.

My goal wasn't really fairness though, my goal was to find a way to make some asteroids and planetoids useful for more than just slow accumulation of population and (low gravity) infrastructure...

As for NPRs building them... they won't?

I enabled building CI's in my latest game, with a rule that every colony with more than 10m *must* have at least one per 1m pop (currently to a max of 2 per million), can't build in excess beyond pop growth, and can only convert into other things in case, say, you're under attack. And must be rebuilt asap once the threat is over - though I'm not there yet to see how that would work out.

But I put a cost of only 40 BP/wealth, considering I want them built everywhere without minerals. I first tried a cost of 200 but then they never managed to follow pop growth or were too much a detriment for normal development. Since CIs are way less than 50% as productive as TN facilities, this cost seems adequate as long as it's not abused, giving them a 2.5% growth rate for basic tech (if all they do is build new ones). It made things interesting with every little colony having something to do. But I'm playing with very low tech: if you play higher tech and want CIs to be interesting, maybe you should either increase their cost or reduce their factory value (default is 10% of a TN factory).

I even gave them a very small maintenance stat so they could help maintain a small scout or fighter parked over them. It makes sense that even a non-military colony could do that on a small scale, and it enriches the story to use them as pit-stops for my patrol ships. Though I'm always turning off MSP production (and fuel as well) since most places will never have use for these (or don't have the minerals) and I'd rather fire off the minerals somewhere else for better use. So they don't make proper fleet bases.

And no, I didn't observe NPRs trying to build them. Probably because they're not programmed to do so. Though I've only seen a single NPR so far, and the war was too brief and bloody to even consider converting CIs to anything else.

[Barkhorn]

Suggestion: Allow industry to help with fortification.  In VB6 (and maybe still in C#?) construction brigades can be used as factories.  Why not the inverse as well?

This would make sense from a removing-special-rules perspective, and from a historical perspective as well; many fortifications were built with civilian or forced labor.  The Atlantic Wall, for example, in WW2 was built by slave labor.

[Migi]

Suggestion: Allow industry to help with fortification.  In VB6 (and maybe still in C#?) construction brigades can be used as factories.  Why not the inverse as well?

This would make sense from a removing-special-rules perspective, and from a historical perspective as well; many fortifications were built with civilian or forced labor.  The Atlantic Wall, for example, in WW2 was built by slave labor.

In C# construction brigades can be used as factories, but I think they need to finish fortifying everything first.
I think the suggestion makes sense, but for balance reasons it should appear as an option in the construction menu rather than happening automatically.

[nakorkren]

Rather than have training occur when you put a fleet under a Training Admin Command, make training a Movement Order similar to how overhaul works. That way you could set a duration for the training, with other orders like refuel/resupply/wait to burn down deployment/actually overhaul since you've used up maintenance life, then set it on Cycle Orders and voila! you've solved the training micromanagement problem.

You could still of course put the fleet in a Training Command, which would be led by someone with high Crew Training, to get that bonus.

[nuclearslurpee]

Rather than have training occur when you put a fleet under a Training Admin Command, make training a Movement Order similar to how overhaul works. That way you could set a duration for the training, with other orders like refuel/resupply/wait to burn down deployment/actually overhaul since you've used up maintenance life, then set it on Cycle Orders and voila! you've solved the training micromanagement problem.

You could still of course put the fleet in a Training Command, which would be led by someone with high Crew Training, to get that bonus.

This is a great idea. Personally, I would rather get rid of the Training Command entirely and just use a Naval Command with a high-training officer. Fleet Training frankly happens rather fast currently so reducing the effect of the command bonus is not a big problem in my opinion, particularly since the effect of fleet training is so strong as to be almost game-breaking - in my campaigns now I usually avoid doing fleet training because of how it trivializes Reaction and order delay mechanics.

As a benefit to doing Training under a Naval Command, the Engineering skill can matter for limiting breakdowns and MSP consumption during training.

[Garfunkel]

Just a reminder that, if possible, ground formations should consume supply units even after combat so that their supply goes back to 100% as it's not obvious to new players that everything is fine if they have supply units available even though the percentage is at 0% plus this would make it easier to resume new invasions afterwards because the formations again carry their own internal supply.

[Zook]

I'm almost sure it's been suggested before, but anyway:

In the combat menu, allow dragging a missile onto a fire control and thereby assign it to all launchers under that control.
(Or is there a faster way already and I haven't gotten the memo?)

[Zook]

What about auto-ceasefire for ships landing on a carrier? I just launched a squadron that fired immediately after leaving the hangar bay, because you don't get an auto-5-second-interrupt if the ship has Open Fire orders but no more ammo, and I forgot to order cease fire.

edit: Actually I think it went like this: I unassigned half the box launchers on each fighter, fired the other half, then assigned them all back and fired the first half, then clicked Cease Fire and flew back to the carrier. They took on the few reloads available and detached from the carrier again. At that point the fighters should have had a Cease Fire order (or I would have had to return to the carrier in 5-second increments), but instead they fired immediately.

[trabber Shir]

I would like to echo something several pages back. A standing order to get your freighters to fulfill your contracts similar to what has been done on Quazar would be an incredibly valuable quality of life upgrade.

[nuclearslurpee]

I'm almost sure it's been suggested before, but anyway:

In the combat menu, allow dragging a missile onto a fire control and thereby assign it to all launchers under that control.
(Or is there a faster way already and I haven't gotten the memo?)

Doesn't this already work in exactly this way? I'm fairly certain I just did this last night...

What about auto-ceasefire for ships landing on a carrier? I just launched a squadron that fired immediately after leaving the hangar bay, because you don't get an auto-5-second-interrupt if the ship has Open Fire orders but no more ammo, and I forgot to order cease fire.

Pretty sure you can use Cease Fire Fleet in the combat tab to do this with one click, although this would be a nice QoL addition anyways.

[Droll]

I'm almost sure it's been suggested before, but anyway:

In the combat menu, allow dragging a missile onto a fire control and thereby assign it to all launchers under that control.
(Or is there a faster way already and I haven't gotten the memo?)

Doesn't this already work in exactly this way? I'm fairly certain I just did this last night...

I think it depends on the "assign all" checkbox, or is that only for target assignment?

[nuclearslurpee]

I think it depends on the "assign all" checkbox, or is that only for target assignment?

I think the latter, it definitely doesn't work for PD mode assignment, which gets annoying when I want to turn my AMM cruisers on/off to manage ammo...

We really need a checkbox for "Assign All of Type" - which works with PD assignment and missile loading while we're at it.

[nakorkren]

It would be great to have a "Send demand to surrender" command to have one fleet send to another, with the likelihood of the enemy surrendering being based on relative strength of the two fleets, any other fleets in the area which could intervene in a reasonable timeframe, damage of the ship being asked to surrender, and xenophobia + militancy.

I thought of this because I often use carriers carrying 1kton fast boarding shuttles with marines on them, which is really enjoyable from an RP perspective but a total micromanagement pain in the behind due to all the loading and unloading of individual units onto and back off of individual enemy ships. E.g. right now I'm in the process of capturing 45 commercial ships, with a giant fleet on my side and no enemy military ships in sight, but there's no way to demand the enemy surrender or be boarded/blown up, as would be totally logical/reasonable.

Alternately, an option to "Attempt boarding with all formations, and pick up the formations afterward if successful" would be just as helpful and probably less open to abuse.

[nuclearslurpee]

It would be great to have a "Send demand to surrender" command to have one fleet send to another, with the likelihood of the enemy surrendering being based on relative strength of the two fleets, any other fleets in the area which could intervene in a reasonable timeframe, damage of the ship being asked to surrender, and xenophobia + militancy.

Supported. In practice, what "works" presently is to fire a round of low-damage shots (10cm railgun or Gauss turret usually works), which may induce the enemy ships to surrender. However it is annoying to micromanage this extra step especially having to open fire and cease fire after the first round of shots since surrender happens on the following increment (as I've discovered only after blowing up surrendering ships more than once...). It would be nice to just broadcast a surrender demand to the remnants of the enemy fleet, and if they choose death I can just give it to them in one swift blow instead of playing the poke-with-railguns game to see who feels lucky today.

[Sebmono]

I think it depends on the "assign all" checkbox, or is that only for target assignment?

I think the latter, it definitely doesn't work for PD mode assignment, which gets annoying when I want to turn my AMM cruisers on/off to manage ammo...

We really need a checkbox for "Assign All of Type" - which works with PD assignment and missile loading while we're at it.

This reminds me of one thing I'd love to see which I keep forgetting to drop here - add fire control and missile assignment as a template to the ship design screen, similar to the ordnance template. In 99% of situations I will want all builds of a given class to have the same FC assignments and I invariably forget to do the assign all step at some point, especially with fighters, so just stating at the ship design level how I want FCs to be assigned would be an amazing QoL addition.