C# Suggestions

[Desdinova]

Suggestion: Industrial command and control modules. Like a mining control center that allows a junior officer to apply their mining bonus, with a similar module for terraforming modules.

[linkxsc]

Tiny little thing.

1 of a couple patches ago (I don't really remember), there were a series of "command" modules added to the game, such as the Auxiliary Control, Combat Information Center, or the Science Department and etc. When these modules are added to a ship, they give the ship 3 letter tags in it's ship design readout.

Could you please add these tags (and a description of what they do to a ship) to the "Glossary" tab of the ship design window, to bring these tags in line with the other ship design tags (BP. TCS, AFT and etc).

[alex_brunius]

Id love to see an option to display either tonnage or % strength left vs template listed in the ground forces OOB tab list. So that you can quickly see which units are damaged, might be lacking supplies or have units added to them bringing them over nominal strength.

[Borealis4x]

Suggestion: Industrial command and control modules. Like a mining control center that allows a junior officer to apply their mining bonus, with a similar module for terraforming modules.

Would love this. The more officer slots we can add the better. I already put a Science module in terraforming platforms for RP purposes.

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: Industrial command and control modules. Like a mining control center that allows a junior officer to apply their mining bonus, with a similar module for terraforming modules.

Would love this. The more officer slots we can add the better. I already put a Science module in terraforming platforms for RP purposes.

How the Hell do you people have extra officers sitting around and I can't buy enough captains for my fleets with all the money in the empire??

[Desdinova]

Currently I have to manually promote people with good mining/terraforming bonus. I like to have senior officers command my mining/terraforming space stations so they have longer careers and accrue bigger industrial bonuses.

[serger]

Just noticed in Colonial AAR thread, that light green color of neutral contacts is quite close to slightly darker green color of orbits, therefore it's quite difficult to find those contacts in the orbital space of some multi-body system if you have not-so-good color vision or just a sun blinking at your monitor.
Maybe it will be nice to change light green neutral contact color to white or light grey or smth?

[Platys51]

Offloading fire control from fighters.
You can already gather sensor data with different ship then feed them to fire controls on board of fighters to calculate firing solutions.
Wouldnt it make more sense to do all the heavy lifting calculations on board of carriers and instead of sensor data, just feed them firing solutions directly?
It could be a module that would act as fire control for a certain number of ships docked to the mothership while said ships would only need a receiver on board.

This would take weight and cost away from fighters, making beam fighters perform better without needing any special rules for them.

[alex_brunius]

The difference in cost between adding a new slipway to a fresh shipyard ( doubling capacity ) and building a new shipyard from scratch feels like it doesn't make much sense.

I understand it's a limitation with tooling of all slipways being to the same ship, but it feels like this limitation shouldn't reduce the cost to less than 10% compared to building a fresh new shipyard.

[kingflute]

The difference in cost between adding a new slipway to a fresh shipyard ( doubling capacity ) and building a new shipyard from scratch feels like it doesn't make much sense.

I understand it's a limitation with tooling of all slipways being to the same ship, but it feels like this limitation shouldn't reduce the cost to less than 10% compared to building a fresh new shipyard.

Dont forget that a shipyard isnt just the slipways. It includes the storage, logistics, manufacturing/assembly facilities and the trained workers. Expanding an existing shipyard requires less work as fewer new facilities need to be built, and the workforce can be distributed to reduce the training required to staff the facilities

[alex_brunius]

Dont forget that a shipyard isnt just the slipways. It includes the storage, logistics, manufacturing/assembly facilities and the trained workers. Expanding an existing shipyard requires less work as fewer new facilities need to be built, and the workforce can be distributed to reduce the training required to staff the facilities

I'm not asking for them to be equal in cost, just questioning if it's balanced right when about +5-10% of the investment can buy you +100% more output.

[nuclearslurpee]

The balance is not in the relative costs, it is in the fact that a shipyard is built with planetary construction factories, but expanded only by its own innate construction capability which is much slower even if much cheaper. This is a good balance as it encourages shipyard expansion due to being cheaper, otherwise if the costs were equal building new yards would be nearly always the optimal decision as it is usually better to have more shipyards than to have more slipways on fewer yards. As it currently stands, the decision between new shipyards and shipyard expansion is very meaningful, since you must build new yards in order to build the many different kinds of ships your space empire needs and interbuilding between similar classes will only get you so far.

[alex_brunius]

The balance is not in the relative costs, it is in the fact that a shipyard is built with planetary construction factories, but expanded only by its own innate construction capability which is much slower even if much cheaper.

That depends on the situation, you play in a conventional start where you have only 500 BP/year available, then a shipyard is not faster at all, it takes almost 5 years to complete, while adding a slipway can be done in exactly 1 year.

...otherwise if the costs were equal...

Did you read the post your responding to?

[nuclearslurpee]

The balance is not in the relative costs, it is in the fact that a shipyard is built with planetary construction factories, but expanded only by its own innate construction capability which is much slower even if much cheaper.

That depends on the situation, you play in a conventional start where you have only 500 BP/year available, then a shipyard is not faster at all, it takes almost 5 years to complete, while adding a slipway can be done in exactly 1 year.

A conventional start is balanced around converting your starting CI into TN industry before you spend a lot of resources expanding your shipyards, using your initial yards to start your expansion (which is enough to launch a survey ship from the naval yard plus colony/cargo ships from the commercial yard). TN construction factories are 10x as efficient as CI so you can get a shipyard into orbit in a year or two if you want to once you've done the conversions.

That being said, I did make an error. Shipyards are not especially slower than planetary factories; they do produce much less "BP" than planetary industry but this is balanced out by the lower cost of expanding the yard compared to building a fresh one planetside. Here I misspoke as I meant to address the difference in BP production which is not the most useful measurement anyways.

That aside, the substance of my point is the same, they are two different kinds of costs paid by two different kinds of build mechanics. Expanding shipyards is cheaper and preferable in a vacuum. Building new yards is necessary to build more ship classes in a useful amount of time, but is and should be more expensive so that it is not greatly preferable to adding new slipways to existing yards. I think in terms of the gameplay it is very reasonable, in practice I tend to find that working my shipyards at full expansion capacity makes the expense comparable to planetary industry and actual shipbuilding so I would not want to upset that balance very much in either direction.

...otherwise if the costs were equal...

Did you read the post your responding to?

No, I just happened to type a post that coincidentally was on the same topic in a freak accident of probability. 

[alex_brunius]

A conventional start is balanced around converting your starting CI into TN industry before you spend a lot of resources expanding your shipyards, using your initial yards to start your expansion (which is enough to launch a survey ship from the naval yard plus colony/cargo ships from the commercial yard).

I very rarely start my conventional games with any shipyards. Doesn't make any logical sense at all to be able to get a 10000 ton facility into space without TN tech IMHO.

And it doesn't make much sense either that the second slipway I get into space can cost 10 times as much if I want it to be able to build a different class of ships...

but is and should be more expensive so that it is not greatly preferable to adding new slipways to existing yards.

That they should be more expensive is not something I ever disagreed with. What I disagree with is if they need to be 10 times or more expensive to be balanced?