C# Suggestions

[Kamilo]

It would be helpful if it were possible to limit the number of the population. Currently, it is possible for a planet that serves as a source of colonists to go down to 0 population. However, if it were possible to specify that a colonist limit of, say, 25 million "must" remain on the colony, then only so many colonists could be transported away until the 25 million was reached. The same applies to the destination of the colonists. It could be specified that, for example, 100 million colonists should be transported to a colony.

[Garfunkel]

It would be helpful if it were possible to limit the number of the population. Currently, it is possible for a planet that serves as a source of colonists to go down to 0 population. However, if it were possible to specify that a colonist limit of, say, 25 million "must" remain on the colony, then only so many colonists could be transported away until the 25 million was reached. The same applies to the destination of the colonists. It could be specified that, for example, 100 million colonists should be transported to a colony.

These would be good options to have. I once accidentally almost emptied Earth thanks to super active civilian shipping.

[Kiero]

In Ground Forces -> Unit Series tab. Ability to hide obsolete units.

[Droll]

In Ground Forces -> Unit Series tab. Ability to hide obsolete units.

I read this as absolute units instead for some reason and was somewhat confused for a moment.

[nuclearslurpee]

In Ground Forces -> Unit Series tab. Ability to hide obsolete units.

This would rather defeat the purpose of the unit series tab, since the whole idea is that you can use it to replace your obsolete units with newer ones more easily (though still not super easily). I can't think of any case where I would want to hide obsolete units on the series tab.

[papent]

In Ground Forces -> Unit Series tab. Ability to hide obsolete units.

This would rather defeat the purpose of the unit series tab, since the whole idea is that you can use it to replace your obsolete units with newer ones more easily (though still not super easily). I can't think of any case where I would want to hide obsolete units on the series tab.

You are on your tenth tank design and would like to hide the p previous 8 designs, just like in the ship designer.

[nuclearslurpee]

In Ground Forces -> Unit Series tab. Ability to hide obsolete units.

This would rather defeat the purpose of the unit series tab, since the whole idea is that you can use it to replace your obsolete units with newer ones more easily (though still not super easily). I can't think of any case where I would want to hide obsolete units on the series tab.

You are on your tenth tank design and would like to hide the p previous 8 designs, just like in the ship designer.

I reiterate - why?

In the series tab, all of the series are collapsed by default. Unlike the formations tab (which does hide obsolete units), you don't ever need to view or interact with the older versions of your units - just drag and drop the new ones into the corresponding series and move on with your day. The only reason to actually expand a specific unit series is to see what older units are/were in it - which, as I said, would be rather defeated if you hid all the obsolete units.

Unless people are somehow trying to use the unit series to organize their ground unit classes? Which is weird and not the intended use but okay I guess.

[nakorkren]

Rather than set demand and supply, set a target qty in a field next to each installation type on that colony, with a check box to turn that target on or off. If the target is on, and you have more than the target, it is treated as available supply. If you have less, it is treated as demand. If you turn the target off, you have no demand or supply for that type on that colony, regardless of the number filled into the target field.

In addition to requiring less clicks/time to set up supply and demand, it resolves any issues with accidental oversupply as sometimes happens now when multiple ships try to bring in supplies, or you are simultaneously using civ shipping and your own ships to bring installations to a colony.

[Vandermeer]

I would like if armor weight rounded better. Currently it seems to detail to at least 4 digits after the zero, while the smallest module the player can build is a minimum size reactor, which is 0.01 (=0.5t). This means that you basically always get weird total sizes for your ships, like 179.998, which you can't perfect. On larger designs it can be overlooked, because the small fraction of total mass usually isn't enough to impact the final speed, but once you create fighters, you will see you can never actually get to a round number.(the issue is generally more prominent the faster ship, but small size dominates in causing this)
Example here:

Adding up the sizes, you'd get to 7.99, which means another "Emergency Exhaust Vent" (=0.5t reactor) should make it exactly 8. However, the armor hides 0.0033 mass behind invisible digits, hence the mass in the upper right corner of 7.9933. If I were to add said reacter, it would overshoot to 401t and have less than 15kps speed, so I cannot actually get to exactly 15kps.
Sad, because the range is already perfectly 4b, and all other ships and missiles in that fleet fly perfect round numbers.

Of course this is only an OCD problem, but VB6 always let us indulge in such sparkle finish fantasies. Reducing the armor accuracy to 0.5t as a minimum grid would instantly absolve this while I think not really taking anything away from design efficiency. On the other hand, maybe personal components could be of down to 0.0001 size, although having 5kg components seems kind of ridiculous.(can I now not only add a kitchen, but also detail it down to the individual coffee machines?)

[xenoscepter]

~snip snip~
Reducing the armor accuracy to 0.5t as a minimum grid would instantly absolve this while I think not really taking anything away from design efficiency. On the other hand, maybe personal components could be of down to 0.0001 size, although having 5kg components seems kind of ridiculous.(can I now not only add a kitchen, but also detail it down to the individual coffee machines?)

 --- What if instead of this there was just a button on the Class Design or something that let you force the game to round up to the nearest ton? Anything smaller isn't modeled at the Shipyard level so even rounding to a half ton loses you that infinitesimal amount of production. Ergo, rounding up to the nearest full ton let's you have the sparkle finish AND not "waste" production.

[Vandermeer]

--- What if instead of this there was just a button on the Class Design or something that let you force the game to round up to the nearest ton? Anything smaller isn't modeled at the Shipyard level so even rounding to a half ton loses you that infinitesimal amount of production. Ergo, rounding up to the nearest full ton let's you have the sparkle finish AND not "waste" production.

Whatever solution lets me have my round speed numbers, I will take it.

[Density]

Rather than set demand and supply, set a target qty in a field next to each installation type on that colony, with a check box to turn that target on or off. If the target is on, and you have more than the target, it is treated as available supply. If you have less, it is treated as demand. If you turn the target off, you have no demand or supply for that type on that colony, regardless of the number filled into the target field.

In addition to requiring less clicks/time to set up supply and demand, it resolves any issues with accidental oversupply as sometimes happens now when multiple ships try to bring in supplies, or you are simultaneously using civ shipping and your own ships to bring installations to a colony.

From my point of view, this suggestion would make keeping track of what I expect the civs to move harder. Right now, I can set up supply and demand orders for equal amounts (and if it goes wrong, I know why). If this were implemented, any time the civs are moving things in a way I didn't expect, I'd have to go through all my colonies to see where the target numbers are wrong or if a target is on/off when it's supposed to be the other. I expect the way I would use this system would be to usually have everything off, and only turn specifics on at source and destination colonies in order to replicate the current system.

If the impetus of this suggestion is to fix the accidental oversupply problem, then I appreciate the effort to make the game better. However,
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg151550#msg151550

[Migi]

Wealth bug

I've been running a (relatively) longer campaign and found a ruin and began exploiting it. However I noticed that the wealth didn't seem to reflect the gains from the ruins. It also made me remember that the wealth recovered from scrapped ships and components were strange as well, and that my reported annual wealth gains didn't seem to be fully reflected on my wealth balance. I don't remember ever reading a bug report about it (though I might have missed it). So I started a new game in an unmodded DB to check for it. Mostly default settings (no NPR), added a ruin to Earth, SM-built a Xeno brigade and a number of Construction brigades.

In C# there was a change for the wealth balance to be limited to double annual wealth. It looks like the ruin is allowing you to go over the limit (which is 37836, according to your annual wealth of 18918), but then being corrected on the next tick.

Based on this exchange in the bugs thread, can you change wealth rewards from ruins?

I think it would be easiest to remove the wealth reward, and instead have a chance of getting some financial centres.

Alternatively, if wealth is 'full' when the reward is triggered, it runs a check to found or expand a CMC. This represents the wealth being fed back into the civilian economy triggering an expansion in civilian activity.

(I'm not personally enamoured of CMCs, but I thought this was a good way to provide a concrete reward and avoid doing weird things like releasing the wealth over a long period)

[alex_brunius]

In C# there was a change for the wealth balance to be limited to double annual wealth. It looks like the ruin is allowing you to go over the limit (which is 37836, according to your annual wealth of 18918), but then being corrected on the next tick.

Based on this exchange in the bugs thread, can you change wealth rewards from ruins?

I think it would be easiest to remove the wealth reward, and instead have a chance of getting some financial centres.

Alternatively, if wealth is 'full' when the reward is triggered, it runs a check to found or expand a CMC. This represents the wealth being fed back into the civilian economy triggering an expansion in civilian activity.

(I'm not personally enamoured of CMCs, but I thought this was a good way to provide a concrete reward and avoid doing weird things like releasing the wealth over a long period)

Or just remove the Wealth cap as Steve himself suggested after doing a few other changes down the line?

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg112448#msg112448

4) The planned wealth reserve cap can be removed.

[Migi]

Or just remove the Wealth cap as Steve himself suggested after doing a few other changes down the line?

That's certainly an option, although I'm not sure that this situation is a strong argument on its own to change the system.


(new topic)
I've been thinking a bit about ground combat due to the recent discussion in the 12 Colonies thread.

I think part of the issue comes from the naming system.
For the frontline, you have a binary option of attack and defence. Within this context, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect that defence means the unit is passive until it gets attacked, and does not seek out enemies to engage.
However, as repeatedly noted, units in frontline defence will seek out and attack the enemy, indeed you can wage a whole war in this position.
Therefore it might make sense to simply rename those positions. I'm pretty bad at thinking of names, but frontline defence could become "limited offensive", "cautious offence", "offensive - trench warfare" or something better that someone else comes up with.
Frontline offence could become "all-out offensive", "blitz", "manoeuvrer warfare" or something better.


I think the other part of the issue is that the current mechanics mix where a unit is positioned within the army with whether the unit has an offensive or defensive posture.
Frontline, support and rear echelon are positions within an overall army. However under the current system you can't stop a frontline unit from attacking, your only option is to move it into a support or rear position. The position system is therefore being used to control whether the unit should attack or not.
I can think of 2 ways to resolve this: first by splitting posture from positioning and having them as 2 separate properties, the second is to add more positions to account for different combinations.
The former would require at least a partial re-think of how systems like fortification interact with posture and positioning separately. I haven't done this, so I don't have a whole new system to propose, but it might inspire other people to do so.

As a more limited change using the second option, I think that adding a frontline position which doesn't attack at all, but does return fire if attacked, might address the main complaints. You could call it "total defence", or "static defence", or "frontline - return fire", or something better.