C# Suggestions

[Lightning]

I'd like to see the ages of the initial officer corps increased. Seems a bit off to have a 21 year old Rear Admiral. Possibly increase the age 2-3 years per promotion?

I'd also like to see a modifier to increase lifespan of officers. Just because we only have a 75-80 year life span doesn't mean that a TN race will too
I like the realistic promotions, but it isn't unusual to see them die or retire before earning many medals when it is used. I know you can manually prevent it on an individual basis, but I would prefer to just give them longer life spans.

Also, perhaps more triggers for medals like assignment to a given task, ie assigned 1st officer, assigned science officer, etc. Basically a ticket punching mechanism to give promotion points to officers that have been used & also increase the number of medals for the more experienced & higher ranking officers.

[Erik L]

I'd like to see the ages of the initial officer corps increased. Seems a bit off to have a 21 year old Rear Admiral. Possibly increase the age 2-3 years per promotion?

I'd also like to see a modifier to increase lifespan of officers. Just because we only have a 75-80 year life span doesn't mean that a TN race will too
I like the realistic promotions, but it isn't unusual to see them die or retire before earning many medals when it is used. I know you can manually prevent it on an individual basis, but I would prefer to just give them longer life spans.

Also, perhaps more triggers for medals like assignment to a given task, ie assigned 1st officer, assigned science officer, etc. Basically a ticket punching mechanism to give promotion points to officers that have been used & also increase the number of medals for the more experienced & higher ranking officers.

I wouldn't mind seeing rank "medals". As they rank up, they receive their new rank insignia.

[Kristover]

I second rank insignia.  Allow users to attach a rank image to each rank level, make it visible on the commander screen, and it changes every time they get promoted.

[papent]

Also on the topic of medals can all officers crewing the ship receive the medal when it's an automatic award for meeting a set criteria i.e. new system discovered or ships destroyed.

P.S. Can the Ship also receive medals either automatic awards or manual? would love to see a storied and long lived ship with a big rack of ribbons and citations.

[Garfunkel]

Rework shields for balance vs armor and better roleplay

Currently: Shield strength scales with the generator size in HS as Size^(3/2). This causes the efficiency of shields per HS relative to armor to increase a lot from one tech level to another, with Epsilon Shields (16k RP) being 40% as efficient as Laminate Composite Armour (20k RP), Theta Shields having 48% relative efficiency, and continuing to increase to a maximum of 75% relative efficiency at high tech levels. In practice, a ship with reasonably thick armor will begin taking internal damage once armor is degraded by about 50%, so a shield which is relatively ~50% as effective as armor is in practice superior against any weapon except mesons, and often is preferable even at lower tech levels against lasers or particle lances which penetrate armor effectively.

On the flip side, small shield generators in the few-HS range are very inefficient to the point of being basically useless. This means that putting shield generators on fighters, FACs, or other smaller ships is usually not practical, despite being a very common fixture in sci-fi settings. While the previous point by itself is okay, since it's fine for newer tech systems to change the combat balance, in my opinion the game mechanics should not limit roleplay in this way.


Suggested change: Rework shields so that regeneration rate scales as Size^(3/2) and generator strength scales linearly with size. This means there is still a tactical advantage to building larger shield generators rather than spamming a lot of small ones, but shield generators of any size will remain viable and shielded fighters or FACs will not be suicide booths like they are now. Shield scaling vs armor will be less extreme as well (i.e. closer to a flat line than a steep sloped curve).

Additionally, to keep shields competitive with armor, the shield strength tech line should be changed to omit the 1.5 and 2.5 values, adding 20 and 25-point values to the end of the tech line. The result would look like this:

    Alpha Shields: 1
    Beta Shields: 2
    Gamma Shields: 3
    Delta Shields: 4
    Epsilon Shields: 5
    Theta Shields: 6
    Xi Shields: 8
    Omicron Shields: 10
    Sigma Shields: 12
    Tau Shields: 15
    Psi Shields: 20
    Omega Shields: 25

For all but the last 3 tech levels the relative efficiency of shields is less than 50% that of armor, so there is an interesting design decision at most tech levels. By the end of the tech line, relative shield efficiency versus armor caps out at 56% which is probably superior to armor but close enough that the choice is not nearly as forced.

That looks quite interesting!

[Jorgen_CAB]

I probably would agree with the issue of how the shields works. Bigger generators probably should increase the rate of regenerations rather than the amount of strength the shield produce. The strength is very easy to compare with armour where regeneration is a mechanic that armour really can't compare in the same way. Small shields are very bad currently, they are not great in linear rates either but at least usable to some degree.

[QuakeIV]

Seems like shield capacitor vs shield generator should be separate tech.

[Jeltz]

Seems like shield capacitor vs shield generator should be separate tech.

Yes, agreed
-J-

[kingflute]

Also on the topic of medals can all officers crewing the ship receive the medal when it's an automatic award for meeting a set criteria i.e. new system discovered or ships destroyed.

P.S. Can the Ship also receive medals either automatic awards or manual? would love to see a storied and long lived ship with a big rack of ribbons and citations.

Or could we see the medals and awards being passed onto a sucessor ship with the same name?

[ArcWolf]

*snip* Small shields are very bad currently, they are not great in linear rates either but at least usable to some degree.

I agree, personally i do not use any shields until i reach Delta shields.

[GodEmperor]

Small suggestion - for starting options we have "Allow human NPR" . I propose additional setting "Only Human NPR's" for that classic hard sf feel.

[hostergaard]

Make player able to buy the output of civilian refinery ships like the civilian mines

I consider Civilian Fuel Harvesters pesky parasites as they seem to only lower the sorium of gas giants without any benefit to me. I wish I could tell them to offload all fuel to my colonies for a payment instead of it simply disappearing by being sold of to the civilian economy.

[hostergaard]

Make civilian transport ships able to ferry minerals for the player

Particularly, it would be nice to be able to have them mantain the reserve levels and ship minerals towards certain destinations. Maybe make the player able to set up shipping routes that the civ transports can elect to ship along?

[nuclearslurpee]

Make player able to buy the output of civilian refinery ships like the civilian mines

I thought we already could do this? Just order tankers to transfer fuel from the civilian harvesters and the wealth is transferred automatically?

[hostergaard]

Yeah, but that is different, when they get full they sell off all the fuel, if you don't have a fleet of tankers ready at all times, it causes the fuel to be lost. I would like for them to offload their fuel at my bases instead of selling