Steve, as usual you have done an over the top job with Aurora. The functionality is leagues ahead of SA. That also means that you?re the victim of your own success. Each new or improved piece gets me wondering what I want next.
So here are various suggestions in no particular order:
In the fighter screen (f7) Allow block assignments to squadrons as well as individual. (ie shift+drag to highlight a block, or cntl+click to highlight non-contiguous)
I have moved the existing list of fighters on to a tab control. There is also a second tab that allows you to move fighters in a block between squadrons or to/from unassigned. Its very similar to the right-hand side of the organization tab on the Fleet window.
In research tab of (f2) Add a sort that uses field for the high order.
You can now sort by any of the three columns on the Research tab by double-clicking. As with other sortable grids, double-clicking the same column twice will reverse the sort order.
In Class Design (f5) allow for selection of class name similar what you had in SA. Maybe a check box to toggle auto-assign.
Not sure what you mean here. There is a Name Type for classes in Aurora, just as with SA. Its on the information tab. Is that what you meant? As an aside, I have got SA and Aurora open at the same time while I look at this and its amazing how relatively primitive SA looks.
During race setup have the ability to restrict what tech trees are available.
Do you mean prevent a race from being able to research specific tech lines such as laser focal size or a whole research field such as Missiles/Kinetics
The ability to create star systems for a new player race that is not initially connected an exist race. This system should be able to generate at least 1 planet that meets parameters assigned to the new race so that the SM doesn?t have to cycle through random system generations or need to manually edit. The ability for the SM to manually edit a newly generated system should be available though.
This is very difficult to accomplish. The main problem is that a species gets its tolerances from the planet on which it is created, so you can't create a species and then try to find a planet to fit. The system generation code is so complex (it took me almost a year to write), with so many factors going into each planet, that creating custom systems is almost impossible. I could ask questions at each step in the same way as SA did but there are a huge number of steps involved and most of the time you wouldn't know what the result would be of choosing a particular star type, planetary distance, density, albedo, atmospheric content, etc because of the formulas involved.
As an example, when a planet is created, the code selects the basic type based on the orbital distance and the star type, then it generates radius and density and from that gets mass, gravity and escape velocity. The year is based on star mass and orbital distance. Tidal forces are calculated using the same information and from that, combined with the system age, the chance of tidelocking is calculated. Solar Infall is calculated based on star luminosity and orbital distance, which in turn affects the base temperature. Other stars within the system also have an impact on Solar Infall as well. Day length is based on tidal forces and system age. Tectonics are calculated based on tidal forces and day length. Magnetic field is based on density, mass and system age. Hydrosphere is based on the "zone" in which the planet is located plus radius, atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc.
The possible atmosphere gases are based on base temperature, plus volcanic gases based on tectonics. Nobles and halogens mays also be added. Amospheric pressure is based on mass, gravity and radius then individual gas proportions are calculated. Some gases are frozen on the surface (the (F) you might see next to the gas name). Albedo is based on pressure, zone and hydrosphere. The Greenhouse factor is also calculated based on the pressure and which gases are present. Surface temperature is then calculated based on base temperature, greenhouse effects, albedo and pressure. Then a check is made for runaway greenhouse effects based on pressure and temperature, which itself may result in changes to atmospheric gases, albedo, pressure, etc and will result in a new surface temperature
Then a recalculation takes place because certain gases might no longer be frozen, which will then in turn cause a further recalculation due to the effect of the released gas on pressure, albedo, surface temperature, hydrosphere, etc. Then a check is made for possible pressure loss of tidelocked worlds that don't have a runaway greehouse effect, which again causes recalculations in albedo, greenhuse factors, temperature, etc.. Once all that is completed, I then check to see if the resulting conditions might support life and check for the possibility of NPRs.
Of course, all that is only possible once the basic system layout is complete and working out valid orbital shells in multiple star systems, taking into account the gravitational effects of all the stars and other large bodies such as superjovians, is pretty complex in itself.
All of the above is done using the scientific formulas, not using made-up game tables such as in Starfire. So escape velocity is Escape Velocity = ((19600 * Gravity * Radius) ^ 0.5) / 11200, Gravity = Mass / ((Radius / 6380) ^ 2) and Year is ((OrbDistance ^ 3) / StarMass) ^ 0.5, etc. That is why knowing the effect of a particular planetary creation choice would be very difficult.
Which is all a very long way of saying, that coming up with a system with a planet to suit a particular set of tolerances would not be easy. On the plus side, it means that Aurora's star systems are fairly realistic and based on some reasonable scientific theory, although I have tweaked the numbers in places to increase the amount of habitable worlds and significantly increase the number of interesting stars. I am biaised but I think Aurora's system generation is the best of any sci-fi game
However, if as an SM you want to create a particular planetary environment then pick any terrestrial size world with reasonable gravity, create a colony and then open the Environmental tab of the pop window for that colony. Using the SM Set Atm button you can setup whatever atmosphere you want. By playing with the atmosphere you can radically alter the environmental conditions and should be able to create a suitable world on which to create a race. Don't forget that the race is based on the planet, so if you have a planet that is -40C, with 4 atm of pressure and only 0.05 atm of oxygen, the race you create will treat that planet as ideal and all other planets will be judged by that race based on how they compare to their homeworld
Steve