Personalization of Aurora

[Paladin (OP)]

Ideas Proposed:

1. ) Leaders Name Change-I'd like to name leaders specifically.  My name, friends names, ect.  Or using a pre-made list of friends (say from facebook).

2. ) Watch List-I have the events list on my top right, and after a few decades there are far too many updates to superfluous leaders.  I'd like to turn off all leader updates EXCEPT for leaders that I want to watch (such as my friends above.  I would think that a new event type be made to mirror the code of the Officer Update/Health/ect.  but make it Watched Officer Update/Health/ect.

3. ) Superior Leaders- Leaders start as exceptional and outstanding and such, but I'm not certain if they also have a higher rate of learning.  Say a naval officer starts as exceptional, but do they grow their skills at the same rate as a regular officer does, all things held constant? This I do not know, but I would like to be able to have my friend Brandon learn things slower (like real life) and have my friend Nick learn things faster (like in real life).  I would hope that this can be balanced by the AI.

4. ) AI leader names- I would like to know the AI's leader names.  Star Trek had recurring villains, as did Wing Commander and Star Wars (at a certain level, but all still remember Darth Maul).  I'd like to remember the name of the 'man' that led the fleet that destroyed mine, not just his ship classification.  Or even have my population dub a notorious villain a title, as the Kilrathi dubbed Christopher Blair the Heart of the Tiger.

5. ) An opposition party to my government- I think this should be strictly a player set-back (the AI already has enough to deal with, giving the player quite an advantage).  Should civilian ships be destroyed, the opposition party should be favored on that basis.  A won battle should provide favor to the current party.  I leave the rest of ideas regarding this in Steve's most capable hands, and humbly suggest he look at war times in America with respect to politics and time, including Vietnam, the Iraq War, and WWII for inspiration.

[Zook]

1 - you can rename them from the commanders window. At the lower left there's a button.

2 - you can hide events types (but you probably know that).

[xeryon]

My thoughts, take them as you will.

1. You can do this.  You can even create your own name files for the application to access.

2. Yes, I would love a means to fully disable certain updates.  The game as a means to hide lots of updates but the time stop trigger still happens on the ones that would halt time.  You can hide officer updates but when so and so gets a promotion it will still stop your turn increment.

3. From my experience I don't think exceptional leaders learn faster but they are promoted faster and they usually have a higher base level of skills to build from.  The higher base does allow them to ultimately be far more skilled then their compatriots.  Because they have higher base skills and gain rank faster they will be put into more assignments and thus raise skills faster as a matter of course.  (I hope your poor friend Brandon doesn't play Aurora!)

4. Realistically this would require full communication with your enemies.  It might be a nice bit of RP fluff to the game but unless you have had successful communication and negotiations before you started shooting at each other how exactly would you know the guys name?

5. You need to just keep notes and dice and play that facet out as RP.  

[Paladin (OP)]

Zook: I freely admit my ignorance of #1, thank you for correcting me.  YEs, I did know I could hide events, but I'd prefer selective events to watch only a small group of about 10 officers. 

Xeryon: 1-Again, my mistake. 
2-The turn increment isn't so much the problem, it's that I want to watch about 10 officers out of about 500 only.  Otherwise, I use Min Inc and set that to 15 1-Day Increments.
3-Haha, yes, he does not play! Actually, in personal correspondence with Steve, the rate of learning can not be changed, but the higher base rank does help with things.
4-This is true, and yes, it is certainly RP fluff.  But I'd also accept our people dubbing an unnamed foe the "Thrasher" after X kills.  Adds flavor to the game, but you are right; it is not necessary.
5-Agreed, for now.  But I humbly put it forth as a suggestion for far future releases.