C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Steve Walmsley]

Hey Steve, coming w/ another bug. I love the Fleet Organization screen, but it has a tendency to just disappear whole Task Forces. I've had 28 ships and 300 fighters all vanish from me trying to organize ships. I've found it to happen most often when working with carriers/nested ships. Most commonly when organizing fighters inside of a carrier into different groups while a carrier is in another group. Is it possible to get that fixed?

Fleet Organization is completely different now so any bugs should have vanished. It is all explained in the changes log.

[Lucifer, the Morning Star]

Hey Steve, coming w/ another bug. I love the Fleet Organization screen, but it has a tendency to just disappear whole Task Forces. I've had 28 ships and 300 fighters all vanish from me trying to organize ships. I've found it to happen most often when working with carriers/nested ships. Most commonly when organizing fighters inside of a carrier into different groups while a carrier is in another group. Is it possible to get that fixed?

Fleet Organization is completely different now so any bugs should have vanished. It is all explained in the changes log.

Have you tested it w/ fighters yet? I.e. if I have ships docked inside another ship, and I put the nested ships in a group that the mothership isn't in, and, say, detach the subfleet with the nested ships, what happens? In VB6 it tends to just delete everything.

[Whitecold]

Have you tested it w/ fighters yet? I.e. if I have ships docked inside another ship, and I put the nested ships in a group that the mothership isn't in, and, say, detach the subfleet with the nested ships, what happens? In VB6 it tends to just delete everything.

It is highly unlikely that the exact same bug would appear in a completely new and different piece of code.

[Lucifer, the Morning Star]

Have you tested it w/ fighters yet? I.e. if I have ships docked inside another ship, and I put the nested ships in a group that the mothership isn't in, and, say, detach the subfleet with the nested ships, what happens? In VB6 it tends to just delete everything.

It is highly unlikely that the exact same bug would appear in a completely new and different piece of code.

Not saying the same bug, just asking if he's tested that in case of a different bug. It seems like something that could break.

[MarcAFK]

Well, there are some 'bugs' which hopefully will make quite an impactful appearance, despite being new code. :p

[Jorgen_CAB]

One thing that I would like to have in C# which I hope would not be too difficult or time consuming for you to add would be the possibility to transfer captured or transferred rescued crew from one ship to another in space.

You might send out a small rescue shuttle to pick up some survivors from a ship and then you want to get back to the carrier and drop them of to go and get some other people to rescue. Or you want to transfer people from your carrier to a hospital ship you keep with you logistical tail or you meet up with a small rescue ship to transfer them there and go to the nearest populated planet.

In C# you also can have commercial hangars so a rescue ship can now keep their own rescue shuttles to go and pick up crew, but you would like to transfer the people to the hospital ship itself after you picked them up. You don't really want to put the ship itself in harms way. I could see a proper hospital ship using both cryo and luxury facilities to represent the medical facilities you might need for fleets on long journeys in space.

In VB6 it is sometimes a bit rigid (and a problem) that you can't move people around once you picked them up on a ship.

[King-Salomon]

Suggestion based on the new screenshots for your new test-game Steve:

on the "Class Design Screen" (and all screens like it) : new order of the check-boxes on the right side (collier, tanker, obsolete etc) to

sorted by function (Collier, Supply Ship, Tanker etc) - 1 row space - sorted by feature (consript, no armor etc) - 1 row space - sorted by display (Obsolute, Size in tonns etc)

that would make it a small QoL improvement as it would be easier to see if something is not checked which should be checked...

[Steve Walmsley]

Suggestion based on the new screenshots for your new test-game Steve:

on the "Class Design Screen" (and all screens like it) : new order of the check-boxes on the right side (collier, tanker, obsolete etc) to

sorted by function (Collier, Supply Ship, Tanker etc) - 1 row space - sorted by feature (consript, no armor etc) - 1 row space - sorted by display (Obsolute, Size in tonns etc)

that would make it a small QoL improvement as it would be easier to see if something is not checked which should be checked...

Yes, good idea. Changed as suggested.

[Jovus]

If possible, I'd like a way to remove ship hull classes. There was a natural bloat in VB Aurora from campaigns, both yours, Steve, and every individual player's, over time, and I found it to get slowly annoying if I would change ship classification scheme or abbreviation method from one campaign to the next to have it all cluttered up. Even worse, if I typoed the addition of a hull class, that mistake would haunt me in perpetuity - at least until I downloaded a fresh database.

I understand that at least part of the reason why we couldn't before was because NPRs need certain classes to function and you didn't want to deal with people deleting them and then complaining their games didn't work. That's completely understandable, and if it's still the case, could we at least get the ability to hide selected hull classification types from the player so they don't show up in the ship building menu?

Thanks.

[Father Tim]

If possible, I'd like a way to remove ship hull classes. There was a natural bloat in VB Aurora from campaigns, both yours, Steve, and every individual player's, over time, and I found it to get slowly annoying if I would change ship classification scheme or abbreviation method from one campaign to the next to have it all cluttered up. Even worse, if I typoed the addition of a hull class, that mistake would haunt me in perpetuity - at least until I downloaded a fresh database.

I understand that at least part of the reason why we couldn't before was because NPRs need certain classes to function and you didn't want to deal with people deleting them and then complaining their games didn't work. That's completely understandable, and if it's still the case, could we at least get the ability to hide selected hull classification types from the player so they don't show up in the ship building menu?

Thanks.

Oh, yes please.  Plus one!  etc.

[Zincat]

If possible, I'd like a way to remove ship hull classes. There was a natural bloat in VB Aurora from campaigns, both yours, Steve, and every individual player's, over time, and I found it to get slowly annoying if I would change ship classification scheme or abbreviation method from one campaign to the next to have it all cluttered up. Even worse, if I typoed the addition of a hull class, that mistake would haunt me in perpetuity - at least until I downloaded a fresh database.

I understand that at least part of the reason why we couldn't before was because NPRs need certain classes to function and you didn't want to deal with people deleting them and then complaining their games didn't work. That's completely understandable, and if it's still the case, could we at least get the ability to hide selected hull classification types from the player so they don't show up in the ship building menu?

Thanks.

Yes yes yes yes yes please XD

[Steve Walmsley]

Yes, the hull types have grown over time

When I get around to it, I'll add a specific window for managing them.

[DEEPenergy]

This is more a suggestion for a later release date, but could there be the option to put space stations and ships into orbit around a star or planet so they revolve around it?

[Father Tim]

This is more a suggestion for a later release date, but could there be the option to put space stations and ships into orbit around a star or planet so they revolve around it?

VB6 Aurora has this.  It unfortunately doesn't get used much as orbiting at even 1 km means no loading, unloading, refueling, etc. is allowed.  Ships still run up their maintenance clocks and crew deployment time.

Hopefully C# Aurora will implement all these functions for orbits at a reasonable distance (perhaps determined by the body's gravity) as well as for 'Move to' commands.

[zatomic]

An option to 'Create Home System' would be easy, as the NPRs already have that function. Yes, there are a number of fixed starting systems in VB6 for NPRs created at game start. That doesn't exist in C# - everything is created from scratch. It only take a second or two to generate and discard all the unsuitable systems until a suitable home system is generated. Every NPR starting system is unique.

A possibly simple addition to a 'Create Home System' function would be to allow the player to set some criteria and then generate and discard systems until one that meets the criteria is found. Possible simple criteria might be:

• Min/Max stars
• Min/Max planets
• Min/Max moons
• Min/Max asteroids
• Min/Max asteroid belts
• Min potential homeworlds (acceptable gravity and base temperature; atmospheric adjustments can be made by the player)
• Min/Max distance to furthest system body

This way, if wanting to do something like a multi-faction multi-planet start in a large complex system, you could easily generate systems with the desired number of homeworlds and some larger minimums to ensure a big complex system. An option to abort in case the criteria are too strict and it just keeps running without a match would be good, or even an auto-fail after some (large, I assume it will go pretty fast) number of tries.

More complex criteria would be like min. potential homeworlds around a single gas giant, min. stars w/ at least 1 homeworld orbiting (to create a binary system with a homeworld around each component), or optional tighter homeworld criteria (like for a particular species if you want multiple homeworlds for human factions, not just good enough to generate a species that matches the homeworld). I'm sure I and others could think of many criteria, but even a fairly basic set would be useful.