C# Suggestions

[UberWaffe]

Suggestion
Add repeats to ground survey sites.

Refers to mechanics from this post by Steve: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg107705#msg107705


Repeating ground survey sites
Add a new value to ground survey sites when generated, for number of times the ground survey can be repeated on that planet. (I'll call this Repeats)
Ground survey can repeat as long as the ground survey site's repeats is 1 or more.
Each time the ground survey is completed, the repeats is reduced by 1, and the survey points needed to complete are reset.
When repeats reaches 0 the ground survey potential is exhausted and is removed.


Changes to ground survey completion
The multipliers (Step 2 from Steve's post) based on potential should be reduced.
If a mineral deposit is generated by the ground survey and a deposit of that mineral already exists on the system body, the existing deposit is increased (not replaced) by the amount rolled, and the accessibility is increased by one tenth of the accessibility rolled.
(Sidenote: the current 'replace' approach rewards holding off on doing a ground survey until all deposits are exhausted.)
The "HalfOriginalAmount" and "OriginalAcc" should be increased by the same values.


Increasing difficulty of repeated ground surveys
Add a new number to system bodies, called "Ground surveys completed".
The number of survey points required to complete a ground survey increases by the number of ground surveys already completed on this planet.
The deeper you go, the slower it gets.
So a survey site with a high number of repeats will take a long time to fully survey.


System / Planet generation changes
When generating a ground survey site, roll for number of repeats it has based on diameter and density of planet. (Larger and more dense planets have a higher number of repeats).
On average repeats should be around 3 for a Earth sized / density planet.
3 repeats should give roughly the same total reward (in terms of amount) as a ground survey currently does.
You should end up with the same total bonus amount, but more spread between minerals.
Repeats distribution should be similar to potential distribution. I.e: 3 repeats << 60%, 2 or 4 repeats << 20%, 1 or 5 repeats << 10%, 6 repeats << 6%, 7 repeats << 3%, 8 repeats << 1%.


Add global modifiers for minerals and ground survey potential
Add a game settings global modifier to Mineral abundance. This is a global multiplier. Whenever system abundance is used in a calculation, multiply it by this as well. Default: 100%
Add a game settings global modifier to Ground survey abundance. This is a global multiplier to the frequency of ground survey sites, and the number of repeats per survey site. Default: 100%

[skoormit]

I would like a way to group fleets within the same admin command, without needing to create a new sub-command.

This is purely for logical grouping--no mechanical effect.
I simply want an additional level of expand/collapse nodes so I can manage the dozens of freighter fleets in my logistical admin command without sacrificing the optimization of my admin hierarchy (right now I have to create parallel commands at the lowest level, using inferior officers).

Maybe call it a fleet group?

[alex_brunius]

Auto Target MFC/BFC buttons in Ship Combat tab of Naval Organization should probably prioritize assigning military ships as targets to FCs over civilian ship ( assign all available FCs to military ships until only civilian ship are left )

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I would like a way to group fleets within the same admin command, without needing to create a new sub-command.

This is purely for logical grouping--no mechanical effect.
I simply want an additional level of expand/collapse nodes so I can manage the dozens of freighter fleets in my logistical admin command without sacrificing the optimization of my admin hierarchy (right now I have to create parallel commands at the lowest level, using inferior officers).

Maybe call it a fleet group?

Or just skip intermediate fleets that don't have any ships in them when working out command bonuses.

[skoormit]

I would like a way to group fleets within the same admin command, without needing to create a new sub-command.

This is purely for logical grouping--no mechanical effect.
I simply want an additional level of expand/collapse nodes so I can manage the dozens of freighter fleets in my logistical admin command without sacrificing the optimization of my admin hierarchy (right now I have to create parallel commands at the lowest level, using inferior officers).

Maybe call it a fleet group?

Or just skip intermediate fleets that don't have any ships in them when working out command bonuses.

Not sure I follow. When you say fleets do you mean admin commands?

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I would like a way to group fleets within the same admin command, without needing to create a new sub-command.

This is purely for logical grouping--no mechanical effect.
I simply want an additional level of expand/collapse nodes so I can manage the dozens of freighter fleets in my logistical admin command without sacrificing the optimization of my admin hierarchy (right now I have to create parallel commands at the lowest level, using inferior officers).

Maybe call it a fleet group?

Or just skip intermediate fleets that don't have any ships in them when working out command bonuses.

Not sure I follow. When you say fleets do you mean admin commands?

Sure.  If I'm not making sense then I should probably go to bed.  Cheers.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I really would need a "follow at" that don't just include the distance but also the vector.

This way I could tell a fleet to follow another fleet at a specific distance and direction. This would be an immense help when setting up patrols, escort or even when attacking an enemy if you want to do it from a specific direction. But mostly it is about setting up patrols, recon and escort missions.

Right now it is a bit fiddly to do so with way-points as it becomes allot of micromanagement to use picket scouts and so forth...

[Froggiest1982]

I really would need a "follow at" that don't just include the distance but also the vector.

This way I could tell a fleet to follow another fleet at a specific distance and direction. This would be an immense help when setting up patrols, escort or even when attacking an enemy if you want to do it from a specific direction. But mostly it is about setting up patrols, recon and escort missions.

Right now it is a bit fiddly to do so with way-points as it becomes allot of micromanagement to use picket scouts and so forth...

Regarding the following command, I've found something odd which wasn't happening in VB6. If you actually manage to reach the followed fleet the command gets erased and you will find yourself standing still. Very annoying. I remember in VB6 you would keep following the selected fleet forever.

I don't know if it's a bug or WAI though

Another problem right now is also that you can't set the speed of ships as that feature don't work so it is very difficult to get picket scouts to follow a fleet unless they have the same speed as the slowest ship in that fleet. This is a big problem right now which make picket scouts very difficult to use.

Currently, when I follow a fleet and I close in at the range I am happy with I just match the speed of the target and avoid this issue. Do you mean the set speed doesn't work? I haven't noticed that.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I really would need a "follow at" that don't just include the distance but also the vector.

This way I could tell a fleet to follow another fleet at a specific distance and direction. This would be an immense help when setting up patrols, escort or even when attacking an enemy if you want to do it from a specific direction. But mostly it is about setting up patrols, recon and escort missions.

Right now it is a bit fiddly to do so with way-points as it becomes allot of micromanagement to use picket scouts and so forth...

Another problem right now is also that you can't set the speed of ships as that feature don't work so it is very difficult to get picket scouts to follow a fleet unless they have the same speed as the slowest ship in that fleet. This is a big problem right now which make picket scouts very difficult to use.

To set the speed you have to uncheck 'use max speed'.

[Jorgen_CAB]

To set the speed you have to uncheck 'use max speed'.

I missed that little detail... very good to know.. that will make my life so much easier now...

[Lamandier]

Several new modules for ships:

- A mobile repair facility capable of repairing other ships, provided the repairing ship has raw materials and/or MSP on hand
- A mobile MSP production facility
- A mobile ordnance production facility

Apologies if this has already been suggested or discussed/turned down, but I have always wanted to duplicate the 'fleet auxiliaries' depicted in the Lost Fleet series, and those three capabilities are pretty key to the concept, not to mention that it would make fleet logistics much more forgiving.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Several new modules for ships:

- A mobile repair facility capable of repairing other ships, provided the repairing ship has raw materials and/or MSP on hand
- A mobile MSP production facility
- A mobile ordnance production facility

Apologies if this has already been suggested or discussed/turned down, but I have always wanted to duplicate the 'fleet auxiliaries' depicted in the Lost Fleet series, and those three capabilities are pretty key to the concept, not to mention that it would make fleet logistics much more forgiving.

There is a maintenance module that handles the 'mobile repair facility' function.  I haven't used them yet so I don't know if they make MSP or not.

[Second Foundationer]

Could the Intelligence window automatically include the full class summary for the class of an enemy ship that has surrendered?

I seem to remember that intelligence and own ship class summaries (including classes of surrendered survey ships/freighters after home world capture) were also strictly separate in VB6. But it doesn't make much sense after acquisition of an intact ship, does it? Now that the intelligence system and window have been improved in so many other ways, it would be convenient to have all information on enemy ship classes displayed centrally.

(Isolated ship surrender to avoid certain destruction=great feature! Especially when the player-aggressor is a semi-robotic monstrosity that sends 'biology is futile' no-reply messages as standard greeting...)

[Egifer]

Rewatching Starship Troopers got me some ideas for a new type of ground based hivemind invader NPR that consists of organic ground units.  Think Star Swarm but ground based like arachnids from Starship Troopers for example.

Main idea
What I have in mind is NPR that consists of special ground unit called Hive that will consume planet minerals and generate organic ground units over time.  The hive will also grow over time and consume more minerals, get more armor, fortification and spawn more and higher tier units depending on the current stage.

Hive stages
let's say Stage 1 Hive will consume 1000 minerals annually and produce several company size formations consisting of only warrior class units that can be dealt with by infantry.  While let's say Stage 5 hive will consume 25k minerals ,generate STO units and regiment size formations including Behemoth class units that will require heavy firepower to take down.  And also will be capable of creating Seed ships that upon arriving on another low colony cost planet in system with minerals will deploy into new hive and some basic defence formations.
Also if the planet have colonists, events will be created randomly over time.  I think of something like this: "Arachnid Hive on planet Mars attacked heavily populated region, killing 12 million colonists and destroying 15 financial centers, 120 infrastructure. . . " This will give the player a sense of time pressure unlike Rakhas or Precursors that just sits on the planet doing nothing.  Since if you leave the hive alone for a few decades not only it will deplete the minerals but also grow into later stage that is capable of spreading the hives on potentially populated planets and will become very hard to get rid of if you don't want the planet to become uninhabitable wasteland from all the orbital bombardment necessary to destroy fully developed hive.

Way of generation
-Upon discovering new system with comets and planets with colony cost < 2, there will be chance that the comet carry a dormant hive to simulate interstellar seed comet since I don't really like the idea of organic ships with jump engines.  Upon detection of the player ship near the comet the hive will enter stage 1 and will start it's growth cycle.  As Stage 1 hive, it will be considerably easier to deal with so the player will have to deal with it soon if he doesn't want to let it spread.  Mainly for some early game challenge.
-Chance of generating new comet containing dormant hive in already discovered systems In great distance from the center like 100b km from Sun. 
-Lower chance of higher stage dormant hive on low colony cost moons, planets for some mid to end game challenge.

Spreading of hives in system of origin
- Last stage of hive will generate heavily armored and fast seed ships let's say every 10 years (maybe making a new parameter in the new game creation menu to change the difficulty) that will choose random planet, move to it and deploy into hive. 
-The ship can also be a special mass driver packet that can be shot down upon detection but I am not sure how hard it would be to implement.

Spreading outside of system of origin
Allowing the hives to spread to other system would make for a proper NPR type but inability to create proper military ships would make it easy to contain in system by camping the gates or deploying mines on them.
Maybe combining Star Swarm and this new type of new NPR would be the way by allowing the last stage hives to generate Star Swarm motherships.

implementation
-I am not sure how hard it would be to implement hives as special type of ground units that generate new units, seed ships.  The hive unit could also be unique NPR only ground force construction complex renamed as Hive but those are easily destroyed.
-organic units can either be unique NPR only military units with defined parameters and unique component like claws, mandibles, plasma discharge that is not dependent on research since this type of NPR would depend more on quantity then quality.  This is mainly for RP reasons but could be left as a standard units.
-seed ships can be ordinary ships with lot of armor, speed and troop transport carrying the hive unit and some formations for defense.
-Could also work only though special events like "Arachnid Hive on Oumuamua successfully deployed new hive.  Estimated target is Mars with ETA of 48 days".  Destroying all the hives in system would halt these events for good.

Well that's my idea for new type of NPR.  I hope that this will give Steve at least some ideas for new content in later versions.

[UberWaffe]

New fleet order: Load all ground units of template X

tl;dr: Acts like "Load Ground Unit", but targets a template Id instead of a specific ground unit Id.

Under "Movement Orders" -> "System Locations" -> "Any system body" add a new order namely "Load all ground units of template X"
Condition: Fleet must have troop transport capacity.

As a secondary parameter, it lists all Ground Unit templates you have, and you select one.
The fleet will attempt to move to the location and load all ground units it finds that are of the selected template.
The fleet will attempt to load as many of these ground units (of the selected template), until there are none left of planet, or the fleet troop capacity has insufficient space remaining.

Insufficient space results in the fleet generating an interrupt message "Insufficient capacity to load ground unit of target {template} from {system body}". Where {template} is the target template name and  {system body} is the target location of the order.
If no ground unit of the picked template is found, fleet generates an interrupt message "Cannot find ground unit of {template} to load on {system body}".

It shouldn't worry about if the template is complete or not. As long as the ground unit is of that template.
(Orders for moving specific ground units already exist for cases like that.)

Reason: This would greatly help with setting up large bulk move troop orders, or repeating orders of moving multiple troop divisions.
Need to move 50 construction divisions to that new colony with only 1 small transport ship? Load by template and spam repeat.
Need to load your fleet of 100 assault transports with genetically engineered deus vult? Target your fortress world and do so in a single order.