Average Mineral Accessibility, Amount and Likelihood during game setup, maybe even a toggle that all planets should have ~some~ minerals.
More options for setting up minerals on planets manually, basically a button to specify that the planet should have a large amount high accessibility low amount or the reverse of which mineral.
Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet
Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?
If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).
Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet
Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?
If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).
Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet
I know that, I wanted avoid the joining fleet order, because than you have to detach the tanker again.
Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet
Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?
If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).
I know that, I wanted avoid the joining fleet order, because than you have to detach the tanker again.
More auxiliary command stations, to provide more positions for officers, and allow officers to have more extensive career histories:
Much like how the existing command stations such as "Science Department", "Engineering" etc function, where the officer assigned gives their full bonus, and the ship captain a half bonus to a function.
Things like:
Terraforming Control, for coordinating the terraforming modules of the ship - officer position would be "Planetologist", uses the "Terraforming" bonus of the officer.
Xenolinguistics Department, for dealing with aliens - officer would be "Xenolinguist", uses the "Communications" bonus
Astrophysics Department, for jump stabilisation ships - officer would be "Astrophysicist", using the "Production" bonus
Information Warfare Centre, for ELINT ships - officer would be "Information Warfare Officer", using the "Intelligence" bonus
Astrogeology Department, for orbital mining ships - officer would be "Astrogeologist", using the "Mining" bonus
True enough, however it'd allow for more story opportunities. Having the ship commander separate from the ship's primary function, has potential for story set-ups, whereas the single-officer ship has less. Especially when you factor in the "political reliability" option for promotions.Quote from: Louella link=topic=13404. msg167314#msg167314 date=1703022631More auxiliary command stations, to. . . allow officers to have more extensive career histories:This has been discussed many times in the past. The main reason cited not to do this is that it doesn't create interesting decisions in most cases.
Suggestion:
Release 2.5.0 before Christmas, so we have the most stable version to play with for the rest of the year. ;D
Suggestion:
Release 2.5.0 before Christmas, so we have the most stable version to play with for the rest of the year. ;D
Unironically this because it's a crying shame that ATG on missiles is bugged and I want to play with the new toys.
Would it be possible to import/export admin command setup?
Would it be possible to copy/paste auto assignment settings between different admin commands?
Right now it takes a lot of time to set it up every time you start a new campaign or create new admin structures/fleets.
Creating 20+ different admin commands and then setting their automatic assignment preferences and priorities is a lot of clicking.
Would be great qol change to make it easier to set up.
BTW, isn't it time for a new Full Installation Version?
I mean... 1.13.0 to 2.5.0 seems to be an adequate jump, don't you think? ;-)
Suggestion:
Release 2.5.0 before Christmas, so we have the most stable version to play with for the rest of the year. ;D
Unironically this because it's a crying shame that ATG on missiles is bugged and I want to play with the new toys.
I will release v2.5.0 before Christmas. As this is a DB release, I am just giving it a couple more days to see if anything else turns up.
Suggestion:
Release 2.5.0 before Christmas, so we have the most stable version to play with for the rest of the year. ;D
Unironically this because it's a crying shame that ATG on missiles is bugged and I want to play with the new toys.
I will release v2.5.0 before Christmas. As this is a DB release, I am just giving it a couple more days to see if anything else turns up.
This actually works for me. I set up a new campaign, but have been struggling to get it off the ground. It took me longer than it should have to realize that this was because I wasn't really interested in the setup, and couldn't get into it. I had already decided to start over, and the new update works for me.
Thanks Steve!
Suggestion:
Release 2.5.0 before Christmas, so we have the most stable version to play with for the rest of the year. ;D
Unironically this because it's a crying shame that ATG on missiles is bugged and I want to play with the new toys.
I will release v2.5.0 before Christmas. As this is a DB release, I am just giving it a couple more days to see if anything else turns up.
This actually works for me. I set up a new campaign, but have been struggling to get it off the ground. It took me longer than it should have to realize that this was because I wasn't really interested in the setup, and couldn't get into it. I had already decided to start over, and the new update works for me.
Thanks Steve!
On those lines, it can be useful to complete setup and then save a copy of the database before incrementing time. If the campaign doesn't get off to a good start, you can go back to that database at any time, open up the System View and use Regen Min and Regen JP to effectively create a new Sol system, giving you a new start. The NPRs will be the same though.
Suggestion for a fighter-sized cargo hold, either 100-ton or 250-tons would be great. Now that fighters can land on all bodies again, they can perform all missions that actual ships can except for transporting facilities and minerals, meaning that it is impossible to run a fighter-only game. Having a fighter-sized cargo hold would rectify that.I'd also like to bring up an old suggestion to remove the size requirement for commercial engines. As it stand now with the new 50t cargo shuttle, the smallest commercial transport you can make is over 2000t; 500t cargo hold, 50t shuttle, 50t bridge, 50t engineering space, 1250t engine, and fuel/armor/sensors to flavor and tech limitations. You can make it smaller but it will require maintenance which would be pretty annoying for something that's meant to transport small amounts of minerals or infrastructure within a system.
Alternately, could we have a design feature in the missile design section called "ballast" that does nothing but add mass/size, and costs nothing, to make matching missile speeds easier?
Would it be possible to import/export admin command setup?
Would it be possible to copy/paste auto assignment settings between different admin commands?
Right now it takes a lot of time to set it up every time you start a new campaign or create new admin structures/fleets.
Creating 20+ different admin commands and then setting their automatic assignment preferences and priorities is a lot of clicking.
Would be great qol change to make it easier to set up.
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
Maybe it can be done semi-automated. I was thinking of the TikZ module in LaTeX to create mind maps. Start with a starting system like Sol in the center and create each system around it with the first directly north and every following one 360/x degrees further clockwise with x being the number of explored JPs. You do the same for the next set of JPs that originate from the daughter systems with the single difference that the parent system is the new starting point from which systems get placed.
The connections between later generations of stars have to be significantly shorter than those for earlier generations, but they have to be long compared to the star system symbols. This way you can ensure that there will never be an overlap between systems.
You can use zoom on the star map after all and you have no size limitations like you have on paper.
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
You could check out the code for one of the algorithms listed here: https://graphviz.org/docs/layouts/
Assuming you can't just use this library as-is, I totally understand not wanting to spend your time digging through their code and reimplementing it -- I'm sure you have more interesting things to work on. But at the very least improving the grid snapping algorithm (currently it often doesn't snap to the nearest grid point, it might be rounding down?) and letting people adjust parameters like the minimum grid spacing and default placement distance would I think go a long way towards making the inevitable map rearrangements less painful.
This is one of those situations in which humans are generally better than computers, especially as each player will have his own view on an acceptable layout.
I add fighters to numerous civilain fleets as I stick a commercial hanger on most commercial ships and then a pair of fighters so a convoy stands a chance of killing a raider
Reintroduction of Staff Officers for admin commands
Reintroduction of Staff Officers for admin commands
Was this ever a thing?
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
Maybe it can be done semi-automated. I was thinking of the TikZ module in LaTeX to create mind maps. Start with a starting system like Sol in the center and create each system around it with the first directly north and every following one 360/x degrees further clockwise with x being the number of explored JPs. You do the same for the next set of JPs that originate from the daughter systems with the single difference that the parent system is the new starting point from which systems get placed.
The connections between later generations of stars have to be significantly shorter than those for earlier generations, but they have to be long compared to the star system symbols. This way you can ensure that there will never be an overlap between systems.
You can use zoom on the star map after all and you have no size limitations like you have on paper.
The above solution might work for the first 3-4 connections, assuming no loops, but when you get to 10+ jump chains and hundreds of systems, you quickly run out of space. How do you handle situations where there are not enough surrounding 'locations' for the systems (mainly due to the presence of other nearby un-connected systems) and how do you handle loops, especially nested loops?
The star map doesn't zoom BTW
Loops are the biggest issue I can see and they should be prevented at all costs.
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
Loops ... should be prevented at all costs.I'm sorry but that is complete nonsense. Yes, loops make mapping more difficult but they are often a storytelling spice that brings extra flavour to a campaign.
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Happy to implement if you can supply the logic :)
There seems to be a very nice package, that is unfortunately in javascript, called d3 force that looks like it could do something pretty neat using a force-directed graph technique.
Demo (with some really nice drag functionality):
https://observablehq.com/@d3/force-directed-graph/2?intent=fork
Source:
https://github.com/d3/d3-force
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
I think that it is important to aim for _simple_ improvements rather than complex ones. Automatic placement could be improved, but even a complex implementation will never be perfect. So the simple improvement that we really need is just better interactivity when dragging systems around on the map. Just making the snap–to–grid functionality less fiddly would go a long way by greatly reducing user frustration. It might even cause some user satisfaction!
Currently, when you drag a system to a new spot on the map there is no feedback about where it will actually snap to. This causes frequent misses, along with repeated attempts to move the system just far enough to put it where we want it to go. Just rendering a “ghost” in the spot where the system will end up and updating it as we move the mouse around would improve usability by a huge margin, and it would be far simpler to implement than any automatic placement system.
Even just changing the rounding so that systems snap in a more intuitive way would be a huge improvement, and probably won’t require changing but a couple of lines of code.
I think that it is important to aim for _simple_ improvements rather than complex ones. Automatic placement could be improved, but even a complex implementation will never be perfect. So the simple improvement that we really need is just better interactivity when dragging systems around on the map. Just making the snap–to–grid functionality less fiddly would go a long way by greatly reducing user frustration. It might even cause some user satisfaction!
Currently, when you drag a system to a new spot on the map there is no feedback about where it will actually snap to. This causes frequent misses, along with repeated attempts to move the system just far enough to put it where we want it to go. Just rendering a “ghost” in the spot where the system will end up and updating it as we move the mouse around would improve usability by a huge margin, and it would be far simpler to implement than any automatic placement system.
Even just changing the rounding so that systems snap in a more intuitive way would be a huge improvement, and probably won’t require changing but a couple of lines of code.
I have advocated before for changes in the snapping parameters under the hood. Currently, the galactic map spaces systems 140px apart with default placement and the snap-to-grid function snaps systems to increments of 20px. This means that there are seven 'increments' of snap positions between default system placements which is silly and not at all conducive to any way of organizing the systems besides a square grid - sometimes I would like to do a hexagonal arrangement and this is not feasible.
So my suggestions would be:
- Change the default snap increment to a neater fraction of 140px - 70px is probably not flexible enough but 35px should be fine.
- Snap-to-grid should round to the nearest increment mark, currently it seems to prefer rounding up rather than down which is frustrating to work with.
For a EXE-only patch we can keep the default 140px spacing as it looks fine as-is and this would preserve compatibility with 2.5.0 maps, but we could change to a friendlier value like 144px or 160px in a DB release which breaks saves anyways.
Move to jump point (Time Delay 365 days)
Trigger Nearby Fleets
Wait for Trigger
Refuel and Resupply at Planet
Overhaul at PlanetThe other fleet would be the same, you would just have it start at Wait for Trigger.Even just changing the rounding so that systems snap in a more intuitive way would be a huge improvement, and probably won’t require changing but a couple of lines of code.
I have advocated before for changes in the snapping parameters under the hood. Currently, the galactic map spaces systems 140px apart with default placement and the snap-to-grid function snaps systems to increments of 20px. This means that there are seven 'increments' of snap positions between default system placements which is silly and not at all conducive to any way of organizing the systems besides a square grid - sometimes I would like to do a hexagonal arrangement and this is not feasible.
So my suggestions would be:
- Change the default snap increment to a neater fraction of 140px - 70px is probably not flexible enough but 35px should be fine.
- Snap-to-grid should round to the nearest increment mark, currently it seems to prefer rounding up rather than down which is frustrating to work with.
Hexagonal arrangements are not impossible, even if they are not easy to achieve:
I split facility construction 50/50 so the system doesn't get clogged by big orders, but this does mean I have to change the %used by construction every time I open the window, either by typing it or selecting an existing work order. I'd very much appreciate the ability to set a default construction % for new construction tasks to use.
QOL Suggestion:That would be a useful "minor change."
Show the ages of scientists as part of the information given when choosing someone to head a project.
May not be relevant to everyone but I've been playing a slower paced game (40% research speed, with Limited Research Admin) and I've run into the problem whereby I'll start the research and then a couple of months later the scientist retires as they reach their mid 60s. Having their age listed when choosing from the list would make it a lot easier to avoid that, whilst also giving players a better idea of when it would be a good idea to switch to a less experienced scientist to train them up.
QOL request...Just use the continuous expansion function to expand it to the proper size. Adding a few hundred tons of capacity would only take like a month, probably
Could the shipyard size limitation be changed to be a modifier on efficiency, rather than a hard limit? E.g. if you want to build a ship that is 20,103 tons, and your shipyard capacity is only 20,000, you'd get a multiplier on your build rate of something like (20,000/20,103)^2. That way you don't have to fuss with adding 103 tons of capacity every time your ship design comes in slightly over, but there's still an incentive to build your shipyards big enough?
Presumably it would only apply in cases when the shipyard is too small, and multiplier would be capped at max of 1.0 (i.e. for when the shipyard is bigger than needed).
is there no conditional order for "cargo hold full" ?
automatic salvaging just salvages untill full and keeps going
-- So, off the cuff idea for Meson Cannons.
Currently, Meson Cannons larger than 30cm are strictly and progressively worse, since they fire slower and have no damage scaling, thus rendering the range increase worthless.
What if it was altered so that larger Meson Cannons had a higher effective rate of fire by making them more energy efficient per shot as they got bigger?
So unlike Railguns and Gauss Cannons, which fire multiple shots per increment and thus have multiple chances to hit as a result, Meson Cannons would instead fire more often by requiring less capacitors per shot as their caliber increased.
So I'm thinking every three caliber techs or so, a Meson Cannon would gain one extra shot, but without needing more capacitors to do it. So 10cm to 15cm Meson Cannons would have one shot as they currently do. 20cm to 30cm Meson Cannons would have twice as many shots, 35cm to 45cm would have thrice as many, and so on and so forth with each new threshold adding one shot.
Incidentally, High-powered Microwaves have this issue as well, whereby the lack of damage scaling means that HPMs over 30cm are just outright worse.
Also incidentally, this change could be applied to HPMs to make calibers over 30cm no longer useless while still preserving their "Secondary Weapon" flavor.
It probably always was like this but not as apparent as Jump Capability was not locked in place... But now it seems silly that the components for more advanced Jump Drives are cheaper to research and build because they are smaller.More advanced tech means more can be done with less materials. I think it's fine. Cloaking devices are the same way.
Efficiency 6 for 3000t ship costing me 50 BP and 500 RP (380t JD size)
Efficiency 4 for 3000t ship costing me 75 BP and 612 RP (570t JD size)
More advanced tech means more can be done with less materials. I think it's fine. Cloaking devices are the same way.Yes, It seems like Cloaking devices are the same way when I test them.
A QOL suggestion since this issue seems to have come up many times in my reading, the ability to organize fighters ordered to provide ground support into some sort of unit that can then be assigned to provide support to some formation directly, rather than having to go by each individual fighter.
Also: Can you make it display the date better in the shipyard production and scientist menus? Usually you can only see that it was produced on friday 12th. . . , which isn't very helpful.
Can you make it that it displays the age of the scientist in the research menu? Will make it easier to pick young healthy ones after they start dying off.
Also: Can you make it display the date better in the shipyard production and scientist menus? Usually you can only see that it was produced on friday 12th. . . , which isn't very helpful. There are probably other places with this same problem but I can't remember off the top of my head.
Attached Pic is all suggestions visualized
I'd still like to have some highlighting in the Commanders window for "Story Characters" to make them easier to find when you have thousands of commanders. That window already supports colored status text for commander health, so the code infrastructure is there. I think the color that is used for CMCs you're buying from would work nicely, but I would be happy with anything.
I attempt to use this feature in all of my games to track individuals with notable achievements throughout their careers and I don't always remember to write their names down in my personal notes.
Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up. They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored. I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.
wtf. . . if been suffering for so long bros. . .Bro...
Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up. They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored. I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.
I wish a ship with a Hub could at least work exactly the same as a ship with a Refuelling/Transfer System. Optimum would be it works as a Hub, even when underway (with appropriate tech).
Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.wtf. . . if been suffering for so long bros. . .Bro...
Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up. They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored. I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.
(https://i.imgur.com/qM6SV4J.png)
Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.
If that's true and there's no hidden pool then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on gameplay whatsoever, the value that's shown in my campaign is 1717, and it will let me construct anything, ships with 2,000 crew, many ships with 1,000 crew, etc.Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.
Fun fact: No. This is actually the total number of crew you have available at any one time.
I realize this is confusing because the number changes when you change the crew training level (1-5), but this is how it works. Presumably this admittedly confusing implementation was easier for Steve than trying to keep track of different numbers of crews with different training levels if you changed the training level.
If that's true and there's no hidden pool then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on gameplay whatsoever, the value that's shown in my campaign is 1717, and it will let me construct anything, ships with 2,000 crew, many ships with 1,000 crew, etc.Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.
Fun fact: No. This is actually the total number of crew you have available at any one time.
I realize this is confusing because the number changes when you change the crew training level (1-5), but this is how it works. Presumably this admittedly confusing implementation was easier for Steve than trying to keep track of different numbers of crews with different training levels if you changed the training level.
This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines.
and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.
If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.
This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines. You have a lump sum of crew and junior officers and it grows based on how many academies in total you have. Increase your training level and the pool goes down, decrease your training level and the pool goes up. Use the Conscript tickbox for ships that will never see combat to save trained crew for your military ships and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.Does the pool replenish over time?
If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.
Right now there is a "salvage nearest wreck" command but no way to automatically empty the ships when they are near full.
If possible some conditional orders of >50% >75% >90% Cargo would be nice and "unload cargo at nearest colony" and "unload cargo at capital" would be nice if possible?
I get into many fights with 10's of ships and manually salvaging is a bit of a pain.
Being able to make smaller salvaging fleets that are automated with commercial hangers and defences would really speed up the game.
Ships that are scrapped send their crews back to the pool and building more academies increases the speed at which the pool grows.This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines. You have a lump sum of crew and junior officers and it grows based on how many academies in total you have. Increase your training level and the pool goes down, decrease your training level and the pool goes up. Use the Conscript tickbox for ships that will never see combat to save trained crew for your military ships and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.Does the pool replenish over time?
If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.
Could we get an autosave function? Default it to, say, once a year?
Asking as someone whose computer decided to reboot overnight to install an update and lost about an in-game decade of progress.
along with this making asteroids far more common in systems (as would be realistic) would promote many more people to use astoid mining ships which are far more vulnerable than their planetside counterparts.
Personally i would like to see 10x-100x more asteroids since as far as i know it doesn't impact performance anymore, maybe even 1000x more asteroids to make automated mining operations much more worth their time and risk.
I have found systems with lots of asteroids before. They aren't common, but are pretty good when they do exist.along with this making asteroids far more common in systems (as would be realistic) would promote many more people to use astoid mining ships which are far more vulnerable than their planetside counterparts.
Personally i would like to see 10x-100x more asteroids since as far as i know it doesn't impact performance anymore, maybe even 1000x more asteroids to make automated mining operations much more worth their time and risk.
Seconded. I noticed this when setting up a bunch of habitable systems for player races, the number of asteroids in Sol is rather anomalous in Aurora and I'm not sure it should be. Although I can see why having large asteroid belts be a bit rare is good for gameplay in making asteroid mining systems valuable finds, this value could be preserved by toying around with the mineral generation rate for asteroids if needed.
It is honestly not uncommon in my known stars game for systems to have asteroid belts with lots of asteroids. In some cases systems have even had multiple asteroid belts usually a system belt and a gas giant belt.
So I'm not convinced that there is a systematic problem with asteroid generation.
Could we get an autosave function? Default it to, say, once a year?I'm sorry dude but you know you can press the save button yourself? I can understand leaving your PC on for the night but at least manually save Aurora before going to bed. Windows does not force an update when you're actively using the PC afterall. Having said that, an auto-save on 1 January of each year is a good idea.
Asking as someone whose computer decided to reboot overnight to install an update and lost about an in-game decade of progress.
I'm sorry dude but you know you can press the save button yourself? I can understand leaving your PC on for the night but at least manually save Aurora before going to bed. Windows does not force an update when you're actively using the PC afterall. Having said that, an auto-save on 1 January of each year is a good idea.Oh, it's totally my fault - I forgot to hit the save button before I went to sleep for the night. I even thought to myself the next day "you know, it's been a while since I last saved - I should probably do that," right before I flipped the screen on.
I'd like to suggest some method of over-riding the game's automatic class designations on player designed ship or station classes. This would obviously need some limitations, such as not being able to change commercial, military or station designations (and probably some others I haven't thought of at the moment). The default works well enough in almost all cases but occasionally gets in the player's way.
For example, I just designed a mobile asteroid mining ship intended to be nearly self-sufficient. It has cargo holds to drop a mass driver then move it when necessary and, crucially, troop transport capability to carry then drop STO's on whatever rock it parks above, in case any unfriendly pests come to bother it.
But when I add the troop transports, it changes the design to a Troop Transport for auto-assignment purposes, due to Troop Transport Bays having precedence over mining modules when determining class type. This is a bit frustrating, as the entire purpose of this ship is to mine so I'd prefer commanders with the relevant bonuses. The ability to manually set design types when necessary would obviate this irritation.
Dropping off life pod survivors is somewhat tedious, especially because you have to have the survivors on board in order to be able to give the unload order, requiring two interrupts.
Therefore I suggest that you add the option to space the survivors. This would not solve the two-interrupt problem, but it would be vastly more satisfying.
In the ship history listing, it would be neat to list what shipyard constructed a given ship.
In the ship history listing, it would be neat to list what shipyard constructed a given ship.
It looks like it does to me -- are you looking at a ship that was Instant Built at game start or with SM mode? Those just say "Constructed".
QOL Suggestion:
Show the ages of scientists as part of the information given when choosing someone to head a project.
May not be relevant to everyone but I've been playing a slower paced game (40% research speed, with Limited Research Admin) and I've run into the problem whereby I'll start the research and then a couple of months later the scientist retires as they reach their mid 60s. Having their age listed when choosing from the list would make it a lot easier to avoid that, whilst also giving players a better idea of when it would be a good idea to switch to a less experienced scientist to train them up.
Add a new type of intelligence gain: Hull Classification. This should be pretty common, and would provide the hull classes of multiple known NPR hulls for the relevant NPR. This way, you can build up information on what each class is, without needing to hope for getting the full design specifications or needing to attack/board NPR ships.
I've found that despite sitting ELINT ships in range of NPR homeworlds for years, I basically only get intelligence on a handful of designs, most of which are either outdated or not deployed. An intelligence gain option like this would let me figure out which ships are tankers, freighters, etc, in a much more practical time-span
In my "war of the worlds" game I have destroyed...
16 ships of 30kt
12 ships of 20kt
4 ships of 10kt
2 ships of 10kt
without being able to gain intel on what the hull classifications might be, despite many of the battles involving cruisers carrying ELINT modules, engaging at beam ranges.
I know the class name, and partial information on sensors, engines, weapons etc. from salvage.
But not the hull classifications.
now that I think about it, the only ships that I have hull classifications for, are ones that I have boarded, or saw being launched due to having sensor coverage of Mars at the time of their launch.
Everything else is XX unknown hull classification. I'm using "real ship/class names".
Is it because I have not translated the Martian language ? (they're extremely xenophobic and refuse to communicate)
In my "war of the worlds" game I have destroyed...
16 ships of 30kt
12 ships of 20kt
4 ships of 10kt
2 ships of 10kt
without being able to gain intel on what the hull classifications might be, despite many of the battles involving cruisers carrying ELINT modules, engaging at beam ranges.
I know the class name, and partial information on sensors, engines, weapons etc. from salvage.
But not the hull classifications.
now that I think about it, the only ships that I have hull classifications for, are ones that I have boarded, or saw being launched due to having sensor coverage of Mars at the time of their launch.
Everything else is XX unknown hull classification. I'm using "real ship/class names".
Is it because I have not translated the Martian language ? (they're extremely xenophobic and refuse to communicate)
In my "war of the worlds" game I have destroyed...
16 ships of 30kt
12 ships of 20kt
4 ships of 10kt
2 ships of 10kt
without being able to gain intel on what the hull classifications might be, despite many of the battles involving cruisers carrying ELINT modules, engaging at beam ranges.
I know the class name, and partial information on sensors, engines, weapons etc. from salvage.
But not the hull classifications.
now that I think about it, the only ships that I have hull classifications for, are ones that I have boarded, or saw being launched due to having sensor coverage of Mars at the time of their launch.
Everything else is XX unknown hull classification. I'm using "real ship/class names".
Is it because I have not translated the Martian language ? (they're extremely xenophobic and refuse to communicate)
You can just set a hull classification? I don't see why the inherent classification is any more useful than one you give it?
You can just set a hull classification? I don't see why the inherent classification is any more useful than one you give it?
Well, assuming that their hull classification isn't misinformation on their part. Y'know, German tank problem and whatnot. Just use misleading hull classifications and fool your foes!
That and the fact that hull classification isn't followed in a general way anyway. Is a destroyer a destroyer based on size, or purpose? Who knows?
I think the general sense in the thread right now is that (1) such intelligence should not be "free" when using the Real Class Names checkbox (and inconsistently so at that) and that (2) being able to gather such intelligence by ELINT would be a cool feature.
Can I meet an adversary 100 kton ship in my space? Yes.
Can they call it as battleship? battle cruiser? heavy cruiser? cruiser? escort cruiser? carrier? freighter? giant freighter? or what ever other way? Yes.
Is this classification meaningful respect the role this ship can have in the fleet? Frankly, no. IMO, its systems, weapons, armour, shields, etc. are much more meaningful, maybe together with the knowledge whether it is a military (M) or a civilian (C) ship.
If my sensors warn me about this large ship, I can be really suspicious it can be very dangerous, even if I don't know whether it is M or C (I can think a cargo loading troops and deploying them where I am unarmed).
So, IMHO, a ship classification can be a very secondary information.
Also for 2.5 there only seems to be a bug report thread...
After having created a few custom NPRs, I notice that those I check to have both missiles and a beam weapon rarely ever use the beam weapon, even in large fleets, and even on beam defence bases (which seem to be PD only). I've observed what seems to be NPRs taking fights at relative tonnage parity despite being entirely out of ammunition and lacking any offensive option. I know it might just be a roll of the dice, but it would be nice to see a more even split between the distribution of beams and missiles in NPR fleets.All or nothing is rather favored with offensive missiles. Your ability to win battles with them is heavily dependent on your volley volume. Trading more missile launchers for offensive beams, either on a ship or in a fleet, is risking your ability to win with missiles to buy the ability to also lose with beams...
In my "war of the worlds" game I have destroyed...
16 ships of 30kt
12 ships of 20kt
4 ships of 10kt
2 ships of 10kt
without being able to gain intel on what the hull classifications might be, despite many of the battles involving cruisers carrying ELINT modules, engaging at beam ranges.
I know the class name, and partial information on sensors, engines, weapons etc. from salvage.
But not the hull classifications.
now that I think about it, the only ships that I have hull classifications for, are ones that I have boarded, or saw being launched due to having sensor coverage of Mars at the time of their launch.
Everything else is XX unknown hull classification. I'm using "real ship/class names".
Is it because I have not translated the Martian language ? (they're extremely xenophobic and refuse to communicate)
You can just set a hull classification? I don't see why the inherent classification is any more useful than one you give it?
It isn't necessarily, but on the other hand, detecting "15x XX Unknown" might prompt a different response than detecting "15x DDG Absolute Carnage". Might want to bring escorts for that second one.
You can literally set the 2nd one yourself? There is no need for the game to do that for you?
Your response is nonsensical?
Unless you want the game to give you all of the information you need about a ship you have never seen before without having ever fought it? which would be REALLY weird.
This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?Thats not what they are saying at all.
You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.
There is simply no need for the game to give you the class of the ship?
You don't NEED to know what class it is, it doesn't actually give you any new information. I have successfully classified more than 2/3 of my current NPRs ships just by evaluating what they do and their capabilities before destroying or being shot at by them.
Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?
So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.
This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?
You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.
Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?
So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.
This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?Thats not what they are saying at all.
You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.
There is simply no need for the game to give you the class of the ship?
You don't NEED to know what class it is, it doesn't actually give you any new information. I have successfully classified more than 2/3 of my current NPRs ships just by evaluating what they do and their capabilities before destroying or being shot at by them.
Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?
So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.
The whole point is that 99% of the time ELINT is useless for finding out any information about enemy ships, because you get maybe 1 ship class report every few years. What we want is a way to more quickly figure out very general information about NPR ships without having to be at war with them.
from an in-character perspective, this would represent your ELINT ships listening to comms chatter to figure out what ships are what (IE this intercepted message says this ship is loading colonists, it must be a colony ship), or having analysts look at photos to figure out what ships do (IE This ship has 20 openings, based on the size of those opening it must be an AMM ship)
You don't see any real world navy waiting until they are at war to figure out what the enemy ships do.
The proposal originally and the entire argument is about the ability to determine a ships class using ELINT, because of the way the game works that just instantly gives you the entire capability of the ship bar weapon range and exact sensor ranges.
Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.
Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.
There is a reason that this is not done, which is that it would yield in many cases a net gain of minerals relative to new construction.
An illustrative example: Suppose I want to do a simple engine refit for a ship, where I have 3x NGC engines of 300 EP each (150 BP each, total 450 BP) and I want to do a simple engine upgrade to 3x ion engines of 375 EP each (187.5 BP each, total 562.5 BP) In this case the refit cost is 562.5 x 1.20 = 675 BP, which will be all gallicite since we are doing only the engines. If we could recover the old engines, we could then scrap them for 30% of their minerals or 135 gallicite. This would mean the net refit cost was 540, which is less than the cost of the engines. This is not desirable and defeats the point of the 1.20x refit penalty mechanic.
Refitting should not be preferable to new construction for economic reasons (this is why we currently have the 1.20x penalty). Refitting is used for other purposes: most commonly, it is used to keep highly-trained crews while upgrading the ships. Another important use is that upgrading ships can make more sense than new construction when you lack the capability to maintain, crew, or assign commanders to large numbers of new ships. There can be others, including some edge cases when you want to upgrade ships without spending certain minerals on specific components.
Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me. You might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.
There is a reason that this is not done, which is that it would yield in many cases a net gain of minerals relative to new construction.
An illustrative example: Suppose I want to do a simple engine refit for a ship, where I have 3x NGC engines of 300 EP each (150 BP each, total 450 BP) and I want to do a simple engine upgrade to 3x ion engines of 375 EP each (187.5 BP each, total 562.5 BP) In this case the refit cost is 562.5 x 1.20 = 675 BP, which will be all gallicite since we are doing only the engines. If we could recover the old engines, we could then scrap them for 30% of their minerals or 135 gallicite. This would mean the net refit cost was 540, which is less than the cost of the engines. This is not desirable and defeats the point of the 1.20x refit penalty mechanic.
Refitting should not be preferable to new construction for economic reasons (this is why we currently have the 1.20x penalty). Refitting is used for other purposes: most commonly, it is used to keep highly-trained crews while upgrading the ships. Another important use is that upgrading ships can make more sense than new construction when you lack the capability to maintain, crew, or assign commanders to large numbers of new ships. There can be others, including some edge cases when you want to upgrade ships without spending certain minerals on specific components.
Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.
You might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.
Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.
I...don't see how? Intuitively, it costs more to open up a ship, rip out a component, install a new one, and close the ship back up than it does to install the same new component while building a ship from scratch. I'm not one of the guys with a hard-on for realism but this seems logical to me.
Yes, but building the entire rest of the new ship is a rather large penalty on that side of the scale. It should be more expensive in some respect to obtain your final ship by building a different design and refitting, sure. But if a refit is plausible at all, it shouldn't be more expensive to do the refit than to scrap the starter ship and build the new ship.Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.
I...don't see how? Intuitively, it costs more to open up a ship, rip out a component, install a new one, and close the ship back up than it does to install the same new component while building a ship from scratch. I'm not one of the guys with a hard-on for realism but this seems logical to me.
- Keeping highly trained crews: Okay, but only because the system doesn't allow us to do things like transfer a trained crew to a new hull.QuoteYou might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.
I've given several reasons why refitting is valuable even if it is relatively more costly. Needless to say, I don't agree with this statement.
Okay, I think I see where your point is. I'm thinking more about the relatively partial refits which can still be significant but come out to substantially less than the cost of building a new ship. Although I think it should be extremely rare to have a refit that costs significantly more than the cost of new construction since you will have carry-over from components that don't upgrade - engineering, fuel tanks, maintenance bays, crew quarters, etc., so even a total refit should be a very similar cost, at worst, to new construction.The original concern was with the mineral dis-economy of (reportedly) not recovering the removed components in any form on a refit, as opposed to scrapping giving you back the components to re-use or break down.
It would be nice to have some way to shift a highly-trained crew over, though.
Honestly the main thing that currently makes me prefer refits over scrap and build new, is service history. I want to see those tonnage destroyed numbers go up higher.This reminds me that it would be good if you could award and then transfer across Battle Honours (including the tonnage destroyed numbers) to ships with the same name.
Maybe the idea here is that you should go ahead and delete the previous one when you train the replacement, but I tend to have at least a couple older generations of troops around as garrison units so it would be nice to at least have the option to retain the current numbering.
I love using STOs in Aurora but managing them can get tedious. Building large STO formations of clustered weapons to minimize entries in the STO targeting list is expensive with long build times, but building multiple smaller, cheaper STO formations means a lot more manual clicking when setting up defense doctrines and during combat situations.I'm 99% sure that you can build smaller STO formations, then merge them together into larger formations afterwards (I've done this with regular troops, so I don't see why STOs would operate differently.) There'll still be some clicking involved to move the STO units, then deleting the (now empty) formations; but it should be a lot less annoying than having to duplicate firing orders to multiple STOs.
-Officers rescued from life pods are not automatically unloaded when the Unload Survivors order completes at a population. My suggestion is that the Unload Survivors order also unloads any unassigned officers that are onboard a ship. Alternatively, an "Unload Unassigned Officers" order be available to ships that have unassigned officers onboard.
-Officers rescued from life pods are not automatically unloaded when the Unload Survivors order completes at a population. My suggestion is that the Unload Survivors order also unloads any unassigned officers that are onboard a ship. Alternatively, an "Unload Unassigned Officers" order be available to ships that have unassigned officers onboard.
I think you can use the "drop off commander" order to unload any rescued officers, but you are presented with a list of all ship commanders in the fleet, which can be a lot. Perhaps some highlighting of unassigned officers would be in order, if that would be simpler to implement than dropping off unassigned officers.
-Officers rescued from life pods are not automatically unloaded when the Unload Survivors order completes at a population. My suggestion is that the Unload Survivors order also unloads any unassigned officers that are onboard a ship. Alternatively, an "Unload Unassigned Officers" order be available to ships that have unassigned officers onboard.
I think you can use the "drop off commander" order to unload any rescued officers, but you are presented with a list of all ship commanders in the fleet, which can be a lot. Perhaps some highlighting of unassigned officers would be in order, if that would be simpler to implement than dropping off unassigned officers.
Yes, this is my issue with the Drop Off Commander order. If Drop off commander highlighted unassigned officers, that would be fine too in my opinion.
As far as ground combat goes, I'd just like aircraft to be moved from individually built tiny spaceships to just being a different type of ground unit.Would an auto-allocate for air support maybe mitigate the problem without changing the architecture?
The benefits of the tiny spaceship approach do not in any way offset the massive increase in micromanagement needed to effectively use them over regular forces.
As far as ground combat goes, I'd just like aircraft to be moved from individually built tiny spaceships to just being a different type of ground unit.Would an auto-allocate for air support maybe mitigate the problem without changing the architecture?
The benefits of the tiny spaceship approach do not in any way offset the massive increase in micromanagement needed to effectively use them over regular forces.
any chance you can increase the amount of static defenses (machine-gun bunkers?) the ai builds?Agreed, any more variety for AI ground force builds would be good.
if you ever do plan on taking another go at ground-forces balance, I have idea for an entire new feature. The problem I'm thinking to solve, is that machine-guns are too much better than personal weapons.I disagree. They are more lethal, for sure, but there is a cost to be paid for that in increased tonnage and increased GSP use. That cost is IMHO about right currently.
I'm trying to think how to change the balance, such that personal weapons become the primary infantry weapon, with machine-guns performing a supporting role.You sound like French generals in WW1 and the interwar period. In reality, the machine gun in its various iterations has arguably been the primary infantry weapon since late-WW1 and most certainly so from WW2. The Germans built their infantry squads around the MG-34/42 and the riflemen were there just to support it. Eventually everyone else copied them to some extent. Yes, the introduction of assault rifles, ie automatic rifles shooting an intermediate cartridge that were affordable enough to equip every infantry soldier, seemed to change things but I would not go so far as to claim that the rifle is the primary weapon and the MG is the supporting weapon. This is an illusion conjured by the recent Anglo-American experiences. In other words, Afghanistan and Iraq massively distorted the understanding of war in both the US and in Britain. Yes, MGs were largely support weapons when 99% of combat is patrol and search missions in counter-insurgency operations among civilian populations. If you look at Ukraine, you'll see that the MG is the king of the battlefield, with artillery and drones coming up close seconds. There the assault rifle is just a support weapon, used only if other, more effective, weapons are not available.
The second problem I wanted to solve, is artillery. Basically, front line being the shield, and backline being the cannon is the most fun dynamic way for things to be,I disagree. Obviously the most fun and dynamic way for things to be is to have Godzilla and King Kong fight each other, with the 50-foot-tall woman as a surprise entrant to make it a 3-way fight. ;D I'm exaggerating for comedic effect but you really shouldn't make such blanket claims. They are just silly.
if you ever do plan on taking another go at ground-forces balance, I have idea for an entire new feature. The problem I'm thinking to solve, is that machine-guns are too much better than personal weapons.I disagree. They are more lethal, for sure, but there is a cost to be paid for that in increased tonnage and increased GSP use. That cost is IMHO about right currently.
So no, I don't think that the current ground combat mechanics need to be changed to solve a problem that does not really exist, especially by promoting ideas that are unrealistic and promote rock-scissors-paper gameplay where you have to have X and Y and Z, while running the risk of distilling all the flavour out of it.
As far as ground combat goes, I'd just like aircraft to be moved from individually built tiny spaceships to just being a different type of ground unit.
The benefits of the tiny spaceship approach do not in any way offset the massive increase in micromanagement needed to effectively use them over regular forces.
And equally as importantly, it is important to recognize that the current ground combat system, due to its relative simplicity, does an excellent job of supporting roleplay. While it may not be "realistic", a player may create a WH40K Imperial Guard regiment, a BattleTech 'Mech regiment, or a WWI-era infantry regiment, and all of these forces will perform reasonably well on the battlefield.
Yes, I will redo the 'air' component of ground combat at some point, probably by introducing a new ground unit type to represent helicopters / attack aircraft / fighter etc.And now you have given me a reason to wait until starting the campaign that I want to do, since that sounds fantastic and I would not want to play without it.
Yes, I will redo the 'air' component of ground combat at some point, probably by introducing a new ground unit type to represent helicopters / attack aircraft / fighter etc.
We used to have nebulae, which did some of your suggestions (shields disabled and reduced speed... possibly reduced sensors?). I honestly don't recall them terribly fondly - being slow is annoying, and since (at least in the last version) they replaced empty systems, there was no reason to be in them. So you ended up just hoping that you didn't get any long realspace connections in a nebula, since it would slow your entire empire down if one ended up in the middle of your main corridors.
In the Class Design window, would be great to see Maintenance needed when a specific component fails.
Would it be possible to add a fleet's Minimum current range stat in the overview tab? We can see total range of all orders and total fuel, but not if the ships have enough fuel to complete the orders.
Probably ignore any refueling effects for simplicity.
If a fleet level stat isn't practical, it would be nice if it could be displayed in the ship list next to % of remaining fuel.
A "Commercial Hanger" or "Commercial Boat Bay" that can only be used to carry commercial vessels and doesn't make the mothership automatically a military ship (the way current hangers do). This would let us put small commercial sensor posts inside hangers on Jump Point Stabilization ships and drop them as they stabilize jump points, leave them near gas giants you suspect your enemies may stop by for fuel harvesting, leave them above prime colonizable worlds you don't have time/reach to claim yet, etc.
Would it be possible to add a fleet's Minimum current range stat in the overview tab? We can see total range of all orders and total fuel, but not if the ships have enough fuel to complete the orders.
Probably ignore any refueling effects for simplicity.
If a fleet level stat isn't practical, it would be nice if it could be displayed in the ship list next to % of remaining fuel.
There already is a range stat for ships.
Naval Orginization Menu - If two fleets are in the same place, let us drag a ship directly from one fleet to another without the extra step of detaching.
Option to start with a default medal setup and event log color scheme as part of the base game. I played for a week before learning about the Medals aspect of this game. I played another two weeks before learning I could download a file from the forums of fully defined conditions with beautiful medals. Include this in the base game, let people have the option to use the default, but still let them edit it to their preferences if they like.
Alternately, offer an option to have the minimum rank selection increase to meet increased demands. Do we *really* need to be bothered every time these people aren't high enough rank?
Towing asteroids into orbit around a different body.
When queueing up installations for construction, show workers required for the installation in the panel that shows mineral costs. Just add it right under "Corundium 20" or whatever.
An in-game library of ship class designs using either the most basic, or currently researched, tech. For instance, if you select Freighter for the class label, have a button to import a basic Freighter design from the library. Not all classes would need examples in the library, but those that do could be highlighted in the drop down to let the player know an example exists. This could even open the door to people sharing their own libraries of ships that they share.
Oh man, I thought that was how it worked already. I didn’t realize my fleets were slowly draining their MSP. Panic
Suggestion - New "No Maintenance Cost" Game RuleOr, alternatively, perhaps have it be paid with wealth instead? In the beginning where wealth is scarce, it might be an issue, but then again, maintenance is low at those times, and you can probably compensate the wealth costs by shutting MSP production off more frequently.
Currently in the game setup rules we have "No Maintenance Required", which disables all ship breakdowns, failures, overhauls, and ongoing MSP maintenance costs. I personally would enjoy a less severe version of this where ships still suffer maintenance breakdowns when away from a maintenance base and require overhauls, but there is no annual MSP consumption for ships at a maintenance base. This would allow for building larger standing fleets and make it less costly to keep obsolete ships, while still having the logistics challenge of building forward fleet bases and maintaining pickets.
Add an "auto-organize" button to the galactic map screen, which automatically sorts systems so we don't have to manually re-arrange the galactic map once it starts getting large
Oh man, I thought that was how it worked already. I didn’t realize my fleets were slowly draining their MSP. Panic
They’re not. They consume MSP from the colony they orbit first, if it has any. The maintenance facilities there are constantly building new MSP, provided they have the right minerals.
If you don't already know, you can see how much MSP a fleet is using in the summary above the ship list ("Annual MSP ###") to help you figure out how much you need. Non-commercial ships use 1/4 their cost in MSP per year, and MSP cost 0.25 minerals each, so after 16 years you have paid the ship cost again in maintenance. If you have keep an old ship around for ~30 years, you might as well have scrapped it to get some of its cost back and built two higher-tech ships instead.Oh man, I thought that was how it worked already. I didn’t realize my fleets were slowly draining their MSP. Panic
They’re not. They consume MSP from the colony they orbit first, if it has any. The maintenance facilities there are constantly building new MSP, provided they have the right minerals.
You misunderstood, I thought it was free so I have been setting up my frontier maintenance colonies without any extra MSP or minerals to make it. The fleets are have been maintained on their own supplies for a good while now. So now I gotta scramble to resupply them and figure out how to keep them supplied.
Or, alternatively, perhaps have it be paid with wealth instead? In the beginning where wealth is scarce, it might be an issue, but then again, maintenance is low at those times, and you can probably compensate the wealth costs by shutting MSP production off more frequently.I like this idea quite a bit - maybe we could call the option "Wealth-Based Maintenance" to make it more clearly different from "No Maintenance Required".
Later, wealth often overflows due to having many no-producer colonies, so this would be a nice way to integrate it back more and be useful.
While I'm thinking on ruins, could we get back the chance of uncovering Precursor Robots that were an infrequent spicy treat when snooping around fallen alien cities in VB6?I never liked that feature personally. It basically just makes ruin recovery take longer, because you have to spend the time to send extra troops.
While I'm thinking on ruins, could we get back the chance of uncovering Precursor Robots that were an infrequent spicy treat when snooping around fallen alien cities in VB6?I never liked that feature personally. It basically just makes ruin recovery take longer, because you have to spend the time to send extra troops.
While I'm thinking on ruins, could we get back the chance of uncovering Precursor Robots that were an infrequent spicy treat when snooping around fallen alien cities in VB6?I never liked that feature personally. It basically just makes ruin recovery take longer, because you have to spend the time to send extra troops.
Worse, the "spicy treat" had a tendency to blow up your loot as collateral damage, which meant that the way to recover loot safely was to have a freighter on station constantly moving installations from the ruin site to some other dumping ground colony, which was annoying and immersion-breaking, let's be honest here.
While I think random spiciness is best for roleplaying reasons; perhaps as a nod to gameplay, if a ruin is chosen as "spicy", it would be the very first thing your construction teams unearth? That way the other ruins haven't been generated yet, so there's no worry about them being destroyed.While I'm thinking on ruins, could we get back the chance of uncovering Precursor Robots that were an infrequent spicy treat when snooping around fallen alien cities in VB6?I never liked that feature personally. It basically just makes ruin recovery take longer, because you have to spend the time to send extra troops.
Worse, the "spicy treat" had a tendency to blow up your loot as collateral damage, which meant that the way to recover loot safely was to have a freighter on station constantly moving installations from the ruin site to some other dumping ground colony, which was annoying and immersion-breaking, let's be honest here.
Famously, blue emu's campaign at Wolf 294
While I think random spiciness is best for roleplaying reasons; perhaps as a nod to gameplay, if a ruin is chosen as "spicy", it would be the very first thing your construction teams unearth? That way the other ruins haven't been generated yet, so there's no worry about them being destroyed.
This would actually make a lot of sense and work pretty well...That's fair - so far in my games I've seen defended planets and I've seen planets with ruins, but ne'er the two together. It makes sense that defended planets would/should be guarding something valuable.
...however, we basically already have this since planets with ruins "usually" have ground units defending them. So really the only difference would be if they are already there defending or pop out in a surprise attack. I don't think having both at the same time works very well, practically.
Oh man, I thought that was how it worked already. I didn’t realize my fleets were slowly draining their MSP. Panic
They’re not. They consume MSP from the colony they orbit first, if it has any. The maintenance facilities there are constantly building new MSP, provided they have the right minerals.
You misunderstood, I thought it was free so I have been setting up my frontier maintenance colonies without any extra MSP or minerals to make it. The fleets are have been maintained on their own supplies for a good while now. So now I gotta scramble to resupply them and figure out how to keep them supplied.
Or, alternatively, perhaps have it be paid with wealth instead? In the beginning where wealth is scarce, it might be an issue, but then again, maintenance is low at those times, and you can probably compensate the wealth costs by shutting MSP production off more frequently.I like this idea quite a bit - maybe we could call the option "Wealth-Based Maintenance" to make it more clearly different from "No Maintenance Required".
Later, wealth often overflows due to having many no-producer colonies, so this would be a nice way to integrate it back more and be useful.
The possibility in the class design window to get an extra tab "ship combat" the same as in the naval org. view to check how the disposition of the armament looks like before putting the ship in production.One step further.
- Ability to mark a character to be Retain in advance, before he/she would go to retire.
- On Map, the ability to mark a few systems at once and move them (with Ctrl.)
...
The story character flag will prevent commander retirement...
Is this the suggestions thread for current builds? I'm hoping so.They aren't added because using them would be a no-brainer. Every cargo vessel would have them, there's no decision making involved. You get the admin bonus if you set up your admin structure right and you get the ship commander's bonus on top. It's the same reason why there isn't a terraforming leadership module or Sorium harvesting leadership module.
My suggestion is a Quartermaster's, Cargomaster's, NESCO's or Intendant's (pick your noun) Command & Control module for ships, equivalent to Aux. Control, that adds the Logistics bonus of an officer to the ship.
Surprised that's missing, actually, since that's usually a pretty big deal IRL. Pork chops (supply officers) are two-three steps from God on a ship depending on its class.
They aren't added because using them would be a no-brainer. Every cargo vessel would have them, there's no decision making involved. You get the admin bonus if you set up your admin structure right and you get the ship commander's bonus on top. It's the same reason why there isn't a terraforming leadership module or Sorium harvesting leadership module.
Quote from: Garfunkel link=topic=13404. msg168728#msg168728 date=1708304235They aren't added because using them would be a no-brainer. Every cargo vessel would have them, there's no decision making involved. You get the admin bonus if you set up your admin structure right and you get the ship commander's bonus on top. It's the same reason why there isn't a terraforming leadership module or Sorium harvesting leadership module.
Seems like this is an unpopular idea, considering all the thanks you're getting for shooting me down :-[, but I feel compelled to disagree regardless. First, so what if every cargo ship has one? Let it happen.
Every cargo ship (probably) has shuttle bays too, does that mean they're a nonsense concept?
Same for CIC bridges on combat ships; that tactical bonus is an absolute no-brainer, on any ship larger than an FAC for 3 HS. Are those too much, as well? After all, you get a pretty good Tactical bonus from setting up your Admin structure correctly there, too, if you emphasize the trait. Why even have that, if that's an issue?
Second, if it's really a problem to have a named Cargo officer on every Naval cargo ship, instead of just implied. . . then instead of dismissing the notion completely, let it be large or expensive enough of a module to have a tradeoff. If it's, say, the size of a cargo shuttle bay, until you already have 4 shuttles, adding one or two more gives more than 25% logistics; you'd need a bunch of really good logistics officers to justify trading a shuttle bay for one in smaller ships. That way, only your heavy freighters built out of extremely large shipyards merit the office. Or same/same for large missile boats, stations, etc. - those may have a cargo officer, but your family-owned small freighter doesn't have the dime for such fancy things.
That said, I think there are a couple slots where there is room for meaningful decisions.
The Diplomacy module, to make a ship a diplomatic one, is 500t, and means the ship requires a Captain, rather than Cmdr or Lt.Cmdr.
With this required rank increase, there's a possibility I feel, to appoint a xenolinguist to the diplomatic ship, to provide a bonus to diplomatic effectiveness and/or efforts at translation.
So a diplomatic ship would have two officers - the Captain (using their Diplomacy bonus), and the Xenolinguist (using their Communications? bonus [I'm not entirely sure what the Communications bonus actually does])
There might even be a case to have a dedicated Ambassador, (using their diplomacy bonus), with an even larger "Embassy" module. (10x the size of the DIP module maybe).
Since pure diplomatic ships are fairly small (even my jump-capable ones are only 5000t), then there's a bit more of a decision on whether or not to include modules that would increase their size.
The ELINT module is another one where I think there might be a meaningful decision to be made.
One of the ships that I was using in my game, was a cruiser which had an ELINT module on it. It wasn't the ships main role, it was a frontline warship that also happened to be capable of gathering ELINT.
Now then, with ELINT modules coming in at 500t, then... another module with an intelligence analyst officer might be a meaningful decision to make.
It'd be a straightforward decision to put one of those on a dedicated intelligence gathering ship, which would carry multiple ELINT modules anyway.
But on ships like my cruisers... do I want to spend a couple hundred tons to make it slightly better at ELINT whilst still being a standard combatant ship ? Do I want to use that tonnage on another CIWS instead ?
Quote from: Louella link=topic=13404. msg168759#msg168759 date=1708458447That said, I think there are a couple slots where there is room for meaningful decisions.
The Diplomacy module, to make a ship a diplomatic one, is 500t, and means the ship requires a Captain, rather than Cmdr or Lt. Cmdr.
With this required rank increase, there's a possibility I feel, to appoint a xenolinguist to the diplomatic ship, to provide a bonus to diplomatic effectiveness and/or efforts at translation.
So a diplomatic ship would have two officers - the Captain (using their Diplomacy bonus), and the Xenolinguist (using their Communications? bonus [I'm not entirely sure what the Communications bonus actually does])
There might even be a case to have a dedicated Ambassador, (using their diplomacy bonus), with an even larger "Embassy" module. (10x the size of the DIP module maybe).
Since pure diplomatic ships are fairly small (even my jump-capable ones are only 5000t), then there's a bit more of a decision on whether or not to include modules that would increase their size.
The ELINT module is another one where I think there might be a meaningful decision to be made.
One of the ships that I was using in my game, was a cruiser which had an ELINT module on it. It wasn't the ships main role, it was a frontline warship that also happened to be capable of gathering ELINT.
Now then, with ELINT modules coming in at 500t, then. . . another module with an intelligence analyst officer might be a meaningful decision to make.
It'd be a straightforward decision to put one of those on a dedicated intelligence gathering ship, which would carry multiple ELINT modules anyway.
But on ships like my cruisers. . . do I want to spend a couple hundred tons to make it slightly better at ELINT whilst still being a standard combatant ship ? Do I want to use that tonnage on another CIWS instead ?
I think having a general-purpose "Communications/Intelligence Officer" station which gives bonuses to Communications and Intelligence skills would be really great, as these skills are not currently really handled anywhere in the auto-assignment system which means they tend to go unused unless you manually assign officers.
I think having a general-purpose "Communications/Intelligence Officer" station which gives bonuses to Communications and Intelligence skills would be really great, as these skills are not currently really handled anywhere in the auto-assignment system which means they tend to go unused unless you manually assign officers.
I'm not sure what the "Communications" skill even does. Old wiki pages suggest that it helps with fleet-wide orders.
But if it's really too overpowered, there are answers for that besides "nah, it's a no-brainer. "Ah sorry friend, I did not mean to claim that your proposal is stupid or that you are stupid. I meant it as a "no-brainer design decision", as in, it's not a decision at all because as nuclearslurpee explained, it would always be added. In which case it might as well be automatic like the Bridge is.
And if you have too many officers, try running fighters and carriers, you'll run out of officers quick :P
One way to solve this issue would be by separating civilian and military commanders. I mean, generally it isn't the military officers running oil drilling platforms or mining excavations or planning logistics networks, though of course many veterans end up employed by companies in these fields. I'd love to have separate military and civilian admin systems and leaders - for example most players end up with a massive surplus of administrators unless you really go hard on creating little mining colonies everywhere. I'd love to have them run industrial and logistics admin commands - 'State owned corporations' - in addition to being governors of colonies and sectors. This would also help with the lack of leadership position between a colony and a sector, which has been asked quite a few times.
If there were separate civilian leaders/managers/specialists, it would make sense to have industrial leadership modules to add to commercial ships and the decision there would be whether you have invested enough in the leadership pipeline so that you have sufficient numbers of trained specialists to fill out all these roles, or whether you run 'poor leadership' ships & stations. Granted, somewhat minor decision but at least one that would require long-term planning.
The ability to SM create NPR minor races, right now it seems like when creating a new race through the system screen, the moment I tick NPR, the option for neutral race gets blocked. Interestingly trying to just create a neutral race results in all of the installations and stockpiles all default to 0.Neutral and minor are two different things.
The ability to SM create NPR minor races, right now it seems like when creating a new race through the system screen, the moment I tick NPR, the option for neutral race gets blocked. Interestingly trying to just create a neutral race results in all of the installations and stockpiles all default to 0.Neutral and minor are two different things.
Neutral race is a completely passive population, usually on the same body as the actual player race. It exists to simulate non-aligned countries in multi-faction game and allows all active factions to utilize that population to simulate immigration to bring in extra colonists as needed. Neutral race has no AI code, cannot have any installations and will never do anything except grow its population.
Minor race is an alien race that is created when a player race enters a system, just like a normal NPR and it will grow and expand like a normal NPR, but it will never leave its home system. It exists to create an option between a full-blown NPR and a low-tech/conventional 'NPR' which will not do research or build industry - this last option exists to simulate low-tech alien populations that can be civilized through the power of superior firepower.
Just a quick suggestion: Could there be logic implemented for civilian movement of colonists, similar to civilian installation movements? ie, could the UI on the Civilian/Flags tab include a target population, for supply or demand, after which the population is set to stable?
Just had my civilians completely drain one of my mining colonies of settlers. Kind of frustrating when I still want people there, just not as many as I had.
Thank you!
Hope you are enjoying the travel life, Steve!
As a possible alternative to one of my earlier suggestions (being able to sort the minerals window by total accessibility), I would also be amenable to the ability to export/copy the text in that window.
I can more-or-less brute-force that functionality by OCR'ing screenshots of the window, but that's obviously not ideal.
Just a quick suggestion: Could there be logic implemented for civilian movement of colonists, similar to civilian installation movements? ie, could the UI on the Civilian/Flags tab include a target population, for supply or demand, after which the population is set to stable?
Just had my civilians completely drain one of my mining colonies of settlers. Kind of frustrating when I still want people there, just not as many as I had.
Thank you!
Hope you are enjoying the travel life, Steve!
I think what you want is already implemented.
In the economics window, under the civilian/flags tab, at the top there are 3 radio buttons.
Stable or destination should prevent civilians from taking colonists (although I expect it will not change currently assigned orders).
When a colony is created, it is set as a destination. I think there is a population level (probably 10 million) where the setting is automatically changed from a destination to source, it sounds like that changeover affected your colony.
Just a quick suggestion: Could there be logic implemented for civilian movement of colonists, similar to civilian installation movements? ie, could the UI on the Civilian/Flags tab include a target population, for supply or demand, after which the population is set to stable?
Just had my civilians completely drain one of my mining colonies of settlers. Kind of frustrating when I still want people there, just not as many as I had.
Thank you!
Hope you are enjoying the travel life, Steve!
I think what you want is already implemented.
In the economics window, under the civilian/flags tab, at the top there are 3 radio buttons.
Stable or destination should prevent civilians from taking colonists (although I expect it will not change currently assigned orders).
When a colony is created, it is set as a destination. I think there is a population level (probably 10 million) where the setting is automatically changed from a destination to source, it sounds like that changeover affected your colony.
Well aware of this functionality. The problem is when I want to bring the population up from 50 M to 60 M, for example. Or if I want 10 M colonists picked up, but no more. Right now, I can have a full blown industrial colony have all 50 M population set to "Source", wanting to move the extra 5 M pop that's there, and the whole 50 M pop will be resettled very quickly when there are too many civvies. It would be awesome to have something a little more granular than what is already available.
In case anyone was curious: this works, but actually getting the text into something that Excel can work with was rather a pain - nearly as much as the OCR route, although without the worries of incorrect characters (and with the bonus of getting an entire system in one shot, rather than 42 planets at a time).As a possible alternative to one of my earlier suggestions (being able to sort the minerals window by total accessibility), I would also be amenable to the ability to export/copy the text in that window.
I can more-or-less brute-force that functionality by OCR'ing screenshots of the window, but that's obviously not ideal.
On a system by system level, you can get the mineral deposits in text form.
In the main window, in the left hand box, there is a tab called "Min Text", which has the body, mineral, and accessibility for the present system.
You can copy and paste the contents into a text file or spreadsheet.
Ability to delete prototypes tech (P) from Ship Design Window.
Ability to delete prototypes tech (P) from Ship Design Window.
You can either set them to be obsolete or if you create a research project for them you can then delete them from the research tab.
Ability to delete prototypes tech (P) from Ship Design Window.
You can either set them to be obsolete or if you create a research project for them you can then delete them from the research tab.
That is the reason behind the suggestion.
I'm sure this one has been brought up a few times by now -
We need a way to search and locate Systems on the Galactic map. I have 150 systems, it can sometimes take a while to track down a system by name alone. Often I have to take several passes at the galaxy to find one system. Maybe also interface with the Mineral Survey Window and snap to a system on double click.
I'm sure this one has been brought up a few times by now -
We need a way to search and locate Systems on the Galactic map. I have 150 systems, it can sometimes take a while to track down a system by name alone. Often I have to take several passes at the galaxy to find one system. Maybe also interface with the Mineral Survey Window and snap to a system on double click.
361 systems and climbing reporting in; I'll echo this suggestion but also add my own: bringing back zooming in/out on the galaxy map (it existed for VB6) would be amazing.
I'm sure this one has been brought up a few times by now -
We need a way to search and locate Systems on the Galactic map. I have 150 systems, it can sometimes take a while to track down a system by name alone. Often I have to take several passes at the galaxy to find one system. Maybe also interface with the Mineral Survey Window and snap to a system on double click.
361 systems and climbing reporting in; I'll echo this suggestion but also add my own: bringing back zooming in/out on the galaxy map (it existed for VB6) would be amazing.
This would also be worthwhile for the "Autoroute" checkbox on the ship movement screen. It would be nice to be able to just type the name of the system I want the fleet to go to.
More importantly, adding a suggestion: autoroute currently selects the shortest route by jumps instead of the shortest route by distance and travel time; this results in some hilariously bad autoroutes. I have a black hole in my main pipeline that if I manually add two extra jumps to enter the black hole via a different jump point I can shave dozens of billions of kilometers (6-8 weeks at 5,000km/s) off the distance and travel time. Exhibit A:
My basic suggestion is to have equal levels fall in the middle of effectiveness. Say, give jammers a +1 to effective level, so an even ECM vs ECCM shows 80% of normal performance. It's an edge to ECM, but not an overwhelming one. For decoys, instead of capping effectiveness if ECM has an edge, why not let it keep having a bigger edge? Or if that's too much, change the benchmark for full performance from equal levels to a level or two of ECM overmatch. So maybe if you're shooting 5 ECM decoys vs 5 ECCM, each decoy looks like size 3 instead of size 5.
Yeah, that would work fine. If ECCM is actually about twice as expensive as ECM, then it's reasonable to assume that you'll generally have a 1-level advantage in ECM, and the problem goes away, at least for jammers. I'd still like something else to be done with decoys, because 5 v 5 and 10 v 0 looking the same is kind of absurd.My basic suggestion is to have equal levels fall in the middle of effectiveness. Say, give jammers a +1 to effective level, so an even ECM vs ECCM shows 80% of normal performance. It's an edge to ECM, but not an overwhelming one. For decoys, instead of capping effectiveness if ECM has an edge, why not let it keep having a bigger edge? Or if that's too much, change the benchmark for full performance from equal levels to a level or two of ECM overmatch. So maybe if you're shooting 5 ECM decoys vs 5 ECCM, each decoy looks like size 3 instead of size 5.
I do generally agree that the ECM/ECCM calculations could use a bit more nuance. I also think how to achieve that nuance is trickier than it seems. One simple change could be to leverage research costs to generate a "pseudo-balance" in ECM vs ECCM at the strategic level.
That's exactly what I thought! We need 1 ton and 0.1 ton misc components! I actually prefer using them to achieve a rounded weight instead of having a fuel capacity of 213,000 liters ;DSorry dude but Steve has shot these sort of suggestions down multiple times in the past. Sure, they work wonders for the experienced user who is very careful but for everyone else, they are a major source of faulty bug reports and frustration because the player messed something up. And Steve does not want to have to code bajillion layers of security-code to prevent players from doing stupid smeg.
New suggestion:
Do not clear current orders when adding a new Template order batch. This would allow for "modular building" of orders. Say Template 1 is to load 1000 of each mineral on Earth, while Template 2 is to unload all on Ceres, then Mars. Template 1 could then be used for different locations afterward.
And ideally, it would be nice if most orders could include an option to "perform task at current location". Instead of "Load minerals on Earth", it would be "Load minerals at current location", and voilà, Template orders would be significantly more versatile.
The research requires 4000 RP.
The Hangar Deck component has 4x the capacity of the Boat Bay, and has 4x the size, 4x the cost, 4x the crew, and 4x the HTK.
In other words, a Hangar Deck is almost entirely equivalent to 4 Boat Bays.
The only difference is using 4 components at 1 HTK each vs 1 component at 4 HTK.
I guess the latter could provide a terribly slight, terribly situational advantage.
But it hardly seems worth the effort to research.
Suggestion: Improve Hangar Decks relative to Boat Bays to justify the 4k RP cost.The research requires 4000 RP.
The Hangar Deck component has 4x the capacity of the Boat Bay, and has 4x the size, 4x the cost, 4x the crew, and 4x the HTK.
In other words, a Hangar Deck is almost entirely equivalent to 4 Boat Bays.
The only difference is using 4 components at 1 HTK each vs 1 component at 4 HTK.
I guess the latter could provide a terribly slight, terribly situational advantage.
But it hardly seems worth the effort to research.
Simple idea: reduce Hangar Deck crew requirement from 12 to 9.
Reducing cryogenic transport modules capacity by a factor of ten (or some other number) would be an interesting option to slow down expansion, it always feels a little silly just how quickly you can move nearly arbitrary amounts of people to me.
To be fair it's more from a preference point of view than a mechanical one, from a mechanics point of view colonization/population transport mechanics in this game are perfectly fine. I personally just find how quickly you can shift hundreds of millions and then billions of people and think it would interesting if settling the stars was a long drown out process over the course of centuries instead of TN tech get's discovered tomorrow and before I even retire Earth is ghost town type timeline you see in the game.Reducing cryogenic transport modules capacity by a factor of ten (or some other number) would be an interesting option to slow down expansion, it always feels a little silly just how quickly you can move nearly arbitrary amounts of people to me.
Interesting.
Do you mean you can do this quickly from the game start, or do you mean that eventually you can move large amounts quickly?
It takes me decades of constant shipbuilding and shipyard expansion from the start to grow my colony ship fleet enough to merely keep up with the rate of pop growth on the HW.
Maybe after fifty years I have enough pop-moving capacity to really spread the population evenly among the HW and other major colonies.
Is that quickly? It seems a long time to me.
Reducing cryogenic transport modules capacity by a factor of ten (or some other number) would be an interesting option to slow down expansion, it always feels a little silly just how quickly you can move nearly arbitrary amounts of people to me.
Request for a new fleet order: Begin Overhaul and Join FleetYou can already do this. Give the order for overhaul and add "join fleet" after it.
I often give ships orders to return to a planet and begin overhaul, and as soon as they arrive and I receive the interrupt event, I manually drag them to a holding fleet.
It would be great if I could do this with a single order and avoid all the extra interrupts and manual fiddling.
Request for a new fleet order: Begin Overhaul and Join FleetYou can already do this. Give the order for overhaul and add "join fleet" after it.
I often give ships orders to return to a planet and begin overhaul, and as soon as they arrive and I receive the interrupt event, I manually drag them to a holding fleet.
It would be great if I could do this with a single order and avoid all the extra interrupts and manual fiddling.
It seems that civilian ships will load colonists from colonies marked as sources even if there are no destinations available. This isn't a big deal normally, but it's somewhat annoying in empires with multiple species: colony ships will fill up with one species, and if they don't have a valid destination they won't be able to carry colonists of a different species. I think it would be better for civilian colony ships to only pick up colonists once they have a valid destination, like civilian freighters.
Yes, I will redo the 'air' component of ground combat at some point, probably by introducing a new ground unit type to represent helicopters / attack aircraft / fighter etc.A bit late to the party but since you've recently started back up posting AAR's after starting your nomadic life I figured now may be a good time to start throwing ideas at you. While there have been many many suggestions for an aircraft unit type, not many actually go in depth on how to actually implement them besides broad strokes "GSF but less micro and mo' better", which is an alright start but we could definitely go deeper. The main topics to discuss is what separates an Air vehicle from a ground vehicle in terms of design and how they interact with ground units, Anti-Air, and each other in regards to the ground combat phase.
| Base Unit | Size | HP | Slots | To Hit Mod | Max Fort | Armor | Available Components |
| Ultra-Light Air Vehicle | 72 | 1.0-1.5 | 1 | 0.05 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MBL, LAV, LAA, LAG, FFD, LOG |
| Light Air Vehicle | 120 | 1.5-2.5 | 2 | 0.1 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, MBL, LAV, MAV, LAA, MAA, LAG, MAG, FFD, LOG? |
| Medium Air Vehicle | 240 | 2-4 | 3 | 0.15 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x), Armored (2.0-2.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, HAC, MBL, HB, LAV, MAV, HAV, LAA, MAA, HAA, LAG, MAG, HAG, FFD, LOG? |
| Heavy Air Vehicle | 360 | 3-5 | 4 | 0.2 | 1.0 | Unarmored (1.5x), Armored (2.0-2.5x) | CAP, HCAP, LAC, MAC, HAC, MBL, HB, SHB, LAV, MAV, HAV, SHAV, LAA, MAA, HAA, LAG, MAG, HAG, SHAG, FFD, LOG? |
| Component Name | Abbreviation | Size | Penetration | Damage | Shots |
| Light Air-to-Ground | LAG | 20 | 2-3 | 2-3 | 3-4 |
| Medium Air-to-Ground | MAG | 40 | 4-6 | 4-6 | 2 |
| Heavy Air-to-Ground | HAG | 80 | 8 | 8 | 1-2 |
| Super-Heavy Air-to-Ground | SHAG | 120 | 10 | 10 | 1 |
words
I believe aircraft should be able to equip CAP, Auto Cannon, and Anti-Air weapons as they are now (might need tweaking to AA weapon parameters), AA components obviously being for use against hostile air units, while CAP and AC would be a sort of dual purpose weapon targeting both air and ground units. For attacking ground targets I am split between giving aircraft access to Anti-Vehicle and Bombardment weapons, or giving them a new Air-to-Ground component that blends the 2 together, again I'll detail out the +/- further in the Air Combat Phase.Note that GSFs currently have access to LAC, LB, and LAA-like components as fighter pod loadouts, so there's not really a reason to preclude aircraft from using bombardment components.
Moving on though, non-combat equipment, FFD is a must. It is only the the first and foremost job of aircraft to be a scout/reconnaissance force and to direct friendly fires, from the first scout aircraft of the 1910s, to modern unmanned drones.Note that FFD only works in a frontline formation, AFAIK, so recon aircraft are limited to organic assets in frontline formations unless we change that mechanic - which we could, but I'd prefer to keep things simple and keep the impact on existing ground unit mechanics minimal.
we could also implement a new feature where if an intermediate formation is destroyed, it would cut off the supply chain from higher units to lower ones,This functionality already exists in the game if you use LVH logistics. However, this conflicts with INF logistics managed through the replacements/unit series mechanic, which is population-based and does not depend on the order of battle. I don't think it is worth reworking this mechanic and making it much less convenient in the general case to support this specific case - destruction of headquarters already has enough benefits to be worthwhile, I think.
Air Unit Base Types
Base Unit
Ultra-Light Air Vehicle
Light Air Vehicle
Medium Air Vehicle
Heavy Air Vehicle
Lastly, the first true special rules for aircraft is how they truly do not benefit from the terrain and can not physically dig in fortify their position, because well, there is no dirt in the sky.
Now for the nitty gritty of how Air-to-Air, Air-to-Ground, and Ground-to-Air combat works. I think it best to implement semi-separate Air Combat phases that precede the Direct combat, Support Fire, Ground AA, and Resupply phases already in place.
Second, they can resupply any unit globally, rather than just internal of a specific unit and its parent formations.
#1 What the hell should the 3/4 letter acronym be!?!?
The other big thing being in order to make aircraft somewhat viable and interesting in my eyes is that we have to give them very specific rule exceptions which kinda breaks Steve's design philosphy for Aurora C#,
Thank you, probably could merit its own individual suggestion thread, but I already had open as just a reply when I first started about ~60 hours ago. And don't worry I got pretty thick skin and after my last effort post forever ago try to reel back on my own abrasiveness. You do bring up some good and valid points, and I think we are both trying to think of the best and most simple ways to do this. I'd say my suggestion is focused more on using existing ground vehicle mechanics with some minor/major tweaks to replicate GSF mechanics, whereas you are trying to mesh GSF mechanics into ground combat. Ultimately its up to Steve to decide which way he wants to gowords
This is quite an effortful post and deserves far more credit than I can give it. As it happens, I shall have to suffice with a simple reply.
I'll not wade too deeply into the mechanics here, and keep my comments to a relatively high level. In short: I like the ideas, but I think it is rather too complex for the fidelity and mechanics of Aurora's ground combat as it currently stands, and I'd prefer to keep that simplicity where possible. Furthermore, I think we can accomplish a lot of this by simply repurposing the existing ground support fighter (GSF) mechanics in terms of targeting, combat, etc. so that we are adding a minimum of new mechanics and rules to the system.
A couple of mechanics notes:
Yep, I had a lot of the Changelog mechanics posts open for reference while typing everything out. The problem with the bombardment pod is that it is treated as always long range/heavy bombardment, ignoring the mechanics of the short range bombardment weapons, which if we give aircraft access to those will it require extra tuning and coding? ALso GSF also don't have a direct AV equivalent so do you not allow aircraft to equip them and will the range properties of them need to get changed up? Its why I'm partial to creating a new AG component thats a blend of both, but I don't know the code well enough to say which would be easier to adapt and why I listed both options.Quotemy wordsNote that GSFs currently have access to LAC, LB, and LAA-like components as fighter pod loadouts, so there's not really a reason to preclude aircraft from using bombardment components.
I shoulda/coulda/woulda clarified, though this was assumed. It is Forward Fire Direction after all, not Backward Fire Direction.Quotemy wordsNote that FFD only works in a frontline formation, AFAIK, so recon aircraft are limited to organic assets in frontline formations unless we change that mechanic - which we could, but I'd prefer to keep things simple and keep the impact on existing ground unit mechanics minimal.
Good catch, the replacements strategy was only half way in my mind thinking. Again, in my post in the bonus suggestions, I do have a slight disagreement with how resupply works with units being "consumed". It may be a future effort post topic for a revamp of the system to actually track its supply usage which is already done in some form with combat units tracking their 10 combat cycles before needing resupply.Quotemy wordsThis functionality already exists in the game if you use LVH logistics. However, this conflicts with INF logistics managed through the replacements/unit series mechanic, which is population-based and does not depend on the order of battle. I don't think it is worth reworking this mechanic and making it much less convenient in the general case to support this specific case - destruction of headquarters already has enough benefits to be worthwhile, I think.
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As far as my more general thoughts:I'm not opposed to the idea of flight being a capability, I think what you suggest would be far more convoluted to implement as currently all capabilities only affect the To-Hit and Hit Chances when fighting in different terrain/environment (and boarding allowing a new "environment" which is kinda iffy as it only works for offense since all ground units work defensively on board). Adding new mechanics for size/GSP/HP multipliers I would think would be significantly more code intensive rather than adding new Base Unit Types. There's plenty of space in the Ground Unit Design window for 4 more.Quotemy words
I think this is too complicated. We currently have a grand total of seven ground unit types, adding several more just for aircraft seems rather awkward. I would also suggest that it is unnecessary, and an easier approach would be to simply model air units as a capability which can be applied to any vehicle type, conferring (say) 2x size, 2x GSP, 0.5x HP, and 0.5x armor multipliers in exchange for using the air combat mechanics instead of normal ground combat mechanics. I would prefer this approach as it keeps the ground units UI simple while allowing for a lot of roleplay freedom - for example, having an armor multiplier means I could use a VEH base type and choose between light armor for 'normal' warplanes and medium armor for my A-10 Warthog equivalents. On the other hand, designing a UHV with flight capability to model a massive hovering skybase sort of aircraft is very fitting for some settings.
Using the existing unit types as the basis also means the question of weaponry is cleared up as well, and personally I see no reason to add weapon restrictions and restrict roleplay - heavier weapons are generally more specialized anyways, so I doubt we're opening up some silly exploit involving UHV aircraft with 4x SHAV or something.
Valid points, I could concede on my suggestion for the permanent hidden aircraft capability reducing the terrain factor rather than negating it outright. And while I understand the want to have aircraft protected in hangars able to be fortified, again in headcannons, you may also have to worry about your actual runways being damaged and not all your aircraft being stowed away at the same time. I think its a good trade off with aircraft essentially being glass cannons for all intents and purposesQuotemy words
Partially agreed on fortification, disagreed on terrain. I think aircraft should be able to benefit from terrain, it may not be the most "realistic" but I think a lot of headcanons imagine, say, aircraft sweeping around mountain peaks or skimming forests to fly beneath enemy radar before popping up to fire a torpedo down the exhaust port... or something more realistic. :P Again, no need to restrict it here.
As far as fortification goes, I would say it can still apply when aircraft are the target of normal ground unit fire - representing them being caught at base in a hangar, surely an airbase can be fortified to some degree? Of course, fortification should not apply when facing AA fire during the AA fire phase.
Like I said above, I had those open for referencing. I do feel like you are kinda repeating what I was proposing though. I probably should have added some more examples in my post. Currently as stands for GSF, they can be assigned to Provide Ground Support to units with fire support as bombardment does, Search and Destroy which just gives them open range on all ground units (though I'm not clear in the wording of the rule saying they can target any formation regardless of position if it factors in positional weighting), or Flak Suppression to directly target ground AA. All of these can be replicated just with the current positional, support, and FFD functions already in place for ground forces. Search and Destroy is the easiest, its just aircraft set to Frontline Attack. Ground support is also simple with setting an air formation to support. Flak suppression is a little tricky, while there are no current mechanics for GU to target specific elements, it can be pretty simply be represented by air units supporting another air unit. If the front-line aircraft are targeted (preferably those equipped with FFD) by surface to Air ordnance, then the supporting unit can engage the attacking units in the same manner as Counter Battery fire mechanics. We also have another function that GSF's lack to simulate Escort Fighters, aircraft with AA weapons supporting air units with AV/B/AG weapons and "counter battering" enemy aircraft targeted your bombers.Quotemy words
As mentioned, I would simply take the ground support fighter rules (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=C-Ground_Combat#Air_to_Ground_Combat) (including the following ground-based AA fire rules (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=C-Ground_Combat#Ground-based_AA_Fire)) and paste them onto the new Flight capability. Since those rules are already written out in sufficient detail for discussion purposes, I won't rehash them here.
One simplification here is that, since we can't set orders for ground units in the UI, I would probably use existing mechanics for bombardment and AA targeting to make this work. In short, aircraft formations can be assigned to support frontline formations or left unassigned. In most cases, regardless of assignment they have the same targeting options as HB units (aside from eliminating the target size reduction for support/rear formations, as you stated). The exception would be AA components which fire as AA weapons following the targeting rules for HAA.
This does mean the bombardment components are a tad lackluster since they won't have any special ability making up for their inflated sizes, but I think that's fine as not every component needs to be equally useful in every situation.
I did state that Air logistics should be resolved last vs internal and parent supply draw. Though like you had mentioned above, the replacement unit tactic does kinda negate the benefit of aircraft logistics being able to resupply any formation regardless of hierarchy. Once again, the consumption of whole units as supplies is a bit of a bore.Quotemy words
I would actually prefer to keep the same rules, as this makes it easier to control the flow of supplies. I suppose an alternative would be to have airborne supply distributed last in the resupply order, which would ensure it ends up where it is needed while maintaining the special flavor, but I'm not sure if that mechanic would see a lot of use in practice. Resupply is already a big enough cost that I don't see airborne supply being very cost-effective - and Aurora doesn't really model the kinds of tactical situations where airborne supply is most useful (e.g., formations aren't getting surrounded and cut off tactically, Aurora simply does not model this).
That would be acceptable if flight was a capability trait, though not a fan of it for base unit types.Quote#1 What the hell should the 3/4 letter acronym be!?!?
I'd settle for an '(A)' following the unit base class abbreviation, e.g., "LVH(A)" or "VEH(A)". Should be easy enough to pick out of a lineup.
I do feel like we are both are trying to reach the same goal just from different starting points. We both want to make a dagger, one of us is elongating a knife while the other is shortening a sword. And agreed, GSF's are just a bit too clunky for my taste (which is almost universally agreed on), and while the concept of trans-atmospheric fighters is appealing, I don't think there is a really good way to bridge the very different gameplay mechanics of Naval Combat and Ground Combat. Its best to just let fighters operate under the already existing orbital bombardment mechanics.QuoteThe other big thing being in order to make aircraft somewhat viable and interesting in my eyes is that we have to give them very specific rule exceptions which kinda breaks Steve's design philosphy for Aurora C#,
This is another major reason why I prefer to work within the existing mechanics as much as possible by treating flight as another capability and repurposing the existing GSF rules. We could keep GSFs as they are but I personally see no reason to, space-to-ground fighters can use regular weapons and rules like everybody else IMHO.
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Again, great post, and I hope this doesn't come across as being overly critical, my goal is really more to look at how we can best mesh new air units with the existing mechanics without upsetting the bucket too much and still get a satisfying flight mechanic that promotes strategic decisions and roleplay openness in equal measure.
I think this is too complicated. We currently have a grand total of seven ground unit types, adding several more just for aircraft seems rather awkward. I would also suggest that it is unnecessary, and an easier approach would be to simply model air units as a capability which can be applied to any vehicle type, conferring (say) 2x size, 2x GSP, 0.5x HP, and 0.5x armor multipliers in exchange for using the air combat mechanics instead of normal ground combat mechanics. I would prefer this approach as it keeps the ground units UI simple while allowing for a lot of roleplay freedom - for example, having an armor multiplier means I could use a VEH base type and choose between light armor for 'normal' warplanes and medium armor for my A-10 Warthog equivalents. On the other hand, designing a UHV with flight capability to model a massive hovering skybase sort of aircraft is very fitting for some settings.
Using the existing unit types as the basis also means the question of weaponry is cleared up as well, and personally I see no reason to add weapon restrictions and restrict roleplay - heavier weapons are generally more specialized anyways, so I doubt we're opening up some silly exploit involving UHV aircraft with 4x SHAV or something.
I'm not opposed to the idea of flight being a capability, I think what you suggest would be far more convoluted to implement as currently all capabilities only affect the To-Hit and Hit Chances when fighting in different terrain/environment (and boarding allowing a new "environment" which is kinda iffy as it only works for offense since all ground units work defensively on board). Adding new mechanics for size/GSP/HP multipliers I would think would be significantly more code intensive rather than adding new Base Unit Types. There's plenty of space in the Ground Unit Design window for 4 more.
Partially agreed on fortification, disagreed on terrain. I think aircraft should be able to benefit from terrain, it may not be the most "realistic" but I think a lot of headcanons imagine, say, aircraft sweeping around mountain peaks or skimming forests to fly beneath enemy radar before popping up to fire a torpedo down the exhaust port... or something more realistic. :P Again, no need to restrict it here.
As far as fortification goes, I would say it can still apply when aircraft are the target of normal ground unit fire - representing them being caught at base in a hangar, surely an airbase can be fortified to some degree? Of course, fortification should not apply when facing AA fire during the AA fire phase.
Valid points, I could concede on my suggestion for the permanent hidden aircraft capability reducing the terrain factor rather than negating it outright. And while I understand the want to have aircraft protected in hangars able to be fortified, again in headcannons, you may also have to worry about your actual runways being damaged and not all your aircraft being stowed away at the same time. I think its a good trade off with aircraft essentially being glass cannons for all intents and purposes
In the Environment tab, together with the Annual Terraform capacity, I would like to read the number of the Terraforming Istallations active on (or near) a body.
Does the issue resolve itself after a time increment? (Theoretically) as long as you've got "use max speed" checked, the fleet should speed back up to max speed once they get underway.
I've seen similar display issues when giving orders to tugs that had dropped off terraformers - their orders will give an ETA that's based on their laden speed, but they'll actually get there much faster.
It would be nice to be able to toggle a checkbox on the fleet orders screen to control if finishing shore leave stops auto-turns.To build on this, a screen that lists all events, and has a checkmark for "does this stop time? y/n" would be ideal (although probably a lot more work than I'd expect.)
...a screen that lists all events, and has a checkmark for "does this stop time? y/n" would be ideal (although probably a lot more work than I'd expect.)
Even better if the screen lets us import/export our preferred interrupts.
Engine technology:
I know this topic has already been raised, but every time I play I wait for the engines to reach at least the level of the Nuclear Pulse Engine.
Maybe it would be worth raising the cost of researching the initial stages of the engines, that would extend the time they can be used, both by players and AI?
For RP purposes, it would be great if a module for a ship could be designed to assign a Scientist and/or Administrator.How about the ability of any misc component to "house" any type of commander?
Engine technology:
I know this topic has already been raised, but every time I play I wait for the engines to reach at least the level of the Nuclear Pulse Engine.
Maybe it would be worth raising the cost of researching the initial stages of the engines, that would extend the time they can be used, both by players and AI?
Counterpoint: I use NRE tech quite a bit in my conventional-start games. I also play with limited research admin + 50% research speed, so even developing NTE tech takes some time during which I can build quite a lot of NRE-level freighters and colony ships. So personally, I prefer things as they are since I would not want to drag out the conventional starts even longer than they already are.
Also, some projects have names that are so long that you can't see the appended part in the list.
Example: "Max Tracking Time for Bonus vs Missiles: 30 Second..."
On the Movement Orders tab of the Naval Organization window, the "Delete Template" button and the "Delete" (fleet) button are right next to each other.
This positioning, despite the subsequent confirmation dialog, leads to me occasionally deleting a fleet when I intend to delete a template.
I think mistakes would be less likely if the second button were labeled "Delete Fleet."
Request for a new fleet order: Begin Overhaul and Join Fleet
I often give ships orders to return to a planet and begin overhaul, and as soon as they arrive and I receive the interrupt event, I manually drag them to a holding fleet.
It would be great if I could do this with a single order and avoid all the extra interrupts and manual fiddling.
QOL Suggestion:
Naval Organization window, Fleet -> Movement Orders tab
Double clicking any order in the list of the fleet's current orders should remove all orders after that one (perhaps with a confirmation prompt).
Sometimes I need to trim a long list of orders back to a specific point.
Repeatedly clicking the Remove Last button is the only way to do it currently.
Sometimes that's a LOT of clicks, and sometimes a user overclicks and then has to re-create the unintentionally removed orders.
If at all possible I would like the ability to move minerals with civilian ships in the same manner that we can move installations I.e. set an amount for pickup/delivery. Mass drivers are great for intra-system mineral transport but it becomes tedious to transport minerals between systems - you have to rely on your own vessels for that. I think it is logical and consistent to give civilians the ability to transport minerals and it would alleviate some of the current micromanaging for larger empires. I would still build freighters for initial colonization and for restricted systems where I don’t want the civilians to go.
...Either make it so the System View open and the System map opens the system as well or add a button in the System view to focus the System Map on the selected system.
Something that I really have wanted in the game for a very long time is the possibility to say double click on a system in the galactic map which then open the system map with that system.
I really want to use the Galaxy Map to orient myself around the world and not have to remember the name of all the systems and selecting them from the drop down list. This really would be a huge improvement in quality of life for me and likely for other people as well.
Currently double clicking on the system opens up the system view. Either make it so the System View open and the System map opens the system as well or add a button in the System view to focus the System Map on the selected system.
Likewise on the "Naval Organization" menu there is a "Select on Map" toggle switch... the issue I have with this is that it is not saved. Please make this toggle stick when I select it.
The best solution would likely be to add the same toggle to the "System View" menu as you have in the "Naval Organization" menu and make them stick when selected so it is automatically selected if you close the window if you selected it previously.
Both of these things would be a huge improvement for the navigation between windows for me.
I've added the Tactical Map as an option to the existing right-click menu on the Galactic map, and also added the option to centre on fleets in the system.
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg169909#msg169909
Any chance you could force the new option to be first in the list? Sometimes my right-click lists are absolutely enormous.
I've added the Tactical Map as an option to the existing right-click menu on the Galactic map, and also added the option to centre on fleets in the system.
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg169909#msg169909
Awesome!
Any chance you could force the new option to be first in the list? Sometimes my right-click lists are absolutely enormous.
On the Research tab, clicking the Assign New button will cause the project name to be appended with "(N)".
I suggest prepending it to the project name instead, to make it easier to find such projects when the list is long
Also, some projects have names that are so long that you can't see the appended part in the list.
Example: "Max Tracking Time for Bonus vs Missiles: 30 Second..."
Given by the number of posts that I've seen pop up, both on this forum and on Reddit, over the years; I think it might make sense to have any NPR that's currently marked as Neutral to automatically be set to Hostile when they open fire on your ships or kill a ground unit.
This should help curb at least one of the causes of the common message of "why can't I shoot back?"
With the current behavior or with a new toggle switch, in either case the solution is "RTFM" and, since if we're being honest here the "FM" is not very readable maybe some better or more accessible documentation would be useful. That said, either way, it is a lesson a player learns once and then (usually) remembers for the next time.You bring up good points - I've never fooled around with multi-race or cohabitating with NPR starts, so didn't consider that.
Adding an informative event (without interruption) that a given ground troop has been unloaded/transported from a transport to a given planet.
This is useful especially for me when I am distributing several ground defensive troops in several places and it takes time for the transport to reach the destination and return (which I may forget), however what It would be important is the unloading info and that's missing.
Would it be possible to group "Neutral Contact Updates" by Race, e.g. "Neutral Contact Update: Vorpaller Conspiracy"? That way we could hide notifications for races we're not concerned about and not hide ones we're keeping an eye on?
If at all possible I would like the ability to move minerals with civilian ships in the same manner that we can move installations I.e. set an amount for pickup/delivery. Mass drivers are great for intra-system mineral transport but it becomes tedious to transport minerals between systems - you have to rely on your own vessels for that. I think it is logical and consistent to give civilians the ability to transport minerals and it would alleviate some of the current micromanaging for larger empires. I would still build freighters for initial colonization and for restricted systems where I don’t want the civilians to go.
I think the last time this came up, the issue raised was how to configure the civilian AI so that the freighters aren't constantly running off to random rocks to pick up 25 tons of vendarite when you'd prefer them to ship 12,000 tons of gallicite from some important colony instead. One suggestion I made at the time was to give civilians a dedicated class of mineral haulers which are just small shuttles (say 5,000 tons capacity) instead of big hulking freighters, however this conflicts with the general trend to use larger ship types to reduce pathfinding/detection slowdown.
With the new colonist transport code, maybe something similar could be added for mineral shipping to resolve this, e.g., the payout for a mineral shipment is scaled by the fraction of the ship's hold that is filled, so civilians will only prefer to pick up minerals if there's enough of them to make a real profit.
| Current Warhead Tech Name | Current Focus Tech Name | Suggested Focus Tech Name |
| Gun-Type Fission Warhead: Strength: 2 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 10K | Infrared Laser Warhead |
| Implosion Fission Warhead: Strength: 3 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 20K | Visible Light Laser Warhead |
| Levitated-pit Implosion Warhead: Strength: 4 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 30K | Near Ultraviolet Laser Warhead |
| Fusion-boosted Fission Warhead: Strength: 5 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 40K | Ultraviolet Laser Warhead |
| Two-stage Thermonuclear Warhead: Strength: 6 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 50K | Far Ultraviolet Laser Warhead |
| Three-stage Thermonuclear Warhead: Strength: 8 x MSP | Laser Warhead Focus - 60K | Soft X-Ray Laser Warhead |
Bomb pumped lasers do in fact use lasing rods which produce the laser pulse before they are destroyed.
There are also reactor driven lasers
...Casaba Howitzer
Also worth mentioning that if we are being realistic the focus and wavelength techs are the wrong way round, the more energetic photons would do more damge while a larger focal array should let you keep the beam focused at a greater distance
Please add conditional orders for "fuel less than 55%" and "fuel less than 60%". Sometimes during a geosurvey, the body will move far enough away that 50% fuel won't get you back home, and sometimes your fuel source's orbit is in a bad position.
It is fairly common for several ruins found near each other to be from the same civilisation. I am usually suprised when I find the first set of ruins which is different from the ones I have already found
Exactly how unlucky have I been??
Quote from: Andrew link=topic=13404. msg170131#msg170131 date=1718214962It is fairly common for several ruins found near each other to be from the same civilisation. I am usually suprised when I find the first set of ruins which is different from the ones I have already found
Wait, really? I thought they were always one-per-civ currently! Exactly how unlucky have I been??
From what I remember from reading Steve's diplomacy change-log for C#, when NPCs consider your claim to a system, they weigh whether they've seen you have a large colony in that system, what tonnage of military ships they've seen there (or around in general), etc. Assuming they don't automatically "know" about your colonies in a system for the purpose of that check, could we get an option to "announce" the location of a colony to neutral/friendly NPCs, the same way we do for ships by activating the ship's transponder? That way you could say "Hey, I have this giant colony here that you haven't noticed because you never come to this side of the system, so respect my claim please."
The NPR will base this on actual populations, not currently detected populations, as it is assumed you will provide the necessary evidence to back up your demand.Essentially the system works as you suggest, "Hey, here's our colony, it's about yea big, go away please kthxbai."
I was thinking, I am very methodic, I like play slow and starting building big capital ships since the beginning of the game (even at conventional start) and then bigger and bigger which at some point takes time to have these ships ready (and this reflects the reality so all good), but, what could be added is the possibility to speed up the process in exchange of a good amount of money (lets be honest guys, we all have a lot of money at some point of the game) which simulate the war effort.
Let's say you are constructing a ship which would be completed in 2 years, we could think a button where in exchange of 10000 wealth, the completition is reduced of 5%. (These numbers are just an example).
The process could be used once or twice, depends of the length of construction or the ship size.
Smaller ships would benefit of one possibility only, while let's say, 60000t would be 3.
Also the cost could be different, with second, third and so on possibility to be much expensive then previous one to simulate the increasing wealth, need and possibility of the state.
Diplomatically speaking you should get "credit" for being seen attacking an NPC's enemies. I.e. if the United States of Alice are at war with the Confederacy of Bob, and you see them fighting and attack Bob's ships, the USA should like you better. Maybe it could be set up as a large short-term boost (enough to make even a mild enemy temporarily not shoot at you for a few hours/days?) that wears off really quickly (or as soon as you next shoot at them) and a longer-term boost that wears off at the normal rate.
I'm suggesting this because in my current game I'm getting yelled at for being in an NPC's space while I'm fighting shoulder to shoulder with them to contain a pretty gnarly spoiler that, before I stepped in, was wrecking them. Not that I'm being entirely altruistic: I really don't want said spoiler to grow so big eating the NPC's wrecked fleet that I can't contain them later. But still, it'd be nice if they'd stop yelling at me to respect their property rights while I'm saving their bacon.
1. An informative event when supplies or fuel on colony goes below a set threshold.
2. For fleets to remember "Set Speed" when they finish overhaul. This is useful for patrol ships that go through routs on reduces speed to conserve fuel.
If you mount a turret to a hull with faster speed than the tracking speed of the turret, the speed of the weapon should be the speed of the hull, just as if it were hull-mounted. After all, the crew could just lock the turret and swing the ship.
No. Inertia of the ships prevent this.
If you want to rotate several thousands of tons, the mass of a ship, you must spend enormous amount of energy; and the same quantity of energy must be spent to stop the rotation: it needs powerful motors.
The mass of a turret is much, much less than one of a ship, so it is much easier to rotate and stop a turret, and keep it aligned towards the target: just some gears are enough to do this.
Then, the speed of a ship can be achieved in a straigh line. While the tracking speed of a turret is the speed of its target, so this speed is turned into the rotation speed of the turret, which is easily manageable.
No. Inertia of the ships prevent this.
If you want to rotate several thousands of tons, the mass of a ship, you must spend enormous amount of energy; and the same quantity of energy must be spent to stop the rotation: it needs powerful motors.
The mass of a turret is much, much less than one of a ship, so it is much easier to rotate and stop a turret, and keep it aligned towards the target: just some gears are enough to do this.
Then, the speed of a ship can be achieved in a straigh line. While the tracking speed of a turret is the speed of its target, so this speed is turned into the rotation speed of the turret, which is easily manageable.
This is, maybe, a nice justification for a design from first principles, but it's already the case in this game that hull-mounted weapons use ship speed as tracking speed.
an alternative would be something off in the warnings corner that says "Hey numpty, you have a turret slower than your ship, are you sure you want that?"
just like we get a warning in that corner if we have a jump drive too small to jump itself
1. An informative event when supplies or fuel on colony goes below a set threshold.
For me it feels highly unrealistic that you can use 100% of all Construction Capacity on a single project, and currently me + alot of other players often use "houserules" or enforced restrictions on ourself to disallow it. At least for larger main colonies.
So what if you had to assign a Commander (Civilian Administrator) for each Construction Project similar to how we do with research and said Administrators Admin rating was used as a cap for how many of the total Cap % that could be allocated to the Project?
1. When a production admin dies/retires/removed, the project will be dissolved the same as with research projects (for the same reason - zeroed cap). The player will need to remember what a project it was to restore it. Yet production projects are harder to memorize, because it's item and quantity, not just item.
Starting to wonder, how far are we from implementing the 3rd conditional order?
In the Galactic Map, in the Overview tab, I would like to recognize the JPs having a jump gate.
A different color of the name or of the dot in the mini-map, or a label next the name.
In this way, it's just evident where a stabilisation ship is needed, without opening each system map.
...
That already exists ...
I mean in the list on the left (or in the mini-map there), not between the systems in the map.
It would be nice to have systems sorted by importance/population size when using the "Autoroute to system" option (similar to how bodies inside a system are sorted with Colonies on top). When you reach 100/200+ systems the list starts to get pretty long, and "Sol" tend to get filtered far far below all the numbered systems ::)
I probably could rename key systems as a workaround but I prefer to not do that since it looks smegty.
You should probably at least name the systems that start their name with numbers as those are extra confusing.
This actually makes me think of another suggestion on that front - in the Rename System button, it'd be nice to be able to auto-pick a name from the selected theme list. Should hopefully be easy for him to add a button like that.
It would be nice to have systems sorted by importance/population size when using the "Autoroute to system" option (similar to how bodies inside a system are sorted with Colonies on top). When you reach 100/200+ systems the list starts to get pretty long, and "Sol" tend to get filtered far far below all the numbered systems ::)
I probably could rename key systems as a workaround but I prefer to not do that since it looks smegty.
In the Galactic Map, in the Overview tab, I would like to recognize the JPs having a jump gate.
A different color of the name or of the dot in the mini-map, or a label next the name.
In this way, it's just evident where a stabilisation ship is needed, without opening each system map.
That's brilliant, even showing number of Automines/DSTS in the system!! :o ;D ;D
Edit:
Although CMC systems probably won't show up normally since they require a population of at least 10m to spawn unless this is outdated:
"That system body must be in a system with at least one population of ten million and..."
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg110347#msg110347
I never play with those things permanently on. I toggle them on and off to get a quick overview of what the situation vis-a-vis exploration or whatever is.
Populated systems are shown first, followed by those that don't have populations but do have automated mines, CMC, etc.Yes, that was my point. :) The only situation a CMC system without population can exist should be if that population was wiped out after the CMC was spawned, so it would almost never be shown.
Any ship loading or unloading colonists will interact only with the surface population, although the ship with Ark Modules could load colonists that a different ship has just unloaded. Depending on playtest, I may also add load/unload colonist orders that have an Ark ship as a target, although I suspect this would be seldom used in practice. Ark Modules will more likely load colonists once and then retain them indefinitely (with the exception being an orbital colony that builds its own Ark ships).
As the population in Ark modules is awake and functional, there will be some population growth if there is space capacity. This growth will be at an annual rate of 5% x (Space Available / Total Capacity). For example, if an Ark Ship is only carrying 75% of capacity, the annual pop growth will be 1.25%. Available space is likely to be a rare situation, but it could happen after damage and repair, or if an Ark loads a surface population less than its capacity.
When viewing a ship class that is locked, if you click on a component it causes a pop-up message that you can't edit a locked class. That's fine, but it prevents you for viewing the details of the component in the lower right window. Instead you have to go find it in the component browser.
Could the code be changed to update the component details in the window to the component you selected and THEN display the pop-up about not being able to edit locked classes?
When viewing a ship class that is locked, if you click on a component it causes a pop-up message that you can't edit a locked class. That's fine, but it prevents you for viewing the details of the component in the lower right window. Instead you have to go find it in the component browser.
Could the code be changed to update the component details in the window to the component you selected and THEN display the pop-up about not being able to edit locked classes?
Seconded, Steve please I am begging you
Right now it's a "nuisance" message that I consciously ignore while unconsciously moving the mouse to the "copy class" button so I don't have to find the component in the components list.
Minor ask, but I'd like to be able to name my administrator ranks. For example, instead of Administrator rank 9, I'd like to be able to rename it "Emperor".
In the Shipyards tab, could we get a vertical whitespace buffer between naval, commercial, and repair yards, to make it a bit easier to visually parse this screen?
In the Shipyards tab, could we get a vertical whitespace buffer between naval, commercial, and repair yards, to make it a bit easier to visually parse this screen?
Like this?
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/ShipyardBlankLine.png)
Allow ships to be built into naval admin commands.
Instead of being built to a target fleet, new ships could have the option to be built to a naval admin command. Once built, they would be formed into a single-ship fleet with the ship name (the same way detaching a single ship from an existing fleet currently names the new fleet) which is placed under that admin command.
This would help manage some of the micromanagement involved with managing shipbuilding for large empires, since building into a Shipyard Fleet still requires clicking to detach and scrolling + dragging the detached ship to the proper place in the hierarchy, which can be tedious for ships intended to operate alone (e.g., survey ships, tankers, stabilization ships, industrial ships which will be immediately redeployed, etc.)
I would suggest that admin commands be color-coded as green in the shipyard drop-down menu to make it easier to parse the list of fleets and commands.
I've been using 1000 and 2000 ton fast interceptors with a particle beam/lance in previous games. I'm likely to create a spinal laser equivalent in my current campaign. The weapon failure rules make them a little less powerful than they were.
In the Commanders window, when we're trying to pick new commanders for ships, can we get a checkbox somewhere to only display unassigned commanders? I'm setting up my initial fleet right now, so I have no desire to reassign anyone, and I've got to do a lot of scrolling to find the available candidates.
Allow ships to be built into naval admin commands.
Instead of being built to a target fleet, new ships could have the option to be built to a naval admin command. Once built, they would be formed into a single-ship fleet with the ship name (the same way detaching a single ship from an existing fleet currently names the new fleet) which is placed under that admin command.
This would help manage some of the micromanagement involved with managing shipbuilding for large empires, since building into a Shipyard Fleet still requires clicking to detach and scrolling + dragging the detached ship to the proper place in the hierarchy, which can be tedious for ships intended to operate alone (e.g., survey ships, tankers, stabilization ships, industrial ships which will be immediately redeployed, etc.)
I would suggest that admin commands be color-coded as green in the shipyard drop-down menu to make it easier to parse the list of fleets and commands.
This one's a bit out of left field, but would it be possible to lock Aestusium and Frigusium behind technologies? Starting tech feels pretty real-world realistic in most cases, but those two magic gases are available right at game start, and that feels too easy to me. Nothing too crazy, maybe 5k RP each, but a bit of a speed bump. (Plus, it'd fill out the Biology tech tree a bit.)
Also, is there a reason why water vapor isn't a greenhouse gas? If that causes mechanical issues, that's fine, but otherwise I think that might make a good safe greenhouse gas for us to crank out in the early game, to make up for the lack of Aestusium. It's certainly a powerful warming agent IRL. CO2 plus H2O is probably enough for Mars and Luna to get habitable if H2O is turned into a GHG, and it'll at least make a dent in the CCs for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
(And while we're playing around with mechanics here, maybe make sulfur dioxide an anti-GHG? Again, it certainly is IRL, and it'll add a few options for terraforming.)
Might be worth thinking about some other ways to allow techs to more effectively manipulate temperatures as well.
I'm lacking scientific knowledge here, but for me it feels highly plausible that advanced Sci Fi techs would allow for more efficient compounds, addatives or other means increasing the greenhouse effect (besides the current techline to just increase how quickly gases can be released into the atmosphere).
This one's a bit out of left field, but would it be possible to lock Aestusium and Frigusium behind technologies? Starting tech feels pretty real-world realistic in most cases, but those two magic gases are available right at game start, and that feels too easy to me. Nothing too crazy, maybe 5k RP each, but a bit of a speed bump. (Plus, it'd fill out the Biology tech tree a bit.)
Also, is there a reason why water vapor isn't a greenhouse gas? If that causes mechanical issues, that's fine, but otherwise I think that might make a good safe greenhouse gas for us to crank out in the early game, to make up for the lack of Aestusium. It's certainly a powerful warming agent IRL. CO2 plus H2O is probably enough for Mars and Luna to get habitable if H2O is turned into a GHG, and it'll at least make a dent in the CCs for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
(And while we're playing around with mechanics here, maybe make sulfur dioxide an anti-GHG? Again, it certainly is IRL, and it'll add a few options for terraforming.)
The 'magic' gases were added because there are no good options for real GH and AHG gases. CO2, Methane, SO2, etc. are all dangerous gases, so even if you terraform a planet, it will still be CC2+.
Water Vapour is the only one that isn't, but it is involved in the evaporation and condensation cycle, so it will quickly exit the atmosphere in most cases.
I could make the 'magic' gases researchable, although I would probably reduce the cost of terraforming modules as well to make sure that terraforming isn't too expensive. I understand the point though about them being not real world at the start.
A way to let the civilian fleet transport minerals and fuel between colonies.
- Supply / demand system like we have for installations
- Extended with "maintain minimal mineral reserves". minimal reserves level dictated by the minerals tab.
- Extended with "maintain minimal Fueld reserves". We should be able to set this for each colony.
One option is building orbital installations that direct more sunlight on to the surface, or block it. They would need to be very large, but that doesn't necessarily mean expensive. They would be hard to move though, so you would likely have to move in place.
Open to ideas.
I think the problem would be finding a method that works within the game mechanics and is more efficient in certain situations than the existing terraforming mechanics - or something that goes beyond the limits of the current mechanics.
Might be worth thinking about some other ways to allow techs to more effectively manipulate temperatures as well.
I'm lacking scientific knowledge here, but for me it feels highly plausible that advanced Sci Fi techs would allow for more efficient compounds, addatives or other means increasing the greenhouse effect (besides the current techline to just increase how quickly gases can be released into the atmosphere).
One option is building orbital installations that direct more sunlight on to the surface, or block it. They would need to be very large, but that doesn't necessarily mean expensive. They would be hard to move though, so you would likely have to move in place.
Deliberately adding dust through bombardment works too. Causing volcanic eruptions would add dust - perhaps a tech for tectonically active worlds.
Open to ideas. Redirecting comets or asteroids, even tiny ones, is not really an option within the game mechanics. A 1km comet would be hundreds of millions of tons.
I think the problem would be finding a method that works within the game mechanics and is more efficient in certain situations than the existing terraforming mechanics - or something that goes beyond the limits of the current mechanics.
When a commander dies, can that show up in the same event type as retirement, not the same event type as mild health issues? Or split "death" into its own event type, if you prefer.
Also, I'm not sure how this would work, but I'd love to be able to hide notifications about unassigned commanders. I don't usually care much about their skills increasing or their health worsening, but that's a lot of what the event log shows during quieter periods.
Could the NPC commercial ship designs be updated to include a small but reasonable amount of MSP? I routinely capture commercial NPC ships and then can't repair even a single engine because they don't carry any MSP beyond what's in the required single Eng bay.
Could the NPC commercial ship designs be updated to include a small but reasonable amount of MSP? I routinely capture commercial NPC ships and then can't repair even a single engine because they don't carry any MSP beyond what's in the required single Eng bay.
This doesn't make any sense - why would the NPRs, logically, design their ships in a less optimal way (slightly bigger, slightly more expensive ships + the cost of supplying this MSP) merely so that their enemies can be less inconvenienced after capturing all of their ships?
The reverse suggestion - forcing player commercial ship designs to include a small but reasonable amount of MSP so that NPRs can capture them and repair a couple of engines afterwards - is quite obviously silly and would never be implemented. I don't think it makes sense to force the NPRs do something that players generally do not want to do (not to discount that some players might put MSP on some commercial ships for other reasons - but this is definitely not a universal design paradigm).
Doing a ground invasion of an alien home world, and the information is overwhelming. Would it be possible to handle ground combat reports in a separate tab of the ground forces window, rather than (or in addition to) via the event list? When the enemy has dozens of unit types, the paragraph format of estimated ground forces is extremely difficult to absorb. It would be a lot easier if it were presented in table format in a specific tab of the ground forces window.
I know UI isn't super high on the list of priorities, but hopefully Steve will be doing a home world invasion in his current game and take pity on us!
Unfortunately I did have most of the events off, just the estimate of enemy ground forces, the summary for attack, the summary for defense, and intel updates. The issue I was having was struggling to understand how well or poorly it was going, since there were so many types of enemy units for which the quantities was being listed. I wish I'd taken a screenshot; I'll see if the prior save is part way through the fight and grab an example.
3. Change the standing order associated with rescuing life pods (and salvaging) automatically (which is a great idea!) to check for nearest life pod at completion of most recent order, rather than waiting for the next construction tick (or whatever the current trigger is, not 100% sure. It appears to pick up the next job after 3 hours in my current game, where I have the construction period set to either 1 or 2 days, can't remember which)
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They keep closing past their detonation point during the increment when they detonate. ...
From another discussion, about laser warheads:...
They keep closing past their detonation point during the increment when they detonate. ...
So, in 2.5.1, are they more powerful than expected, as they detonate at smaller distances from the targets?
This makes the suggestion: is it possible to add a selection of the explosion distance for the laser warheads?
The nearer to the target, the more energy arrives on it, so more potential damage can be done, but at higher risk to be intercepted.
Might be worth thinking about some other ways to allow techs to more effectively manipulate temperatures as well.
I'm lacking scientific knowledge here, but for me it feels highly plausible that advanced Sci Fi techs would allow for more efficient compounds, addatives or other means increasing the greenhouse effect (besides the current techline to just increase how quickly gases can be released into the atmosphere).
One option is building orbital installations that direct more sunlight on to the surface, or block it. They would need to be very large, but that doesn't necessarily mean expensive. They would be hard to move though, so you would likely have to move in place.
Deliberately adding dust through bombardment works too. Causing volcanic eruptions would add dust - perhaps a tech for tectonically active worlds.
Open to ideas. Redirecting comets or asteroids, even tiny ones, is not really an option within the game mechanics. A 1km comet would be hundreds of millions of tons.
I think the problem would be finding a method that works within the game mechanics and is more efficient in certain situations than the existing terraforming mechanics - or something that goes beyond the limits of the current mechanics.
Proposal: Galaxy-wide Factory Production Speed Modifier
What: Provide an option at game creation and at the game selection screen that allows the player to modify the galaxy-wide factory production modifier for all races, in the same way that research, terraforming or survey speed modifiers do currently.
How: The race information window already provides this sort of functionality, however, it is limited only to the races that the player can modify. As such, NPRs are not affected, potentially giving the player races unintended advantages. This is technical and so beyond my purview, but I presume it would be simple enough to copy the same logic that applies to the other mentioned modifiers to achieve the desired effect. Actual item costs would remain the same.
Why: Allow players to speed up (or slow down) the eXpansion side of Aurora, for both the human and NPRs, without providing an unfair advantage to the player (which can be done by changing the race-specific industrial modifier). At low-to-mid tech levels, particularly if using lowered research rates or the limited research administration option, even modest expansion can take quite a while, which is both nice in some ways and frustrating in others.
I believe that an optional modifier to expansion can provide willing players with more exciting experiences due to NPRs becoming more powerful, impactful and present in larger scales sooner or for the feeling of slow, arduous progress to be enhanced even more, if desired.
Proposal
Seconded because I have no idea why this is a race modifier and not a global one.
Proposal
Seconded because I have no idea why this is a race modifier and not a global one.
Third it, but I would not move that to a global but add the global modifier.
I like it as a race modifier, as that can really give some interesting diversity. I'm currently playing an 2M RP start with only 500m pops, 0.2 pop capacity and bonus modifiers for research and industry for testing. Has a different feeling and unique challenges.
How hard would it be to implement a game-start option to scaled the research cost for ship components by the Research Speed setting.
That way, we would have the option to play a game where theoretical research takes longer, but component design research isn't such a pain point.
Boost factor for engines in the name or description in the component design screen since that's one of the three most important characteristics about an engine along with it's power rating. Just something like x1.5 at the end of the name after engine power.
It would be great to have a new Move to System Requiring Geosurvey or Gravsurvey standing order.
It could be used as a secondary standing order to complement Survey Next Three Bodies or Locations primary standing order and greatly help with survey ships automation.
It would be great to have a new Move to System Requiring Geosurvey or Gravsurvey standing order.
It would be great to have a new Move to System Requiring Geosurvey or Gravsurvey standing order.
I'm afraid I don't understand this question ?
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/402321466839793664/1267118769780555971/image.png?ex=66a79fd0&is=66a64e50&hm=01c05714478ae5edae9204ab0e06b846fa6b97169266123e0e6dd685aa2194a3&)
This is one of my survey ships, jump capable, and it's fully automated ?
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OP is asking for both geo and grav in a single order, which currently we do not have.
Quote...
OP is asking for both geo and grav in a single order, which currently we do not have.
Order "Survey Next Three Bodies or Locations" should be enough: if a ship can travel to an unsurveyed system, it contains both move and survey actions.
Is the ship jump-capable? if it isn't, at least one of the jump points in the system is it stabilised?
If your ship can't leave the system, you get that message.
I suppose I'm obligated to ask: a SM way to transfer officers to another empire, and an SM way to transfer colonies to another empire.
It's a recurring suggestion, but it's one that I'd benefit greatly from.
A way to transfer colonies to another empire.
I suppose I'm obligated to ask: a SM way to transfer officers to another empire, and an SM way to transfer colonies to another empire.
It's a recurring suggestion, but it's one that I'd benefit greatly from.
Colony transfer is the final frontier for multiple-player-race campaigns. @Steve plz
Hi Steve
Not for this patch but would you consider dedicating a patch to just QOL improvements. No new features per say just adjustments to what is already there.
Creating a new thread for just QOL suggestions to get focused ideas from the community could help.
New menus or templates options, potential ways to reduce repetitive mouse clicks that sort of stuff.
Hi Steve
Not for this patch but would you consider dedicating a patch to just QOL improvements. No new features per say just adjustments to what is already there.
Creating a new thread for just QOL suggestions to get focused ideas from the community could help.
New menus or templates options, potential ways to reduce repetitive mouse clicks that sort of stuff.
I'm not organized enough to do that :)
Updates tend to get done when:QoL changes tend to be done as a result of one of the above triggers. Aurora is a hobby, so I don't take a planned or rigourous approach. I program when I am in the mood for it and usually work on things that I find interesting - unless there is a major issue that needs fixing.
- I need them for my own campaigns
- I see a good suggestion that is quick to implement
- I have a burst of enthusiasm and start reading through the suggestions list
- I decide that something isn't working well, or I am persuaded by players, and I work on a major update, like the recent missile changes
What about an Econ tab similar to Empire Mining, but for research?
Show all projects underway, lab assignments, etc. at all colonies.
Would make it easier to keep track of research efforts when you've distributed a lot of labs to various construct locations.
When giving fleet orders, the default order given when double-clicking an uncolonized body is Geological Survey.
If you inadvertently give such an order to a fleet without a geo sensor, the fleet will orbit the body indefinitely, accomplishing nothing (presumably trying to figure out how to perform this survey that the boss asked them to do).
For me (and maybe most players?) most geo survey orders arise from the use of standing orders, not manually.
Could the default order for uncolonized bodies be changed to a simple move order?
Is the ship jump-capable? if it isn't, at least one of the jump points in the system is it stabilised?
If your ship can't leave the system, you get that message.
Ship is jump capable.
Could you double check if survey next three bodies or locations standing order causes your ships to change system on their own if there is nothing to survey?
I need a move to a system requiring xxx secondary order to make that happen.
I'm attaching a screenshot of my setup.
Is the ship jump-capable? if it isn't, at least one of the jump points in the system is it stabilised?
If your ship can't leave the system, you get that message.
Ship is jump capable.
Could you double check if survey next three bodies or locations standing order causes your ships to change system on their own if there is nothing to survey?
I need a move to a system requiring xxx secondary order to make that happen.
I'm attaching a screenshot of my setup.
Hi.
I've assigned the order "Survey Next Three Bodies or Locations" to all the survey ships. It works: ships move to unsurveied sites.
In particular, I had geo and grav ships stucked in a system: no jump-able, no jump gates.
When the first JG has build, they moved to systems around.
BUT, after the order, a couple of grav ships started to try to perform geo survey (images atteched), even if they don't have geo sensors onboard!!
I report this in the bugs thread.
Simple suggestion regarding tactics of a particular spoiler.
Please use spoiler tags when replying.
The Raider's scout/survey ship (~9.8kt, 90% cloaked, ~5400km/s) seems to always pursue the closest target.
This makes it possible to endlessly kite the scout with a faster ship.
Even with early tech, faster ships can be built very cheaply and deployed to all systems.
Then, when a Raider scout arrives, it can be kited endlessly until a fleet can be brought in with sufficient firepower to destroy the scout.
This greatly diminishes the threat the Raider scouts present.
Is it reasonable to modify the Raider scout's tactics so that it does not pursue any ship that can match or exceed its own speed?
That feels like "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to me. If you know this game well enough to abuse the AI, and decide to build a dedicated class of AI-abuser ships in advance, then you know that the game's not actually about the challenge of beating AI opponents in a fair fight. It's always going to have holes like that, because it's not like Steve has a team of full-time AI coders in his back pocket (and for that matter, even a lot of AAA games have holes like that, despite them actually literally having full-time AI coders).
If he can come up with a quick, simple, and effective fix, then sure, that's great. But I doubt it's anywhere near that easy.
I think Steve can determine if the juice is worth the squeeze, or even if this is the juice he's after, without you harshing on my mellow.
How about you play the game your way, I'll play it my way, and we won't take anyone to task in a suggestions thread for having badwrongfun?
That way we both enjoy the game how we like, toss ideas out to Steve as we have them, and no negative responses will discourage other players from submitting suggestions.
After all, the more players contributing their voices in this space, the better for the game, and the more fun we all get to have, regardless of differences in play style.
I always considered infraatructure to be life support equipment, not necessarily hardened buildings. Things like oxygen pumps, heating, etc.
Reinforced construction is something we already do with conventional materials, and there's plenty of places in the game where conventional materials are implied but not visible. A CC=0 planet doesn't require infrastructure, but the materials for all the houses and such down there must have come from somewhere...
I would not go that far. After all, nothing is stopping us from creating a colony on CC=50 hellhole and dumping millions of people there without infrastructure. I do agree that volcanism should play some sort of role in colony cost and/or terraforming etc but jsut disabling colonies is the wrong approach, IMHO.I always considered infraatructure to be life support equipment, not necessarily hardened buildings. Things like oxygen pumps, heating, etc.
Reinforced construction is something we already do with conventional materials, and there's plenty of places in the game where conventional materials are implied but not visible. A CC=0 planet doesn't require infrastructure, but the materials for all the houses and such down there must have come from somewhere...
I see this, and I agree with it broadly, but I think the other appropriate course is to just disallow colonization for tectonically overactive planets.
It feels a bit odd/inconcistent that missile decoys also are automatically equipped with retargeting if the missile is and can stick around to make infinite amounts of attacks with the missile, while ship launched decoys only stick around for a single 5sec increment. Ship launched decoys are much much larger and more expensive so how come they are so much more primitive than the decoys acompanying missiles?
Any missiles that survive CIWS and successfully roll their Chance to Hit will be checked to see if they hit the Ship or one of the Decoy Missiles. The chance to hit the ship is equal to: Size Ship in Tons / (Ship Size in Tons + Total Signature of All Decoys). Multiple warhead missiles will check each warhead independently.
Particle Lances are awesome and I really like them. In fact they might be slightly too good.
Particle beams are, IRL (according to the whitepapers regarding 60s-70s satellite design) spinals.
Mil SF (including derivatives such as various anime) have awesome scenes of gigantic spinal particle cannons.
Thus this suggestion: particle lances should take the spinal slot on warships on which they are mounted. This would mean you could only mount one (or two, if you have advanced spinals? I'm not clear these days on how spinal vs advanced spinal works, except giving you a larger aperture for lasers) and it would take 'the spinal slot' from other candidates. It would also require you to research spinal mounts before actually being able to mount a particle lance.
(Maybe advanced spinals still give you 1 damage/range tech above normal? I haven't thought that far in advance; this is based on Rule of Cool for me.)
The problem with spinal weapons in general is that they don't really scale well mechanically. Currently, If you have (say) 30 cm laser tech and Advanced Spinals, your biggest spinal weapon is a 45 cm laser which requires, IIRC, about 700 tons. That's a proper spinal weapon on a 5,000-10,000 ton ship, but not much more than a slightly bigger gun on a 50,000-ton dreadnought.
(It's worth noting that the current situation hails from the VB6 days when, for a long time, most players were designing smaller ships on which a Spinal Laser actually lived up to its billing. Changes in the C# versions as well as the player base learning better strategies over time has led to larger ships becoming more common if not the normal approach for many players. In this sense, spinal weapons are a bit of a historical artifact.)
IMO, massive dreadnought-scale spinal weapons fall under the same umbrella as tiny space superiority fighters - very common in science fiction, but not really a good fit for Aurora's mechanics. That being said, I do enjoy the niche they currently have, as charging with a wing of spinal-armed FACs/LACs is a very fun doctrine.
Suggestion, ctrl clicking and shift clicking added to some interfaces.
Explanation. If managing say files in windows, or an excel sheet, or any of dozens of other interfaces where a person might want to select a group of things quickly, most softwares use a system where, clicking somethign at the top of the list, and shift+clicking something towards the bottom, highlights the group, and then you can drag adn drop, or delete, or whatever.
Similarly CTRL+Clicking several items in a list will allow you to select those ones, and move them all at once as well.
I feel that this would be a handy addition in a few management windows. Specifically the Fleet Management interface, where moving large numbers of units around between fleets can be a bit tedious, as well as assigning missiles to launchers, assigning weapons to FCs if you need to juggle for whatever reason
You can already ctrl or shift click in the ship list for fleets, then detach and drag. The Treeview is a Microsoft control and doesn't support multi-select.
For weapons or missiles in the combat view, use Assign All, or Assign # to drag multiples.
I remember of reading this already: in the System Map, please, the possibility to hide the civilian fleets.
I remember of reading this already: in the System Map, please, the possibility to hide the civilian fleets.
This already exists. Uncheck civilians in the display tab of your system view framebox (the big box on the left side that's strangely easy to forget about).
A perennial suggestion but one I'll continue to make, it'd be my dream for ground support fighters to be replaced with an aircraft-type unit.
Like... if you manage to put that into the next release (whenever that'll be), that'll be the perfect version and barring bugfixes I would desire no new features.
A perennial suggestion but one I'll continue to make, it'd be my dream for ground support fighters to be replaced with an aircraft-type unit.
Like... if you manage to put that into the next release (whenever that'll be), that'll be the perfect version and barring bugfixes I would desire no new features.
I know ground support doesn't really work, so I will sort that at some point.
I like to leave fuel stations at all jump points throughout my core systems, to facilitate cross-empire travel by ships without very large fuel range.
I find myself quite often manually refueling a fleet just enough to get to the next refueling point (or the fleet's ultimate destination).
Suggestion for new fleet orders: "Refuel (Minimal)" and "Refuel (Minimal) from Stationary Tankers"
These orders behave like the current refuel orders, but instead of completely filling each ship in the fleet, refuel each ship in the fleet sufficiently to reach the next refuel order in the order list (plus perhaps a small error margin, like 1%), or to reach the last order in the list if there are no subsequent refuel orders.
If the fuel source is emptied before providing sufficient fuel, or if any ship in the fleet is completely refueled but still cannot reach the next refuel order, generate an interrupt event (but continue the order list--do not clear the list).
I like to leave fuel stations at all jump points throughout my core systems, to facilitate cross-empire travel by ships without very large fuel range.
I find myself quite often manually refueling a fleet just enough to get to the next refueling point (or the fleet's ultimate destination).
Suggestion for new fleet orders: "Refuel (Minimal)" and "Refuel (Minimal) from Stationary Tankers"
These orders behave like the current refuel orders, but instead of completely filling each ship in the fleet, refuel each ship in the fleet sufficiently to reach the next refuel order in the order list (plus perhaps a small error margin, like 1%), or to reach the last order in the list if there are no subsequent refuel orders.
If the fuel source is emptied before providing sufficient fuel, or if any ship in the fleet is completely refueled but still cannot reach the next refuel order, generate an interrupt event (but continue the order list--do not clear the list).
IMO, it would be sufficient and general enough to make the logistical orders (refuel, resupply, reload, etc.) make use if the "Minimum" field in the orders interface.
I like to leave fuel stations at all jump points throughout my core systems, to facilitate cross-empire travel by ships without very large fuel range.
I find myself quite often manually refueling a fleet just enough to get to the next refueling point (or the fleet's ultimate destination).
Suggestion for new fleet orders: "Refuel (Minimal)" and "Refuel (Minimal) from Stationary Tankers"
These orders behave like the current refuel orders, but instead of completely filling each ship in the fleet, refuel each ship in the fleet sufficiently to reach the next refuel order in the order list (plus perhaps a small error margin, like 1%), or to reach the last order in the list if there are no subsequent refuel orders.
If the fuel source is emptied before providing sufficient fuel, or if any ship in the fleet is completely refueled but still cannot reach the next refuel order, generate an interrupt event (but continue the order list--do not clear the list).
IMO, it would be sufficient and general enough to make the logistical orders (refuel, resupply, reload, etc.) make use if the "Minimum" field in the orders interface.
That would be a useful feature, but it doesn't seem like it would help in this case, because different ships in the fleet might require different amounts of fuel.
Also, it would require calculating ahead of time how much fuel will be needed, which requires manual calculation work rather than just refueling until ships have the necessary range.
And it would not be useful at all for order templates, again because different ships will need different amounts of fuel.
Building upon Steve's idea, I propose the following: allow players to create and save multiple custom visibility profiles for events. Each profile could include specific settings for which events are displayed, hidden, or collapsed. A convenient way to switch between saved profiles quickly, perhaps using a dropdown menu would be beneficial.Doing a ground invasion of an alien home world, and the information is overwhelming. Would it be possible to handle ground combat reports in a separate tab of the ground forces window, rather than (or in addition to) via the event list? When the enemy has dozens of unit types, the paragraph format of estimated ground forces is extremely difficult to absorb. It would be a lot easier if it were presented in table format in a specific tab of the ground forces window.
I know UI isn't super high on the list of priorities, but hopefully Steve will be doing a home world invasion in his current game and take pity on us!
Don't forget you can hide most of the events. In major ground combat, I just leave the overall results events and the intel events, so it is very easy to read. If you need to see the hidden events without un-hiding them individually, use See All Events on the events window.
Make it so that empty fleets can be moved to waypoints in addition to colonies since we cannot make colonies on gas giants.
A perennial suggestion but one I'll continue to make, it'd be my dream for ground support fighters to be replaced with an aircraft-type unit.
Like... if you manage to put that into the next release (whenever that'll be), that'll be the perfect version and barring bugfixes I would desire no new features.
I know ground support doesn't really work, so I will sort that at some point.
A perennial suggestion but one I'll continue to make, it'd be my dream for ground support fighters to be replaced with an aircraft-type unit.
Like... if you manage to put that into the next release (whenever that'll be), that'll be the perfect version and barring bugfixes I would desire no new features.
I know ground support doesn't really work, so I will sort that at some point.
Thank you. Is there any way to make reorganizing depleted ground units more feasible? I've been having trouble with it and wanted to ask if there can be a mechanic for regenerating them to full strength (using the ground formation buildings) once they return home from an expedition.
In the Shipyard list, would it be possible to give evidence of the ones with "No Class Assigned", e.g. using another color of the text?
If there are several SYs, this information could be lost.
Then, can I suggest again that a message should appear in the column "Current Activity" when a shipyard is building a ship? something like "Building ship(s)" or "Shipyard(s) Busy", instead of "No activity".
Because building a ship is an activity of a shipyard.
Because building a ship is an activity of a shipyard.Technically the ship is not built by the "shipyard" itself but by one of it's slipways, thus the correct place to see how many of the slipways are free is in the "SW" (Slipways) and "Avail"(Available Slipways) columns.
Class Design window, in the list of the installed systems in a class, next the name of each chosen item, would it be possible to indicate its weight/size (in the case, multiplied by the number of the installed ones), or indicate the mass/size of the type of systems (let's say, all the engines, all the lasers, etc.)?
IMO, it would help in balancing the weights, or in finding the item(s) to improve with new research project(s).
I like to leave fuel stations at all jump points throughout my core systems, to facilitate cross-empire travel by ships without very large fuel range.
I find myself quite often manually refueling a fleet just enough to get to the next refueling point (or the fleet's ultimate destination).
Suggestion for new fleet orders: "Refuel (Minimal)" and "Refuel (Minimal) from Stationary Tankers"
These orders behave like the current refuel orders, but instead of completely filling each ship in the fleet, refuel each ship in the fleet sufficiently to reach the next refuel order in the order list (plus perhaps a small error margin, like 1%), or to reach the last order in the list if there are no subsequent refuel orders.
If the fuel source is emptied before providing sufficient fuel, or if any ship in the fleet is completely refueled but still cannot reach the next refuel order, generate an interrupt event (but continue the order list--do not clear the list).
IMO, it would be sufficient and general enough to make the logistical orders (refuel, resupply, reload, etc.) make use if the "Minimum" field in the orders interface.
That would be a useful feature, but it doesn't seem like it would help in this case, because different ships in the fleet might require different amounts of fuel.
Also, it would require calculating ahead of time how much fuel will be needed, which requires manual calculation work rather than just refueling until ships have the necessary range.
And it would not be useful at all for order templates, again because different ships will need different amounts of fuel.
It might not be optimal for this specific need, but it would be very useful in a wide range of cases which IMO is a better thing to implement. Also easier and less error-prone, I would think.
I have many cases where I would like to take or leave X amount of fuel or MSP but instead I have to manually watch the levels while advancing time. Having some way to set a value and move on with the game would eliminate a lot of micromanagement for me, and I don't mind having to do occasional napkin math while playing with my spaceship spreadsheet personally.
I've added two new minimum refuel orders using the class minimum capacity, plus I have added the option to specify an amount per ship to four existing orders. This should cover most cases.
The concept of adding just enough fuel to get somewhere is a lot tricker, because the distance at the time of refuelling might change due to the subsequent orbits of planets and Lagrange points or the movement of target fleets.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171244#msg171244
Sadly, it is not possible.Make it so that empty fleets can be moved to waypoints in addition to colonies since we cannot make colonies on gas giants.
I believe this is possible if you select Rendezvous type of Waypoint.
Sadly, it is not possible.Make it so that empty fleets can be moved to waypoints in addition to colonies since we cannot make colonies on gas giants.
I believe this is possible if you select Rendezvous type of Waypoint.
Three proposals for the Galactic Map.
1. Next each system, it would be nice to have also an icon for the ground units (if present), like we have for the fleets.
2. In the Overview tab, I think it could be useful to have also information about the Lagrange Points in the selected system: the number of them in the summary of the system bodies at least (as having also them in the mini system map, together with the JPs, request to recalculate their positions at each turn, while their possible total is deducible from the number of large planets there).
3. Together with the data about known and (grav)surveyed systems, it could be interesting to have also the fully geosurveyed ones.
Two new size options for mass drivers:
Mass Driver - Small
size and capacity: 20% of standard Mass Driver
cost: 25% of standard Mass Driver
Mass Driver - Large
size and capacity: 500% of standard Mass Driver
cost: 400% of standard Mass Driver
Reasoning:
A large majority of the OM-eligible asteroids in the early game have less than 25kt of minerals in total.
Delivering a 25kt facility (and moving it elsewhere when the body is depleted) imposes a high logistical cost relative to just scooping directly from multiple mining locations to fill a freighter.
The proposed smaller mass driver imposes a more reasonable logistical cost, for a 25% rate cost premium.
The large mass driver offers 20% cost savings for very large mineral-flinging operations.
I would imagine these would be available without additional tech, but I could also see putting them behind a fairly cheap Logistics research.
I agree with Alex, like, I wouldn't be mad to have more mass driver options, but I don't know that it is really solving any problems.
But I explained exactly what problems it solves, even if those problems don't apply to you.My point was that your problem can be solved equally well without need of adding any new types of mass driver installations at all.
Hi Steve! I would like to make a quick suggestion that I felt does not warrant its own thread. I have noticed that when I equip my survey ships with any weapon but a CIWS, even the most meagre armament, they are classed as a warship.
What I was trying to do was to give them box missile launchers in order to be able to deploy buoys on important planets and jump points but also carry a few missiles for emergency self defense. However I can’t do that without the ship being classed as a warship, with even one missile launcher changing the classification.
Hi Steve! I would like to make a quick suggestion that I felt does not warrant its own thread. I have noticed that when I equip my survey ships with any weapon but a CIWS, even the most meagre armament, they are classed as a warship.
What I was trying to do was to give them box missile launchers in order to be able to deploy buoys on important planets and jump points but also carry a few missiles for emergency self defense. However I can’t do that without the ship being classed as a warship, with even one missile launcher changing the classification.
What I would like to suggest is to have the “survey ship” classification take primacy over the “warship” classification so that having either Gravitational or Geological Survey Sensors will instantly make the ship a “survey ship” regardless of armament.
Or, at the very least, I would to classify certain missile launcher configurations as civilian; such that a survey ship can deploy buoys or non-explosive missiles (size 0 warhead) without being classed as a warship.
I understand that deploying buoys or carrying armament that could be used offensively is expressly military activity, but survey sensors already automatically classify a ship as military even if its engines are commercial. So a hostile or cautious actor would already see such a vessel as a possible threat.
Thanks for considering!
What: Have shipyards, ground force construction centers, maintenance facilities, research facilities, etc only use population when they're actually performing work. This could/should have a lower limit, e.g. perhaps 25% of max when doing no work (i.e. the workforce required to "keep the lights on") up to 100% when the facility is operating at peak capacity.
Why: Right now you can toggle on or off construction of MSP, you can use part of the industrial capacity, etc, but terraforming facilities and shipyards and GFCCs always use maximum population. This can be a strain on colonies, and right now the only way to prioritize one occupation over another is to move the facility to an unoccupied local moon. It would also add some element of gameplay choice as to how you prioritize use of the workforce when a given colony is workforce constrained. We already have wealth consumption occurring in this fashion, so why not population usage?
I would support this. IIRC, we had this in VB6 and it was lost or removed in the C# transition. I suspect the idea may have been to make population management more important, but what I see people do in practice is just shuffle facilities to an unimportant nearby colony (e.g., Luna) to free up population, which is just added micromanagement for the same result. In this case I think the VB6 approach was better.
Hi Steve,
Is it possible to add a "Current location" to the "Movement orders" "Bodies?" list?
Or if that is not possible. Add the body that you are currently orbiting to the "Bodies?" list.
Thanks in advance.
Static Army Recruitment Bonuses for Colony Worlds
Similar to how ruins work what about if when discovering a habitable world there is a chance for that colony to give a static army recruitment bonus to units created on it.
Bonuses like 5% to defense or a boost in breakthrough and similar bonuses to the already existing fighting mechanics.
Taught behind it is as Auroras spoilers are mostly based on 40K Xenos it would be cool for RP reasons to be able to have armies or legions that have unique bonus to them based on the worlds they come from like the Space Marines have.
It would also encourage players to build colonies on those worlds regardless of their position in the galaxy, Some might even be on border systems and see a lot of fighting like 40Ks Cadia.
Highly likely it's been asked for many times before, but can we please please please have Random Stars setting assign system names randomly from the list, rather than picking them in alphabetical order? This would be a significant QoL improvement. Currently if you play Random Stars you have to manually rename your systems as you discover them or accept that your galaxy will be comprised solely of names starting with the letter A or B for the first 50 years.
Hoping this is a really easy thing to implement.
Highly likely it's been asked for many times before, but can we please please please have Random Stars setting assign system names randomly from the list, rather than picking them in alphabetical order? This would be a significant QoL improvement. Currently if you play Random Stars you have to manually rename your systems as you discover them or accept that your galaxy will be comprised solely of names starting with the letter A or B for the first 50 years.
Hoping this is a really easy thing to implement.
the work around instead of manually renaming them, is open the file for system names, resort the names randomly, and then do it again EACH AND EVERY TIME you go thru to discover a new star.
Static Army Recruitment Bonuses for Colony Worlds
Similar to how ruins work what about if when discovering a habitable world there is a chance for that colony to give a static army recruitment bonus to units created on it.
Bonuses like 5% to defense or a boost in breakthrough and similar bonuses to the already existing fighting mechanics.
Taught behind it is as Auroras spoilers are mostly based on 40K Xenos it would be cool for RP reasons to be able to have armies or legions that have unique bonus to them based on the worlds they come from like the Space Marines have.
It would also encourage players to build colonies on those worlds regardless of their position in the galaxy, Some might even be on border systems and see a lot of fighting like 40Ks Cadia.
I'd probably structure this as those worlds being able to build units with the normal terrain bonuses ("Desert Warfare", "High Gravity", etc.), but without needing to pay the extra costs for those, or with a reduced cost penalty. Probably a lot easier to track in the code, and doesn't break the current design balance, but still has the same feel. That high-G, high-pressure hot desert mountain world that's a pain in the arse to live on suddenly gets a lot more appealing when you can use it to churn out Sardaukar. Normally, Extreme Pressure + High G + Extreme Temp + Mountain + Desert is a cost multiplier of 2*1.5*1.5*1.25*1.25 = 7.03. Even if it just halves the penalties, you're suddenly looking at a multiplier of 1.5*1.25*1.25*1.125*1.125 = 2.97 instead, which is less than half the final cost.
Not sure if it's balanced, but I think that's your best shot at making it work.
the work around instead of manually renaming them, is open the file for system names, resort the names randomly, and then do it again EACH AND EVERY TIME you go thru to discover a new star.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that's exactly as much work as renaming them manually, because you have to resort it each time you discover a new star. Just checking to make sure I'm not missing something, because if it was as simple as randomizing the list once at the start of the game setup, that would be a legit workaround and I'd be kicking myself for not trying that.
Moving ships between Admin Commands.On this one, if required you can open two fleet windows and drag between them.
A movement order specifying a change in Admin Command was promised in 2017 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849)) but never added. Ship Construction into Admin Commands is a step in the right direction but it gets increasingly tedious to drag existing fleets between admins the more fleets and admins you have, which is a real problem with a large empire. Therefore I propose adding an order or a menu to quickly change the Admin Command of a fleet.be delighted to hear your response, Steve.
Moving ships between Admin Commands.On this one, if required you can open two fleet windows and drag between them.
A movement order specifying a change in Admin Command was promised in 2017 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849)) but never added. Ship Construction into Admin Commands is a step in the right direction but it gets increasingly tedious to drag existing fleets between admins the more fleets and admins you have, which is a real problem with a large empire. Therefore I propose adding an order or a menu to quickly change the Admin Command of a fleet.be delighted to hear your response, Steve.
Moving ships between Admin Commands.On this one, if required you can open two fleet windows and drag between them.
A movement order specifying a change in Admin Command was promised in 2017 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849)) but never added. Ship Construction into Admin Commands is a step in the right direction but it gets increasingly tedious to drag existing fleets between admins the more fleets and admins you have, which is a real problem with a large empire. Therefore I propose adding an order or a menu to quickly change the Admin Command of a fleet.be delighted to hear your response, Steve.
You can open two fleet windows? How? That would make moving battlegroups between geographic fleets much easier.
Moving ships between Admin Commands.On this one, if required you can open two fleet windows and drag between them.
A movement order specifying a change in Admin Command was promised in 2017 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849)) but never added. Ship Construction into Admin Commands is a step in the right direction but it gets increasingly tedious to drag existing fleets between admins the more fleets and admins you have, which is a real problem with a large empire. Therefore I propose adding an order or a menu to quickly change the Admin Command of a fleet.be delighted to hear your response, Steve.
You can open two fleet windows? How? That would make moving battlegroups between geographic fleets much easier.
If you hold shift when clicking on a toolbar button, it will open another window rather than selecting the existing one.
Can we get the option to zoom the galaxy map? Even my relatively small explored area is starting to feel cramped, and big universes seem like big pains in the butt to visualize.
Also, a bit more pie-in-the-sky, it might be fun to have an option for naming themes of systems that works on a system-by-system basis. Each system has a naming scheme for things that get discovered from it, and every time you do, that'd be inherited by the newly discovered system. That way, people could have chains of systems keep similar names, but different chains have different schemes. (This means that instead of the current option for a system naming scheme that applies galaxy-wide, you'd just have the scheme for your homeworld, and it'd automatically spread outwards from there until you changed it somewhere.)
I have never even considered that the fleet window could interact with its copy! To me, extra fleet windows often seemed like a nuisance because I'd open them by clicking on fleets on the tactical/galaxy map then forget to close them. I will certainly be using this trick.Moving ships between Admin Commands.On this one, if required you can open two fleet windows and drag between them.
A movement order specifying a change in Admin Command was promised in 2017 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849)) but never added. Ship Construction into Admin Commands is a step in the right direction but it gets increasingly tedious to drag existing fleets between admins the more fleets and admins you have, which is a real problem with a large empire. Therefore I propose adding an order or a menu to quickly change the Admin Command of a fleet.be delighted to hear your response, Steve.
Having unmanned ships with 100% morale definitely seems like a bug to me.
and without players ending up designing ships that carry extra crew around.
Having unmanned ships with 100% morale definitely seems like a bug to me.
Yes, I agree on this point. I need to find a mechanic that creates a penalty but without any fiddly micromanagement and without players ending up designing ships that carry extra crew around. I have an idea that I am going to try out.
Having unmanned ships with 100% morale definitely seems like a bug to me.
Yes, I agree on this point. I need to find a mechanic that creates a penalty but without any fiddly micromanagement and without players ending up designing ships that carry extra crew around. I have an idea that I am going to try out.
I've added the following new posts on the Changes List:
Under-manning Penalties: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171631#msg171631
Captured Ship Penalties: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171632#msg171632
Having unmanned ships with 100% morale definitely seems like a bug to me.
Yes, I agree on this point. I need to find a mechanic that creates a penalty but without any fiddly micromanagement and without players ending up designing ships that carry extra crew around. I have an idea that I am going to try out.
I've added the following new posts on the Changes List:
Under-manning Penalties: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171631#msg171631
Captured Ship Penalties: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171632#msg171632
Thank you, this is excellent! Being able to load conscript crews is an especially nice touch.
I assume there's no intention to make under-manning impact refueling/ordnance transfer rates? This would mean captured enemy tankers could be pressed into service without crew replenishment, but this is a non-issue compared to losing the ability to use their fuel in the middle of an offensive campaign.
it would be nice to see, and be able to filter on, the total accessibility of a body in the mineral search screen.
In the missile design window, the four default speeds against which the "% chance to hit" is shown (1, 3, 5 and 10k km/s) are never relevant for AMMs and become irrelevant for fighters quickly and for ships by mid to late game tech.
Instead, show the speeds at which you have 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% chance to hit. That way the info is guaranteed to always be relevant regardless of what tech level you're at.
The "SM Part Refuel" button allows us to set the fuel level of a ship.
I often want to add or subtract a specific amount, so I have to find the current amount, do the mental math, remember the result, go back to the Misc tab, and use the button.
Suggestion: a new button "SM Add Fuel Amt" that allows us to skip the math part. Just add a given amount.
Respect max capacity of ship.
Allow negative input (but don't set current amount below zero, obviously).
In the Galactic Map, is it possible to show also the locations of the bodies marked as colonies?
A coloured dot next a system can be enough.
Adding also the number of the colonies in each system would be perfect.
Option (check box) to automatically scrap any modules at or below your tech level that result from scrapping a ship. This way you don't have to manually go through the resulting pile of components and scrap them all individually.
In the Galactic Map, is it possible to show also the locations of the bodies marked as colonies?
A coloured dot next a system can be enough.
Adding also the number of the colonies in each system would be perfect.
There is already a 'Populated Systems' option on the galactic map.
Geosurvey from orbit doesn't need that a body is a colony. So, why not the same for ground geosurvey?
Please, remove the need that a body is declared as a colony, to unload geosurv troops on it.
Actually, that would be nice to have for all of the unload orders, if a body is the target of the order create a colony (of the unloaded species for a colony ship, otherwise of the primary species is probably fine in most cases). Simply modifying existing unload orders to work this way for non-population targets instead of adding new orders would avoid cluttering the interface as well.
Geosurvey from orbit doesn't need that a body is a colony. So, why not the same for ground geosurvey?
Please, remove the need that a body is declared as a colony, to unload geosurv troops on it.
Since ground units require a population to be at (unless on a ship), I think the best solution here would be to have an order to create a colony and unload ground units there.
Actually, that would be nice to have for all of the unload orders, if a body is the target of the order create a colony (of the unloaded species for a colony ship, otherwise of the primary species is probably fine in most cases). Simply modifying existing unload orders to work this way for non-population targets instead of adding new orders would avoid cluttering the interface as well.
......
It used to work that way, but I removed it and forced the manual colony creation we have now. Of course, I can't remember why :) but I assume it caused unexpected issues.
Ability to remove multiple ground force construction tasks simultaneously (shift/ctrl click would be great), as well as wiping the entire construction queue. I semi-accidentally ordered the construction of 10 STO divisions through the Organization window, meaning that I have over six hundred formations in the queue and it will take far too long to complete them all. Having to delete construction tasks one by one is getting pretty tedious. :PI did the same thing ordering 4 corp built on a planet with 1 GF construction complex and undermanned instead of the world with 65 complexes
Ability to remove multiple ground force construction tasks simultaneously (shift/ctrl click would be great), as well as wiping the entire construction queue. I semi-accidentally ordered the construction of 10 STO divisions through the Organization window, meaning that I have over six hundred formations in the queue and it will take far too long to complete them all. Having to delete construction tasks one by one is getting pretty tedious. :PI did the same thing ordering 4 corp built on a planet with 1 GF construction complex and undermanned instead of the world with 65 complexes
I'd like to suggest a second officer position for ground formations, akin to officers for space ships. This could be a second-in-command, executive officer or aide that requires one rank lower than the formation's set commander rank. These officer positions could provide a very small bonus, but this feature would mainly serve to put all of our ground officers to work and make more granular rank setups feasible.
Currently, many traditional ranks are skipped when playing with battalions as smallest formation. If you go with battalions -> brigades -> divisions, you have lieutenant colonels, brigadier generals and major generals, with colonels inbetween being skipped. Those ranks could be integrated into a second-in-command or staff position.
This is why I use battalion - regiment - brigade - division - corps as my ground forces layers, plus SpecOps has squad/platoon/company levels as well.
Suggestion: Rename the "Recreational Drugs" trade good to something else--anything that won't prompt uncomfortable questions from curious children.
Suggestion: "Collapse All NACs" button
A button to collapse all the nodes in the fleet treeview (leaving just the root expanded) would be very useful for crazy people like me with a dozen or so 6-deep NAC hierarchies under the root.
A perfect spot would be the far left of the row of buttons at the bottom of the Naval window.
Alternatively (if this is possible with this treeview control): special case the "collapse node" event so that if it is the root node, it also collapses all other nodes.
That way we can just double click the root twice (to collapse and re-expand it) to have a nice and tidy tree again (so we can go find what we want without as much hassle).
Suggestion: "Collapse All NACs" button
A button to collapse all the nodes in the fleet treeview (leaving just the root expanded) would be very useful for crazy people like me with a dozen or so 6-deep NAC hierarchies under the root.
A perfect spot would be the far left of the row of buttons at the bottom of the Naval window.
Alternatively (if this is possible with this treeview control): special case the "collapse node" event so that if it is the root node, it also collapses all other nodes.
That way we can just double click the root twice (to collapse and re-expand it) to have a nice and tidy tree again (so we can go find what we want without as much hassle).
Case 1:
I often have a carrier delivering a squadron of fighters to another carrier.
Currently, this requires waiting for the carrier to move to the location, then manually launching the squadron and giving it orders to land on the target carrier.
Suggestion: "Transfer Squadron to Mothership" order.
Just target the desired carrier, pick the order, and double click the squadron from the list (similar to Join Sub-Fleet order).
Case 2:
I often have a carrier delivering a squadron of fighters to a non-carrier fleet.
Sometimes to join the base fleet, sometimes to join a sub-fleet, and sometimes to create a new sub-fleet.
The micro for this is similar to the above, but manually giving the launched squadron some flavor of join order at the end instead of an order to land on a carrier.
Suggestion: Three new orders -- "Transfer Squadron to Fleet", "Transfer Squadron to Sub-Fleet" and "Transfer Squadron as Sub-Fleet."
Same as above. Just target the desired fleet and pick the order. (In the case of transferring to a sub-fleet, also pick the sub-fleet.)
It would be helpful if missile salvos being displayed on the map could be "condensed" much like fleets are. I know they're already sort of condensed in that you don't see every missile, but it would be a lot more readable if it said "20x salvos of 5x missiles each" instead of showing 20 lines of "Salvo of 5x missiles". Yes, I know it would probably expand back out to more lines as some salvos lost missiles due to PD, but it would still be no worse than the current display and in almost all cases it would be much better, visually.
Missile contacts will be grouped in the same way as ships.
It would be helpful if missile salvos being displayed on the map could be "condensed" much like fleets are. I know they're already sort of condensed in that you don't see every missile, but it would be a lot more readable if it said "20x salvos of 5x missiles each" instead of showing 20 lines of "Salvo of 5x missiles". Yes, I know it would probably expand back out to more lines as some salvos lost missiles due to PD, but it would still be no worse than the current display and in almost all cases it would be much better, visually.
SJW: Already in v2.6. See the Changes List
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.0
Time to start a new thread. Please add suggestions in this thread for releases starting with v2.4.0gday Stevie i was wondering if you could implement a text size selector it would be great if you can that would be bloody awesome but no worries if you cant
Time to start a new thread. Please add suggestions in this thread for releases starting with v2.4.0gday Stevie i was wondering if you could implement a text size selector it would be great if you can that would be bloody awesome but no worries if you cant
hey Steve can you add a melee ground unit weapon because it would be really cool to see and if you can could you add a ramming component like the thing on the front of WH40K ships making ramming a viable tactic
it would be nice to have an ark-style component that holds 50k colonists for the purpose of creating an R&R location for your ships.+
it would be nice to have an ark-style component that holds 50k colonists for the purpose of creating an R&R location for your ships.+
it would be nice to have an ark-style component that holds 50k colonists for the purpose of creating an R&R location for your ships.+
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg159464#msg159464
In the game I only see a 200k colonist component. What research is required for the 50k module?
1. To bring our templates into new versions of the database. (Probably would require some manual tweaking of designs to adjust to the new version...)
Quote1. To bring our templates into new versions of the database. (Probably would require some manual tweaking of designs to adjust to the new version...)
I fear you could at least get several errors for missing components out of the old template in the new database.
Let's say, in your running game you can develop a new component (anyone) because you are at the research level that allows it, but in the new database (e.g., at the beginning of a new game) that component is still not possible, because your research level is too low. So, you cannot build that class in the new game. And I think you could even block the game.
I can see potential issues going across DB versions (thus the manual tweaking) - so maybe only allow import into same version so we can share designs.
I don't see the tech a s a real problem - currently, you can save a higher level tech ship as a template, and start a new game and see the required tech to research before building it...
So maybe export to something like JSON, have it version marked, and allow import in same version of DB... thus promoting sharing of designs :-)
Give that we are only a couple weeks away from 2025, it might be time to consider updating the default start year? Unless Aurora is going to switch over into being a retro-futurism 4X.
I already did :) It's 2050 in the next version.Looking forward for another 25 years ;D
I already did :) It's 2050 in the next version.Looking forward for another 25 years ;D
Complete 3D VR system and galaxy maps, microscopic detailing of ships and components to include the exact wavelength and diffusion of lasers or the manifold pressure of powerplants, advanced and intuitive AI that properly reacts to the player and creates unique ships without templates.I already did :) It's 2050 in the next version.Looking forward for another 25 years ;D
Let us raise our expectations, in 250 years Robot Steve will still be developing Aurora! ;D
Hi Steve, could you add a small square in the classe design and naval organization window that display a small image of the ship? Not very big, let's say the size of the one we have in the race information or even smaller.
Specifically what I would like to do is that We have the possibility to select a ship image (for example the one we have in the shipicon and station folder) during the design of a new ship and then the same image appears in the naval organization when we select a ship of that class.
In my opinion this would add really a lot of flavor since fighting is the main thing of Aurora and we spent a lot of time in these 2 windows and it should be super easy to implement, it would be very interesting.
Eventually the same thing could be done for all the other non-human players with the game randomly selecting an image which is displayed in the intelligence window, it is already there but it is always the same image for everything.
I will go further suggesting that if this is feasible, you could add also a very small image in the unit class design (for tanks, vehicles, soldiers, artillery etc.), in this case the system can just pick up a random image leaving to the player the possibility to change it (to avoid too much micromanagement) since they are not very important as ships.
Overall implementing all of these would add a lot of flavor considering that Aurora is very sterile from this point of view.
I attached 3 example of how I would like this to be implemented.
Hi Steve, could you add a small square in the classe design and naval organization window that display a small image of the ship? Not very big, let's say the size of the one we have in the race information or even smaller.
Specifically what I would like to do is that We have the possibility to select a ship image (for example the one we have in the shipicon and station folder) during the design of a new ship and then the same image appears in the naval organization when we select a ship of that class.
In my opinion this would add really a lot of flavor since fighting is the main thing of Aurora and we spent a lot of time in these 2 windows and it should be super easy to implement, it would be very interesting.
Eventually the same thing could be done for all the other non-human players with the game randomly selecting an image which is displayed in the intelligence window, it is already there but it is always the same image for everything.
I will go further suggesting that if this is feasible, you could add also a very small image in the unit class design (for tanks, vehicles, soldiers, artillery etc.), in this case the system can just pick up a random image leaving to the player the possibility to change it (to avoid too much micromanagement) since they are not very important as ships.
Overall implementing all of these would add a lot of flavor considering that Aurora is very sterile from this point of view.
I attached 3 example of how I would like this to be implemented.
I've been considering something on these lines for a while. The limitation so far has been the lack of similar but different ship models, especially if they were eventually to be used as icons rather than static pictures.
For example, it would be relatively straightforward if you were running a Star Wars or Star Trek theme game to get various pictures off the internet to represent different ships. However, if you are using your own theme, or a non-sci-fi theme such as my recent Imperial Japan game, it would be difficult to find numerous suitable images that share that theme, so you probably end up with the standard race ship images for every class, which doesn't really seem right either.
However, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am probably going to add a large variety of either AI-generated or licenced ship, station and race images in the not-too-distant future, in which case this becomes a far more viable option.
On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.
Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!
Reasoning: So I've been playing this game for a while and one thing that always gets me is lack of quality of life features and the fact that I have to constantly remember about everything, because nothing will remind me that something happened and I didn't respond to it. This applies to the fact that I have to sleep sometimes and when I wake up I don't always remember what I was doing/planning to do the day before. This is not fun and forces me to go through everything just to make sure I didn't miss something. Eventually this leads to the burn out and dropping the game, being too frustrated to play it once it hits me it will only get worse once my empire grows even more.
Ideas:
- Ingame goals/objectives
Add a simple panel, that will list all the objectives and give an ability to create new ones and mark old ones as complete/remove them. Something like a TODO list for a players, to keep track of their progress.
Every objective would have: name, description, optional attached fleet, status (debatable, but in theory would allow players to understand that they already started it). There could be more, like attaching specific character for flavor reasons, but these are bare minimum required to operate and I would be happy even if we finished this here, but...
- Automated goal/objective creation
I would imagine this as a set of rules, for start they could be simple, for example event popping up. The simple use case would be to create an objective with title "Deploy sentry buoys" and description "Deploy sentry buoys at [event_target]" whenever the event jump point discovered pops up. Event_target would be te jump point in question, but in general it would be a target of an event, there doesn't really have to be a reference to the object, just the name, and if that's too complicated, I'm fine with just keeping the reference to the event itself, like:
Title: Deploy sentry buoys
Description: Deploy sentry buoys at the jump point:
Event: Jump point #2 discovered (...)
The creation of those rules would be simple, but could be easily extended in the future if there's a need for that:
Choose event source (i.e. JP discovered), Put default title, Put default description. If there are any keywords available and implemented, they could be put in the description as tags [tag] and during objective creation they would be replaced with appropriate text, i.e. name of event.
Profit?
Did you ever had a situation where
- you were doing something but suddenly your explorers discovered multiple new systems and finished their orders? Now you have to drop everything, go to them, give them new orders and make sure to bring jump gate constructors and buoy deployers to secure the perimeter and hope you'll still remember what you were doing before that... - well, how about creating objective for what you are currently doing, having automated objectives for all the new JPs and just giving new orders to explorers so that you can go back to what you did without having to look through every system you have in search for non secure jump points later on?
- one of your explorers sits on the standing orders, not doing anything apart from trying to go back to the home planet for overclock, but they can't so they just go to jump gate, try to explore again and go back to jump gate? - how about an automated objective telling you that ship requires shore leave/overclock?
- pirates raiding your civilian trade ships, but you can't really handle them right now because you're designing new ship? - how about creating yourself an objective to secure this route in the future
- you explored on so many directions and forgot in which direction you wanted to expand... again? - leave yourself an objective to expand to specific system
etc.
- instead of searching for issues EVERYWHERE, you just go to the objectives panel and see what is there currently to do in your empire.
Solution to most of the logistical/managerial problems we currently have is super simple and I think the game would benefit greatly from it. In short currently the game becomes overwhelming quite quickly because you have to remember EVERYTHING, if we remove that constant burden from the players, I think more people would be able to enjoy the game.
Additional ideas:
- export/import automated rules (so that you have reuse them in other games)
- standing order for objective creation (just once, and then the order is removed)
- objective rules for planet based activities, like resource stock levels, population levels etc. For example: Create new ground unit when population grows to a certain level.
On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.
Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!
I like this idea very much, but I'd rather have it work by Admin Command and not by class. Your survey ships are likely to be in the same NAC, so it'd work similarly for them, but you'd also be able to tell where all your naval forces in the sector's NAC are, or landing craft, or salvagers, or anything else, even if you're running numerous classes in each hull type. This woud invaluable for those large, multi-system military operations.
Also, if class-based ship images (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13404.msg172506#msg172506) are going to happen one day, then maybe we can get class-based icons on the galaxy map too, which would make things far easier to read.
For the sentry buoys specifically, you can check where they are deployed on the Galactic Map, using the Missiles tab (assuming that is pre v2.6). I use that all the time to plan buoy placement.
Please don't take this as a flippant answer, but you can already make extensive notes outside of the software. I use Word and Excel, but even Notepad is enough, or pen and paper. I have limited programming time so it wouldn't be a high priority to replicate note-taking, apart from maybe adding a free text tab to fleets. A more involved, automated system would involve a considerable amount of work because of the variety of things that can happen in the game, especially with different context in many cases. It isn't something that has been requested before.
The game already has events to tell you when things finish, or when you have forgotten something like allocating research labs. You can read back through all the past events. You can also have your fleets send you a message when they arrive somewhere, reminding you of why you sent them. I know some people even create fake fleets, or 'message bots', to use the remind messages on a regular basis. It also helps to get into a regular routine - checking terraforming fleets, checking survey fleets, checking build queues, mining output, etc..
For the sentry buoys specifically, you can check where they are deployed on the Galactic Map, using the Missiles tab (assuming that is pre v2.6). I use that all the time to plan buoy placement.
Please don't take this as a flippant answer, but you can already make extensive notes outside of the software. I use Word and Excel, but even Notepad is enough, or pen and paper. I have limited programming time so it wouldn't be a high priority to replicate note-taking, apart from maybe adding a free text tab to fleets. A more involved, automated system would involve a considerable amount of work because of the variety of things that can happen in the game, especially with different context in many cases. It isn't something that has been requested before.
The game already has events to tell you when things finish, or when you have forgotten something like allocating research labs. You can read back through all the past events. You can also have your fleets send you a message when they arrive somewhere, reminding you of why you sent them. I know some people even create fake fleets, or 'message bots', to use the remind messages on a regular basis. It also helps to get into a regular routine - checking terraforming fleets, checking survey fleets, checking build queues, mining output, etc..
For the sentry buoys specifically, you can check where they are deployed on the Galactic Map, using the Missiles tab (assuming that is pre v2.6). I use that all the time to plan buoy placement.
It's your game, not mine, but all the solutions that you mentioned are symptoms of problems that the game has. These are hacks and workarounds that allow some players to overcome issues (like forgetting stuff) with some additional manual work. If you see players making bot fleets just to remember to do something, then perhaps they need better tools in the game so that they don't have to resort to hacks or create external resources like Excel sheets to keep track of what were they doing and what they plan to do. In the end, it's an additional stuff that you have to do, and is quite costly in terms of time, that you have to pay before you even start the new game. That's of course on top of having to design all the required ships and installations, what already takes a lot. Then you have to maintain those sheets, the more complex they are, the more time you have to spend maintaining them.
The game is great, don't get me wrong, but at some point it should start moving towards automation of things instead of relying on the player to do everything manually. Ideally you shouldn't have to check events log all the time just to make sure you didn't miss anything, because things should work when you set them up and only break if there was a third party introduced into the mix. Of course there are people who don't mind the hard work, but I don't think there are many of them. I'm not 100% sure that automated objectives would solve anything, maybe it's not such a great idea after all, who knows, but the fact that it wasn't requested before is not very surprising. Complex games tend to attract people who like them (I know, impossible:D) and these people take pride in overcoming design flaws that make games unplayable for the general public. I mean, who is going to complain about lack of organisational tools in the game that forces to you to select a target for every missile in the fleet of 20 ships, each capable to deploy more than a hundred at once. It seems like such a non issue in comparison.
I won't bother you with this anymore, just keep in mind that when players start using in game systems in a weird way, it's because they are missing something that wouldn't force them to jump through all those hoops to do something simple. Just because I can spend 10 minutes setting up fake fleets to remember about something in 20 minutes and do it again for 5 other things, doesn't mean it's fun and I'll be able to keep on top of it forever. Maybe instead, I just need a reminder function with simple text input that I can set up with 2 clicks and focus on something else. Or maybe I need something else, like an action that triggers at certain condition. It's hard to say without knowing specific cases, but making notes/using external software to deal with the game shouldn't be a go to answer because it will overload everyone at some point, be it sooner or later. Also, for every player that will use word/excel/set up fake fleets, there will always probably be 10 or more other players just will just bounce back from the game, never to return, not giving it a chance.
On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.
Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!
I like this idea very much, but I'd rather have it work by Admin Command and not by class. Your survey ships are likely to be in the same NAC, so it'd work similarly for them, but you'd also be able to tell where all your naval forces in the sector's NAC are, or landing craft, or salvagers, or anything else, even if you're running numerous classes in each hull type. This woud invaluable for those large, multi-system military operations.
Also, if class-based ship images (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13404.msg172506#msg172506) are going to happen one day, then maybe we can get class-based icons on the galaxy map too, which would make things far easier to read.
I've added both the above ideas for v2.6
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg172561#msg172561
Coul you add a "button" to the shipicon on the galaxy map that would pop up a window with the list of all hulls in the system?
In the System View window, in the dropdown menu from where a system can be chosen (upper row of the window), would it be possible to highlight the ones with a population enstablished?
Just to easily individuate the systems we already own.
like how they're highlighted in the fleet movement window ?
- Ingame goals/objectives
Add a simple panel, that will list all the objectives and give an ability to create new ones and mark old ones as complete/remove them. Something like a TODO list for a players, to keep track of their progress.
Every objective would have: name, description, optional attached fleet, status (debatable, but in theory would allow players to understand that they already started it). There could be more, like attaching specific character for flavor reasons, but these are bare minimum required to operate and I would be happy even if we finished this here, but...
I have at one point suggested / asked for a simple in game textbox to keep notes on. I find it a bit annoying to flip back and forth between notepad and aurora.
But that's just a window focus thing, and I am on a single monitor. So... meh.
Biome specific trade goods (or bonuses to trade good production based on planet biome type.) I think if the civilian trade stuff gets fleshed out in the future it could add some interesting considerations for "profit-oriented" empires (like if you're playing as a mega corporation.)
Biome-specific trade goods might make it more profitable to to colonize specific planets and terraform them to a specific biome, rather than blanket-colonize-and-terraform into the habitable range. For example, coffee production would have a bonus on tropical planets, with an extra bonus to coffee production if the planet is a mountainous rainforest (since coffee likes to grow relatively high up.) Wine would have a bonus on a warm, planes world. Fur production would be drastically reduced on hot deserts, but greatly increased on tundra worlds.
11) Recycling of the orbital miner - the performance of the orbital miner leaves much to be desired. The module weighs 5000 tons and costs 120 corundum, and produces 10 tons of each mineral per year. Considering that comets and asteroids contain no more than three types of minerals (at least a brief review showed exactly that much), the payback period for the module alone is 4 years, not counting the rest of the ship and the availability of the vein. Add to this the threat of pirates, and the distraction of attention to setting up and monitoring production, and we get a less than favorable offer.
So If I chain 4 size 2 missiles together that should be cheaper than a size 8 missile to research?I think that the cost would be 0 because you already paid the full RP cost of the size 2 missile design before designing the "empty" multi stage to chain them together.
Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.
Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.
Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.
Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.
Dev costs for player designed components have already been reduced in slower-research games in v2.6.
After playing around with Ground Combat it feels like something that I'm missing is that feeling that veteran units with alot of combat experience should perform significantly better than a freshly built formation.
The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.
The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.
This is not really true. Analysis done by many folks here has shown that heavy armor is generally a less efficient use of BP than light armor/infantry and will end up suffering higher loss rates (in BP) than the lighter units. This doesn't make heavy armor useless at all, as it remains useful in tonnage-bottlenecked situations, but to say that the current model favors heavy armor is not correct.Yes, your right. That conclusion was filtered through an assumed tonnage limit as almost always the main practical limit for my invasions in in how much invasion tonnage I can bring.
3: I would really like a new button on the tactical screen. A "Back" button that will return the tactical view to the previously viewed system, or maybe back to the system that was being viewed when time was advanced. It could fit in the little space left by the tabs under the system selection drop-down.
Suggestion: Show taskforces instead of ship names.
Over on the Paradox game forum Blue Emu is running an exhibition game of sorts and we're running into a bit of difficulty with the map display. To be precise, it gets a tad cluttered if there are a lot of different enemies on the map, making screenshots difficult to decipher.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/sirius-business-a-c-aurora-forum-game-v2-5.1621469/post-30151670
Some way to display groups of enemy ships and such as a single unit would help a lot.
I would lik to see discoverable planetary atmosphere so that colonization levels for colonizeable bodies appears only after survey.
In theory you get a general value XX.XX (Assuming temperature, atmo, and water value is for instance 0), and after survey you get the actual data which will result in the proper and correct details.
Function could be flagged at start. Something like: advanced exploration on or off.
I think it is very unrealistic but have no objections to options.
At the moment we can do spectographic analysis of the atmospheres of planets in other solar systems. With better space based telescopes and computers that will be easy to do, so any survey ship appearing in a system will be able to determine the atmosphere of all planets quickly without visiting them.
I think it is very unrealistic but have no objections to options.
At the moment we can do spectographic analysis of the atmospheres of planets in other solar systems. With better space based telescopes and computers that will be easy to do, so any survey ship appearing in a system will be able to determine the atmosphere of all planets quickly without visiting them.
To be realistic we should know that atmosphere and size of planets in a system before visiting it. I see no reason or method to implement such a thing, however the current model of seeing the planet on arrival works.
There is an arguement that we should know if an alien homeworld is in a system on arrival as the emissions and effects on the planet are going to be detectable at interstellar ranges and the homeworld has probably been a large ondustrialised population for centuries. Of course I don't know that a xeno homelworld could be detected at interstellar ranges as we have not found one yet
EDIT: Eventually , what I am seeking is not a realistic model but perhaps one where the gameplay would allow for more interesting and heroic exploration on a televised sci fi model instead of a NASA hard data driven one. Sorry if I haven't clarified that sooner :)
I would lik to see discoverable planetary atmosphere so that colonization levels for colonizeable bodies appears only after survey.
In theory you get a general value XX.XX (Assuming temperature, atmo, and water value is for instance 0), and after survey you get the actual data which will result in the proper and correct details.
Function could be flagged at start. Something like: advanced exploration on or off.
I have never had a problem with magazine capacities, however I can think of one thing which may be confusing you. for the ship with a size 483 magazine so you also have 3 size 40 missile launchers? as the magazine capacity includes 1 missile in each launcher plus those in storage
Magazines and how to read them
I don't know if I'm having another skill issue, if its a rounding or naming error, or if the number is based on something else entirely, but I'm consistently running into a calculation error with magazine capacity. My capacity 483 magazine should, according to my math, hold 12 size-40 missiles in it. In reality, or at least in my class designer ordnance&fighters tab, it holds 15. According to the class designer interface, my editor-named capacity 483 magazine has a magazine capacity of 603. And my 504 has a capacity of 654.
You know what, that would do it. Still not used to games making sense. Also explains why the magazine was always conveniently a load's set higher and not skewed. Since I only have 2 magazines so far in this current run and since the Ordnance&Fighters tab doesn't list the capacity, (as well as an on-going intermittent skill issue regarding remembering where it lists the ship's capacity in the designer,) I wanted to bring it up just in case. Good to know I was right and it is a skill issue.I have never had a problem with magazine capacities, however I can think of one thing which may be confusing you. for the ship with a size 483 magazine so you also have 3 size 40 missile launchers? as the magazine capacity includes 1 missile in each launcher plus those in storage
Magazines and how to read them
I don't know if I'm having another skill issue, if its a rounding or naming error, or if the number is based on something else entirely, but I'm consistently running into a calculation error with magazine capacity. My capacity 483 magazine should, according to my math, hold 12 size-40 missiles in it. In reality, or at least in my class designer ordnance&fighters tab, it holds 15. According to the class designer interface, my editor-named capacity 483 magazine has a magazine capacity of 603. And my 504 has a capacity of 654.
I almost forgot!
Jump Drive Squadron Size 1-2
Feel free to ignore this one entirely, but my lizard brain parts keeps insisting that I build a jump-command ship and then make jumpless squaddies to "maximize" efficiency. I've thankfully ignored that urge in my latest game, but knowing that jump engines can move up to 3 ships by default and not exploiting that is causing me pain.
The way I see it, I'm already losing out by not creating jump drive-less variants to exploit the extra 2 free ships of transportation. May as well get like a 1% size efficiency bonus for having less than 3 squadron size, or even just a cost reduction. I'll even take pure vanity and loss of squadron function, lol.
#1. Static single-target selection in a fleet setting.
When a fleet of multiple identically-sized targets of the same class enters range, every mine will fire at the top-most target, overkilling then self-destructing because even with retarget capability, they won't seek out new targets. Assuming the attached image posts, yes it is a 48,000 ton ship with 2x800 tons of escorts, but in a previous incident against 2 of the exact same ship I had the exact same problem where the mines targeted the very first ship exclusively.
Your mine-missiles need active sensors to look for new targets.Missile Size: 7.27 MSP (18.175 Tons) Warhead: 9.0 Radiation Damage: 9.0
I thought mines were still broken.Launch Ready Ordnance placed mines seem to work as long as the first stage has no engine. I tried making a 2-stage geosurvey probe to fire at habitable worlds to avoid STO fire on occupied planets but I couldn't target the planet to fire at with MFCs. Tried to deploy the probe anyways and it just permanently deployed the first "Deployment" stage of the probe which never timed out to deploy the second stage, so I just deleted the salvo. And then the probes. I regret wasting the time to develop them and I regret the time wasted building and loading them into my scouts, since they're actually useless.
#1. Static single-target selection in a fleet setting.
When a fleet of multiple identically-sized targets of the same class enters range, every mine will fire at the top-most target, overkilling then self-destructing because even with retarget capability, they won't seek out new targets. Assuming the attached image posts, yes it is a 48,000 ton ship with 2x800 tons of escorts, but in a previous incident against 2 of the exact same ship I had the exact same problem where the mines targeted the very first ship exclusively.
Mines and for that matter any missiles that rely on sensors really, really should select targets randomly within whatever rules they work with. There's no fluff reason why all mines or missiles go after the exact same target when there are multiple identical ones on their sensors, it's purely a game mechanical issue where the "top" target is selected instead of randomly selecting from all "identical" targets.
I'd love to see a weighted random targeting chance (e.g., 67% chance of targeting the size-200 contact, 33% chance of targeting the size-100 contact), but I'd settle for simply splitting the fire between identical targets.
Your mine-missiles need active sensors to look for new targets.Launch Ready Ordnance placed mines seem to work as long as the first stage has no engine. I tried making a 2-stage geosurvey probe to fire at habitable worlds to avoid STO fire on occupied planets but I couldn't target the planet to fire at with MFCs. Tried to deploy the probe anyways and it just permanently deployed the first "Deployment" stage of the probe which never timed out to deploy the second stage, so I just deleted the salvo. And then the probes. I regret wasting the time to develop them and I regret the time wasted building and loading them into my scouts, since they're actually useless
#1. Static single-target selection in a fleet setting.
When a fleet of multiple identically-sized targets of the same class enters range, every mine will fire at the top-most target, overkilling then self-destructing because even with retarget capability, they won't seek out new targets. Assuming the attached image posts, yes it is a 48,000 ton ship with 2x800 tons of escorts, but in a previous incident against 2 of the exact same ship I had the exact same problem where the mines targeted the very first ship exclusively.
Mines and for that matter any missiles that rely on sensors really, really should select targets randomly within whatever rules they work with. There's no fluff reason why all mines or missiles go after the exact same target when there are multiple identical ones on their sensors, it's purely a game mechanical issue where the "top" target is selected instead of randomly selecting from all "identical" targets.
I'd love to see a weighted random targeting chance (e.g., 67% chance of targeting the size-200 contact, 33% chance of targeting the size-100 contact), but I'd settle for simply splitting the fire between identical targets.
Missiles currently select the nearest target, but they are probably also targeting the oldest contact if more than one target is at the same distance.
Randomizing is no problem, but how should salvo target detection handle distance and size? Should it be closest targets weighted by size, or any target within range weighted by size, or maybe targets weighted by size and range?
Bear in mind that too much dispersion will make the missiles less effective, especially against shielded targets.
#1. Static single-target selection in a fleet setting.
When a fleet of multiple identically-sized targets of the same class enters range, every mine will fire at the top-most target, overkilling then self-destructing because even with retarget capability, they won't seek out new targets. Assuming the attached image posts, yes it is a 48,000 ton ship with 2x800 tons of escorts, but in a previous incident against 2 of the exact same ship I had the exact same problem where the mines targeted the very first ship exclusively.
Mines and for that matter any missiles that rely on sensors really, really should select targets randomly within whatever rules they work with. There's no fluff reason why all mines or missiles go after the exact same target when there are multiple identical ones on their sensors, it's purely a game mechanical issue where the "top" target is selected instead of randomly selecting from all "identical" targets.
I'd love to see a weighted random targeting chance (e.g., 67% chance of targeting the size-200 contact, 33% chance of targeting the size-100 contact), but I'd settle for simply splitting the fire between identical targets.
Missiles currently select the nearest target, but they are probably also targeting the oldest contact if more than one target is at the same distance.
Randomizing is no problem, but how should salvo target detection handle distance and size? Should it be closest targets weighted by size, or any target within range weighted by size, or maybe targets weighted by size and range?
Bear in mind that too much dispersion will make the missiles less effective, especially against shielded targets.
#1. Static single-target selection in a fleet setting.
When a fleet of multiple identically-sized targets of the same class enters range, every mine will fire at the top-most target, overkilling then self-destructing because even with retarget capability, they won't seek out new targets. Assuming the attached image posts, yes it is a 48,000 ton ship with 2x800 tons of escorts, but in a previous incident against 2 of the exact same ship I had the exact same problem where the mines targeted the very first ship exclusively.
Mines and for that matter any missiles that rely on sensors really, really should select targets randomly within whatever rules they work with. There's no fluff reason why all mines or missiles go after the exact same target when there are multiple identical ones on their sensors, it's purely a game mechanical issue where the "top" target is selected instead of randomly selecting from all "identical" targets.
I'd love to see a weighted random targeting chance (e.g., 67% chance of targeting the size-200 contact, 33% chance of targeting the size-100 contact), but I'd settle for simply splitting the fire between identical targets.
Missiles currently select the nearest target, but they are probably also targeting the oldest contact if more than one target is at the same distance.
Randomizing is no problem, but how should salvo target detection handle distance and size? Should it be closest targets weighted by size, or any target within range weighted by size, or maybe targets weighted by size and range?
Bear in mind that too much dispersion will make the missiles less effective, especially against shielded targets.
I would make the minimal change: missiles target by the same rules they do now (i.e., largest and closest signature of the given type), they simply will choose randomly from a list of targets that are identical under this criteria. This way, missiles with target acquisition sensors function almost exactly as they do now, but are not artificially nerfed by an arbitrary bookkeeping mechanic (which ship is "on top" in memory).
I saw a thread from 2021 about it but i'll ask anyway.
Can we be allowed to assign anyone above the ship commander rank to a flag bridge slot? Or minimum effort idea, anyone to the slot?
Its kinda a bummer when I have 30 ships in a fleet and the highest rank dudes are all the same rank. The characters above that low flag bridge slot level are no longer ever in danger in fleet engagements if they are only in admin slots. I do love reading their service history and see their ship got shot out from under them and they survived. Would be epic to see that on a Vice Admiral as he was commanding a fleet.
Looking at the current Russian-Ukrainian war I though what about we add a new building, power plants:
1) They could be of a different type with different energy output.
2) This addition would require a rework of existent building to add energy requirement to each of them.
3) Connected to previous points, I would like to have the possibility to missile-target specific building on the planet surface, it would add a lot of tactical to space bombardment and the AI should also be instructed to seek building bombardment (power plant preferred) in some cases to undermine the enemy logistic before invasion.
Looking at the current Russian-Ukrainian war I though what about we add a new building, power plants:
1) They could be of a different type with different energy output.
2) This addition would require a rework of existent building to add energy requirement to each of them.
3) Connected to previous points, I would like to have the possibility to missile-target specific building on the planet surface, it would add a lot of tactical to space bombardment and the AI should also be instructed to seek building bombardment (power plant preferred) in some cases to undermine the enemy logistic before invasion.
I have thought about some form of colony power system for a while. It would become a new type of resource provided by a variety of sources and a lack of power would function in a similar way to a lack of workers. Nuclear power stations would be the standard, with options for Hydropower on planets with mountains and a decent hydrosphere, geothermal on planets with high tectonics, etc. Maybe even solar collector stations that beam power from closer to the star.
The main question is whether the addition of this extra layer would add interesting decisions or just extra colony management.
I would like the option to leave some Ground Unit modules empty. Everything Medium and up can take up to two modules, but I'd like to have the option to leave one or more empty.
Regarding precise targeting of different installations, there is already a way to identify general and specific installations types using ELINT. So it seems reasonable that more directed targeting could be used against whatever was discovered via ELINT.
One point to consider with the various power-related suggestions, is that if something on those lines is added, it will also be something the AI has to manage.
One point to consider with the various power-related suggestions, is that if something on those lines is added, it will also be something the AI has to manage.I think it might be alright to let the AI cheat a bit here like they do when their ships run out of fuel. They should still attempt to build enough power stations for their colonies but should probably ignore an penalties if they don't have enough facilities, or if they don't have enough wealth to operate them. The player can fix it if/when they conquer the colony.
I will offer a contrary opinion and say I don't see any interesting gameplay from adding power plants that offsets the added micro. I see most people are talking about different types of power but there is not much being said about what interesting gameplay decisions they will add.
One person mentioned adding decision-making for strategic bombardment. That could be interesting in principle, but (1) we don't currently have such a mechanic so we would need to add one and of course it should allow general targeting of specific installations and not be unique to power plants, and (2) I'm not sure it adds much in practice since usually the goal is to take the planet and get the surviving installations as loot, I'm not sure strategic bombardment is done in Aurora except for exterminatus reasons.
The one idea I can see being interesting is not having multiple types, but rather having only the nuclear type and having it consume sorium as fuel. This could add a new mineral use for sorium and make it interesting to mine more than incidentally (since most fuel in practice comes from gas giants). However, I'm not sure this is worth the additional micro.
I will offer a contrary opinion and say I don't see any interesting gameplay from adding power plants that offsets the added micro. I see most people are talking about different types of power but there is not much being said about what interesting gameplay decisions they will add.
One person mentioned adding decision-making for strategic bombardment. That could be interesting in principle, but (1) we don't currently have such a mechanic so we would need to add one and of course it should allow general targeting of specific installations and not be unique to power plants, and (2) I'm not sure it adds much in practice since usually the goal is to take the planet and get the surviving installations as loot, I'm not sure strategic bombardment is done in Aurora except for exterminatus reasons.
The one idea I can see being interesting is not having multiple types, but rather having only the nuclear type and having it consume sorium as fuel. This could add a new mineral use for sorium and make it interesting to mine more than incidentally (since most fuel in practice comes from gas giants). However, I'm not sure this is worth the additional micro.
As previously said, adding power plant alone it will be just another building, interesting but just another building.
If instead, the power plants are meant to power all the other buildings AND the infrastructure targeting is a thing, than it became a game play change.
Imagine that alien shipyard, mines, ground facilities, missile factories are all powered by power plants, then it can became relevant strategic bombardment from the player to halt enemy production.
The same of course must be for the human player with the AI choosing to bombard your facilities and put you in real difficulty, your home world is currently quite safe as long as you have enough STOs as the enemy cannot bombard you from the distance and play an attrition war.
As said, I imagine all this requires an extensive modifications, but it is worth to think about.
Imagine that alien shipyard, mines, ground facilities, missile factories are all powered by power plants, then it can became relevant strategic bombardment from the player to halt enemy production.
Furthermore, there's no interesting economic decisions being made by the player - power is simply something you must do to get full production. At best you have different types of power plants such as hydro plants in mountainous terrain, but that simply introduces an obvious optimum rather than a real decision to make. By contrast, I would point out that the current installation mechanics present a set of interesting decisions as part of the core gameplay loop, both decisions of kind (e.g., which kind of factory do I need? Which kind of mine? Which kind of shipyard?) and decisions of opportunity cost (e.g., dedicating more production to factories means less production is available for mines or shipyards). It is a simple yet effective set of mechanics leading to every player having their own tendencies and every new campaign having a different 'build order'.
In my view, if power plants will be added to the game it must be because they add interesting decisions to the core gameplay loop, not because they will make a nice, juicy target. I believe Steve's posts reflect a similar sentiment.
Could we get a distance circle marker for waypoints? Something that draws a circle at x mkm distance from a waypoint marker? Would be a nice helper tool to remind yourself keeping certain ships within certain distances to objects.
When do we get intel from interrogating prisoners from lifepods in 2.5?
When we pick up the pods, or when we land the prisoners on a colony?
Is it different in 2.5.1?
Is it GOING to be different in 2.6?
When do we get intel from interrogating prisoners from lifepods in 2.5?
When we pick up the pods, or when we land the prisoners on a colony?
Is it different in 2.5.1?
Is it GOING to be different in 2.6?
Assuming you meant to post in the questions thread. You get intel points upon picking up the pods in 2.5/2.5.1, and will get them after interrogating prisoners at a suitable colony in 2.6.0. https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171766#msg171766 (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg171766#msg171766)
Playing with an idea here:
A fun ;D addition would be variable firing range distances. Once the firing distance of a gun has been explored, you position yourself outside that range and nag away at the enemies defences.
At a quite high cost of maintenance and/or energy wouldn't it be fun if a gun emplacement on a planet could temporarily extend its weapon range to get a surprising counter volley into your occupying ships? Should definitely extremely costly to do that, but fun for some role-play events, if we can find a reasonable mechanic to realise this.
Perhaps something like the Lensman 'Primary Beams' which originated from burning out a standard energy projector in one blast and was very destructive, later books featuring cartridges of sandard energy projectors which burned out with every shot and were then replaced
An idea that seems simple to me is to have an option in the fleets so that the order doesn't mean a pause/stop game advance when finished.
For "Orders Completed" with a case box or new order, for example, "do not warn me when finished."
In the Intel window, when a ship class is selected, and some ships are marked as destroyed, is it possible to continue to show the systems where those ships were (apart the wreck marks in the galactic map)? I can think to go and salvage them later, and their location is useful to remember of them.
Moreover, if I salvaged some of them, could these ones be marked somehow (let's say, using an asterisk or adding an "(s)" near the ship in the Intel window)? This mark should be valid only for the ships salvaged by me, as I don't know if a NPR did it, so adding a factor of uncertainty in perfoming these operations in systems controlled by an ostile NPR (I need to survey the system in anticipation, before mounting a mission).
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I admit it's not the same, but you can double-click any ship in that list to focus the game on its last known location, even if it's long been destroyed or even salvaged.
In the Intel window, when a ship class is selected, and some ships are marked as destroyed, is it possible to continue to show the systems where those ships were (apart the wreck marks in the galactic map)? I can think to go and salvage them later, and their location is useful to remember of them.
Moreover, if I salvaged some of them, could these ones be marked somehow (let's say, using an asterisk or adding an "(s)" near the ship in the Intel window)? This mark should be valid only for the ships salvaged by me, as I don't know if a NPR did it, so adding a factor of uncertainty in perfoming these operations in systems controlled by an ostile NPR (I need to survey the system in anticipation, before mounting a mission).
Suggestion on orbital miners: can the orbital miner be made to put the mined minerals into internal cargo holds instead of onto a colony on the body it is mining; and a standing order where if cargo is full unload at a colony with either a cargo station or spaceport?
I think not many players would use the possibility you propose.
It can add another layer of possibility and of role playing; but the way it is now, it is more efficient.
Because the orbital miners can spend their time only mining, and can save extra space for cargo and for an engine.
So, they can be build using less materials and a bit faster, don't need to go to a colony and unload the minerals, and a tug can deploy them near the body to mine.
Even more, cargo ships can anyway go and load minerals directly from the orbit, as the small bodies don't need a cargo shuttle station. But, a mass driver on the body can save cargo ships to go (and save fuel).
I've never tried this with an OM, but doesn't the Load All Minerals Until Full order basically do this? An OM mines just by being in orbit of a body, so I would think having that order active wouldn't interfere with the mining part of its job.
Combine that with an order to unload at the hub world and then fly back to whichever comet or asteroid it's mining, and either cycle orders or repeat however many times it would take to mine out that body (or mine to low enough levels that accessibility is no longer worth it).
While what I propose may technically be less efficient it would cut out a lot of the micromanagement involved in mining asteroids/small bodies.
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with the standing order 'Move to Asteroid Mineral Source' what I proposed would allow you to set up an orbital miner that automatically does this without having to manually set up the repetitive orders or mark the body as a colony, and doesn't require you to periodically check to make sure they are actually mining something.
I don't think a standing order for this would be as useful as it sounds. The issue is that automating orbital mining means the miners have to use some logic to select targets. Orbital miners are no use if they ignore useful resources to go pull up 25,000 tons of tritanium, for instance. I think most players would rather assign orbital miners to specific bodies than suffer from random selection, and any logic that is implemented will be sure to satisfy no one (except maybe Steve, but that is a big maybe).
There is also the question of whether this is the type of "micromanagement" that needs to be removed, which I don't think it is. Making decisions about where to send orbital miners is part of the core strategic gameplay of Aurora, so a standing order like this has the downside of removing interesting gameplay for the sake of expedience, which has never been Aurora's design philosophy.
So overall I think having the normal orders which can be repeated or cycled is sufficient as it is, and no change of this type is needed. I can see why some people might want that change, but I don't think that rationale is compelling for Aurora.
I don't think a standing order for this would be as useful as it sounds. The issue is that automating orbital mining means the miners have to use some logic to select targets. Orbital miners are no use if they ignore useful resources to go pull up 25,000 tons of tritanium, for instance. I think most players would rather assign orbital miners to specific bodies than suffer from random selection, and any logic that is implemented will be sure to satisfy no one (except maybe Steve, but that is a big maybe).
There is also the question of whether this is the type of "micromanagement" that needs to be removed, which I don't think it is. Making decisions about where to send orbital miners is part of the core strategic gameplay of Aurora, so a standing order like this has the downside of removing interesting gameplay for the sake of expedience, which has never been Aurora's design philosophy.
So overall I think having the normal orders which can be repeated or cycled is sufficient as it is, and no change of this type is needed. I can see why some people might want that change, but I don't think that rationale is compelling for Aurora.
the standing order for moving to an asteroid with minerals is already in game and last i checked it moves to an asteroid with the highest total yield(all the accessibility values added together), so the only additions would be putting the mined minerals into the cargo hold if present and a conditional order to check for a full cargo hold and to empty the cargo hold at a suitable place
The suggestions to change orbital mining I think come from a deeper dissatisfaction with the Aurora orders system. The orders system is really quite similar to a visual scripting language, except that you are limited to one player-defined loop, two premade loops (in the form of standing orders) and two conditional orders. I think a lot of tedium could be removed from issuing orders if the system was a proper scripting environment. Perhaps keep the GUI to construct simple scripts, but also offer the possibility of writing complex behavioral scripts by hand, so that players might use unlimited conditionals, loops, and knowledge about the game state to write one script defining the behavior of, say, an orbital miner, and never have to intervene in that fleet's affairs after that.
Standing/conditional order templates.
Moved over as I realise I posted it in the wrong thread -
Super excited by all the updates coming in 2.6 Steve, but is there any prospect of the old Advanced techs coming back at all, even as an option that could be toggled on or off in the settings when creating a game? I recently reread the old VB6 Trans-Newtonian campaign, and actually unearthed advanced lasers on a 2.0.1 game I'm still running atm, and it feels like something that would make a nice reward for players working through Precursors or the new Advanced Precursors, or even the Invaders.
Steve, do you remember my suggestion to add ships, fighters, ground units etc. portraits in various game's windows (class design, naval org. etc.)? Is it in the list? Will you add something in 2.6.0?
On the ground units Order of battle tab, can the hierarchy be: System>SystemBody>Population, Instead of what it is now: System>Population? It would make dragging units from one population to another a lot easier when you have a lot of colones in the same system thanks
There is generally only one population per system body, so it would just add an extra layer that would be almost always redundant.
There is generally only one population per system body, so it would just add an extra layer that would be almost always redundant.
when you use genetic modification you end up with more then one on a system body and if you already have a bunch of colonies in a system before using genetic modification the new 'Race's' Colonies end up being so far down the line that it makes dragging a ground unit to the new race's colony impossible. maybe having them sort by name instead of creation order would be better?
[-] Sol
| [-] Earth
| | [+] I. Corps
| | [+] III. Corps
| | [+] VI. Corps
| etc.
| [-] Luna - Genetic Research Base
| | [+] 192nd Special Guard Brigade
| [-] Luna - Tranquility Base
| | [+] Lunar Brigade
| [-] Mars - Cydonia
| | [+] II. Corps
| | [+] Martian Brigade
| [-] Mercury - Erebor
| | [+] Inner System Brigade
etc.
There is generally only one population per system body, so it would just add an extra layer that would be almost always redundant.
when you use genetic modification you end up with more then one on a system body and if you already have a bunch of colonies in a system before using genetic modification the new 'Race's' Colonies end up being so far down the line that it makes dragging a ground unit to the new race's colony impossible. maybe having them sort by name instead of creation order would be better?
On the Create New Race window there is a checkbox for "Conventional Empire."
Please consider relabeling that to "Non-TN Empire" or similar.
New players are often unaware of the specific meaning of "Conventional" in Aurora, and they tick this box because they believe, naturally enough, that a "conventional" empire is a good choice for a first game.
Suggestion: Change Flag Bridge components to function as radius-zero (i.e., system-only) Naval Admin Commands, here called Flag Bridge Commands.
I have briefly mentioned this suggestion a few times in various places, but I think it is high time that I formalized it and posted it in this thread where Steve may actually see it. :)
Rationale: Flag Bridge components are currently of minimal use, at best. On one hand, the current bonus (+Reaction) is probably the weakest currently in the game and frankly scales rather poorly as it is effective for fleets with low training but useless for fleets with high training. On the other hand, the restriction to only a single fleet is arbitrary (i.e., this introduces a salient gameplay difference between two identical forces based on how they are organized into fleets with no additional or counterbalancing factors) and does not work well with numerous common play patterns such as carrier fleets, survey carriers, or even just regular fleet detachments.
Frankly, it is very silly that an admiral who detaches some fleet elements to execute a tactical maneuver immediately stops giving a bonus to those detachments.
Suggested Implementation: A Flag Bridge component should function as a radius-zero Naval Admin Command, with the following rules and restrictions:It would be up to Steve whether a Flag Bridge Command is automatically created for a ship or fleet with a Flag Bridge component or manually created by the player. I suspect the latter will make for a better user experience.
- A Flag Bridge Command is incorporated into the existing Naval Admin Command hierarchy under an existing command.
- A Flag Bridge Command may not have subordinate Naval Admin Commands (a possible exception could be made for other Flag Bridge Commands, at Steve's discretion).
- A Flag Bridge Command has a fixed system radius of zero which cannot be extended by, e.g., stacking Flag Bridges in a single ship or fleet. This means that the effect of a Flag Bridge Command is local to the system its fleet is in only. Within that system, it gives bonuses as a normal Naval Admin Command (including the ability to select the bonus type in the Naval Admin Command interface as usual).
- Fleets may be placed under the Flag Bridge Command to receive its command bonuses as long as they remain in the same system as the Flag Bridge ship/fleet.
- The fleet containing the ship which hosts the Flag Bridge is always subordinate to the Flag Bridge Command.
- A ship or fleet containing multiple Flag Bridges will have only one Flag Bridge Command associated with it, at most.
Benefits: In addition to addressing the deficiencies listed above, the Flag bridge Command offers significant new gameplay and roleplay flexibility:I note for completeness that, yes, most of what I ask for is at least technically possible already so long as the player is willing to shift 10 freighter-loads of Naval headquarters around with their fleet. However, this is (1) silly, (2) expensive, and (3) impractical particularly if one is trying to do this in several distant systems or regions at once. The other option, of course, is to just spam Naval HQs at Earth to expand the command range to something ludicrous, but this is lame for roleplay---if I cannot drive closer so my admirals may hit them with their swords then what is the purpose of playing Aurora, after all? ;D
- The ability to choose the skills benefiting from the flag officer through selecting the admin command type allows new command types. For example, a survey carrier may include a Flag Bridge component to provide survey bonuses to its detached parasites.
- This allows unusual arrangements, such as deploying an escort or patrol force to a system with substantial logistics elements and assigning the Flag Bridge Command associated with that escort force as a Logistics command, modeling a naval officer overseeing naval logistics in that system from the safety of an armed flagship.
- This allows Flag Bridges to function as useful command elements without the substantial overhead of establishing a Naval Headquarters installation on some system body just to extend the command range. Frankly, having to shift 10 freighters around just to allow an admiral to command from near the front is silly.
- Functioning as an admin command allows the player to select the rank of the flag officer, allowing higher-ranked admirals to lead from the front if they so desire.
Suggestion: Change Flag Bridge components to function as radius-zero (i.e., system-only) Naval Admin Commands, here called Flag Bridge Commands.
[...]
Flag Bridge NACs would be awesome! But I can't help but mention that there's a single class of ship that could benefit from Flag Bridges as currently implemented, and that's beam fighters. More on this here (https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13404.msg172954#msg172954), but in short, they're the only case where Reaction bonus can make or break a fight, and also the only case where it's untenable to put an appropriate officer on every combat ship. So I truly hope they'll get something resembling small flag bridges for them while actual flag bridges get admin commands.
Flag Bridge Commands with either NAV or PTL admin command types would provide Reaction bonuses, so my suggestion also addresses this need without any added complexity. :)
It is also not terribly difficult to stack Reaction bonuses with layered admin commands, which is one of several reasons I consider it the weakest bonus in the game. Of course, any bonus can be stacked with equal ease, but most other bonuses continue to pay off reasonably well when stacked, and Reaction is the only one which becomes drastically less useful the better your crew/fleet training levels get (well, and Crew Training, but that's a rather different case).
Suggestion: Change Flag Bridge components to function as radius-zero (i.e., system-only) Naval Admin Commands, here called Flag Bridge Commands.
I have briefly mentioned this suggestion a few times in various places, but I think it is high time that I formalized it and posted it in this thread where Steve may actually see it. :)
Rationale: Flag Bridge components are currently of minimal use, at best. On one hand, the current bonus (+Reaction) is probably the weakest currently in the game and frankly scales rather poorly as it is effective for fleets with low training but useless for fleets with high training. On the other hand, the restriction to only a single fleet is arbitrary (i.e., this introduces a salient gameplay difference between two identical forces based on how they are organized into fleets with no additional or counterbalancing factors) and does not work well with numerous common play patterns such as carrier fleets, survey carriers, or even just regular fleet detachments.
Frankly, it is very silly that an admiral who detaches some fleet elements to execute a tactical maneuver immediately stops giving a bonus to those detachments.
Suggested Implementation: A Flag Bridge component should function as a radius-zero Naval Admin Command, with the following rules and restrictions:It would be up to Steve whether a Flag Bridge Command is automatically created for a ship or fleet with a Flag Bridge component or manually created by the player. I suspect the latter will make for a better user experience.
- A Flag Bridge Command is incorporated into the existing Naval Admin Command hierarchy under an existing command.
- A Flag Bridge Command may not have subordinate Naval Admin Commands (a possible exception could be made for other Flag Bridge Commands, at Steve's discretion).
- A Flag Bridge Command has a fixed system radius of zero which cannot be extended by, e.g., stacking Flag Bridges in a single ship or fleet. This means that the effect of a Flag Bridge Command is local to the system its fleet is in only. Within that system, it gives bonuses as a normal Naval Admin Command (including the ability to select the bonus type in the Naval Admin Command interface as usual).
- Fleets may be placed under the Flag Bridge Command to receive its command bonuses as long as they remain in the same system as the Flag Bridge ship/fleet.
- The fleet containing the ship which hosts the Flag Bridge is always subordinate to the Flag Bridge Command.
- A ship or fleet containing multiple Flag Bridges will have only one Flag Bridge Command associated with it, at most.
Benefits: In addition to addressing the deficiencies listed above, the Flag bridge Command offers significant new gameplay and roleplay flexibility:I note for completeness that, yes, most of what I ask for is at least technically possible already so long as the player is willing to shift 10 freighter-loads of Naval headquarters around with their fleet. However, this is (1) silly, (2) expensive, and (3) impractical particularly if one is trying to do this in several distant systems or regions at once. The other option, of course, is to just spam Naval HQs at Earth to expand the command range to something ludicrous, but this is lame for roleplay---if I cannot drive closer so my admirals may hit them with their swords then what is the purpose of playing Aurora, after all? ;D
- The ability to choose the skills benefiting from the flag officer through selecting the admin command type allows new command types. For example, a survey carrier may include a Flag Bridge component to provide survey bonuses to its detached parasites.
- This allows unusual arrangements, such as deploying an escort or patrol force to a system with substantial logistics elements and assigning the Flag Bridge Command associated with that escort force as a Logistics command, modeling a naval officer overseeing naval logistics in that system from the safety of an armed flagship.
- This allows Flag Bridges to function as useful command elements without the substantial overhead of establishing a Naval Headquarters installation on some system body just to extend the command range. Frankly, having to shift 10 freighters around just to allow an admiral to command from near the front is silly.
- Functioning as an admin command allows the player to select the rank of the flag officer, allowing higher-ranked admirals to lead from the front if they so desire.
I assume this is intended for deployments beyond the range of the normal admin command network, otherwise there is no benefit from putting the admin command on the flag bridge.
I assume this is intended for deployments beyond the range of the normal admin command network, otherwise there is no benefit from putting the admin command on the flag bridge.
If I'm honest, it is mainly for roleplay - even if putting the NAC on Earth is arguably a better decision, it's more fun when the admiral "commanding" my fleet can actually be present with the fleet, but the existing Flag Bridge component really was lame.
Either way, the change looks great and it is certainly useful for distant operations (I was motivated to finally make my post in large part by dreams of survey carriers using the new standing orders). ;D
Does this mean that you could build e.g. a Terraforming Project Command Ship (or station), and put an admin command on it, to represent the overall chief of a terraforming project ? Cool.
Does this mean that you could build e.g. a Terraforming Project Command Ship (or station), and put an admin command on it, to represent the overall chief of a terraforming project ? Cool.
Yes but I believe it would be a military ship so you would have to provide maintenance somehow.
I would love templates for setting mineral reserves on colonies. Or some way to set reserve levels for colonies fasters than the current method.Maybe a one click button to keep 5 or 10 years of "current" mineral consumption as reserve?
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My suggestion is, assuming it does not require a lot of work, is to have a section on the Class design window that lists any shipyards tooled for the class you are looking for, perhaps in the Prioirites/Misc tab? If it listed the shipyard name, system, size and slips (total/available), for any shipyard capable of building the class, that would be a really big help.
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I was going to say that you need to set the waypoint on the body, then it will move together with it but I now realize that you want your probe to monitor the body from a safe distance so it doesn't get shot down immediately and yeah that cannot be done for a long duration because of orbital mechanics. But since ELINT cannot be put on a missile and active/passive sensors reveal everything inside their range immediately, I'm not sure how much need there is for a long-duration sensor drone orbiting a planet a million (or two) kilometres away. That is the job of a stealthy scout which can carry the ELINT module with it, revealing more information over time.
But more options never hurt so if it's an easy thing to code - have JP be 'attached' to a specific body and move with it maintaining the same distance and heading - then why not!
I was going to say that you need to set the waypoint on the body, then it will move together with it but I now realize that you want your probe to monitor the body from a safe distance so it doesn't get shot down immediately and yeah that cannot be done for a long duration because of orbital mechanics. But since ELINT cannot be put on a missile and active/passive sensors reveal everything inside their range immediately, I'm not sure how much need there is for a long-duration sensor drone orbiting a planet a million (or two) kilometres away. That is the job of a stealthy scout which can carry the ELINT module with it, revealing more information over time.
But more options never hurt so if it's an easy thing to code - have JP be 'attached' to a specific body and move with it maintaining the same distance and heading - then why not!
Thanks Garfunkel.
If you cannot build an ELINT ship (because you still haven't the technlogy, or -like me- you are struggling with shortage of minerals for it), a simple replacement can be a sensor-probe. And revealing the movement of the alien's ships (near the bodies and the JPs) can help to understand, with some anticipation, where to concentrate some more ships.
But, I mean, these points can be used the same way we use the waypoints, without placing a WP each time.
Suggestion: do not generate unrest-related events for colonies that have no population.
I sometimes create placeholder colonies on hostile worlds (generally for ease of reference for the body's stats and environment).
If I then attack the hostile colony and cause radiation damage, I get constant events regarding the unrest levels rising.
Unrest is irrelevant until a colony has population.
Suggestion: do not generate unrest-related events for colonies that have no population.
I sometimes create placeholder colonies on hostile worlds (generally for ease of reference for the body's stats and environment).
If I then attack the hostile colony and cause radiation damage, I get constant events regarding the unrest levels rising.
Unrest is irrelevant until a colony has population.
I think radiation was the only one that wasn't checking for population. Fixed now.
Suggestion: do not generate unrest-related events for colonies that have no population.
I sometimes create placeholder colonies on hostile worlds (generally for ease of reference for the body's stats and environment).
If I then attack the hostile colony and cause radiation damage, I get constant events regarding the unrest levels rising.
Unrest is irrelevant until a colony has population.
I think radiation was the only one that wasn't checking for population. Fixed now.
Maybe political status of colonies with 0 population should be set to Imperial Population upon conquest as well? Subjugated automines don't make a lot of sense, and I've excavated a ruin into an "occupied" precursor colony on more than one occasion.
Quote...
Waypoints that move by themselves are theoretically possible, although you would need a ship to follow them anyway. A sensor buoy is stationary and a missile would run out of fuel.
If I want to monitor hostile aliens, I use an ELINT ship (its well worth the 2000 RP), a small scout (fighter-sized, so its hard to detect), a sensor buoy placed on a nearby body, or I try to sneak in a freighter with a tracking station and place it on a body.
PLEASE. Let us resize the windows or at least change the UI size and font size. moving the window around to access buttons is getting painful...Hi Mint Keyphase. I use Windows 10 display scaling option to get the bigger interface.
PLEASE. Let us resize the windows or at least change the UI size and font size. moving the window around to access buttons is getting painful...
PLEASE. Let us resize the windows or at least change the UI size and font size. moving the window around to access buttons is getting painful...Hi Mint Keyphase. I use Windows 10 display scaling option to get the bigger interface.
While you are tinkering with standing orders, could you perhaps add two additional conditionals on <55% and <60% fuel?
Quite often, I send out a survey ship with the conditional to return home on 50% fuel. However, it doesn't reach Earth because Earth is in a further alignment than where it left. With 55% and/or 60%, this shouldn't happen any more. 55% is probably sufficient for Earth, but 60% might be required for a home base that has a larger orbit.
Hi.
It would be great to have a possibility to hide civilian fleets on the main screen.
I hope it is the right place to post the suggestion for the 2.6.0 update.
So Active Terminal Guidance.
Kind of... boring, honestly. And mostly useless.
Hi.
"Ordnance and missiles" tab of "Class design" window has no clear information about class capacity. I suggest to add on "fighter" and "missile" areas labels with total and used capacities. F.e. "Fighters N/A" and "Missiles 60/391".
Wrecks will usually appear in systems with planets. They may be in orbit and, if so, they are more likely to appear in orbit of planets with better environments.
I like the idea of a 'fallen race'. I could probably generate the race normally, then wipe it out, then pass a random amount of historical time to reduce what remains, including radiation. Substantial addition though, so might not be soon.
Simple Suggestion: Change the default starting date to 2030 (or any approapriate new start date)
It is currently according to the gregorian calender the year 2025 (in real life)
Aurora 4x has always had a date that is in the future to start with, to maintain continuity this must be rectified as aurora now starts in the modern day on default start. I am sure everyone agrees.
Simple Suggestion: Change the default starting date to 2030 (or any approapriate new start date)
It is currently according to the gregorian calender the year 2025 (in real life)
Aurora 4x has always had a date that is in the future to start with, to maintain continuity this must be rectified as aurora now starts in the modern day on default start. I am sure everyone agrees.
Give that we are only a couple weeks away from 2025, it might be time to consider updating the default start year? Unless Aurora is going to switch over into being a retro-futurism 4X.
I already did :) It's 2050 in the next version.
So Active Terminal Guidance.
Kind of... boring, honestly. And mostly useless.
Simple Suggestion: Change the default starting date to 2030 (or any approapriate new start date)
It is currently according to the gregorian calender the year 2025 (in real life)
Aurora 4x has always had a date that is in the future to start with, to maintain continuity this must be rectified as aurora now starts in the modern day on default start. I am sure everyone agrees.
I alway just set mine to 2100 because its easier to see how many years iv been playing. I do this mostly because i cant count. ha :D :D :D
Separate but connected suggestion: Certain spoiler races seem hardstuck when it comes to maximum speed and size of combat craft. Expanding the custom NPR parameters to the combat craft of spoiler races would be nice, though this might be more of a challenge.
Hi Steve,
Something I'd like to throw in the ring for a suggestion would be an increase in the energy/kinetic weapon bores we can research, as well as possibly increasing the distance beam weapons can fire up to as well, even if it comes at obscene mass prices. I'm asking as I'm currently trying to recreate an accurate design from David Weber's RMN fleet book, but anything beyond light cruiser size is unachievable at the moment due to the high tonnage of his designs.
So Active Terminal Guidance.
Kind of... boring, honestly. And mostly useless.
...