Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2010, 11:33:12 AM
Steve
Post by: waresky on January 15, 2010, 03:06:06 PM
okok..
1) am will a 1.000.000.000.000 stars to conquer..aaand..
2) am will Planetary hex map for planetary assault and disposable..aaaand..
3) a multiplayer Internet game..plus.
4) a NEW icon-ship radar contact...triangle,hexagon etc.etc..
for now ok.
Edit: and a newly Coffee machine ty Steve..:S
Post by: Beersatron on January 15, 2010, 03:27:31 PM
This is an idea from reading another thread about automated turns that seemed to diverge into talk on NPRs and having to 'wait' for relationships to improve.
Could you add something similar to what is in for multi-player-controlled games where you can 'gift' minerals/wealth/items-in-general to an NPR you have a Trade agreement with to get a slight boost in standings? Make it so you can't shower them with gifts over a short period of time and maybe have it become a negative effect according to to the type of NPR.
Maybe an extension to that could be that when an NPR gets into negative wealth for a period more than say 6 months (i.e. recession) they 'ask' the player for aid? Same for if they are low on minerals, they could ask for minerals and the player could choose to load up a freighter or two and send it to the NPR.
The one thing I can think about gifting wealth is that obviously the NPR won't be using the same currency and there probably wont be an interstellar exchange system in place!
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 15, 2010, 03:29:54 PM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
lol @wareskyOn the bottom of the Empires menu on the main menu bar is the Foreign Aid window. You can use this to send wealth to other races on an annual basis. Doesn't handle anything beyond wealth at the moment though.
This is an idea from reading another thread about automated turns that seemed to diverge into talk on NPRs and having to 'wait' for relationships to improve.
Could you add something similar to what is in for multi-player-controlled games where you can 'gift' minerals/wealth/items-in-general to an NPR you have a Trade agreement with to get a slight boost in standings? Make it so you can't shower them with gifts over a short period of time and maybe have it become a negative effect according to to the type of NPR.
Maybe an extension to that could be that when an NPR gets into negative wealth for a period more than say 6 months (i.e. recession) they 'ask' the player for aid? Same for if they are low on minerals, they could ask for minerals and the player could choose to load up a freighter or two and send it to the NPR.
The one thing I can think about gifting wealth is that obviously the NPR won't be using the same currency and there probably wont be an interstellar exchange system in place!
Steve
Post by: Father Tim on January 15, 2010, 04:00:19 PM
1. Precursor ships are not built with any of the 'advanced tech' available from ruins (compressed fuel tanks, advanced railguns, heavy lasers, etc.). I think they should be, so that those components have a chance of being discovered in their wrecks.
2. Precursors are a set to a similar level in every game, rather than given an amount of tech points relative to the player - which maybe should be the case.
3. As it stands, the political status modifier of populations exists in discrete, 20% chunks. A newly-conquered pop produces 20% of normal, until its political status upgrades to Occupied, at which point it suddenly doubles to 40%. It seems a shame to possess the computing power of a math co-processor and not use it.
I suggest changing the political status modifier and the way it is calculated. A newly Conquered population should begin at 0% production/trade/wealth, and each production cycle increase its modifier by a factor calculated from the amount by which the current Occupation Strength exceeds the required minimum. Perhaps cap the increase rate at some amount, so a small mining outpost doesn't immediately jump to full imperial citizenship. Then a simple derivative ( 1/2 * a * t^2 ) tells you the effective rate at which production occurred over the previous increment. (Where a is the rate for that increment, and t is the time in seconds.)
The political status of the colony would then be determined by the current modifier, rather than the other way around:
0% to 20% Conquered
>20% to 40% Occupied
etc.
I would expect the Trade & Wealth modifiers to increase more quickly than the Production modifier, maye double - after all, the government still makes money on rebuilding things. Tremendous profits came out of Europe in the late forties and fifties rebuilding after World War II.
4. Oh, and a minor thing. At the bottom of the left panel of the F2 'Population & Production' window is an option to display extra 'Summary Information' in the colony list. Could we please have production modifiers added as an option? And have Maintenance Facilities, Maintenance Supplies, and Fuel combined into one option (I'm not sure there's enough space to display all three, in which case I'd still like Supplies & Fuel combined in one entry).[/quote]
Post by: Shinanygnz on January 15, 2010, 04:56:38 PM
Those shield techs I keep bothering you about
X-ray laser missile warheads.
Cheers
Stephen
Post by: AtomikKrab on January 15, 2010, 09:29:48 PM
but really it's a pain when I can pick how many of something to load, but have to unload all of it or none or i'm just not seeing a way to already do that if it exists
Post by: sloanjh on January 15, 2010, 11:39:57 PM
Something else that's been nagging at me the last day or two - I would put more initial variation into the initial NPR reaction. At present, I think they typically start out at war with you, in which case you can probably keep them from going to war if you put a big diplo team on them (unless you go blundering around in their home system or they decide to colonize one of your systems).
Don't forget the idea that came up a week or two ago about making civie trade goods more meaningful - more impact on economy, plus able to tell which worlds are suited for which good. It just occured to me that the Galactic Civ might work - they've got resources that essentially give governor-type bonuses when they're exploited, so a shortage of plastics on a world might lower industrial efficiency there (or full-plastics might raise e.g. by 1.1x) while a shortage of luxury goods might increase unrest or cut wealth production (all the rich people move somewhere else
).John
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 16, 2010, 08:55:26 AM
How about a chance (15%-25%) when a scientist finishes a project using their full admin rating that the rating goes up.
As an alternate instead of a flat rate chance, have a scientific sector leader whose admin ratings modifies a much lower chance of improving the admin rating. Either the base rate is like 5% + the admin rating of the sector leader, or make it twice the difference between the sector leaders admin rating and the scientist's admin rating. With the second idea it would make for an interesting choice for who is put in charge of the sector for scientific research. (Maybe also have 1/4 of the sector leaders bonus apply like it use to before the changes to the 4 different types of leaders)
both of these ideas are based on the idea that when a project is finished their would be a chance that the leader of the project would have learned how to manage a bigger project. If they are not working at their full capacity however there is little chance that they would get better. This would give a player a much better chance of having really good scientists after a few years, and it would make improving your scientists a little harder to do without having lots of labs.
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on January 16, 2010, 11:40:09 AM
The reason it's a pain is the following: since the button greys out, I have to do one of the following two procedures:
1) Close the F5 window. Find the main menu-bar window and click in it to make it active. Hit ctrl-s (which isn't always recognized from windows, which is why I need to highlight the main menu-bar). Hit F5 to open the F5 window in SM mode. Hit the "unlock" button. Close the F5 window. Make the main menu-bar active. Hit ctrl-o to turn off SM mode. Open the F5 window.
There are two reasons for going through the above dance: ctrl-s/ctrl-o aren't recognized from all windows (in F5, ctrl-s works, but ctrl-o gives me a "you did something wrong" bell), and screens don't automatically refresh (turning greyed-out buttons on/off) when a transition to/from SM mode occurs. This is the procedure I've been using for the last couple of weeks for the F12 screen - today it just occured to me that there's a button somewhere to "refresh all screens", which led me to the following process:
2) Find the main menu-bar and make it active. Hit ctrl-s. Find the F2 screen and hit "Refresh All". Find the F5 screen and hit "unlock". Find the main menu-bar and hit ctrl-o. Find the F5 screen and do whatever you were doing.
This is a somewhat smaller procedure than #1, but it's still a lot less ergonomic than "hit the unlock button" :-)
Post by: sloanjh on January 16, 2010, 03:53:32 PM
John
Post by: Beersatron on January 16, 2010, 08:57:42 PM
*now were is my pitch fork*
Post by: Andrew on January 17, 2010, 07:56:20 AM
Post by: Hegemon2 on January 17, 2010, 08:53:10 AM
Captions should be bold instead of marking it's area with a frame.
The Summary Screen in Population and Production could benefit from some better organizations with categorization.
Arbitrary sorting by the user would be appreciated. For example sorting all bodies in the System Overview (F9) by Colony Cost or Mineral Status (0/S/M).
In the Event Manager shorten the date (e.g. 27. Nov. 2047) and put the time in a second line under it.
27. Nov. 2047 General Event
00:00 Another Event
00:10 Another Event
09:15 Another Event
28. Nov 2047
00:00
and so on.
Oh and Steve, would you mind if one would post information directly from the database onto the wiki (Governments for example), the db being passworded and all?
Great game, btw.
Post by: sloanjh on January 17, 2010, 01:01:26 PM
Quote from: "Andrew"
How about moving PDC's so that their commanders are drawn from the ground force officer list
Seconded, with caveats.
I had this thought myself, but then realized that the "crew training" is important for missile-PDC, and that's a Naval trait. Theoretically, it might make sense to distinguish between barracks-type and missile-type PDC, but from the point of view of coding it up it probably isn't worth it....
John
Post by: Father Tim on January 17, 2010, 03:26:24 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Andrew"How about moving PDC's so that their commanders are drawn from the ground force officer list
Seconded, with caveats.
John
How about this - allow any officer/leader/scientist/whatever to be assigned to any project/post/ship/brigade/whatever. Leave the automated assignments as is, but allow the player to do what he or she wants - even if it's contrary to the 'rules'. If I want to put a ground forces Major in charge of a research project, I should be able to. I know perfectly well he'll have 0% research bonus, and an Admin raing of 1, but I should be able to do it. LIkewise if I want a prominent scientist in charge of a survey vessel - I know she has no applicable bonus, but if I want to do it, I should be able to.
That way, everybody can be happy. If someone wants GF officers in charge of their PDCs, or Naval officers, or a mix of both, the player can have that. If they don't care enough to assign the 'renegades' themselves, they can live wtih whatever Aurora gives them.
Post by: sloanjh on January 17, 2010, 04:14:54 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
How about this - allow any officer/leader/scientist/whatever to be assigned to any project/post/ship/brigade/whatever. Leave the automated assignments as is, but allow the player to do what he or she wants - even if it's contrary to the 'rules'.
I really like this suggestion, especially since it probably makes the code simpler....
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 17, 2010, 10:38:13 PM
I like to name my battalions by type and number within the type, e.g. 1st Armored, 2nd Armored, 1st (not 3rd) Infantry, 2nd Infantry, etc.
My problem occurs in the various displays (e.g. during officer assignment) - most of them sort alphabetically, so I end up with
1st Armored
1st Airborne
1st Infantry
10th Infantry
2nd Armored
2nd Airborne
...
What I'd like is all units of the same type together. So the proposal is to split the names of ground units up into to pieces: a "type name" (or whatever you want to call it) and a "sequence number". So the 1st Armored would have a type name of "Armored" and a sequence number of "1". If sequence number was "none" or blank, then it wouldn't be part of the name, e.g. a type name of "Rico's Roughnecks" and sequence number of "none" would come out as "Rico's Roughnecks". The ordering could then be based on the type name, with a secondary ordering based on the (numerical, not string) sequence number.
Actually, the same sort of thing could be done for task groups too - right now I'm naming my TG "Ferret 001", "Ferret 002", etc. so that the sorting doesn't put Ferret 1, 10, and 100 next to each other.
This isn't high priority - on the ground units side I've simply started naming things "Armored 1st", "Armored 2nd" etc., then read them right to left. Just a thought that's been nagging me for a while....
John
Post by: Rathos on January 18, 2010, 11:30:14 AM
Post by: MoonDragon on January 18, 2010, 01:04:37 PM
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vista (and Windows 7) GUI, but they have a new display scheme called Aero. It makes window titlebars semi-transparent, and blue by default. So, a semi-transparent blue text on a dark blue background of the system view window is darn hard to see. Especially if one doesn't know that they should be looking there.
Post by: Drakale on January 18, 2010, 01:18:56 PM
1- A jury rigging(or recycling) tech could be added that increase the amount of mineral gained from scrapping, make refits faster(but still cost as much mineral as before) and make salvaging more efficient/yield more parts. I like the concept of a tinkerer civilization that has a knack for assembling and disassembling constructs.
2- Jump gates could stand to be harder to build in my opinion. Right now if I build a few gate constructors(5-6) early with lots of fuel and decent engines, I can rather easily build gates at all the discovered jump points. In comparison maintaining enough jump ships for the fleet is a much bigger expense. The only case I need jump ship is to invade a hostile system, and even then, a one way trip with a task-force is a viable if potentially dangerous tactic to secure and then build a way back in half a year. If jump gates took 3-5 years to build then only the major system would be linked and the choice between a jump capable fleet and a massive jump gate building infrastructure would be a little harder to do. Or am I wrong in thinking jump ships are not worth the effort?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 18, 2010, 01:38:45 PM
Quote from: "Drakale"
Jump gates could stand to be harder to build in my opinion. Right now if I build a few gate constructors(5-6) early with lots of fuel and decent engines, I can rather easily build gates at all the discovered jump points. In comparison maintaining enough jump ships for the fleet is a much bigger expense. The only case I need jump ship is to invade a hostile system, and even then, a one way trip with a task-force is a viable if potentially dangerous tactic to secure and then build a way back in half a year. If jump gates took 3-5 years to build then only the major system would be linked and the choice between a jump capable fleet and a massive jump gate building infrastructure would be a little harder to do. Or am I wrong in thinking jump ships are not worth the effort?The problem with jump gates is that while they make your life a lot easier, they also make it easier for an invading alien Empire
. For example, non-jump precursors can't follow you out of a system unless you provide them with a jump gate. It is also quite slow to build in a chain because you can't start gates in the next system until you complete them in the previous one, unless you have a large civilian jump ship to escort the construction ships.Steve
Post by: Drakale on January 18, 2010, 01:51:38 PM
For me 1 year to build a 2 way gate is quite fast... You are right for the invasion part however. I did not have to deal with a full scale NPR invasion yet so I might revise my strategy at that point.
Post by: Andrew on January 18, 2010, 02:14:27 PM
Post by: Rathos on January 18, 2010, 04:15:27 PM
Post by: Sherban on January 18, 2010, 04:27:21 PM
Post by: Poojawa on January 18, 2010, 08:13:59 PM
But!
Perhaps could we have drag boxes to adjust the sizes of the windows, rather than being stuck with the width of 1024? my primary computer I'd like to play this on is a max of 1600x900 (widescreen), while the laptop I discovered this gem is 1600x1200.
And no, I've tried fiddling with the unsupported monitor resolutions and the LG monitor basically told me to piss off <,<
Post by: Father Tim on January 19, 2010, 01:53:41 AM
Quote from: "Sherban"
Can you destroy (target) jump gates? It might be one solution to deal with NPR invasions.
No, you can't (though it's a much-discussed topic). And it would be, which is why you (currently) can not do so.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 02:55:07 AM
Quote from: "Rathos"
I would like to be able to design missile launchers larger than 24 size too. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to (with enough time and resources) build massive 100 size launchers that fire five stage cruise missiles every hour or so =DThat is something else that was originally in v4.8 and was lost when I suffered a corruption in the master DB before Xmas. I'll add it for v4.9
EDIT: Missile Launchers now go up to Size 100 in v4.9
Steve
Post by: Rathos on January 19, 2010, 03:35:33 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Rathos"I would like to be able to design missile launchers larger than 24 size too. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to (with enough time and resources) build massive 100 size launchers that fire five stage cruise missiles every hour or so =DThat is something else that was originally in v4.8 and was lost when I suffered a corruption in the master DB before Xmas. I'll add it for v4.9
EDIT: Missile Launchers now go up to Size 100 in v4.9
Steve
Sweet. Why not size 10000 launchers as well? That way we can fit a missile big enough to destroy a planet. :roll:
Post by: boggo2300 on January 19, 2010, 03:37:09 AM
Matt
Post by: Rathos on January 19, 2010, 06:06:00 AM
Civilian Contracts for Minerals
It doesn't have to be fancy, but that would be great!
Also, any improvements along the civilian line would be great as well. I really think they have a lot of possibilities. Especially seeing civilian mining bases turn into something more, like a: Smuggler den, Shipping company HQ, Civilian Research labs, Mercenary companies(!? Maybe escort services for your civilians), Offshore (Heh or off-planet!) Gambling dens, Civilian Fuel Refineries/Maintenance facilities (where civilian ships refuel/repair but government ships have to pay wealth), Luxury resorts, Civilian Ship construction yards (Right now civilian ships are made from no where?), SETI radio antennas (which could turn into alien greeting hubs after you meet your first aliens), and maybe Civilian Asteroid Race courses?
There are a lot of things you could do with Civilians, and I think they add a whole new dynamic to play. Instead of destroying the civilian mining colony when it runs out of ore why not rename it to one of the above for now and let it produce a tiny amount of wealth? Later you can go back and add things to each one, maybe having each type of installation have a ship that is associated with it and performs a function? Have the Smuggler/Shipping HQ/Refinery/Construction facilities have a cargo ship that trades between the facility and your habitual worlds. Have a Luxury Liner go between the Gambling den/Race course/Lux resort between a planet and the facility. The Seti/Research lab could send a ship that travels between points in the system randomly.
Just some ideas (albeit I think they are good ones!)
Post by: Hawkeye on January 19, 2010, 06:11:50 AM
Quote from: "Rathos"
Sweet. Why not size 10000 launchers as well? That way we can fit a missile big enough to destroy a planet. :roll:
Hm, designing a dreadnought that shoots a (small) destroyer at the enemy :lol:
Post by: Rathos on January 19, 2010, 06:22:02 AM
"Sir! It isn't a ship, its a missile!"
"WHAT!?"
Kaboom
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 10:26:40 PM
1) Put an "average time spares will last" number on the Class summary. The huge annual breakdown rate numbers on big ships are confusing to a lot of people (it seems), and the important number is how many years it will take for your spares to run out. As it is, I just realized that I always do the worst-case calculation in my head - it would simplify my life to have Aurora do it for me, especially if it also told me the average (in addition to max) breakdown cost.
2) "Conventional" fighter engines. Now that we've go company-sized drop bays, I just design my first assault shuttle - it comes in at 350 tons. Unfortunately, I can't make it a fighter because I haven't researched fighter-engine tech yet. It would be nice to be able to research a fighter-type engine (that will flag a design as a fighter) without going to the fighter power-level, e.g. use GB power-level instead.
As another possibility, you could have a checkbox on the F5 design tab that specified a ship as a fighter (independent of engines), with a design error if it was over 500 tons.
As a gripping possibility, you could just specify any ship of 500 tons or less as a "small craft", which is built through construction factories rather than through SY. This is actually probably the simplest (and best?) option.
The main impetus for this is that it doesn't seem consistent for whether or not something is classified as a small craft (built in factories) depends on the type of engines it has, with the more sophisticated (fighter) engines requiring factory (less specialized) rather than SY (more specialized) to consturct.
Another thought - put in a passenger compartment for e.g. 30-50 passengers that's the same size as a company-size drop bay. This would allow us to build an "admiral's barge". OTOH, it's getting dangerously close to removing the abstraction that cargo lighters are hidden in the mass cost of CHS and spaceports.
And another thought...I still think that CHS size should probably be bumped up, at least by 2x and possibly as much as 5x. As it stands, it's negligible relative to the size of the cargo holds.
John
PS - See, still got that counting issue
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 10:46:25 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
1) Put an "average time spares will last" number on the Class summary. The huge annual breakdown rate numbers on big ships are confusing to a lot of people (it seems), and the important number is how many years it will take for your spares to run out. As it is, I just realized that I always do the worst-case calculation in my head - it would simplify my life to have Aurora do it for me, especially if it also told me the average (in addition to max) breakdown cost.It's not quite that simple. I can calculate the number of failures per year fairly easily (based on increasing failure chance over time) but the system that fails will significantly affect the lifetime of the maint supplies and the chance of each system failure is weighted by the DAC. I guess I could do it based on the most expensive system.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 10:53:41 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"1) Put an "average time spares will last" number on the Class summary. The huge annual breakdown rate numbers on big ships are confusing to a lot of people (it seems), and the important number is how many years it will take for your spares to run out. As it is, I just realized that I always do the worst-case calculation in my head - it would simplify my life to have Aurora do it for me, especially if it also told me the average (in addition to max) breakdown cost.It's not quite that simple. I can calculate the number of failures per year fairly easily (based on increasing failure chance over time) but the system that fails will significantly affect the lifetime of the maint supplies and the chance of each system failure is weighted by the DAC. I guess I could do it based on the most expensive system.
Steve
I know it's not
I was suggesting calculating the average cost of a failure as sum((prob_system_from_DAC)*(cost_of_system)/100); after that the calculation should be the same as for the most expensive. Most expensive works for me too - it's what I do in my head anyway.John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:10:07 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"I know it's not :)). I calculate the total cost of failures per year, using an increasing chance of failure each year, to derive a figure in years that is a conservative estimate of how long the maint supplies will last.Quote from: "sloanjh"1) Put an "average time spares will last" number on the Class summary. The huge annual breakdown rate numbers on big ships are confusing to a lot of people (it seems), and the important number is how many years it will take for your spares to run out. As it is, I just realized that I always do the worst-case calculation in my head - it would simplify my life to have Aurora do it for me, especially if it also told me the average (in addition to max) breakdown cost.It's not quite that simple. I can calculate the number of failures per year fairly easily (based on increasing failure chance over time) but the system that fails will significantly affect the lifetime of the maint supplies and the chance of each system failure is weighted by the DAC. I guess I could do it based on the most expensive system.
For exampleCode: [Select]Victory class Gravitational Survey Vessel 1450 tons 133 Crew 300.5 BP TCS 29 TH 50 EM 0
1724 km/s Armour 1-11 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/2/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 16% IFR: 0.2% Maint Capacity 130 MSP Max Repair 100 MSP Est Time: 3.43 Years
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (2) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 62.1 billion km (416 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor S20-R100 (1) GPS 2000 Range 20.0m km Resolution 100
Gravitational Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per HourCode: [Select]Ark Royal class Cruiser 6200 tons 611 Crew 639 BP TCS 124 TH 250 EM 0Steve
2016 km/s Armour 3-30 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 3 PPV 26
Annual Failure Rate: 102% IFR: 1.4% Maint Capacity 193 MSP Max Repair 45 MSP Est Time: 2.39 Years
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 29.0 billion km (166 days at full power)
Twin 10cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x2) Range 90,000km TS: 15000 km/s Power 6-6 RM 3 ROF 5 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 0
15cm C3 Near Ultraviolet Laser (2) Range 180,000km TS: 3000 km/s Power 6-3 RM 3 ROF 10 6 6 6 4 3 3 2 2 2 1
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1) Max Range: 192,000 km TS: 3000 km/s 95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (1) Max Range: 48,000 km TS: 12000 km/s 79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Pebble Bed Reactor (6) Total Power Output 18 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Active Search Sensor S10-R1 (1) GPS 10 Range 100k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor S20-R100 (1) GPS 2000 Range 20.0m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 11:12:39 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I have assumed the most expensive system as that is already explicitly stated on the summary (and its 5am and I am battling with flu at the moment and can't sleep and therefore being lazy
Looks great, Steve!! (And I had forgotten about the increasing failure rate with time....)
Now go drink a bunch of orange juice and ...... get better (was going to say get some sleep, but it seems you've already tried that).
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:19:12 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"I have assumed the most expensive system as that is already explicitly stated on the summary (and its 5am and I am battling with flu at the moment and can't sleep and therefore being lazy :). On a course of antibiotics as well on the moment as I always get a really bad chest infection when I get any cold or flu. Currently interspersing forum posts with bug fixes and coughing up great quantities of green gunge :). Its just as well I can't sleep as I would only keep my wife awake with my constant coughing and she needs to work tomorrow. The frustrating thing is that the British Poker Tour is at the closest casino to home at the moment and I can't play - grrr!
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:31:11 PM
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 11:36:32 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
coughing up great quantities of green gunge
Hmmmm - sounds like it could be a new weapons system, or maybe for monsters when you put them back in. Microwaves already knock out sensors, so maybe this would be engine-disabling. You could have two types of tech research: color and viscousity. Color could cycle up the spectrum, e.g. IR, red, orange, yellow, etc. while viscousity would have a % rating. Seems like viscousity should control the % power loss for the engines, while color might control the duration of power loss. Oh yes, you'd also need to also research a green gunge launcher, with launcher size and reload rate ratings ..... AHA!!! It's not a new system - it's a new warhead type for missiles (with the same two techs).
Quote
or was that too much detail?
Nope. But my post probably was
Hope you feel better,
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 19, 2010, 11:42:32 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
ROFL! Be careful what you wish for :)Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"coughing up great quantities of green gungeHmmmm - sounds like it could be a new weapons system, or maybe for monsters when you put them back in. Microwaves already knock out sensors, so maybe this would be engine-disabling. You could have two types of tech research: color and viscousity. Color could cycle up the spectrum, e.g. IR, red, orange, yellow, etc. while viscousity would have a % rating. Seems like viscousity should control the % power loss for the engines, while color might control the duration of power loss. Oh yes, you'd also need to also research a green gunge launcher, with launcher size and reload rate ratings ..... AHA!!! It's not a new system - it's a new warhead type for missiles (with the same two techs).
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 19, 2010, 11:48:49 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
ROFL! Be careful what you wish for
I was hoping you'd say something like this so I could say "And the scary part is that I actually got you thinking about it"
John
Post by: boggo2300 on January 19, 2010, 11:58:55 PM
Matt
Post by: IanD on January 20, 2010, 11:44:02 AM
Regards
Post by: sloanjh on January 20, 2010, 02:07:08 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
Allow half space increments for sensor antenna sizes up to 3 or 4. My FAC need a new FC, a 2 hull space antenna gives me a range of 21.6 million kilometres, while a 3 space antenna gives me a range of 43.2 million Kilometres. What I wanted was a range of 30 million kilometres. Half a space is important on a FAC.
Regards
Seconded.
Or an even more extreme possibility is to allow fractional values in the design of most ship-borne systems - similar to missile design. So for active sensors, you'd specify a (decimal) resolution and a (decimal) size in HS, and get a unique system. Similarly for engines - you'd specify a power level (commercial/military/GB/Drone/Fighter) and a size. I accidently made a 0.75 HS missile in my last game - why not allow 0.75 HS launchers so you could pack 4/3 as many of them into your point defense?
One difficulty I see would be the damage allocation model - you'd probably want some sort of probablistic interpretation of fractional HTK. Another difficulty would be in cargo holds - I would want to be able to specify picking up only an integral number of installations if I had a ship with a weird-capacity hold.
John
Post by: boggo2300 on January 20, 2010, 02:44:24 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
Allow half space increments for sensor antenna sizes up to 3 or 4. My FAC need a new FC, a 2 hull space antenna gives me a range of 21.6 million kilometres, while a 3 space antenna gives me a range of 43.2 million Kilometres. What I wanted was a range of 30 million kilometres. Half a space is important on a FAC.
Regards
I think this is a useful idea, the number of times I've had to overpower my fire controls, not so important on a ship, but I've been moving to a more FAC/Fighter based fleet, and half a space can be very important on a FAC
Matt
Post by: sloanjh on January 20, 2010, 02:47:16 PM
I was thinking about the "unlock design" SM-only issue this morning, and it occured to me that Aurora actually is intended to support 3 modes:
1) SM mode, aka "Cheat" mode. Allows one to break the rules.
2) Solitaire player mode - should be able to easily ignore rules (i.e. cheat) that he wants to ignore, but wants to be warned when cheating.
3) Multi-human mode - There's an SM mailing DB to players who enter their orders etc. In this mode the rules should be strictly enforced, which means requiring the SM password to go into any of the other modes. It's not clear how much effort you (Steve) want to expend here, since I don't know of anyone who's actually doing this.
In any event, introducing the multi-human mode will give a compromise solution to a lot of the "should this cheat require the SM PW" questions - in multi-human mode the answer is "yes"; in solitaire mode is "no, but maybe give a warning".
It also occurred to me while typing this message that the startup screen should probably modified to support multi-player mode - there should be a "select human player" pulldown (which includes SM) that requires the apropriate PW to start the game. This so that the SM doesn't accidently leave the DB that he mails to player1 with the default empire set to player2's.
John
Post by: Virex on January 21, 2010, 09:08:10 AM
Post by: metalax on January 21, 2010, 11:23:08 AM
Should Engineer Brigades require at least a Brigadier for command? I know you can do this manually but I wasn't sure if this was an oversight. On a related note shouldn't they attach to Divisional HQ's instead of Brigade HQ's? Or at least have the option to do so?
Any possibility of getting the ability to add additional ranks for ground force officers in a similar way to the ability to do so for naval officers?
Also any prospect of getting at least one more level of HQ's?
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 21, 2010, 01:00:07 PM
A means to assign superior formation to fighters squadrons on the F7 window. This is carried over to the task group created when the squadron is launched. If an F7 superior formation isn't assigned then default to parent TG. I tend to have multiple small squadrons on a carrier. Then tend to need to manouver together.
The ability for carriers to repair fighter battle damage.
The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.
Post by: welchbloke on January 21, 2010, 02:28:16 PM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
Flotilla/squadron handling for gunboats similiar to what we have for fighters.Steve's been talking about revamping the F7 screen for some time and the suggestion above would help me as well. I also have multiple sqns that have to manoeuvre together.
A means to assign superior formation to fighters squadrons on the F7 window. This is carried over to the task group created when the squadron is launched. If an F7 superior formation isn't assigned then default to parent TG. I tend to have multiple small squadrons on a carrier. Then tend to need to manouver together.
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
The ability for carriers to repair fighter battle damage.A YES PLEASE! from me as well.
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.Not sure if I agree with this one. If you think about today's fighters then some changes are possible, Typhoon F3 to Typhoon FGR4is acheivable, but you couldn't turn a Tornado F3 into a Typhoon FGR4 for example. The mechanics of this would need some thought. Maybe changes that don't increase/decrease mass by more than 20%?
Post by: boggo2300 on January 21, 2010, 02:34:09 PM
Matt
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 21, 2010, 02:51:27 PM
Quote from: "boggo2300"
Something that would be usefull for the Hunter/Killer class submarine wannabe's I'm experimenting with would be reduced squadron sizes for Jump Drives, allowing you to select squadron sizes smaller than 3 (all the way down to 1 I'd like) these ships are supposed to operate alone, and every hull space I can save is more magazine space.....
Matt
Already there. That's how I've built my jump fighters. Just have to keep researching minimum jump engine size. If I recall correctly, reduced size is trigger by improved efficency.
Post by: metalax on January 21, 2010, 03:17:04 PM
Post by: Beersatron on January 21, 2010, 03:42:30 PM
Quote from: "metalax"
I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.
afaik you can get:
squadron size 1 jump drives (military and commercial I think)
squadron size 2 jump drives (commercial)
squadron size 3 and up jump drives (military and commercial)
Post by: boggo2300 on January 21, 2010, 03:49:05 PM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Quote from: "metalax"I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.
afaik you can get:
squadron size 1 jump drives (military and commercial I think)
squadron size 2 jump drives (commercial)
squadron size 3 and up jump drives (military and commercial)
Cool, I've been unable to test this with 4.8, I keep getting combat increments, and I'm still in November of my second year, and the damn research monkeys arent gettin' it done!!
Matt
Post by: mrwigggles on January 21, 2010, 03:58:57 PM
A display for seeing the state of the civvie contracts in terms of completion.
Post by: sloanjh on January 21, 2010, 04:00:26 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
If he put the series stuff in (from missiles), then upgrades could be allowed within a series but not across series.Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.Not sure if I agree with this one. If you think about today's fighters then some changes are possible, Typhoon F3 to Typhoon FGR4is acheivable, but you couldn't turn a Tornado F3 into a Typhoon FGR4 for example. The mechanics of this would need some thought. Maybe changes that don't increase/decrease mass by more than 20%?
John
Post by: Father Tim on January 22, 2010, 03:55:53 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Or an even more extreme possibility is to allow fractional values in the design of most ship-borne systems - similar to missile design. So for active sensors, you'd specify a (decimal) resolution and a (decimal) size in HS, and get a unique system. Similarly for engines - you'd specify a power level (commercial/military/GB/Drone/Fighter) and a size. I accidently made a 0.75 HS missile in my last game - why not allow 0.75 HS launchers so you could pack 4/3 as many of them into your point defense?
One difficulty I see would be the damage allocation model - you'd probably want some sort of probablistic interpretation of fractional HTK. Another difficulty would be in cargo holds - I would want to be able to specify picking up only an integral number of installations if I had a ship with a weird-capacity hold.
John
I'm always in favour of finer granularity in Aurora. If I had my way, 99.98% of the game would be entering decimal values in boxes. As for Damage Allocation, simply keep the current 0 HTK system* and for systems larger than 1 HTK round down all to the nearest integer (in mathematical terms, modulo 1).
*Currently, a 0 HTK component takes up one space on the DAC, is destroyed by even a single point of damage, but does not 'absorb' that point of damage, so it then goes on to destroy something else.
Post by: Father Tim on January 22, 2010, 04:11:11 AM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Quote from: "metalax"I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.
afaik you can get:
squadron size 1 jump drives (military and commercial I think)
squadron size 2 jump drives (commercial)
squadron size 3 and up jump drives (military and commercial)
Really? Because if that's true then there's almost no reason to ever build a commercial drive bigger than SqSz 2. Oh, I suppose some lunatic will want to hurl multiple commercial-engined ships into a combat where they'll be deaf, dumb, and blind for 12 hours, but the rest of us will simply take the extra few minutes to move multiple ships through a jump point.
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 22, 2010, 07:08:12 AM
As far as I know this was part of the v4.8 release.
Post by: Beersatron on January 22, 2010, 08:42:47 AM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
I don't believe that squadron size 2 is available for either military or commercial jump drives. But Self only (squadron size 1) are for drives from 1hs to just below the lowest researched minimum jump drive size.
As far as I know this was part of the v4.8 release.
Pretty sure that in my current game (don't have it on this PC) I have a 60k Ton JD that was created with squadron size 3 technology but that gets equated to squadron size 2 because it is a commercial design.
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 22, 2010, 09:04:52 AM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"I don't believe that squadron size 2 is available for either military or commercial jump drives. But Self only (squadron size 1) are for drives from 1hs to just below the lowest researched minimum jump drive size.
As far as I know this was part of the v4.8 release.
Pretty sure that in my current game (don't have it on this PC) I have a 60k Ton JD that was created with squadron size 3 technology but that gets equated to squadron size 2 because it is a commercial design.
I just reviewed the jump engine design. In actual function I can't say one way or the other.
Post by: Rathos on January 22, 2010, 04:26:22 PM
Maybe make 1-25 low tech, and 25-50 cost 1000 each, then 50-100 cost 2000 each.
Also take launcher max size up to 1000, in increments of 50 between 100-500 (i.e. 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, etc.) and 100 between 500-1000 (i.e. 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000) 1000 size box launchers shooting ship sized torpedoes to blow up entire planets/fleets is fun. (I made a 1000 size MIRV that broke up into thousands of small deadly dart missiles with their own targeting software)
Also how about higher jump drive efficiencies? i.e. 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 etc. Doubling the RP cost though would make it go too high though, so maybe stick with a 10% increase in the cost? Max jump drive already costs a lot so it would still take a while to research.
Also, maybe you could play a game with some giant big ships. There are some problems with them (Sensor Errors, Fleet Contact Errors, Maintenance error overflows, extremely long time to load fire-control systems (Because of the sheer number of weapon systems. Maybe once the list gets so large group the weapons into tens so each weapon represents 10 of the guns on board?)
Also a larger fuel tanks/crew quarters/engineering spaces would be nice. (156 thousand engineering spaces on my 50 million ton super monitor took a lot of x100 clicking...only to throw a maintenance error every cycle that results in no maintenance failures! Might as well not put any on there!)
Of course you might of already fixed this for 4.9...I just upgraded and it will take some time to rebuild. (In fact I never managed to actually build a ship larger than 6 million tons, the 50 million monitor was fast OBed in to test it out on my playground game
)Edit: Also, can we have a button to add a shipping line that isn't Spacemaster, that costs an amount of wealth (Maybe 5-10% of your total wealth?)
Post by: mrwigggles on January 22, 2010, 05:25:48 PM
Post by: Father Tim on January 22, 2010, 10:42:12 PM
Quote from: "Rathos"
Also a larger fuel tanks/crew quarters/engineering spaces would be nice. (156 thousand engineering spaces on my 50 million ton super monitor took a lot of x100 clicking...only to throw a maintenance error every cycle that results in no maintenance failures! Might as well not put any on there!)
You're unlikely to get larger versions, as that would take a lot of programming time for a minor return of fun, but I'm sure Steve would be willing to whip up a x1000, and maybe even a x10,000 button, on the F5 Unit design screen.
Post by: sloanjh on January 22, 2010, 11:32:41 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "Rathos"Also a larger fuel tanks/crew quarters/engineering spaces would be nice. (156 thousand engineering spaces on my 50 million ton super monitor took a lot of x100 clicking...only to throw a maintenance error every cycle that results in no maintenance failures! Might as well not put any on there!)
You're unlikely to get larger versions, as that would take a lot of programming time for a minor return of fun, but I'm sure Steve would be willing to whip up a x1000, and maybe even a x10,000 button, on the F5 Unit design screen.
I have a suspicion that the DAC (Damage Allocation Table) might break if there were 10s of thousands of components - it depends on which variable types Steve is using.. The damage control screen might have problems too - I don't remember if you get 1000 entries for 1000 broken components of the same type....
John
Post by: Rathos on January 23, 2010, 01:29:44 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "Rathos"Also a larger fuel tanks/crew quarters/engineering spaces would be nice. (156 thousand engineering spaces on my 50 million ton super monitor took a lot of x100 clicking...only to throw a maintenance error every cycle that results in no maintenance failures! Might as well not put any on there!)
You're unlikely to get larger versions, as that would take a lot of programming time for a minor return of fun, but I'm sure Steve would be willing to whip up a x1000, and maybe even a x10,000 button, on the F5 Unit design screen.
I don't see how copying the current tech entries from the database, copying them at the bottom, changing the modifier to a higher number is a lot of programming.
There are already multiple ones for smaller systems. Also armored fuel bunkers.
A few minutes in Access whipped me up the following:
Code: [Select]
ID Name CategoryID RaceID TechTypeID ReplicatingTech NoTechScan RuinOnly Prerequisite1 Prerequisite2 StartingSystem ConventionalSystem Dev AdditionalInfo AdditionalInfo2 AdditionalInfo3 AdditionalInfo4 TechDescription
50 Jump Drive Efficiency 100 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 4000000 100 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
51 Jump Drive Efficiency 1000 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 10000000 1000 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
52 Jump Drive Efficiency 150 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 6000000 150 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
53 Jump Drive Efficiency 200 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 8000000 200 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
54 Jump Drive Efficiency 250 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 10000000 250 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
55 Jump Drive Efficiency 300 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 10000000 300 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
56 Jump Drive Efficiency 50 1 0 8 False False False 1219 0 False False 2000000 50 0 0 Jump engines with higher levels of jump drive efficiency will permit larger ships to jump than lower efficiency engines of the same size
58 Missile Launcher Size 1000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 12500 1000 2000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
59 Missile Launcher Size 10000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 1000000 10000 20000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
60 Missile Launcher Size 100000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 10000000 100000 200000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
61 Missile Launcher Size 150 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 150 300 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
62 Missile Launcher Size 200 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 200 400 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
63 Missile Launcher Size 2000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 25000 2000 4000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
65 Missile Launcher Size 250 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 250 500 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
66 Missile Launcher Size 300 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 300 600 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
67 Missile Launcher Size 3000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 50000 3000 6000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
68 Missile Launcher Size 350 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 350 700 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
69 Missile Launcher Size 400 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 400 800 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
70 Missile Launcher Size 4000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 100000 4000 8000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
71 Missile Launcher Size 450 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 5000 450 900 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
73 Missile Launcher Size 500 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 7500 500 1000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
74 Missile Launcher Size 5000 1 0 10 False False False 0 0 False False 100000 5000 10000 0 The maximum size of missile a launcher with this technology can fire
80 Expanded Cargo Hold 31 0 80 False False False 0 0 True True 200 50000 0 0 Allows ship to transport 50000 cargo points. 1 ton of minerals = 2.5 CP, Infrastructure = 2500 CP, Factory or Mine = 25,000 CP
81 Expanded Crew Quarters 11 0 99 False True False 0 0 True True 1000 2500 0 0 Provides life support for up to 2500 crew. A ship design must always include sufficient life support for the crew
82 Expanded Fuel Storage 11 0 94 False True False 0 0 True True 1000 500000 0 0 Fuel storage for ships. Each Fuel Storage module can hold 500,000 litres of fuel.
83 Expanded Engineering Section 11 0 66 False True False 0 0 True True 0 500 0 0 0 Extra large Engineering Space. Reduces chance of failure and adds maintenance supply capacityI could of probably did it in seconds if I had known what I was doing.
The real programing problem I think would be the overflow errors relating to extremely large ships. Also the number of components on them might cause problems with the DAC and also with fire-control list like sloanjh said. To minimize the amount of components on the ship while maintaining how much they add is the goal of the larger sections. Thousands of entries to either would make them take forever to load right now (It already takes 30-40 seconds to load the North Carolina's fire control and it only has about 1000 weapons). The damage control screen, thankfully lumps the same components into one entry I.E. x11 Ion engine E9s or 2x PewPewlasers or 1x Big missile launcher of doom.
Also, who are you to say what is a minor bit of fun? I realize I might be in the minority here, but I know at least a couple other people who enjoy designing large warships. One of most fun things for me to do is to try and design a giant warship and then build it. The sense of accomplishment getting everything together to build a North Carolina Missile Cruiser with nothing but the resources of Sol was quite fun. Ditto when the 750 thousand ton warship flew into Washington to destroy the alien invaders, and it was terribly sad to see the ship broken up for scrap after not having enough maintenance facilities to overhaul it as its maintenance clock ran up.
All this is moot anyway, Steve will decide what Steve wants to add in the end. I'm just thankful I can add a few things *I* enjoy to my database and have them work relatively well.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 23, 2010, 03:44:26 AM
I would urge those people who do have the password not to pass it on, otherwise I am going to have to start regularly changing it. I do give out the password to players with a lot of experience who need to change something that we have discussed to fix a specific problem.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 23, 2010, 04:51:04 PM
1) Introduce a company-sized unit: "Marine Battalion HQ" (or maybe just "Battalion HQ"), that's size-1, defense 0.5, cost 20, and can attach 4 company-sized units.
2) Change the combat stats of Marine companies to be 1/4 (vice 1/5) those of a Marine battalion: 2.5 attack and defense, and the cost to 40 BP.
3) (Possibly) Disallow placing officers in command of companies (it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a field-grade officer leading a company).
So this gives 4 Marine companies plus an HQ stats of attack 10, defense 10.5, and cost 180, in comparison to 10/10/180 for a Marine battalion. I tried to pick the numbers by looking at your brigade and division HQ. I originally was going to make the HQ cost 60 (and the companies 30) since your brigade HQ tend to be more expensive than batallions, but figured you'd want 5 individual companies to cost more than a battalion, since it would have stats 25% larger. The 10.5 in total defense was to make the numbers come out even - I don't think it's harmful because I suspect that a battalion is stronger fighting as a single unit than broken up into individual units (which can be picked off one at a time).
If the first two changes are put in place, then I can group my Marine companies under a battalion HQ, which will be attachable to Brigade HQ just like any other battalion.
John
Post by: Litcube on January 23, 2010, 10:07:28 PM
Going through the tutorial, I added a Nuclear Engine Research Project Design 10 times, because I didn't know that there was no confirmation when hitting "create". My suggestion is to add some sort of confirmation when creating a research project (sound, message box, etc.)
Post by: Erik L on January 24, 2010, 02:17:46 AM
Post by: Rathos on January 24, 2010, 02:22:47 AM
Quote from: "Litcube"
Hi!
Going through the tutorial, I added a Nuclear Engine Research Project Design 10 times, because I didn't know that there was no confirmation when hitting "create". My suggestion is to add some sort of confirmation when creating a research project (sound, message box, etc.)
Ditto the first time I designed something, although I only tried 4 times.
Post by: Toloran on January 24, 2010, 06:14:16 PM
. I also only recently upgraded from 4.75 to a new version so I might of missed things in there too.- Ability to Abandon a colony.
- Additional upgrades to the "Small Jump Gate Construction" module (instead of just having the 360 day one).
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 24, 2010, 06:45:38 PM
Quote from: "Toloran"
I apologize if any of these things are already in the game. I've gotten most things figured out but I still can't find certain thingsTo abandon a colony, select it on the Economics window and press the Abandon button, which is next to the Close button
- Ability to Abandon a colony.
- Additional upgrades to the "Small Jump Gate Construction" module (instead of just having the 360 day one).
The upgrade to the small JGC module is really the larger 180 day model and its subsequent variants
Steve
Post by: Erik L on January 25, 2010, 04:55:50 PM
Post by: Rathos on January 25, 2010, 05:01:50 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
A targeting queue. It'd be nice to order a ship to target bogey 001, bogey 002, bogey 003, and have it shift fire as the targets are destroyed.
Yeah, yeah. In one battle I had one ship ten fire controls. Each missile would kill a enemy ship. It was a right pain to have to switch the missile launcher and target for each fire control every 5 seconds until a missile had been launched at every single one.
Post by: Andrew on January 25, 2010, 05:13:22 PM
Also if you have 5 ships each wanting to laod 1 company they load in sequence so that is 45 days to load the troops , and then another 45 days to transfer them to drop bays which can lead to the first company losing organisation before the last one loads, this can be avoided by splitting the fleet into 5 single ships but it would be nice if there was somewhay for each troopship in a flleet to load at the same time
Post by: Father Tim on January 26, 2010, 03:41:05 AM
Post by: Beersatron on January 26, 2010, 01:31:34 PM
The user has a large and complex Galaxy Map that has loops and colonies that are on the other side of these loops. This means that following one path (4 jumps) is quicker than the other (6 jumps) but the Civies don't seem to be able to understand this and refuse to move even though there are JGs plus supply/demand setup along the 4 jump route.
Can we then have the option to 'Create a Shipping Lane' that has one colony as the root and another colony as the tip. It would be created in the same way as you give travel orders at the moment, but you would restrict the options to only bodies that have a colony.
i.e.
Start at Earth (human 1.4billion) -> Transit Alpha Centauri JP -> Transit Luyten JP -> Transit Gliese 1337 JP -> Transit EG 105 JP -> Transit Vega JP -> End at Eden (human 12million)
I do not know what way you store travel orders for TG currently, but can you store the above as an abstract series of parent-child rows and then apply it to a TG when selected on the orders screen?
You can then change your civie algorithms to check for a Shipping Lane that starts at their current location and ends somewhere that has demand, before doing what I presume is an exponential search out to 4 jumps away from current location.
I am not sure if I am explaining myself correctly and I am typing fast because my lunch break is up. Hopefully somebody understands what I am trying to get across and can put it more eloquently! The aim is to lift the restriction on 4 jumps maximum for Civies and the 'show all pop' option.
Post by: Erik L on January 26, 2010, 09:35:12 PM
Post by: Erik L on January 26, 2010, 09:38:42 PM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Would it be possible for you to define 'Shipping Lanes'? The theory behind it is this:
The user has a large and complex Galaxy Map that has loops and colonies that are on the other side of these loops. This means that following one path (4 jumps) is quicker than the other (6 jumps) but the Civies don't seem to be able to understand this and refuse to move even though there are JGs plus supply/demand setup along the 4 jump route.
Can we then have the option to 'Create a Shipping Lane' that has one colony as the root and another colony as the tip. It would be created in the same way as you give travel orders at the moment, but you would restrict the options to only bodies that have a colony.
i.e.
Start at Earth (human 1.4billion) -> Transit Alpha Centauri JP -> Transit Luyten JP -> Transit Gliese 1337 JP -> Transit EG 105 JP -> Transit Vega JP -> End at Eden (human 12million)
I do not know what way you store travel orders for TG currently, but can you store the above as an abstract series of parent-child rows and then apply it to a TG when selected on the orders screen?
You can then change your civie algorithms to check for a Shipping Lane that starts at their current location and ends somewhere that has demand, before doing what I presume is an exponential search out to 4 jumps away from current location.
I am not sure if I am explaining myself correctly and I am typing fast because my lunch break is up. Hopefully somebody understands what I am trying to get across and can put it more eloquently! The aim is to lift the restriction on 4 jumps maximum for Civies and the 'show all pop' option.
This used to be in there before civvies. That's how trade routes were setup. Though the shipping along them was abstracted.
Post by: mrwigggles on January 27, 2010, 12:30:44 AM
Quote from: "Andrew"
A faster laoding time for marine companies, at the moment it takes 9 days to load a marine company unless your ship carries cargo handling equipment, which is a bit of a problem if you just want a single company for boarding actions on a ship.
Also if you have 5 ships each wanting to laod 1 company they load in sequence so that is 45 days to load the troops , and then another 45 days to transfer them to drop bays which can lead to the first company losing organisation before the last one loads, this can be avoided by splitting the fleet into 5 single ships but it would be nice if there was somewhay for each troopship in a flleet to load at the same time
The load for drop pods to and from troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and a half. Holy crap?!
But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 27, 2010, 07:17:35 AM
This request came about in part because I got several different races where the beam weapons and engine tech was quite high, the capaciter tech was minimal, or high missile tech, and they hadn't even researched the second level of magazine improvements, etc.
Thanks
Brian
Post by: Hawkeye on January 27, 2010, 10:11:49 AM
Quote from: "mrwigggles"
The load for drop pods to and from troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and a half. Holy crap?!
But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.
Hm, haven´t loaded any troops from a troopbay to a dropbay in my newest game, but in my 4.7 game, I loaded a full division (transported in 4 TTs) in 8 dropships in a few hours.
The key to this, I think, was that my TTs had a cargo handling system for each battalion it could carry i.e. 5 battalions capacity - 5 cargo handling systems (and putting each TT in its own taskgroup, so yes, I also second Adrews proposal to have several TTs in a single Taskgroup load troops parallel instead of in-sequence)
Now that I think about it, putting in the order to drop the troops on the alien planet as soon as they are loaded seemed to considerably speed up things. Might be my memory playing tricks on my, however.
Post by: Andrew on January 27, 2010, 10:17:07 AM
Quote from: "Hawkeye"
I fit CHS system to the large troopships but GB Engined dropships and FTR Engined assault shuttles cannot carry the extra , likewise it seems silly to need a CHS to help load a company of marines , at the moment my battleships carry a company and a shuttle eachQuote from: "mrwigggles"
The load for drop pods to and from troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and a half. Holy crap?!
But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.
Hm, haven´t loaded any troops from a troopbay to a dropbay in my newest game, but in my 4.7 game, I loaded a full division (transported in 4 TTs) in 8 dropships in a few hours.
The key to this, I think, was that my TTs had a cargo handling system for each battalion it could carry i.e. 5 battalions capacity - 5 cargo handling systems (and putting each TT in its own taskgroup, so yes, I also second Adrews proposal to have several TTs in a single Taskgroup load troops parallel instead of in-sequence)
Now that I think about it, putting in the order to drop the troops on the alien planet as soon as they are loaded seemed to considerably speed up things. Might be my memory playing tricks on my, however.
Post by: Hawkeye on January 27, 2010, 01:06:46 PM
Quote from: "Andrew"
I fit CHS system to the large troopships but GB Engined dropships and FTR Engined assault shuttles cannot carry the extra , likewise it seems silly to need a CHS to help load a company of marines , at the moment my battleships carry a company and a shuttle each
I might not have made myself clear, ´cause I do exactely the same thing
i.e. the TTs have CHS, the dropships don´tIt is my understanding that the CHS on the TT is actually loading the troops into the dropships
You are of course right, there shouldn´t be a need for a CHS for a company of marines, even if they are power armored, no, make that especially if they are power armored (which, in my mind, they absolutely are) they will simply walk up the ramp.
Hm, how long does it actually take, to load this company into the shuttle?
Post by: Andrew on January 27, 2010, 04:32:03 PM
Post by: mrwigggles on January 27, 2010, 06:45:09 PM
Quote from: "Andrew"
9 days to load the company on the ship , I have not tried to load them onto the shuttle yet, but I recall that taking 9 days in the previous version
I'm also not seeing how a chs can help to load infantry, unless they are all in fright boxes.
Post by: ShadoCat on January 27, 2010, 09:05:00 PM
Quote from: "mrwigggles"
Quote from: "Andrew"9 days to load the company on the ship , I have not tried to load them onto the shuttle yet, but I recall that taking 9 days in the previous version
I'm also not seeing how a chs can help to load infantry, unless they are all in fright boxes.
Freight boxes? That would be the luxury troop ship.
Post by: boggo2300 on January 27, 2010, 09:44:20 PM
Matt
Post by: Paul on January 27, 2010, 10:43:16 PM
My suggestion is to modify the homeworld mineral generation to overlap the standard mineral generation instead of replacing it. For example, if Homeworld X was generated with 3,000,000 Duranium and 1,000,000 Sorium, the homeworld code would leave the bulk of those two deposits and simply adjust to make the planet more homeworld-like. So maybe the final result would be a world with 3,000,000 Duranium, 1,000,000 Sorium, and the other 9 minerals at the base homeworld amount of roughly 20-100k each.
So basically it would generate the amount of minerals and the accessibility like it does now, then it would check to see if existing mineral content is higher than the amount the homeworld code generated. If it is, the higher amount is used. All the accessibility scores would just be replaced by the homeworld code, since it generally gives better accessibility and would be more suitable for homeworlds.
This way the homeworld would still have a shortage problem on some minerals which would force players to outsource them(from what I can see it never gives worlds all 11 minerals except homeworlds), but would have a comparatively logical amount of minerals when compared to the other worlds with the same or similar gravity rating (like Venus).
I did some searching to see if this had been suggested before, but all I found was posts about how people were using the SM to increase starting minerals on homeworld (So I guess I wasn't the only one who saw it as strange, hehe).
Post by: ZimRathbone on January 28, 2010, 03:17:50 AM
Quote from: "Paul"
This way the homeworld would still have a shortage problem on some minerals which would force players to outsource them(from what I can see it never gives worlds all 11 minerals except homeworlds), but would have a comparatively logical amount of minerals when compared to the other worlds with the same or similar gravity rating (like Venus).
I did some searching to see if this had been suggested before, but all I found was posts about how people were using the SM to increase starting minerals on homeworld (So I guess I wasn't the only one who saw it as strange, hehe).
I have seen occasional unihabited worlds with all minerals (perhaps 1 in 1000 of those that have minerals) but yes its quite rare, but I usualy find one or two in each game. Part of the discussion of the use of SM mode to increase homeworld minerals was due to the fact that duranium used to be required for almost everything except fuel, and as a result you often ended up with economic crashes 3-4 years into the game. I believe Steve re-jigged a lot of the build costs a while ago, and I (for one) have experienced far fewer mineral shortages in the first few years than I used to. Its still not quite perfect but ususally I end up with around 10-12 years worth of high accesabilty of duranium, which is often good enough to at least get the first major outsystem mining colony up and running.
Post by: Morrigi on January 28, 2010, 08:41:30 AM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 28, 2010, 09:54:55 AM
Quote from: "Morrigi"
This has probably come up before, and apologies in advance for being a noob, but is there any chance it will be possible to resize the windows or change the resolution? Having to scroll all over the place is getting annoying...Have a look at the FAQ for display issues
viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2033 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2033)
Steve
Post by: Morrigi on January 28, 2010, 11:12:12 AM
Post by: Father Tim on January 30, 2010, 05:33:47 AM
Post by: Father Tim on January 30, 2010, 09:25:48 AM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on January 30, 2010, 09:54:01 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
On the (F2) 'Population & Production' window, 'Teams/Academy' tab, 'Team Members' box, would it be possible to get the relevant bonus/skill for team members displayed after their name when a team is selected in the above 'Teams based on this Colony' box?I have already added that for v5.0
Also, you can see the bonuses and assignments for each person in the list when you are forming a team so you don't need to check the Officer window to decide on the right candidates for a new team
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on January 30, 2010, 11:18:06 AM
Allow construction factories to add to the capacity of SY, create new slipways, and/or build SY with initial sizes larger then 1kton/1slipway.
At present I'm running a 10billion pop conventional campaign (seeing if bigger industry can overcome tech disadvantage vs. NPR), so my industrial base is 10x what it normally is.
The good news is that almost everything is scaling well (it's amazing how fast research gets done with 100+ labs
, although I do see some data-management issues looming on the screens for ground units, officers, SY management etc - basically anything where you need to control individuals becomes 10x harder when you have 10x of them.The one thing that isn't scaling well is the lag time in SY to build many or large ships. Basically, once you've built a SY, you have no way to speed up the growth of the SY - once the initial yard is built, it takes the same time to expand the capacity of a SY to make capable of constructing a super-carrier whether you've got 100 construction factories or 10,000. One of the things that I think would be fun in this 10x game would be to a few 100kton warships rather than 10x 10kton warships, but I'll need to wait decades for my new SY to grow big enough to manage a 100kton ship.
Two thoughts of how to do this:
A) Allow construction factories to be assigned to SY for the purposes of their expansion tasks. These construction factories would be taken out of the general industrial pool, i.e. they would get "first dibs" on the factories before the various percentages of the other stuff was factored in.
B) Add "expand capacity for SY X" or "build new slipway for SY X" to the possible industrial tasks. The management problem here is coordinating between the industrial tasks and the growth task of the SY itself. An extreme version of this would be to remove the ability of SY to grow themselves from the SY - just turn it into another industrial task (I'm not sure I like that idea due to micromanagement concerns on the industrial tasks screen - I think I prefer #A above).
Note that, once the SY is built, I can speed up construction of large ships by creating prefab components - I was originally skeptical of this idea when it was introduced, but now that I'm using it I love it - it's simply getting a SY big enough in place that's the problem.
A few minor suggestions for managing 10x games that I thought of while typing:
1) Allow SY to be set into a "continuous construction" task, where it automatically starts a new ship of the same class whenever the previous ship finishes. This would cut down on micromanagement of series production.
2) When building prefab components, add a command that allows you to build the prefab components for an entire ship class as a single task. At present, I'm spending a lot of time adding tasks for 5 ion engines, 1 active sensor, 1 thermal sensor, 1 EM sensor, etc. and coordinating their percentages so they finish at the same time, all to prefab the components of a single ship.
2') It just occured to me that suggestion A above could also be used to make prefabbing easier - allow industrial capacity to be dedicated to SY construction tasks too. I'm not sure you're going to like this one though (which is ok), since you want to make it hard to switch SY abilities around. On the other hand, the retooling cost/time is still there, which adds switching time.
3) I'm not having a lot of luck with the current numerical rating system for prioritizing officer assignments to classes in auto-assign. How about a new dialog/tab on the Commanders window that allowed you to pick a level of commander - it would then present all of the classes which that level can command as an ordered list with up or down arrows. The class ordering could then be adjusted by hitting the arrows. Level of commander would still be controlled by the DAC tab of the F5 screen - it's just the priority of the classes for getting commanders that seems hard/cumbersome.
4) Some way to group ground units into "commands" that can be minimized, without requiring the building of HQ. Actually, I think someone else (Waresky maybe?) has suggested something similar for TF/TG. In the TF/TG version, the F12 screen would have an additional pulldown selector for "TF being viewed" (which would include "all" as an option). If the TF was set to e.g. "Exploration Command", then only TG in Exploration command would show up TG selector. The "command" idea for ground units is similar - a command wouldn't have any game mechanics significance, it would just be a tag that could be filtered against. As a concrete example, if I end up with 100 Marine companies, each on a ship, my "all ground units" screen is going to be a nightmare because I can't put them into an HQ.
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 30, 2010, 11:23:38 AM
And a similar suggestion for luxury passenger quarters. Father Tim (I think) had a cool role playing idea of creating diplomatic courier vessels for transporting diplo teams in a role playing sense. For every troop transport module size, I'd like to see a lux module of the same size.
John
PS - I have this incredible feeling of deja vu - I may have already made this one in another post. If so, that just shows that I think it's a really good idea
Post by: Andrew on January 30, 2010, 12:33:33 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
A "tiny" troop transport module that holds a company. At present, if I want to put a boat bay on a cruiser that holds a single company-size assault craft (fighter), I need to put in a battalion's worth of quartersSmall Company sized transport modules already exist
Post by: sloanjh on January 30, 2010, 12:47:36 PM
Quote from: "Andrew"
Quote from: "sloanjh"A "tiny" troop transport module that holds a company. At present, if I want to put a boat bay on a cruiser that holds a single company-size assault craft (fighter), I need to put in a battalion's worth of quartersSmall Company sized transport modules already exist
DOH!!! I had it in my head that normal = brigade and small = battalion. Never mind....
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 30, 2010, 12:56:59 PM
After adding a project, I tend to want to look at it. When there's more than 6 projects active, I have to grab the vertical scroll bar and pull it down to see what I just did.
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 30, 2010, 06:43:01 PM
I'm trying to rescue some life pods that got blown away by precursors. The approach course I picked would have run me right over the precursors, except that they're sitting there with their engines on full and so I picked them up on thermals. If they were at speed 1, then they probably would have picked me up first and blown me away (since it's an unarmed picket ship that's trying to make the pickup).
John
PS - With small ships, passive detection and low signatures, Aurora feels more and more like submarine warfare to me.
Post by: Brian Neumann on January 31, 2010, 10:33:55 AM
Brian
Edit***
another sort that would be usefull is of the scientists by their specialty.
Thanks for all the hard work you put in. I really enjoy playing around with Aurora.
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on January 31, 2010, 10:35:35 AM
I often find myself in a situation where I want to do something for e.g. a month, then stop doing it. If the "do something" is moving a TG somewhere, then I can use the "send message" order to remind myself when it arrives. If not, though, then I have to tie a string around my finger, and then I get weird looks when I go out in public with 50 strings tied around said finger
2) (Stolen from a recent post of Brian's) Being able to double click on the ground unit/team/whatever is selected in the secondary orders list that pops up when you do a load/unload command. I always find myself trying to double-click, then remembering I have to do an "add move".
John
Post by: sloanjh on January 31, 2010, 04:01:42 PM
I've got a standard "Nitro" class munitions ship. There are 3 different loadouts I'd like it to have, depending on the mission:
1) All AMM (for resupplying missile defense ships/PDC).
2) All ASM (for resupplying missile FAC/Cruisers)
3) Empty (for dead-heading back after dropping missiles off at a colony)
Similarly, I might want to add some size-1 ASM (heavier warhead, more fuel) to my Anti-missile escorts' magazine according to the mission.
At present, reloading to these loadouts can't be automated, because the loadout is bound to the class definition, not the ship or the role.
So the idea is to create an extra layer of indirection between the class and the loadout definition. Rather than binding the class to "200 Sidewinder and 25 Harpoon" and having that be the loadout for all ships, at the class level you would be allowed to define multiple loadouts, giving each one a name (in the same way missile series have names). Individual ships could then be set to use the loadout that's most suited to their particular mission. That way one could have both ASM and AMM colliers in the same TG and a simple "replenish ordnance from colony" order would fill them both correctly.
John
Post by: quintin522 on January 31, 2010, 05:45:55 PM
Expanding civilian businesses to include corporations. Right now from what I've seen the player is the only one who can terraform, survey systems/planets/moons/asteroids, and facilities. My idea is the ability to outsource these tasks to the civilian sector and have them do it, for a price.
Examples:
You've just started expanding into a new system. You want to explore the system quickly to see what resources are available and whether there's anything lurking out there. But you don't have anything nearby that can do that. So you outsource it to the civilian sector. Good news! Whitman's Incorporated is based on a planet in the next system and have a survey ship available. They send you a contract that lists how much they'll charge per orbital body/type. You accept, and they head out to start surveying.
One of your new colonies is the perfect spot for a military refuel/repair/resupply hub. You want to put orbital/ground facilities there to do so. But your production ques are full. Yes, the answer is outsource! Using the civilian manufacturing sector, Bigstong Constructors can create those modules/factories for you. Then it's sister company, Bistong Shippers, can ship it out to that location and set it up.
I feel this would add a higher level of realism and get rid of the need to make all those survey ships and the like (need, not want
). Most government branches will outsource construction contracts to military contractors or the civilian sector. Or provide incentives for businesses/companies/corporations to build something somewhere.
Post by: ZimRathbone on February 01, 2010, 05:48:23 AM
Post by: Another on February 01, 2010, 05:54:14 AM
Quote from: "quintin522"
Most government branches will outsource construction contracts to military contractors or the civilian sector. Or provide incentives for businesses/companies/corporations to build something somewhere.
In real world that is highly dependent on political regime. I doubt that the "Player Race" = any flavour of "Democracy".
Post by: Father Tim on February 01, 2010, 08:01:52 AM
From a certain point of view, what you are describing is what happens currently. A nice, friendly democractic government issues contracts and payments, the evil dictator says "Do it! Or off with your head!" and the militant theocracy cries "God demands it of us!"
Personally, I consider it a bug that 'hive mind' races have a civilian sector at all, but it's not much of one and I can easily ignore it.
#:-]
Post by: sloanjh on February 01, 2010, 08:54:51 AM
I like the flexibility of the new %capacity stuff for construction, but it's led to a lot more micromanagement (I think) than the old way when my priorities change. Someone else already suggested that, when a project ends, the next project on the list should start with whatever factories are available, and should accrete factories until it reaches its max. The other problem is that factories sit idle whenever a project finishes.
I'd like to extend this concept (now that I think of it, this is more a display extension - I think the mechanics are the same as previously suggested):
At present, there is only 1 column in the display - the % capacity. In addition, once a project is active, there is no prioritization among projects.
The proposal is to differentiate between the % requested and the % assigned, and to throw everything (queued and unqueued) into one big queue (similar to the old system) with arrows to move projects up and down. Construction capacity would be assigned by assigned the requested capacity to the 1st project in the queue, then to the second project, until a project is reached which requests more capacity than is available - that project only gets partial capacity. All other projects are in a queued state. So the current "% capacity" column changes to "% capacity requested" and a new "% capacity assigned" column appears.
Doing it this way will make it very simple to change priorities or requested capacity - simply change that project and everything redistributes automagically. It also solves the "idle factories when finished" problem - it should be easy to assign the idle capacity to the next project in the queue....
John
Post by: VariousArtist on February 01, 2010, 09:39:23 AM
Post by: Erik L on February 01, 2010, 08:07:03 PM
Post by: Erik L on February 01, 2010, 11:06:59 PM
Post by: Father Tim on February 02, 2010, 02:51:22 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
I mainly run off the economic screen. It'd be really helpful to have the auto-time control replicated there as well. :)
Me too, and yes please.
Post by: teoleo on February 02, 2010, 04:49:32 AM
Post by: Balibar on February 02, 2010, 04:50:07 AM
Post by: mrwigggles on February 02, 2010, 05:24:07 AM
As in, a fuel harvester task force with subordinate fuel harvest detached should issue orders as if the task force had a fuel harvest in its task force.
Post by: mrwigggles on February 02, 2010, 06:49:56 AM
Post by: nichaey on February 02, 2010, 08:58:33 AM
or at least the ability to hide all commander related events. I turned on automanage commanders because I didn't want to nanomanage in that respect, and now whenever somebody dies or even sneezes theres half a page of people adanvcing in rank
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 02, 2010, 09:03:16 AM
Quote from: "nichaey"
I don't know if this was already mentioned, but I feel the need for more filters on the event update screen.If you click the Event List button, you will see a list of events. Double-click the events to filter them out. I know there is a display bug for the Event List - it is fixed in v5.0
or at least the ability to hide all commander related events. I turned on automanage commanders because I didn't want to nanomanage in that respect, and now whenever somebody dies or even sneezes theres half a page of people adanvcing in rank
Steve
Post by: VariousArtist on February 02, 2010, 09:16:47 AM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 02, 2010, 11:15:28 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
On the Research tab of the F2 screen: Always put in the researcher's specialization (vice "none"), even when the researcher's bonus is 0%. I give researchers "training projects" to give them an opportunity to grow their skills, so a 0% CP researcher is different from a 0% EW to me.Added for v5.0
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on February 02, 2010, 10:28:45 PM
I just opened a new extra-solar colony which will consume most of my civie shipping, but Mars has enough population that a few ships might do an Earth/Mars trade route back and forth. I'd like to see the paths of particular ships, but it's hard to pick them out from the noise of all the other ships in the line.
John
Post by: Osmosis Jones on February 03, 2010, 11:37:24 AM
Basically, I want to be able tow a big fat ship out into deep space, and have it sit there, being fed minerals from my roving harvester fleets, which it converts into missiles, maintenance supplies, and I suppose fighters.
Post by: VariousArtist on February 03, 2010, 12:26:32 PM
Post by: Erik L on February 03, 2010, 12:29:06 PM
Quote from: "VariousArtist"
Create new game: Can we get an additional option for a start in a randomized starting system? I mean no more Earth, Mars, Jupiter, etc. I miss the surprise-effect from other games! =)
There is a function for that. Under starting race. Select the SM Race option.
Post by: Father Tim on February 03, 2010, 01:30:18 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "VariousArtist"Create new game: Can we get an additional option for a start in a randomized starting system? I mean no more Earth, Mars, Jupiter, etc. I miss the surprise-effect from other games! =)
There is a function for that. Under starting race. Select the SM Race option.
It's a little more complicated than that, as Aurora does not have a 'create system with a habitable world' function, so the player needs to create a new system, select a body with acceptable gravity, add a colony of the SM race, use the F2 P&P window Environment tab (in SM mode) to adjust the atmosphere to include Oxygen (or Methane) and remove any dangerous gasses, then use the F9 SysInfo window SM button 'Create Empire'.
Post by: VariousArtist on February 03, 2010, 01:47:25 PM
Post by: Brian Neumann on February 03, 2010, 03:17:16 PM
This is the only area on missiles that does not get better with higher tech. I do not think it should go up as fast as armour does. With a cap of maybe 1msp giving 5 points of protection on the high end. This would make a lot of design choices interesting at higher tech levels. For instance having 2-3 points of armour makes the choice of using lasers vs gauss cannon a viable one, and also makes a difference between 10cm and 15cm weapons. You can get more 10cm on board, but the 15cm have a much better kill chance, etc.
Brian
Post by: MoonDragon on February 03, 2010, 07:29:43 PM
Post by: sloanjh on February 03, 2010, 08:22:59 PM
Quote from: "Brian"
Steve, could you possibly make the missile ablative armour more effective based on the tech researched. Something based on the amount of internal armour that has been researched rather than directly off of the armour available for ships. For instance at Ceramic composite having 1msp give 2 points of protection instead of 1.
This is the only area on missiles that does not get better with higher tech. I do not think it should go up as fast as armour does. With a cap of maybe 1msp giving 5 points of protection on the high end. This would make a lot of design choices interesting at higher tech levels. For instance having 2-3 points of armour makes the choice of using lasers vs gauss cannon a viable one, and also makes a difference between 10cm and 15cm weapons. You can get more 10cm on board, but the 15cm have a much better kill chance, etc.
Brian
Seconded.
John
Post by: Empty on February 03, 2010, 08:55:25 PM
Ie a pooled storage in a task force?
I've just made 5 10k ton troop transports each with one transport module.
Thinking they could pick up a size 25 engineer brigade.
I thought the brigade would be split between the transports
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 04, 2010, 07:17:54 AM
Why not disallow normal/auto mine placement on asteroids and comets? (substrate too unstable)
+++++++++++++
also: request 2 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2143&p=20619#p20619)
Post by: VariousArtist on February 04, 2010, 07:44:31 AM
Quote from: "Commodore_Areyar"
Asteroidminers seem useless compared to placing automines.Veto! No useful idea to nerf the mines to improve usability of miners.
Why not disallow normal/auto mine placement on asteroids and comets? (substrate too unstable)
+++++++++++++
also: request 2 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2143&p=20619#p20619)
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 04, 2010, 11:31:49 AM
Quote from: "MoonDragon"
Currently (4.91), only the colonies with population specify the status of the planetary "geological team survey". The mining colonies, even though they have been team surveyed, do not show the status. Could this be augmented please?Already done for v5.0
Steve
Post by: Charlie Beeler on February 04, 2010, 12:07:56 PM
The ability to block select battalions when making brigade HQ assignments. Better yet, a form of cntl+click to select multiple units not concurrent in the unit list. When assigning brigade HQ's to Div HQ's the subordinate battalions are asigned as well.
The ability to block select ground units when being assigned to embark on troop transports. If an HQ is selected, query if all subordinates are to be embarked at the same time or not.
The ability to move troops from drop pods back to troop bays without having to perform a combat drop.
Charlie
Post by: Kurt on February 04, 2010, 06:04:18 PM
Kind of a question/suggestion:
Why does conventional ground forces (low tech armor and infantry) require trans-newtonian minerals to build? That doesn't seem right. Shouldn't they just require money, time, and a ground force training facility to build?
Kurt
Post by: Baron Of Hell on February 04, 2010, 09:57:08 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Decouple loadout definitions from classes, or at least allow multiple loadouts for a particular class.
I've got a standard "Nitro" class munitions ship. There are 3 different loadouts I'd like it to have, depending on the mission:
1) All AMM (for resupplying missile defense ships/PDC).
2) All ASM (for resupplying missile FAC/Cruisers)
3) Empty (for dead-heading back after dropping missiles off at a colony)
Similarly, I might want to add some size-1 ASM (heavier warhead, more fuel) to my Anti-missile escorts' magazine according to the mission.
At present, reloading to these loadouts can't be automated, because the loadout is bound to the class definition, not the ship or the role.
So the idea is to create an extra layer of indirection between the class and the loadout definition. Rather than binding the class to "200 Sidewinder and 25 Harpoon" and having that be the loadout for all ships, at the class level you would be allowed to define multiple loadouts, giving each one a name (in the same way missile series have names). Individual ships could then be set to use the loadout that's most suited to their particular mission. That way one could have both ASM and AMM colliers in the same TG and a simple "replenish ordnance from colony" order would fill them both correctly.
John
I would like to to piggy back on this suggestion since my idea is similar. I have multiple ships of the same class that I wish to have different default loadouts. John's idea would work fine for me and is more robust than what I had in mind.
I think you should just use the AMMO MNGT button on the individual ship screen to also define the default ordnance. It could act as a override if you also have the default ordnance defined on the class screen. Maybe just add a checkbox to the AMMO MNGT window that says something like "use as default load for TG load order".
I can clearly see why you would want this set on the class screen but I think a option for individual ships is also needed.
Post by: sloanjh on February 05, 2010, 11:40:44 AM
The following scenario has been bugging me for a long time, and the solution just clicked in: Let's say I've got a ship with a speed of 10,000 and my fire-control speed and turret speed are both 4,000. If I want to have a laser mount with a tracking speed of 12,000 (let's say I know that's an enemy's standard speed), then I need to pay for a 30% turret (3x4,000) to mount it in, of which only the last 5% does me any good - the first 25% goes to matching the ship's speed. If the turret speed added to the ship speed, however, then I'd only have to design a 5% turret, since I would only need the 2,000 extra speed between 12,000 and 10,000.
For the case of ship speeds that are slower than the fire-control speed, I would only add turret speed to the ship speed, not to the fire control speed. So a 4,000 turret on a 2,000 ship with 4,000 fire-control speed would result in a tracking speed of 6,000 rather than 8,000. This is because the fire control speed effect is intended as a floor for tracking speed in the case of fixed mounts on slow ships.
I realize you might not want to do this for balance issues, which is fine, but I like the idea of giving an incentive to build fast escorts even if they're equipped with turrets. The thing that triggered this was a thread about using fighters and GB in an anti-missile role - the turret mass penalty disproportionately hits small, fast craft because they have to "waste" a lot of mass getting the turrets' tracking speed up to their own speed. This makes the fire-control bonus that fighters get a lot less effective, since the weapons often won't be able to match the tracking speed of a fighter fire-control.
John
Post by: Charlie Beeler on February 05, 2010, 02:11:33 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Have the turret tracking speed be additive to the ship's tracking speed, not a replacement.
The following scenario has been bugging me for a long time, and the solution just clicked in: Let's say I've got a ship with a speed of 10,000 and my fire-control speed and turret speed are both 4,000. If I want to have a laser mount with a tracking speed of 12,000 (let's say I know that's an enemy's standard speed), then I need to pay for a 30% turret (3x4,000) to mount it in, of which only the last 5% does me any good - the first 25% goes to matching the ship's speed. If the turret speed added to the ship speed, however, then I'd only have to design a 5% turret, since I would only need the 2,000 extra speed between 12,000 and 10,000.
For the case of ship speeds that are slower than the fire-control speed, I would only add turret speed to the ship speed, not to the fire control speed. So a 4,000 turret on a 2,000 ship with 4,000 fire-control speed would result in a tracking speed of 6,000 rather than 8,000. This is because the fire control speed effect is intended as a floor for tracking speed in the case of fixed mounts on slow ships.
I realize you might not want to do this for balance issues, which is fine, but I like the idea of giving an incentive to build fast escorts even if they're equipped with turrets. The thing that triggered this was a thread about using fighters and GB in an anti-missile role - the turret mass penalty disproportionately hits small, fast craft because they have to "waste" a lot of mass getting the turrets' tracking speed up to their own speed. This makes the fire-control bonus that fighters get a lot less effective, since the weapons often won't be able to match the tracking speed of a fighter fire-control.
John
A simpler solution, that I've advocated in the past, is changing the turret tracking speed for each tech level to match the 4x fire control speed for the same tech level. And adjust the research costs to match the same level of fire control. With offensive missiles speeds regularly being in the 24k/kps to 32k/kps range starting turret tracking is woofully slow before the additional gear mass for faster turrets.
This was part of the proposal last year for reducing the sizes of gauss cannons that let to CIWS being added instead.
Personally I don't think this would segnificantly unbalance the game. Instead it makes turrets a little more viable.
Post by: Yonder on February 05, 2010, 03:06:44 PM
I would also like a research branch to make maintenance facilities more effective, and automation technologies to lower crew requirements. It seems like those are the only part of ship design that you can't improve.
My other suggestion is on the environmental front. Right now the only way to affect the temperature is with Greenhouse or Anti-Greenhouse gases. If we could make large orbital constructs to either block a portion of the sun's rays, or large orbital mirrors to focus more light on the planet, that would be cool.
This should be very costly and time intensive, as well as being very vulnerable to an enemy, but it would be cool to have the option.
PS: I really like the idea of turret fire control adding to ship speed, I've thought it was odd that it can't myself. I am guessing that the reason it doesn't work that way now is that, for example, a ship with four turrets wouldn't be able to always rotate in such a way that it helps all of its turrets at once. However if a fighter or corvette had one turret on its nose that would obviously do nothing but help, and even two turrets would probably never conflict. What if you added the ship's speed divided by the number of turrets? So a ship that moved 4000 km/s with two turrets with a 6000 km/s track speed would instead have an 8000 km/s effective track speed. Is that too complicated?
Hmm, although if a ship had a turreted weapon and a non-turreted weapon it would make sense that none of the ship's maneuverability would be helping the turret, it would almost all go towards lining up the fixed weaponry.
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 05, 2010, 03:34:54 PM
So if a ship with 3 targeting systems (with linked weapons) uses them for two different targets,
either the player needs to select which target the pilot/helmsman needs to focus on
and/or have the game add the ship speed bonus to the fastest target by default.
I thought the current system odd at first, but then realized that a ship with turrets will likely use it's maneuvring to avoid fire more than tracking.
Also turrets are expected to have dedicated gunners, while forward facing weaponry usually is under the control of the guy also in control of the helm.
Turrets could be placed under pilot control, but then they would likely be restricted to a forward firing arc, which negates most of the turret freedom.
Post by: Yonder on February 05, 2010, 03:51:54 PM
Quote from: "Commodore_Areyar"
I thought the current system odd at first, but then realized that a ship with turrets will likely use it's maneuvring to avoid fire more than tracking.
But a ship without turrets uses it's speed bonus both to avoid being hit and to help hit the enemy.
It would be interesting if the speed could only be used to increase one or the other, with a player chosen level of "Evasion" to "Aggression" determining the portion used for defense of offense. This could be affected by the skill of the crew or the commander as well.
That'd probably be way too much micromanaging, but it's interesting to think about.
Post by: Father Tim on February 05, 2010, 05:53:19 PM
Quote from: "Yonder"
I would like it if there was a branch of research that increased public health in order to raise the useful time of your officers, scientists, and administrators. It doesn't seem right that 200 years after I start people are still retiring or dying in their 80s.
There was discussion a few versions back about varying 'longevity' for alien races. I think I prefer this idea of a tech line rather than the old idea of a box on the Ctrl-F2 'Race Details' window.
Post by: Kurt on February 05, 2010, 06:41:00 PM
Quote from: "Yonder"
I would like it if there was a branch of research that increased public health in order to raise the useful time of your officers, scientists, and administrators. It doesn't seem right that 200 years after I start people are still retiring or dying in their 80s.
I would also like a research branch to make maintenance facilities more effective, and automation technologies to lower crew requirements. It seems like those are the only part of ship design that you can't improve.
My other suggestion is on the environmental front. Right now the only way to affect the temperature is with Greenhouse or Anti-Greenhouse gases. If we could make large orbital constructs to either block a portion of the sun's rays, or large orbital mirrors to focus more light on the planet, that would be cool.
This should be very costly and time intensive, as well as being very vulnerable to an enemy, but it would be cool to have the option.
PS: I really like the idea of turret fire control adding to ship speed, I've thought it was odd that it can't myself. I am guessing that the reason it doesn't work that way now is that, for example, a ship with four turrets wouldn't be able to always rotate in such a way that it helps all of its turrets at once. However if a fighter or corvette had one turret on its nose that would obviously do nothing but help, and even two turrets would probably never conflict. What if you added the ship's speed divided by the number of turrets? So a ship that moved 4000 km/s with two turrets with a 6000 km/s track speed would instead have an 8000 km/s effective track speed. Is that too complicated?
Hmm, although if a ship had a turreted weapon and a non-turreted weapon it would make sense that none of the ship's maneuverability would be helping the turret, it would almost all go towards lining up the fixed weaponry.
Seconded. Although I don't really have an opinion on the turret issue at the current time, I like, and have suggested, some of the other things in the past.
Kurt
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 05, 2010, 07:56:00 PM
good idea, I really like it! However I'd not have it time intensive, but rather maintenance intensive.
Since they are not providing a permanent alteration to the environment, but directly increasing/decreasing the albedo *
(* actually altering received solar radiation, but albedo is the factor that comes closest from those listed in the environmental box of the sysgenscreen).
It is the quick fix approach to planetary engineering:
They would be fairly cheap to build (similar cost to infrastructure, but utilising another TN element), and you would still require quite a number for them to be effective, but their effect on planetary base temperature (or albedo, whichever works) would be instantaneous.
The drawback is that they would also require maintenance. Or alternatively take up pop like infra does.
The best option would be to have them decay (orbital).
(one unit could in/decrease basetemp by one degree one year one, but this decays by 0.1 each year. or 10%/year for the entire unit to fail).
They would be equally succeptable to collateral damage as infrastructures, but not directly targetable like shipyards.
my two creds.
Post by: mrwigggles on February 06, 2010, 06:08:07 AM
I'm in favor of mega constructions in general though, so this gets my thumbs up.
Post by: waresky on February 06, 2010, 07:18:21 AM
Quote from: "Commodore_Areyar"
On your terraforming mirror/ shade idea.Am not agree,dislike "decay" orbit.
good idea, I really like it! However I'd not have it time intensive, but rather maintenance intensive.
Since they are not providing a permanent alteration to the environment, but directly increasing/decreasing the albedo *
(* actually altering received solar radiation, but albedo is the factor that comes closest from those listed in the environmental box of the sysgenscreen).
It is the quick fix approach to planetary engineering:
They would be fairly cheap to build (similar cost to infrastructure, but utilising another TN element), and you would still require quite a number for them to be effective, but their effect on planetary base temperature (or albedo, whichever works) would be instantaneous.
The drawback is that they would also require maintenance. Or alternatively take up pop like infra does.
The best option would be to have them decay (orbital).
(one unit could in/decrease basetemp by one degree one year one, but this decays by 0.1 each year. or 10%/year for the entire unit to fail).
They would be equally succeptable to collateral damage as infrastructures, but not directly targetable like shipyards.
my two creds.
There r so far micromanagement.
When u colonize 2000 solar systems or planets..show u HOW many micro u need follow:))
Post by: waresky on February 06, 2010, 07:28:31 AM
Am found little difficult on research Specialist on Scientist selection windows.
Can u setup a sort of "query" list,and sort them for Specialization?
Eg: Am will found how many best Scientist are on Energy,or Construction even Missile/Kinetic field are.
For more fast selection and for put them on a sort of "list" from better to weak..
hope u understand:)
See ya
Post by: Brian Neumann on February 06, 2010, 09:50:00 AM
Have the effect be something like (# of modules/# of modules needed) with a max effectiveness of 90%. That way even if you are only missing one module to maintain a really big ship it will have an effect, but with the clock going up at 10% of normal it will still take a long time. For smaller ships if they are missing even one module it will probably be a greater percentage anyway so the max effect doesn't do anything.
Brian
Post by: Hawkeye on February 07, 2010, 12:56:15 PM
As it is, scattering a few tracking stations here and there is not realy efficient in my book.
Take our solar system, for example. Playing a conventional start, I usually have colonists on Mars and often Titan too, along with some mining outposts on one or two other planets, some moons and asteroids/comets. Initially, I put one or two planetary tracking stations on each colony/outpost.
Lets assume I have a total of 8 outposts/colonies, each with 2 tracking stations.
Those will cover perhaps 20% of the system at a given signatur strength. Once I reel all of them in back to earth, They suddenly cover the entire system out to Neptun, perhaps even further.
This doesn´t realy make a lot of sense.
What I am trying to say is, am I the only one that thinks, that at higher levels, the sensor strength of PTS seems to rise way too fast or should they be toned down a bit?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 07, 2010, 01:55:10 PM
Quote from: "Hawkeye"
The bug issue with planetary tracking stations brought forward a nagging feeling I had for some time now.An interesting point. The simple solution would be to have planetary sensors add their values together rather than the current method of 25% greater effect for every additional module. I can't even remember why I set it up that way in the first place. I would guess that my intention was to restrict the capability of planetary sensors. Although that is true when only a few sensors are involved, the reverse becomes true as more sensors are added. Does anyone have a problem with changing planetary sensors to a simple aggregate value?
As it is, scattering a few tracking stations here and there is not realy efficient in my book.
Take our solar system, for example. Playing a conventional start, I usually have colonists on Mars and often Titan too, along with some mining outposts on one or two other planets, some moons and asteroids/comets. Initially, I put one or two planetary tracking stations on each colony/outpost.
Lets assume I have a total of 8 outposts/colonies, each with 2 tracking stations.
Those will cover perhaps 20% of the system at a given signatur strength. Once I reel all of them in back to earth, They suddenly cover the entire system out to Neptun, perhaps even further.
This doesn´t realy make a lot of sense.
What I am trying to say is, am I the only one that thinks, that at higher levels, the sensor strength of PTS seems to rise way too fast or should they be toned down a bit?
For example, assuming sensors of strength 300:
For 10 sensors, the current value would be 2793. On a simple aggregate basis it would be 3000
for 2 sensors, it would be 375 / 600
For 5 sensors, it would be 915 / 1500
For 20 sensors: 26,020 / 6000
For 30 sensors: 242,338 / 9000
As you can see, an aggregate method would be better for 10 or fewer sensors but much worse for larger amounts
Steve
Post by: Erik L on February 07, 2010, 03:18:04 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
An interesting point. The simple solution would be to have planetary sensors add their values together rather than the current method of 25% greater effect for every additional module. I can't even remember why I set it up that way in the first place. I would guess that my intention was to restrict the capability of planetary sensors. Although that is true when only a few sensors are involved, the reverse becomes true as more sensors are added. Does anyone have a problem with changing planetary sensors to a simple aggregate value?
For example, assuming sensors of strength 300:
For 10 sensors, the current value would be 2793. On a simple aggregate basis it would be 3000
for 2 sensors, it would be 468 / 600
For 5 sensors, it would be 915 / 1500
For 20 sensors: 26,020, 6000
For 30 sensors: 242,338 / 9000
As you can see, an aggregate method would be better for 10 or fewer sensors but much worse for larger amounts
Steve
That works for me. Means more strategic thinking in placing listening posts.
Post by: schroeam on February 07, 2010, 11:12:22 PM
Any thoughts on a release date for v5.0?
Adam.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 07, 2010, 11:19:51 PM
Quote from: "adradjool"
Steve,Still have quite a bit of testing to do. Sometime this week I would guess though.
Any thoughts on a release date for v5.0?
Adam.
Steve
Post by: quintin522 on February 07, 2010, 11:24:53 PM
Post by: backstab on February 08, 2010, 01:18:35 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "adradjool"Steve,Still have quite a bit of testing to do. Sometime this week I would guess though.
Any thoughts on a release date for v5.0?
Adam.
Steve
Darn ... just started my mega-campaign ... might have to put it on hold for a while and see what you have included in Ver 5.0
Post by: plugger on February 08, 2010, 03:01:11 AM
I'd like to request an additional option when you first start a new game that places a randomly generated NPR somewhere within your start system. Eg. The methane breathing Ice-slugs of Titan or the Red Dust Swarms of Mars.
I realise that you can do this via SM mode but that provides the player with a lot of pre-knowledge that takes away the surprise and challenge of the unknown.
Having a random race in a semi-random location in your system enables the player to quickly transition to the Alien Contact / Combat part of Aurora which can take an awfully long time to encounter in a normal game.
Sort of a 'fast start' option for a different type of game. One that puts you in clear and present danger from the word go.
Cheers,
Plugger
Post by: ZimRathbone on February 08, 2010, 04:56:32 AM
Quote from: "quintin522"
In the Honorverse, they would burn out the enemy missile's guidance system using ECM. Any chance of something like this being implemented?
This is what High Power Microwave projectors are for.
And what the electronic Hardening tech is there to prevent.
Note that you can't mount HPMs in a turret for anti missile use but I'm not sure if they would be effective in this role anyway unless the missile was on ATG (OTOH Steve may have coded them to take out a missile if 1 pt of damage penetrates, like most other beam weps). You CAN however burn out the guiding ships F/C. Real problem here is the range - HPMs are about as short sighted as Mesons, other than JP assaults, unless youre lucky they wont often come into range of missile ships until after all missiles have been fired
Post by: Brian Neumann on February 08, 2010, 05:46:10 AM
Quote from: "ZimRathbone"
This is what High Power Microwave projectors are for.
And what the electronic Hardening tech is there to prevent.
Note that you can't mount HPMs in a turret for anti missile use but I'm not sure if they would be effective in this role anyway unless the missile was on ATG (OTOH Steve may have coded them to take out a missile if 1 pt of damage penetrates, like most other beam weps). You CAN however burn out the guiding ships F/C. Real problem here is the range - HPMs are about as short sighted as Mesons, other than JP assaults, unless youre lucky they wont often come into range of missile ships until after all missiles have been fired
The other place that HPM's work is in a nebula. There the short range is not a factor, and there are no shields to stop them.
Brian
Post by: quintin522 on February 08, 2010, 09:01:19 AM
Quote from: "ZimRathbone"
Note that you can't mount HPMs in a turret for anti missile use
I was hoping for something like this. My idea was to mount them on fighters and have them act as a screening force.
Post by: sloanjh on February 08, 2010, 08:26:02 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Does anyone have a problem with changing planetary sensors to a simple aggregate value?Um, that was the way I thought it worked.... Or maybe I was thinking that it was going like strength~sqrt(Nsensors) due to the funky strengths that were coming out for multiple sensors. Linear growth seems much more reasonable than exponential.
John
Post by: georgiaboy1966 on February 08, 2010, 08:47:29 PM
Would it be possible to add another fitler to the task force window to remove the Civilian mining centers from the list of possible population destinations on the location list portion.
Post by: boggo2300 on February 08, 2010, 10:29:58 PM
sorry I loved Star Cruiser for 2300ad, so Submarines in space is a bit of a thing for me
Matt
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 08, 2010, 11:35:51 PM
Quote from: "boggo2300"
Poached from another thread... Sensor shadows for system bodiesI have a copy of Star Cruiser for 2300 AD. It's in mint condition with the counters unpunched as I have never got around to playing it. I'll dig out the manual and take a look.
sorry I loved Star Cruiser for 2300ad, so Submarines in space is a bit of a thing for me
Steve
Post by: MoonDragon on February 09, 2010, 01:26:44 AM
Post by: welchbloke on February 09, 2010, 04:53:32 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I have no issue with this, it has never been much of an issue for me either way.Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"Does anyone have a problem with changing planetary sensors to a simple aggregate value?Um, that was the way I thought it worked.... Or maybe I was thinking that it was going like strength~sqrt(Nsensors) due to the funky strengths that were coming out for multiple sensors. Linear growth seems much more reasonable than exponential.
John
Post by: Balibar on February 09, 2010, 08:30:48 AM
Post by: Father Tim on February 09, 2010, 11:31:30 AM
Quote from: "MoonDragon"
I'd like a way to remove civilian ships from the main F3 display. They are starting to get a bit spammy in my current game. Half of my screen is a huge wall of blue text, obscuring actual fleet names that are parked in Solar system.
Over on the left hand side, one of the tabs is for fleets, and includes a checkbox for 'show civilians'. I'm away from my computer right now or I'd give you a better description of where to find it.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 09, 2010, 11:33:10 AM
Quote from: "Balibar"
A suggestion for the Wealth Screen. As the layout exists, I cannot figure out what is contributing what. The problem is the calculations seem to be based on a month or a year and many projects will end before the time frame. The first thing I would like is a display of the current wealth and the change from the most recent 5 day cycle. The second thing I would like is the expenditures and income for the current 5 day cycle. These would be especially helpful for battling the budget deficit.If you want to change the period over which you view wealth, use the radio buttons underneath. The display of current wealth and the 5-day change is in the title bar of the economics windows.
Steve
Post by: MoonDragon on February 09, 2010, 12:12:17 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Over on the left hand side, one of the tabs is for fleets, and includes a checkbox for 'show civilians'. I'm away from my computer right now or I'd give you a better description of where to find it.
If you could give one, I'd really appreciate it. Even after you said this, and I went looking for the option again, I still could not find it.
Post by: boggo2300 on February 09, 2010, 01:34:06 PM
I'm thinking of having as an explanation for who becomes major players, who has ready access to the minerals, and keeping track on paper seems like something Aurora could do better?
Matt
Post by: Father Tim on February 09, 2010, 01:57:20 PM
So you're right, that's an excellent suggestion. Steve, please put a checkbox on one of the (F3) 'System Map' sidebar tabs to show/hide civilian contacts.
Post by: Paul on February 09, 2010, 05:09:05 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the current system has a minimum population growth of 2% once you reach 1 billion. Above that amount and it never falls further, no matter how high the population gets - even if you have 500 billion (I know, that would take a ridiculously long time to reach, but still).
How about an overall maximum population on worlds based on their size? Then you could have the population growth decline further past the 1 billion mark based on that size, eventually reaching 0 where the population growth would level out with as many births as there are deaths.
The reason I suggest this is, as it stands, the only need to ever colonize other worlds is to boost your population growth a bit - but once you reach a certain population level the minor boosts in growth you get from having colonies doesn't make that much difference since you're always getting the 2% on your homeworld. It's still useful to have worlds for minerals and bases to maintain your ships, but the entire financial, research, and construction capacity of your empire can be housed on Earth - even if you have billions upon billions of people. By limiting worlds to, say, 400,000 x diameter (or some similar number, whatever is deemed appropriate for gameplay - 400,000 would give earth a 5.1 billion limit) it would make colonizing worlds more important in the long run, since to support your 500 billion people you would need a large empire of worlds instead of just a ridiculously productive Earth. And even before you reached the limit, you would want to move the people off Earth since the growth would be constantly declining as the population got higher.
It could just be divided out and have the growth rate decline linearly until the limit is reached. So for example a 5 billion limit at 1 billion growth would be 2%. Add a billion and you're now about 20% closer to the limit, so growth declines 20% to 1.6%. At 4 billion you would only get 0.4% growth, eventually declining to 0 as you approach the limit. Over the limit would make growth negative, so you couldn't just farm colonists on other worlds and send them to Earth.
Thoughts?
Post by: mrwigggles on February 09, 2010, 05:47:05 PM
Quote from: "Paul"
I'm not sure if this has been suggested before (I did a search, but I wasn't really sure what to search for).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the current system has a minimum population growth of 2% once you reach 1 billion. Above that amount and it never falls further, no matter how high the population gets - even if you have 500 billion (I know, that would take a ridiculously long time to reach, but still).
How about an overall maximum population on worlds based on their size? Then you could have the population growth decline further past the 1 billion mark based on that size, eventually reaching 0 where the population growth would level out with as many births as there are deaths.
The reason I suggest this is, as it stands, the only need to ever colonize other worlds is to boost your population growth a bit - but once you reach a certain population level the minor boosts in growth you get from having colonies doesn't make that much difference since you're always getting the 2% on your homeworld. It's still useful to have worlds for minerals and bases to maintain your ships, but the entire financial, research, and construction capacity of your empire can be housed on Earth - even if you have billions upon billions of people. By limiting worlds to, say, 400,000 x diameter (or some similar number, whatever is deemed appropriate for gameplay - 400,000 would give earth a 5.1 billion limit) it would make colonizing worlds more important in the long run, since to support your 500 billion people you would need a large empire of worlds instead of just a ridiculously productive Earth. And even before you reached the limit, you would want to move the people off Earth since the growth would be constantly declining as the population got higher.
It could just be divided out and have the growth rate decline linearly until the limit is reached. So for example a 5 billion limit at 1 billion growth would be 2%. Add a billion and you're now about 20% closer to the limit, so growth declines 20% to 1.6%. At 4 billion you would only get 0.4% growth, eventually declining to 0 as you approach the limit. Over the limit would make growth negative, so you couldn't just farm colonists on other worlds and send them to Earth.
Thoughts?
I'm fine with this, but it should probably not be based solely on size, but other factors as well, such as hydrosphere.
I think the game assumes that enough food and water is always made for not matter how large a population is getting.
Though in the Foundation series, and Starwars, when a planet was getting in the double billion digit, the planet were turning into city planets. If an initial low population cap is reached, like I think ten billion general epoch that earth is going to reach in 2050. So maybe we can have a construction research for archologies, and an industry production of of them to continue population growth, or stamp out refuse issues, or pollution with a continuations into city planets at late end game campaigns.
This would provide play style options. The expansionist to support its huge population or the ones that like to turtle a bit. It'll also offer a method to not penalize players simply because RNG didnt give them a fair amount of habitable planets.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 09, 2010, 10:17:57 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
That's because I lied to you - it's not there. It used to be on the 'Display' tab, or rather there used to be a check box to not show neutral contacts, or to not show a specific race's contacts, or maybe I'm confusing it with the (F11) 'Galactic Map' or even with SA.I have already added a contact filter dropdown for v5.0. You can choose from:
So you're right, that's an excellent suggestion. Steve, please put a checkbox on one of the (F3) 'System Map' sidebar tabs to show/hide civilian contacts.
All Contacts
No Civilians
No Civilians/Allied
Neutral or Hostile
Hostile Only
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 09, 2010, 10:26:24 PM
Quote from: "Paul"
I'm not sure if this has been suggested before (I did a search, but I wasn't really sure what to search for).The Population growth is already lower than 2% for large populations but I forgot to update the growth value displayed on the pop summary window (well, I forgot to remove the line of code that says "if pop growth < 2 then pop growth = 2"). The pop growth in the 5-day increment is correct though so large pops have been growing more slowly for several versions now.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the current system has a minimum population growth of 2% once you reach 1 billion. Above that amount and it never falls further, no matter how high the population gets - even if you have 500 billion (I know, that would take a ridiculously long time to reach, but still).
How about an overall maximum population on worlds based on their size? Then you could have the population growth decline further past the 1 billion mark based on that size, eventually reaching 0 where the population growth would level out with as many births as there are deaths.
The reason I suggest this is, as it stands, the only need to ever colonize other worlds is to boost your population growth a bit - but once you reach a certain population level the minor boosts in growth you get from having colonies doesn't make that much difference since you're always getting the 2% on your homeworld. It's still useful to have worlds for minerals and bases to maintain your ships, but the entire financial, research, and construction capacity of your empire can be housed on Earth - even if you have billions upon billions of people. By limiting worlds to, say, 400,000 x diameter (or some similar number, whatever is deemed appropriate for gameplay - 400,000 would give earth a 5.1 billion limit) it would make colonizing worlds more important in the long run, since to support your 500 billion people you would need a large empire of worlds instead of just a ridiculously productive Earth. And even before you reached the limit, you would want to move the people off Earth since the growth would be constantly declining as the population got higher.
It could just be divided out and have the growth rate decline linearly until the limit is reached. So for example a 5 billion limit at 1 billion growth would be 2%. Add a billion and you're now about 20% closer to the limit, so growth declines 20% to 1.6%. At 4 billion you would only get 0.4% growth, eventually declining to 0 as you approach the limit. Over the limit would make growth negative, so you couldn't just farm colonists on other worlds and send them to Earth.
Thoughts?
The growth calculation is as follows for ideal habitable worlds
//colony annual growth rate, which is dependent on total population. Formula is 20 divided by cube root of pop
Growth Rate = 20 / (CurrentPop ^ (1 / 3))
If Growth Rate > 10 Then Growth Rate= 10
Growth Rate = Growth Rate x CommanderGrowthBonus
// divide by hundred to create a percentage
Growth Rate = Growth Rate/ 100
If NPR = True then Growth Rate = Growth Rate x (DifficultyModifier / 100)
Steve
Post by: Paul on February 10, 2010, 01:11:51 AM
Well then, my new suggestion is to incorporate the size of the planet and perhaps availability of water into the growth equation.
Maybe take the diameter divided by 10,000 (or some other number, you could use the diameter of earth if you wanted earth to be 1) and then divide the CurrentPop by that before using it, so that larger worlds could support the larger pop before getting into the lower growth rates, and thus be more desireable for colonization.
Something like this:
Growth Rate = 20 / ((CurrentPop / (Diameter / 10000)) ^ (1 / 3))
That way a 1 billion pop world Earth's size would grow at a rate of about 2.17, while 1 billion pop on Mars would grow at a rate of about 1.76. Or if you used the diameter of earth as the diameter divisor you would have 2% on earth and 1.62% on mars.
Presence of water could be just a simple modifier added in the same way as the governor bonus, like a straight 10% bonus for having water. Or you could do it based on the extent, like extent / 5. So mars would be a 2% boost for the 10% water while Earth would be a 14% boost since its 70%. If water already does something cool that I don't know about it may not be necessary, but I always thought having water should be a "Great! That planet's my next colony" sort of thing, since water is so necessary for life.
I hope you don't mind suggestions like these. When I make a suggestion on something I try to come up with some sort of formula or example if its relevant, and here since you've given me the formula for how it currently works I'm fiddling with that. I've known some people that don't like others meddling with their math, so if this is unwelcome just let me know.
Post by: Aldaris on February 10, 2010, 03:24:18 AM
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 10, 2010, 06:09:14 AM
(Or make the box work for all teams that require a target empire.)
Similarly add an espionage option to the alien diplomacy interface.
Probably most logical to add to one of the intelligence pages, primary diplomacy screen would be most clear though
This will be most useful for starting players, but duplication of function is always good for ease of play.
---
On a related track, will it be possible in time to direct espionage teams to preferably perform a certain type of mission?
(As in MOO i think it was.)
Areyar
Post by: Father Tim on February 10, 2010, 05:05:53 PM
Quote from: "Aldaris"
As an addition to the new display options, I always like seeing the buzzing activity of the civvies in my systems, but not the endless wall of text. Would it be possible to add in an option to not display each civvie ship but display groups of them as 'civillian fleet' instead?
Or better yet, a way of separating the civilians 'display options (ship names, speed, sensors readings, transponders, movement trails, etc.) from all the other ships' display options. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd like separate display options for each of the categories you gave on the 'contact filter' dropdown above (plus mass driver packets). So I can choose a combination of just dots, dots with tails, dots with tails & labels, full info, etc.
Post by: Father Tim on February 10, 2010, 05:16:06 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 10, 2010, 08:09:17 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Would it be possible to get 'Wealth points' added to the list of 'SM Mods' on that pop-up on the (F2) 'Population & Production' screen? I realize that wealth is not currently associated with individual colonies, except in the case of conquering an enemy's Capital, so that might break something in the database. Though I suppose at current any colony in the Empire can theoretically access 100% of the empire's wealth, so maybe it's a not a problem. Plus, it allows for SM Mode emergency infusions of cash, if you want that sort of thing. As it stands now, I don't believe there's any way to "give" an Empire money, short of upping it's racial wealth tech a few levels.Added for v5.0
Steve
Post by: Beersatron on February 11, 2010, 12:39:46 PM
Possible spoiler so I will wrap it in the spoiler tags.
[spoiler:3s7wm8z0]You have it so that a Precursor will ram if it runs out of ammo. Can you apply similar logic to the Star Swarm but instead of damaging the target, they latch on and perform what could be described as a boarding attempt? Your description of the Star Swarm mentioned that no air was detected streaming from them when hit, but fluid was - so organic ships.
So you could say that instead of having a 'crew' of sentient beings their crew could be macro-scale white-blood/defense/repair cells and that these cells can survive in another ships confines for a short period of time once injected. They would finally degrade after time due to being out of their normal transport fluid.
I am not suggesting that they should be able to take control of the ship, but they could do damage to components and kill crew or embarked marines.
They would only do this against slow moving ships and, if there is a way for them to detect such a thing, if that ship has very tough internal HTKs.
To expand it further, if they manage to kill the whole crew, you can then redesign or create a new class of workers that have a tractor/grapple so they can then tow a derelict ship (or wreck?) to the queen for consumption
On a side note, I have watched a couple of swarms in SM mode but haven't seen them actually do much even in a system with plenty of minerals and them knowing about the WPs. The workers have orders to move to a mineral location, but I don't see them doing anything with it - is it abstracted? Could you explain some more of the Star Swarm in a spoiler/snerker thread?[/spoiler:3s7wm8z0]
Post by: Sainthe on February 12, 2010, 12:33:04 AM
This may be because by "missed its target" it's meant that the missile was so far off course that the detonation had no chance of ever harming the target.
I'm suggesting that warheads help the "chance to at least do one point of damage." I'm not sure if this is how it truly works, but it seems to be a bit weird to put a massive warhead on a missile, such as the AIM-54 Phoenix, if it doesn't help it to kill cruise missiles and such.
Post by: Sainthe on February 12, 2010, 12:34:29 AM
Fighters and FAC don't put out a lot of signature from their engines, even though they are quite strong, and thermal reduction makes it even worse; However, your typical large ship puts out around 1000-2000 TH!
It seems kind of silly that a thermal sensing missile is better at long range against large ships then short range, when that role is already taken by Active missile sensors; I would expect the reverse to be true. Thermal just doesn't mesh that well with Fighter-Fighter combat, so I suggest adding a boost to FTR and FAC engine signatures.
I would imagine all that super-charging would have a penalty to heat signature or something. Also, and I'm not too sure about this, a large ship has a larger hull to dissipate heat with, while a small ship is stuck with its massive engine heat.
Post by: Sainthe on February 12, 2010, 01:06:23 AM
This would require a change so that a Fire Control can be assigned passive sensor contacts. Basically, you can now guide the missile for as long as your Fire Control range allows, but after that it's all up to the missile guidance systems.
I don't think this needs to allow switching targets. I'm just looking for a basic system to complement the on board missile sensors; perhaps it could be a costly option added to the Fire Control design page.
Post by: backstab on February 12, 2010, 01:42:04 AM
Can be used as normal ground forces or used for sabotage (industry/terraformers/maintenance facilities)
Post by: Sherban on February 12, 2010, 03:53:18 PM
Post by: solops on February 13, 2010, 10:37:28 AM
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 14, 2010, 06:24:58 AM
Quote from: "solops"
Why not put the Race environmental ranges and environmental notes, both of which are found on the system screen, in the large, unused area of the Environment screen (the one where you control terraformers)?I think it is handier where it is: in a screen where you can browse and compare the bodies of a system. Also where you make colonies, which is a prerequisite for seeing the planet in the econ/enviro screen.
Rather than moving it, maybe a copy would be better. Having a reminder never hurts.
I'd like to suggest including some hints to distinguish the various gasses as being toxic/GH/aGH/neutral.
Thinking of SimEarth, it would be cool to be able to crash comets for added water. (but that is likely a much repeated suggestion.
Post by: Kurt on February 14, 2010, 08:13:32 AM
When fighting non-player-controlled NPR's, it would be nice if there were damage estimates in the Event Update log. For instance, I landed ground troops on an NPR's planet, and, of course, I only get updates about how my ground troops are doing, not the NPR's. The same with planetary bombardment. That's fine, and as it should be, but it would be really nice to have some sort of idea of how my troops are doing. As things stand now I just know that they are taking damage, without knowing how much damage they are causing in return.
Kurt
Post by: Gunner on February 14, 2010, 09:21:37 AM
Anyway, here are three usability suggestions from a newly addicted noob:
- 1 - Under the conditional orders for a TG it would be great if you could say "do X and return to what you were doing before." In my mind it would specifically be used most for refueling, so the command would read "If Fuel less than 30%" then "Refuel at Colony within 4 Jumps and return to previous task."
- 2 - A variation on the Transit command that sent the TG to the jump point and then waited till it becomes possible to transit at which point it would do so on its own. This would make coordinating early non-jump capable exploration ships with jump tenders so much easier and less frustrating.
- 3 - In the Class Design window, I would love to be able to add ship components that I have created the research project for but not yet completed researching. Obviously, the ship wouldn't be able to be built until all of the research is done (though it would be cool to be able to start retooling early -- would be a lot like how some modern defense projects start production before all of the technologies have been completed.) As it is I find myself having to do a decent amount of hand calculations while designing ships to make sure that everything will fit. I think it would make the design process more interesting and interactive too -- giving you the feeling that you're running design simulations before actually committing to developing physical tech.
Post by: sloanjh on February 14, 2010, 03:41:55 PM
I often have more than 100 TG (since my scouts and pickets tend to be solo TG). At present these are organized in a very flat way when I want to adjust them on the F12 screen. It would be nice to be able to "collapse" e.g. all the cargo fleets into a single node to reduce clutter.
Originally I was thinking of just an alphabetical collapse, but it occurs to me that what I really want is the ability to form administrative groupings for the tree view that don't penalize me when I move stuff around - like the old "Administrative Command" groups in SA (except nestable). This would be a structure parallel to the TF, which are operational groupings - the only role is to be able to group TG in a hierarchical tree view.
John
Post by: solops on February 14, 2010, 04:12:22 PM
Quote from: "Commodore_Areyar"
Quote from: "solops"Why not put the Race environmental ranges and environmental notes, both of which are found on the system screen, in the large, unused area of the Environment screen (the one where you control terraformers)?I think it is handier where it is: in a screen where you can browse and compare the bodies of a system. Also where you make colonies, which is a prerequisite for seeing the planet in the econ/enviro screen.
Rather than moving it, maybe a copy would be better. Having a reminder never hurts.
I'd like to suggest including some hints to distinguish the various gasses as being toxic/GH/aGH/neutral.
Thinking of SimEarth, it would be cool to be able to crash comets for added water. (but that is likely a much repeated suggestion.
Yes. Have the Race environmental ranges and environmental notes in BOTH places. I did not mean to recommend moving it. Personally, I would get far more use out of the data in the Environment Management screen. Though I rarely use the system screen other than to see the enviro data, it does come in handy for minerals and a few other things.
Post by: SteveAlt on February 14, 2010, 05:28:11 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
A tree view on the F12 screen for the TG selection.How about grouping them by Task Force? I have a task force that just contains freighters and colony ships, etc. It has commander with a high Logistics rating and a good logistics officer. It would be better to expand the use of TFs rather than introduce a new, parallel structure
I often have more than 100 TG (since my scouts and pickets tend to be solo TG). At present these are organized in a very flat way when I want to adjust them on the F12 screen. It would be nice to be able to "collapse" e.g. all the cargo fleets into a single node to reduce clutter.
Originally I was thinking of just an alphabetical collapse, but it occurs to me that what I really want is the ability to form administrative groupings for the tree view that don't penalize me when I move stuff around - like the old "Administrative Command" groups in SA (except nestable). This would be a structure parallel to the TF, which are operational groupings - the only role is to be able to group TG in a hierarchical tree view.
EDIT - a follow up suggestion. Re-reading this I realise that task forces are not suitable due to the penalties for changing TF and the inability to nest them. How about if I set up the F12 view with nested TGs, using the higher TG IDs. That already allows for a nested structure. You can create higher level admin 'task groups'' because empty task groups don't appear on the system map anyway.
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on February 14, 2010, 05:44:01 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "sloanjh"A tree view on the F12 screen for the TG selection.How about grouping them by Task Force? I have a task force that just contains freighters and colony ships, etc. It has commander with a high Logistics rating and a good logistics officer. It would be better to expand the use of TFs rather than introduce a new, parallel structure
I often have more than 100 TG (since my scouts and pickets tend to be solo TG). At present these are organized in a very flat way when I want to adjust them on the F12 screen. It would be nice to be able to "collapse" e.g. all the cargo fleets into a single node to reduce clutter.
Originally I was thinking of just an alphabetical collapse, but it occurs to me that what I really want is the ability to form administrative groupings for the tree view that don't penalize me when I move stuff around - like the old "Administrative Command" groups in SA (except nestable). This would be a structure parallel to the TF, which are operational groupings - the only role is to be able to group TG in a hierarchical tree view.
EDIT - a follow up suggestion. Re-reading this I realise that task forces are not suitable due to the penalties for changing TF and the inability to nest them. How about if I set up the F12 view with nested TGs, using the higher TG IDs. That already allows for a nested structure. You can create higher level admin 'task groups'' because empty task groups don't appear on the system map anyway.
Steve
That (the edit) is a great idea and is exactly what I was looking for - it hadn't occured to me that TG could be nested. It also matches the responsibilities (in the computer science sense) of the TG - they're primarily an aggregator for ships that allow one to give the same command to a group of coincident ships.
If I look at what I just typed about TG primarily being aggregators (while TF actually reflect chain-of-command), this leads to some more thoughts:
1) At present, it's VERY easy to loose 50% of your training by accidentally transferring a ship between TG that aren't in the same TF. If I take seriously the idea that TG are just aggregators and don't affect game mechanics, then ships (rather than TG) should be assigned to TF. This would also allow "TDY" status for a ship - it performs a short mission with another TF, then returns to the original TF without getting hit with a 75% training reduction (50% hit for the transfer out and 50% hit for the transfer back). It would also allow a ship to have training levels with multiple TF - you could put a "Ship Training" table in the DB that had ShipID (input), TFID (input), and Training level (output) values. TG would still need to be assigned to TF, but that would simply indicate which admiral was commanding that TG so as to determine which TF training level should be applied to ships in that TG.
2) I've been wondering for the past few days what happens in terms of maneuvering penalties for TG with different training levels of ships in them. Let's say I've got a TG with 4 ships trained at 100% and 1 ship trained at 0%. What's the effective station-keeping training level? 100%? 0%? 80? Binding individual ships (rather than TG) to TF would match this concept - that there might be untrained "TDY" ships within a TG that aren't trained for that TF (but are trained for another one).
John
Post by: sloanjh on February 14, 2010, 06:42:27 PM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
EDIT - a follow up suggestion. Re-reading this I realise that task forces are not suitable due to the penalties for changing TF and the inability to nest them. How about if I set up the F12 view with nested TGs, using the higher TG IDs. That already allows for a nested structure. You can create higher level admin 'task groups'' because empty task groups don't appear on the system map anyway.
More thoughts on the hierarchical TG idea: You could put an "indivisible" checkbox or a "coincident" state (or both) on parent TG (or maybe a "independant" flag on child TG). I think this would help a lot with some of the more complex spit/join grouping issues that come up. The fundamental observation here is that you don't have to destroy a subordinate TG when it joins with a parent - you can put it into a state where it is acting like a compound "ship" in the parent TG, and the parent TG simply passes through all its queries.
Here's a concrete example. At present, I've got a TF called "Fleet 01st". There are two primary TG within the TF: "Fleet 01st Carrier Div. 01st" and "Fleet 01st Carrier Div. 02nd". Each carrier division has two carriers: Lexington and Saratoga in the 1st and Hornet and Wasp in the 2nd (okay, actually it's just Lexington 001, 002, 003, and 004, but the historical names sound cooler). Each carrier has 3 FAC embarked.
Problem #1 : I have to micromanage assigning FAC to motherships by going to individual unit screens. What I'd like to do is define four TG "Carrier Space Wing N" where N runs from 001-004 (one for each carrier), then launch and land the TG without having the TG go away. I think this is the way it works now with fighters - the fighter squadrons would effectively just become a TG grouping.
Problem #2 : The reason I've got two carriers per division is that my FAC squadrons are 1 Leader and 5 Attack. I'd like to define TG "FAC Squadron 001" and "FAC Squadron 002" each of which is assigned to a carrier division. I don't want these TG to disappear when the FAC are landed on their motherships.
Problem #3 : I also have fast "Apache" class scouts (with conventional engines) which I send out with the FAC squadrons - they've got two engines so they're the same speed. So I want to group and Apache with each FAC squadron into a TG that actually goes out on strikes.
If I think about the above, there are 3 states that a carrier division might be in:
1) Carriers, Scout, and FAC all in same colocated TG; FAC landed on carriers.
2) Carriers, Scout, and FAC all in same colocated TG; FAC flying free (launched).
3) Carriers in one TG; Scout and FAC in another - not necessarily colocated.
Here's a TG structure:
TG Carrier Div. 01st
- CV Lexington
CV Saratoga
TG FAC Squadron 01st
- SC Apache 001
TG FAC Squadron 01st A (mothership Lexington)
- FAC Snake Eyes 001
FAC Asp 001
FAC Asp 002
- FAC Asp 003
FAC Asp 004
FAC Asp 005
What I'd like is for this TG structure to be the same, whether or not the FAC are landed and whether or not TG FAC Squadron 01st is on a strike or "joined with" the carrier division TG. To do this, you need two extra states for TG:
A) An "independent" flag. This determines if the TG is operating under independent orders, or if it is simply an invisible pass-through for orders from the first independent parent. In the example above, the two squadron sections "A" and "B" would never be independent - they would alway follow the orders of Squadron 01st (and are only present for launch/land state on the carriers). In states 1 and 2 of the example, Squadron 01st is set to "not independent", since its elements are maneuvering with the carrier division TG. In state 3 (on a strike) Squadron 01st is set to "independent", which means that it is following its own orders.
B) A "mothership" target. This allows groupings within squadrons which are too big for a single carrier, and allows launch/land/mothership assignment to be done at the TG level without disrupting the higher formation.
I can see the same sorts of things going on for escorts when going through a JP (where they have to join into a single TG for the jump), combat transits (where you want subordinate TG to indicate which ships are grouped with which TG) and survey operations (where you want the survey fleet to transit into a system then scatter) - in all cases the "independent" flag lets you do a "virtual join" of two TG without actually changing the TG structure.
John
Post by: boggo2300 on February 14, 2010, 08:04:04 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
If this is possible, I give it *little finger to corner of mouth* 1 Million votes!!CV Lexington
CV Saratoga
TG FAC Squadron 01st
SC Apache 001
TG FAC Squadron 01st A (mothership Lexington)
FAC Snake Eyes 001
TG FAC Squadron 01st B (mothership Saratoga)
FAC Asp 001
FAC Asp 002
FAC Asp 003
FAC Asp 004
FAC Asp 005
What I'd like is for this TG structure to be the same, whether or not the FAC are landed and whether or not TG FAC Squadron 01st is on a strike or "joined with" the carrier division TG. To do this, you need two extra states for TG:
A) An "independent" flag. This determines if the TG is operating under independent orders, or if it is simply an invisible pass-through for orders from the first independent parent. In the example above, the two squadron sections "A" and "B" would never be independent - they would alway follow the orders of Squadron 01st (and are only present for launch/land state on the carriers). In states 1 and 2 of the example, Squadron 01st is set to "not independent", since its elements are maneuvering with the carrier division TG. In state 3 (on a strike) Squadron 01st is set to "independent", which means that it is following its own orders.
B) A "mothership" target. This allows groupings within squadrons which are too big for a single carrier, and allows launch/land/mothership assignment to be done at the TG level without disrupting the higher formation.
I can see the same sorts of things going on for escorts when going through a JP (where they have to join into a single TG for the jump), combat transits (where you want subordinate TG to indicate which ships are grouped with which TG) and survey operations (where you want the survey fleet to transit into a system then scatter) - in all cases the "independent" flag lets you do a "virtual join" of two TG without actually changing the TG structure.
John
the persistant tg for embarked fac's would be lovely!!
One thing that has kept me from nesting TG's for increasing my ob complexity has been the fact that the TG screen tends to become a bit of a pain to navigate when you have large numbers of TG's, If we could get to the TG window for a specific TG through the OB window, that would make giving orders easier...
Matt
Post by: SteveAlt on February 15, 2010, 01:30:26 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
What I'd like is for this TG structure to be the same, whether or not the FAC are landed and whether or not TG FAC Squadron 01st is on a strike or "joined with" the carrier division TG. To do this, you need two extra states for TG:
A) An "independent" flag. This determines if the TG is operating under independent orders, or if it is simply an invisible pass-through for orders from the first independent parent. In the example above, the two squadron sections "A" and "B" would never be independent - they would alway follow the orders of Squadron 01st (and are only present for launch/land state on the carriers). In states 1 and 2 of the example, Squadron 01st is set to "not independent", since its elements are maneuvering with the carrier division TG. In state 3 (on a strike) Squadron 01st is set to "independent", which means that it is following its own orders.
B) A "mothership" target. This allows groupings within squadrons which are too big for a single carrier, and allows launch/land/mothership assignment to be done at the TG level without disrupting the higher formation.
I can see the same sorts of things going on for escorts when going through a JP (where they have to join into a single TG for the jump), combat transits (where you want subordinate TG to indicate which ships are grouped with which TG) and survey operations (where you want the survey fleet to transit into a system then scatter) - in all cases the "independent" flag lets you do a "virtual join" of two TG without actually changing the TG structure.
EDIT: After reading below, jump straight to the next post for a much more refined suggestion :). For example, at the moment there are a lot of checks within the code to ensure that anything carried on a mothership is in the same fleet, or moved with the mothership when it changes fleet (and there are a lot of places in the code where a ship can change fleet). I don't really want to start messing with that.
There is already the concept of sub-fleets and the ability to copy orders to those sub-fleets. I think this could be modified so that orders were ONLY passed to the sub-fleets and not carried out by the fleet to which the orders were being given. Or perhaps, a more intelligent option where they are only passed to specified subfleets. Perhaps also the ability to give orders to one sub-fleet and copy the orders to specified 'sister' fleets that belonged to the same higher fleet. That would get around the issue of the parent fleet not having the same order list as a specialised sub-fleet. I would also allow the display of sub-fleets when the main fleet is selected. The problem will be the interface as the fleet window is already crowded and I am restricted on resolution
A second change would have to be the creation of (for want of a better term) 'theoretical' fleets. These would be simply be a theoretical grouping of ships that could be converted into an actual fleet when required. For example, you could assign a group of FACs to a theoretical fleet called FAC Squadron 01 even though the FACs are part of a different 'real' fleet because they are currently on a carrier. The theoretical fleet could also be given a higher fleet. If the theoretical fleet is activated then any members of that theoretical fleet in the selected location are taken from their current real fleets and assembed into a new real fleet. The "Convert Theoretical to Real command" would have to be on the fleet window and would use the location of the currently selected real fleet as the location for the conversion of the theoretial fleet.
For example, using your example of the carrier groups. Assume you had a empty real fleet as Carrier Battle Group 01 which contained two real fleets each containing two carriers and perhaps some escorts (Carrier Division 01 and Carrier Division 02). You could give orders at the Carrier Battle Group level that would be passed to the two Divisions, or you could give orders to the divisions individually. Assuming that a ship could be assigned to more than one TheoFleet (I needed a shorter name) at once, if the carriers each have three FAC then you could create a TheoFleet with the Carrier Battle Group as the higher fleet with all 12 FACs plus two TheoFleets of 6 FAC with the two Divisions as higher fleets plus (if required) four TheoFleets of 3 FACs, two of which reported to Division 01 and two of which reported to Division 02. Then you could activate whichever TheoFleet you wanted depending on how many FAC you needed. When the TheoFleet is activated, the FACs are removed from their carriers and placed in a new real fleet that has the same higher fleet as the TheoFleet. That TheoFleet stil exists and if you activated it again, it would create a new real fleet and move the FACs again. Bear in mind that activation of a TheoFleet will only include ships that are in the specified location.
The suggested TreeView on the Fleet window would show the hierarchy of real fleets. Optionally, it could show any parasites or fighters in a separate strikegroup section and any ground forces in their own section. If ships were restricted to only be in one TheoFleet at time, ships could be shown in TheoFleets rather than the current real fleet. I'll need to give this some more though but is that along the lines you were thinking, or is the whole TheoFleet concept just too complicated?
Steve
Post by: SteveAlt on February 15, 2010, 02:19:54 AM
Lets use part of the British order of battle from Jutland as an example.
The top level is called Grand Fleet and has no ships directly attached. The second level has two points on the structure; "Battle Fleet" and "Battlecruiser Fleet". Neither of those has any ships either. On the Battle Fleet branch we will create several squadrons on the next level, such as the First Battle Squadron or the First Cruiser Squadron. The first Cruiser Squadron has four ships directly attached; Defence, Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and Black Prince. The First Battle Squadron has no ships directly attached and instead has two new points on the structure, Sixth Division and Fifth Division. Each of those division has four ships directly attached. Bear in mind these are just organization elements - they aren't task groups in the current sense
So assuming all your ships are in the same location, if you activated the Sixth Division, Aurora would create a task group called "Sixth Division" that contained the four ships assigned to the Sixth Division. if you activated the First Battle Squadron instead, Aurora would create a task group called "First Battle Squadron" which contained all the ships within its hierarchy. In this case the eight ships of the Fifth and Sixth Divisions. If you activated the Battle Fleet, Aurora would create a task group called "Battle Fleet" containing all the ships within that structure - in this case the eight ships of the First Battle Squadron and the four ships of the First Cruiser Squadrons and the ships of any other subordinate squadrons.
If the "Battle Fleet" was moving as a group and you decided to activate the First Battle Squadron, those eight ships would be detached and placed in a new task group called the "First Battle Squadron". The rest of the "Battle Fleet" would remain in the existing task group. Lets assume the Battle Fleet had several other detachments during an engagement and then all those detachments moved to the same location. If you activated the "Battle Fleet" again, all those detachment would combine into one new task group called "Battle Fleet". All the empty task groups would be disbanded.
Lets assume that the Sixth Division of the First Battle Squadron actually comprises a pair of carriers, Lexington and Yorktown, that have a dozen FAC between them. The Sixth Division could have a new subordinate point on the organization chart called Sixth Division Air Wing. That point has two subordinate point called Lexington Air Wing and Yorktown Air Wing. Note that these cannot be directly linked to the ships as those are not points on the organization chart. The fighters that will be based on the Lexington are assigned to the Lexington Air Wing structure point and those for the Yorktown are assigned to the Yorktown Air Wing structure point. If you activate the Lexington Air Wing, Aurora will create a task group called "Lexington Air Wing" containing all the fighters assigned to that structure point. If you activate the Sixth Division Air Wing, Aurora will create a task group called "Sixth Division Air Wing" containing all the fighters assigned to both the Yorktown and Lexington as they are attached to subordinate structure points.
Using this paradigm, your fleet has a permament organization that you can modify outside of the composition of your current task groups. Task groups just become temporary groupings of ships for a specified task while remaining part of the overall command structure. For players who don't want to bother with any of this, they can just ignore it and continue to use fleets in the existing manner
I think this would work very well and add a lot of flavour to the game for those interested in created a real naval organization
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 15, 2010, 02:42:11 AM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
An idea on Star Swarm tactics after reading Steve's latest chapter.
Possible spoiler so I will wrap it in the spoiler tags.
[spoiler:1vmzuhlu]You have it so that a Precursor will ram if it runs out of ammo. Can you apply similar logic to the Star Swarm but instead of damaging the target, they latch on and perform what could be described as a boarding attempt? Your description of the Star Swarm mentioned that no air was detected streaming from them when hit, but fluid was - so organic ships.
So you could say that instead of having a 'crew' of sentient beings their crew could be macro-scale white-blood/defense/repair cells and that these cells can survive in another ships confines for a short period of time once injected. They would finally degrade after time due to being out of their normal transport fluid.
I am not suggesting that they should be able to take control of the ship, but they could do damage to components and kill crew or embarked marines.
They would only do this against slow moving ships and, if there is a way for them to detect such a thing, if that ship has very tough internal HTKs.
To expand it further, if they manage to kill the whole crew, you can then redesign or create a new class of workers that have a tractor/grapple so they can then tow a derelict ship (or wreck?) to the queen for consumption :) This may spoil some of the surprise for the Star Swarm and will definitely change how you handle them so stop reading now if you don't want to know
The Star Swarm are actually creatures rather than ships. You have no doubt encountered the Queen, the workers and the soldiers. They are Trans-Newtonian creatures who are based on Trans-Newtonian elements in the same way we are based on carbon. The Queen produces more soldiers or workers and occasionally a new Queen by laying eggs in the wrecks of Trans-Newtonian ships. When those eggs hatch, the wreck is consumed and more Star Swarm are born. The workers extract material from planets in a similar way to asteroid miners. When they have enough, they use it to create a "wreck" in orbit of the planet, which is really just a glob of TNEs but you can salvage it. The Queen then uses this "wreck" to lay more eggs. Once the system population of star swarm reaches a certain point, a new Queen may be born (if sufficient materials are available). When a new Queen is born, it will leave the system and found its own hive in an adjacent system.
Now the cat is out of the bag, I guess this might change player's strategy against the Star Swarm
Steve[/spoiler:1vmzuhlu]
Post by: sloanjh on February 15, 2010, 02:48:46 AM
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
I am trying to think of a way to provide something along these lines without having to rewrite everything concerning fleets (when I say fleets I mean TG - its an old habit) :-)
So anything that moves in the direction of "more complex" is probably not in the right direction.... In particular, I suspect a lot of the code that moves fleets back and forth is due to conditional orders like spit/join/gather escorts/deploy escorts/etc. My thought is that most of those spots would eventually be swapped out for operations which make subordinate TG (that already exist) switch state from independent to dependent or vice-versa.QuoteThere is already the concept of sub-fleets and the ability to copy orders to those sub-fleets. I think this could be modified so that orders were ONLY passed to the sub-fleets and not carried out by the fleet to which the orders were being given. Or perhaps, a more intelligent option where they are only passed to specified subfleets. Perhaps also the ability to give orders to one sub-fleet and copy the orders to specified 'sister' fleets that belonged to the same higher fleet. That would get around the issue of the parent fleet not having the same order list as a specialised sub-fleet. I would also allow the display of sub-fleets when the main fleet is selected. The problem will be the interface as the fleet window is already crowded and I am restricted on resolution :-) might show the following TheoFleets: Div 01, Div 02, CVBG Space Wing (all the FAC), CVBG Escorts (all the escorts) etc. Opening the Div 01 node might show FAC Squadron 01 and CV Div 01 (ships + escorts). Opening the CVBG Space Wing might show FAC Squadrons 01 and 02 (the same TheoFleets that show up in the Divisions). There might also be some sort of color coding and/or shading and/or text to indicate which nodes have been turned into real fleets are are not coincident with the parent - for example FAC Squadron 01 might be on a strike and show up differently in the tree view (maybe with a "(detached)" after the name). Is this what you were thinking?QuoteThe suggested TreeView on the Fleet window would show the hierarchy of real fleets. Optionally, it could show any parasites or fighters in a separate strikegroup section and any ground forces in their own section. If ships were restricted to only be in one TheoFleet at time, ships could be shown in TheoFleets rather than the current real fleet. I'll need to give this some more though but is that along the lines you were thinking, or is the whole TheoFleet concept just too complicated?
I think actually that there would need to be two TreeViews: one that showed only the real-fleet structure, and another which showed the TheoFleet structure. And your mentioning of ground forces brings up an interesting point - a week or two ago I suggested something very similar for being able to structure ground forces in the ground forces browser. If you play your cards right, then TheoFleet actually becomes "TheoUnit", which can be a generic container ship/parasite/ground units (I suspect you're already thinking along these lines, since you mentioned it
On real estate for the F12 screen, would it be possible to push a button that would bring up a TG TreeView screen, which one could select in and change the state of the F12 screen to be pointing to that one (kind of how clicking on a leader event in the ctrl-F3 screen used to change the active leader in the F4 screen). That would put off the redesign of F12 as much as possible, since the TheoFleets could all be managed by the new TreeView screen (ctrl-F12 maybe?), plus (and more important) if the TreeView turns out to be too cumbersome, people would still have the old TG selector available in the F12 screen.
So yes, this is the spirit of what I was thinking. The only other thing that concerns me is how close 5.0 is to going out the door - you probably don't want to do a lot of big changes here just before shipping. OTOH, if this works out, I see a lot of potential for simplifying the management of sub-formations on the orders screen (and in the code), so there's the risk of generating a lot of DB changes fairly quickly after 5.0 goes out. My inclination is for 5.0 to include the TheoFleets, with maybe only one or two extra orders on the F12 screen like "Join as TheoFleet" or "Split out TheoFleet x". If you think this is too complicated, then I'd be happy just to get the real fleet TreeView for F12 into 5.0 and leave the TheoFleets for 5.1.
John
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 15, 2010, 03:00:15 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
So yes, this is the spirit of what I was thinking. The only other thing that concerns me is how close 5.0 is to going out the door - you probably don't want to do a lot of big changes here just before shipping. OTOH, if this works out, I see a lot of potential for simplifying the management of sub-formations on the orders screen (and in the code), so there's the risk of generating a lot of DB changes fairly quickly after 5.0 goes out. My inclination is for 5.0 to include the TheoFleets, with maybe only one or two extra orders on the F12 screen like "Join as TheoFleet" or "Split out TheoFleet x". If you think this is too complicated, then I'd be happy just to get the real fleet TreeView for F12 into 5.0 and leave the TheoFleets for 5.1.I'll wait until you read my follow up post before replying properly to this post, as I think it addresses what you are looking for. I think I will try and get something into v5.0 as if I do it right it shouldn't really interfere with anything else.
Steve
Post by: Journier on February 15, 2010, 04:51:54 AM
You could raise taxation at your core worlds, to increase emigration out to fledgling colonies, while also increasing your Unrest point accumulation requiring more divisions on those worlds.
Also a tax rate modifier for Shipping lines as well, so that Civilian Shipping lines can pocket more of the profit creating a large growth in those area's without subsidizing the industries. Then again you could do this for civilian Mining colonies as well, able to lower tax income so maybe they expand more into mining faster?
I did a search and didn't find anyone really asking for this ability, and hope you haven't already struck down the idea
Post by: sloanjh on February 15, 2010, 04:56:14 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"So yes, this is the spirit of what I was thinking. The only other thing that concerns me is how close 5.0 is to going out the door - you probably don't want to do a lot of big changes here just before shipping. OTOH, if this works out, I see a lot of potential for simplifying the management of sub-formations on the orders screen (and in the code), so there's the risk of generating a lot of DB changes fairly quickly after 5.0 goes out. My inclination is for 5.0 to include the TheoFleets, with maybe only one or two extra orders on the F12 screen like "Join as TheoFleet" or "Split out TheoFleet x". If you think this is too complicated, then I'd be happy just to get the real fleet TreeView for F12 into 5.0 and leave the TheoFleets for 5.1.I'll wait until you read my follow up post before replying properly to this post, as I think it addresses what you are looking for. I think I will try and get something into v5.0 as if I do it right it shouldn't really interfere with anything else.
Steve
I just read your follow-up, and I think we've managed to swap positions :-)
John
PS - Last iteration for me tonight - gotta get to sleep.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 15, 2010, 05:20:15 AM
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on February 15, 2010, 10:14:40 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
In the TOE model a ship can be in a TheoTG comprising its branch of the TOE, or a TheoTG based on any superior branch. In the more advanced CombinedTheoTG model, a ship can be part of an unlimited number of TheoTGs as defined by the player, who specifies which independent TOE branches belong to each CombinedTheoTG. Does that summarise where we have got to?I think so - it sounds like we're 100% on the same page. I agree with the overall strategy you've described of implementing TOE on TheoTG first (with better names) - as long as you've got it in the back of your mind that the CombinedTheoTG :-) I had also thought a bit about the difficulty of explaining this to new players - I fear it's going to be almost as hard as tracking speed :)
[/quote]
LOL. And to think that all this came from a simple request for a tree view in TG selection
John
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 16, 2010, 05:06:39 PM
-Areyar
Post by: backstab on February 17, 2010, 01:11:43 AM
Low Tech
Mechanized Division Attack Str: 2 Defence Str: 2.5
High Tech
Super Heavy Assault Battalions Attack Str: 15 Defence Str: 15 (Extreamly costly to make .... extreamly difficult to transport .... think Mechs/OGRE/Shiva)
Light Infantry Battalions Attack Str: 3 Defence Str: 7 (easy to transport)
Post by: Journier on February 18, 2010, 02:30:26 AM
Quote from: "backstab"
More ground units .....
Low Tech
Mechanized Division Attack Str: 2 Defence Str: 2.5
High Tech
Super Heavy Assault Battalions Attack Str: 15 Defence Str: 15 (Extreamly costly to make .... extreamly difficult to transport .... think Mechs/OGRE/Shiva)
Light Infantry Battalions Attack Str: 3 Defence Str: 7 (easy to transport)
Bolo....
Post by: Laurence on February 18, 2010, 10:05:57 AM
Quote from: "Journier"
Bolo....
The later Bolo's could shoot at ships... Give'em a large bore plasma carronade.
Post by: ShadoCat on February 18, 2010, 07:55:44 PM
Quote from: "Laurence"
Quote from: "Journier"
Bolo....
The later Bolo's could shoot at ships... Give'em a large bore plasma carronade.
That's no PDF... ...it's moving!
Post by: Journier on February 18, 2010, 10:48:45 PM
Quote from: "ShadoCat"
Quote from: "Laurence"Quote from: "Journier"
Bolo....
The later Bolo's could shoot at ships... Give'em a large bore plasma carronade.
That's no PDF... ...it's moving!
for ship bombardment of planets you could have wasnt it pretty much giant iron or steel spikes dropped en masse from a ship at a target?
I remember one of the books had the Bolo like firing at the spikes/ avoiding them as best as possible i think.
John ringo came back with this idea in his book about later on after Humanity has pretty much defeated the posleen and a new race shows up with much more advanced tech and tactics...
Our first move in that book was to take a bunch of ships that were mothballed orbital bombardment ships we made which were pretty much giant freighters full of spikes, and they just opened cargo holds and let loose over the planet.
Post by: JimiD on February 19, 2010, 08:04:01 AM
Hotel / resorts. Colonies with small populations that luxury cruisers can use as destinations. Perhaps they have a low infrastructure demand to represent expansion.
Civilian colonies. Not related to mineral wealth, but perhaps there is someother, non gameplay related, reason for being there. This might be as simple as setting up a new community (perhaps similar to the founding of the US), to jails, a non TN resource etc. These could expand to become quite large, and include large civilian economic supplies and demands.
Perhaps the civilian colonies should be able to produce civilian terraformers? I dont suppose they will produce them in numbers, or locations, to unbalance the game. But I dont know what balance would be in this game. I suppose I mean to replace the work the player would do anyway.
I am not familiar with the Starstorm background, but there are plenty of other modern references in which 'The Company' has outposts or facilities in which the storey is set.
I like the civilian economy as it represents the rest of my civilisation getting on with dealing with becoming star based, while I deal with the military side. Expanding it would add to this immersion, and add additional colonies that would need protection and policing.
Perhaps this is not for v5.0, but this seems the best thread.
Post by: Journier on February 19, 2010, 09:00:03 AM
Quote from: "JimiD"
I am enjoying watching the civilian economy expand, and would encourage you to take this further.
Hotel / resorts. Colonies with small populations that luxury cruisers can use as destinations. Perhaps they have a low infrastructure demand to represent expansion.
Civilian colonies. Not related to mineral wealth, but perhaps there is someother, non gameplay related, reason for being there. This might be as simple as setting up a new community (perhaps similar to the founding of the US), to jails, a non TN resource etc. These could expand to become quite large, and include large civilian economic supplies and demands.
Perhaps the civilian colonies should be able to produce civilian terraformers? I dont suppose they will produce them in numbers, or locations, to unbalance the game. But I dont know what balance would be in this game. I suppose I mean to replace the work the player would do anyway.
I am not familiar with the Starstorm background, but there are plenty of other modern references in which 'The Company' has outposts or facilities in which the storey is set.
I like the civilian economy as it represents the rest of my civilisation getting on with dealing with becoming star based, while I deal with the military side. Expanding it would add to this immersion, and add additional colonies that would need protection and policing.
Perhaps this is not for v5.0, but this seems the best thread.
I also enjoy watching the civilian side of things grow and sorta take care of itself, throw in a little extra cost for having civilian shipping companies transport your stuff from planet to planet and youd have a pretty simple and self sustaining industry in space without the extra hassle of manual transfer of most of the goods.
Post by: Tnx on February 19, 2010, 11:44:55 AM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 20, 2010, 10:53:27 AM
Steve
Post by: waresky on February 20, 2010, 11:59:54 AM
Am hope much in this upgrade.
ur work has resolve the "NPR's" troubles in time advance? (argh..am nevermind the right words..)
Post by: Tnx on February 20, 2010, 12:40:21 PM
Post by: Nabobalis on February 20, 2010, 05:12:41 PM
Post by: Erik L on February 20, 2010, 05:19:56 PM
Quote from: "Nabobalis"
Maybe, when a JP is found in a system, it shows up on the galactic map as an unknown system so I could neatly organise the map before I've explored the system?
The system is not generated until the JP is explored. Think of it as finding a closed door. You don't know what is on the other side until you open.
Post by: Nabobalis on February 20, 2010, 05:30:44 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "Nabobalis"Maybe, when a JP is found in a system, it shows up on the galactic map as an unknown system so I could neatly organise the map before I've explored the system?
The system is not generated until the JP is explored. Think of it as finding a closed door. You don't know what is on the other side until you open.
Hmm, so nothing is generated? Can a blank icon at least be generated on discovery of a JP in the galactic map? It would so help with my analness
Post by: schroeam on February 20, 2010, 05:36:07 PM
Quote from: "Nabobalis"
You can select display options in the galactic map to show systems that have unexplored jump points.Quote from: "Erik Luken"Quote from: "Nabobalis"Maybe, when a JP is found in a system, it shows up on the galactic map as an unknown system so I could neatly organise the map before I've explored the system?
The system is not generated until the JP is explored. Think of it as finding a closed door. You don't know what is on the other side until you open.
Hmm, so nothing is generated? Can a blank icon at least be generated on discovery of a JP in the galactic map? It would so help with my analness
Adam.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 21, 2010, 05:15:29 AM
Steve
Post by: Venec on February 21, 2010, 07:53:23 AM
Quote
On a side note, if you could assign missions to fighters wings, for example issue t o imaginary 1st fighter wing "intercept all fighters" at waypoint 1 with a radious of, let's say, 1m kms, it would be sweet.
Post by: Brian Neumann on February 21, 2010, 11:38:28 AM
Brian
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 23, 2010, 08:46:23 PM
Ex: an aggressive officer tries to target bigger targets, while defensive officers may keep more guns in reserve for PD.
As soon as individual ships individually decide on priority targets, a senior officer with good operations skill might allow better coordinated attacks amongst ships in a taskforce or even between forces.
(As I understand it, current system provides pretty optimal firing solutions.)
Post by: nichaey on February 24, 2010, 03:55:24 AM
I think that missiles without warheads should still do damage. (unless Im mistaken and they actually do)
I'm looking at this mainly from the AmM role, but anything going 20,000 Km/s should be able to do enough damage to destroy a missile. you might have to rebalance the to hit ratio, but I feel that this would be more realistic
Post by: Nabobalis on February 24, 2010, 06:39:50 AM
Side note 1: How much construction time is saved when the components already happen to be built when a ship is laid down?
Refitting a ship with an upgraded component. For example, you happen to have a spare couple of engines lying around, which happen to be better than the current ship undergoing an overhaul. So you just want to replace those engines.
Side note 2: Is damage control the only way to repair a damaged component? Since an overhaul doesn't seem to fix a damaged component, nor is there an option that I can see on the TG page to fix ships at a planet.
Post by: Hawkeye on February 24, 2010, 10:32:22 AM
Post by: MoonDragon on February 24, 2010, 12:56:13 PM
Post by: tanq_tonic on February 24, 2010, 01:42:28 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
This is merely a cosmetic change for ground unit names, so it might not be worth the coding and DB change....
I like to name my battalions by type and number within the type, e.g. 1st Armored, 2nd Armored, 1st (not 3rd) Infantry, 2nd Infantry, etc.
My problem occurs in the various displays (e.g. during officer assignment) - most of them sort alphabetically, so I end up with
1st Armored
1st Airborne
1st Infantry
10th Infantry
2nd Armored
2nd Airborne
...
What I'd like is all units of the same type together. So the proposal is to split the names of ground units up into to pieces: a "type name" (or whatever you want to call it) and a "sequence number". So the 1st Armored would have a type name of "Armored" and a sequence number of "1". If sequence number was "none" or blank, then it wouldn't be part of the name, e.g. a type name of "Rico's Roughnecks" and sequence number of "none" would come out as "Rico's Roughnecks". The ordering could then be based on the type name, with a secondary ordering based on the (numerical, not string) sequence number.
Actually, the same sort of thing could be done for task groups too - right now I'm naming my TG "Ferret 001", "Ferret 002", etc. so that the sorting doesn't put Ferret 1, 10, and 100 next to each other.
This isn't high priority - on the ground units side I've simply started naming things "Armored 1st", "Armored 2nd" etc., then read them right to left. Just a thought that's been nagging me for a while....
John
Seconded with another variation. Allow the user to set the "basename" so that one doesn't have to retype "Armored 1st" and "Armored 2nd", but let the user type in a "base name" of "Armored" with the automatic numbering of the user defined base to automatically get "Armored 001" "Armored 002"
Post by: Kurt on February 24, 2010, 03:56:09 PM
I'm pretty sure I (and probably others <G>) have brought this issue up before, and I'm also pretty sure I know why you've declined to make any changes, but I've been thinking about this lately and thought I'd bring it up again, to see if anything has changed.
I have been reading Ringo's "Live Free or Die" lately. Excellent book, I can recommend it unreservedly. IMO, of course. At one point in the book the author goes into a little exposition about how difficult it is to get the "lay of the land" in a solar system, i.e., how hard it is to figure out where all of the planets and such are from a standing start. Especially from a couple of billion kilometers away. In aurora an exploration ship can tell exactly where everything is instantaneously after entering a system, which not only exceeds the bounds of credibility, but, as one attorney I know said (about something else), blows way past the bounds of even incredibility.
It seems to me that upon entering a system the explorer would be able to determine the system primary immediately, but nothing else. It might take months to find all of the planets, even with good survey instruments and scanners, and longer to determine the location of asteroids. Now, I'm not suggesting we take it to extremes of taking years of constant effort to determine the location of every last comet and asteroid, however, instantaneous is problematic.
I suspect that in the past you have avoided dealing with this issue because of the difficulty in establishing partial knowledge of a system, and that difficulty likely hasn't changed. I am currently considering ways to "role-play" this issue, but it would be easier to do if Aurora supported this.
Kurt
Post by: ShadoCat on February 24, 2010, 05:40:09 PM
Instead of XXX engine or XXXcm laser where XXX changes each tech level and, thus, randomizes the placement of the tech on the list, how about: Engine - XXX or Laser, xxxcm?
I generally do a 1B population start and hunting down moving techs in the initial tech allocation can be a bit of a pain.
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on February 24, 2010, 07:00:50 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
Steve -I guess it is an expansion of the gravsensor techno babble: range is inversely proportional to mass and it is instantaneous, so a tiny gravsensor designed to detect planets should be ultrasmall, asteroids are also leagues more heavy than the average ship.
I'm pretty sure I (and probably others <G>) have brought this issue up before, and I'm also pretty sure I know why you've declined to make any changes, but I've been thinking about this lately and thought I'd bring it up again, to see if anything has changed.
I have been reading Ringo's "Live Free or Die" lately. Excellent book, I can recommend it unreservedly. IMO, of course. At one point in the book the author goes into a little exposition about how difficult it is to get the "lay of the land" in a solar system, i.e., how hard it is to figure out where all of the planets and such are from a standing start. Especially from a couple of billion kilometers away. In aurora an exploration ship can tell exactly where everything is instantaneously after entering a system, which not only exceeds the bounds of credibility, but, as one attorney I know said (about something else), blows way past the bounds of even incredibility.
It seems to me that upon entering a system the explorer would be able to determine the system primary immediately, but nothing else. It might take months to find all of the planets, even with good survey instruments and scanners, and longer to determine the location of asteroids. Now, I'm not suggesting we take it to extremes of taking years of constant effort to determine the location of every last comet and asteroid, however, instantaneous is problematic.
I suspect that in the past you have avoided dealing with this issue because of the difficulty in establishing partial knowledge of a system, and that difficulty likely hasn't changed. I am currently considering ways to "role-play" this issue, but it would be easier to do if Aurora supported this.
Kurt
Atmospheric composition and such would require more specialized sensors though. Still, once you know where to look, a sensor can be trained perfectly and focused tightly.
Requirement of geosensors (and/or being in orbit) to determine anything besides body mass and size would be more interesting though.
Post by: Another on February 25, 2010, 07:08:18 AM
When upgrading ships changing design of MyCruiserWithTheseFeatures Mk4 to MyCruiserWithTheseFeatures Mk5 would be more convenient if after pressing Rename button we had an edit field with old name already there, not a blank one. Renaming system bodies could also benefit from such a feature.
Are colonies with geology team survey completed but no population still not showing the line about it in the status window like in 4.91?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on February 25, 2010, 07:53:15 AM
Quote from: "Another"
A suggestion about renaming:Added for Systems, System Bodies, Ships, Fleets and Classes. I'll add it to other renames over time.
When upgrading ships changing design of MyCruiserWithTheseFeatures Mk4 to MyCruiserWithTheseFeatures Mk5 would be more convenient if after pressing Rename button we had an edit field with old name already there, not a blank one. Renaming system bodies could also benefit from such a feature.
Quote
Are colonies with geology team survey completed but no population still not showing the line about it in the status window like in 4.91?This should be fixed for v5.0. All colonies will show geo team status.
Steve
Post by: Father Tim on February 25, 2010, 07:01:22 PM
Quote from: "Kurt"
It seems to me that upon entering a system the explorer would be able to determine the system primary immediately, but nothing else. It might take months to find all of the planets, even with good survey instruments and scanners, and longer to determine the location of asteroids. Now, I'm not suggesting we take it to extremes of taking years of constant effort to determine the location of every last comet and asteroid, however, instantaneous is problematic.
While I'd like some sort of arcane formula based on body masses, sensor resolutions, regular/improved/advanced/super-powered survey sensors, etc., I'd settle for simply stellar type & mass immediately, super-jovians after one hour, other gas giants after three hours, terrestrial planets/moons after 24 hours, chunks after one week, and asteroids after one month.
Post by: Journier on February 26, 2010, 11:35:03 AM
Easier way to subsidize the shipping fleet please Steve?
currently you give 1000 wealth per click, could we have a "shift + click = 10,000 or 100,000?"
hell maybe some other way to do something with the civilian fleet to make it easier to help the thing grow.
Post by: Nabobalis on February 26, 2010, 01:55:32 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "Kurt"It seems to me that upon entering a system the explorer would be able to determine the system primary immediately, but nothing else. It might take months to find all of the planets, even with good survey instruments and scanners, and longer to determine the location of asteroids. Now, I'm not suggesting we take it to extremes of taking years of constant effort to determine the location of every last comet and asteroid, however, instantaneous is problematic.
While I'd like some sort of arcane formula based on body masses, sensor resolutions, regular/improved/advanced/super-powered
survey sensors, etc., I'd settle for simply stellar type & mass immediately, super-jovians after one hour, other gas giants after three hours, terrestrial planets/moons after 24 hours, chunks after one week, and asteroids after one month.
I like that, it makes sense. I mean with current technology I'm sure someone could survey the sky quite easily with a powerful telescope to find all the planets within a month or two. So a space ship with advanced technology could do it much faster. I'm sure from a JP located somewhere in the inner system or even the outer system, you could find most planets rather quickly.
Post by: Aldaris on February 26, 2010, 04:39:19 PM
Any ship entering a previously unknown system would start looking around for planets, they would scan/photograph in a sphere all around them and save the data. Asuming either bored crewmen with nothing better to do while moving somewhere, or ftl comms and people without anything better to do back home, that data could be anylized without the ship being in the system, removing the need for that check. So upon generating a system, each body type would be given a date for thwn they would be revealed.
Another idea: Planets having a thermal emision based on albedo, distance to star, and star luminosity. That way bodies can be picked up by thermal sensors. And of course any body should be picked up by active sensors.
Post by: Andrew on February 26, 2010, 05:36:16 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
If this gets added please make it optional, I spend far too much time managing survey ships as it is without messing around with planet searches.Quote from: "Kurt"It seems to me that upon entering a system the explorer would be able to determine the system primary immediately, but nothing else. It might take months to find all of the planets, even with good survey instruments and scanners, and longer to determine the location of asteroids. Now, I'm not suggesting we take it to extremes of taking years of constant effort to determine the location of every last comet and asteroid, however, instantaneous is problematic.
While I'd like some sort of arcane formula based on body masses, sensor resolutions, regular/improved/advanced/super-powered
survey sensors, etc., I'd settle for simply stellar type & mass immediately, super-jovians after one hour, other gas giants after three hours, terrestrial planets/moons after 24 hours, chunks after one week, and asteroids after one month.
Post by: Sotak246 on February 26, 2010, 06:25:16 PM
Quote
If this gets added please make it optional, I spend far too much time managing survey ships as it is without messing around with planet searches.
I second this.
Post by: Journier on February 27, 2010, 04:26:07 AM
Quote from: "Sotak246"
QuoteIf this gets added please make it optional, I spend far too much time managing survey ships as it is without messing around with planet searches.
I second this.
I third this.
Grav survey and geo survey need some form of automation for scanning already scouted systems, and returning to the home system on their own.
Sooooo much micro with this portion of game.
Post by: BlackWarder on February 27, 2010, 07:15:57 AM
It might be that I don't get it but currently it's just unneccesery micromanagment, I think that we should have a button that say terraform to <race name> with some sliders for climate changes (hotter/colder)
Post by: AtomikKrab on February 28, 2010, 05:09:44 PM
some sort of raise temperature option,not simply the add greenhouse gas, which only goes so far with raising temperature, it just irks me that with all of this technology at my disposal, I still have to build installations on pluto because I can only raise the temperature to just below racial tolerances
although thats really a minor suggestion, I just generally don't colonize pluto because of it though
Post by: mavikfelna on March 01, 2010, 05:16:09 PM
The other alternative would be if you do an unassign all, can we get it to also cancel all the research projects? When you've got a dozen projects going and have to remove each one one at a time it's like 3 clicks each and it's annoying.
Thanks,
--Mav
Post by: sloanjh on March 01, 2010, 10:48:28 PM
I think (but am not sure) that if I restore a saved DB and play forward, that I can't recover the previous sequence of events (do to random hit probabilities or officer promotions, for example). It would be nice to have reproducability.
John
Post by: Father Tim on March 02, 2010, 11:57:29 AM
Quote from: "mavikfelna"
There is an "Unassign All Officers" button on the officer's screen. It unassigns scientists from their research projects and administrators from their colonies as well as everybody else. Can we perhaps get an additional button that only unassigns the currently selected officer type? So if you're on the Navy Officer's screen it just unassigns all navy officers and leaves everyone else where they are?
The other alternative would be if you do an unassign all, can we get it to also cancel all the research projects? When you've got a dozen projects going and have to remove each one one at a time it's like 3 clicks each and it's annoying. :)
Thanks,
--Mav
Don't add a second button, just change it to "Unassign Selected Officer Type". Anybody who truly wants to unassign all officers/civilian admistrators/scientists can spend the time for six extra clicks.
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on March 02, 2010, 06:21:45 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
SECONDED.Quote from: "mavikfelna"There is an "Unassign All Officers" button on the officer's screen. It unassigns scientists from their research projects and administrators from their colonies as well as everybody else. Can we perhaps get an additional button that only unassigns the currently selected officer type? So if you're on the Navy Officer's screen it just unassigns all navy officers and leaves everyone else where they are?
The other alternative would be if you do an unassign all, can we get it to also cancel all the research projects? When you've got a dozen projects going and have to remove each one one at a time it's like 3 clicks each and it's annoying.
Thanks,
--Mav
Don't add a second button, just change it to "Unassign Selected Officer Type". Anybody who truly wants to unassign all officers/civilian admistrators/scientists can spend the time for six extra clicks.
Related. maybe have autoassign also reassess assigned officers for optimal assignment of whole fleet?
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 03, 2010, 08:50:05 AM
Quote from: "mavikfelna"
There is an "Unassign All Officers" button on the officer's screen. It unassigns scientists from their research projects and administrators from their colonies as well as everybody else. Can we perhaps get an additional button that only unassigns the currently selected officer type? So if you're on the Navy Officer's screen it just unassigns all navy officers and leaves everyone else where they are?Added for v5.02
Steve
Post by: S.K. Ren on March 03, 2010, 11:49:23 AM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 03, 2010, 01:58:53 PM
Quote from: "S.K. Ren"
Would It be possible to create NPR's with Conventional Empires? As it stands selecting Conventional Empire blocks the NPR button when selected. I currently don't have a mindset to micromanage several civs at once, but starting at Trans-Newtonian level seems too unbalanced for the setup I desire. So is it possible?It will be a lot of work for me to implement conventional NPRs. The issue is that the AI will need changing to deal with the problem of only having partial tech in every area, and that would affect a huge chunk of the AI code. At the moment they always have at least the first level of every tech, which makes life much easier.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 03, 2010, 02:28:02 PM
Steve
Post by: sloanjh on March 03, 2010, 09:15:03 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "S.K. Ren"Would It be possible to create NPR's with Conventional Empires? As it stands selecting Conventional Empire blocks the NPR button when selected. I currently don't have a mindset to micromanage several civs at once, but starting at Trans-Newtonian level seems too unbalanced for the setup I desire. So is it possible?It will be a lot of work for me to implement conventional NPRs. The issue is that the AI will need changing to deal with the problem of only having partial tech in every area, and that would affect a huge chunk of the AI code. At the moment they always have at least the first level of every tech, which makes life much easier.
In addition, I suspect the AI is significantly worse at strategic tech planning than a human. (This is not a slam on Steve or the AI - AI stuff is hard.) The practical implication of this would be that any conventional NPR that are there are game start will be far behind you technologically by the time you encounter them, while those that are generated when you encounter them will automatically be far behind you (because they are generated as conventional empires when you encounter them, and you're (obviously) already star-faring).
On the other hand here are two ideas:
1) The problem I run into when doing conventional starts is that NPR tech level for discovered (as opposed to startup) NPR is determined by how long the game has been running, so by the time I start generating them they're several TL ahead of me. It would be very easy for Steve to put a "time handicap in years" on the startup screen that becomes active for conventional starts. This number would be subtracted off from the "time since game start" (with a floor of 0, of course) when generated new NPR. So if I did a conventional start with a handicap of 15 years, then any NPR generated before year 15 would be generated using parameters used for start-up NPR in a TN game, while an NPR generated at year 17 would use the parameters equivalent to year 2 in a TN game.
2) In SF, there were High-tech, industrial, and pre-industrial NPR. It probably wouldn't be a lot of work for Steve to write an "Industrial civilization" AI that didn't try to research TN tech, and didn't try to build ships. Basically, all it would build would be ground training installations (which would have to be buildable with conventional tech) and army battalions (would probably want to put in low-tech HQ units too). The idea is that it might be fun to drop a heavy assault division on an industrial world an watch it fight the 200 conventional army divisions on that world. The pre-industrial NPR could just be a big pool of population, which would be available for working in trans-shipped mining and factories (think low-tech slave labor) - the % workers available could be tweaked so only 1% or so of the population was available to simulate the inefficiencies of no tech training.
BTW, this reminds me - it seems like it would make a lot of sense for ground training facilities to be a conventional tech.
John
Post by: sloanjh on March 03, 2010, 11:35:09 PM
I've run into two issues in my campaign that I'd like solved:
1) Luna had good minerals, so I dropped some auto-mines on it before any CMC had shown up. I feared that this would preclude any CMC from being generated. I worked around this by waiting for a CMC to show up on another world, then transferring one of the complexes from that world to Luna using SM mode. Once this "seed" was there, the CMC grew normally, but I don't know if it would have ever gotten any if I hadn't done the seeding.
2) All my colonies have been surveyed-out by my Geo team, so I started surveying Europa, which had decent minerals but not enough for a CMC. To do the survey, I have to create a colony, and might add some auto-mines. My fear is that this will preclude CMC from appearing. I can play the same trick as before, but I'd rather not worry about these things.
John
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on March 04, 2010, 07:18:28 AM
Wouldnt abandoning the colony allow Civilian exploitation again?
Post by: Poojawa on March 04, 2010, 07:54:13 AM
So I don't have to manually go through each and every one of my 130 destroyers to assign the PD range, which guns to which FCT.
Also... have ships that are newly built automatically topped off from the population in fuel.. unless there's some small check box I missed to auto fuel on completion.
Post by: Brian Neumann on March 04, 2010, 08:03:03 AM
Quote from: "Poojawa"
Ability to set weapons to a fire control through ship design, as well as assign missiles to launchers.
So I don't have to manually go through each and every one of my 130 destroyers to assign the PD range, which guns to which FCT.
Also... have ships that are newly built automatically topped off from the population in fuel.. unless there's some small check box I missed to auto fuel on completion.
1.) Seconded, so that when a new ship is built it uses the preset default assignments.
2.) You already can do this in effect. In the battle control window (F8) you can set up one ship and then use the buttons on the far right to copy that setup to all ships of the same class in either the fleet, system, or your entire empire. This is something I do on a regular basis. About every year of game time I go through and assign the fire control/weapons for each class of ship and then copy it to my empire. Usually this is a defensive setup so that if ambushed I already have all weapons preset for point defense. I can always go in and change it once combat starts.
brian
Post by: sloanjh on March 04, 2010, 08:27:50 AM
Quote from: "Commodore_Areyar"
Why do you want CMCs on good mineral sources? Free automines? (but you'd still have to buy the goods) Roleplay then?
Wouldnt abandoning the colony allow Civilian exploitation again?
Free automines, plus some role playing.
If all I've got is a survey team, then yes I could abandon the colony - I don't like the book-keeping/role-playing/instability here. One fear is that if I screw up and delete before the colony's empty, bad things could happen. Another fear is that I would delete the wrong colony. I'd rather not stress about it.
If I've already started putting automines on the colony, though (like I did with Luna), then abandoning doesn't work.
John
Post by: Charlie Beeler on March 04, 2010, 12:13:12 PM
The ability to repair PDC battle damage. Damage control can be used for internal components but the isn't a current method for repairing PDC armor.
Post by: waresky on March 10, 2010, 01:12:18 PM
Simply for more like feeling:)
Or fast recognize a "Atmosphere breath Planets!! EHY Dude show that!!!"...
Post by: waresky on March 10, 2010, 01:15:33 PM
Object:MILITARY SQUADROON
Steve,we can have a icons around or INSIDE a Solar System for fast recon "Where at the.." military Squadroon directly on Map?..(ahhh orrible english apologize:D)
Post by: sloanjh on March 10, 2010, 04:38:22 PM
John
Post by: Charlie Beeler on March 11, 2010, 07:31:27 AM
Post by: Charlie Beeler on March 11, 2010, 09:23:46 AM
Post by: Arwyn on March 11, 2010, 09:50:43 AM
I have a colony on a planet with the gravity thats a few points over the maximum allowed for my race. I dropped the colony there so I could land an engineer brigade to salvage the colony ruins I found there. Everything was fine until the engineers recovered a facility that turned out to be a couple of hundred points of infrastructure. Since they, the civilians have been sending a non-stop stream of colonists to the site, even after I removed the infrastructure.
Its rather annoying to see a message every few months about all the colonists dying when they land on the planet.
A quick toggle to prevent civilian colonization would be handy for things like that.
Post by: Another on March 11, 2010, 11:47:13 AM
Quote from: "Arwyn"
One thing that might be helpful is a way to prevent civilian colonizers from landing on non-habitable colony sites.
I have a colony on a planet with the gravity thats a few points over the maximum allowed for my race. I dropped the colony there so I could land an engineer brigade to salvage the colony ruins I found there. Everything was fine until the engineers recovered a facility that turned out to be a couple of hundred points of infrastructure. Since they, the civilians have been sending a non-stop stream of colonists to the site, even after I removed the infrastructure.
Its rather annoying to see a message every few months about all the colonists dying when they land on the planet.
A quick toggle to prevent civilian colonization would be handy for things like that.
Have you tried to designate that colony as "source of colonists" at "civilian/ind status" tab?
Post by: Brian Neumann on March 11, 2010, 01:54:54 PM
Brian
Post by: Arwyn on March 11, 2010, 04:13:57 PM
Quote from: "Another"
Quote from: "Arwyn"One thing that might be helpful is a way to prevent civilian colonizers from landing on non-habitable colony sites.
I have a colony on a planet with the gravity thats a few points over the maximum allowed for my race. I dropped the colony there so I could land an engineer brigade to salvage the colony ruins I found there. Everything was fine until the engineers recovered a facility that turned out to be a couple of hundred points of infrastructure. Since they, the civilians have been sending a non-stop stream of colonists to the site, even after I removed the infrastructure.
Its rather annoying to see a message every few months about all the colonists dying when they land on the planet.
A quick toggle to prevent civilian colonization would be handy for things like that.
Have you tried to designate that colony as "source of colonists" at "civilian/ind status" tab?
Sure have, no luck.
Post by: sloanjh on March 11, 2010, 11:06:26 PM
Quote from: "Arwyn"
Quote from: "Another"Have you tried to designate that colony as "source of colonists" at "civilian/ind status" tab?
Sure have, no luck.
IIRC, this doesn't work for colonies that have less than 25m people. The flag in the DB is only for turning on incoming colonists (i.e. making it a destination even after there are 25m pop). You can see this by trying to set the flag for a colony with less than 25m - if you go away then come back (e.g. by reselecting your empire in the upper left box) you'll see the radio button magically reset itself - it won't "stick"
STEVE - Can you "fix" this for 5.1 so that the switch is meaningful for all colony sizes?
John
Post by: MoonDragon on March 11, 2010, 11:55:03 PM
Post by: backstab on March 12, 2010, 12:28:03 AM
Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"
A way to have seperate names for colonies on the same world. This really comes into play when play a game with multiple empires on the same world and one conquers another. The labels in some places are identical. (example mass driver destinations on the minerals tab of the F2 economics screen).This would be useful for Pre TN Starts on earth also !
Post by: sloanjh on March 12, 2010, 12:47:23 AM
John
Post by: waresky on March 12, 2010, 05:40:54 AM
Quote from: "backstab"
+1+1+1+1!!Quote from: "Charlie Beeler"A way to have seperate names for colonies on the same world. This really comes into play when play a game with multiple empires on the same world and one conquers another. The labels in some places are identical. (example mass driver destinations on the minerals tab of the F2 economics screen).This would be useful for Pre TN Starts on earth also !
Raise hand! damned Divinity idea.
Post by: Charlie Beeler on March 12, 2010, 07:06:23 AM
Quote from: "Arwyn"
One thing that might be helpful is a way to prevent civilian colonizers from landing on non-habitable colony sites.
I have a colony on a planet with the gravity thats a few points over the maximum allowed for my race. I dropped the colony there so I could land an engineer brigade to salvage the colony ruins I found there. Everything was fine until the engineers recovered a facility that turned out to be a couple of hundred points of infrastructure. Since they, the civilians have been sending a non-stop stream of colonists to the site, even after I removed the infrastructure.
Its rather annoying to see a message every few months about all the colonists dying when they land on the planet.
A quick toggle to prevent civilian colonization would be handy for things like that.
Perhaps a new type of planetary/system ban, Military exclusion zone. Still allows the play to assign colonies, but civilian activity is banned. Still have the chance that the civilians will ignore it just like the current full ban.
Post by: waresky on March 13, 2010, 03:52:13 AM
Objectives: resolve in 1 hand the task:
NEEDED: a SINGLE button to refuel FROM Tanker Squadroon linked in same Squadroon WITHOUT follow a complicated orders line,from position then Refuel..
EDIT: NOT from a USELESS equalize refuel..not not..ANOTHER button please:DDDD
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 13, 2010, 05:17:45 AM
Pick some^^
Interface:
-Allow orders in the middle of the list (In the fleet window) to be deleted when selected,
that way you don't have to delete everything below and put it back in thereafter.
-Order possible actions for Freighters not after 'load' and 'unload', but whats actually there,
having 'load Infrastructure' and unload Infrastructure directly next to each other.
-Allow a doubleclick to pick up a specific team or ground unit, it would be so nice if it was consistent in this
Game:
-How about an automatic Space/Time bubble for NPRs fighting?
Whenever they need 5second increments, calculate 10, then advance the rest of the universe by a minute, repeat.
That way only one system needs 5 seconds and a player not involved in it will notice less.
-I would love to be able to have a more advanced race creation, with more breathable gases, and resistances for dangerous ones.
Why can't I make a race that breathes Water or Carbon Monoxide, or needs radiation to live?
Would give bombarding their planet an entirely new meaning^^
-An option to not automatically retire officers with a skill above 25%. I've lost some pretty good officers because at that time, I didn't have an assignment for them.
-Techs to filter radiation etc. Can't imagine no one would ever invent that. Or genetics and cybernectics for more efficient workers/crews.
Equipment:
Ship Capacitors:
Provide double the energy of a same size same tech generator, but only for 30 seconds.
Need to be charged like weapons outside of combat.
This would give players the choice to pack capacitors for short engagements, minimizing the chance of reactor explosion,
at the cost of no longterm staying power. Could also be installed in Fighters to give them a very small
powersource for a dozen shots that needs to be recharged at a carrier afterwards.
More miniaturization!
How about Battery Lasers, that are even smaller, and have yet higher reload, but can fire a limited number of shots relatively fast?
Like:
Battery Laser:
33% Size
2x Reload for 2 Shots, 50x Reload Noncombat
Or the other direction:
Pulse Laser, taking up more energy (per multiplier, so capacitors aren't too weak) for fire rate.
That would allow you to sacrifice range and space for drastically higher dps.
Defenses:
-Small Craft shields!
I'd really love a 25t shield to apply on beamfighters or gunboats, maybe less fuel efficient and weaker.
Shield Types, I'd love choices there;
Examples:
-Reflective Shields, sacrificing shield strength at 1/point per 20% reflection chance
-The possibility to shift shield strenght to recharge or the other way around when designing a shield.
Would give a HUGE bunch of tactical choices.
-Heavy Shield generators, spanning a bubbleshield that will protect the fleet.
-AntiEnergy shields, taking 20% less damage from beam weapons, but will let missiles pass.
-Armor Alloy coating, reducing armor strengh for specific effects. (effectively takes away a layer, same weight)
Examples:
Reactive: Fires an electric charge to prematurely detonate missiles, reduces missile damage on armor (dmg*0.9-1)
Requires 1 layer/5 armor layers
Hardened: Expensive, increases armor value/HS by 10%, incomming damage (dmg*1.1-1); This will decrease the effect of small calibers
requires 1 layer total, more efficient the more armor you apply.
Energetic: Increases Shield Strenght by 1 point for every outer armor plate, maximum +50% shield strenght.
Requires 1 layer total. Better on huge ships.
Living Armor: Will consume Fuel or Energy to shift armor over to damaged areas slowly and repair the lowest layer.
Combat Maneuvers, like:
Afterburner, +50% speed, firecontrols and sensors go offline. 5x fuel use, lasts only a few increments.
Overcharge, +50% damage, -50% reload for 2 shots, weapon recieves electronic damage and 1 shot cooldown (2x reload)
Also, +1to waresky.
Awesome game;
Regards
Post by: MoonDragon on March 13, 2010, 10:22:13 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
-An option to not automatically retire officers with a skill above 25%. I've lost some pretty good officers because at that time, I didn't have an assignment for them.
F4; select commander; in Additional Details, bottom row of checkboxes, check Do Not End Tour button.
Post by: Venec on March 13, 2010, 11:00:35 AM
Post by: wilddog5 on March 14, 2010, 03:56:42 AM
This is only a tentive sugestion as i suspect that this will require a greate deal of recodeing. :?: ( i have enough knowledge of programing to be dangerous but not enough to be very helpfull
))The second stage could be civlian ship movement / trade determination this would not only mabe speed things up but would alow you to add all those wonderfull extras that every one wants (and now have the extra processing to do)
Stage three+ whatever else you think would benifit form this
Please note that I am not sure if this would benifit people with more than 2 cores as I have heard that programing for 4+ cores is another (very difficult) kettle of fish and that some of the websites I looked up said that multithreading for VB is a bad thing
Thank you for reading
Post by: sloanjh on March 14, 2010, 11:10:22 AM
I just discovered the home world of an NPR. As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from both the F3 and F9 screens. Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had
The one subtlety here that I can think of is managing what happens if a population does change (e.g. it gets nuked by another NPR while you're away). In this case, I would log a "contact" (interrupt) event when a ship of the player's has moved back to a range where it should be picking the population up but is not seeing anything, e.g.:[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]
John
Post by: sloanjh on March 14, 2010, 11:15:10 AM
John
Post by: welchbloke on March 14, 2010, 11:37:21 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.
I just discovered the home world of an NPR. As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from both the F3 and F9 screens. Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had
[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]
John
Post by: Aldaris on March 14, 2010, 12:15:00 PM
Quote from: "welchbloke"
Seconded.Quote from: "sloanjh"Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.
I just discovered the home world of an NPR. As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from both the F3 and F9 screens. Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had
[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]
John
Post by: Shadow on March 14, 2010, 03:04:26 PM
Another, smaller suggestion I have in mind is referring to officers using "they" and "their" when applicable, given you need to be genderless due to the presence of female officers. That is, unless you can overhaul the system to use he/she and his/her properly, but I'm guessing that's quite more complicated.
That's all I can think of right now.
*This button seems redundant as it leads to the same place as the Diplomacy one does.
Post by: Beersatron on March 14, 2010, 03:58:42 PM
Quote from: "Aldaris"
Quote from: "welchbloke"Seconded.Quote from: "sloanjh"Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.
I just discovered the home world of an NPR. As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from both the F3 and F9 screens. Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had
[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]
John
Thirded
I asked for this before, pretty sure it is on Steve's to-do list and in the mean time he suggested that we click on the system body that has the population and then add a WP to it, 'add to last' I think? This way, the WP moves with the system body.
Post by: Shadow on March 14, 2010, 04:20:25 PM
I'm no physicist, but I did some calculations taking some information from the game. A 50-ton magazine with a 100% efficiency feed system can store 20 MSP, meaning a size-6 missile would have a mass of 15 tons. That's the size of my current ASM design, which happens to travel at 20000 km/s, which is about 6.6% the speed of light. Since I have both its mass and velocity, I can calculate its kinetic energy. The result is an astounding 717 megatons! And that's just for a solid rod of metal, completely ignoring the warhead!
If we paid full attention to that, we'd have to change a lot of things, so let's not get too realistic. However, I do believe the influence of speed on kinetic energy can't be denied, and that could be used in some fashion. Perhaps a missile could get +1 WH for every 5000 km/s, independently from the MSP spent on the warhead itself? That's just speculation: the numbers themselves should be thoroughly tested and balanced, but there you go.
Post by: sloanjh on March 14, 2010, 06:07:48 PM
Quote from: "Beersatron"
Quote from: "sloanjh"Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.Thirded
I asked for this before, pretty sure it is on Steve's to-do list and in the mean time he suggested that we click on the system body that has the population and then add a WP to it, 'add to last' I think? This way, the WP moves with the system body.
Oh....you want them to be contacts :-)
John
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 14, 2010, 06:35:28 PM
Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^
It's probably not workable gameplay wise?
Maybe make it a kind of Warhead, Kinetic Missile^^
*Idea!* Suggestion:
Non-Radiation missile, for when you just wanna get rid of those PDCs.
Post by: Shadow on March 14, 2010, 07:13:35 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^Imagine trying to catch constantly-speeding ships. Not my idea of fun.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 14, 2010, 07:55:27 PM
Would an EMP missile be possible, btw?
Like, a Microwave Laser head?
Post by: sloanjh on March 14, 2010, 11:13:45 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Ships stop when they run out of fuel because they use non-Newtonian drives - no drive field, no motion. (Go read the Starfire books for more on the concept.)Quote from: "Shadow"Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.Shadow, if that's done, it would result in late tech amms, which casually travel near lightspeed, to deal up to 60 damage without any warhead applied to it.
Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^
It's probably not workable gameplay wise?
They don't do kinetic energy damage for the same reason - when inertia goes out the window so does kinetic energy.
Ok, so I just made that technobabble up (at least the second bit - the first bit is canon), but the bottom line is that (as UnLimiTeD points out) this is a game-breaking suggestion, so I can't believe that Steve's going to go for it. And we've already been there for AMM - it used to be that a hit with a strength-0 missile would kill another missile. I don't remember the details of the problems it caused that resulted in it being taken out (I think it was making AMMs too powerful), but I don't think we're going back in that direction.
Quote
Maybe make it a kind of Warhead, Kinetic Missile^^We've already got a missile launcher that throws kinetic warheads - it's called a Mass Driver :-) If you want to know why, go google GFFP (Genocide For Fun and Profit). Basically, in Starfire, there was a powerful strategy where you'd simply exterminate every NPR race you met, steal their jewelry, and move into their houses. The reason this worked was that killing off the population didn't cause damage to the planet. One of Steve's goals in Aurora was to force players to live with the consequences of genocide, which is why TN weapons systems (other than ground forces) cause horrendous damage to the environment.
John
John
Post by: Shadow on March 14, 2010, 11:30:11 PM
However, how do non-missile, kinetic weapons (gauss cannons, railguns and mass drivers) work at all then, if they're only propelled when fired? With kinetic energy out of the picture, those projectiles would be utterly useless.
Post by: sloanjh on March 15, 2010, 12:38:25 AM
Quote from: "Shadow"
However, how do non-missile, kinetic weapons (gauss cannons, railguns and mass drivers) work at all then, if they're only propelled when fired? With kinetic energy out of the picture, those projectiles would be utterly useless.
Gauss Cannon and Railguns are newtonian weapons - the projectiles don't have an engine on board. Mass drivers ditto, although I was mostly being a wise-guy with that one
(but only mostly - the underlying idea holds).John
PS - If you want to discuss this further, can we take it to another thread (like in The Academy)? I hate to clutter up the official suggestions thread with a lot of (at this point) off-topic discussion - makes it harder for Steve to pull signal out of the noise....
Post by: waresky on March 15, 2010, 10:52:02 AM
Pls we must USE right Tread.
Post by: Father Tim on March 15, 2010, 11:12:11 AM
Quote from: "Shadow"
Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.
Missiles don't impact Aurora ships, they blow up near them. Thus, only the warhead does damage, regardless of the missile's speed.
Post by: waresky on March 15, 2010, 11:37:41 AM
SUBJECT: GROUND ARMY
OBJECT: MAKE ARMY WINDOWS SAME AS "NAVAL ORGANIZATIONS" WITH "+" AND "-" FOR EXPAND INFORMATION UNDER DIVISION ORGANIZATIONS.
AND A COSMETIC SUGGESTION: POSSIBLE HAVE A SITREP OF WHOLE ARMY? (NUMBER OF DIVISIONS,BRIGADES AND BATTALLIONS)
TY AND APOLOGIZE FOR CAPS.
Post by: Sotak246 on March 15, 2010, 12:28:51 PM
Post by: mberkers on March 15, 2010, 12:56:05 PM
Post by: rubberduck on March 15, 2010, 05:16:28 PM
Still, despite the lack of conversation partners, my researchers continued to communicate with the aliens for months, finally establishing contact, and having the other empire reveal its name. Without me having any contact at all with the other empire.
Now, I don't necessarily propose that the game should figure out when there can be communication efforts, and when there can't. All I'm interested in is a way to stop the Initiate Communication action, after it has been initialized.
Post by: Father Tim on March 16, 2010, 07:17:58 AM
Post by: MoonDragon on March 16, 2010, 10:25:45 AM
Post by: waresky on March 16, 2010, 11:36:29 AM
Quote from: "MoonDragon"
It would be very nice to see relevant commander bonuses somehow listed, highlighted, or expressed visually, in the F4 window, when assigning to a given ship that benefits from specific commander bonuses. Sort of like the individual ship display (F6) shows them at the top with the commander name.+1
Good suggestioning
Post by: waresky on March 16, 2010, 11:38:57 AM
Quote from: "Shadow"
Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.Damn good point Shadow...
I'm no physicist, but I did some calculations taking some information from the game. A 50-ton magazine with a 100% efficiency feed system can store 20 MSP, meaning a size-6 missile would have a mass of 15 tons. That's the size of my current ASM design, which happens to travel at 20000 km/s, which is about 6.6% the speed of light. Since I have both its mass and velocity, I can calculate its kinetic energy. The result is an astounding 717 megatons! And that's just for a solid rod of metal, completely ignoring the warhead!
If we paid full attention to that, we'd have to change a lot of things, so let's not get too realistic. However, I do believe the influence of speed on kinetic energy can't be denied, and that could be used in some fashion. Perhaps a missile could get +1 WH for every 5000 km/s, independently from the MSP spent on the warhead itself? That's just speculation: the numbers themselves should be thoroughly tested and balanced, but there you go.
ive DriveTech speed reach 80000km/s..so a single missile are a Doomsday Machine for every UN-shielded Ships:D
Post by: Shadow on March 16, 2010, 01:01:33 PM
For instance:
UPCOMING EVENTS
- August 2nd: Meson Focusing Technology 5 (Bobby Jones - EW35%)
- August 7th: Automated Mine (Earth)
- August 19th: 33rd Marine Company (Mars)
- August 23rd: BB Valiant 001 (Alpha Centauri A-II)
- August 23rd: BB Valiant 002 (Alpha Centauri A-II)
- August 23rd: BB Valiant 003 (Alpha Centauri A-II)
- August 25th: GE Stakhanov 002 orders completed (Sol)
Post by: Randy on March 16, 2010, 01:02:24 PM
1. Why do ground units lose 50% morale when assigned to a different HQ? I have a couple of officers with good training bonus (like 250) so I want them to train units in general, which then get moved off to a new division. Problem is, the unit that was trained to 116 morale goes to the new command and drops to 58 morale. Then after recovery time, it goes back to 100 and stops. All the extra training is gone. SO either don't lose the morale, or at least allow it to "recover" back to the pre-transfer value (eg in this case 116).
2. Establish a new set of threads here that only Steve can post in. Then in these threads, he can post each fix/change made as he goes for the next version. eg. there should be a 5.1 change thread showing each thing implemented (when done), and it would provide an excellent reference to find when such a change was made, as well as highlight the progress made in general.
Post by: Randy on March 16, 2010, 01:05:26 PM
The option to turn off automatic retirement while using auto assignment of officers. I put so much effort into getting them created, and then to lose so many without getting to use them... argh!
Post by: waresky on March 17, 2010, 11:01:14 AM
Quote from: "Randy"
And one more -+10
The option to turn off automatic retirement while using auto assignment of officers. I put so much effort into getting them created, and then to lose so many without getting to use them... argh!
Another good suggestions,hope Steve read this.Too many Good Commanders retired only for "End of Tour Of Duty".
Or get a "War Check" Buttons... :twisted: Nuk'em
Post by: ShadoCat on March 17, 2010, 07:01:11 PM
Quote from: "Shadow"
Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.
I'm no physicist, but I did some calculations taking some information from the game. A 50-ton magazine with a 100% efficiency feed system can store 20 MSP, meaning a size-6 missile would have a mass of 15 tons. That's the size of my current ASM design, which happens to travel at 20000 km/s, which is about 6.6% the speed of light. Since I have both its mass and velocity, I can calculate its kinetic energy. The result is an astounding 717 megatons! And that's just for a solid rod of metal, completely ignoring the warhead!
If we paid full attention to that, we'd have to change a lot of things, so let's not get too realistic. However, I do believe the influence of speed on kinetic energy can't be denied, and that could be used in some fashion. Perhaps a missile could get +1 WH for every 5000 km/s, independently from the MSP spent on the warhead itself? That's just speculation: the numbers themselves should be thoroughly tested and balanced, but there you go.
One problem: the to hit chances assume proximity hits.
It would be fun to see a direct hit version of missile. A direct hit with a missile will probably makes it's warhead worthless since the firing mechanism would get munched as it hit the armor at speed. Though you could replace warhead with payload mass. That might be needed since missiles are probably designed to be as light as possible.
Post by: Shadow on March 17, 2010, 10:43:11 PM
Post by: Randy on March 18, 2010, 09:46:03 AM
Might need to add another pop-over screen (like the stockpiles) to have room to show it - but as an added bonus this would allow a lot more text to be displayed.
Things to list:
- General description of the item
- Pop requirement
- output level (have this sensitive tot eh current research level related - eg. fighter construction rate)
- size for transport purposes
- any peculiarities of the facility.
This would let us have the notes that are scattered throughout this site in a handy location when playing the game - and not require an internet connection to look anything up...
Post by: Shadow on March 18, 2010, 10:22:23 AM
Quote from: "Randy"
It would be real nice to have descriptions of the various facilities (and other constructable items) displayed when you select them - similar to the way a description is shown for tech before you assign it to a research project.I second this suggestion.
Might need to add another pop-over screen (like the stockpiles) to have room to show it - but as an added bonus this would allow a lot more text to be displayed.
Things to list:
- General description of the item
- Pop requirement
- output level (have this sensitive tot eh current research level related - eg. fighter construction rate)
- size for transport purposes
- any peculiarities of the facility.
This would let us have the notes that are scattered throughout this site in a handy location when playing the game - and not require an internet connection to look anything up...
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 18, 2010, 12:20:13 PM
Quote from: "tanq_tonic"
I would enjoy a third option in the population source/destination. I have found sometimes you just want a "neutral" stance to allow for natural growth (i.e. neither source nor destination).While this suggestion would make civ colonization much easier to manipulate, I want to maintain the idea that the civs colonize on their terms rather than doing exactly what the government tells them. If you could set source, dest and neither, you could decide exactly which colonies would have population added and from which colonies that population came. The civ ships would be no different than your own colony ships, except you wouldn't have to pay for them. In fact, with this amount of flexibility, there really wouldn't be any point building your own colony ships. At the moment, you have to use your own ships when you and the civs have different ideas about which colony is the most important.
Example:
remote system, has two populations, one well above 25 million (A) and one right at 25 million (B). You want to start "seeding" another system one jump away. In my circumstance I want the commercial sector to go gangbusters transferring from A to the new colony. Right now I have to set B as either "source" or "destination".
If set as "source" the commercial ships drain the pop., then B gets set to destination when it falls below 25 million. In this case, the commercial movers go ape moving population from the previous system to B, or from A to B. The growth of the new colony is then minimized.
If set as destination, then the outer colony will not be seeded, since traffic will either run A->B, or previous system -> B.
In some cases, even when a colony is well past the 25 million mark, I would just like to see holostic growth of the population there.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 18, 2010, 12:23:21 PM
Quote from: "Randy"
Establish a new set of threads here that only Steve can post in. Then in these threads, he can post each fix/change made as he goes for the next version. eg. there should be a 5.1 change thread showing each thing implemented (when done), and it would provide an excellent reference to find when such a change was made, as well as highlight the progress made in general.A very good idea. Erik, if you are reading, could there be a release notes forum (which is read-only except for this account and SteveAlt) in which I could create a thread for each release and post changes as I make them?
Steve
Post by: Erik L on March 18, 2010, 01:21:13 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Randy"Establish a new set of threads here that only Steve can post in. Then in these threads, he can post each fix/change made as he goes for the next version. eg. there should be a 5.1 change thread showing each thing implemented (when done), and it would provide an excellent reference to find when such a change was made, as well as highlight the progress made in general.A very good idea. Erik, if you are reading, could there be a release notes forum (which is read-only except for this account and SteveAlt) in which I could create a thread for each release and post changes as I make them?
Steve
There is now a sub-forum under Installation called Release Notes. If I got it right, only Steve can post there (and myself).
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 18, 2010, 04:33:31 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
There is now a sub-forum under Installation called Release Notes. If I got it right, only Steve can post there (and myself).Thanks! Now I just need to remember to use it
Steve
Post by: Sainthe on March 19, 2010, 12:03:38 AM
I can't remember how many times I've accidentally removed too many Mass Drivers... just one errant click on Cycle Orders or anything else and its wammo-blammo instant death for the poor unsuspecting planet below.
Post by: waresky on March 19, 2010, 06:54:22 AM
Quote from: "Sainthe"
Add option to LOCK a certain number of Mass Drivers occupying a planet, disallowing cargo ships from removing any amount of Mass Drivers which would reduce them below this amount.Ive lost 200+ millions people on Earth one time.Packet from 5 different direction blast into surface..our Civie Administrators flee on Unknow space before was shooting at wall:D
I can't remember how many times I've accidentally removed too many Mass Drivers... just one errant click on Cycle Orders or anything else and its wammo-blammo instant death for the poor unsuspecting planet below.
Post by: Vanigo on March 19, 2010, 07:46:47 AM
Post by: IanD on March 19, 2010, 08:41:09 AM
Regards
Post by: Elvin on March 19, 2010, 08:38:51 PM
While it wouldn't be optimal in all cases ( energy weapons especially) it would most certainly be useful in 90% of cases.
But this is still an awesome game. Very well done
Post by: Shadow on March 19, 2010, 08:48:38 PM
Quote from: "Elvin"
This might just be me being lazy, but I'd really like a button that would add all current component designs back into the research list, with the most up to date techs possible. This saves hours of fiddling with every type of engine each time you get that extra 10% efficiency, or having to re-design every one of your missile launchers from scratch for the shortened reload times.
While it wouldn't be optimal in all cases ( energy weapons especially) it would most certainly be useful in 90% of cases.
But this is still an awesome game. Very well done :shock:
Post by: sloanjh on March 19, 2010, 09:13:16 PM
Quote from: "Vanigo"
I think the geological survey completion thing needs an overhaul. As it stands, a marginally competent geology team is likely to declare that they can't find any more minerals pretty quickly, which makes sense, but once they've done so, an expert geology team will never be able to find any more minerals either. Sending a good team to begin with will result in more total minerals found. This means that either the good team is magically summoning minerals out of nowhere, or the lousy team is hunting down and destroying mineral deposits. I think we can all agree that either of these is insane, even if, from a coding and game-mechanical perspective, magically summoning minerals comes pretty close to the truth. I think that, instead of a simple binary fully surveyed/not fully surveyed flag, system bodies should have a number indicating how thoroughly explored they are. As a geology team works, this number increases, and if the exploration thoroughness is equal to or greater than the geology team's skill, that team can't find any more minerals. However, if a more skilled team comes by later, they can search some more and perhaps find some minerals the first team missed.
Seconded on the need for a tweak to the "completed" algorithm - this has been bugging me as well. As it stands, I'm having geo-survey teams do weird things to get their training levels up (like training them on Luna instead of Earth, for fear that they'll exhaust the minerals on Earth).
Since there's a floor to the exhaustion probability, one possibility would be to have a secret roll for teams that aren't experienced enough to be at the floor that determines whether the event is "minerals are really exhausted" or "team isn't clever enough to find any more". For example, if the floor is 10%, but the team is so poor that it's got a 30% probability of exhaustion, then there would be a 33% (10%/30%) chance of "really gone" and a 66% chance of "mostly gone" errr I mean "this team can't find any more" (sorry - I got mixed up there with the difference between "really dead" and "mostly dead"). In any event, rather than "survey completed" on the system summary tab, you'd see the skill level of the best team to get a "can't find any more" message. Any team with an equal or lower skill level would be unable to find anything ever again. The part I haven't worked out is how to penalize a team that's only 5 points (or even 1 point) better than the previous exhaustion level - maybe require at least a 20 point increase before there's a new chance of finding anything.
John
Post by: sloanjh on March 19, 2010, 09:16:17 PM
Quote from: "IanD"
Can I have an unload ordnance order on the F12 screen please. Makes it much easier for colliers to transfer missile stocks without undue attention and much easier to replace a ships missile load with an updated model. Or is there one and I just can't see it?
Seconded. I think "load ordnance from planet" will empty the magazines of old missiles before reloading, but without the "unload" order I can't give a collier an order sequence to transfer missiles between planets.
I'd also like to re-mention the "multiple standard loads" suggestion here - allow multiple load-outs for classes, so that a ship can configure its load-out to its mission.
john
Post by: waresky on March 20, 2010, 08:13:15 AM
Needed: a more flexible Army designation and management under certain circumstances
Suggestion: Change whole Army section and make same as TASK GROUP windows management like type,for more flexible,put-in,regroup,redesignation target,and more easy to find where a single Division and reassign Battalion.
edit: am sure are a awesome thoughest work..but in a growth empire are a benefit more and more than we have now.
Am found very boring actually Amry assign system and management.Army NEED urgent a overhauling in presentation,management and cosmetic,.
More appeal than now,because soem time am left Army management only because r too boring and too waste time..srry
Post by: Shadow on March 20, 2010, 08:56:36 AM
Post by: sloanjh on March 20, 2010, 10:41:42 AM
It's really easy right now to accidentally launch a ridiculous refit (e.g. a Carrier into a FAC). More subtle is the fact that a lot of times a refit will be a significant fraction (e.g. 75-80%) of the cost of building a new ship. In such cases, I'll often want to keep the old ships around and simply build new, since the incremental increase in capability of the new ship isn't worth the expense. That's why I suggested the threshold at something (50%) which might initially seem rather low.
John
PS - This have gotten 3-4 seconds so far in the The Academy thread where it came up.
Post by: sloanjh on March 20, 2010, 10:50:53 AM
Right now my civies have 56 ships, each of which is all alone in its own TG. This would be ok (and/or even good, since it shows lots of civies buzzing around), except that I suspect it's hitting performance, and I know that it's cluttering up the map and contact lists (yes I know about the "no civies" filter, but that's pretty heavy-handed plus it doesn't keep them from showing up in the right-click "ships" menu). If the civies merged their TG when appropriate, then this would reduce the clutter.
An alternative would be to do something like is done with escorts not being drawn seperately - have the ability to display the number of civie TG at a particular location, rather than the individual TG. In other words, if there were 11 civie ships at Earth, then in this mode there would only be 1 line for them in the stack of TG shown on the map, e.g. "11 Civilian TG with 11 Ships", or one entry each for cargo ships, colony ships, or luxury liners.
John
Post by: sloanjh on March 20, 2010, 11:06:21 AM
At present I've got a lot of TG running around doing training, and the only information I'm getting is that the even happened in Sol.
John
Post by: Aldaris on March 20, 2010, 01:26:52 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Have the "Refueling could not be completed" event message which comes when a tanker goes below 10% fuel tell you which tanker/TG it happened to.
At present I've got a lot of TG running around doing training, and the only information I'm getting is that the even happened in Sol.
John
You can double-click on the event (Even in system view) and the game will zoom to the relevant TG. Even so, this is a feature I'd like too.
Post by: S.K. Ren on March 20, 2010, 07:36:21 PM
Link to Thread (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2306)
Post by: Sainthe on March 20, 2010, 08:39:12 PM
Please remove the following rule:
"Military engines are unable to traverse a wormhole created by a commercial jump engine."
I didn't see this rule anywhere except AFTER I had problems; meaning that the description for jump engines does not include this feature. I'll just make believe and it'll be alright though.
Post by: Sainthe on March 20, 2010, 11:45:01 PM
Post by: The Shadow on March 21, 2010, 12:44:56 AM
This is a great way to get races that breathe different atmospheres in your empire.
Post by: The Shadow on March 21, 2010, 01:31:57 AM
There are all sorts of engineering projects a starfaring race can do to adjust the temperature and other characteristics of a world, besides messing around with atmospheric composition. Like, it's been discussed to build a gigantic sunscreen to cool Venus down. Or building orbital mirrors to melt Mars' ice caps.
Likewise, bombarding a barren planet with comets to introduce water.
What this would look like in the game, I don't know. Perhaps just give extra options in the terraforming screen.
Adjusting the temperature by geoengineering would be much faster than atmospheric terraforming, but there would be a catch... Your geoengineering project could be destroyed by enemy ships.
There could also be catastrophic events that would cause losses of population or sudden temperature shifts.EDIT: Geoengineering as a weapon is also scary - imagine aliens setting up a sunshade over Earth to G'voontform it to a comfortable -150 degrees!
Post by: Shadow on March 21, 2010, 12:29:11 PM
Being able to change a medal's image would come in handy as well. You can quickly change the look of whole planets, so why not tiny medals too?
Post by: Venec on March 21, 2010, 03:49:52 PM
Post by: Beersatron on March 21, 2010, 07:32:06 PM
[spoiler:3o0yrlg1]Independent Tramp Freighter/Miner/Fuel Harvestor
- This would be a low-tech, slow, light armor, 1 Cargo Hold/Asteroid Miner/Fuel Harvestor ship ran by a Clan or Family.
- They would spawn in system with a large population and a certain number of CMCs, asteroids or gas giants with Sorium.
- Their goal would be to transport trade goods or mine minerals and then sell them to a CMC or Colony, or produce fuel and sell it to a Colony or Shipping Line.
Smuggler/Pirate
- This would be a low-tech, fast, lightly armed (Meson?), FAC/Boarding Craft.
- They would spawn in system with a large population and lots of civilian activity.
- Their goal would be to trade in explicit/banned goods. Or, to chase down, disable and then board the Independent Tramps. They could then sell the Tramps on the blackmarket (this would mean you need to setup blackmarket logic
) or use them to "expand their base".- Their base could be 5 maintenance facilities on an asteroid to take care of their craft plus maybe some rudimentary defences - but nothing glaringly EM or TH since they are meant to be hiding. The smugglers could provide the fuel/minerals for upkeep.[/spoiler:3o0yrlg1]
Thoughts? Put them in spolier tags.
Post by: sloanjh on March 22, 2010, 12:02:54 AM
This is the number that makes NPR economies bigger. It seems like most of the effect that it's having is to induce new players to run at a high level, thereby breaking the NPR AI due to resource crashes. I think the only practical alternative is to give NPR an infinite amount of home world minerals (but keep the accessibilities between 0.1 and 1.0) - that way you'll get a lot fewer resource crashes.
If you want to have a difficulty dial to turn, I would instead use the "years since start of game for determining NPR tech level" as the dial. If the player input +10 years, then the NPR would tend to be 10 years ahead in TL of the ones that would normally be encountered; -10 would give NPR that are 10 years behind (appropriate for a conventional start).
John
Post by: waresky on March 22, 2010, 12:48:16 AM
But am point an "my personel" trouble and lead to boring situation: Army management.
Without a good Army management screen,more easy to link togheter,join them at new brigade and divisions,setup,and in general a macro VIEW of them around,same as Task group,am fear,because Army are absolutely NECESSARY,who those situation lead to boring whole game.
Many there arent build a VERY BIG Stellar empire,am mean more than 100worlds..and NONE know what a HELL are a Army management in those situations.
Steve take a breath..but Army NEED a hurry re-planning windows.
srry but its true.and 1st in Aurora planning concept.Ty again
Post by: Shadow on March 22, 2010, 12:52:46 PM
Please add a way to transfer troops out of combat modules (back to regular transport bays) without dropping them on a planet.
Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.
Post by: ndkid on March 22, 2010, 02:58:51 PM
Post by: Hawkeye on March 22, 2010, 03:41:20 PM
Quote from: "Shadow"
Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.
You might try this:
Launch the empty dropships and put each in íts own TG.
Set each of those TGs to load one of the companies. This used to work, but I haven´t done this since 4.8, or was it 4.9?
Yes, it´s a bit of a hassel, but the only way around it, AFAIK
Post by: Shadow on March 22, 2010, 04:12:51 PM
Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to have a colony not receive nor send colonists. Presently, colonies can only be a source or destination of colonists, but there should be a way to just stop colonization efforts related to that particular planet. Sometimes I'd want my main colonist source (Earth) to be used by civilian companies solely to ship people to the newest colony, as opposed to colonists being sent everywhere. At the same time, I wouldn't want my smaller colonies to become a source, since that'd deplete their population faster than it can grow.
A related flaw of the current system is that populations can't be deemed sources if under 25 million, which means planetary evacuation is impossible.
Finally, also related, the current system has civilian companies blindly shuttling people to planetary battlefields, the 'colonies' you have to employ to unload combat troops. This has also recently stranded two civilian vessels there, given there was only a one-way jumpgate to reach the hostile system, and now they're stuck on this side.
Post by: Hawkeye on March 22, 2010, 04:41:23 PM
Quote from: "Shadow"
I see.
Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to have a colony not receive nor send colonists. Presently, colonies can only be a source or destination of colonists, but there should be a way to just stop colonization efforts related to that particular planet. Sometimes I'd want my main colonist source (Earth) to be used by civilian companies solely to ship people to the newest colony, as opposed to colonists being sent everywhere. At the same time, I wouldn't want my smaller colonies to become a source, since that'd deplete their population faster than it can grow.
That´s intentional. If you got total control over the shipping lines, they´d just be _your_ ships, only for free.
Quote from: "Shadow"
A related flaw of the current system is that populations can't be deemed sources if under 25 million, which means planetary evacuation is impossible.
Again intentional, I presume. If you want to evacuate a colony (perhaps due to an impending alien attack) you better own a couple of colony transports of your own instead of asking a company to risk it´s spaceships on your behalf.
Quote from: "Shadow"
Finally, also related, the current system has civilian companies blindly shuttling people to planetary battlefields, the 'colonies' you have to employ to unload combat troops. This has also recently stranded two civilian vessels there, given there was only a one-way jumpgate to reach the hostile system, and now they're stuck on this side.
Ok, this looks like a problem :)
The one way jumpgate thing sounds like a bug to me. Civillians should allways check, if there is a way back home, before entering a new system (probably relying on the military for probing new systems).
Post by: praguepride on March 22, 2010, 06:45:36 PM
1) Unique racial bonuses (similar to MOO or Space Empires). Populations of races are already track. Simple implementation would be to provide planetary bonuses only, advanced implementation would allow ship crew populations to be tracked to provide bonuses to ship systems (think star trek) and ultimate implementation would allow different leaders of different races to provide different kinds of bonuses, as well as bizarre bonuses like "doesn't need food" or whatever (think the silicone lifeforms from MOO that consume metals instead of food).
2) Procedually generated leader backstories. Based on their traits & rank, would fill in their history with fluff stuff. Childhood, what kind of education they had, for officers it would "back-date" when they were promoted through the ranks.
3) Morale for ship combat - low morale ships might break and flee combat, high morale ships might start ignoring orders, charging into combat. Simple would just have it happen within the battle itself, advanced implementation might have the ships deviate dramatically, possibly even jumping to get back to the nearest friendly ship (or to attack the nearest hostile ship). Complex implementatoin might have the ship go rogue if extreme morale happens and become AI controlled (not NPR, would wander around like a pirate seizing goods!)
4)Expand Leader Skills - more skills are always more welcome. Situational bonuses like +10% offense or +10% defence, Ambush (+% damage when enemy isn't/can't target back), Longshot (+% to hit at >1/2 range), Weapon Specialties (+% to beam weapons). Those could be even further subdivided, so a defensive expert might have bonuses to armor resistence or shield resistence or shield regeneration.
5) Heart of Iron III style "waterfall" bonuses. Basically for ground units, you set up traditional tiers (Brigade -> Division -> Corps -> Army). Basically an Army commander would have X Corps under him, which each have Y Divisions which each have Z brigades. This would be a formal organization that the player would set up. The bonuses of the higher ranks filter down at a highly reduced rate, so while a Division adds 100% of his bonus to the troop he directly commands, maybe only 50% of that bonus filters down to the Brigades under his command. (arbitrary numbers, tweaking would be necessary)
Post by: Erik L on March 22, 2010, 09:14:30 PM
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:25:04 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Have Aurora launch an "are you sure" dialogue when launching a refit task if the cost of the task is above some threshold (like 50%) of new construction.Added for v5.1
It's really easy right now to accidentally launch a ridiculous refit (e.g. a Carrier into a FAC). More subtle is the fact that a lot of times a refit will be a significant fraction (e.g. 75-80%) of the cost of building a new ship. In such cases, I'll often want to keep the old ships around and simply build new, since the incremental increase in capability of the new ship isn't worth the expense. That's why I suggested the threshold at something (50%) which might initially seem rather low.
John
PS - This have gotten 3-4 seconds so far in the The Academy thread where it came up.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:28:29 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Max rank for ships, similar to the minimum rank. And with this a check when an officer is promoted if he becomes "too senior" for his slot.There is a max rank at the moment for auto-assignment. It's two levels above the min rank. There is no immediate check for officers that get promoted, although they will be reassigned during the round of assignments at the end of the current tour.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:32:20 AM
Quote from: "Sainthe"
What. a. headache.I can't remove the rule because it would allow you to create a large cheap commercial jump engine to escort huge military ships. As commercial ships are usually much larger than military ones, there is a corresponding commercial jump drive with different restrictions to the military one. I have added the rule you quoted to the description of jump drive efficiency tech.
Please remove the following rule:
"Military engines are unable to traverse a wormhole created by a commercial jump engine."
I didn't see this rule anywhere except AFTER I had problems; meaning that the description for jump engines does not include this feature. I'll just make believe and it'll be alright though.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:36:50 AM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Take the "Difficulty level" number out of the set-up screen.I have removed some of the effects of the difficulty modifier for v5.1 but I agree that it is causing some unforeseen issues. I can't give the NPRs infinite home world minerals in case the player captures the homeworld
This is the number that makes NPR economies bigger. It seems like most of the effect that it's having is to induce new players to run at a high level, thereby breaking the NPR AI due to resource crashes. I think the only practical alternative is to give NPR an infinite amount of home world minerals (but keep the accessibilities between 0.1 and 1.0) - that way you'll get a lot fewer resource crashes.
If you want to have a difficulty dial to turn, I would instead use the "years since start of game for determining NPR tech level" as the dial. If the player input +10 years, then the NPR would tend to be 10 years ahead in TL of the ones that would normally be encountered; -10 would give NPR that are 10 years behind (appropriate for a conventional start).
. I could remove mineral requirements for certain tasks, such as construction, although that would give NPRs a major advantage. I like the added years idea as an alternative though. I will give that some thought.Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:39:18 AM
Quote from: "Hawkeye"
If you load the HQ and click the "Load Entire Formation" checkbox, the whole brigade or division will be loaded concurrently, not consecutively. Another reason why unit integrity is important.Quote from: "Shadow"Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.
You might try this:
Launch the empty dropships and put each in íts own TG.
Set each of those TGs to load one of the companies. This used to work, but I haven´t done this since 4.8, or was it 4.9?
Yes, it´s a bit of a hassel, but the only way around it, AFAIK
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 23, 2010, 01:42:12 AM
Quote from: "praguepride"
5) Heart of Iron III style "waterfall" bonuses. Basically for ground units, you set up traditional tiers (Brigade -> Division -> Corps -> Army). Basically an Army commander would have X Corps under him, which each have Y Divisions which each have Z brigades. This would be a formal organization that the player would set up. The bonuses of the higher ranks filter down at a highly reduced rate, so while a Division adds 100% of his bonus to the troop he directly commands, maybe only 50% of that bonus filters down to the Brigades under his command. (arbitrary numbers, tweaking would be necessary)This is already in the game, along with the waterfall bonuses. You can build Brigade HQs and Division HQs. Battalions link to brigades and brigades link to divisions.
Steve
Post by: IanD on March 23, 2010, 06:06:14 AM
Regards
Post by: sloanjh on March 23, 2010, 08:37:35 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
If you load the HQ and click the "Load Entire Formation" checkbox, the whole brigade or division will be loaded concurrently, not consecutively. Another reason why unit integrity is important.
Does this mean you'll be putting company-sized Marine Battalion HQ units in soon?
Another suggestion: Don't count replacement battalions when calculating the 4-unit limit for brigades/divisions. This would allow me to attach replacements to higher echelons for TOE purposes without taking up a combat-unit slot. Since replacements don't fight and have irrelevant morale, there's no harm done.
John
PS - It would be nice if Battalion HQ had Brigade HQ as their parent unit - then I could make a Marine Brigade out of 16 line companies, 4 Battalion HQ companies, and 1 Brigade HQ.
Post by: Shadow on March 23, 2010, 08:46:01 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
I meant that mainly in relation to marine companies, which operate in smaller numbers than normal brigades. There's no Marine Battalion HQ (it'd be company-sized, ideally), which would come in handy during boarding operations centered around fast dropships (fighter-sized, 20000+ km/s), given quick loading into combat pods and HQ-related bonuses.Quote from: "Hawkeye"If you load the HQ and click the "Load Entire Formation" checkbox, the whole brigade or division will be loaded concurrently, not consecutively. Another reason why unit integrity is important.Quote from: "Shadow"Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.
You might try this:
Launch the empty dropships and put each in íts own TG.
Set each of those TGs to load one of the companies. This used to work, but I haven´t done this since 4.8, or was it 4.9?
Yes, it´s a bit of a hassel, but the only way around it, AFAIK
Steve
EDIT: Damn, beaten to it by sloanjh!
Post by: Decimator on March 23, 2010, 09:44:05 AM
It would be nice to be able to set up civilian research contracts, which would work in a similar manner to civilian shipping contracts.
Civilian companies could also do some research on their own in pursuit of their interests(mining tech, drive efficiency and power modification tech, stuff like that).
Post by: Shadow on March 23, 2010, 11:59:58 AM
*Of course, salvagers would be able to tell if the component was installed on the ship or simply stored in the cargo hold.
Post by: waresky on March 23, 2010, 02:16:40 PM
Steve,are an hard work put an program who help us in "SitRep" for ORE stockpile situation around our colonies?
When u have dozens of worlds and u finish'em a Gallicite up one..are a very damned work check others,every single,colony for redeploy resources.Send a Freighter,load and relocate'em..(grrr)
Hope u have understand what am mean
Post by: Shadow on March 23, 2010, 04:25:45 PM
Add some way to determine the age of a particular wreck, be it through salvage or sensors.
Post by: praguepride on March 23, 2010, 06:33:52 PM
Also, be able to perma-save planets to specific graphics. At the very least for the Sol system as I'm tired of having to re-set all the planetary images every single new game...
Post by: Vanigo on March 23, 2010, 08:21:34 PM
Post by: Erik L on March 23, 2010, 08:31:07 PM
Post by: sloanjh on March 23, 2010, 09:42:42 PM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Option to turn off the auto-class name when designing classes. I don't like using up "good" names for harvesters, cargo/colony ships, etc. Maybe a check box on the F5 screen. If checked, and new is clicked, no auto-name.Seconded. I pretty much always use "copy" from an old class because of this (which means that I actually don't end up using auto-naming of classes).
Another thing that would be cool (if it doesn't already happen) is to do auto-theme for classes, rather than auto-name. My recollection (from SA) is that the theme for an auto-named class is "classes starting with the letter X" where X is the first letter of the auto-name. It would be nice if the theme were randomly selected, then the auto-name selected from the theme. (BTW, I wouldn't want to knock a theme out of the list just because it wasn't right for a particular class.)
John
Post by: sloanjh on March 23, 2010, 09:45:07 PM
Quote from: "Vanigo"
Add an option to have ships use hyperdrives whenever possible. It should probably be a toggle set on a TG-by-TG basis, since you don't want to accidentally activate your military ships' hyperdrives when they stray across the hyper limit in the middle of a battle.
Seconded. I spend a lot of time micromanaging my hyper-capable geo-survey ships when they cross the hyper-boundary to turn the engines on/off. This is something the navigator could do. It would be even nicer if the selection criteria for the "next N things to survey) were based on travel time, so that hyper-capable ships would prefer going to survey targets outside the hyper limit. If even the first suggestion were put in place, I might build hyper-capable grav survey ships - at present they're too much micro-management to bother with.
John
Post by: Erik L on March 23, 2010, 10:49:17 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"Option to turn off the auto-class name when designing classes. I don't like using up "good" names for harvesters, cargo/colony ships, etc. Maybe a check box on the F5 screen. If checked, and new is clicked, no auto-name.Seconded. I pretty much always use "copy" from an old class because of this (which means that I actually don't end up using auto-naming of classes).
Another thing that would be cool (if it doesn't already happen) is to do auto-theme for classes, rather than auto-name. My recollection (from SA) is that the theme for an auto-named class is "classes starting with the letter X" where X is the first letter of the auto-name. It would be nice if the theme were randomly selected, then the auto-name selected from the theme. (BTW, I wouldn't want to knock a theme out of the list just because it wasn't right for a particular class.)
John
I actually meant the class theme, not the individual ship names.
Post by: georgiaboy1966 on March 24, 2010, 09:49:27 AM
Ability on the population list to have the colonies/world pops listed by species. So that you can easily move between colonies of a specific peoples, without having to choose a colony, then look on the summary to see which population it is.
If you have more than 1 population on a world, then it can get hard to find the specific colonies you are looking for.
Post by: waresky on March 24, 2010, 12:10:25 PM
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Third!--->Quote from: "Erik Luken"Option to turn off the auto-class name when designing classes. I don't like using up "good" names for harvesters, cargo/colony ships, etc. Maybe a check box on the F5 screen. If checked, and new is clicked, no auto-name.Seconded. I pretty much always use "copy" from an old class because of this (which means that I actually don't end up using auto-naming of classes).
Another thing that would be cool (if it doesn't already happen) is to do auto-theme for classes, rather than auto-name. My recollection (from SA) is that the theme for an auto-named class is "classes starting with the letter X" where X is the first letter of the auto-name. It would be nice if the theme were randomly selected, then the auto-name selected from the theme. (BTW, I wouldn't want to knock a theme out of the list just because it wasn't right for a particular class.)
John
Post by: EarthquakeDamage on March 24, 2010, 12:49:08 PM
1. Ground unit organization is cumbersome. While it's better than 5.00 (or was that 4.9x I first tried?), since the "select an HQ unit" dropbox no longer resets immediately after assigning a unit to one, it still needs help. It'd be nice if we could select multiple units and attempt to assign them to an HQ (or transfer them to a pop/PDC or whatever) all at once. It'd also be nice if full HQ units (i.e. those which already have 4 units assigned to them) were either visibly flagged (an asterisk, maybe?) or removed from the dropbox.
2. As an alternative to the above, or more likely in addition to it, perhaps an "automatic organization" button is in order. It could place as many unassigned units as possible under non-full HQs. Ideally, it would only make homogeneous divisions (e.g. marine-only or garrison-only).
3. We need some way to add multiple slipways at once, whether it be an "add X slipways" order or a shipyard order queue. I find it tedious to babysit a brand new shipyard (thus 1 slipway) on its way to, say, 10 slipways for FAC production.
4. I like elite crewmen a bit too much. I've set my racial training level to 125 for two reasons: it gives a crew grade bonus slightly in excess of 100% and it yields a nice round 8 crew per academy per year compared to level 121. To compensate, I've built way too many academies, 1250 to be precise (obscene amounts of minerals in the process), thus getting as many crew per year as someone with base level training and 10 academies. The problem: Too many officers. I now have several thousand officers (far too many to spend several real days retiring individually), which bogs the game down horribly (minutes per time increment instead than seconds), most of whom are superfluous. There should be a way to reduce officer bloat (and no, Replace All is ineffective when I get some 6000 officers per year). A "maximum officer count" setting (preferably on a per type basis, so we can say "allow only 100 scientists but up to 1000 naval officers" or whatever) would help, as would a "retire 50% of unassigned officers" button. Those are the first ideas that came to mind.
To summarize that last one: If you invest a lot of time and resources into academies because you want awesome crewmen, you will get redacted by useless bums (read: officers) who mostly do nothing but slow the game horribly. We need some means of controlling the officer bloat while reaping the benefit of our investment in crew training.
Post by: Erik L on March 24, 2010, 03:53:06 PM
Post by: Erik L on March 24, 2010, 03:54:09 PM
Post by: praguepride on March 24, 2010, 04:10:31 PM
Steve[/quote]
Again, me just spitballing
1) Make Difficulty % impact the amount of starting resources for an NPR. So at 100%, starting NPR's get x2 as many resources as the player.
2) "Cheat" - have the NPR's start with a few asteroid miners or freighters/mass drivers/automated mines to haul off and establish an early resource base
3) Alter AI behavior - have the early AI focus purely on resource development.
Post by: Journier on March 25, 2010, 05:37:49 PM
The ability to have a larger drop down box for ship lists in f5 ship screen.
picture for reference.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5151869/shiplist%20dropdown.png)
If you could double the length that would allow me to quickly change my ship selections when i have many.... instead of searching through them etc.
My naming conventions help greatly but it still once i have more than 8 ship designs its not so great.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 25, 2010, 07:53:30 PM
How about the possibility to also a small icon to fleets and ship types on creation?
@praguepride:
The reason for commercial engines is that they allow to put reasonably cheap engines on extremely heavy freighters, which just happen to drastically reduce micromanagement by costing less fuel.
On Military ships, weight is more important, as it all needs to be maintained.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 26, 2010, 12:02:24 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Option to turn off the auto-class name when designing classes. I don't like using up "good" names for harvesters, cargo/colony ships, etc. Maybe a check box on the F5 screen. If checked, and new is clicked, no auto-name.Added for v5.1
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 26, 2010, 12:04:04 AM
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Have the naval organization table update when I add ships to TGs listed in the org chart.You can't list TGs in the org chart. it just consists of org branches and ships. What might be possible is to set an org chart branch at construction time in the same way as a destination TG.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 26, 2010, 12:06:19 AM
Quote from: "Journier"
This would be a huge help for me , and I am sure people would also like this...Unfortunately the length of the dropdown is due to Microsoft, not me. Its a standard MS dropdown control. The alternative is to redesign the class window to be more like the Ship and Population windows, with a list of classes down the left hand edge of the window.
The ability to have a larger drop down box for ship lists in f5 ship screen.
picture for reference.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5151869/shiplist%20dropdown.png)
If you could double the length that would allow me to quickly change my ship selections when i have many.... instead of searching through them etc.
My naming conventions help greatly but it still once i have more than 8 ship designs its not so great.
Steve
Post by: Steve Walmsley on March 26, 2010, 12:10:42 AM
Quote from: "georgiaboy1966"
A suggestion for multi-species empires.I have already added the species name to the colony name for v5.1 due to the addition of genetics
Ability on the population list to have the colonies/world pops listed by species. So that you can easily move between colonies of a specific peoples, without having to choose a colony, then look on the summary to see which population it is.
If you have more than 1 population on a world, then it can get hard to find the specific colonies you are looking for.
[attachment=0:2ip1f7hu]species.GIF[/attachment:2ip1f7hu]
Steve
Post by: The Shadow on March 29, 2010, 12:37:06 AM
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 29, 2010, 05:47:27 AM
Post by: waresky on March 29, 2010, 11:08:04 AM
Quote from: "The Shadow"
As mentioned on the bugs thread, allocate random system numbers for starting NPR's so they aren't necessarily "nearby".Absolutely SECOND and THIRDEd and Fourthed:DD..
Or a low random possibility..OR a "Good Nearborough Alien"..not so Evil.
Post by: waresky on March 29, 2010, 11:08:52 AM
Quote from: "EarthquakeDamage"
[spoiler:qiwnxh3g]I can't find any screen that lists damaged ships. That would be helpful should we overlook one (particularly likely with large fleets).[/spoiler:qiwnxh3g] Derp. Also, this forum lacks a strikeout feature (i.e.Second!text).
It'd also be helpful if we could automate damage control (similar to the auto-fire checkbox). Additionally, some way to apply the setting to an entire TG would be useful. Ditto for auto-fire, since as far as I can tell we have to set auto-fire for each individual ship (annoying for carrier-heavy fleets with lots of fighters/FACs).
Post by: The Shadow on March 29, 2010, 03:09:40 PM
Quote from: "waresky"
Quote from: "The Shadow"As mentioned on the bugs thread, allocate random system numbers for starting NPR's so they aren't necessarily "nearby".Absolutely SECOND and THIRDEd and Fourthed:DD..
Or a low random possibility..OR a "Good Nearborough Alien"..not so Evil.
I thought of a way to fake it for now - just set the "local" chance to 0% and the local neighborhood to the number of starting NPR's. That'll guarantee there won't be an NPR one jump from Sol, and make it unlikely they'll be within two or three.
The downside is that you lose the clustering behavior. So you could make the local neighborhood a lot bigger; it's just that the bigger you make it, the more likely you are to pull the NPR's close again. (But no closer than two jumps.) Random numbers really are the way to go for this.
Post by: praguepride on March 29, 2010, 08:02:56 PM
So at 100% the probability for NPR close to you might only be x0.1 the normal chances, while anything below 100% would be 0% and anything higher would scale linearly so that at 200% difficulty it would be just as likely as any other uninhabited system.
Post by: Elvin on March 30, 2010, 07:00:29 PM
A super-high end technology that allows you to create your own jump points, from anywhere to anywhere. Associated technologies could be to do with reducing it's material cost ( I'm thinking a massive module on a ship, that also uses millions of litres of fuel ), the chance of getting the Jp where you want it to go, else it will end up 1,2,3 etc. jumps down the chain.
The main reason for this was the feeling that space shouldn't be centralised on the Sol system. When you start getting larger chains of systems, inevitably there are no cross-connections between the branches, except possibly within 2-3 jumps of the Sol system itself. And this makes very little logical sense, as we are in an arm of the galaxy. But then again, Jump Points hardly make logical sense either. But I would personally like to decentralise the net of jump points, without resorting to using the SM.
Post by: Erik L on March 30, 2010, 07:03:39 PM
Quote from: "Elvin"
A rather large suggestion, at least in game terms:
A super-high end technology that allows you to create your own jump points, from anywhere to anywhere. Associated technologies could be to do with reducing it's material cost ( I'm thinking a massive module on a ship, that also uses millions of litres of fuel ), the chance of getting the Jp where you want it to go, else it will end up 1,2,3 etc. jumps down the chain.
The main reason for this was the feeling that space shouldn't be centralised on the Sol system. When you start getting larger chains of systems, inevitably there are no cross-connections between the branches, except possibly within 2-3 jumps of the Sol system itself. And this makes very little logical sense, as we are in an arm of the galaxy. But then again, Jump Points hardly make logical sense either. But I would personally like to decentralise the net of jump points, without resorting to using the SM.
One way to alleviate that is to give Sol 1 or 2 JP only on game creation. But, I've also noticed that loops form outside of Sol. It's all random
Post by: UnLimiTeD on March 30, 2010, 07:47:00 PM
Would make it tremendously easier to RP several factions without accidentally mistaking one for the other.
Also adds flavour.
Post by: praguepride on March 31, 2010, 10:21:04 AM
1) Track fuel expendiatures. Unless I memorize the numbers, I don't have any indication of whether I'm gaining or losing fuel overall from my stockpiles. Would be nice if you had a little indicator like with wealth so at a glance I could compare it to last year's fuel levels.
2) Some sort of screen that shows what upcoming "events" are. For example, "planned" production end points, shipyard modifications, research projects.
I'm envisioning something like the events list but for the future:
Current Date +5:
1 Construction Factory produced.
Freighter 001 produced.
Current Date +20:
Joe Schmoe's Research Project Completes
Current Date +160:
Shipyard 001 completes new slipway.
Basically this would REALLY come in handy when you're trying to decide how much time to speed ahead. I hate advancing 30 days only to realize that my research project completed after the first 5 days and just sat idle for the remaining 25. Plus it'd be a great way to see in one place the timing of certain events.
3) Graphs & Other excel fun
Would be nice to be able to pull up historical trend graphs. You can somewhat do that now with Wealth but it would be nice to see things like:
Population levels over the past Month/Year/5 Years/10 Years
Mineral Stockpiles over the past 5 Days/30 Days/6 Months/Year/5 Years/10 Years
Fuel Stockpiles
Industrial Capacity (would be nice to identify periods of dips in productivity due to population/mineral/wealth
Wealth Trends
Now I know a lot of this information is linear and on a short view can be extrapolated, but it'd be nice to see whether things like moving to a bunch of colonies improved wealth overall or be able to track mining rate vs. industrial rate to determine if you will need more mines to maintain your growing industry or if you can afford to spare some for distant mining colonies.
One thing that I'd LOVE to know and can't really figure out (without sitting down and actually taking notes every hour increment) would be whether my mining colonies are doing a good enoug job supporting my industrial capital. Sometimes they maintain a constant mineral supply, sometimes I get spammed by Mineral Shortage. I'd like to know if it's more efficient to ship my mines to a richer planet and mass drive them home OR to just keep them at home and thus eliminate transit time of mass driving.
4) Biological Weapons, Plagues, and Medicine
This would be a pretty big implement, me thinks, but it'd be interesting and challenging to encounter situations where disease (from natural events or weapons) is ravaging your colony so you have to start producing medical supplies and building medical facilities to counter the disease/toxin.
For the purposes of writing, I will use the term "disease" to represent toxins, bacteria, virii, and other biological weapons.
Medical Facility would be a "factory" with it's own worker type (Medical Personnel) that could produce generic medicines or specialized products.
General Medicine would be a product that would slowly be consumed by colonies (I'm thinking at a rate of one unit per Million per month). Now it's assumed that medical supplies are produced on the back end so for established colonies (i.e. >25 mil) it's not very necessary. The generic medicine would provide a small boost to growth rate based on Medicine Tech level and % of population supplied. So let's say 5 tech levels that add +5, +10%, +15%, +20%, +25% to growth rates, and this would be reduced accordingly by not having adequate supplies. So if only 1/2 the population is supplied with level 4 medicine, the total bonus is only +10%. Finally, medical facilities would be able to instantly identify a disease hitting your population/ships/GU.
Generic medicine would just cost wealth to produce as organic matters etc. aren't really tracked.
When a disease is encountered, it would trigger a research topic (probably the new Biological/Genetics area) that would let you research a vaccine/antibiotic/antidote (abstracted into generic name "cure") in your medical faciliteis. These diseases would be tracked, so if your colony is hit with Space Measels but you cure it, you might want to have a stockpile on hand if/when it resurges.
I'm thinking chances of disease outbreaks would be dependent on infrastructure & population levels (overcrowding would greatly increase the chances of a plague), morale (unhappy workers aren't cleaning themselves properly). If possible, would also like infection to be a part of planetary gen, so some worlds are just prone to producing dangerous living conditions.
Generic Medicine would also be consumed by ground units during combat, and being supplied with extra medical supplies could add a bonus to defense as they can treat wounds better and send injured combatants back into the fray faster. This would be a minor bonus, but hey, every little bit helps!
As an alternative to having to track another resource, Medical Facilities could just support X population (based on tech level). For disease identification, it'd be 100% if everyone is covered, 50% if only 50% population is covered etc.This would be a monthly check, so if you're not fully covered a disease has time to spread a bit before being detected.
On that note, having a medical bay on ships would allow them to function in place of medical supplies. So for example, a single medical bay could represent 10 units of "medicine" a month. This could be applied to both planets or for ground troops. Like medical facilities, they would instantly identify any disease encountered by the crew or any GU/civilians transported on board.
Finally, biological weapons. Once a disease is encountered (or researched as part of the medicine track) it could be loaded into a missile warhead and used in combat. I'm thinking 3 seperate strategies could be used for various biological weapons:
1) Anti-Ship Biological Missile- designed to punch through ships and spread disease. This would damage enemy crew severely while only minimally damaging the enemy ship. Several strategies, for example using this to destroy the crew combined with boarding strategies could make capturing ships much easier (as long as you don't accidentally kill off your own troops with your own disease. Medbays could count towards resistance on both ends).
2) Planetary Dispersal - targets population centers and hits against their growth rate and damage their infastructure. Imagine sending in a cloaked ship to launch a deadly disease into their capital and sneak away as a precursor to starting a war. When war starts the NPR can't mobilize and churn out the ships as it's too busy trying to keep it's people alive on the planet.
3) Ground Combat - used to damage enemy troops.Very low chance of spreading to population.
Now, this is just one suggestion for breakdown. Another idea would be to just have a single "biological warhead" and build a missile around it. So putting one in a ship-to-ship missile would make it
So, I've illustrated how you could stop a disease from killing your own people and how to use it to destroy your opponents, but what is a disease? I'm thinking they would have stats. Random stats generated on game start ups OR you can engineer your own stats as a design project. I'm thinking:
1) Spread Type: Contact or Airborne. Contact are cheaper, and easier to quarantine. Airborne are more dangerous, harder to quarantine, and much higher spread rate. This works both for and against you. So contact warheads (i.e. it has a liquid that has the disease inside and splashes on the enemy) would only hit the effect area, but then when your troops march in you don't have to worry about spreading it back to your own guys. Airborne would devesate enemy troops/crews/populations but there's a risk that when you march in, you can get your own people infected.
2) Spread Rate: How fast does it "grow." Some abstraction is needed so this is a cumulative effect. A highly infectious disease that kills very quickly (like Ebola) would actually have a very low "growth" rate as those infected would have less chance to spread. Anyway, by their nature, toxins would generally have the lowest spread rate while virii would have the highest (due to the mutations). Now, you could engineer a toxin that spreads faster then a virii based on how your research progresses, but assuming equal tech levels, it would go toxin < bacteria < virus.
This would ALSO dictate the chances of spreading it between colonies. Any ship that lands at a planet infected would have a certain percentage based on the spread rate of picking it up and transporting it to another colony. Airborne elements would get a huge bonus to their spreadrate across sectors. So while a contact toxin might only have a 5% chance of being picked up by a passing ship, an airborne one might have a 50% chance.
Spread Rate would be an estimate as actual rate of spread would depend on variables like target infastructure/lifesupport/medical facilities/overcrowding etc. For a simple approach, it's fine having it linear (i.e. infects 5% of population a month.) But for more advanced it would be interesting to see both an exponential growth and a cap on infection (i.e. at most only 40% could become infected).
3) Impact: I'm thinking 3 things should be impacted by infection: Population Levels (i.e. how many people die from it), Productivity Levels (if everyone's out with the flu, they can't build your warships), and Morale. These should be cumulutive effects, so a "Death" virus would also impact Productivity and Morale.
So again, 3 "kinds" of impact:
Morale - weakest type. Basically it just makes people miserable. Could be useful depending on what morale impacts.
Morale & Productivity - medium level. Dibilitating but not very dangerous. Would lower factory productivity, crew & GU reaction time.
Morale, Productivity, and Death - most dangerous - would kill people.
This should be staged accordingly. So a death virus would kill 5%, reduce productivity 10%, and morale 20% (arbitrary numbers, I know it would be super powerful this way) . So Morale impact would be x2 productivity impact which is x2 death rate. As a balancing point, the more dangerous a disease is, the lower it's spread rate.
4) Type: Toxin/Bacteria/Virus - toxins would be the "safest" to use as they would have no variables really, just potency. Bacteria would be the middle ground and viruses would be the most "dangerous" to use as their stats have the highest chance of "mutation" (i.e. altering their effect).
5) Strains - this would be both in the player's hands and the AI. The player could alter diseases similar to ships, but bacteria on a low chance and virii on a high chance could "create" strains during their infections.
So you might have though you released a contact, low-spreading morale virus to destablize enemy ground troops a little before a big fight, but when your troops land suddenly they're encountering a deadly airborne beast! Your medical "database' would register it as a new strain and you'd need to start researching a cure for it.
Finally, you'd be able to quarantine planets to prevent AI ships from spreading disease. This could also be used to prevent AI ships from going to a colony that is in a dangerous situation. Even if not quarantined, if the disease outbreak is known to the empire (i.e. medical facility ID'd it) then it would factor into the AI's "danger rating."
So, that was a huge text bomb so here's the summary:
New Element: Disease - subdivided up into toxins, bacteria, or virii. For the purposes of this idea, all three will be referred to as "disease", even if it's a toxin like mustard gas.
New Installation: Medical Facility - would either operate like a factory to produce cures and generic medicine OR would just "support" X population, like infastructure does. Would also be used to identify diseases. Until a medical facility encounters a disease, the infection will be unknown to everyone but an observant player.
New Population Type: Medical Personnel - would work in medical facilities. Overall would probably be a pretty small part of the population but should be tracked none-the-less.
New Ship Component: Medical Bay - ship/base mounted medical facility.
New Missile Warhead: Biological Warhead - allows you to launch "diseases" against ships, GU, or planets. The missile would be built using current methods, but a biological warhead would also allow you to select a "payload" from a list of researched disease. Based on the warhead size it would factor into the payload's growth rate, so small missiles would be useful against crews & GU as they'd damage the target but have a low chance of starting a plague, or you could create massive planetary bombs that would infect millions of people at once.
New Research: [Disease] Cure - when a disease is encountered, a research path would be generated. Researching a new disease would be based upon the complexity of the target (weak, contact, slow spreading, toxins would be "low" complex items while deadly, airborn, fast spreading, virii would be "high" complex items). Once a disease cure is research the population gains resistance based on either medical facility support or production of cures. Researching strains would be 1/10th the cost of the initial disease.
New Research: Biological Weapon Engineering - this would actually contain a cluster of projects (similar to cloak theory or jump point theory). You can research:
-Toxic Biological Weapons
-Bacterial Biological Weapons
-Viral Biological Weapons
-Contact Dispersal
-Airborne Dispersal
-Mutation Control (starts out with high chance of mutation and you can research this to lower it by 5% increments)
-Morale Impact (starts low, gains by a linear amount each level)
-Productivity Impact (same as morale)
-Deadly Impact (same as morale)
-Growth Rate (starts out very small and goes up)
New Design: Biological Weapon - drop downs would allow you to select: (note I'm using arbitrary numbers for now to illustrate the various impacts)
Type: (Toxin/Bacteria/Virus)
Dispersal: (Airborne/Contact)
Mutation Rate: (x0.9, x0.85, x0.5 etc.)
Morale Impact: (x1.1, x1.2, x1.3, etc.)
Productivity Impact: (x0, x1.05, x1.1, x1.15 etc.)
Deadly Impact (x0, x1.025, x1.05, x1.075 etc.)
Growth Rate (x1.1, x1.25, x1.5 etc.)
And that would give you the disease stats. I'm thinking that Toxin/Bacteria/Virus would all start with basic stats:
Toxin:
Morale Impact: -5% annual from target
Productivity: -2.5% annual from target
Deadly: -1.25% annual population
Growth: 0% growth
Mutation Rate: 0% growth
Bacteria:
Morale Impact: -10% annual from target
Productivity: -5% annual from target
Deadly: -2.5% annual population
Growth: +5% growth
Mutation Rate: 5% per year
Virus:
Morale Impact: -5% annual from target
Productivity: -2.5% annual from target
Deadly: -1.25% annual population
Growth: +20% growth
Mutation Rate: 20% chance
Airborne and Contact would alter things accordingly. I think Contact would be "no change" whil Airborne would add x1.5 to both mutation and growth rate. So an airborne virus would have a 30% growth and mutation rate.
By default, until you research into productivity and deadly, the x0 would zero out the impacts on those two things, so a low-tech disease would make people miserable but not kill them. Not saying it's more difficult to make a non-lethal disease then a lethal one, but for both game balance purposes as well as the understanding that it's easier to research non-lethal diseases because you don't risk your staff dying from infection
. As for toxins, at least as a low-tech their growth rate and mutation rate would be 0% as it's a stable element and won't "spread". I'm thinking that radiation damage from missiles could also be tracked like this.As a potential growth, perhaps nanomachines could be researched that would still have a 0% mutation rate but a higher growth rate. But that's getting a bit far ahead.
New Event: Outbreak - random chance with modifiers for a disease to hit a colony. Variables that would influence it would be overcrowding, low medical:population ratio, lack of medical supplies, hostile environment would increase chances while the opposite would decrease chances. So although RNG is involved, it's still preventable.
If an outbreak occurs, it would not be indicated on the map nor the player notified until either a medical facility detects infected population (% chance based on population coverage) or a ship with a medical bay "docks" there and interacts with the population. Could provide a bit of a challenge if an infection spreads subtley for the player to try and find the origin of the outbreak.
New Action: Quarantine - infected colonies could be quarantined with a check mark on the Economics screen to prevent AI ships from landing there. This could also be used by the player to control AI access to colonies. As player can choose to ignore quarantine or not, if you don't want the AI going to a colony for whatever reason, you can "quarantine it". A quarantined colony should have some sort of indication on the system map (perhaps the "blue ring" is surrounded by another red ring.
New Notes: Infected - basically anywhere that lists crew, population, or GU would need an indicator to show that the unit is infected. Perhaps a % could be combined so you can see just how bad it is. Low % of infection has a lower chance of spreading, after all.
Anyway, that's all I have for this for now. Hope it helps!
Post by: DeadWire on March 31, 2010, 11:45:33 AM
Considering you need an ecosystem to keep everything working and not just a breathable atmosphere.
Idea; new research line; artificial ecosystems. Is part of the biology group(which is lacking in Aurora) and it acts like the background techs for lasers and so on.
Then, a "big bottles of biomass" building/ship/thing created at the modification center. It is shipped like colonists or cargo; the research makes it quicker to create the specific ecosystem (like the specific laser design, it must be researched) or makes it take less biomass to jumpstart the ecosystem e.g. makes it "bottled biomass" thing lighter/smallerl
Post by: georgiaboy1966 on March 31, 2010, 08:54:40 PM
able to increase hydroshpere, ie add water to a planet that does not add too much pressure to a planet. Since adding water whould also add atmosphere, true, but should be adding oxygen to an atmosphere. Maybe tow some comets into planets for terraforming, adding mass, adding
water.
Post by: Beersatron on March 31, 2010, 10:16:16 PM
Quote from: "praguepride"
Some more random suggestion I had:
*snip*
An epic post, that deserves a quote just so he/she/it knows that at least one person read it and gave it a big THUMBS UP!
Probably something for version 6.0 though
Post by: boggo2300 on March 31, 2010, 11:39:15 PM
Quote from: "praguepride"
Some more random suggestion I had:I quite like your first 2 ideas, especially the upcoming events one, the Graphing, I can see might be useful, however, I have BIIIIG reservations about the biological warfare, way too Star Trek for me, where every race seems to be biologically completely compatible with every other. The only way I can see it being believable you would need to have (I suppose by scans and observation) a fairly large amount of information on your enemies biology, and I'm really fairly dubious it could be done as better way of wiping out a population than dropping a few missiles onto a planet, and letting the radiation and dust do the rest.
1) Track fuel expendiatures. Unless I memorize the numbers, I don't have any indication of whether I'm gaining or losing fuel overall from my stockpiles. Would be nice if you had a little indicator like with wealth so at a glance I could compare it to last year's fuel levels.
2) Some sort of screen that shows what upcoming "events" are. For example, "planned" production end points, shipyard modifications, research projects.
I'm envisioning something like the events list but for the future:
Current Date +5:
1 Construction Factory produced.
Freighter 001 produced.
Current Date +20:
Joe Schmoe's Research Project Completes
Current Date +160:
Shipyard 001 completes new slipway.
Basically this would REALLY come in handy when you're trying to decide how much time to speed ahead. I hate advancing 30 days only to realize that my research project completed after the first 5 days and just sat idle for the remaining 25. Plus it'd be a great way to see in one place the timing of certain events.
3) Graphs & Other excel fun
Would be nice to be able to pull up historical trend graphs. You can somewhat do that now with Wealth but it would be nice to see things like:
Population levels over the past Month/Year/5 Years/10 Years
Mineral Stockpiles over the past 5 Days/30 Days/6 Months/Year/5 Years/10 Years
Fuel Stockpiles
Industrial Capacity (would be nice to identify periods of dips in productivity due to population/mineral/wealth
Wealth Trends
And a Mega SNIP
just my ha'penny's worth
Matt
Post by: Father Tim on April 01, 2010, 01:08:41 AM
Quote from: "praguepride"
Finally, biological weapons. Once a disease is encountered (or researched as part of the medicine track) it could be loaded into a missile warhead and used in combat. I'm thinking 3 seperate strategies could be used for various biological weapons:
1) Anti-Ship Biological Missile- designed to punch through ships and spread disease. This would damage enemy crew severely while only minimally damaging the enemy ship. Several strategies, for example using this to destroy the crew combined with boarding strategies could make capturing ships much easier (as long as you don't accidentally kill off your own troops with your own disease. Medbays could count towards resistance on both ends).
2) Planetary Dispersal - targets population centers and hits against their growth rate and damage their infastructure. Imagine sending in a cloaked ship to launch a deadly disease into their capital and sneak away as a precursor to starting a war. When war starts the NPR can't mobilize and churn out the ships as it's too busy trying to keep it's people alive on the planet.
3) Ground Combat - used to damage enemy troops.Very low chance of spreading to population.
No.
This brings us straight back to Genocide for Fun & Profit, wiping out the inhabitants of a planet and moving in the next day, free ships for the taking with the single application of a 'super-weapon', etc. All of which have been turned down before, and for good reason.
Post by: wilddog5 on April 01, 2010, 02:41:49 AM
I say just create an new infrastructure type call it grav plating and have it work like infrastructure does for col cost
most of the code is already there so it would be quicker and easer to do
Post by: praguepride on April 01, 2010, 05:33:50 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
No.
This brings us straight back to Genocide for Fun & Profit, wiping out the inhabitants of a planet and moving in the next day, free ships for the taking with the single application of a 'super-weapon', etc. All of which have been turned down before, and for good reason.
As it stands, missile boats are pretty much an "I Win" button so I don't see what the concerns are for balance purposes. Until missiles are nerfed back in line with other weapons any argument of "it's unbalanced" falls on deaf ears for me
As for "risk-free" bio weapons, I don't know if you read my post thoroughly (it's a pretty big text bomb after all) but there is a huge risk in using biological weapons, namely that the biological agent will mutate into something that you can't control. Similar to nukes & radiation, if you're too liberal with them you'll turn the target planet into a death world where 80 different deadly strains of Spaces Measles run rampant and any ship landing on the planet would risk infecting your entire civilization.
My thoughts would be that biological weapons wouldn't be used for mass genecide (hence why the actual effects are rather tame compared to a missile barrage) but for destabilization purposes. You'd fire off a couple plagues before the war so the enemy can't mobilize as effectively. It's hard to fire accurately when the whole crew is down with the flu, that sort of thing. This is why I suggested bio agents have an infection "cap", so deadly bio agents can't just wipe out an entire civilization with one bio bombing. The purpose is to lower morale and productivity, hence why those are a much larger impact then "death."
Plus, it's fairly easy to counter once you know what's going on, a med facility would identify and then a 500pt research topic would spawn.
Post by: Andrew on April 01, 2010, 05:58:59 AM
Quote from: "wilddog5"
I see that everyone wants to be able to alter the gravity of a planet using teraformingI don't
I say just create an new infrastructure type call it grav plating and have it work like infrastructure does for col cost
most of the code is already there so it would be quicker and easer to do
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 01, 2010, 06:23:28 AM
Bring in Terraform ship
Add Toxic substances, wait a few years.
As for Bioweapons:
I'm not really in favour of it, it adds a new level of complexitiy that isn't exactly believable.
The system suffers from unbelievability already with all races breathing oxygen (uncommon and highly toxic) or Methane, and for some inexplicable reason they all suffer from radiation and stuff like Carbon Monoxide. I'm willing to ignore all that, but adding more of that kind?
Rather not.
Gravity just adding to colony cost I would support, to a limit of .1 so no asteroids are habitable.
Post by: praguepride on April 01, 2010, 08:54:52 AM
Real Life:
Obvious various WMD discussions (anthrax, mustard gas etc.)
Using specialized poisons to kill pests (insecticides, herbicides). If you meet a species genetically similar to an ant, why not try ant poison?
Sci-Fi
Dawn of War II has Space Marines injecting a virus into Tyranid hives
War of the Worlds - alien invaders defeated by common cold
Countless examples in Star Trek and Star Wars
Evolution has the humans using Head & Shoulders to kill alien invaders
The key is that you could only use engineered bio agents, so you would need to know the enemy's biological traits as well as have research enough to adapt a virus or toxin specifically against them.
Anyway, moving on to my next idea: Nerfing Missiles (this is sure to make me popular :D
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 01, 2010, 09:27:52 AM
While I agree that missile ranges are too high, I don't see a big problem with it.
Missiles can be intercepted, Beams can't.
Higher tech levels give a tracking speed bonus of a good 100% versus missiles in sensor range, resulting in a Dual Gauss turret (firerate 3, range 3) to swat a half dozen missiles out of the air every five seconds.
Cloaking technology lets you close to beam distance more easily, ECM caps the targeting range for enemy missiles, and most of all:
They cost a smegload of resources, on medium techlevels you can build fighters whose ordnance exceeds the ships cost.
They also don't work in Nebulae, the only thing I miss are decoy buzzers to lead them astray.
Only problem I see with missiles is that you can make them untargetable on high tech levels.
Post by: Andrew on April 01, 2010, 10:41:35 AM
The only two methods I have found for making missiles effective are
1) mounting large numbers in Box launchers for big salvo's to overwhelm the defenses
2) large numbers of small (size 1 or 2 missiles) fired at short range as the salvo's are large enougth
The problem of 1 is is the alpha strike does not kill the enemy then you are in deep trouble , with 2 the range is around 3-4 million km which means beam armed ships can close through your fire particularly as the small warheads take a lot of hits to kill an well armoured ship
Have you a lot of experience of missile fleets being undefeatable?
Post by: praguepride on April 01, 2010, 10:56:55 AM
Quote from: "Andrew"
Have you a lot of experience of missile fleets being undefeatable?
No, I'm still a newb. I was just reading through a bunch of the stories and it seems that most people go heavy on the missiles (at least early on) and swat the AI left and right with it.
Perhaps it's more of an issue of the AI then the game itself. Now that I think about it, it makes sense. I often compare this game to Space Empire (although this game rocks far more) and missiles are similar in some ways (long range, high damage, long reload, limited magazine, expensive) but the key difference is that their range is only about x4 that of beam weapons (at least in the beginning). Sitting down and looking at those weapon range charts, it struck me as very odd that a "basic" missile's range is measured in the millions of km.
If mid-tech counters and high-tech shuts down missile strategies, I guess they don't need to be balanced, but then again it strikes me that missiles are heavily unbalanced if they swing from overpowered to underpowered. Balanced would mean that they are equally useful throughout the game
Post by: waresky on April 01, 2010, 11:21:27 AM
lately am found 3 or max 4 field to "become more interesting"
1)Army management,more flexible and more addictive than a TaskGroup windows
2)More "orders line" in windows TG (eg: Deployment Collier,JumpTender)
3)Improvement in NPR management for loose few time 5-sec step.
4)more Diplomatical field and more choice in Diplomatical screen.
in fact many of our new friends havent play in a Hundereds colonies Empire..and not know how many difficult are to manage a monster Navy or Civie fleets around-:D
So a 5th suggestions was: some of improvement in Civie fleets orders,management and choice or something.
Navy TG windows than Civie TG windows,for more fast selection.
=more Automation in Civie management and target,load-drop,more choice,(eg: "if Earth or Capital running low on xxxx type mineral:pls GOto nearest 4jumop Mining Colony and Load":_DDD..not?:D.." ok fired'em..eheh
Ty Steve:)
Post by: praguepride on April 01, 2010, 11:22:17 AM
I don't think any of mine are vital to the game, just putting thoughts out there about "possabilities."
For example: I've recently started playing an "Exodus" style game and one thing that puzzles me is that if you have 5 empires on the same planet, if any one of them uses a geosurvey team, all of them find the results. Plus, all of them have "geo team survey" marked as complete.
Why can't an Empire try and hide it's finding? Why can't multiple teams hit a planet? Not saying it's vital but it would be really neat if Empires retain control of their geological team surveys. This would mean that different planets might mean different things to different empires. You might look at a planet and say "nothing's there! I checked" but the AI is scrambling mines over to take advantage of hidden deposits.
Bonus points for being able to trade this information with other Empires. More bonus points if capturing enemy facilities on a planet revela the hidden deposits.
Post by: Hawkeye on April 01, 2010, 11:36:11 AM
Quote from: "Andrew"
I am not convinced that missiles are unbalanced in fact given the size and cost of missiles along with the limited magazine capacity of warships I seriously consider not building missile armed ships. Against a taskgroup of comparable technology equipped with good antimissile defenses (antimissiles, plenty of laser or Gauss turrets)some shielding and decent armour I find that missile attacks often fail to inflict any signifigant damage forcing both sides to close the range .
The only two methods I have found for making missiles effective are
1) mounting large numbers in Box launchers for big salvo's to overwhelm the defenses
2) large numbers of small (size 1 or 2 missiles) fired at short range as the salvo's are large enougth
The problem of 1 is is the alpha strike does not kill the enemy then you are in deep trouble , with 2 the range is around 3-4 million km which means beam armed ships can close through your fire particularly as the small warheads take a lot of hits to kill an well armoured ship
Have you a lot of experience of missile fleets being undefeatable?
Agreed. I have recently encountered an NPR fielding a dedicated AMM-Cruiser (actually, three of them) and it took my 12 Missile cruisers entire ammo load to kill two of them. Their defensive fire was incredible. When you see salvos of 150 missiles being swatted from the sky, you realy start to think about your building priorities :)
Post by: Commodore_Areyar on April 01, 2010, 01:28:25 PM
UPLIFT technology: raise non-sentient natives to sentience.
Not really instant slave labour (as the uplifted population by necessity starts small), but an allied/subject race colonizing a planet perfectly suited for them.
Post by: Andrew on April 01, 2010, 05:57:43 PM
Quote from: "praguepride"
My own fleets are probably more resistant to misile fire than most NPR's but I have had several battles where NPR's of comparable or slightly lower tech have shot down my entire missile force. I have also had a battle where one 7400 tom precursor ship destroyed a 40,000 ton BB and crippled a second using lasers . I have also had battles where my missiles have slaughtered the enemy but in those cases my fleet had a large advantage in either tonnage or technology so I would have slaughtered them whichever weapons I used.Quote from: "Andrew"Have you a lot of experience of missile fleets being undefeatable?
No, I'm still a newb. I was just reading through a bunch of the stories and it seems that most people go heavy on the missiles (at least early on) and swat the AI left and right with it.
Perhaps it's more of an issue of the AI then the game itself. Now that I think about it, it makes sense. I often compare this game to Space Empire (although this game rocks far more) and missiles are similar in some ways (long range, high damage, long reload, limited magazine, expensive) but the key difference is that their range is only about x4 that of beam weapons (at least in the beginning). Sitting down and looking at those weapon range charts, it struck me as very odd that a "basic" missile's range is measured in the millions of km.
If mid-tech counters and high-tech shuts down missile strategies, I guess they don't need to be balanced, but then again it strikes me that missiles are heavily unbalanced if they swing from overpowered to underpowered. Balanced would mean that they are equally useful throughout the game
I think missiles are about equally useful throughout the game as antimissile defenses keep improving along side the offensive missiles and the really big limitation as Hawkeye said is that you sometimes run out of missiles completely , your lasers always work.
Post by: Andrew on April 01, 2010, 06:00:02 PM
Post by: boggo2300 on April 01, 2010, 06:12:03 PM
Quote from: "wilddog5"
I see that everyone wants to be able to alter the gravity of a planet using teraforming
I say just create an new infrastructure type call it grav plating and have it work like infrastructure does for col cost
most of the code is already there so it would be quicker and easer to do
Personally I think it's a lousy Idea, changing the gravity of a planet is WAAAY out of scope of how terraforming works in Aurora, and for me it stretches believability about 4 times past the snapping point.
However, Wilddogs idea I could live with, but I think if the colonisable world range is expanded we may run into performance issues
Matt
Post by: Brian Neumann on April 01, 2010, 06:22:38 PM
Quote from: "Andrew"
A possible change or alternative to the cloaking device instead of having it reduce the sensor range , have them reduce the cross section of theship mounting them so you need active sensors with a lower resolutionCurrently this is how cloaking tech works. Ecm reduces the range of missile fire control and the to hit chance of beam weapons.
Brian
Post by: sloanjh on April 01, 2010, 08:40:41 PM
Quote from: "praguepride"
Quote from: "Andrew"Have you a lot of experience of missile fleets being undefeatable?
No, I'm still a newb. I was just reading through a bunch of the stories and it seems that most people go heavy on the missiles (at least early on) and swat the AI left and right with it.
Perhaps it's more of an issue of the AI then the game itself. Now that I think about it, it makes sense. I often compare this game to Space Empire (although this game rocks far more) and missiles are similar in some ways (long range, high damage, long reload, limited magazine, expensive) but the key difference is that their range is only about x4 that of beam weapons (at least in the beginning). Sitting down and looking at those weapon range charts, it struck me as very odd that a "basic" missile's range is measured in the millions of km.
If mid-tech counters and high-tech shuts down missile strategies, I guess they don't need to be balanced, but then again it strikes me that missiles are heavily unbalanced if they swing from overpowered to underpowered. Balanced would mean that they are equally useful throughout the game
A few things you might not be aware of:
1) SE ship design and combat is very similar to Starfire, which is the game that Aurora morphed out of. I have no knowledge one way or another, but it's a plausible conjecture that there was some intellectual cross-fertilization there.
2) Aurora missiles, like those in SF, originally were not significantly longer-ranged than beam weapons. Then Steve's drive towards internal consistency led him to run some numbers, and he realized that it didn't really make sense for them to be that short-ranged. You should be able to find the thread discussing this, some where in Mechanics, IIRC, and should read it. Looking for "tomahawk or harpoon" might help, since there was some discussion of modern naval warfare in the thread.
3) As others have said, and as is mentioned every time this perceived imbalance comes up, logistics is part of the game. The handicap with missiles is that it's very difficult to keep those magazines full of the latest and greatest missiles. That being said, I tend to build missile-armed FAC early on in my conventional starts because they do seem to be the only weapons system that have a chance against higher-tech bad guys.
John
Post by: Father Tim on April 01, 2010, 10:30:22 PM
Quote from: "praguepride"
Nerfing Missiles (this is sure to make me popular)
Missiles aren't unbalanced, it just that people almost universally overlook or discount their disadvantages.
1. Missiles don't work in a Nebula. At all. If missiles are your only weapon, you're screwed.
- This is somewhat negated by the fact that a 'Real Stars' game will have NO nebula systems in it, but in my opinion that's a bug with the real stars setting.
2. Missiles are expensive. I can build entire ships for less than the cost (in money and minerals) of filling the magazines of a missile cruiser.
3. Missiles have a shallow damage template, requiring them to average more total damage to cripple or destroy a ship.
4. Missiles are very weak in a jump point assault - or defense. They gain no benefit from short range, save in the rare case where they deny anti-missile defenses multiple shots.
5. Small, cheap anti-missiles can kill missiles at a spectacular exchange rate - something like 3-5% of the build time & cost.
6. The mechanics of missile targeting and 'to hit' leads to wildly inefficient use of ammo. It's not at all unusual to score a spectacular overkill, or underkill, on opponents.
7. Most people seriously under-armour their ships. My frigates have 12 layers of armour, my battleships 24 to 30.
7a. Most people - especially at low tech levels - seriously under-shield their ships. In player vs player fights I've had a single battleship absorb the entire magazine capacity of my opponent's missile squadron without blowing up.
- Granted, low-level shield tech is crap but it's not that expensive in terms of RP to improve it up to the level usefulness.
8. Missile production is slow, and ammo is hard to get to the ships. I conquered one NPR when it withdrew all its (empty) cruisers to re-arm, and another when it simply ran out of ammo on an empire-wide basis. In both cases I lost 2-3 initial battles.
TACTICALLY, missiles are very strong. STRATEGICALLY, they are fairly well balanced if you take adequate care to properly run your empire and plan for missile expenditure. Most people don't, leading to them scoring crushing victories in 3-5 fights, then being one turn from extermination, whether they realize it or not.
When I fight missile empires, the fights go one of three ways:
1 - The enemy runs out of missiles before I run out of ships. My survivors crush his entire fleet.
2 - The enemy runs out of reloads before I run out of fleets. My survivors crush his entire empire.
3 - The enemy runs away faster than I can chase. My survivors occupy what space I will, and wait for the enemy to return.
While I frequently lose battles, I never lose the war because I ruthlessly exploit the weaknesses of missile-armed opponents - especially economic weaknesses.
Post by: waresky on April 02, 2010, 05:42:55 AM
Agree on Father
r some months ive change my "older" Missile Squadroon in "Beam Squadroons" and the battles goes as well.
Obviously armour over 30
shield as many
SPEED r the Core of tactics.
And minerals r saving.
Obviously ive some Missile Squadroon active as complements to Battle Fleet (more than 2+ Squadroon=Fleet).
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 02, 2010, 06:53:31 AM
Back to suggestions:
I think it would be nice to have a mass production bonus that increases the build rate by a small % every time you build the same thing again.
When you have 3 slipways churning out the same FAC for the last 6 years, you gotta expect them to be faster.
To counter it, the mod rate could go down.
Post by: Arwyn on April 02, 2010, 08:12:48 PM
One of thing things I liked about Hearts of Iron is that it reflected the production line efficiencies that result from task repetition.
As far as the missiles conversation goes; economically, missiles will kill your empire financial the longer and engagement goes on. I ran into that personally 2 games back where I simply couldnt build enough missiles to keep up with the rate of expenditure from combat (evil, evil box launchers).
Missiles also start to lose out when fighting higher tech opponents due to the increase in speed and anti-missile defenses. In my last game I had an entire fleet of missile boats get stopped cold by three dedicated anti-missile cruisers. I expended the entire magazine capacity of the fleet to kill one AMM cruiser and damage another. NOT a favorable exchange rate. I am playing a current game where my major opponents are star swarm and a higher tech mechanical race. I can kill swarm all day long, but I cant sustain the fight to keep up with the rate of replacement vs the number of missiles. The mechanoid race is higher enough tech to make my missile exchanges ruinously expensive, since I have to saturate their defenses wholesale to get a kill through.
If you have a significant speed advantage, beams are definitely viable. They cant be stopped, they cost nothing, and the have deeper damage profiles. I had three beam armed frigates firing 20cm UV lasers decimate an enemy fleet by catching them at close range and then running down the surviors for a loss of 2 of the three frigates vs 9 enemy destroyers/cruisers armed with missiles.
Missiles are strong early on against similar tech opponents, against higher tech NPR's, they are often less than stellar, so I dont think they are at all unbalanced from a end to end game perspective.
Post by: Decimator on April 02, 2010, 10:29:59 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
I think it would be nice to have a mass production bonus that increases the build rate by a small % every time you build the same thing again.Why should the mod rate go down? You would already have the disadvantage of producing obsolete equipment.
When you have 3 slipways churning out the same FAC for the last 6 years, you gotta expect them to be faster.
To counter it, the mod rate could go down.
Post by: Bear on April 02, 2010, 11:50:36 PM
So the basic idea is this, change the missile requirements to be at least 1 MSP total size OR at least a 1-pt warhead. This should still prevent someone from blatantly abusing the ability to create tiny missiles, while allows those with high levels of technology to still be able to take advantage of it in the form of effective short-ranged missiles or second-stage bomblets.
In the same vein I was considering the idea of requiring every missile to have a basic "guidance system." This would represent the basic electronics and controls necessary for a missile to communicate with its fire control, steer, and so on. It would be perhaps .05 MSP so as to not totally throw off current missile designs but serve as a further deterrent to tiny dud missiles.
Post by: The Shadow on April 03, 2010, 09:16:56 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
The system suffers from unbelievability already with all races breathing oxygen (uncommon and highly toxic) or Methane, and for some inexplicable reason they all suffer from radiation and stuff like Carbon Monoxide.
Er, no. Oxygen is one of the few gases that can provide enough metabolic energy to support complex animal life. It's no accident that the Cambrian explosion occurred shortly after the building up of free oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere; complex animals would have had a very hard time beforehand.
The reason *why* oxygen is uncommon in its native state is because it's highly reactive - the very reason that makes it a good biological medium. (It's uncommon only in its native diatomic form, though - oxygen is one of the most common elements in the universe.)
If you spot free oxygen in an atmosphere, that almost (but not quite) guarantees that there is life there. Especially if (as with Earth) it appears along with a small amount of methane. The two simply cannot coexist together for long, so if both appear, they must be constantly regenerated.
It has been hypothesized that a hydrogen-methane cycle could also work, in place of an oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle. (But everyone, including Aurora, gets it backwards - the animals would actually be breathing hydrogen, while the plants would be breathing methane. Which means that any world with such a cycle needs to be heavy enough to hold onto hydrogen.)
Virtually all other SF suggestions for breathable gases simply don't work - they don't provide enough energy. Steve has clearly done his research.
Radiation probably *should* affect almost any biology, unless it evolved with reasons to have strong defenses against it. Any life based on chemistry will have a strong distaste for ionizing radiation. While some Earth species are highly radiation resistant (with the crown going to the Radiodurans genus of bacteria, which flourishes inside nuclear reactors) that ability carries a high cost that most species are not willing or able to pay. Basically, you can be good at that or good at other things, and the other things are often more useful.
(That said, I do think that removing radiation should be a terraforming option.)
Carbon monoxide is more of an issue. I don't see any particular reason why it would have an effect on a "methane-breathing" race, though you never know. But hemoglobin isn't the only chelating compound that holds carbon monoxide better than oxygen; the stuff is built like oxygen, only smaller and lighter.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 03, 2010, 10:02:00 AM
And Oxygen is indeed highly toxic to beings not accustomed to it, just like
There were some experiments a while back that showed that life could exist based on elictricity, inside a constant voltage, they sort of developed charge cores with a double ion shere around it that grew and split like our cells do.
Sure, that was primitive, but it would work as a proof of concept.
A race with a hivemind could probably also do with a less reactive gas to fuel their bodily reactions, I mean, a spacefaring race could just as well be intelligent goo.
And playing a race of "plants" that sustain themselves with photosynthesis sounds like a plan aswell, so breathing carbon dioxide is also an option.
And then chemosynthesis would be another possible, maybe on some planets theres atmospheres that support that kind of breathing to a degree that intelligent life can be sustained.
And a race that originates from oceans and thus needs water (which contains oxygen, most likely) is also far from impossible, dolphins are close to that already.
Btw, the cambrian explosion is of course possible due to the occurrence of oxygen, but maybe it's also because of a suspected higher amount of carbon dioxide, which is rather good for plants, and because it's quite likely two thirds of the planet were deep frozen just a few dozen million years before.
Which leads to the question if intelligent, oxygen based life can actually form in cold climates.... Maybe it's just because we incorporate a lot of water.
Just noted this is the suggestions thread, we should probably not discuss this here.
Over all, I think it's conversation, but quite not helping to steve. gogo, mass production bonus!^^
Post by: The Shadow on April 03, 2010, 10:37:03 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Just noted this is the suggestions thread, we should probably not discuss this here.
I replied to you in the Chat forum (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=2448).
Post by: Elouda on April 03, 2010, 04:15:43 PM
As to how this would be implemented, while I do not know how the game handles ship components at the moment, the basic idea would be to allow the player to design a 'Mission Module' section through the Design window, and then equipment modules for it some other way. These modules would just be normal components packaged togeather which could then be 'loaded' into a Mission Module, and would probably built using construction factories like components can be now.
Now, obviously flexibility comes at a price, and this should be in the form of extra space needed for the systems to interface. So for example, lets say I'm building a 6000ton cruiser and stick a '1000ton Mission Module' I've designed onto it. This module could then load a predesigned component 'package' up to say 700tons. This would allow me, for example, to swap out the Active Sensor and FCS depending on the missile loadout I want to assign.
These could be upgraded through research, and potential areas that might be improved are;
-Efficiency of the Mission modules (How many % of the module can be used for 'packages')
-Total fraction of a ship that can be made up of modules (Initially 20-25%? Could be almost the whole ship eventually, allow for extreme flexbility - this would be the total ALL the modules make up, if multiple modules are allowed, or else you could just restrict modules to one per ship)
-Time required to swap out modules (Should increase with module size, so a 500t sensor package swap will be much faster than a 2500ton weapons reconfiguration)
-Possibily internal armour on the module itself?
The advantages of sacrificing some tonnage for flexibility would include;
-Ability to design and repurpose ships to fill a variety of roles. This could go as far as for example having a 6000ton cruiser which mounts a 2500ton combine weapons/sensor package that allow it to switch between cruiser and escort cruiser roles (in this example, the magazine and engines would be part of the main hull, the module would feature your choice of FCS, Active Sensors and Launchers). This could also work for commercial and support ships - being able to swap out cargo hold modules for a troop transport module, though this would obviously take a lot longer than similar military swaps due to the size of components. Eventually this system could even let you swap out entire propulsion packages, allowing you to tailor your fleet to whatever role its playing at the moment (system defence? trade for more speed with less fuel and engineering spaces).
-Capability to extend the lifetime of early ships without refits, or in conjuction with them. Those 1500ton frigate that you built early on could have their 500ton mission module (able to hold say 250tons) refitted with a newer version able to hold 350tons. This coupled with the ability to swap in a 'modern' mission module means these ships would have longer lifetimes (if this is a good thing or not depends on personal preference!).
-One further possible use of this would be if a ship with such a system took damage to its 'mission package', but not the module itself. Such a ship could then simply swap out the damaged module for a new one while the old one if repaired. I dont know if thats within the scope of the game though, or if it would make thing too complicated.
Obviously there would have to be some logic to make sure this fits within the existing ship design paradigm, such as ensuring either the ship has enough crew to cover the modules needs, else prevent it from being loaded? Or require modules to have self contained crew quarters. Theres also potential for conflict between the Military/Commercial categories, but I suppose this would be solved by restricting Commerical modules to only loading Commerical packages. Mission module would probably only be able to take one package a piece, up to the maximum 'capacity' in size wise - so fitting an undersized module would be possible, though wasteful.
Hopefully that made some sense. I have no idea if it fits your vision for the game, but it was something that occurred to me as I was learning the game.
Elouda
Post by: Father Tim on April 03, 2010, 11:20:09 PM
The downsides are that both the main ship and your 'module' must mount life support for their (separate) crews, and that only one one or the other can use its engines at a time - which is fine, because you're probably not going to put engines on your module. And while portions of your 'modules' can be constructed by Industry, at the very least final assembly must take place in a shipyard tooled for the task. But if you limit your modules to say, 1000 tons, it's not hard at all to maintain a shipyard for them.
Oh, okay, they show up as two separate contacts, they are targeted individually, their shields & armour don't combine, and they combat jump as two ships, but otherwise they're 'modular'.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 04, 2010, 02:16:25 AM
Quote from: "The Shadow"
That said, I do think that removing radiation should be a terraforming option.Not allowing radiation removal through terraforming is a game design decision to prevent a Starfire game strategy that used to be called "Genocide For Fun and Profit (GFFP)". GFFP was all about exterminating alien races and taking over their planets. This was possible in Starfire because you could completely glass the planet from orbit and move in the next day with no ill effects. Aurora has environmental and collateral damage to make ground combat a realistic option. If you could wipe out a population from orbit and then remove the resulting radiation, it would significantly reduce the need for ground combat.
Steve
Post by: waresky on April 04, 2010, 03:31:40 AM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Agree on Steve.Without if,without but.Quote from: "The Shadow"That said, I do think that removing radiation should be a terraforming option.Not allowing radiation removal through terraforming is a game design decision to prevent a Starfire game strategy that used to be called "Genocide For Fun and Profit (GFFP)". GFFP was all about exterminating alien races and taking over their planets. This was possible in Starfire because you could completely glass the planet from orbit and move in the next day with no ill effects. Aurora has environmental and collateral damage to make ground combat a realistic option. If you could wipe out a population from orbit and then remove the resulting radiation, it would significantly reduce the need for ground combat.
Steve
Post by: The Shadow on April 04, 2010, 03:42:49 AM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Aurora already has a technology for building 'Modular Mission Ships' - it's called a tractor beam.
This game never ceases to amaze. I expect we'll soon see a series of tractor-based modular ships in the forums...
Kudos, Steve. You've made a game with endless possibilities!
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 04, 2010, 05:13:15 AM
I mean, a reduction of radiation based on regular speeds, being 1-8 per month, or, let's say, 20-160 per yer, along with terraforming speed upgrades, sounds like it's not breaking anything.
Letting that rest for not being all that important, SM functions ftw,
How about a new level of tractor technology that pulls the module close enough to to combine the shields of tug and module?
Also, can a module actually have a tractor on it's own to tow another module?
Otherwise, a dual tractor beam would be neat.
Post by: Andrew on April 04, 2010, 02:08:31 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Uhm, Steve, may I add that those terraformers to reduce radiation could just as well be used to fill the atmosphere with sulfur instead, wiping the population in about the time it would cost you to remove the radiation again?Terraforming a world takes longer than nuking it (particularly as in the next version you will need more poisonous gas), and requires your terraformers to reach it. My terraformers are slow and undefended, I could build faster armoured ones but that would be expensive. There is a counter that the defenders can build terraforming installations , or just shoot missiles at your terraformers.
I mean, a reduction of radiation based on regular speeds, being 1-8 per month, or, let's say, 20-160 per yer, along with terraforming speed upgrades, sounds like it's not breaking anything.
Letting that rest for not being all that important, SM functions ftw,
How about a new level of tractor technology that pulls the module close enough to to combine the shields of tug and module?
Also, can a module actually have a tractor on it's own to tow another module?
Otherwise, a dual tractor beam would be neat.
For example in my current game I managed to decoy the enemy fleet away from their homeworld briefly and got ships in close to it , I could have nuked the planet and wiped out the population but would not have had time to terraform the planet.
I did manage to wipe out the troops without irradiating the planet as the thin atmosphere allowed laser bombardment, this reduced in a lot of dust but did not produce any radiation .
Post by: AndonSage on April 05, 2010, 12:12:01 AM
I would also like to see the current technology (with effects) listed in the Technology Description box (or in a separate box) when you click on a technology to research in the Research tab of the F2 screen. So for example, if I click on Construction Rate 14 BP, I'd see Construction Rate 12 BP as the current technology. Just makes it easier to know what increase you're getting for your research points.
Some of the Technology descriptions need a better description. For example, Shields just say "The level of shield technology. Higher level shields provide more protection for the same size shield generator. Shields regenerate over time." I'd like to know exactly what that protection is. Armour isn't any better.
Any chance of getting a tech flowchart? While it's easy to see that Armoured Fuel Bunker 1 -> Armoured Fuel Bunker 2, unless you know your Greek alphabet, Beta Shields -> Gamma Shields isn't as easy. This especially holds true for Armour. What comes after High Density Duranium Armor?
Post by: Father Tim on April 05, 2010, 05:18:24 PM
1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 4 --> 5 --> 6 --> 7 --> 8 --> 9 --> 10 --> etc.
Alpha --> Beta --> Gamma --> Delta --> Epsilon --> Zeta --> Theta --> Eta --> Iota --> Kappa --> Lambda --> Mu --> Nu --> Omicron --> Pi --> Psi --> etc.
The only systems that don't follow the pattern are armour, reactors/engines, and - I suppose - Laser wavelengths. Wait, missile warheads don't follow the pattern either, but then they also tell you the strength per MS as part of the name.
If you want to build a tech tree, then go to the (F2) 'Population & Production' screen, the 'Research' tab, and click on the 'All Projects' radio button to get a list of all projects. You can sort the columns by name or RP cost by clicking on the headers.
Oh, and I believe 'Composite Armour' is the next step up from High-Density Duranium. It's easy enough to figure out - research HDDA then look for the only entry in the 'Available Research' with 'Armour' in it's name. If you're really impatient, use SM Mode to instant research each level of armour and write it down, then delete the tech.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 05, 2010, 07:56:44 PM
So certainly it wouldn't be bad.
Seeing as no one openly opposed it, I'd like to see tactical maneuvers that alter the ships behavior, as seen here:
http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2450
Basically advanced possibilities to react to situations with experienced Crews.
Also, it seems that I can not train my crews above 2000 points in space, but they seem to be able to leave the academy with more.
Can I get those Drill Officers on my ships, too?
Post by: AndonSage on April 06, 2010, 01:07:15 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
... I've yet to find out how to research improved cargo handling, just not available.I might not understand the problem, but I'm seeing "Improved Cargo Handling System" for 10,000 RP in the Logistics/Ground Combat category in my current game. This is in version 5.02.
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Seeing as no one openly opposed it, I'd like to see tactical maneuvers that alter the ships behavior, as seen here:I read the post, but since I have no experience with combat yet, I didn't comment. That said, more options are always good
Post by: praguepride on April 07, 2010, 09:22:04 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Also, it seems that I can not train my crews above 2000 points in space, but they seem to be able to leave the academy with more.
Can I get those Drill Officers on my ships, too?
Building off of this, having "tiers" of training based on situation:
1) 0-1000 - academy training. This teaches the basics of ships, military tactics etc. but isn't a replacement for hands-on training.
2) 0-2000 - ship manuevering. Crew gets hands on experience running drills and getting to know their ship, but it's still no replacement for combat training.
3) 0-3000 - war games. Simulated battles you can run. Lasers are underpowered and ship computers set to "simulate" damage. Dummy warheads would need to be researched and produced for missile boats. Ships would burn fuel at combat rates as a limit to people abusing this over "manuevering". The main difference is that manuevering would improve crew response time, war games would focus on actual combat performance. It'd be a fluff distinction, true, but game mechanics wise, the difference would be that manuerving would gain XP at a faster rate but have a lower cap and wouldn't consume fuel for powering weapons. War games owuld have lower XP gain but higher cap, and would burn up fuel (powering "dummy" weapons) and resources ("dummy" missiles).
4) 0-4000 - commander training bonus. Nothing beats a good leader for whipping a crew into shape. Would be slowest XP gain of them all but have a high cap and would be continuous throughout the commander's assignment.
5) No limit - combat. NOthing beats actual combat for learning how to function during combat
Post by: The Shadow on April 07, 2010, 09:44:41 AM
Post by: The Shadow on April 08, 2010, 12:17:49 PM
Post by: Journier on April 08, 2010, 12:39:06 PM
the 75% of population in the service industries, I am pretty sure causes this.
Could we have different government types sorta modify that number? Democracy = 75% Tyranny = 50% or something?
I understand in modern world many work in the service industries but.... thats just due to current tech levels right??? i want my robotic plumber and food worker to handle everything in me game.
If thats not a good idea you think...
Can we get a SM modifier for these numbers? or if there already is please let me know
Post by: The Shadow on April 08, 2010, 01:22:00 PM
Why not allow an empire to subsidize particular areas of research - Power & Propulsion, say. The civilian sector would then provide a certain number of research points, but you wouldn't have any direct control over where they went; they'd research the topics that interest them, rather than you.
(Probably random, but you could get more complicated if you wanted.) But over the long haul it would benefit all sorts of things.You might not be able to subsidize research into Energy Weapons or Defensive Systems, though, as those are more intrinsically military. (Missiles are more of a borderline case. Drones and buoys have definite civilian uses.)
On a related note, how come you can't have two scientists (with their own sets of labs) researching the same thing? Basically they'd be working on different aspects of the same problem. Happens all the time in RL - though there might be a modest efficiency penalty due to a certain unavoidable amount of duplicated effort.
Post by: Journier on April 08, 2010, 09:56:44 PM
Quote from: "The Shadow"
IRL, most research gets done by the civilian sector - though it's subsidized by the government.
Why not allow an empire to subsidize particular areas of research - Power & Propulsion, say. The civilian sector would then provide a certain number of research points, but you wouldn't have any direct control over where they went; they'd research the topics that interest them, rather than you.
You might not be able to subsidize research into Energy Weapons or Defensive Systems, though, as those are more intrinsically military. (Missiles are more of a borderline case. Drones and buoys have definite civilian uses.)
On a related note, how come you can't have two scientists (with their own sets of labs) researching the same thing? Basically they'd be working on different aspects of the same problem. Happens all the time in RL - though there might be a modest efficiency penalty due to a certain unavoidable amount of duplicated effort.
I like both idea's. Private companies do a huge amount of research into material sciences etc.
Post by: The Shadow on April 08, 2010, 10:13:04 PM
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 09, 2010, 05:35:37 AM
Quote
Why not allow an empire to subsidize particular areas of research - Power & Propulsion, say. The civilian sector would then provide a certain number of research points, but you wouldn't have any direct control over where they went; they'd research the topics that interest them, rather than you. (Probably random, but you could get more complicated if you wanted.) But over the long haul it would benefit all sorts of things.2nd
Post by: sloanjh on April 09, 2010, 10:44:14 AM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hmmmm - that's an idea. Maybe the only sensors allowed on commercial designs should be size-1 actives, since commercial ships won't be trained to do TMA.... This would also mean that the "implied" passive sensors should be removed from all ships - if you want a sensor, you need to build it in.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The idea is that passives have now become very powerful (in terms of ID'ing other ships), and so commercial ships shouldn't have the skill or equipment to do TMA or narrow-band signature identification. It seems like the two options are to either introduce "dumb" (wide-band) passives which don't give you ID and are bearing only which civies use, or to take passives away from civies entirely. This actually makes sense when you think about it in wet-navy terms - freighters don't have (passive) ESM gear, but they do have (active) navigation radar.
John
Post by: Steiners on April 10, 2010, 01:05:06 AM
Wanna play it very badly on my notebook when i'm around but a 12-13" screen can't handle Aurora windows
Post by: sloanjh on April 10, 2010, 10:13:33 AM
Quote from: "Steiners"
Well not exactly a gameplay suggestion.. but is possible to make the windows scrollable?
Wanna play it very badly on my notebook when i'm around but a 12-13" screen can't handle Aurora windows
Please read the FAQ, especially this one viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2033 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2033) and this one viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2043 (http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=2043)
John
Post by: Decimator on April 12, 2010, 10:12:45 PM
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 13, 2010, 07:29:27 AM
I'm not speaking of reducing the time, but instead having a "Jump ECM" of up to 50% that stacks with regular ECM and lasts as long as the distortion, though of course it takes some space.
Post by: Hawkeye on April 13, 2010, 10:27:34 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
As Jumping results in Significant Sensor Distortion, shouldn't there be a techline to counter that?
I'm not speaking of reducing the time, but instead having a "Jump ECM" of up to 50% that stacks with regular ECM and lasts as long as the distortion, though of course it takes some space.
I am not sure I understand what you are suggesting.
A taskgroup jumps. The effects of the jump cause all sensors/firecons to shut down, so you basicly have to reboot the system (Note: I truely think shields, PD/weapons and jumpengines should be offline too, engines may work, but nav-systems shouldn´t be online either. Of course, you can move your ship on manual control until the nav-comps come online again, so moving the ship immediately after a jump is ok).
The standard jump might induce some kind of "residential current" that has to dissipate on its own, before you can reboot your system, hence the longer delay (hey, I need a rationalization, no matter how stupid, for emergence ;) )
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 13, 2010, 11:44:28 AM
The Idea is to have a distortion field around the ship that makes it harder to lock onto the ship.
It was partially inspired by Jump-Cloak in Eve online, though I played that for a total of 8 days a few years back.
Initially I thought of a cloak field, but thats either a completely new system, or already there and better used permanently.
Then I thought "That jump field could realistically be used to reduce incomming accuracy.
It's already possible today to widen space by means of electric currents, though unusably limited.
But thats already there, It's ECM. Sure, it's only for Beam weapons, against missiles it just reduces the range, but Beam weapons should be the prevalent weapon system on a Jump Point Defense ship.
So the idea to keep it simple was to have a "Jump-ECM" that has a value of half the current ecm level, and ADDs to the ecm of the ship, thus reducing the incomming accuracy and making the ship less vulnerable. It would only work during the Sensor Offtime.
I think it would be comparably easy to implement.
If you wanted it complex, you could go with a fixed Acc% reduction that also increases the sensor distortion time by an equal amount and with higher tech you could increase the bonus and the time, without increasing the penalty. --> Lot's of work for no result.
Post by: Hawkeye on April 13, 2010, 02:16:32 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
Then I thought "That jump field could realistically be used to reduce incomming accuracy.
But that´s the thing. There _is_ no jump field after the jump. The delay time is simply the effect of the jump itself. There simply is nothing to project anywhere.
As I said in my earlier post. I think pretty much anything on a ship should be (realisticly) be offline for the duration of the distortion. Let´s face it, if my sensors electronics can´t stand a jump, but the ECM/ECCM electronics can, my next sensors will be build by the guys that did my ECM/ECCM and the desinger of my sensors will find himself up against a wall.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 13, 2010, 03:22:50 PM
Seeing how shields are indeed working, can my shield designers maybe make the firecontrol?
I just generally think it's rather boring that a jumppoint assault inevitably results in a mexican standoff between beamarmed warships, with the attacker being at a severe disadvantage, and theres nothing you can do about it.
Recent game was able to solve that with diplomacy, but otherwise it would have ended in both sides sitting on their side of the jumppoint, armed to the teeth, and he who moves first is dead.
Or in that specific case he (enemy) who has only 20% of the naval strength, but thats not always the case.
High jump displacement tech sure helps that, but it ends up the same, just that it takes mesons out of the equation and reintroduces missiles.
Post by: Beersatron on April 13, 2010, 03:57:16 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
You can make fluff to whatever, but then I ask you why it's impossible to build a sensor that can boot in 5 seconds?
Seeing how shields are indeed working, can my shield designers maybe make the firecontrol?
I just generally think it's rather boring that a jumppoint assault inevitably results in a mexican standoff between beamarmed warships, with the attacker being at a severe disadvantage, and theres nothing you can do about it.
Recent game was able to solve that with diplomacy, but otherwise it would have ended in both sides sitting on their side of the jumppoint, armed to the teeth, and he who moves first is dead.
Or in that specific case he (enemy) who has only 20% of the naval strength, but thats not always the case.
High jump displacement tech sure helps that, but it ends up the same, just that it takes mesons out of the equation and reintroduces missiles.
From another thread just recently answered by Steve:
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The psuedo code is as follows:Code: [Select]Bonus = 1 - (Int(Sqr(GradePoints) - 10) / 100)Which means that a squadron transit will cause blindness for 11-30 seconds and a regular or jump gate transit will cause blindness for 121-180 seconds. This affects both fire control and active sensors. The delay is reduced by the grade bonus of each ship.
If Squadron Transit then
Delay = (10 + Random Number(20)) * Bonus
Else
Delay = (120 + Random Number(60)) * Bonus
End
Steve
You are blind for a maximum of 30 seconds in which time the hostile ships have to come to action stations (or maybe NPRs don't use crew training yet? cant remember) and that can sometimes take up to 30 seconds for my own partially trained crews.
The way I look at it, the defender is in a bad spot since they have to burn maintenance on the ships guarding the JP whilst the attacker can stay in orbit of their planet for a while and drop a stealthed FAC in now and then (minimum jump engine size) to see whats up. If the defender is forced to remove forces for routine overhaul then the attacker can pounce, or if the stealthed FACs are getting in and out without being detected it isn't much of a stretch to make a combat version and use them to force an entrance.
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 14, 2010, 05:19:10 AM
This is a suggestion, we shouldn't discuss the reasons for that suggestion.
EDIT 2:
How about a techline to improve lifepods? To make them last longer.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 14, 2010, 09:10:23 AM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
You can make fluff to whatever, but then I ask you why it's impossible to build a sensor that can boot in 5 seconds?There is something you can do about it. Research Max Squadron Jump Radius, so you can jump in outside the beam weapon range of the defenders, and train your crews so they suffer less of a delay.
Seeing how shields are indeed working, can my shield designers maybe make the firecontrol?
I just generally think it's rather boring that a jumppoint assault inevitably results in a mexican standoff between beamarmed warships, with the attacker being at a severe disadvantage, and theres nothing you can do about it.
Steve
Post by: waresky on April 14, 2010, 12:06:23 PM
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Agree on that.Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"You can make fluff to whatever, but then I ask you why it's impossible to build a sensor that can boot in 5 seconds?There is something you can do about it. Research Max Squadron Jump Radius, so you can jump in outside the beam weapon range of the defenders, and train your crews so they suffer less of a delay.
Seeing how shields are indeed working, can my shield designers maybe make the firecontrol?
I just generally think it's rather boring that a jumppoint assault inevitably results in a mexican standoff between beamarmed warships, with the attacker being at a severe disadvantage, and theres nothing you can do about it.
Steve
Too many people wanna find trick or short easy way of life.
Space never become an Easy land.
Post by: EarthquakeDamage on April 15, 2010, 11:18:17 AM
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 15, 2010, 12:16:57 PM
Post by: Andrew on April 16, 2010, 10:07:36 AM
1) The ability to edit commander abilities (Sometimes you want to create the immortal God Emperor ) and prevent them from dying
2) Ground troops transferred between races should keep the ground combat values from their creating race tech and/or Allow races to build troops at various tech levels
Post by: UnLimiTeD on April 16, 2010, 10:22:12 AM
1. A "Create Wreck" Button, with pop-up choice of random wreck, Precursor Wreck, and Wreck belonging to already discovered ruins (consistent tech levels).
2. A "Create Precursor" Button, with pop-up to choose strenght.
3. A "Delete Orbital Body" button, to get used of Asteroids completely devoid of minerals that clutter the memory, and for epic RP.
4. A "System Properties" Drop down, that allows stuff liek the Exodus Campaign outside of the sol system. I mean, that "Star is getting warmer" would be quite credible in a Nebula System with an evolving Protostar, and a Dieing system centered around a withered white dwarf might also be interesting.
In the same way, Super-Novae etc. will grant possibilities for the future. Would make an even more dramatic campaign if you got 30 years before the system perishes.^^
5. The possibility to give a system number range when 'creating a new system' for RP setup.
Even one of those would make my life so much easier.
PS: I didn't download the newest version yet, so apologies if I'm not up to date.
Post by: Steve Walmsley on April 16, 2010, 10:26:03 AM
Quote
5. The possibility to give a system number range when 'creating a new system' for RP setup.You can already do this one. When creating a new system, it will appear within the system range of the default race.
Steve
Post by: The Shadow on April 16, 2010, 03:53:10 PM
* First and most obviously, a way to raise the maximum atmospheric pressure a race can withstand.
* Racial adaptation to poisonous gases. ie, you can produce a race that's tolerant of a higher level of chlorine. (Though they still need oxygen to breathe.)
* How about a mod to increase intelligence? The way it works is this: Any research labs on an "intelligent" race's colony produces X% more research points than it would otherwise. However, production and/or mining falls by X% - it's too boring. :twisted: Like, you can pretty cheaply produce something that will affect all oxygen-based life (or whatever), but if you wipe out a planet with it, you won't be able to use it either.
On the other hand, for a lot of research points you could develop a plague specific to a particular race, but will (probably?) leave your own race alone.
I figure you'd mostly deliver plagues to planets via missile. But perhaps there could be a ship-to-ship version too - if it breaches armor, the plague is delivered to the crew. Meanwhile there could be defenses like extra compartmentalization, or well-stocked sick bays.
* Reduced cost of infrastructure, or extra bang from the infrastructure you have. Terraforming efficiency and reduction of colony cost could arguably be moved to the Biology category, too.
* Oh - how about applying different themes to different races? Or is this possible already? (I'm not at my home computer at the moment.)
Post by: waresky on April 17, 2010, 09:22:05 AM
Post by: Nabobalis on May 10, 2010, 11:19:04 AM
Fighters/bombers, with only one crew member.
Post by: Father Tim on May 10, 2010, 06:34:50 PM
Quote from: "Nabobalis"
Instead of all jump points having a jump-gate maybe a probability that they do, also a way to disable jump gate construction (does the A.I build them?).
Fighters/bombers, with only one crew member.
It sounds like you have the 'Jump Gates on all Jump Points' option ticked on the main Game Info screen.
Post by: Nabobalis on May 11, 2010, 04:09:53 PM
Quote from: "Father Tim"
Quote from: "Nabobalis"Instead of all jump points having a jump-gate maybe a probability that they do, also a way to disable jump gate construction (does the A.I build them?).
Fighters/bombers, with only one crew member.
It sounds like you have the 'Jump Gates on all Jump Points' option ticked on the main Game Info screen.
Well I want to play in a universe where the knowledge to construct JG is never known but that there is around say maybe 40% of JPs have them.
Post by: Father Tim on May 12, 2010, 08:38:51 AM
1. Never research 'Jump Gate Construction Module 180' and no race will be able to build them.
2. Roll a d10 for every warp point discovered and on a 1-4 use SM Mode to add a jump gate to it.
EDIT:
Actually, that will throw your percentages off, as in a standard game some (no idea how many) warp points will have ancient Jump Gates on them.
Post by: jocan2003 on May 21, 2010, 09:39:14 PM
Post by: jocan2003 on May 23, 2010, 02:37:23 PM
Post by: symon on May 24, 2010, 07:01:33 AM
Bio terraforming
A useful addition to the Biology/Genetics line of tech would be genetically engineered microbes and similar life forms to aid existing terraforming efforts. These would be tailored to the target world and Examples might include bacteria that combine nitrogen and water to release ammonia or water and carbon dioxide to release methane. A black lichen could reduce planetary albedo. One mechanism might be that they add or remove (or both) gases or alter albedo for a limited period, perhaps 10 years and then 'self destruct'. Could be manufactured elsewhere, take up little space and then shipped to where needed.
Comet terraforming
At present there seems no way to alter hydrographic percentage. Moving comets or the right type of asteroids would allow for this, although shifting them might take a while. Still, a little nudge a long way out.... also, think about this as a weapon of war as you wouldn't want to be on the planet at the time of impact. The resultant atmospheric dust might help or hinder for sometime as well. In theory, you'd also be able to enrich the planets supply of minerals. A way of making serious alterations to a planet perhaps?
Anagathics
Another piece of tech for the Biology/Genetics line. I can foresee at least three game effects. Firstly, it could well be a trade item of value. Secondly, it ought to lead to happier citizens. Finally, the life expectancy of your officers would increase, which would be a blessing. Might want to allow multiple levels of this.
Life expectancy
Yet more tech for Biology/Genetics, with similar happy citizens/longer lived officers and cumulative with anagathics. Might want to allow multiple levels of this.
Medical advances
Another one for Biology/Genetics. Reduce the chances of those serious illnesses officers get and happier citizens. Might want to allow multiple levels of this.
Genetic warriors
More Biology/Genetics tech. This would increase the combat capability of ground force units by 1. A minor effect, but useful in simulating certain non-humanoid species. My Organism or a certain group of Xenomorphs for example. Might want to allow multiple levels of this.
Post by: Charlie Beeler on May 24, 2010, 01:57:34 PM
Tactical intelligence should be able to make some class assumptions without for detailed scans. Such as 3 ships of same class on the back asmith of 3 salvos of 16 plasma torps strength 64. That class could have a tentative updated of 16 stength 64 plasma torp launchers aboard.
For Events if a ship takes damage it should at least know what direction the damage came from.
Post by: nichaey on May 31, 2010, 09:38:58 AM
Unless I'm mistaken, I do believe that maintenance supplies are transferable from one ship to another. I would suggest the addition of a task group order that would allow you to transfer supplies. This is to make handling station bases easier.
Post by: Hawkeye on May 31, 2010, 10:00:41 AM
Quote from: "nichaey"
Sorry if this is a repost, but I want to out it down before I forget.
Unless I'm mistaken, I do believe that maintenance supplies are transferable from one ship to another. I would suggest the addition of a task group order that would allow you to transfer supplies. This is to make handling station bases easier.
Designate a ship-class as a supply ship (F5 ship design --> checkbox supply ship ON).
Select a TG you want to resupply (F12 window) and choose a TG with one or more of those supply ships as target.
Select the order "supply at".
Your TG will resupply, using the supplies on those ship(s)
Note: the "supply at" order is only available, if the target TG contains at least one supply ship!
Post by: Sotak246 on May 31, 2010, 10:05:40 PM
Post by: symon on June 15, 2010, 08:06:59 AM
Force Beams
I miss these and as we have tractors, they ought to be plausible. I’ve been trying to think of ways that would make them different to lasers. A menu of ideas that can be taken as desired perhaps:-
More range than lasers. Perhaps make them the longest range beam weapons.
Make the more damaging than lasers by say 25%, but make shields more effective against them, (By 50-100%)
Give them a linear penetration profile, but damage that penetrates armour is doubled.
Needs to be considered in the context of current weapon damage profiles to make them unique I suppose.
More Warheads
I’ve always liked the idea of kinetic kill warheads. I’ve assumed nukes in Aurora are detonating at range and/or suffer ‘drive field’ interdiction. Nukes aren’t nearly as destructive in a vacuum as they are in an atmosphere. Nothing to transmit a blast component, but they are still a bit gross. Kinetic kill warheads might be cheaper if nothing else and as the Railgun and Gauss cannon show us, having dense metal impact with your ship at high velocity is not good.
Additional Ground Units
Aurora does a lot better than many similar scale offerings, but I’d still like to see more ground assets. Maybe dedicated artillery and air defence, rather than assuming they are part of the HQ units.
Death from above
Fighters should be able to take part in ground combat. Assuming they had the right weapons, or in the case of box launchers were fitted with the right munitions, they could be very useful. I’d also like to see the concept of ortillery. There is a difference between bombarding population and industrial centres, and having forward observers call down non-nuclear weapons as fire support. Could give rise to a range of ground support munitions for missiles.
Navies and Airforces
In particular I’d like to aircraft and ocean going vessels when appropriate (homeworlds mostly). To be honest, submarine mounted, dedicated meson defences could be a very effective alternative to PDC.
Automation
I’d really like to see the option to develop automation so that we can reduce overall crew requirements (if that’s the direction the player wants to go in). It shouldn’t be a free lunch though by any means. I would like to see the ability to automate fighters and their ilk down to zero crew, so we can develop the autonomous kill vehicle concept.
Ramming
The Organism and AKV demand the right to ram. It shouldn't just be a precursor maneuver.
Post by: Soralin on June 22, 2010, 05:33:04 PM
On the galactic map, an option to update the system map to the currently selected system. It would certainly be easier to navigate around with, rather than only a drop-down list of systems in alphabetical order. There is the system map button on the galactic map, but that only moves the system map to the selected system if it's closed, if it's already open, it doesn't seem to do anything(perhaps a bug). And in any case, it would still be easier to navigate around with a single click for something like this. Also, for the OOB tab, options to exclude shipping line/commercial/etc. ships from the list.
On the system map, some way to transition to the system on the other side of a selected jump point would be nice. So, say for example you have a ship that you just watched go through a jump point, and want to change the system map to that system to continue watching it, you could control-click the jump point, or something like that, and the system map would change to the system on the other side of the jump point.
On the Ships screen, individual unit details, to be able to transition to the fleet screen for the fleet that the selected ship is in. It would also be nice if there were an indication of where the selected ship's fleet is located, and what it's currently doing. The ability to organize the list of ships by fleet or location would also then be useful.
On the Fleet orders / Task Groups screen, to have something similar to the naval organization screen, that would automatically list task groups, ordered and arranged by what system they're in. Although the order of battle button on the galactic map is already nice for this.
On the Task Force Organization screen, simply the ability to sort the list of task groups by their headers. So that they could be sorted by their location, or simply a list of them by name, or so on. Also, a transition from the list here to the fleet orders screen by clicking, or right-clicking, or something.
Post by: Erik L on June 23, 2010, 09:02:04 PM
Post by: Erik L on June 24, 2010, 01:42:13 PM
Post by: UnLimiTeD on June 24, 2010, 04:53:46 PM
Post by: Erik L on June 24, 2010, 10:45:38 PM
Quote from: "UnLimiTeD"
shouldn't this eventually be merged or replaced with/by the new "for 5.14 (or hopefully soon 5.2) thread?
My bad, I went for the stickied one.