v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Jorgen_CAB]

In regard to "Miscellaneous Components" I was wondering if we could also link them to a character type. Say I want my science vessel to be equipped with a science lab section and then add a scientist to the ship. I think this would be fun for role-play perspective and give some needed jobs to characters that otherwise don't have any even if they don't actually do anything.

I could think of many other reasons for attaching different types of commanders, administrators or the like to ships.

[ZimRathbone]

In regard to "Miscellaneous Components" I was wondering if we could also link them to a character type. Say I want my science vessel to be equipped with a science lab section and then add a scientist to the ship. I think this would be fun for role-play perspective and give some needed jobs to characters that otherwise don't have any even if they don't actually do anything.

I could think of many other reasons for attaching different types of commanders, administrators or the like to ships.

I usually just use the Science Department option for this (150 tons seems reasonable & it creates an officer slot for the ship too).  I use the same thing for my hospital ships treatment rooms, just headcanon that the officer is a doctor, or  manufactory (officer is an engineer) and so forth.  A long as the component is not really changing the capabilities of the ship it works OK.

[nuclearslurpee]

In regard to "Miscellaneous Components" I was wondering if we could also link them to a character type. Say I want my science vessel to be equipped with a science lab section and then add a scientist to the ship. I think this would be fun for role-play perspective and give some needed jobs to characters that otherwise don't have any even if they don't actually do anything.

I could think of many other reasons for attaching different types of commanders, administrators or the like to ships.

I usually just use the Science Department option for this (150 tons seems reasonable & it creates an officer slot for the ship too).  I use the same thing for my hospital ships treatment rooms, just headcanon that the officer is a doctor, or  manufactory (officer is an engineer) and so forth.  A long as the component is not really changing the capabilities of the ship it works OK.

I think Jorgen's idea was more to have a component where unused scientists and civ admins could be stationed for flavor...currently, many of these officers have not got much to do for large parts of the game - many civ admins won't be useful until late game when you have many developed colonies, and many scientists will just never get used because there's 2-3 better in their field. Ideally, it would be nice for those leaders to still have a chance to contribute, but as no niche exists for them flavor reasons and a new misc component would be sufficient.

[LiquidGold2]

In regard to "Miscellaneous Components" I was wondering if we could also link them to a character type.  Say I want my science vessel to be equipped with a science lab section and then add a scientist to the ship.  I think this would be fun for role-play perspective and give some needed jobs to characters that otherwise don't have any even if they don't actually do anything.

I could think of many other reasons for attaching different types of commanders, administrators or the like to ships. 

I usually just use the Science Department option for this (150 tons seems reasonable & it creates an officer slot for the ship too).   I use the same thing for my hospital ships treatment rooms, just headcanon that the officer is a doctor, or  manufactory (officer is an engineer) and so forth.   A long as the component is not really changing the capabilities of the ship it works OK.

I think Jorgen's idea was more to have a component where unused scientists and civ admins could be stationed for flavor. . . currently, many of these officers have not got much to do for large parts of the game - many civ admins won't be useful until late game when you have many developed colonies, and many scientists will just never get used because there's 2-3 better in their field.  Ideally, it would be nice for those leaders to still have a chance to contribute, but as no niche exists for them flavor reasons and a new misc component would be sufficient.

On the topic of massive amounts of unused officers, it would be nice if there was something mechanically useful we could use them for.  Scientists in particular have very few being useful at any one time relative to the amount of idlers.  Maybe something akin to VB's Task Force staff officers? Or some sort of background task they can be assigned to?

[nuclearslurpee]

On the topic of massive amounts of unused officers, it would be nice if there was something mechanically useful we could use them for.  Scientists in particular have very few being useful at any one time relative to the amount of idlers.  Maybe something akin to VB's Task Force staff officers? Or some sort of background task they can be assigned to?

Scientists can be assigned to naval admin commands when?

"Alpha Fleet and Beta Fleet, set a course directly towards each other at 10,000 km/s."
"Lord Admiral, sir, is this wise?"
"It's better than wise, Captain...it's science!!"

 

[DFNewb]

In regard to "Miscellaneous Components" I was wondering if we could also link them to a character type.  Say I want my science vessel to be equipped with a science lab section and then add a scientist to the ship.  I think this would be fun for role-play perspective and give some needed jobs to characters that otherwise don't have any even if they don't actually do anything.

I could think of many other reasons for attaching different types of commanders, administrators or the like to ships. 

I usually just use the Science Department option for this (150 tons seems reasonable & it creates an officer slot for the ship too).   I use the same thing for my hospital ships treatment rooms, just headcanon that the officer is a doctor, or  manufactory (officer is an engineer) and so forth.   A long as the component is not really changing the capabilities of the ship it works OK.

I think Jorgen's idea was more to have a component where unused scientists and civ admins could be stationed for flavor. . . currently, many of these officers have not got much to do for large parts of the game - many civ admins won't be useful until late game when you have many developed colonies, and many scientists will just never get used because there's 2-3 better in their field.  Ideally, it would be nice for those leaders to still have a chance to contribute, but as no niche exists for them flavor reasons and a new misc component would be sufficient.

On the topic of massive amounts of unused officers, it would be nice if there was something mechanically useful we could use them for.  Scientists in particular have very few being useful at any one time relative to the amount of idlers.  Maybe something akin to VB's Task Force staff officers? Or some sort of background task they can be assigned to?

When I play I usually have all my scientists researching even with only 1 lab cause it can give them bonuses to their research stat or max labs.

[nuclearslurpee]

When I play I usually have all my scientists researching even with only 1 lab cause it can give them bonuses to their research stat or max labs.

Scientists can gain bonuses to their max labs even when idle, but their research skill only increases when in a lab I believe.

I used to do this, but especially in the early game when you have few labs it takes valuable space away that you need to blitz out early techs I find. Added to that, usually your early scientists are quite weak aside from one or two, and you'll eventually generate ones with better skills more quickly than you can level up your starting scientists. In any non-critical fields you're usually better off in terms of net RP generated to wait for a good scientist to spawn and use the good ones you've got to jump ahead in a couple of key tech areas.

By "usually" I mean "never" because I always generate three Bio/Gen rock stars at game start and muddle along praying for just one C/P specialist, but your mileage may vary...

[QuakeIV]

I usually have at least one main line researcher in each area that I am doing work in, and then have basically a 'trainee' that has 1-3 labs who is trying to catch up before the mainline person dies.  Later as I grow wealthier I add more of these people so that I have a steady supply of useful researchers.  The number of labs doesn't seem to substantially effect skill gain, so you can potentially relatively cheaply ensure that you have good researchers for the future, which is absolutely worth it for me even early game.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have role-play rules in place that forces all factions to use allot more scientist. First of all each lab is only usable in ONE research category so no way to switch a lab from being used from Construction to Groung-combat for example... If there is need I would have to convert 2 labs to 1 to switch field so it would be costly.

In addition to that no specific project type can just switch labs willy-nilly either so I need to use multiple scientist in each field to work on different projects. A scientist can only reassign one lab for every 10 administration skill they have per year, minimum one lab. These project are so large and impactful to society that it is really difficult to shift research around without becoming very inefficient.

So when I want to start work on a new component I usually can only reassign one or two labs per year to work on it. Since I also usually play on 10-15% research you may imagine what effect this have on priorities and type of components that get used. It also highly influence ship design as well. Scientists usually can retain their labs if they continue working on component types of similar types.

If a large project ends and it has a huge amount of labs it usually have to be divided among all the other projects or several new projects started... though I do allow some type of techs to be interchangeable such as passive EM, Thermal and Active strength for example... I can the have one running project for those same technologies.

This give me allot of use for allot more scientists over time.

[Borealis4x]

Again, I can't seem to leave a comment without it devolving into a math nerd fight I can't even follow.

Anyways, on the topic of more roles for leaders I fully support it but I don't think it will come with this update. What I do hope will come, and what I assume would just require a minor tweak to a variable or two, is making Ground Officers spawn much more rapidly. I personally think they should be more plentiful than Naval officers since I'd bet recruiting standards would be low (no offense to anyone in the Army but an Naval officer is probably a literal rocket scientist at least). However, I'd settle for them spawning at the same rate as Naval officers for now.

What would be even better is a way to tweak leader spawn rates from the game options menu, just like you can with survey speeds and such.

Also, making Scientists lead survey ground units instead of ground leaders would be really cool.

[nuclearslurpee]

Anyways, on the topic of more roles for leaders I fully support it but I don't think it will come with this update. What I do hope will come, and what I assume would just require a minor tweak to a variable or two, is making Ground Officers spawn much more rapidly. I personally think they should be more plentiful than Naval officers since I'd bet recruiting standards would be low (no offense to anyone in the Army but an Naval officer is probably a literal rocket scientist at least). However, I'd settle for them spawning at the same rate as Naval officers for now.

This would need to be coupled with a general buff to officer spawn rates (say from 5/yr to 6/yr per academy) so that adding ground officers isn't taking away naval officers and scientists. The latter two are arguably more vital which I think is why ground force officers currently are underrepresented, so ideally we can bump up the spawn rate overall so that all officers are well-represented. I would prefer if quality of officers were a limit on military expansion rather than quantity as it is now.

What would be even better is a way to tweak leader spawn rates from the game options menu, just like you can with survey speeds and such.

Would support this especially coupled with the ability to set rank ratios - bring back 4:1 ground forces!

[Droll]

Anyways, on the topic of more roles for leaders I fully support it but I don't think it will come with this update. What I do hope will come, and what I assume would just require a minor tweak to a variable or two, is making Ground Officers spawn much more rapidly. I personally think they should be more plentiful than Naval officers since I'd bet recruiting standards would be low (no offense to anyone in the Army but an Naval officer is probably a literal rocket scientist at least). However, I'd settle for them spawning at the same rate as Naval officers for now.

This would need to be coupled with a general buff to officer spawn rates (say from 5/yr to 6/yr per academy) so that adding ground officers isn't taking away naval officers and scientists. The latter two are arguably more vital which I think is why ground force officers currently are underrepresented, so ideally we can bump up the spawn rate overall so that all officers are well-represented. I would prefer if quality of officers were a limit on military expansion rather than quantity as it is now.

What would be even better is a way to tweak leader spawn rates from the game options menu, just like you can with survey speeds and such.

Would support this especially coupled with the ability to set rank ratios - bring back 4:1 ground forces!

As well as tweakable rank ratios - I would like the academy structure to get split into Naval, Ground, Science and Management types that each give out their own type of characters only. If you don't want it to be that granular instead make it so that the separation is military academy (naval, ground), civilian academy (admin, scientist) instead. I have made this suggestion on the thread before but the post is pretty deeply buried by now.

[Jorgen_CAB]

As well as tweakable rank ratios - I would like the academy structure to get split into Naval, Ground, Science and Management types that each give out their own type of characters only. If you don't want it to be that granular instead make it so that the separation is military academy (naval, ground), civilian academy (admin, scientist) instead. I have made this suggestion on the thread before but the post is pretty deeply buried by now.

I agree that splitting up Academies between Civilian and Military make sense... I also think you can add some more effect to academies aside from just training characters and crew. I also think they both should require population to run as well, they also should have a wealth cost. At least civilian academies should have some other effect outside training administrators and scientists.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Anyways, on the topic of more roles for leaders I fully support it but I don't think it will come with this update. What I do hope will come, and what I assume would just require a minor tweak to a variable or two, is making Ground Officers spawn much more rapidly.

If you assign a ground officer as academy commandant, it will generate more ground force officers.

[Borealis4x]

Anyways, on the topic of more roles for leaders I fully support it but I don't think it will come with this update. What I do hope will come, and what I assume would just require a minor tweak to a variable or two, is making Ground Officers spawn much more rapidly.

If you assign a ground officer as academy commandant, it will generate more ground force officers.

I am aware of this and do regularly assign ground officers as commandants, but it is still not enough imo.