Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

In my current campaign, I have been using scout fighters on my survey ships to check planets for any hostile aliens before risking my valuable survey ships. I have noticed that when the survey ship recovers the fighter, if the fighter has very low fuel the conditional refueling order is triggered and the survey ship (which can easily refuel the fighter and has lots of fuel left) will turn for home to refuel.

Suggestion: Conditional orders such as "Fuel less than X%" should not include parasites in hangars when evaluating the condition.

I've checked the code and parasites are not considered for conditional orders. Possibly something else I fixed without remembering it.

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: Add functionality to transfer an existing colony to another race. This would be a useful complement to the recently-added functionality to transfer ships between races, particularly in multiple player race games. Ideally, this could also include transferring the existing ground units at a colony (possibly optionally with a checkbox).

While the obvious use case is to implement concessions as part of a peace treaty between player races, I'm also very interested in using this kind of functionality to handle faction break-ups, civil wars, those kinds of things. Right now, there's no way to make this happen beyond granting a single colony independence, for example it is not possible to grant a bunch of colonies independence and then group them into a single polity.

[TheBawkHawk]

There is a way to transfer colonies between races. Ground invasions! The way that I've been doing so up until now has been to transfer all of the ground troops at the colony over to the recipient race (or if there are none, SM generate a ground unit from the recipient race on the body), and set the two hostile for a single tick of ground combat (taking care to prevent any auto-fire or STO mishaps in the meantime). It works, but also leads to certain drawbacks like the colony having the conquered political status, the need for a policing force, and potential unintended tech transfers. The drawbacks can be mitigated somewhat by SM tools, but it's still not ideal.

Being able to transfer colonies to other races more easily (particularly NPR races!) would be a great addition in my books.

[nuclearslurpee]

It works, but also leads to certain drawbacks like the colony having the conquered political status, the need for a policing force, and potential unintended tech transfers.

This is IMO the biggest drawback, it basically means trying to do this "legit" with SM mode leaves the new polity crippled for however long it takes for the colonists to stop "revolting". Of course anything is possible with careful DB editing but that's just asking for it.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Hi All,

I don't know if this has been mentioned before (I couldn't see it, apologies if i've missed it) but it's something I'd love to see added.

It'd be great to have the ability to expend ships as targets in order to test out new weapons systems, especially in the early game before you encounter NPR's.

It'd add some great RP for me as I find I don't always know how well weapons function until i provoke a fight with an NPR, not to mention the RP of fleet manouvers/exercises.

I thought this could be achieved by either changing the abandon ship function to a self destruct option and adding a seperate abandon ship where the crew evacuate but the ship remains intact though non-operational. 
Or alternatively, a new option added in ship designer to create a ship with 0 crew but cannot move or use non-automated systems (such as potentially CIWS).  This could even allow the designing of custom target hulls.

It was just an idea for adding something a bit interesting but hopefully not an enormous amount of work.  I'm sure it's much harder than it sounds but thought i'd share the idea!

I've added some new functionality that should allow a more flexible version of the above.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13090.msg166210#msg166210

[alex_brunius]

When I'm playing the game it feels like some of the stuff I enjoy especially with ground combat units unlocks a bit "too late" or cost a bit too much RP to be able to play around with in primitive or conventional starts until your already in the "mid game" or exploration phase. And for no real logical or good reason that I can think of at least.

For example stories where you just manage to get to space proper and find alien ruins on Mars you need to first put 5000rp into both Construction Equipment and Xenoarcheology Equipment before you can even design ground units to start exploring them.

Another thing I think feel odd is the boarding combat stuff (5000 RP for Boarding Combat Capability + 4000 RP for Troop Transport Bay + 6000 RP for Boarding Bays = 15k RP).

Not to mention the fighter weapons (3 x 5000RP) that have lots of potential for early game fun if they were balanced properly so they actually have a decent chance to hit ground forces / to damage, and so that AA is not super binary like nothing... nothing... nothing... all ground support fighters slaughtered.

Then we also have the Salvage Module (5000RP). Do I really need the same amount of research as developing jump drive theory in order to know how to dismantle an enemy faction space station I destroyed in orbit of Earth?



The only logical reason I can think of limiting these to later in the game is to not overload new players with too much information/stuff right away, but let's be honest here... Auroroa 4x was never designed to be friend to new players to begin with 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

When I'm playing the game it feels like some of the stuff I enjoy especially with ground combat units unlocks a bit "too late" or cost a bit too much RP to be able to play around with in primitive or conventional starts until your already in the "mid game" or exploration phase. And for no real logical or good reason that I can think of at least.

For example stories where you just manage to get to space proper and find alien ruins on Mars you need to first put 5000rp into both Construction Equipment and Xenoarcheology Equipment before you can even design ground units to start exploring them.

Another thing I think feel odd is the boarding combat stuff (5000 RP for Boarding Combat Capability + 4000 RP for Troop Transport Bay + 6000 RP for Boarding Bays = 15k RP).

Not to mention the fighter weapons (3 x 5000RP) that have lots of potential for early game fun if they were balanced properly so they actually have a decent chance to hit ground forces / to damage, and so that AA is not super binary like nothing... nothing... nothing... all ground support fighters slaughtered.

Then we also have the Salvage Module (5000RP). Do I really need the same amount of research as developing jump drive theory in order to know how to dismantle an enemy faction space station I destroyed in orbit of Earth?

The only logical reason I can think of limiting these to later in the game is to not overload new players with too much information/stuff right away, but let's be honest here... Auroroa 4x was never designed to be friend to new players to begin with 

Yes, I agree that the more fun parts of ground forces are currently limited by high research costs. I think I already knew that without consciously registering it

I'll take a look at those costs.

[Tavik Toth]

I don't know if this has been asked before, but would be it possible to have conventional tech version of lasers or railguns? Sometimes when I wish I had an option to use something other than missiles when doing a near-conventional tech playthrough.

[Ultimoos]

Looks like Steve is on a roll this week.
I made that suggestion some time ago, but I never got an answer to it (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13150.0), so I'll try my chances one more time.
We've all seen military ships just stay in place while exchanging beam fire with planetary defense. Or your beam fighters stay in place while attacking stationary enemy ship and taking hits. This makes beam combat sketchy. You would make waypoints so your ships would keep moving to evade enemy shots. it's especially problematic with fighter swarms.
I'm suggesting to make ships participating in combat to be treated as if they are going at full speed, regardless of them moving or standing in place.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Looks like Steve is on a roll this week.
I made that suggestion some time ago, but I never got an answer to it (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13150.0), so I'll try my chances one more time.
We've all seen military ships just stay in place while exchanging beam fire with planetary defense. Or your beam fighters stay in place while attacking stationary enemy ship and taking hits. This makes beam combat sketchy. You would make waypoints so your ships would keep moving to evade enemy shots. it's especially problematic with fighter swarms.
I'm suggesting to make ships participating in combat to be treated as if they are going at full speed, regardless of them moving or standing in place.

They are already treated as if they are going at full speed.

[Ultimoos]

Ok, was not aware of that. Thanks for clarifying

[bankshot]

For the Changes to Governor assignment to populations https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13090.msg166138#msg166138 I'd like to request that the default for civilian colonies be toggleable or returned to manual.  I routinely assign governors to CMCs to boost production if I'm buying the minerals. 

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: Add "Replace Element" button to Ground Forces window, Formation Templates tab.

The functionality would be: the user selects a formation element in the lower-right panel and a unit type in the upper-left panel. On pressing the Replace Element button, the current formation element is replaced with an element of the new selected unit type (same number of units).

The use case I have in mind here is to work in combination with the Copy + Update button to quickly create variations of similar formations - one example would be GEO/XEN/DEC formations, another slightly more complex example would be creating specialist formations, e.g., I might have a standard Infantry Brigade and then variants for desert, mountain, etc. specializations.

It may also be worth having a "Copy Formation" button in addition to the current Copy + Update if things get too messy otherwise.

[JacenHan]

I know 2.2 just came out and I'm still enjoying all the new features, but...

Suggestion: Have units built using the new "Organization" tab of Ground Forces use the name of the Organization node for the formations created instead of the name of the formation template (possibly a toggle option). For example, if I have an "Infantry Division" organization with a "Division Headquarters Assets" top-level formation template, the formation added to the construction queue or instant built would be named "1st Infantry Division" instead of "1st Division Headquarters Assets".

It would be very nice if we could cascade this down through nested templates as well (IE, the "Infantry Division" organization above contains three "Infantry Brigade" organizations below the division headquarters, and those would be named "1st/2nd/3rd Infantry Brigade" instead of "1st/2nd/3rd Brigade Headquarters Assets"), but that sounds more complicated since it looks like nesting organizations just copies the contents and doesn't link the organizations themselves.

[nuclearslurpee]

Does anyone actually use Training naval admins? I feel like it is too much micromanagement so most people avoid it, but maybe people do use it and we just don't talk about it much?

Suggestion: Change Training Admin Command to give 0.25 Crew Training and 0.25 Fleet Training, and eliminate the training behavior for fleets under this type of command.

This would eliminate micromanagement and make Training commands worth using, plus it would create some jobs for my admirals with Crew Training and no other useful skills. If we still want to have access to the current mechanic (or better, the old VB6 mechanic?) it could be re-implemented as an order or standing order.

EDIT: It is possible to implement this by adding a new naval admin command type in the DB. This means you can have both options very easily, for anyone who wants to try this change for themselves. Easy one-liner in DIM_NavalAdminCommandTypes - usual rules about bug reporting apply of course.