Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Kristover]

I second the training admin comment.  I don’t use them now because of the micro but would them if it was structured like this.

[Snoman314]

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.

I use them religiously. Getting rotated through the training and overhaul fleets before being released for active duty is part of my ship production pipeline. I think it makes sense for there to be a major advantage to having well trained crews, but for that to take a little bit of admin to arrange.

[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.

I use them religiously. Getting rotated through the training and overhaul fleets before being released for active duty is part of my ship production pipeline. I think it makes sense for there to be a major advantage to having well trained crews, but for that to take a little bit of admin to arrange.

This is fair. My thing is more, I want to have a job for my admirals with Crew Training and very little else + a more thematically appropriate command type for reserve/training fleets, but I hate the micro and resource use of the current training mechanics. So my idea is to have the Training HQ give a passive bonus, and then have the current training mechanic as an order type that gives x2 boost or similar to the training rate in exchange for the micro + resource usage.

[Snoman314]

This is fair. My thing is more, I want to have a job for my admirals with Crew Training and very little else + a more thematically appropriate command type for reserve/training fleets, but I hate the micro and resource use of the current training mechanics. So my idea is to have the Training HQ give a passive bonus, and then have the current training mechanic as an order type that gives x2 boost or similar to the training rate in exchange for the micro + resource usage.

Ahh OK. So like a 'Fleet Reserve' Admin Command type, for ships not on active service, that gives a small training bonus. I like that, especially as a way to give a bump up crew rating while ships aren't needed on active duty (seeing as fleet training Admin commands don't give any crew training bonus). As long as the Fleet training bonus was small and didn't become a way to skip using the fleet training mechanics.

Now you've pointed this out, I think I'll be using Naval type Admin commands for my reserve fleets, and giving them admirals with high crew training.

[jatzi]

While Steve is apparently working on the refit costs section I thought Id bring up adding a time to refit section to that screen. Personally I usually don't particularly care about the cost to refit something, I mostly care about the time it'd take. Building a brand new ship can take a long time, especially if you dont have components built for it. Refitting something to get a ship with similar capabilities can be quicker than building a new ship. Unless it's not which I'd like to know. If some thing costs a lot to refit but takes less time than building the class from scratch I'd strongly consider doing the refit to save time. So it's a useful metric and having it shown on the screen would be awesome. Thanks!

[nuclearslurpee]

While Steve is apparently working on the refit costs section I thought Id bring up adding a time to refit section to that screen. Personally I usually don't particularly care about the cost to refit something, I mostly care about the time it'd take. Building a brand new ship can take a long time, especially if you dont have components built for it. Refitting something to get a ship with similar capabilities can be quicker than building a new ship. Unless it's not which I'd like to know. If some thing costs a lot to refit but takes less time than building the class from scratch I'd strongly consider doing the refit to save time. So it's a useful metric and having it shown on the screen would be awesome. Thanks!

Refit/build time is directly proportional to build cost, so if the refit cost is 15% of the build cost it will take 15% of the class build time to do the refit. In other words, if the refit cost is less than 100% then the refit will be faster than a new build.

[alex_brunius]

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.

Not every day you make a suggestion on the Aurora 4x Forums and it's implemented and released later the same day. 
Maybe I should go give gambling a try...


That said after giving it some reflection I probably would have left some of the Superheavy techs untouched, and I was pretty fine with the Powered Infantry Armour (especially Heavy) being expensive as I see it as more or less Mecha/Spacemarines stuff in RP which IMO makes sense unlocking later.

I also missed suggesting that HQs design costs do become a bit silly if you want to make large primitive military OOBs (like spending 20-40% of wealth on ground forces) where you end up needing 1000-2000 RP research unlocks for the HQs even without extra armor for them.

[nuclearslurpee]

That said after giving it some reflection I probably would have left some of the Superheavy techs untouched, and I was pretty fine with the Powered Infantry Armour (especially Heavy) being expensive as I see it as more or less Mecha/Spacemarines stuff in RP which IMO makes sense unlocking later.

I think Steve intends to add higher levels of some tech lines, and infantry armor would be one of them I imagine. In some other thread we discussed Space Marines and the consensus seemed to be that something more like 4x armor/4x HP would be more fitting than the 2x/2x we have now.

Though I do agree that the infantry armor didn't really need a cost reduction, I already used that one regularly. However I am enjoying the cheaper research costs for the terrain capabilities as I never used them before but now they are so accessible, why not? 

I also missed suggesting that HQs design costs do become a bit silly if you want to make large primitive military OOBs (like spending 20-40% of wealth on ground forces) where you end up needing 1000-2000 RP research unlocks for the HQs even without extra armor for them.

The HQ components really should have the same cost scaling as every other component. Personally I would remove the size cap and allow for a HQ2.5M component to take up 5,000 tons, since such a major HQ should be so large, but we could just as well keep the 250-ton size cap and reduce the scaling factor to put costs in line with everything else. That would keep research costs down and make higher HQ levels reasonably affordable.

[Ultimoos]

Terrain capabilities could be tiered. Each with increasing training time.
Something like:
Basic survival - Reduces effectiveness penalty by half.
Familiarization - No penalty, no benefits in unfamiliar territory.
Terrain utilization - Effectiveness increased by 50%.
Elite adaptability - Effectiveness doubled.

Weapon techs could be tiered too. For example each level would increase weapons accuracy. Development of smarter weapons making it easier to hit hiding or fast moving targets.
A counter to that could be tiering of armor types, each increasing hit points.

Just throwing ideas around.

[Andrew]

Though I do agree that the infantry armor didn't really need a cost reduction, I already used that one regularly. However I am enjoying the cheaper research costs for the terrain capabilities as I never used them before but now they are so accessible, why not? 
 want to make large primitive military OOBs (like spending 20-40% of wealth on ground forces) where you end up needing 1000-2000 RP research unlocks for the HQs even without extra armor for them.

The terrain modifiers still make the units with them a lot more expensive, so you can't put many on a unit . You have to build the units for the planet so your offensive units can't really use them as the time taken to build an offensive army means you really need to have been building it before the target is available.  They can be nice on defensive units as you know the terrain , or small units made to knock over outposts on minor planets

[nuclearslurpee]

Though I do agree that the infantry armor didn't really need a cost reduction, I already used that one regularly. However I am enjoying the cheaper research costs for the terrain capabilities as I never used them before but now they are so accessible, why not? 

The terrain modifiers still make the units with them a lot more expensive, so you can't put many on a unit . You have to build the units for the planet so your offensive units can't really use them as the time taken to build an offensive army means you really need to have been building it before the target is available.  They can be nice on defensive units as you know the terrain , or small units made to knock over outposts on minor planets

In my current campaign (a Duranium Legion reboot to explore the new features while waiting for the early bugfixes), I rely mostly on mechanized forces, so the cost of my infantry-based formations increases by only about 10% with a single capability due to the large amount of LVH forces that don't use terrain capabilities. The exception is my desert assault corps which includes significant armored units that can benefit from the desert capability, that one is pricier for sure.

[smoelf]

That said after giving it some reflection I probably would have left some of the Superheavy techs untouched, and I was pretty fine with the Powered Infantry Armour (especially Heavy) being expensive as I see it as more or less Mecha/Spacemarines stuff in RP which IMO makes sense unlocking later.

As long as boarding capability is locked behind the first level of Powered Infantry Armour, then I think it should be very accessible, but I would be fine with later tiers being more expensive.

[alex_brunius]

As long as boarding capability is locked behind the first level of Powered Infantry Armour, then I think it should be very accessible, but I would be fine with later tiers being more expensive.

Oh it is??!!! I never actually noticed that because I always get the Powered Infantry Armour as my first tech in Ground Combat
Then ignore what I wrote with that! 

[Desdinova]

A trivial change that I think would be great would be making "geo survey complete" events interrupting events; right now they tend to get skipped over and my geosurvey ground units end up wasting a lot of time sitting on desolate planets doing nothing.

SJW: Above added for v2.3.0

I would like to see a way to export and import a player race, including names, images, and naming themes. I like to play "United Nations" games with a diverse set of race name themes, and it always takes a bunch of time to set them up when I start a new game.

Also, it would be nice to be able to import/export the naval admin command hierarchy, since this is also another big game setup step.

It would be nice if display options on the main screen and galactic map were remembered in the database and consistent across saves. Setting the galactic map display options is another time consuming setup step I do once at the start of every new game.

I would love it if scrapped or destroyed ships could have their histories retained, the same way we can preserve notable retired/dead commanders.

[nuclearslurpee]

Words of wisdom

I like all of these so yes please.

Also:

Also, it would be nice to be able to import/export the naval admin command hierarchy, since this is also another big game setup step.

One automation trick I would find useful would be for an admin command to be assigned, by default, a required rank one level under its parent command when created if its parent command has a required rank set by the player. Even better would be if it also inherits the rest of the auto-assign settings from the parent rank - for example, if I create the Logistics Command (auto-assign on, requires Logistics skill, rank Admiral), then creating the Logistics Department underneath it should have auto-assign on, requires Logistics skill, and rank Vice Admiral. This wouldn't eliminate all of the clicking I have to do when I set up the admin commands but it would greatly streamline the process.