Suggestions for 3.3

[jfelten]

Individual Unit Details window
Combat Settings tab
Assign Weapons to Selected Fire Control pane

Devise some way to see all the text for entries in that pane.  Either make the pane resizable somehow, or perhaps create mouse-over text for that entry or such.  Currently the way I name things I put the maximum range of the sensor or missile at the end, but that gets cut off here so I can't see it.

Similar problem in the "Selected fire Control (SFC)" pulldown list in the same window.

Also, same window, could the "Max PD Range" box default to the maximum range of the selected fire control above it?  I'm afraid I'm going to make a mental miscalculation here sometime and get my fleet whacked because of it.  If it defaulted, I could just select the anti-missile
fire control from the pick list and hit the "Set Mode" button.  Or at least I would know I could change to a smaller number but not larger.

[ZimRathbone]

just something that occured to me...

There is a change for the XA team to research out a ruin, but AFAIK, there is no downside to the reactivation of installtions (ie if there are 200 abandoned installations in a ruin, then you will get 200 working installtions (eventually).  The only effect of team skill is how long you will take to get them all.

Being somewhat cynical, and knowing more than a few field archaeologists, there should be a significant change of lower skill teams completly messing up the reactivation process (Oh, you meant DONT touch the  big red Molly button! Whoops! <BOOOOOOM>)

I know of more than one Archeological team who's first reaction to arriving on site is "Who gets to drive the JCB?"  

I'd limit the usual catastrophe to just losing a potential installation, but really bad results could mean the loss of more than 1, or damage/destuction to existing installtions, or even loss of the team. More a colour thing than anything else.

[welchbloke]

just something that occured to me...

There is a change for the XA team to research out a ruin, but AFAIK, there is no downside to the reactivation of installtions (ie if there are 200 abandoned installations in a ruin, then you will get 200 working installtions (eventually).  The only effect of team skill is how long you will take to get them all.

Being somewhat cynical, and knowing more than a few field archaeologists, there should be a significant change of lower skill teams completly messing up the reactivation process (Oh, you meant DONT touch the  big red Molly button! Whoops! <BOOOOOOM>)

I know of more than one Archeological team who's first reaction to arriving on site is "Who gets to drive the JCB?"  

[IanD]

Steve – After the revelations that Mars contains substantially more water than previously thought (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6459967.stm  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=red ... rt-massive) shouldn’t the stats for Mars be updated? unfortunately I fear this will not affect the colony cost! but always hopeful.
Regards
Ian

[jfelten]

Feature requests:  

On the event log window:  

1.  Would it be a simple code change to allow copy/pasting from that window?  

2.  Could the window be made resizable?  

3.  Could the function keys be enabled for that window (to open other Aurora windows, etc.)?  

4.  Add an option for the SM to add a free text entry to the log for a particular empire.  

Thanks

[Erik L]

Feature requests:  

On the event log window:  

1.  Would it be a simple code change to allow copy/pasting from that window?  

You can output a text file from that window.

[Randy]

Just a thought-

  There is already a delay for firing and some other commands based on crew training levels.

  Reading about the various battles it occurs to me that for missile armed ships this delay can be entirely eliminated by simply having the missiles fired to a marshalling point before sending the volley to its target.

   I suggest that crew trainging and quality should also affect the time it takes to re-target missiles. Otherwise you can virtually ignore the delay issue for misile races as they can (most of the time) be gotten around just by launching missiles at one target and then switching target with no penalty...

[jfelten]

Feature requests:  

On the event log window:  

1.  Would it be a simple code change to allow copy/pasting from that window?  

You can output a text file from that window.

Yes, but that is a lot more work and slower than just highlighting something and copy/pasting it in to an email to a player.  For ones and twos it isn't an issue but if you start doing it all the time, it gets old.  And the export to text takes awhile once the log gets long.  You can shorten the log of course but maybe you don't want to for some reason.  If it is just a flag Steve can set to allow copy/pasting from that window, it would be nice if he would do that.

[waresky]

Name and Routes COLOR EDITABLE pls,Steve,for more easy printable version (black and white for less expense on laser toner and quickly chomprension)of Galactic Map.

Am love gave a printable version to Galactic map,u know Megatravller "Fleets Operation",and a good printing strategical map are very useful (4 me,obviously,hope r same for all ur friends here:).)

[waresky]

Dear Steve,hope u can understand that am write:

in solar system map,classic,when u hit (clik) on a squadroon,directly on map,it's possible this action OPEN a tas Group window directly?obviously not "left" click but RIGHT click....i think r more useful than check "military" classic windos on left and try to found the right Task Group,then mouse right click and open the window...u understand what am mean?

[Larac]

A simple addition to raise the paranoia of player races, (at least I assume it would be simple).

Have some random fluff for ruins that is given with the first result of the xenologists investigations. E.g.  “These installations appear to have malfunctioned and simply been abandoned” or “this settlement was destroyed by nuclear bombardment”. This may give a player race a reason to increase their military R&D and construction.

If the result could be tied to the condition of the ruin all the better.  E.g. Destroyed Outpost – 70% chance result of some sort of military action, ruined outpost - 50% chance of “bombardment +/- indications of ground combat” etc. You could even solicit the group for suitable fluff.

If you want to be more ambitious, then the type of fluff could affect the security requirements of populations in adjoining systems. But I fear this could be a lot of work for little return.

Regards
Ian

One way to do this, might be to allow the users to edit the fluff areas.

A set of files that they could write up the reports to match the events, for ruins and other items. When a Military action Ruin is called for the sw randomly picks a Ruin Report of Military. Might work well for Special Research and other things as well. So the reports would vary greatly as they do in real life, the info would be the same but how it is presented would be more RPish.

Also with the user base writing the text Steve is not put on the spot to generate all the story stuff.

Another Idea would be to allow a SM to choose a set of reports or add extra info into them, to tell more story elements to the players.
If done randomly a threshold number could be set to limit what info is released, so at Lvl 1 its very vague and hinting, to Lvl 10 Where it give detailed info, the SM just sets the Threshold number as the game is played. At the start it is 0-1, then after a few reports are sent it is increased to 1-2, then 3, and if the players are spreading quickly and start losing contact with lots of ships it jumps to 4-7 and so on.

It would give the SM a great tool for telling the story along with everything else.


I am not sure if this can be done yet, still poking around.
Is there a report that can be generated that lists all major events, discoveries and such for each player of their Empire and what they know happened in the Other Empires.
Spies, ships hidden in system that sort of thing?
This would be nice to export to a set of letter heads from differing departments and send as a pdf to the players.
Again I see the User base making all the extra stuff, just a good way to separate the info into departments from the SW.


Will have more as I learn more.
Great Program, Thank You for the time you have poured in

Lee

[waresky]

Steve,am lost in ur program:)..exist a command link to set an ship on MOTHBALLED situation?
Do u remember Megatraveller "DEPOT" Imperial Solar System,where the impi navy put oldest Colonial and Imperials Fleet,maintain a training range,entire moons dedicated to maintenance mothballed ships and so on..

at moment on Aurora are an similar possibility?

[Erik L]

Steve,am lost in ur program:)..exist a command link to set an ship on MOTHBALLED situation?
Do u remember Megatraveller "DEPOT" Imperial Solar System,where the impi navy put oldest Colonial and Imperials Fleet,maintain a training range,entire moons dedicated to maintenance mothballed ships and so on..

at moment on Aurora are an similar possibility?

Ships used to be able to be put into a mothball state. But that was removed in an early 2.x version if I recall. When the maintenance facilities were introduced.

[Kurt (OP)]

Steve -

Something came to light in my latest battle.  I was going through and doing battle prep, assigning weapons to fire controls and assigning targets, and I did something without thinking that kind of messed up my firing plan.  It would have been nice if Aurora told me I screwed up when I did it, rather than informing me after the time advance.  

Basically, I used the "copy Assign" button on the right hand side of the Combat Assignments window to copy the fire control assignments and missile/missile launcher assignments throughout my entire fleet.  This simplifies things greatly, except for one little problem.  I used the first ship on the list as the model, and that ship had the latest and best missiles on board.  When I hit the "Copy Assign" button, that assigned those same missiles to every launcher throughout the fleet, whether or not the ship had those missiles.  Unknown to me, because I wasn't paying attention, severl ships had older missiles, but in spite of the fact that they had zero of the latest missiles in their mags, the latest missiles were assigned to their launchers.  After hitting the time advance I noticed the problem on the Events window and changed the missile assignments as needed.  

This was an oops on my part, but it would be nice if a pop-up came up to tell me that some of the ships didn't have the appropriate missile, rather than assigning a missile that the ship didn't have.  

Kurt

[Charlie Beeler]

Steve,  

IIRC you've increased turret speeds in v4.0 by 25%.  May I suggest that they be increased to match 4x the tracking speed of the same level beam fire control?  This would provide for PD systems that were an par with the max available fire control for a tech iteration.  Missiles can still be built at the same tech levels that exceed the tracking speeds, but this will give beam turrets a chance.  

In the first couple of levels of beam systems this isn't very noticeable.  But it doesn't take long for even double size fire controls to be so far beyond the turret tracking, without extreme expenditure of mass, as to make then near useless except on large ships.  

I've made this change in my database and so far it does not appear to be unbalancing.