Suggestions for 3.3

[Steve Walmsley]

Have the keyboard arrow keys "pan" in the System Map (in addition to the arrow buttons).

The keyboard keypad will pan the system map and the keypad +/- will zoom it,

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

5.  Allow "banning" a planet/moon that has population (to keep civilian ships from adding more).  See the bug report I'm about to post on why I ran in to this.  

There is a Ban Body button on the F9 System View window that will do this.

Steve

[jfelten]

Have the keyboard arrow keys "pan" in the System Map (in addition to the arrow buttons).

The keyboard keypad will pan the system map and the keypad +/- will zoom it,

Steve

O.K.  I'm using a laptop without a keypad so I missed that and tried using the arrow keys which didn't work.  The laptop does have the "Fn" pseudo-keypad but those are miserable to try to use for much.

[jfelten]

5.  Allow "banning" a planet/moon that has population (to keep civilian ships from adding more).  See the bug report I'm about to post on why I ran in to this.  

There is a Ban Body button on the F9 System View window that will do this.

Steve

I did try that.  Unfortunately it doesn't work for zero pop "colonies" and throws an error dialog instead.

[Father Tim]

5.  Allow "banning" a planet/moon that has population (to keep civilian ships from adding more).  See the bug report I'm about to post on why I ran in to this.  

There is a Ban Body button on the F9 System View window that will do this.

Steve

I did try that.  Unfortunately it doesn't work for zero pop "colonies" and throws an error dialog instead.

Banning a planet with an existing colony throws an error, as it should.  The short version is you can't declare a colony off-limits to civilians only.  That's the point of civilian shipping - it goes where it wants to, not where you want it to.  Any colony with less than 10m population and less than its Infrastructure can support is a valid delivery location.  The probem arises from putting colonies on Col Cost:N/A worlds (such as automated mining sites), which the current version of Aurora interprets as being the same as Col Cost: 0.0.   When the underlying bug is fixed (which it has been for 4.0) the problem will disappear.   In the mean time, you will have to manually remove the excess population in SM Mode (or just live with the problem).

[jfelten]

Banning a planet with an existing colony throws an error, as it should.  The short version is you can't declare a colony off-limits to civilians only.  That's the point of civilian shipping - it goes where it wants to, not where you want it to.  Any colony with less than 10m population and less than its Infrastructure can support is a valid delivery location.  The problem arises from putting colonies on Col Cost:N/A worlds (such as automated mining sites), which the current version of Aurora interprets as being the same as Col Cost: 0.0.   When the underlying bug is fixed (which it has been for 4.0) the problem will disappear.   In the mean time, you will have to manually remove the excess population in SM Mode (or just live with the problem).

I can't imagine why the government/military shouldn't be able to tell the civilian ships "This colony/system/area is off limits to you".  Especially when you consider that some government types are dictatorships or monarchies.

[schroeam]

Banning a planet with an existing colony throws an error, as it should.  The short version is you can't declare a colony off-limits to civilians only.  That's the point of civilian shipping - it goes where it wants to, not where you want it to.  Any colony with less than 10m population and less than its Infrastructure can support is a valid delivery location.  The problem arises from putting colonies on Col Cost:N/A worlds (such as automated mining sites), which the current version of Aurora interprets as being the same as Col Cost: 0.0.   When the underlying bug is fixed (which it has been for 4.0) the problem will disappear.   In the mean time, you will have to manually remove the excess population in SM Mode (or just live with the problem).

I can't imagine why the government/military shouldn't be able to tell the civilian ships "This colony/system/area is off limits to you".  Especially when you consider that some government types are dictatorships or monarchies.

I agree that at some point, regardless of the government type, there will be areas that the government wants off limits to civilian ships due to quarantine, rebellion, secret research, etc.  There are plenty of examples of this throughout history, and even present today.

Adam.

[schroeam]

How about an addition to the espionage code that allows espionage teams to sneak into alien empires using civilian ships?  Just assign the target empire and the team makes it's own way, if possible, to the destination.  If there is not a way, then maybe a message stating that the target empire was unreachable through clandestine means.

Adam.

[Erik L]

How about an addition to the espionage code that allows espionage teams to sneak into alien empires using civilian ships?  Just assign the target empire and the team makes it's own way, if possible, to the destination.  If there is not a way, then maybe a message stating that the target empire was unreachable through clandestine means.

Adam.

This idea I like.

Steve, with the additional automation, what you going to do with trade routes? Will the trade ships become legitimate contacts and targets?

[alanwebber]

When building fighters, could we have a warning if a default fleet isn't selected? I've just built 12 fighters which disappeared into the ether. They are still present on the squadrons screen but not on the individual units one.

[Bellerophon06]

I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but I would be interested in seeing the option to build military or commercial engines.  Much like the Starfire system where commercial ships whose engines can run all out at all times with little maintenance penalty and warships that can go much faster than the commercial ships, but can only do so for limited periods.  This could also require warships to have a "cruising speed" after which maintenance penalties would begin to apply.  The military engine could have a speed increase of 50% from the normal "maximum" speed but have a 75% failure increase over time, for instance.  The consequences would be interesting if one of your warships had a major failure while they were running from the enemy at flank speed.

[Brian Neumann]

I don't know how difficult this would be to code, but I would be interested in seeing the option to build military or commercial engines.  Much like the Starfire system where commercial ships whose engines can run all out at all times with little maintenance penalty and warships that can go much faster than the commercial ships, but can only do so for limited periods.  This could also require warships to have a "cruising speed" after which maintenance penalties would begin to apply.  The military engine could have a speed increase of 50% from the normal "maximum" speed but have a 75% failure increase over time, for instance.  The consequences would be interesting if one of your warships had a major failure while they were running from the enemy at flank speed.

In a way there is already part of this in place.  The commercial engine has several levels of improved efficiency added to it.  As thier is a 2-1 ratio of fuel efficiency vs engine power change this results in slower ships (a 20% reduction in fuel use is also a 10% reduction in engine power)  The reduction in power and the fuel use is cumulative so even a few levels of each can make a big difference on how much fuel you use.  The reverse is also true.  A "military" engine uses a more powerfull engine but one that is much less fuel effecient.  (a 10% boost to power is also a 20% increase in fuel use.  all together that is about a 13% increase in fuel use)

Brian

[jfelten]

I was also thinking about commercial engines like the old Ic.  It does seem a bit silly that freighters are essentially the same speed as warships.  And I don't think that fuel efficiency should be the main point to differentiate on.  I would like commercial engines to also be substantially cheaper (50%?) and to require substantially less maintenance and/or have a lower failure rate so they would be a worthwhile option, but maybe be about 75% as powerful as military engines.  You would have to balance it against simply putting fewer regular engines in the design so there was an advantage to the civilian engines.  It could be a fairly low tech modifier to be researched and apply to regular engines similar to the efficiency modifier.  

I'm not too keen on the idea of running military engines at full power resulting in things falling apart.  You are going to end up with what is essentially a random event costing someone a major battle.  Even if that is "realistic" it doesn't make for a good game unless you are going for historical recreation accuracy (which obviously isn't the case with Aurora).

[Charlie Beeler]

I agree with Brian.  Research different power and fuel efficencies then design the engines and powerplants accordingly.

[schroeam]

I'm not sure that a knew line of tech for a commercial engine is the right answer.  They would still have the ability to run faster than a warship as long as there are not restrictions in the number of engines used.  Maybe the right answer is an additional tech in the mode of some sort of booster.  I guess it would work the same as afterburners for today's fighters.  They would provide a short term boost of speed to quickly close the range with an enemy, but at the same time increase the possibility of engine damage exponentially with regard to time in service and the consumption of fuel goes up by a factor of maybe four or more.  I'm not exactly sure where this would correlate in SF, but I think the closest was detuning engines.  Maybe the engine booster tech line would allow for longer periods of use before catastrophic effects took place as well as slightly smaller percentage (1-2%) of fuel consumption with each tech level.  As with everything, a smaller version could be created for gunboats and fighters.  

Adam.