Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Time to start a new thread. Please add suggestions in this thread for releases starting with v2.4.0

[Tavik Toth]

Looking at the Customise NPR window, could it be used when creating a non-human player race when creating a game too? Not sure how practical it would be.

[Elouda]

Are missile series ever going to make a return? I really miss their utility from back in the day, being able to automatically revert to previous designs if the latest is not available.

[SinisterMinister]

Hey.  Wanted to request a few accessibility QoL changes for screen reader users. 
1.  Would it be possible to perhaps click on a body or JP in the system view and have the game designate it as the centre point of the system? The effect of this would be to have distances between various points accessible in a text format.  Right now there's no way to know how far various bodies are from one another which makes planning very difficult.  So for example, let's say I wanted to put down a naval base near a major JP in Alpha Centauri, I'd  be able to set that JP as the centre of the system and the nearest body would be displayed to me. 

Next, perhaps this one is too big an ask but figure I'd ask it anyway.  Would it be possible to get something like the OOB by System tab but for known alien ships in different systems?  Perhaps it might even be able to group the various fleets together and have information such as their speed, baring and approximate description reported as well.  For example,
"Sol System     Group A      Orbiting Earth     2005KM/S"

If not that right now if you're following a ship it says the baring of your fleet in relation to that.  It would be nice to somehow have it display a textual description of where the ship is.  This is very useful for raiders or ships that have lost sensor contact.  So instead of saying First Battle Fleet, orders, follow enemy ship, it might say follow enemy ship 132 thousand KM/s from Mars at 90 degrees. 

Hopefully those suggestions make some semblance of sense.  They'd really make the game a lot easier for blind players.

Before I close though one  mechanical suggestion.  Would it ever be considered to add the ability to vassalise the minor races for example?
Thanks once again, hope you consider my suggestions. 

[Garfunkel]

Suggestion for a fighter-sized cargo hold, either 100-ton or 250-tons would be great. Now that fighters can land on all bodies again, they can perform all missions that actual ships can except for transporting facilities and minerals, meaning that it is impossible to run a fighter-only game. Having a fighter-sized cargo hold would rectify that.

[captainwolfer]

Add an option to group missile contacts, I just had an instance where I had to manually count in the event log how many salvos were incoming to figure out the total number of missiles (it was 981 missiles in 109 separate contacts)

[Warer]

Average Mineral Accessibility, Amount and Likelihood during game setup, maybe even a toggle that all planets should have ~some~ minerals.

More options for setting up minerals on planets manually, basically a button to specify that the planet should have a large amount high accessibility low amount or the reverse of which mineral.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Average Mineral Accessibility, Amount and Likelihood during game setup, maybe even a toggle that all planets should have ~some~ minerals.

More options for setting up minerals on planets manually, basically a button to specify that the planet should have a large amount high accessibility low amount or the reverse of which mineral.

In SM Mode, you can already specify the exact amount and accessibility of each mineral on each planet, using the System View window.

[Kaiser]

Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".

Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?

If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).

Currently a ship that has run ot of fuel must be emptied of movement orders, deleted of conditional movements and than can be refueled and orders restored, pretty cumbersome.

[captainwolfer]

Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".

Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?

If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).

Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet

[Kaiser]

Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".

Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?

If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).

Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet

I know that, I wanted avoid the joining fleet order, because than you have to detach the tanker again.

[nuclearslurpee]

Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet

I know that, I wanted avoid the joining fleet order, because than you have to detach the tanker again.

I think this is going to be a necessary annoyance, otherwise you will inevitably get situations where a tanker is ordered to refuel a fleet it cannot keep up with and someone will wonder why their fleet ran out of fuel. Having the tanker join the fleet ensures that the speeds match and prevents all kinds of annoying bugs and it really is not that annoying honestly.

[DrBladeSTEEL]

Steve, add an order to refuel another fleet "while this fleet is moving".

Realistically speaking, I do not see the reason why while a ship is moving (or has run out of fuel but it is still moving at 1km/s) cannot be refuel. After all, in real world fighter and ships get refueled while moving, so why not in sci-fy Aurora?

If you think there's a reason why you do not want do that, maybe we can think of an extra module to add to tankers or maybe a chance that the refuel operation fails and there's an explosion with random damage in one of the two ships (I imagine this operation would be risky and complicated).

Ships can already refuel while moving. Its under the "underway replenishment tech", which starts at 20% of normal rate and goes up from there. You just have to have the tanker join the fleet, and set it to refill ships in the fleet

I know that, I wanted avoid the joining fleet order, because than you have to detach the tanker again.

Piggybacking off Slurpee, you can make this less annoying by 'Join as sub-fleet', then you can simply detach the sub once it's refueled.

[Louella]

More auxiliary command stations, to provide more positions for officers, and allow officers to have more extensive career histories:

Much like how the existing command stations such as "Science Department", "Engineering" etc function, where the officer assigned gives their full bonus, and the ship captain a half bonus to a function.

Things like:
Terraforming Control, for coordinating the terraforming modules of the ship - officer position would be "Planetologist", uses the "Terraforming" bonus of the officer.
Xenolinguistics Department, for dealing with aliens - officer would be "Xenolinguist", uses the "Communications" bonus
Astrophysics Department, for jump stabilisation ships - officer would be "Astrophysicist", using the "Production" bonus
Information Warfare Centre, for ELINT ships - officer would be "Information Warfare Officer", using the "Intelligence" bonus
Astrogeology Department, for orbital mining ships - officer would be "Astrogeologist", using the "Mining" bonus

[nuclearslurpee]

More auxiliary command stations, to provide more positions for officers, and allow officers to have more extensive career histories:

Much like how the existing command stations such as "Science Department", "Engineering" etc function, where the officer assigned gives their full bonus, and the ship captain a half bonus to a function.

Things like:
Terraforming Control, for coordinating the terraforming modules of the ship - officer position would be "Planetologist", uses the "Terraforming" bonus of the officer.
Xenolinguistics Department, for dealing with aliens - officer would be "Xenolinguist", uses the "Communications" bonus
Astrophysics Department, for jump stabilisation ships - officer would be "Astrophysicist", using the "Production" bonus
Information Warfare Centre, for ELINT ships - officer would be "Information Warfare Officer", using the "Intelligence" bonus
Astrogeology Department, for orbital mining ships - officer would be "Astrogeologist", using the "Mining" bonus

This has been discussed many times in the past. The main reason cited not to do this is that it doesn't create interesting decisions in most cases. For example, a terraforming control module is a no-brainer, it goes on every terraforming ship once you research it because it is so small and (presumably) cheap compared to an actual terraforming module. Similar for, e.g., orbital mining, jump stabilization, cargo handling, etc. - in general, auxiliary command stations for commercial ships don't have the same tradeoffs as on military ships because the former are usually so much larger.

There is also an argument that it is too redundant, since on these kinds of ships the commander is already being selected for a single bonus and is giving the full bonus to the ship, unlike a military ship where several commander skills are relevant and these are applied at half-bonus, so having specialized posts makes more sense to specialize the ship rather than just being a straight-up buff. Even survey ships have this dynamic, since the ship's captain applies only half of their bonuses but multiple bonuses are relevant (Survey, Engineering, and perhaps Crew Training at least).

I would be interested in seeing a new station to support the expanded EWAR capabilities somehow, though I don't know how that would be justified in the lore.