Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[AlStar]

From what I understand, the deal is that Steve doesn't want to add things to commercial vessels.

Now, what he could do is give us a cargo transfer module (and terraforming/mining/etc.) that makes the ship military. As a tradeoff, perhaps we could make these modules super-effective, giving twice or three times the commander's bonus to the ship... but even then, I suspect that you'll not find many takers - but it would be a choice!

[Louella]

I previously mentioned that I would like additional officer positions, because I was coming at that argument from an immersion & consistency perspective. Consistency being a uniform "captain applies half bonus, specialist provides full bonus" across all commander bonuses. Immersion being that more positions leads to more varied & detailed careers for officer characters.

That said, I can appreciate how the gameplay effects, and decision-making qualities, mean that some things would always be used, because there are few reasons not to.

Plus, since not every officer rank is explicitly modelled, many positions would be held by junior officers, below the game's level of abstraction.
i.e. the lowest rank for naval officers is Lieutenant-Commander. A cargo ship might conceivably have a loadmaster, but that might only be a role for a Lieutenant, which would be one of the unnamed "junior officers" ingame. And even on a large cargo ship, is the loadmaster a senior enough position that it would be a billet for a Lt.Cmdr ?

That said, I think there are a couple slots where there is room for meaningful decisions.

The Diplomacy module, to make a ship a diplomatic one, is 500t, and means the ship requires a Captain, rather than Cmdr or Lt.Cmdr.
With this required rank increase, there's a possibility I feel, to appoint a xenolinguist to the diplomatic ship, to provide a bonus to diplomatic effectiveness and/or efforts at translation.
So a diplomatic ship would have two officers - the Captain (using their Diplomacy bonus), and the Xenolinguist (using their Communications? bonus [I'm not entirely sure what the Communications bonus actually does])
There might even be a case to have a dedicated Ambassador, (using their diplomacy bonus), with an even larger "Embassy" module. (10x the size of the DIP module maybe).
Since pure diplomatic ships are fairly small (even my jump-capable ones are only 5000t), then there's a bit more of a decision on whether or not to include modules that would increase their size.


The ELINT module is another one where I think there might be a meaningful decision to be made.
One of the ships that I was using in my game, was a cruiser which had an ELINT module on it. It wasn't the ships main role, it was a frontline warship that also happened to be capable of gathering ELINT.
Now then, with ELINT modules coming in at 500t, then... another module with an intelligence analyst officer might be a meaningful decision to make.
It'd be a straightforward decision to put one of those on a dedicated intelligence gathering ship, which would carry multiple ELINT modules anyway.
But on ships like my cruisers... do I want to spend a couple hundred tons to make it slightly better at ELINT whilst still being a standard combatant ship ? Do I want to use that tonnage on another CIWS instead ?

[nuclearslurpee]

That said, I think there are a couple slots where there is room for meaningful decisions.

The Diplomacy module, to make a ship a diplomatic one, is 500t, and means the ship requires a Captain, rather than Cmdr or Lt.Cmdr.
With this required rank increase, there's a possibility I feel, to appoint a xenolinguist to the diplomatic ship, to provide a bonus to diplomatic effectiveness and/or efforts at translation.
So a diplomatic ship would have two officers - the Captain (using their Diplomacy bonus), and the Xenolinguist (using their Communications? bonus [I'm not entirely sure what the Communications bonus actually does])
There might even be a case to have a dedicated Ambassador, (using their diplomacy bonus), with an even larger "Embassy" module. (10x the size of the DIP module maybe).
Since pure diplomatic ships are fairly small (even my jump-capable ones are only 5000t), then there's a bit more of a decision on whether or not to include modules that would increase their size.


The ELINT module is another one where I think there might be a meaningful decision to be made.
One of the ships that I was using in my game, was a cruiser which had an ELINT module on it. It wasn't the ships main role, it was a frontline warship that also happened to be capable of gathering ELINT.
Now then, with ELINT modules coming in at 500t, then... another module with an intelligence analyst officer might be a meaningful decision to make.
It'd be a straightforward decision to put one of those on a dedicated intelligence gathering ship, which would carry multiple ELINT modules anyway.
But on ships like my cruisers... do I want to spend a couple hundred tons to make it slightly better at ELINT whilst still being a standard combatant ship ? Do I want to use that tonnage on another CIWS instead ?

I think having a general-purpose "Communications/Intelligence Officer" station which gives bonuses to Communications and Intelligence skills would be really great, as these skills are not currently really handled anywhere in the auto-assignment system which means they tend to go unused unless you manually assign officers.

[Arkrider]

That said, I think there are a couple slots where there is room for meaningful decisions.

The Diplomacy module, to make a ship a diplomatic one, is 500t, and means the ship requires a Captain, rather than Cmdr or Lt. Cmdr.
With this required rank increase, there's a possibility I feel, to appoint a xenolinguist to the diplomatic ship, to provide a bonus to diplomatic effectiveness and/or efforts at translation.
So a diplomatic ship would have two officers - the Captain (using their Diplomacy bonus), and the Xenolinguist (using their Communications? bonus [I'm not entirely sure what the Communications bonus actually does])
There might even be a case to have a dedicated Ambassador, (using their diplomacy bonus), with an even larger "Embassy" module.  (10x the size of the DIP module maybe).
Since pure diplomatic ships are fairly small (even my jump-capable ones are only 5000t), then there's a bit more of a decision on whether or not to include modules that would increase their size.


The ELINT module is another one where I think there might be a meaningful decision to be made.
One of the ships that I was using in my game, was a cruiser which had an ELINT module on it.  It wasn't the ships main role, it was a frontline warship that also happened to be capable of gathering ELINT.
Now then, with ELINT modules coming in at 500t, then. . .  another module with an intelligence analyst officer might be a meaningful decision to make.
It'd be a straightforward decision to put one of those on a dedicated intelligence gathering ship, which would carry multiple ELINT modules anyway.
But on ships like my cruisers. . .  do I want to spend a couple hundred tons to make it slightly better at ELINT whilst still being a standard combatant ship ? Do I want to use that tonnage on another CIWS instead ?

I think having a general-purpose "Communications/Intelligence Officer" station which gives bonuses to Communications and Intelligence skills would be really great, as these skills are not currently really handled anywhere in the auto-assignment system which means they tend to go unused unless you manually assign officers.

I'll +1 this, but add that I wished the admin structure handled communications/diplomacy hand downs as well.  What I do is have one fleet admin designated as "State Department," and put diplomacy ships and, because it's pretty bare bones with just those, I put my orbital habitats there.

Speaking of those, the diplomacy bonus might be argued to be relevant to commanders of those habitats; maybe for something like restlessness? It would give them something to do besides the important but comparatively rare task of keeping aliens happy.

Similarly, Comms might be useful for civilian shipping somehow? A complicated insert would be something like good Communications officers allowing civilian shipping stopped there to plan and reach further out stations (with some use cases built in that ends up with trade stations with good Comms officers being a major boni to civilian trade income) or a simple add instead may just be a flat minor tax bonus on a roll if a 'Customs office' with a good comms officer is present somehow.

I mean, to my knowledge Communications only helps in translation, and then is forever more a useless trait.  Unless I'm missing something? Seems like it'd be better for it to have a job somewhere else as well.

[Louella]

I think having a general-purpose "Communications/Intelligence Officer" station which gives bonuses to Communications and Intelligence skills would be really great, as these skills are not currently really handled anywhere in the auto-assignment system which means they tend to go unused unless you manually assign officers.

I'm not sure what the "Communications" skill even does. Old wiki pages suggest that it helps with fleet-wide orders.
If that's still the case, then a "communications officer" station, that helped with fleet commands such as selecting appropriate targets when on "Fleet fire at will" orders, or with "Synchronised Fire" orders, might be good.
There's a decision there about spending tonnage to make fleets more co-ordinated, without it being a no-brainer module for all warships, since you'd still have smaller warships that couldn't afford the tonnage, and solo warships that have no use for that bonus.


You can make an "Intelligence Ship" which then uses the intelligence bonus for auto assignment, but... if the ship has anything else on it, that overrides it, and there's no way to make a ship's ELINT modules more effective. An "intel Officer" station would help with that.
i.e. ship with only ELINT modules on it = intelligence ship = auto-assignment picks commander using the "intelligence" skill.
ship with ELINT modules and any kind of weapon on it = warship = intelligence skill is irrelevant to auto-assignment for that ship.

Which means unless you build dedicated intelligence ships, the "intelligence skill" is almost never used.

[nuclearslurpee]

I'm not sure what the "Communications" skill even does. Old wiki pages suggest that it helps with fleet-wide orders.

It helps when establishing communications with a new alien race, but that's all it does sadly.

[Garfunkel]

But if it's really too overpowered, there are answers for that besides "nah, it's a no-brainer. "

Ah sorry friend, I did not mean to claim that your proposal is stupid or that you are stupid. I meant it as a "no-brainer design decision", as in, it's not a decision at all because as nuclearslurpee explained, it would always be added. In which case it might as well be automatic like the Bridge is.

And if you have too many officers, try running fighters and carriers, you'll run out of officers quick

One way to solve this issue would be by separating civilian and military commanders. I mean, generally it isn't the military officers running oil drilling platforms or mining excavations or planning logistics networks, though of course many veterans end up employed by companies in these fields. I'd love to have separate military and civilian admin systems and leaders - for example most players end up with a massive surplus of administrators unless you really go hard on creating little mining colonies everywhere. I'd love to have them run industrial and logistics admin commands - 'State owned corporations' - in addition to being governors of colonies and sectors. This would also help with the lack of leadership position between a colony and a sector, which has been asked quite a few times.

If there were separate civilian leaders/managers/specialists, it would make sense to have industrial leadership modules to add to commercial ships and the decision there would be whether you have invested enough in the leadership pipeline so that you have sufficient numbers of trained specialists to fill out all these roles, or whether you run 'poor leadership' ships & stations. Granted, somewhat minor decision but at least one that would require long-term planning.

[Kiero]

- An ability to take prisoners from a colony and transfer them to another.
- A facility that can convert prisoners to colonists or the ability to use prisoners to create forced labour camps and convert them back to prisoners or colonists of a particular race.
- A civilian administrative organization (similar to a naval organization) for RP purposes.

[Ush213]

And if you have too many officers, try running fighters and carriers, you'll run out of officers quick

One way to solve this issue would be by separating civilian and military commanders. I mean, generally it isn't the military officers running oil drilling platforms or mining excavations or planning logistics networks, though of course many veterans end up employed by companies in these fields. I'd love to have separate military and civilian admin systems and leaders - for example most players end up with a massive surplus of administrators unless you really go hard on creating little mining colonies everywhere. I'd love to have them run industrial and logistics admin commands - 'State owned corporations' - in addition to being governors of colonies and sectors. This would also help with the lack of leadership position between a colony and a sector, which has been asked quite a few times.

If there were separate civilian leaders/managers/specialists, it would make sense to have industrial leadership modules to add to commercial ships and the decision there would be whether you have invested enough in the leadership pipeline so that you have sufficient numbers of trained specialists to fill out all these roles, or whether you run 'poor leadership' ships & stations. Granted, somewhat minor decision but at least one that would require long-term planning.

Expanding the Mil academies functions to add more slots for officers and admins would be a cool way to eat up unused admins, I make sure to have academies on each of my population centers.
RP wise I really like seeing the captains of my ships are from Mars, Nova Prime or Sirius. Etc instead of them all just being from Earth.

Game wise the leader spawning mechanic is good but if there was more to this is would add more useful roles to fill.
You could have a second slot for new leader generation so one for Mil and one for Admin, then after that the remaining just give bonus to different parts of the colony.
Maybe standard stuff like mining or wealth creation. But personally id like to see other benefits as those bonuses are already handled by Govs and Sector Govs. Or maybe the other slots will have some fixed bonuses for the colonies.

I am one of those people who assign Govs to all of my mining colonies. I really like the leader training and their assignment history and take the time to assign a good mix of skills to all the colonies. I also add every command module that fits the ship class I'm building and have as many officers assigned to a ships as possible.

Its mostly for RP/training reason. I understand adding more ship modules wouldn't create any more decisions but maybe as a counter point. More inbuilt modules like the bridge could be added creating more officer roles. It wouldn't be a decision it would just the default. Maybe based off tonnage like bridges are now. More tonnage more roles (that make sense). Id be happy with that,
Currently It feels unrealistic that without c&c modules there is only one officer aboard, at least for me anyway and thats why i add the modules.

For larger ships there could even be admin roles like ship councilor (Star Trek TNG) or something.
Then ultimately a players poor officer recruitment decisions or bad war planning will hurt them in the long run with officer numbers. but also all the extra positions will mean there is a healthy level of skill and ranks.

[Kiero]

An ability to rename ground forces organization nodes 

[pedter]

A two-fold suggestion for the Class Design window, specifically sorting within the Ships in Class tab:
- The sort buttons are not in the same order vertically as the data columns are horizontally; it would be much smoother to locate the preferred sort method if they used the same order.
- The tab lacks a way to sort by Ammo or MSP; finding the ships that need to come home early due to poor maintenance RNG or lack of ammo would be much easier with those sort methods.

[AlStar]

Just a bit of fluff: if we could specify that an awarded honor is a medal rather than a ribbon - like the little awards under our usernames on the forums here.

I'd imagine that any medal would go to a separate part of the commander's page - maybe center-aligned, since the ribbons currently show up on the left side?

Edit: Since I don't want to double-post, here's another.

As far as I know, currently jump points currently only appear around the primary star in a system. I think it would be neat if there were possible JPs around every star in a system. That would make binary and trinary systems natural 'gateway' systems, since they'd have 2x or 3x as many nodes.

[Silvarelion]

Just a quick suggestion: Could there be logic implemented for civilian movement of colonists, similar to civilian installation movements?  ie, could the UI on the Civilian/Flags tab include a target population, for supply or demand, after which the population is set to stable? 

Just had my civilians completely drain one of my mining colonies of settlers.  Kind of frustrating when I still want people there, just not as many as I had.

Thank you! 

Hope you are enjoying the travel life, Steve!

[paolot]

Again with Civilian/Flags: could civilians produce all kind of installations, not only the Infrastructures?
I would like I can buy everything from them, not only their minerals, so I can have their help to let grow faster my colonies.
To build the installations I request, they could use some of the minerals they mine from their bodies in a system, and then sell the goods to me at higher prices than the minerals. So, they can earn some money, while I should be careful in the purchase to avoid to overspend.
There could also be some trade (or exchange) between the different corporations to obtain the goods they haven't and build what I ask.

[AlStar]

As a possible alternative to one of my earlier suggestions (being able to sort the minerals window by total accessibility), I would also be amenable to the ability to export/copy the text in that window.

I can more-or-less brute-force that functionality by OCR'ing screenshots of the window, but that's obviously not ideal.