Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.

Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.

Dev costs for player designed components have already been reduced in slower-research games in v2.6.

[NuclearStudent]

Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.

Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.

Dev costs for player designed components have already been reduced in slower-research games in v2.6.

I actually quite like paying significant dev costs for player designed components in general, because it encourages more strategic aforethought and reuse of components. It's just multistage missiles specifically that I think are overcosted in this department.

[alex_brunius]

After playing around with Ground Combat it feels like something that I'm missing is that feeling that veteran units with alot of combat experience should perform significantly better than a freshly built formation.

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

[Ghostly]

After playing around with Ground Combat it feels like something that I'm missing is that feeling that veteran units with alot of combat experience should perform significantly better than a freshly built formation.

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

I agree, there's not much benefit to having any veteran units other than those who've been sitting around under a commander with GCT for years, never seeing any combat, which is the opposite of how things should actually work. I suppose this is due to the unit Morale also representing their training level, which is awkward, as you would expect Training and Morale to be separate stats, with Training increasing slowly while idling and quickly when participating in combat, and Morale dropping rapidly while taking losses and increasing while inflicting casualties, performing breakthroughs or idling. The ground unit system is already complex as it is, but I think such a change would be more than justified.

[gateisgreen]

While playing Aurora, making notes to not forget about what could be improved.
Few simple suggestions for UI:

1) Economics >> Industry
- add "Construction Rate" per factory indicator, along with "Construction Capacity"; currently only way to check it is to open Race Information, which is in different window

2) Economics >> Shipyards
- it seems, upgrading SY requires some minerals along with wealth, so it would be super handy to have this information in additional columns, for example

3) Economics >> Research
- add "Research Rate" per lab; currently only way to check it is to open Race Information

4) Economics >> GU Training
- add information about minerals cost for training Ground Forces, currently it is only "BP cost" column
- add "Ground Formation Construction Rate" indicator, currently it is in Race Information

5) Ground Forces >> Formation Templates
- for Show/Hide Obsolete models - make obsolete ones visually distinctive from current ones, by changing font colour (white=>gray, for example)

6) Events
- same as for show/hide obsolete models, make filtered events visually distinctive in some way (rarely needed, but I recently misclicked button in Events window and hide certain type of event for many years until I figured something is wrong, well:))

[nuclearslurpee]

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

This is not really true. Analysis done by many folks here has shown that heavy armor is generally a less efficient use of BP than light armor/infantry and will end up suffering higher loss rates (in BP) than the lighter units. This doesn't make heavy armor useless at all, as it remains useful in tonnage-bottlenecked situations, but to say that the current model favors heavy armor is not correct.

[alex_brunius]

This is not really true. Analysis done by many folks here has shown that heavy armor is generally a less efficient use of BP than light armor/infantry and will end up suffering higher loss rates (in BP) than the lighter units. This doesn't make heavy armor useless at all, as it remains useful in tonnage-bottlenecked situations, but to say that the current model favors heavy armor is not correct.

Yes, your right. That conclusion was filtered through an assumed tonnage limit as almost always the main practical limit for my invasions in in how much invasion tonnage I can bring.

And I did not mean the specific unit type heavy armor, but all units with heavier armour than infantry (so including also stuff like powered INF armour).

[lumporr]

I think it'd be nice to be able to raise the wealth cap, either via tech or via settings. It'd be fun to roleplay as a vast empire with an enormous debt but huge reserves, having a decade-spanning long economic panic - and I think it might've been mentioned as something that was planned to change back in the C# patch notes (I'd link but I'm stuck on mobile at the moment).

[lumporr]

Would it be possible to prevent DSPs from appearing as conspicuous yellow "Asteroid #0"s for other races? It's a little hard to ignore, and I usually solve it by hackily creating a colony on the offending Asteroid 0# using the fleet orders menu and renaming it to "Gravitational Anomaly" or some such, but this is not ideal.

[Ghostly]

With every other spaceborne spoiler receiving an enhanced setting, have you considered adding Enhanced Raiders? I love these little guys because they're the only real justification I have for setting up colonial fleets, STO garrisons and escorted convoys everywhere, which I really enjoy, but they're severely lacking both in quantity and in quality in my game.  A minor attack happens every few years, and I only fought a large fleet of them once, decades ago. They never advanced in technology (presumably because I haven't allowed them to salvage much) and their ships, rather squishy to begin with, are now hopelessly outmatched. It would be nice to have an option to increase their production and research rates, as well as give them better-protected designs and boost their general aggressiveness. Another thought that crossed my mind is that as a race of pirates, they really should have the ability to engage in boarding combat, if only for the purpose of scrapping captured ships.

Also, I'm not saying fighters launched from a mothership with thermal reduction engines from hundreds of millions of kilometers away would be very exciting to fight, but that's a very sneaky way to attack someone, and since NPRs are already getting carriers...

[EclipsedStar]

Proposal: Add a setting in the (tactical view)'s display panel to hide the names of ship-components (Thermal/EM/Active Sensors/Fire Control/Weapons) from the view while still showing said component's range band (respective of their other settings in the display).

Reasons for Implementation: This would allow you to still differentiate when you might detect enemies/be able to fire on them, but you would no longer have a giant text wall of the same sensor(s) from multiple different fleets all overlapping and blotting out a region of space. (Plus, it would make it easier to view a system from a zoomed out view, whereas normally you'd have to zoom in a fair bit to avoid the sensor-text getting too concentrated in one area). Mainly just to make it easier on the eyes while still being able to tell what's where in systems with a large number of fleets/inhabited planets.

[AdamantineAxe]

1: I would like an option in the tactical view contacts tab to allow the display of civilian contacts but toggle off all civilian contact text.
I would like to have the civilian contact pips illustrate shipping lines but the text information has little value and causes excess visual clutter. It would be nice if the text information for a specific fleet would still display if the view is centered on that fleet.


2: During slow conventional starts there is no way to increase your manufacturing base. I would like to be able to construct Conventional Industry, even if it is very inefficient and expensive.

Since Conventional Industry can be converted to TN facilities, it's cost should prevent using it to mitigate mineral crunches;

Full mineral cost                            Cost to upgrade from C.I.   Theoretical C.I. mineral cost
       
                                                                                                 50 Duranium
Construction factory: 60dur 60neu             10dur 10neu                50 Neutronium     
Fighter Factory:         120ven                     20ven                       100 Vendarite
Financial Center:       120corb                    20corb                      100 Corbomite
Fuel Refinery:            120bor                     20bor                       100 Boronide
Mine:                        120corr                    20corr                      100 Corrundium
Ordnance Factory:      120trit                     20trit                       100 Tritanium

Since the mineral cost is so high I would think the wealth cost should be 120, same as what it would cost to make one of the TN facilities.

3: I would really like a new button on the tactical screen. A "Back" button that will return the tactical view to the previously viewed system, or maybe back to the system that was being viewed when time was advanced. It could fit in the little space left by the tabs under the system selection drop-down.


Thanks for all the fun so far!

[Ghostly]

3: I would really like a new button on the tactical screen. A "Back" button that will return the tactical view to the previously viewed system, or maybe back to the system that was being viewed when time was advanced. It could fit in the little space left by the tabs under the system selection drop-down.

There's already a keybind to focus on a previously centered location.

[randakar]

Suggestion: Show taskforces instead of ship names.

Over on the Paradox game forum Blue Emu is running an exhibition game of sorts and we're running into a bit of difficulty with the map display. To be precise, it gets a tad cluttered if there are a lot of different enemies on the map, making screenshots difficult to decipher.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/sirius-business-a-c-aurora-forum-game-v2-5.1621469/post-30151670

Some way to display groups of enemy ships and such as a single unit would help a lot.

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: Show taskforces instead of ship names.

Over on the Paradox game forum Blue Emu is running an exhibition game of sorts and we're running into a bit of difficulty with the map display. To be precise, it gets a tad cluttered if there are a lot of different enemies on the map, making screenshots difficult to decipher.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/sirius-business-a-c-aurora-forum-game-v2-5.1621469/post-30151670

Some way to display groups of enemy ships and such as a single unit would help a lot.

There is an option in the tactical map settings for this. In the settings window on the left side of the tactical map view, on the Contacts tab, check "Group Contacts". This will group all enemy contacts that are the same (same position, same class, same sensor/shield status, same speed, etc.) into a single contact display which can help tone down the clutter considerably. This can still leave some clutter of, e.g., ships of the same class split into multiple entries based on sensor or shield emissions, but for large groups of forces it helps considerably.

I also suggest using the various options in the Display tab to tone down how much information is shown on-screen (which Emu is already doing in some cases, but I add as a reminder).