Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up.  They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored.  I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.

Its on the Academies tab of the Race Window.

[Garfunkel]

wtf. . .  if been suffering for so long bros. . .

Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up.  They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored.  I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.

Bro...

[Elminster]

I have built some Tankers and Ordnance ships as Hubs.

I don't know if this is a bug or WAI, but these ships are not able to support their fleet, not even while standing still. I have to detach them and tell the fleet to refuel/load from Hub.

I wish a ship with a Hub could at least work exactly the same as a ship with a Refuelling/Transfer System. Optimum would be it works as a Hub, even when underway (with appropriate tech).

[nuclearslurpee]

I wish a ship with a Hub could at least work exactly the same as a ship with a Refuelling/Transfer System. Optimum would be it works as a Hub, even when underway (with appropriate tech).

Going to reiterate my eternal suggestion for the Hub-related standing orders to work with regular refueling/ordnance/etc. systems as well. No reason I should not be able to automate my survey ships with a tanker stationed in deep space except that the standing order doesn't support it.

[LuuBluum]

It's been suggested before but I figured to suggest it again, the ability in SM to transfer a colony from one empire to another. Mechanically, this would work in the same way that independence via SM does, except rather than putting it into a new empire, puts it into the specified empire (so that ground units are properly taken care of).

Or honestly even something as simple as the ability to use SM to change the political status of a colony.

[The_Seeker]

wtf. . .  if been suffering for so long bros. . .

Also! I don't think there is anywhere that shows your total number of academy crew graduates (not officers) that you have stored up.  They show how much you get per year, but not the total stored.  I think this used to be showed in the academy/teams tab.

Bro...

Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.

[nuclearslurpee]

Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.

Fun fact: No. This is actually the total number of crew you have available at any one time.

I realize this is confusing because the number changes when you change the crew training level (1-5), but this is how it works. Presumably this admittedly confusing implementation was easier for Steve than trying to keep track of different numbers of crews with different training levels if you changed the training level.

[The_Seeker]

Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.

Fun fact: No. This is actually the total number of crew you have available at any one time.

I realize this is confusing because the number changes when you change the crew training level (1-5), but this is how it works. Presumably this admittedly confusing implementation was easier for Steve than trying to keep track of different numbers of crews with different training levels if you changed the training level.

If that's true and there's no hidden pool then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on gameplay whatsoever, the value that's shown in my campaign is 1717, and it will let me construct anything, ships with 2,000 crew, many ships with 1,000 crew, etc. 

[nuclearslurpee]

Re-read what he wrote, that's the number of crew and junior officers that you get per-year, not how many are in the pool total.

Fun fact: No. This is actually the total number of crew you have available at any one time.

I realize this is confusing because the number changes when you change the crew training level (1-5), but this is how it works. Presumably this admittedly confusing implementation was easier for Steve than trying to keep track of different numbers of crews with different training levels if you changed the training level.

If that's true and there's no hidden pool then it doesn't seem to have any bearing on gameplay whatsoever, the value that's shown in my campaign is 1717, and it will let me construct anything, ships with 2,000 crew, many ships with 1,000 crew, etc.

What happens is that once the number hits zero, any additional crew members will be conscripts (start with 0 grade/-10% skill).

Source: this has happened to me too many times.

[Garfunkel]

This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines. You have a lump sum of crew and junior officers and it grows based on how many academies in total you have. Increase your training level and the pool goes down, decrease your training level and the pool goes up. Use the Conscript tickbox for ships that will never see combat to save trained crew for your military ships and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.

If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.

[nuclearslurpee]

This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines.

Ah yes, the good ol' days, when China got nuked in every AAR. 

and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.

If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.

To clarify: If you have, let's say, a ship that requires 1,000 crew, and you have 500 crew remaining, then the ship will take all 500 of those and draft 500 conscripts to replace them. The ship's starting overall crew grade will be the average between the 500 trained crew and the 500 conscripts - so depending on your training level, it might look like your ship has a real crew because the training level is positive, but it will be less positive than expected so the mechanic is still working.

If you have zero trained crew and a ship gets built, then it will be staffed entirely with conscripts and you will see a fat, ugly -10% in the crew grade column.

[deathpickle]

Oh! then wouldn't it be a good idea to give a total crew employed in your empire (in the racial screen and such)?

[captainwolfer]

This has been the way crew grade worked since before I started playing VB6 Aurora, back when the big change was that jump gates did not need components anymore and commercial shipyards started at 10,000 tons instead of 1,000 tons like military. We had Gunboat engines and Fighter engines as special cases to use in addition to Missile engines and actual Ship engines. You have a lump sum of crew and junior officers and it grows based on how many academies in total you have. Increase your training level and the pool goes down, decrease your training level and the pool goes up. Use the Conscript tickbox for ships that will never see combat to save trained crew for your military ships and as Nuclearslurpee said, once you run out, your ship's crew grade will start as negative instead of a positive number.

If that does not happen, then you've encountered a bug.

Does the pool replenish over time?

[deathpickle]

One more thing, can you remove the "do you want to remove queued ground unit from production" prompt that gets asked every time you want to remove a ground unit in production queue? There isn't any way to spam it with holding enter like the usual prompts, so its particularly terrible.    It should only ask the prompt when removing the one in production instead of from anywhere on the queue, that's how it works on the industry tab.    I'm sure everyone has spammed like 40 ground troops only to realize aghast in horror.   .   .    they now need to remove them.   

two more thing, just a suggestion.    Can you make a togglable checkmark for your shipyards that make them automatically create a new task when available without you needing to click the button? It'd be cool if there was a queue for shipyards of course, but I figure that would require a redesign, and honestly a toggleable is more convenient than that anyways.    If you do decide to do it, you'd have to make sure the "use components from stockpile" becomes permanently toggleable too, instead of resetting after you close the window.   

[joshuawood]

Right now there is a "salvage nearest wreck" command but no way to automatically empty the ships when they are near full.

If possible some conditional orders of >50% >75% >90% Cargo would be nice and "unload cargo at nearest colony" and "unload cargo at capital" would be nice if possible?

I get into many fights with 10's of ships and manually salvaging is a bit of a pain.

Being able to make smaller salvaging fleets that are automated with commercial hangers and defences would really speed up the game.

On this note, making asteroid mining modules add the minerals to the cargo holds within the fleet would allow these orders to fully automate asteroid mining ships.

along with this making asteroids far more common in systems (as would be realistic) would promote many more people to use astoid mining ships which are far more vulnerable than their planetside counterparts.

Personally i would like to see 10x-100x more asteroids since as far as i know it doesn't impact performance anymore, maybe even 1000x more asteroids to make automated mining operations much more worth their time and risk.