Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[captainwolfer]

This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?

You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.

There is simply no need for the game to give you the class of the ship?

You don't NEED to know what class it is, it doesn't actually give you any new information. I have successfully classified more than 2/3 of my current NPRs ships just by evaluating what they do and their capabilities before destroying or being shot at by them.

Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?

So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.

Thats not what they are saying at all.

The whole point is that 99% of the time ELINT is useless for finding out any information about enemy ships, because you get maybe 1 ship class report every few years. What we want is a way to more quickly figure out very general information about NPR ships without having to be at war with them.

from an in-character perspective, this would represent your ELINT ships listening to comms chatter to figure out what ships are what (IE this intercepted message says this ship is loading colonists, it must be a colony ship), or having analysts look at photos to figure out what ships do (IE This ship has 20 openings, based on the size of those opening it must be an AMM ship)

You don't see any real world navy waiting until they are at war to figure out what the enemy ships do.

[nuclearslurpee]

This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?

You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.

Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?

This is true. You can obtain all of this information -- in combat.

From a roleplay perspective, if nothing else (I would argue this is also a good game mechanic), it makes sense to determine partial information about alien ship classes before we shoot at them (or they at us), because from a roleplay perspective any military planner worth their rank will want to have an accurate assessment of enemy capabilities before going to war with them. Of course, we cannot get complete information on the enemy force, nor should we be able to, but getting some basic information before engaging in combat is not unreasonable nor unrealistic. We can already get some information without even using ELINT: size, speed, and any revealed active sensor or shield signatures. Personally, I would think knowing the hull classification of alien ship classes which the alien race itself uses is another useful piece of information, which by no means gives away the full extent of alien capabilities but can potentially give you a bit more information for planning purposes. As a simple example, if your military planners know that the alien race uses missiles (DDGs, CGs, etc.) then part of the war planning includes assessment of point defense capabilities.

So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.

I hardly think one piece of information - namely, the hull classification - constitutes being spoon-fed. Nor for that matter would I consider the necessity to deploy and maintain ELINT assets to acquire this information "without any extra effort", I would in fact consider this to require extra effort.

As it currently stands, you can in fact get this information without extra effort. The "Real Ship / Class Names" checkbox at the top of the Intelligence window will reveal the hull designation of any newly-encountered alien ship classes (but not previously-encountered classes) - so already, we can get this information for zero effort. I can't speak for everyone else, but all I propose here is to (1) not reveal the hull designation when using the real ship/class names, and (2) to make the hull designation discoverable with ELINT (which requires more effort than currently), separately from discovering complete class design blueprints which is a very rare event. This also means that the amount of intelligence you obtain remains the same regardless of whether you use the real ship/class names or your own designations, which I think is a minor point but all the same one that should be consistent between those two options.

Honestly, I'm more interested in the first part - I would like to use the real ship and class names (it makes AAR reporting easier in multiple-player-race campaigns) without seeing the hull designations. If we never get the capability to reveal the designations with ELINT I don't care so much, relatively speaking.

[joshuawood]

This just isn't true? you can get ALL of the information relevant to the capabilities of a ship without any elint?

You can get speed, sensors, weapon ranges, ECCM, ECM shields, armour etc.

There is simply no need for the game to give you the class of the ship?

You don't NEED to know what class it is, it doesn't actually give you any new information. I have successfully classified more than 2/3 of my current NPRs ships just by evaluating what they do and their capabilities before destroying or being shot at by them.

Once a ship has shot at you then you should be able to classify it with almost a 100% accuracy?

So basically what you are asking for is the game to spoon feed you information you couldn't be bothered to look up / determine yourself OR you want more information on enemy ships without any extra effort, which just makes the game even easier to counter AI designs, which the game sorely does NOT need.

Thats not what they are saying at all.

The whole point is that 99% of the time ELINT is useless for finding out any information about enemy ships, because you get maybe 1 ship class report every few years. What we want is a way to more quickly figure out very general information about NPR ships without having to be at war with them.

from an in-character perspective, this would represent your ELINT ships listening to comms chatter to figure out what ships are what (IE this intercepted message says this ship is loading colonists, it must be a colony ship), or having analysts look at photos to figure out what ships do (IE This ship has 20 openings, based on the size of those opening it must be an AMM ship)

You don't see any real world navy waiting until they are at war to figure out what the enemy ships do.

Being able to determine more information about ships with ELINT is very different from being able to determine the entire capability of enemy ships with ELINT.

The proposal originally and the entire argument is about the ability to determine a ships class using ELINT, because of the way the game works that just instantly gives you the entire capability of the ship bar weapon range and exact sensor ranges.

You also do consistently see people waiting untill war to figure out what enemy ships can do, even with intelligence and how much closer the ranges are. 

In real life we are on a single planet with very limited capability to prevent intelligence gathering. Being able to determine things like holes in the side of a ship at millions of km is like trying to determine the calibre of a ships cannons from the moon. You simply cannot compare the two on ease of information gathering.

And even then, in real life OFTEN countries have been completely unaware of the capabilities of enemy aircraft even after combat has started. Which is a much more reasonable comparison to aurora ships than IRL ships.

If your suggestions are to make ELINT better (or at all useful) that is VERY different from the original statement.

[nuclearslurpee]

The proposal originally and the entire argument is about the ability to determine a ships class using ELINT, because of the way the game works that just instantly gives you the entire capability of the ship bar weapon range and exact sensor ranges.

Maybe I misread the original comment, but I did not understand this to be the proposal. The proposal under discussion simply relates to the hull type designation of a class: e.g., "Missile Cruiser (CG)", "Freighter (FT)", or "Beam Defense Base (BDB)". This is not the same as knowing the actual class details (blueprints). Knowing this does not give you the entire capability of a class, it only gives you the very broad strokes (this presuming no deliberate deception by the alien race) - you know that a CG class is probably missile-armed, but you don't know the number, size, or reload rate of the launchers, you know nothing about the class ECM/ECCM loadout, armor thickness, etc. A lot of information remains unknown and that is as it should be, this would only give a very general sense of enemy fleet composition beyond the number and size of each class.

By the way, note that we can already get the full class specifications with ELINT, this is simply a very rare event and is often not very useful since you get specifications for, e.g., a civilian spaceliner class instead of a warship class. But this functionality is already in the game, so it is not what other people are trying to advocate for as far as I can tell.

[tastythighs]

Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.

[nuclearslurpee]

Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.

There is a reason that this is not done, which is that it would yield in many cases a net gain of minerals relative to new construction.

An illustrative example: Suppose I want to do a simple engine refit for a ship, where I have 3x NGC engines of 300 EP each (150 BP each, total 450 BP) and I want to do a simple engine upgrade to 3x ion engines of 375 EP each (187.5 BP each, total 562.5 BP) In this case the refit cost is 562.5 x 1.20 = 675 BP, which will be all gallicite since we are doing only the engines. If we could recover the old engines, we could then scrap them for 30% of their minerals or 135 gallicite. This would mean the net refit cost was 540, which is less than the cost of the engines. This is not desirable and defeats the point of the 1.20x refit penalty mechanic.

Refitting should not be preferable to new construction for economic reasons (this is why we currently have the 1.20x penalty). Refitting is used for other purposes: most commonly, it is used to keep highly-trained crews while upgrading the ships. Another important use is that upgrading ships can make more sense than new construction when you lack the capability to maintain, crew, or assign commanders to large numbers of new ships. There can be others, including some edge cases when you want to upgrade ships without spending certain minerals on specific components.

[LuuBluum]

That and it keeps the dynamic that, rather than perpetually upgrading the same ship with newer and newer tech, you keep the old ships around so long as they're sufficiently functional, and then scrap the whole thing once they've outlived their usefulness.

Don't always gotta have the newest tech in every ship, after all.

[Snoman314]

Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.

There is a reason that this is not done, which is that it would yield in many cases a net gain of minerals relative to new construction.

An illustrative example: Suppose I want to do a simple engine refit for a ship, where I have 3x NGC engines of 300 EP each (150 BP each, total 450 BP) and I want to do a simple engine upgrade to 3x ion engines of 375 EP each (187.5 BP each, total 562.5 BP) In this case the refit cost is 562.5 x 1.20 = 675 BP, which will be all gallicite since we are doing only the engines. If we could recover the old engines, we could then scrap them for 30% of their minerals or 135 gallicite. This would mean the net refit cost was 540, which is less than the cost of the engines. This is not desirable and defeats the point of the 1.20x refit penalty mechanic.

Refitting should not be preferable to new construction for economic reasons (this is why we currently have the 1.20x penalty). Refitting is used for other purposes: most commonly, it is used to keep highly-trained crews while upgrading the ships. Another important use is that upgrading ships can make more sense than new construction when you lack the capability to maintain, crew, or assign commanders to large numbers of new ships. There can be others, including some edge cases when you want to upgrade ships without spending certain minerals on specific components.

Thanks for taking the time to put this explanation out @nuclearslurpee. I disagree however. If you got old components back and could scrap them, that's not a net gain. You pay slightly less, sure. But you only get 1 ship, not two. I feel like you could make an inverse argument about scrapping the old ship and recycling the components + building new, vs refitting, being unreasonably cheap by comparison.

Given how micro-management intensive the current training mechanics are, I'd never put up with playing if I couldn't refit ships to keep the crew. The pain of losing resources/components that evaporate when refits occur (I can't even repurpose them on other ships), is a constant.

[Ulzgoroth]

Presently, new construction is preferable to refit as you get none of the minerals used in the replaced components back (unless I'm mistaken). That's all well and good, but it means that ships with long histories are lost if you're short of minerals and can't afford the inefficiency. I'd like to suggest that components replaced in refit be either given back to you as in the case of scrapping or automatically scrapped for minerals.

There is a reason that this is not done, which is that it would yield in many cases a net gain of minerals relative to new construction.

An illustrative example: Suppose I want to do a simple engine refit for a ship, where I have 3x NGC engines of 300 EP each (150 BP each, total 450 BP) and I want to do a simple engine upgrade to 3x ion engines of 375 EP each (187.5 BP each, total 562.5 BP) In this case the refit cost is 562.5 x 1.20 = 675 BP, which will be all gallicite since we are doing only the engines. If we could recover the old engines, we could then scrap them for 30% of their minerals or 135 gallicite. This would mean the net refit cost was 540, which is less than the cost of the engines. This is not desirable and defeats the point of the 1.20x refit penalty mechanic.

Refitting should not be preferable to new construction for economic reasons (this is why we currently have the 1.20x penalty). Refitting is used for other purposes: most commonly, it is used to keep highly-trained crews while upgrading the ships. Another important use is that upgrading ships can make more sense than new construction when you lack the capability to maintain, crew, or assign commanders to large numbers of new ships. There can be others, including some edge cases when you want to upgrade ships without spending certain minerals on specific components.

Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me. You might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.

Of course, it still is economic preferable for small refits - because you get another ship of the good class built quickly and cheaply aside from the input of an obsolete ship.

[nuclearslurpee]

Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.

I...don't see how? Intuitively, it costs more to open up a ship, rip out a component, install a new one, and close the ship back up than it does to install the same new component while building a ship from scratch. I'm not one of the guys with a hard-on for realism but this seems logical to me.

You might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.

I've given several reasons why refitting is valuable even if it is relatively more costly. Needless to say, I don't agree with this statement.

[papent]

Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.

I...don't see how? Intuitively, it costs more to open up a ship, rip out a component, install a new one, and close the ship back up than it does to install the same new component while building a ship from scratch. I'm not one of the guys with a hard-on for realism but this seems logical to me.

Funny enough most military forces will do just about anything to avoid new builds: from Tanks, Fighters, Transports, Ships, To Subs. Everything from powerplants, engines, types of propulsion (sail to steam transitions are absolute wild.) fire control systems, weapon types. It's has all been done before and will be done in the future.

It's actually is the logical thing to do.

[Ulzgoroth]

Refitting not being preferable to new construction for economic reasons seems like a bizarre priority to me.

I...don't see how? Intuitively, it costs more to open up a ship, rip out a component, install a new one, and close the ship back up than it does to install the same new component while building a ship from scratch. I'm not one of the guys with a hard-on for realism but this seems logical to me.

Yes, but building the entire rest of the new ship is a rather large penalty on that side of the scale. It should be more expensive in some respect to obtain your final ship by building a different design and refitting, sure. But if a refit is plausible at all, it shouldn't be more expensive to do the refit than to scrap the starter ship and build the new ship.

You might as well not have refitting if it's going to be at a loss.

I've given several reasons why refitting is valuable even if it is relatively more costly. Needless to say, I don't agree with this statement.

- Keeping highly trained crews: Okay, but only because the system doesn't allow us to do things like transfer a trained crew to a new hull.
- Lacking the capability to maintain more ships: Right, but the alternative wasn't keep rusted old ships and build new ones, it was scrap rusted old ships and build new ones, so no difference there.
- Not wanting to spend minerals on specific components - again, if you scrap the old ship you can re-use its components better than if you refit it. That's the competing proposition.

[nuclearslurpee]

Okay, I think I see where your point is. I'm thinking more about the relatively partial refits which can still be significant but come out to substantially less than the cost of building a new ship. Although I think it should be extremely rare to have a refit that costs significantly more than the cost of new construction since you will have carry-over from components that don't upgrade - engineering, fuel tanks, maintenance bays, crew quarters, etc., so even a total refit should be a very similar cost, at worst, to new construction.

It would be nice to have some way to shift a highly-trained crew over, though.

[Ulzgoroth]

Okay, I think I see where your point is. I'm thinking more about the relatively partial refits which can still be significant but come out to substantially less than the cost of building a new ship. Although I think it should be extremely rare to have a refit that costs significantly more than the cost of new construction since you will have carry-over from components that don't upgrade - engineering, fuel tanks, maintenance bays, crew quarters, etc., so even a total refit should be a very similar cost, at worst, to new construction.

It would be nice to have some way to shift a highly-trained crew over, though.

The original concern was with the mineral dis-economy of (reportedly) not recovering the removed components in any form on a refit, as opposed to scrapping giving you back the components to re-use or break down.

[captainwolfer]

Honestly the main thing that currently makes me prefer refits over scrap and build new, is service history. I want to see those tonnage destroyed numbers go up higher.