Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[skoormit]

In the main window's left pane, Contacts tab, can we add a checkbox for our own fleets?
Sometimes I want to see what the civvies are doing, and my own fleets clutter the view.

[paolot]

As we already have automines, what about automatic fuel production (using some more Boronide than usual refineries)?
E.g., when we don't want to, or can't, install a full colony (on bodies with harsh environment conditions).
Sorry if this was already proposed.

[paolot]

Economics window, Civilian/Flags tab: in the Demand and Supply sections, would it be possible to have also a column named "Arriving" or "Travelling to" or "Shipped" or something like this, meaning that a certain quantity of material was shipped to or from that site?
"Assigned", I understand it means something that is about to be sent/shipped, isn't it?
So, I feel I'm missing the information of something already onboard a moving ship/fleet.

[Kaiser]

Hi Steve, could you add a small square in the classe design and naval organization window that display a small image of the ship? Not very big, let's say the size of the one we have in the race information or even smaller.

Specifically what I would like to do is that We have the possibility to select a ship image (for example the one we have in the shipicon and station folder) during the design of a new ship and then the same image appears in the naval organization when we select a ship of that class.


In my opinion this would add really a lot of flavor since fighting is the main thing of Aurora and we spent a lot of time in these 2 windows and it should be super easy to implement, it would be very interesting.

Eventually the same thing could be done for all the other non-human players with the game randomly selecting an image which is displayed in the intelligence window, it is already there but it is always the same image for everything.

I will go further suggesting that if this is feasible, you could add also a very small image in the unit class design (for tanks, vehicles, soldiers, artillery etc.), in this case the system can just pick up a random image leaving to the player the possibility to change it (to avoid too much micromanagement) since they are not very important as ships.

Overall implementing all of these would add a lot of flavor considering that Aurora is very sterile from this point of view.

I attached 3 example of how I would like this to be implemented.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Hi Steve, could you add a small square in the classe design and naval organization window that display a small image of the ship? Not very big, let's say the size of the one we have in the race information or even smaller.

Specifically what I would like to do is that We have the possibility to select a ship image (for example the one we have in the shipicon and station folder) during the design of a new ship and then the same image appears in the naval organization when we select a ship of that class.


In my opinion this would add really a lot of flavor since fighting is the main thing of Aurora and we spent a lot of time in these 2 windows and it should be super easy to implement, it would be very interesting.

Eventually the same thing could be done for all the other non-human players with the game randomly selecting an image which is displayed in the intelligence window, it is already there but it is always the same image for everything.

I will go further suggesting that if this is feasible, you could add also a very small image in the unit class design (for tanks, vehicles, soldiers, artillery etc.), in this case the system can just pick up a random image leaving to the player the possibility to change it (to avoid too much micromanagement) since they are not very important as ships.

Overall implementing all of these would add a lot of flavor considering that Aurora is very sterile from this point of view.

I attached 3 example of how I would like this to be implemented.

I've been considering something on these lines for a while. The limitation so far has been the lack of similar but different ship models, especially if they were eventually to be used as icons rather than static pictures.

For example, it would be relatively straightforward if you were running a Star Wars or Star Trek theme game to get various pictures off the internet to represent different ships. However, if you are using your own theme, or a non-sci-fi theme such as my recent Imperial Japan game, it would be difficult to find numerous suitable images that share that theme, so you probably end up with the standard race ship images for every class, which doesn't really seem right either.

However, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am probably going to add a large variety of either AI-generated or licenced ship, station and race images in the not-too-distant future, in which case this becomes a far more viable option.

[Kaiser]

Hi Steve, could you add a small square in the classe design and naval organization window that display a small image of the ship? Not very big, let's say the size of the one we have in the race information or even smaller.

Specifically what I would like to do is that We have the possibility to select a ship image (for example the one we have in the shipicon and station folder) during the design of a new ship and then the same image appears in the naval organization when we select a ship of that class.


In my opinion this would add really a lot of flavor since fighting is the main thing of Aurora and we spent a lot of time in these 2 windows and it should be super easy to implement, it would be very interesting.

Eventually the same thing could be done for all the other non-human players with the game randomly selecting an image which is displayed in the intelligence window, it is already there but it is always the same image for everything.

I will go further suggesting that if this is feasible, you could add also a very small image in the unit class design (for tanks, vehicles, soldiers, artillery etc.), in this case the system can just pick up a random image leaving to the player the possibility to change it (to avoid too much micromanagement) since they are not very important as ships.

Overall implementing all of these would add a lot of flavor considering that Aurora is very sterile from this point of view.

I attached 3 example of how I would like this to be implemented.

I've been considering something on these lines for a while. The limitation so far has been the lack of similar but different ship models, especially if they were eventually to be used as icons rather than static pictures.

For example, it would be relatively straightforward if you were running a Star Wars or Star Trek theme game to get various pictures off the internet to represent different ships. However, if you are using your own theme, or a non-sci-fi theme such as my recent Imperial Japan game, it would be difficult to find numerous suitable images that share that theme, so you probably end up with the standard race ship images for every class, which doesn't really seem right either.

However, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am probably going to add a large variety of either AI-generated or licenced ship, station and race images in the not-too-distant future, in which case this becomes a far more viable option.

I understand, I myself play always non-sci-fi game since I never been passionate about Star trek and Star Wars, but consider that the community is super active and once you implement these, there will be for sure a flourish of images from us.

No need to reply, thanks for considering this

[NuclearStudent]

QOL suggestions:

STO Targeting

Currently, STOs will automatically engage ships or missiles, but must be micromanaged between them. I suggest that the PD and firing options be split into four selection boxes.

• PRIORITIZE/ONLY FIRE AT
• SHIPS/MISSILES
• Largest Ship/Smallest Ship/Easiest Target/Slowest Target/Fastest Target
• Area Defense/Final Defensive Fire/Final Defensive Fire (Self)

If you set an STO to only fire at missiles, the ship fire options should be blank. If you set an STO to only fire at ships, the PD options should be blank. By allowing the player to set the STOs to handle all threats in advance, it would reduce micromanagement.

(This would not be a replacement for other excellent suggestions in this thread to make STOs simpler to micromanage.)

Scrap At Specified Shipyard/Scrap at Available Shipyard

If you have a large fleet you want to scrap, especially of fighters, it can be tedious to enter the economy interface and scrap every ships individually. It would save micromanagement if there was a command to move to a colony and then scrap there.

[dth11]

Reasoning: So I've been playing this game for a while and one thing that always gets me is lack of quality of life features and the fact that I have to constantly remember about everything, because nothing will remind me that something happened and I didn't respond to it. This applies to the fact that I have to sleep sometimes and when I wake up I don't always remember what I was doing/planning to do the day before. This is not fun and forces me to go through everything just to make sure I didn't miss something. Eventually this leads to the burn out and dropping the game, being too frustrated to play it once it hits me it will only get worse once my empire grows even more.

Ideas:
- Ingame goals/objectives
Add a simple panel, that will list all the objectives and give an ability to create new ones and mark old ones as complete/remove them. Something like a TODO list for a players, to keep track of their progress.
Every objective would have: name, description, optional attached fleet, status (debatable, but in theory would allow players to understand that they already started it). There could be more, like attaching specific character for flavor reasons, but these are bare minimum required to operate and I would be happy even if we finished this here, but...
- Automated goal/objective creation
I would imagine this as a set of rules, for start they could be simple, for example event popping up. The simple use case would be to create an objective with title "Deploy sentry buoys" and description "Deploy sentry buoys at [event_target]" whenever the event jump point discovered pops up. Event_target would be te jump point in question, but in general it would be a target of an event, there doesn't really have to be a reference to the object, just the name, and if that's too complicated, I'm fine with just keeping the reference to the event itself, like:
Title: Deploy sentry buoys
Description: Deploy sentry buoys at the jump point:
Event: Jump point #2 discovered (...)
The creation of those rules would be simple, but could be easily extended in the future if there's a need for that:
Choose event source (i.e. JP discovered), Put default title, Put default description. If there are any keywords available and implemented, they could be put in the description as tags [tag] and during objective creation they would be replaced with appropriate text, i.e. name of event.

Profit?
Did you ever had a situation where
- you were doing something but suddenly your explorers discovered multiple new systems and finished their orders? Now you have to drop everything, go to them, give them new orders and make sure to bring jump gate constructors and buoy deployers to secure the perimeter and hope you'll still remember what you were doing before that... - well, how about creating objective for what you are currently doing, having automated objectives for all the new JPs and just giving new orders to explorers so that you can go back to what you did without having to look through every system you have in search for non secure jump points later on?
- one of your explorers sits on the standing orders, not doing anything apart from trying to go back to the home planet for overclock, but they can't so they just go to jump gate, try to explore again and go back to jump gate? - how about an automated objective telling you that ship requires shore leave/overclock?
- pirates raiding your civilian trade ships, but you can't really handle them right now because you're designing new ship? - how about creating yourself an objective to secure this route in the future
- you explored on so many directions and forgot in which direction you wanted to expand... again? - leave yourself an objective to expand to specific system
etc.
- instead of searching for issues EVERYWHERE, you just go to the objectives panel and see what is there currently to do in your empire.

Solution to most of the logistical/managerial problems we currently have is super simple and I think the game would benefit greatly from it. In short currently the game becomes overwhelming quite quickly because you have to remember EVERYTHING, if we remove that constant burden from the players, I think more people would be able to enjoy the game.

Additional ideas:
- export/import automated rules (so that you have reuse them in other games)
- standing order for objective creation (just once, and then the order is removed)
- objective rules for planet based activities, like resource stock levels, population levels etc. For example: Create new ground unit when population grows to a certain level.

[Garfunkel]

I keep an Excel sheet(s) for each game to keep track of what I'm planning on doing and what is already underway and what has been achieved so far. That helps a lot with the issues you described.

[dth11]

I guess it might work when there's nothing like it, but this should be in the game. The same as some kind of wiki. The longer I spend outside of the game, searching for stuff and planning stuff, the less time I spend in the game and the higher the chance is that I will decide I don't want to play it. Also, you can't hook Excel to ingame events to allow any kind of automation happening. If I have to do all the heavy lifting in Excel, yeah, it's still better than nothing, but then again, am I playing the game or running an Excel sheet in the end?

[Bezz]

On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.

Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!

[Ghostly]

On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.

Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!

I like this idea very much, but I'd rather have it work by Admin Command and not by class. Your survey ships are likely to be in the same NAC, so it'd work similarly for them, but you'd also be able to tell where all your naval forces in the sector's NAC are, or landing craft, or salvagers, or anything else, even if you're running numerous classes in each hull type. This woud invaluable for those large, multi-system military operations.

Also, if class-based ship images are going to happen one day, then maybe we can get class-based icons on the galaxy map too, which would make things far easier to read.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Reasoning: So I've been playing this game for a while and one thing that always gets me is lack of quality of life features and the fact that I have to constantly remember about everything, because nothing will remind me that something happened and I didn't respond to it. This applies to the fact that I have to sleep sometimes and when I wake up I don't always remember what I was doing/planning to do the day before. This is not fun and forces me to go through everything just to make sure I didn't miss something. Eventually this leads to the burn out and dropping the game, being too frustrated to play it once it hits me it will only get worse once my empire grows even more.

Ideas:
- Ingame goals/objectives
Add a simple panel, that will list all the objectives and give an ability to create new ones and mark old ones as complete/remove them. Something like a TODO list for a players, to keep track of their progress.
Every objective would have: name, description, optional attached fleet, status (debatable, but in theory would allow players to understand that they already started it). There could be more, like attaching specific character for flavor reasons, but these are bare minimum required to operate and I would be happy even if we finished this here, but...
- Automated goal/objective creation
I would imagine this as a set of rules, for start they could be simple, for example event popping up. The simple use case would be to create an objective with title "Deploy sentry buoys" and description "Deploy sentry buoys at [event_target]" whenever the event jump point discovered pops up. Event_target would be te jump point in question, but in general it would be a target of an event, there doesn't really have to be a reference to the object, just the name, and if that's too complicated, I'm fine with just keeping the reference to the event itself, like:
Title: Deploy sentry buoys
Description: Deploy sentry buoys at the jump point:
Event: Jump point #2 discovered (...)
The creation of those rules would be simple, but could be easily extended in the future if there's a need for that:
Choose event source (i.e. JP discovered), Put default title, Put default description. If there are any keywords available and implemented, they could be put in the description as tags [tag] and during objective creation they would be replaced with appropriate text, i.e. name of event.

Profit?
Did you ever had a situation where
- you were doing something but suddenly your explorers discovered multiple new systems and finished their orders? Now you have to drop everything, go to them, give them new orders and make sure to bring jump gate constructors and buoy deployers to secure the perimeter and hope you'll still remember what you were doing before that... - well, how about creating objective for what you are currently doing, having automated objectives for all the new JPs and just giving new orders to explorers so that you can go back to what you did without having to look through every system you have in search for non secure jump points later on?
- one of your explorers sits on the standing orders, not doing anything apart from trying to go back to the home planet for overclock, but they can't so they just go to jump gate, try to explore again and go back to jump gate? - how about an automated objective telling you that ship requires shore leave/overclock?
- pirates raiding your civilian trade ships, but you can't really handle them right now because you're designing new ship? - how about creating yourself an objective to secure this route in the future
- you explored on so many directions and forgot in which direction you wanted to expand... again? - leave yourself an objective to expand to specific system
etc.
- instead of searching for issues EVERYWHERE, you just go to the objectives panel and see what is there currently to do in your empire.

Solution to most of the logistical/managerial problems we currently have is super simple and I think the game would benefit greatly from it. In short currently the game becomes overwhelming quite quickly because you have to remember EVERYTHING, if we remove that constant burden from the players, I think more people would be able to enjoy the game.

Additional ideas:
- export/import automated rules (so that you have reuse them in other games)
- standing order for objective creation (just once, and then the order is removed)
- objective rules for planet based activities, like resource stock levels, population levels etc. For example: Create new ground unit when population grows to a certain level.

Please don't take this as a flippant answer, but you can already make extensive notes outside of the software. I use Word and Excel, but even Notepad is enough, or pen and paper. I have limited programming time so it wouldn't be a high priority to replicate note-taking, apart from maybe adding a free text tab to fleets. A more involved, automated system would involve a considerable amount of work because of the variety of things that can happen in the game, especially with different context in many cases. It isn't something that has been requested before.

The game already has events to tell you when things finish, or when you have forgotten something like allocating research labs. You can read back through all the past events. You can also have your fleets send you a message when they arrive somewhere, reminding you of why you sent them. I know some people even create fake fleets, or 'message bots', to use the remind messages on a regular basis. It also helps to get into a regular routine - checking terraforming fleets, checking survey fleets, checking build queues, mining output, etc..

For the sentry buoys specifically, you can check where they are deployed on the Galactic Map, using the Missiles tab (assuming that is pre v2.6). I use that all the time to plan buoy placement.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

On the galactic map you can display the presence of fleets and can choose all fleets and/or warships. Would it be possible to filter this by ship class? That way we can see at a glance on the galactic map where our grav survey ships are, or the mine layers or whatever. There appears to be enough space for another tab to implement this. It would immensely facilitate fleet management.

Apologies if its already present - please tell me how!

I like this idea very much, but I'd rather have it work by Admin Command and not by class. Your survey ships are likely to be in the same NAC, so it'd work similarly for them, but you'd also be able to tell where all your naval forces in the sector's NAC are, or landing craft, or salvagers, or anything else, even if you're running numerous classes in each hull type. This woud invaluable for those large, multi-system military operations.

Also, if class-based ship images are going to happen one day, then maybe we can get class-based icons on the galaxy map too, which would make things far easier to read.

Either fleets or admin commands is possible. Different class icons is a good idea, although there would have to be some form of priority involved.

[paolot]

For the sentry buoys specifically, you can check where they are deployed on the Galactic Map, using the Missiles tab (assuming that is pre v2.6). I use that all the time to plan buoy placement.

Sorry Steve, but Missiles tab is a new feature of v2.6
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg169884#msg169884
not a pre v2.6 one.