Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Ghostly]

Simple Suggestion: Change the default starting date to 2030 (or any approapriate new start date)

It is currently according to the gregorian calender the year 2025 (in real life)

Aurora 4x has always had a date that is in the future to start with, to maintain continuity this must be rectified as aurora now starts in the modern day on default start. I am sure everyone agrees.

This has already been done

Give that we are only a couple weeks away from 2025, it might be time to consider updating the default start year? Unless Aurora is going to switch over into being a retro-futurism 4X.

I already did   It's 2050 in the next version.

[smoelf]

Super minor thing but I thought it would be interesting to see how much time is spent per safefile. Perhaps a timer that stores its value every time you actively save.

[skoormit]

So Active Terminal Guidance.

Kind of... boring, honestly. And mostly useless.

I am entirely baffled.

This ability requires a straight 0.25MSP, costs about the same as 0.25MSP of engine at 400% power, and increases accuracy by some percentage that increases with research.
Even at the first research level of +15%, straightforward math tells you that trading 0.25MSP of engine size for this ability this will improve accuracy if your engine is 1.92MSP or larger.
The higher your tech level, the smaller the engine has to be for this ability to improve accuracy when traded for engine size.

Obviously you lose some speed when you make this trade, and that makes you somewhat more vulnerable to enemy PD and AMM.
So it's probably not worth making that trade for an engine just barely big enough--a small gain to accuracy probably isn't worth the additional PD/AMM vulnerability.

But if you have a really big missile, with a really big engine, it is absolutely worth it.
If there's anything boring about this ability, it's that it is so good on big missiles that there's hardly ever a reason to not use it.

[David_H_Roarings]

Simple Suggestion: Change the default starting date to 2030 (or any approapriate new start date)

It is currently according to the gregorian calender the year 2025 (in real life)

Aurora 4x has always had a date that is in the future to start with, to maintain continuity this must be rectified as aurora now starts in the modern day on default start. I am sure everyone agrees.

I alway just set mine to 2100 because its easier to see how many years iv been playing. I do this mostly because i cant count. ha 

I generally set mine to 1000 so I don't have to count

[nuclearslurpee]

Suggestion: A button or option to lock time advancement, so that clicking a time increment button does nothing.

Rationale: I've lost count of how many times I've accidentally advanced time during game setup due to unfortunate misclicks. 

[paolot]

- Please, add the missing tooltips: they are missing in several (too many) points.
- Please, keep the tooltips visible until the cursor is moved. I.e. not set a time-out for showing them: reading long sentences requires more time than the one is now allowed.

[Akhillis]

Suggestion: New Game Settings - Minerals

Fairly simple suggestion, add two new fields to the game settings.

- Mineral Deposit Frequency
- Mineral Deposit Size

Deposit Frequency alters the chance of discovering minerals with both space and ground geosurveys. Deposit Size alters the size of any discovered deposits. Both are percentage modifiers and are set to 100 by default, much like the other settings.

To my understanding this wont affect the accessibility of minerals.

[paolot]

Economics window, Civilian/Flags tab: if there is a request for an installation, a new supply cannot be created for that item. A simple warning message could be helpful.

[lumporr]

Suggestion: Expanded parameters for customizing NPR fleets, especially size, and potentially speed (or tech level with slightly more granularity than just the single pool of tech points?). It is difficult to set up NPRs to fight at a certain tech level or engine generation, or use ships of truly massive sizes. It may cause unforseen issues, but what happens if the size parameter is expanded out to say, 10x times? Or if there's a field for engine generation and average max engine multiplier? These would both go a long way in the ability to represent specific NPRs from fiction that will be the specific challenge you'd like them to be.

Separate but connected suggestion: Certain spoiler races seem hardstuck when it comes to maximum speed and size of combat craft. Expanding the custom NPR parameters to the combat craft of spoiler races would be nice, though this might be more of a challenge.

[Viridia]

Hi Steve,

Something I'd like to throw in the ring for a suggestion would be an increase in the energy/kinetic weapon bores we can research, as well as possibly increasing the distance beam weapons can fire up to as well, even if it comes at obscene mass prices. I'm asking as I'm currently trying to recreate an accurate design from David Weber's RMN fleet book, but anything beyond light cruiser size is unachievable at the moment due to the high tonnage of his designs.

[paolot]

Economics window, Shipyards Tasks tab: would it be possible to add sorting by "Progress" and "Ship name"?

[nuclearslurpee]

Separate but connected suggestion: Certain spoiler races seem hardstuck when it comes to maximum speed and size of combat craft. Expanding the custom NPR parameters to the combat craft of spoiler races would be nice, though this might be more of a challenge.

I would like to see at least the ability to set the Precursors and Invaders tech level as a player's choice option, since they remain static and for higher-tech games they basically become speed bumps after a certain point. This could perhaps also be good for Raiders if the player wants them to be more threatening, a la Steve's Gothic campaign back before 2.0.

Hi Steve,

Something I'd like to throw in the ring for a suggestion would be an increase in the energy/kinetic weapon bores we can research, as well as possibly increasing the distance beam weapons can fire up to as well, even if it comes at obscene mass prices. I'm asking as I'm currently trying to recreate an accurate design from David Weber's RMN fleet book, but anything beyond light cruiser size is unachievable at the moment due to the high tonnage of his designs.

In an older thread, someone came up with the number that 1 "Walmsley ton" = 4 "Weber tons", which might be helpful for you in trying to get tonnages to "match". Anecdotally, when I've tried to set up Honorverse-style settings, I've usually been able to get tonnages to match by playing around with various degrees of freedom like missile sizes, number of sidewall generators, etc.

[skoormit]

A lot of players like to start the game with civilian shipping lines active, and then deactivate them at some point (ideally before civvy trade-route-finding starts slowing down turn generation too much).

This setting also affects NPRs, though, and therefore it seems that an NPR that is generated after civvies are deactivated won't have any civvies. Which seems like a big handicap for the NPR.

Suggestion: modify the NPR creation process to include an appropriate amount of civilian shipping tonnage (perhaps comparable to the largest non-NPR race's tonnage, modified by this NPR's random scaling value), even if civvies are currently "inactive" in the game.

[David_H_Roarings]

Can we get orders to detach a sub-fleet/sub-fleets and adsorb fleet as sub-fleet? I often have an assortment of commercial grade support ships in a sub fleet that I detach and leave at the jump point before going into a contested system