Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Zed 6]

I was wondering would it make sense/be interesting if you could transport water for terraforming purposes?

Considering how many times you would need to do and repeat this, I think it would soon become tedious.

And eat a lot of fuel stocks.

This is a severe understatement.

We can make a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see how impractical this would be:

Let us assume that volumetric compression can be neglected as a transportation option. Let us also assume that we wish to cover 20% of the surface area of a terraformable body with liquid water to a depth of 10 m---this is a gross underestimate, but by being so it should more than cancel out the previous assumption to yield a conservative estimate.

Consider a Mars-like world, which has a mean radius of about 3,400 km (3.4e6 m), yielding a surface area of 1.45e14 m^2. To accomplish our stated goal will require (1.45e14 * 0.20 * 10) = 2.9e14 m^3 of water. Now consider a standard 25,000-ton cargo hold: if we neglect compression of the water and use the Walmsley ton (1 t = 14 m^3), we can transport 350,000 m^3 of liquid water per standard cargo hold per round trip. The number of (round trips * standard holds) required to complete this terraforming goal is therefore (2.9e14 / 3.5e5) = 830 million.

In fact, even if we assume a ridiculous Trans-Newtonian compression factor of 100x, we're still looking at over 8 million standard cargo holds worth of water to transport. Now, I've been known on occasion to give a freighter flotilla cycled orders with dozens of cycles and let them run around unsupervised for a few years, but this is well beyond that and probably well beyond the realm of feasibility. And of course, this is ignoring the fact that for a real, sustainable planetary water cycle, bodies much deeper than 10 m are certainly required, increasing the transport throughput required by potentially multiple orders of magnitude still.

A similar analysis could be done for terraforming gases, where the much higher compression achievable with gases is offset by the fact that an atmosphere must be many dozens of kilometers deep rather than 10 meters. This is why in Aurora, our terraformers magically scientifically produce gases out of nothing through Trans-Newtonian handwaving. 

Senator: What is line item in your budget proposal for an 8 inch hose at 250 Million miles?

Terraforming Secretary: Sir, that is the max distance from Earth to Mars, but we'll probably have to extend that by at least 4-5 times to go around the Sun over the pole. At a cheap $1 a foot, that is 6.6 Trillion.  Plus pumps. Should be $ 10 trillion.

[paolot]

In the System windows, when All System View is selected, is it possible to include at least also the "Sort by" options for "population" and "atmosphere"?

[paolot]

I'm trying to design an ambush ship: I feel a bit reductive calling it a scout (by the way, there is no "Ambush something" class type  ).

Would be fun to have some space submarine equivalent. Substellar? Subcosmic? Subcelestial?

I am designing that ship with high level cloaking: it shall appear as 7% of the ship mass (and I'm studying 5%).
I think of it as a submarine-like vessel.   

In the last update of the Gothic V campaign of Steve, you can read a clear example of the possibility that this feature can open.
Fantastic! Thank you Steve!

[Collin Thomas]

Oh awesome! Tysm!

Reading "2.6.0 Changes List", this doesn't mean it's out, right? Cause I'm not seeing a patch in installation files

[Tavik Toth]

Oh awesome! Tysm!

Reading "2.6.0 Changes List", this doesn't mean it's out, right? Cause I'm not seeing a patch in installation files

Steve always makes a new thread for each new release once it is ready.

[paolot]

In the View Technology window, when missiles are shown, is it possible to add the information about retargeting capability?

[Indefatigable]

Editable value in Game Options for

Maximum number of Civilian Shipping Lines (per Race)
Maximum number of ships per a Civilian Shipping Line

[paolot]

I've found this suggestion for v2.0
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13020.msg166200#msg166200
while I was overthinking about more or less the same item for accuracy of weapons.
No answer to this and no other similar proposal i found.

High speed/high power computing can increase the aiming ability of weapons (turrets, CIWS, STOs) I think.
Using this feature they can perform better and faster calculation of the target future position, and therefore the direction to aim to, increasing the probability that a shot hits the target.
I've done some hypothesis.
The research cost could start at 1,000 (one thousand) research points, then increases e.g. like
RP_lev(X) = RP_lev(1)*(1+int((lev(X)-1)^3)).
While, at each level, the multiplicative factor for the accuracy could be
ACC_lev(X) = int(10,000*(1.2+(1.0025-1.2)/(1+(lev(X)/10)^4)))/10,000
starting from 1.0025 and capped at 1.20 for high levels.
For the first 20 levels, the values from these formulas are:
RP;Acc:
1,000.00;1.0025 - 2,000.00;1.0028 - 9,000.00;1.004 - 28,000.00;1.0074 - 65,000.00;1.0141 - 126,000.00;1.0251 - 217,000.00;1.0407 - 344,000.00;1.0598 - 513,000.00;1.0807 - 730,000.00;1.1012 - 1,001,000.00;1.1198 - 1,332,000.00;1.1357 - 1,729,000.00;1.1487 - 2,198,000.00;1.1592 - 2,745,000.00;1.1674 - 3,376,000.00;1.1738 - 4,097,000.00;1.1788 - 4,914,000.00;1.1828 - 5,833,000.00;1.1859 - 6,860,000.00;1.1883
The mass of the computers should influence the outcome too: the ability of small units (e.g. 50 kg, or 0.001 HS) could be reduced (e.g., dividing this factor by 4 or 5); the listed numbers could be obtained with at least 1 ton (0.2 HS) computer, while large ones (50 or 100 tons, i.e. 1 or 2 HS) could increase it a bit more (30% maximum).
But, as BwenGun said, computers can really be applied to everything in the game: research, factories, tracking stations, shipyards, finance, terraforming, ship components, prisoners interrogation, etc. etc..
Apart coding it, the hard point is the balance of this with the rest of the mechanics in the game.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Editable value in Game Options for

Maximum number of Civilian Shipping Lines (per Race)
Maximum number of ships per a Civilian Shipping Line

Shipping Lines have changed in v2.6 and will have far fewer ships.

[randakar]

But what if you like having lots of civilians around?