4.1 Suggestions

[SteveAlt]

1) On the DAC/RANK tab of the Class Design (F5) screen, provide some sort of numerical rank that rates the relative importance of that class when it comes time to auto-assign officers.

I want my best officers (highest crew rating) to go on my warships, then on my jump ships, but auto-assign thinks that missile bases are more important, so it assigns high crew ratings to them first.

2)  Provide some way to specify a "primary responsibility" for Task Forces for use during auto-assign.  

In my home system, I break thinks up into "Logistics Command" (logistics), "Survey Command" (survey), "Home Fleet" (combat), etc.  I would like my best logistics staff officer to go to Logistics Command during auto-assign, but it rarely works out that way :-)

I have added a priority next to the rank. The rank will still take precedence but within a given rank level the classes will be assessed in order of priority. At the moment they are assessed in descending order of combat power and cost. Those will still apply if the priorities are equal. I need to leave the rank in place in order to make best use of the available officers. At the moment in v4.0 the assignment process is as follows:

Survey Ships of Rank 3 or higher
Any armed ship of rank 3 or higher
Any remaining ships of rank 3 or higher
HQ Divisions
Survey ships of Rank 2
Armed ships of rank 2
Remaining ships of rank 2
Construction Ships
Terraformers
Harvesters
Salvage Ships
Assault Divisions
Armed rank 1 ship classes
Rank 1 divisions
Remaining rank 1 ship classes
Intelligence Officers
Operations Officers
Communication Officers
Logistics Officers
Survey Officers
Fighter Ops Officers
Public Affairs Officers

The difference will now be that within each step, the class priority will be considered ahead of combat strength and cost. I can re-arrange the order of the steps but not on a per race basis so if there was general agreement to make staff officers more important for exmaple, that could be done for v4.1

With the existing complexity, I don't want to get into fleet priorities at this stage though.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Very true. He does make nice toys.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

The only problem with that method, is the tedious and time consuming setup just to test each design. It's a great workaround to use if one really MUST
test a ship design, but an ingame engine would be less problematical.

The reason I suggested it was that I've seen this request go by several times in the past, and I don't think I've seen Steve expressing much interest in it, so I thought I'd give you a work-around (that I believe has been suggested in the past).  Don't forget that his stated motivation isn't to make a commercial game - it's mostly to be a basis for his writing activities, so his motivation for what he wants to work on doesn't always align with what we want in the game (Pi-Rats!...Pi-Rats! :-)

A combat simulator would be a lot of work and its something I have never needed so its unlikely to get done - at least until I have a sudden burst of enthusiasm to tackle it

PS - Just kidding about the pirates Steve - I know you've expressed a willingness to get them in if you can figure out a way to do so that makes sense.

The new trade system will provide a great reason to have pirates so I would expect them to appear in v4.2 or later.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Display "course" (angular heading) information for contacts.

When I'm running away from precursors, I'd like to know if they're responding to my course changes by making their own course changes.  At present, I'm doing this by dropping a series of waypoints and eyeballing it - it would help a lot if the F3 screen simply told me their course in addition to their speed.

John

[SteveAlt]

Display "course" (angular heading) information for contacts.

When I'm running away from precursors, I'd like to know if they're responding to my course changes by making their own course changes.  At present, I'm doing this by dropping a series of waypoints and eyeballing it - it would help a lot if the F3 screen simply told me their course in addition to their speed.

You can now display headings for both fleets and contacts in v4.1

Steve

[simon]

. The upgrade is sublime though

[SteveAlt]

Alas we game with notebooks and the new ship design window is cumbersome, you end up having large empty spaces which have minimum functionality while important stuff is forced out into the border areas. For example when designing vessels the number of errors that can prevent design authorization are few and rarely occur all at once so you end up with a large empty design error space while dragging and dropping the window back and forth to see the vitals this also affect the vessel summary when you end up with large spaces and duplicate information when the summary is done. Could it be optional to retain the old window in 4.1v? (It was workable at 1024X768)

Unfortunately, the old window is no more. The new window is the old window with extra bits. I can't even use an old copy of the window because the underlying code would be out of date.

I agree that the design error space is mostly unused, although it was a matter of aesthetics because I wanted to include a brief summary on the design tab to avoid tabbing back and forth as in v3.2. The depth of the window was the problem so I therefore removed the information that was being repeated in the top section and I moved the design error section to the side to give me more space. I probably should make the Components section longer but I was just matching up the lines . I originally kept it down to 1280x1024 because I used to have a second monitor with that resolution. I am now using three monitors on my main PC, each with 1900x1200. It would good to take full advantage of that but I realise that would make it unusuable for many people so I am sticking with the existing resolution. Trying to make it fit to 1024x768 would make all the windows very small for me. I guess another option would be to add the same scrollbars as the Fleet Window but I haven't done so because I have to change the resolution of my monitors to test it and then swap back to code, which gets annoying in a hurry

Steve

[backstab]

How about Special Forces Groups that could be used to raid HQ units or destory componants in PDB (Like Missile Magazines, Weapons, Power Plants)

[Hagar]

Since it takes 5 of the current cargo holds to transport a facility or part of the larger facilities that are transported in pieces, there never seems to be a reason to put anything but a multiple of 5 cargo holds on a ship.  I just encountered a problem with one of my designs where I had accidently only put on 4 cargo holds and was unable to move facilities (the order was not available for the task group containing the ship).  I did not check to see if several versions of this ship in a single task group would be able to move facilities.  Does it make sense to increase the size of the current cargo hold by 5 so that each cargo hold could transport one facility?

[Father Tim]

I tend to put one cargo hold on my colony ships so they can haul their own infrastructure along, but I wouldn't miss it all that much if I could no longer do so.

[SteveAlt]

Since it takes 5 of the current cargo holds to transport a facility or part of the larger facilities that are transported in pieces, there never seems to be a reason to put anything but a multiple of 5 cargo holds on a ship.  I just encountered a problem with one of my designs where I had accidently only put on 4 cargo holds and was unable to move facilities (the order was not available for the task group containing the ship).  I did not check to see if several versions of this ship in a single task group would be able to move facilities.  Does it make sense to increase the size of the current cargo hold by 5 so that each cargo hold could transport one facility?

That's a reasonable idea. The reason for the smaller holds is that certain items such as minerals can fit in a one hold and you may want a small, fast cargo ship. However, if no one has any particular objection I could make the hold 5x as large with 5x the capacity. Bear in mind its already 10x as large for v4.1 due to the general size increase so it would 50x larger than at the moment with 5x the capacity

Steve

[schroeam]

Since it takes 5 of the current cargo holds to transport a facility or part of the larger facilities that are transported in pieces, there never seems to be a reason to put anything but a multiple of 5 cargo holds on a ship.  I just encountered a problem with one of my designs where I had accidently only put on 4 cargo holds and was unable to move facilities (the order was not available for the task group containing the ship).  I did not check to see if several versions of this ship in a single task group would be able to move facilities.  Does it make sense to increase the size of the current cargo hold by 5 so that each cargo hold could transport one facility?

That's a reasonable idea. The reason for the smaller holds is that certain items such as minerals can fit in a one hold and you may want a small, fast cargo ship. However, if no one has any particular objection I could make the hold 5x as large with 5x the capacity. Bear in mind its already 10x as large for v4.1 due to the general size increase so it would 50x larger than at the moment with 5x the capacity

Steve

Yes the size of a single hold may increase, but the overall effect on ship design will not be affected.  The size of freighters will go up anyway, and people will then use just one hold instead of five.  I'm all for the change, smaller faster freighters still can't carry all that many minerals.

Adam.

[schroeam]

How about Special Forces Groups that could be used to raid HQ units or destory componants in PDB (Like Missile Magazines, Weapons, Power Plants)

I agree with a commando style unit that will serve some sort of clandestine purpose on the battlefield.  Maybe satisfy this with a negative impact on the enemy force morale and readiness.

Adam.

[backstab]

How about Special Forces Groups that could be used to raid HQ units or destory componants in PDB (Like Missile Magazines, Weapons, Power Plants)

I agree with a commando style unit that will serve some sort of clandestine purpose on the battlefield.  Maybe satisfy this with a negative impact on the enemy force morale and readiness.

Adam.

You could even throw them away in regular combat , if you are desperate.

[sloanjh]

Since it takes 5 of the current cargo holds to transport a facility or part of the larger facilities that are transported in pieces, there never seems to be a reason to put anything but a multiple of 5 cargo holds on a ship.  I just encountered a problem with one of my designs where I had accidently only put on 4 cargo holds and was unable to move facilities (the order was not available for the task group containing the ship).  I did not check to see if several versions of this ship in a single task group would be able to move facilities.  Does it make sense to increase the size of the current cargo hold by 5 so that each cargo hold could transport one facility?

That's a reasonable idea. The reason for the smaller holds is that certain items such as minerals can fit in a one hold and you may want a small, fast cargo ship. However, if no one has any particular objection I could make the hold 5x as large with 5x the capacity. Bear in mind its already 10x as large for v4.1 due to the general size increase so it would 50x larger than at the moment with 5x the capacity

Steve

Yes the size of a single hold may increase, but the overall effect on ship design will not be affected.  The size of freighters will go up anyway, and people will then use just one hold instead of five.  I'm all for the change, smaller faster freighters still can't carry all that many minerals.

Adam.

The only three drawbacks I can think of are:

1) Right now cryo holds and cargo holds are the same size.  I wouldn't want the same change for cryo holds, since I often put 6 on a ship, rather than 5.
2) Civilian tramp steamers:  Given the way the civilian trade system is going, one might want to design a small (cheap!!) 1-hold freighter would transport trade goods; the cheap cost would permit civilian companies to buy them more rapidly.
3)  Remote maintenance facilities/"general support ships" - Ships with mobile maintenance modules will probably want to have a small hold for minerals. That way they can make a "forward repair base" colony and drop the minerals on it, rather than having to mine them or bring along a full-fledged freighter.  Such a mineral hold could also be put onto a generic support ship, that had fuel tankage, maintenance supplies, magazines, and mineral cargos as part of a fleet train.

Alternate proposal 1:

Have two types of cargo hold system: "classic" and "large (the 5x guy)".

Alternate proposal 2:

Split the "design errors" section of the class design (F5) window into "errors" and "warnings" sections.  "Warnings" could have things like "cargo holds not a multiple of 5", "ship's mass is smaller than jump engine maximum size" (which doesn't prevent the ship from jumping, but means you've over-engined it), "too much (or too little) reactor power for weapons mix", ...

John