4.3 Suggestions

[georgiaboy1966]

Steve, been runnig into an irritating problem for a while now. That is the loading of troops. Is it possible to load troops like minerials instead. So do not having to load each individual troop, I can load a specific number or max of a troop type.

Loading 500 assault troops for an invasion is a pain.

[waresky]

Gooood point georgia..
it's true.
hope steve,in many thing going to finish'em,found time to make more easy troops management.
Recover'it into PDC,multiple selection of them...etc.etc..

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve, been runnig into an irritating problem for a while now. That is the loading of troops. Is it possible to load troops like minerials instead. So do not having to load each individual troop, I can load a specific number or max of a troop type.

Loading 500 assault troops for an invasion is a pain.

That isn't a problem I have run into but It sounds like your campaign must have reached a considerable size . I assume you just want to be able to load a particular type of division instead. Load All Heavy Assault, for example?

Steve

[welchbloke]

Steve, been runnig into an irritating problem for a while now. That is the loading of troops. Is it possible to load troops like minerials instead. So do not having to load each individual troop, I can load a specific number or max of a troop type.

Loading 500 assault troops for an invasion is a pain.

That isn't a problem I have run into but It sounds like your campaign must have reached a considerable size

[georgiaboy1966]

Steve, been runnig into an irritating problem for a while now. That is the loading of troops. Is it possible to load troops like minerials instead. So do not having to load each individual troop, I can load a specific number or max of a troop type.

Loading 500 assault troops for an invasion is a pain.

That isn't a problem I have run into but It sounds like your campaign must have reached a considerable size . I assume you just want to be able to load a particular type of division instead. Load All Heavy Assault, for example?

Steve

Yes loading individual types would be nice. Similiar to the minerals loading/unloading would be nice.

[backstab]

The ability to sell/trade complete systems .... eg a race develops the A-1 Railgun and sells / trades it to another race instead of sell/tradeing each individual componant

[welchbloke]

The ability to sell/trade complete systems .... eg a race develops the A-1 Railgun and sells / trades it to another race instead of sell/tradeing each individual componant

To take this suggestion one step further how about selling complete weapon systems?  Sell 10x A-1 Railguns without giving the tech. I see backstab's suggestion as giving the information to 'licence produce' a system.  Whereas, what I'm suggesting is just like selling Typhoon to Saudi Arabia.  Of course you could retro-engineer the system maybe destroy the system to give you a random number of RP on the tech?

[IanD]

For the future once 4.3 is out. When you salvage an unknown or hostile wreck it would be nice to get a brief (and perhaps incomplete) summary of the ship, eg missile combatant, freighter, how many missile ports and/or kinetic/beam weapons (without saying 8 size 4 missile launchers) in addition to the specific tech you sometimes get.

Regards

[Steve Walmsley]

The ability to sell/trade complete systems .... eg a race develops the A-1 Railgun and sells / trades it to another race instead of sell/tradeing each individual componant

This would be fairly straightforward in terms of programming but without the background knowledge, would the second race be able to build it? For example, if the US gave Albania the plans for the latest Patriot missile, could Albania actually manufacture the missiles?

To take this suggestion one step further how about selling complete weapon systems?  Sell 10x A-1 Railguns without giving the tech. I see backstab's suggestion as giving the information to 'licence produce' a system.  Whereas, what I'm suggesting is just like selling Typhoon to Saudi Arabia.  Of course you could retro-engineer the system maybe destroy the system to give you a random number of RP on the tech?

This is harder from a programming and gameplay perspective but probably more realistic. The problem is how you model the 10x A-1 railguns. Does Race A have to bulid them before giving them to Race B and if so, how do I account for that in the game. If instead you just say Race B can bulid 10 railguns and the program keeps track, that is no different than giving them the plans and if they are building it, how do you stop them building more?

This area of the game is very interesting but full of pitfalls. One option I have considered in the past is having Industrial Capacity (IC) instead of construction, fighter and ordnance factories. You have a pool of unused IC and you can devote a number of IC points to building a certain type of installation, missile or fighter. Once a production run is complete, you can build more of the same, leave the IC setup to build the same thing but dormant or 'release' the IC back into the pool. If the IC is released, there would be a period when it would be unavailable (6 months?) as it is being retooled. This mechanic could be reversed so that when unused IC is devoted to a new task, there is a retooling period before construction begins - this is more realistic but the former is easier. This would create more diverse industrial output and you could have a lot of different items being produced at the same time.

If the above was in place, you could take it a step further (a step too far, probably

If that paradigm was in place, then one race could quite easily pass on or sell manufactured components to another (the 10x Railgun mentioned above for example

Steve

[Father Tim]

I like this paradigm very much, but then I tend to model my Aurora games on the Age of Sail or the dreadnought race - where such things were quite common.  More than one battleship was nicknamed "the ship with her aunt's/grandmother's teeth" due to reuse of big guns.  One of the things that annoys me about the Aurora Production queue is the inability to assign a percentage of output to a certain product.  With a pre-TN start I convert mot of my CI 50-50 to CF & mines, which currently means a heck of a lot of 'convert 10' orders interleaved.  With a new colony, I'd like to be constantly building a small amount of Infrastructure to keep up with growth, rather than batches interspersed with other facilities.

[welchbloke]

I also like this paradigm but I am cognisant of the possibility of generating huge amounts of micromanagement without necessarily improving the gaming experience.  How about treating component manufacture in the same manner as mines etc?  Have a multiple selection tree for contruction factories something like the officers window for command opportunities.  In the components selection have all of the racial designed components available for construction.  So if a player wants to build some components to sell they do it that way.  If they want to build a ship they don't need to build components (the shipyard handles it).  I like the idea of getting components back if you scrap a ship.  These components then become available for sale.  I suppose, if its possible, the stockpiled components could be used to reduce the construction time of a ship in the slipyards.  Reduce time of construction by the percentage of the mass of the component?  Anyway these are my (probably random) musings  

[sloanjh (OP)]

I'm worried about the micromanagement.  How often do we think that we're going to be trading components between races?  I can see it for a multi-civ earth game, but not of a game involving a single player race with lots of alien NPR.  It also seems like it would vastly complicate class design - how do you specify a class that contains "alien" components?  It seems that this might be more trouble to implement than it's worth.

John

[waresky]

Steve.
Same as Master Of orions,we have some ResLabs ok?..but are possible who 200 labs research same area? no i think..
Are possible diferent labs can assign different Area tech to research at same time?

[Steve Walmsley]

I also like this paradigm but I am cognisant of the possibility of generating huge amounts of micromanagement without necessarily improving the gaming experience.  How about treating component manufacture in the same manner as mines etc?  Have a multiple selection tree for contruction factories something like the officers window for command opportunities.  In the components selection have all of the racial designed components available for construction.  So if a player wants to build some components to sell they do it that way.  If they want to build a ship they don't need to build components (the shipyard handles it).  I like the idea of getting components back if you scrap a ship.  These components then become available for sale.  I suppose, if its possible, the stockpiled components could be used to reduce the construction time of a ship in the slipyards.  Reduce time of construction by the percentage of the mass of the component?  Anyway these are my (probably random) musings   but the more I think about it, the more I think you might have hit on an ideal solution that would suit everyone.

Shipyards would remain as they are now - same cost, same mechanics etc. with one exception. When they begin building a ship, they check for available components stockpiled on the planet. If any are available, they are removed from the stockpile and the ship construction prtogress advances to a percentage equal to the cost required for the stockpiled components. For example, assume you had stockpiled engines, either by building them or recovering them from a scrapped ship, and you built a survey ship with six engines for which the engines comprised thirty percent of the cost. When you pressed the Add Task button, the six engines would be removed from the stockpile and the progress percentage would start at 30%. After that, construction would continue normally. It's a little more complex because the mineral consumption for the rest of the task would be incorrect but I could fix that in the background at the start of the task. If you had no components stockpiled, the ship would be built by the shipyard in exactly the same way it is built now.

This method allows for players who want to build components or re-use them and also for players who want to ignore the idea entirely. It also means I wouldn't have to modify the NPR construction code.

What does everyone think of the idea of replacing construction/ordnance/fighter factories with Industrial capacity (IC). This would essentially be the same as having just construction factories but you could build multiple items at once. Any  IC that was returned to the pool would be unavailable for a time while it was retooled - I think 3 months is probably reasonable. Any new build IC would be immediately available.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve.
Same as Master Of orions,we have some ResLabs ok?..but are possible who 200 labs research same area? no i think..
Are possible diferent labs can assign different Area tech to research at same time?

This is different to construction because each research task lasts quite some time. There is essentially no difference between researching five projects in a row and five projects simultaneously, except in the former case you get some of them earlier than you would in the latter case. One of the advantages of creating different colonies is that you can split up your research labs and take advantage of the tech bonuses of different officers.

Steve