Suggestions for v5.1

[IanD]

Allow half space increments for sensor antenna sizes up to 3 or 4. My FAC need a new FC, a 2 hull space antenna gives me a range of 21.6 million kilometres, while a 3 space antenna gives me a range of 43.2 million Kilometres. What I wanted was a range of 30 million kilometres. Half a space is important on a FAC.

Regards

[sloanjh]

Allow half space increments for sensor antenna sizes up to 3 or 4. My FAC need a new FC, a 2 hull space antenna gives me a range of 21.6 million kilometres, while a 3 space antenna gives me a range of 43.2 million Kilometres. What I wanted was a range of 30 million kilometres. Half a space is important on a FAC.

Regards

Seconded.

Or an even more extreme possibility is to allow fractional values in the design of most ship-borne systems - similar to missile design.  So for active sensors, you'd specify a (decimal) resolution and a (decimal) size in HS, and get a unique system.  Similarly for engines - you'd specify a power level (commercial/military/GB/Drone/Fighter) and a size.  I accidently made a 0.75 HS missile in my last game - why not allow 0.75 HS launchers so you could pack 4/3 as many of them into your point defense?

One difficulty I see would be the damage allocation model - you'd probably want some sort of probablistic interpretation of fractional HTK.  Another difficulty would be in cargo holds - I would want to be able to specify picking up only an integral number of installations if I had a ship with a weird-capacity hold.

John

[boggo2300]

Allow half space increments for sensor antenna sizes up to 3 or 4. My FAC need a new FC, a 2 hull space antenna gives me a range of 21.6 million kilometres, while a 3 space antenna gives me a range of 43.2 million Kilometres. What I wanted was a range of 30 million kilometres. Half a space is important on a FAC.

Regards

I think this is a useful idea, the number of times I've had to overpower my fire controls, not so important on a ship, but I've been moving to a more FAC/Fighter based fleet, and half a space can be very important on a FAC

Matt

[sloanjh]

An additional box on the game-info screen (ctrl-I ?): multi-human game.  This would make some of the non-SM operations require an SM password.

I was thinking about the "unlock design" SM-only issue this morning, and it occured to me that Aurora actually is intended to support 3 modes:

1)  SM mode, aka "Cheat" mode.  Allows one to break the rules.

2)  Solitaire player mode - should be able to easily ignore rules (i.e. cheat) that he wants to ignore, but wants to be warned when cheating.

3)  Multi-human mode - There's an SM mailing DB to players who enter their orders etc.  In this mode the rules should be strictly enforced, which means requiring the SM password to go into any of the other modes.  It's not clear how much effort you (Steve) want to expend here, since I don't know of anyone who's actually doing this.

In any event, introducing the multi-human mode will give a compromise solution to a lot of the "should this cheat require the SM PW" questions - in multi-human mode the answer is "yes"; in solitaire mode is "no, but maybe give a warning".

It also occurred to me while typing this message that the startup screen should probably modified to support multi-player mode - there should be a "select human player" pulldown (which includes SM) that requires the apropriate PW to start the game.  This so that the SM doesn't accidently leave the DB that he mails to player1 with the default empire set to player2's.

John

[Virex]

I suspect someone has run into this before, but I'd at the very least like to build reduced-speed beam controll systems as an analog to the reduced range ones. Especialy since fighter versions of the beam controlls already get a 4x modifier to tracking, that I don't need for my anti capital ship fighters.

[metalax]

Just been playing around with ground forces and came up with a few ideas/questions.

Should Engineer Brigades require at least a Brigadier for command? I know you can do this manually but I wasn't sure if this was an oversight. On a related note shouldn't they attach to Divisional HQ's instead of Brigade HQ's? Or at least have the option to do so?

Any possibility of getting the ability to add additional ranks for ground force officers in a similar way to the ability to do so for naval officers?

Also any prospect of getting at least one more level of HQ's?

[Charlie Beeler]

Flotilla/squadron handling for gunboats similiar to what we have for fighters.

A means to assign superior formation to fighters squadrons on the F7 window.  This is carried over to the task group created when the squadron is launched.  If an F7 superior formation isn't assigned then default to parent TG.  I tend to have multiple small squadrons on a carrier.  Then tend to need to manouver together.

The ability for carriers to repair fighter battle damage.

The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.

[welchbloke]

Flotilla/squadron handling for gunboats similiar to what we have for fighters.

A means to assign superior formation to fighters squadrons on the F7 window.  This is carried over to the task group created when the squadron is launched.  If an F7 superior formation isn't assigned then default to parent TG.  I tend to have multiple small squadrons on a carrier.  Then tend to need to manouver together.

Steve's been talking about revamping the F7 screen for some time and the suggestion above would help me as well. I also have multiple sqns that have to manoeuvre together.

The ability for carriers to repair fighter battle damage.

A YES PLEASE! from me as well.

The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.

Not sure if I agree with this one.  If you think about today's fighters then some changes are possible, Typhoon F3 to Typhoon FGR4is acheivable, but you couldn't turn a Tornado F3 into a Typhoon FGR4 for example. The mechanics of this would need some thought. Maybe changes that don't increase/decrease mass by more than 20%?

[boggo2300]

Something that would be usefull for the Hunter/Killer class submarine wannabe's I'm experimenting with would be reduced squadron sizes for Jump Drives, allowing you to select squadron sizes smaller than 3 (all the way down to 1 I'd like) these ships are supposed to operate alone, and every hull space I can save is more magazine space.....

Matt

[Charlie Beeler]

Something that would be usefull for the Hunter/Killer class submarine wannabe's I'm experimenting with would be reduced squadron sizes for Jump Drives, allowing you to select squadron sizes smaller than 3 (all the way down to 1 I'd like) these ships are supposed to operate alone, and every hull space I can save is more magazine space.....

Matt

Already there.  That's how I've built my jump fighters.  Just have to keep researching minimum jump engine size.  If I recall correctly, reduced size is trigger by improved efficency.

[metalax]

I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.

[Beersatron]

I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.

afaik you can get:
squadron size 1 jump drives (military and commercial I think)
squadron size 2 jump drives (commercial)
squadron size 3 and up jump drives (military and commercial)

[boggo2300]

I believe he was talking about having a tech that allows you to reduce the number of ships that can accompany the jump ship in order to get a further reduction in drive size.

afaik you can get:
squadron size 1 jump drives (military and commercial I think)
squadron size 2 jump drives (commercial)
squadron size 3 and up jump drives (military and commercial)

Cool, I've been unable to test this with 4.8, I keep getting combat increments, and I'm still in November of my second year, and the damn research monkeys arent gettin' it done!!

Matt

[mrwigggles]

Keypad movement support for the system display map with orthogonal movements as with the galactic map.

A display for seeing the state of the civvie contracts in terms of completion.

[sloanjh]

The ability for fighter factories to refit fighters to new/upgraded designs.

Not sure if I agree with this one.  If you think about today's fighters then some changes are possible, Typhoon F3 to Typhoon FGR4is acheivable, but you couldn't turn a Tornado F3 into a Typhoon FGR4 for example. The mechanics of this would need some thought. Maybe changes that don't increase/decrease mass by more than 20%?

If he put the series stuff in (from missiles), then upgrades could be allowed within a series but not across series.

John