Suggestions for v5.1

[Toloran]

I apologize if any of these things are already in the game. I've gotten most things figured out but I still can't find certain things . I also only recently upgraded from 4.75 to a new version so I might of missed things in there too.

- Ability to Abandon a colony.
- Additional upgrades to the "Small Jump Gate Construction" module (instead of just having the 360 day one).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I apologize if any of these things are already in the game. I've gotten most things figured out but I still can't find certain things . I also only recently upgraded from 4.75 to a new version so I might of missed things in there too.

- Ability to Abandon a colony.
- Additional upgrades to the "Small Jump Gate Construction" module (instead of just having the 360 day one).

To abandon a colony, select it on the Economics window and press the Abandon button, which is next to the Close button

The upgrade to the small JGC module is really the larger 180 day model and its subsequent variants

Steve

[Erik L]

A targeting queue. It'd be nice to order a ship to target bogey 001, bogey 002, bogey 003, and have it shift fire as the targets are destroyed.

[Rathos]

A targeting queue. It'd be nice to order a ship to target bogey 001, bogey 002, bogey 003, and have it shift fire as the targets are destroyed.

Yeah, yeah. In one battle I had one ship ten fire controls. Each missile would kill a enemy ship. It was a right pain to have to switch the missile launcher and target for each fire control every 5 seconds until a missile had been launched at every single one.

[Andrew]

A faster laoding time for marine companies, at the moment it takes 9 days to load a marine company unless your ship carries cargo handling equipment, which is a bit of a problem if you just want a single company for boarding actions on a ship.
Also if you have 5 ships each wanting to laod 1 company they load in sequence so that is 45 days to load the troops , and then another 45 days to transfer them to drop bays which can lead to the first company losing organisation before the last one loads, this can be avoided by splitting the fleet into 5 single ships but it would be nice if there was somewhay for each troopship in a flleet to load at the same time

[Father Tim]

That sounds like a bug:  five ships in the same fleet loading sequentially instead of simultaneously.

[Beersatron]

Would it be possible for you to define 'Shipping Lanes'? The theory behind it is this:

The user has a large and complex Galaxy Map that has loops and colonies that are on the other side of these loops. This means that following one path (4 jumps) is quicker than the other (6 jumps) but the Civies don't seem to be able to understand this and refuse to move even though there are JGs plus supply/demand setup along the 4 jump route.

Can we then have the option to 'Create a Shipping Lane' that has one colony as the root and another colony as the tip. It would be created in the same way as you give travel orders at the moment, but you would restrict the options to only bodies that have a colony.

i.e.
Start at Earth (human 1.4billion) -> Transit Alpha Centauri JP -> Transit Luyten JP -> Transit Gliese 1337 JP -> Transit EG 105 JP -> Transit Vega JP -> End at Eden (human 12million)

I do not know what way you store travel orders for TG currently, but can you store the above as an abstract series of parent-child rows and then apply it to a TG when selected on the orders screen?

You can then change your civie algorithms to check for a Shipping Lane that starts at their current location and ends somewhere that has demand, before doing what I presume is an exponential search out to 4 jumps away from current location.

I am not sure if I am explaining myself correctly and I am typing fast because my lunch break is up. Hopefully somebody understands what I am trying to get across and can put it more eloquently! The aim is to lift the restriction on 4 jumps maximum for Civies and the 'show all pop' option.

[Erik L]

When exporting a text file on the ship screen, if Hide Obsolete is checked, the file should skip the obsolete ones (or at least mark them obsolete).

[Erik L]

Would it be possible for you to define 'Shipping Lanes'? The theory behind it is this:

The user has a large and complex Galaxy Map that has loops and colonies that are on the other side of these loops. This means that following one path (4 jumps) is quicker than the other (6 jumps) but the Civies don't seem to be able to understand this and refuse to move even though there are JGs plus supply/demand setup along the 4 jump route.

Can we then have the option to 'Create a Shipping Lane' that has one colony as the root and another colony as the tip. It would be created in the same way as you give travel orders at the moment, but you would restrict the options to only bodies that have a colony.

i.e.
Start at Earth (human 1.4billion) -> Transit Alpha Centauri JP -> Transit Luyten JP -> Transit Gliese 1337 JP -> Transit EG 105 JP -> Transit Vega JP -> End at Eden (human 12million)

I do not know what way you store travel orders for TG currently, but can you store the above as an abstract series of parent-child rows and then apply it to a TG when selected on the orders screen?

You can then change your civie algorithms to check for a Shipping Lane that starts at their current location and ends somewhere that has demand, before doing what I presume is an exponential search out to 4 jumps away from current location.

I am not sure if I am explaining myself correctly and I am typing fast because my lunch break is up. Hopefully somebody understands what I am trying to get across and can put it more eloquently! The aim is to lift the restriction on 4 jumps maximum for Civies and the 'show all pop' option.

This used to be in there before civvies. That's how trade routes were setup. Though the shipping along them was abstracted.

[mrwigggles]

A faster laoding time for marine companies, at the moment it takes 9 days to load a marine company unless your ship carries cargo handling equipment, which is a bit of a problem if you just want a single company for boarding actions on a ship.
Also if you have 5 ships each wanting to laod 1 company they load in sequence so that is 45 days to load the troops , and then another 45 days to transfer them to drop bays which can lead to the first company losing organisation before the last one loads, this can be avoided by splitting the fleet into 5 single ships but it would be nice if there was somewhay for each troopship in a flleet to load at the same time

The load for drop pods to and from troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and  a half. Holy crap?!


But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.

[Brian Neumann]

When I create a race to start a game with, I often like to let the computer choose my techs.  The only problem is that some very basic techs are sometimes left off.  If we could have a point in the design process where we check a box so the computer does not spend all of the initial tech points it would be nice.  I was thinking like 10% reserved for the player to assign.  If the box is checked, the computer assigns the bulk of the tech, the player the last bit, and then the computer takes over again to finish designing work for specific techs and ships.

This request came about in part because I got several different races where the beam weapons and engine tech was quite high, the capaciter tech was minimal, or high missile tech, and they hadn't even researched the second level of magazine improvements, etc.  

Thanks
Brian

[Hawkeye]

The load for drop pods to and from  troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and  a half. Holy crap?!


But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.

Hm, haven´t loaded any troops from a troopbay to a dropbay in my newest game, but in my 4.7 game, I loaded a full division (transported in 4 TTs) in 8 dropships in a few hours.
The key to this, I think, was that my TTs had a cargo handling system for each battalion it could carry i.e. 5 battalions capacity - 5 cargo handling systems (and putting each TT in its own taskgroup, so yes, I also second Adrews proposal to have several TTs in a single Taskgroup load troops parallel instead of in-sequence)

Now that I think about it, putting in the order to drop the troops on the alien planet as soon as they are loaded seemed to considerably speed up things. Might be my memory playing tricks on my, however.

[Andrew]

The load for drop pods to and from  troop bays is ridiculous in my humble opinion. From the various media that have drop pods their advantage is for fast deployment then with drop ships. Starship Trooper being the most recent one I've reread, they at most sat in them for a few hours before being lunched, but onward of a month and  a half. Holy crap?!


But yea, I second quicker intervals for drop pod loading.

Hm, haven´t loaded any troops from a troopbay to a dropbay in my newest game, but in my 4.7 game, I loaded a full division (transported in 4 TTs) in 8 dropships in a few hours.
The key to this, I think, was that my TTs had a cargo handling system for each battalion it could carry i.e. 5 battalions capacity - 5 cargo handling systems (and putting each TT in its own taskgroup, so yes, I also second Adrews proposal to have several TTs in a single Taskgroup load troops parallel instead of in-sequence)

Now that I think about it, putting in the order to drop the troops on the alien planet as soon as they are loaded seemed to considerably speed up things. Might be my memory playing tricks on my, however.

I fit CHS system to the large troopships but  GB Engined dropships and FTR Engined assault shuttles cannot carry the extra , likewise it seems silly to need a CHS to help load a company of marines , at the moment my battleships carry a company and a shuttle each

[Hawkeye]

I fit CHS system to the large troopships but  GB Engined dropships and FTR Engined assault shuttles cannot carry the extra , likewise it seems silly to need a CHS to help load a company of marines , at the moment my battleships carry a company and a shuttle each

I might not have made myself clear, ´cause I do exactely the same  thing  i.e. the TTs have CHS, the dropships don´t
It is my understanding that the CHS on the TT is actually loading the troops into the dropships

You are of course right, there shouldn´t be a need for a CHS for a company of marines, even if they are power armored, no, make that especially if they are power armored (which, in my mind, they absolutely are) they will simply walk up the ramp.
Hm, how long does it actually take, to load this company into the shuttle?

[Andrew]

9 days to load the company on the ship , I have not tried to load them onto the shuttle yet, but I recall that taking 9 days in the previous version