Suggestions for v5.1

[Commodore_Areyar]

There is an "Unassign All Officers" button on the officer's screen. It unassigns scientists from their research projects and administrators from their colonies as well as everybody else. Can we perhaps get an additional button that only unassigns the currently selected officer type? So if you're on the Navy Officer's screen it just unassigns all navy officers and leaves everyone else where they are?

The other alternative would be if you do an unassign all, can we get it to also cancel all the research projects? When you've got a dozen projects going and have to remove each one one at a time it's like 3 clicks each and it's annoying.

Thanks,
--Mav

Don't add a second button, just change it to "Unassign Selected Officer Type".   Anybody who truly wants to unassign all officers/civilian admistrators/scientists can spend the time for six extra clicks.

SECONDED.

Related. maybe have autoassign also reassess assigned officers for optimal assignment of whole fleet?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

There is an "Unassign All Officers" button on the officer's screen. It unassigns scientists from their research projects and administrators from their colonies as well as everybody else. Can we perhaps get an additional button that only unassigns the currently selected officer type? So if you're on the Navy Officer's screen it just unassigns all navy officers and leaves everyone else where they are?

Added for v5.02

Steve

[S.K. Ren]

Would It be possible to create NPR's with Conventional Empires? As it stands selecting Conventional Empire blocks the NPR button when selected. I currently don't have a mindset to micromanage several civs at once, but starting at Trans-Newtonian level seems too unbalanced for the setup I desire. So is it possible?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Would It be possible to create NPR's with Conventional Empires? As it stands selecting Conventional Empire blocks the NPR button when selected. I currently don't have a mindset to micromanage several civs at once, but starting at Trans-Newtonian level seems too unbalanced for the setup I desire. So is it possible?

It will be a lot of work for me to implement conventional NPRs. The issue is that the AI will need changing to deal with the problem of only having partial tech in every area, and that would affect a huge chunk of the AI code. At the moment they always have at least the first level of every tech, which makes life much easier.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

In v5.02, crew grade will improve slightly as the result of a ship being damaged. This is to simulate "combat experience". The amount of damage is compared to the size of the ship so the crews of smaller ships will get proportionately more combat experience from the same amount of damage. In other words, if a battleship gets hit by a 5" shell, most of the crew won't be affected. If a patrol boat gets hit by a 5" shell, it would be memorable for the entire crew.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Would It be possible to create NPR's with Conventional Empires? As it stands selecting Conventional Empire blocks the NPR button when selected. I currently don't have a mindset to micromanage several civs at once, but starting at Trans-Newtonian level seems too unbalanced for the setup I desire. So is it possible?

It will be a lot of work for me to implement conventional NPRs. The issue is that the AI will need changing to deal with the problem of only having partial tech in every area, and that would affect a huge chunk of the AI code. At the moment they always have at least the first level of every tech, which makes life much easier.

In addition, I suspect the AI is significantly worse at strategic tech planning than a human.  (This is not a slam on Steve or the AI - AI stuff is hard.)  The practical implication of this would be that any conventional NPR that are there are game start will be far behind you technologically by the time you encounter them, while those that are generated when you encounter them will automatically be far behind you (because they are generated as conventional empires when you encounter them, and you're (obviously) already star-faring).

On the other hand here are two ideas:

1)  The problem I run into when doing conventional starts is that NPR tech level for discovered (as opposed to startup) NPR is determined by how long the game has been running, so by the time I start generating them they're several TL ahead of me.  It would be very easy for Steve to put a "time handicap in years" on the startup screen that becomes active for conventional starts.  This number would be subtracted off from the "time since game start" (with a floor of 0, of course) when generated new NPR.  So if I did a conventional start with a handicap of 15 years, then any NPR generated before year 15 would be generated using parameters used for start-up NPR in a TN game, while an NPR generated at year 17 would use the parameters equivalent to year 2 in a TN game.

2)  In SF, there were High-tech, industrial, and pre-industrial NPR.  It probably wouldn't be a lot of work for Steve to write an "Industrial civilization" AI that didn't try to research TN tech, and didn't try to build ships.  Basically, all it would build would be ground training installations (which would have to be buildable with conventional tech) and army battalions (would probably want to put in low-tech HQ units too).  The idea is that it might be fun to drop a heavy assault division on an industrial world an watch it fight the 200 conventional army divisions on that world.  The pre-industrial NPR could just be a big pool of population, which would be available for working in trans-shipped mining and factories (think low-tech slave labor) - the % workers available could be tweaked so only 1% or so of the population was available to simulate the inefficiencies of no tech training.

BTW, this reminds me - it seems like it would make a lot of sense for ground training facilities to be a conventional tech.

John

[sloanjh]

I'd like to suggest a tweak (in case it doesn't work this way already) to the way Civilian Mining Complexes are placed or grow.  In particular, I'd like them to ignore existing unpopulated colonies during their placement algorithms.

I've run into two issues in my campaign that I'd like solved:

1)  Luna had good minerals, so I dropped some auto-mines on it before any CMC had shown up.  I feared that this would preclude any CMC from being generated.  I worked around this by waiting for a CMC to show up on another world, then transferring one of the complexes from that world to Luna using SM mode.  Once this "seed" was there, the CMC grew normally, but I don't know if it would have ever gotten any if I hadn't done the seeding.

2)  All my colonies have been surveyed-out by my Geo team, so I started surveying Europa, which had decent minerals but not enough for a CMC.  To do the survey, I have to create a colony, and might add some auto-mines.  My fear is that this will preclude CMC from appearing.  I can play the same trick as before, but I'd rather not worry about these things.

John

[Commodore_Areyar]

Why do you want CMCs on good mineral sources? Free automines? (but you'd still have to buy the goods) Roleplay then?
Wouldnt abandoning the colony allow Civilian exploitation again?

[Poojawa]

Ability to set weapons to a fire control through ship design, as well as assign missiles to launchers.

So I don't have to manually go through each and every one of my 130 destroyers to assign the PD range, which guns to which FCT.

Also... have ships that are newly built automatically topped off from the population in fuel.. unless there's some small check box I missed to auto fuel on completion.

[Brian Neumann]

Ability to set weapons to a fire control through ship design, as well as assign missiles to launchers.

So I don't have to manually go through each and every one of my 130 destroyers to assign the PD range, which guns to which FCT.

Also... have ships that are newly built automatically topped off from the population in fuel.. unless there's some small check box I missed to auto fuel on completion.

1.)  Seconded, so that when a new ship is built it uses the preset default assignments.  

2.)  You already can do this in effect.  In the battle control window (F8) you can set up one ship and then use the buttons on the far right to copy that setup to all ships of the same class in either the fleet, system, or your entire empire.  This is something I do on a regular basis.   About every year of game time I go through and assign the fire control/weapons for each class of ship and then copy it to my empire.  Usually this is a defensive setup so that if ambushed I already have all weapons preset for point defense.  I can always go in and change it once combat starts.

brian

[sloanjh]

Why do you want CMCs on good mineral sources? Free automines? (but you'd still have to buy the goods) Roleplay then?
Wouldnt abandoning the colony allow Civilian exploitation again?

Free automines, plus some role playing.

If all I've got is a survey team, then yes I could abandon the colony - I don't like the book-keeping/role-playing/instability here.  One fear is that if I screw up and delete before the colony's empty, bad things could happen.  Another fear is that I would delete the wrong colony.  I'd rather not stress about it.

If I've already started putting automines on the colony, though (like I did with Luna), then abandoning doesn't work.

John

[Charlie Beeler]

I know that Kurt has asked for this in previous version suggestions and I thought it had been added.

The ability to repair PDC battle damage.  Damage control can be used for internal components but the isn't a current method for repairing PDC armor.

[waresky]

A "COSMETIC" Suggestin for more "feel" in HABITABLE planets show in "System Map":..Steve can render a "Habitable PLanet" (for PLAYER RACE) a GREEN or SKY Coloured than Others around?..

Simply for more like feeling:)

Or fast recognize a "Atmosphere breath Planets!! EHY Dude show that!!!"...

[waresky]

Situation:GALACTIC MAP
Object:MILITARY SQUADROON


Steve,we can have a icons around or INSIDE a Solar System for fast recon "Where at the.." military Squadroon directly on Map?..(ahhh orrible english apologize:D)

[sloanjh]

A better way of sorting the "Potential Assignments" on the F4 screen.  What would be totally cool would be to put the Fleet Organization (tree) view into this pane.  Barring that, how about the same 3 radio buttons (size/hull/alphabetical) from the F6 screen?  At present, it only seems to sort alphabetically, and I'm having a horrible time making sure my carrier commanders have high fighter ratings ('cuz I can't find the carriers in the noise).

John