Suggestions for v5.1

[Venec]

Maybe notifications when Task Force has no commander/staff officers assigned?

[wilddog5]

I see in the task manager that Aurora only uses one processor and that multi threading might improve the performance especialy on computers that have realitivly lo CPU speed but more than one core.

This is only a tentive sugestion as i suspect that this will require a greate deal of recodeing.  :?: ( i have enough knowledge of programing to be dangerous but not enough to be very helpfull   ))

The second stage could be civlian ship movement / trade determination this would not only mabe speed things up but would alow you to add all those wonderfull extras that every one wants (and now have the extra processing to do)

Stage three+ whatever else you think would benifit form this

Please note that I am not sure if this would benifit people with more than 2 cores as I have heard that programing for 4+ cores is another (very difficult) kettle of fish and that some of the websites I looked up said that multithreading for VB is a bad thing

Thank you for reading

[sloanjh]

Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.

I just discovered the home world of an NPR.  As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from  both the F3 and F9 screens.  Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had  The one subtlety here that I can think of is managing what happens if a population does change (e.g. it gets nuked by another NPR while you're away).  In this case, I would log a "contact" (interrupt) event when a ship of the player's has moved back to a range where it should be picking the population up but is not seeing anything, e.g.:

[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]

John

[sloanjh]

Disallow deletion of systems (like lasers) that other systems (like turrets) might depend upon.  I thought of this failure mode in the 5.02 bugs thread, but forgot to add the suggestion there.

John

[welchbloke]

Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.

I just discovered the home world of an NPR.  As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from  both the F3 and F9 screens.  Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had  The one subtlety here that I can think of is managing what happens if a population does change (e.g. it gets nuked by another NPR while you're away).  In this case, I would log a "contact" (interrupt) event when a ship of the player's has moved back to a range where it should be picking the population up but is not seeing anything, e.g.:

[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]

John

I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.

[Aldaris]

Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.

I just discovered the home world of an NPR.  As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from  both the F3 and F9 screens.  Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had  The one subtlety here that I can think of is managing what happens if a population does change (e.g. it gets nuked by another NPR while you're away).  In this case, I would log a "contact" (interrupt) event when a ship of the player's has moved back to a range where it should be picking the population up but is not seeing anything, e.g.:

[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]

John

I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.

Seconded.

[Shadow]

I suggest further decentralization of 'moddable' images (like flags and races, which already have their own separate folders), and text stuff like lists of names, surnames, ship names, system names, race names and ranks. Something in particular I'd like to mod myself are some of the icons present on the System Map: icons like the ones of the Task Force, Events and Intelligence on Alien Classes* windows make little sense, for instance. In fact, most could be improved in some way.

Another, smaller suggestion I have in mind is referring to officers using "they" and "their" when applicable, given you need to be genderless due to the presence of female officers. That is, unless you can overhaul the system to use he/she and his/her properly, but I'm guessing that's quite more complicated.

That's all I can think of right now.

*This button seems redundant as it leads to the same place as the Diplomacy one does.

[Beersatron]

Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.

I just discovered the home world of an NPR.  As I moved my scout away, they disappeared from  both the F3 and F9 screens.  Unlike ships, populations tend not to go anywhere - I would expect my staff to at least have written down on a sticky note where then NPR's homeworld is and how big a signature it had  The one subtlety here that I can think of is managing what happens if a population does change (e.g. it gets nuked by another NPR while you're away).  In this case, I would log a "contact" (interrupt) event when a ship of the player's has moved back to a range where it should be picking the population up but is not seeing anything, e.g.:

[crappy Russian accent]
"Captain....The population.....It's just gone sir!!!"
[/crappy Russion accent]

John

I'm all for this subtle but quite useful change.

Seconded.

Thirded

I asked for this before, pretty sure it is on Steve's to-do list and in the mean time he suggested that we click on the system body that has the population and then add a WP to it, 'add to last' I think? This way, the WP moves with the system body.

[Shadow]

Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.

I'm no physicist, but I did some calculations taking some information from the game. A 50-ton magazine with a 100% efficiency feed system can store 20 MSP, meaning a size-6 missile would have a mass of 15 tons. That's the size of my current ASM design, which happens to travel at 20000 km/s, which is about 6.6% the speed of light. Since I have both its mass and velocity, I can calculate its kinetic energy. The result is an astounding 717 megatons! And that's just for a solid rod of metal, completely ignoring the warhead!

If we paid full attention to that, we'd have to change a lot of things, so let's not get too realistic. However, I do believe the influence of speed on kinetic energy can't be denied, and that could be used in some fashion. Perhaps a missile could get +1 WH for every 5000 km/s, independently from the MSP spent on the warhead itself? That's just speculation: the numbers themselves should be thoroughly tested and balanced, but there you go.

[sloanjh]

Have the F9 screen "remember" population contacts.

Thirded

I asked for this before, pretty sure it is on Steve's to-do list and in the mean time he suggested that we click on the system body that has the population and then add a WP to it, 'add to last' I think? This way, the WP moves with the system body.

Oh....you want them to be contacts :-)

John

[UnLimiTeD]

Shadow, if that's done, it would result in late tech amms, which casually travel near lightspeed, to deal up to 60 damage without any warhead applied to it.
Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^
It's probably not workable gameplay wise?
Maybe make it a kind of Warhead, Kinetic Missile^^

*Idea!* Suggestion:
Non-Radiation missile, for when you just wanna get rid of those PDCs.

[Shadow]

Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^

Imagine trying to catch constantly-speeding ships. Not my idea of fun.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, without fuel, they might drift into space and never be seen again

Would an EMP missile be possible, btw?
Like, a Microwave Laser head?

[sloanjh]

Now for a more daring suggestion. The concept is simple: have missile speed add to its damage potential, presumably represented by the Warhead value in its entirety.

Shadow, if that's done, it would result in late tech amms, which casually travel near lightspeed, to deal up to 60 damage without any warhead applied to it.
Also, I would ask the question why ships stop if they run out of fuel.^^
It's probably not workable gameplay wise?

Ships stop when they run out of fuel because they use non-Newtonian drives - no drive field, no motion.  (Go read the Starfire books for more on the concept.)

They don't do kinetic energy damage for the same reason - when inertia goes out the window so does kinetic energy.

Ok, so I just made that technobabble up (at least the second bit - the first bit is canon), but the bottom line is that (as UnLimiTeD points out) this is a game-breaking suggestion, so I can't believe that Steve's going to go for it.  And we've already been there for AMM - it used to be that a hit with a strength-0 missile would kill another missile.  I don't remember the details of the problems it caused that resulted in it being taken out (I think it was making AMMs too powerful), but I don't think we're going back in that direction.

Maybe make it a kind of Warhead, Kinetic Missile^^

We've already got a missile launcher that throws kinetic warheads - it's called a Mass Driver :-)  If you want to know why, go google GFFP (Genocide For Fun and Profit).  Basically, in Starfire, there was a powerful strategy where you'd simply exterminate every NPR race you met, steal their jewelry, and move into their houses.  The reason this worked was that killing off the population didn't cause damage to the planet.  One of Steve's goals in Aurora was to force players to live with the consequences of genocide, which is why TN weapons systems (other than ground forces) cause horrendous damage to the environment.

John


John

[Shadow]

Oh, didn't know all that. Nevermind then. Though I didn't mean the suggestion to go through exactly as I described it. As I mentioned earlier, things could change according to balancing and gameplay reasons.

However, how do non-missile, kinetic weapons (gauss cannons, railguns and mass drivers) work at all then, if they're only propelled when fired? With kinetic energy out of the picture, those projectiles would be utterly useless.