Suggestions for v5.1

[sloanjh]

Take the "Difficulty level" number out of the set-up screen.

This is the number that makes NPR economies bigger.  It seems like most of the effect that it's having is to induce new players to run at a high level, thereby breaking the NPR AI due to resource crashes.  I think the only practical alternative is to give NPR an infinite amount of home world minerals (but keep the accessibilities between 0.1 and 1.0) - that way you'll get a lot fewer resource crashes.

If you want to have a difficulty dial to turn, I would instead use the "years since start of game for determining NPR tech level" as the dial.  If the player input +10 years, then the NPR would tend to be 10 years ahead in TL of the ones that would normally be encountered; -10 would give NPR that are 10 years behind (appropriate for a conventional start).

John

[waresky]

am found many ideas interesting and drive us into deepest roleplaying and monster-managing.
But am point an "my personel" trouble and lead to boring situation: Army management.

Without a good Army management screen,more easy to link togheter,join them at new brigade and divisions,setup,and in general a macro VIEW of them around,same as Task group,am fear,because Army are absolutely NECESSARY,who those situation lead to boring whole game.
Many there arent build a VERY BIG Stellar empire,am mean more than 100worlds..and NONE know what a HELL are a Army management in those situations.

Steve take a breath..but Army NEED a hurry re-planning windows.
   srry but its true.and 1st in Aurora planning concept.

Ty again

[Shadow]

URGENT!

Please add a way to transfer troops out of combat modules (back to regular transport bays) without dropping them on a planet.

Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.

[ndkid]

I apologize if this was mentioned before (this thread is getting long; is there any reasonable way to turn a thread like this into a definitive set of "I will do this one day/I may do this/I won't do this" list from Steve?) but I've found in my last several campaigns that I've really wanted to have the intelligence screen show missile data. "Did those guys hit me with 25000 kps missiles that did 3 damage, or 30000 kps missiles that did 4 damage?"

[Hawkeye]

Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.

You might try this:
Launch the empty dropships and put each in íts own TG.
Set each of those TGs to load one of the companies. This used to work, but I haven´t done this since 4.8, or was it 4.9?
Yes, it´s a bit of a hassel, but the only way around it, AFAIK

[Shadow]

I see.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to have a colony not receive nor send colonists. Presently, colonies can only be a source or destination of colonists, but there should be a way to just stop colonization efforts related to that particular planet. Sometimes I'd want my main colonist source (Earth) to be used by civilian companies solely to ship people to the newest colony, as opposed to colonists being sent everywhere. At the same time, I wouldn't want my smaller colonies to become a source, since that'd deplete their population faster than it can grow.

A related flaw of the current system is that populations can't be deemed sources if under 25 million, which means planetary evacuation is impossible.

Finally, also related, the current system has civilian companies blindly shuttling people to planetary battlefields, the 'colonies' you have to employ to unload combat troops. This has also recently stranded two civilian vessels there, given there was only a one-way jumpgate to reach the hostile system, and now they're stuck on this side.

[Hawkeye]

I see.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to have a colony not receive nor send colonists. Presently, colonies can only be a source or destination of colonists, but there should be a way to just stop colonization efforts related to that particular planet. Sometimes I'd want my main colonist source (Earth) to be used by civilian companies solely to ship people to the newest colony, as opposed to colonists being sent everywhere. At the same time, I wouldn't want my smaller colonies to become a source, since that'd deplete their population faster than it can grow.

That´s intentional. If you got total control over the shipping lines, they´d just be _your_ ships, only for free.

A related flaw of the current system is that populations can't be deemed sources if under 25 million, which means planetary evacuation is impossible.

Again intentional, I presume. If you want to evacuate a colony (perhaps due to an impending alien attack) you better own a couple of colony transports of your own instead of asking a company to risk it´s spaceships on your behalf.

Finally, also related, the current system has civilian companies blindly shuttling people to planetary battlefields, the 'colonies' you have to employ to unload combat troops. This has also recently stranded two civilian vessels there, given there was only a one-way jumpgate to reach the hostile system, and now they're stuck on this side.

Ok, this looks like a problem
The one way jumpgate thing sounds like a bug to me. Civillians should allways check, if there is a way back home, before entering a new system (probably relying on the military for probing new systems).

[praguepride]

Damn, my previous post with lots more detail didn't get posted for some reason, so here's the short-short version of things that would be awesome:

1) Unique racial bonuses (similar to MOO or Space Empires). Populations of races are already track. Simple implementation would be to provide planetary bonuses only, advanced implementation would allow ship crew populations to be tracked to provide bonuses to ship systems (think star trek) and ultimate implementation would allow different leaders of different races to provide different kinds of bonuses, as well as bizarre bonuses like "doesn't need food" or whatever (think the silicone lifeforms from MOO that consume metals instead of food).

2) Procedually generated leader backstories. Based on their traits & rank, would fill in their history with fluff stuff. Childhood, what kind of education they had, for officers it would "back-date" when they were promoted through the ranks.

3) Morale for ship combat - low morale ships might break and flee combat, high morale ships might start ignoring orders, charging into combat. Simple would just have it happen within the battle itself, advanced implementation might have the ships deviate dramatically, possibly even jumping to get back to the nearest friendly ship (or to attack the nearest hostile ship). Complex implementatoin might have the ship go rogue if extreme morale happens and become AI controlled (not NPR, would wander around like a pirate seizing goods!)

4)Expand Leader Skills - more skills are always more welcome. Situational bonuses like +10% offense or +10% defence, Ambush (+% damage when enemy isn't/can't target back), Longshot (+% to hit at >1/2 range), Weapon Specialties (+% to beam weapons). Those could be even further subdivided, so a defensive expert might have bonuses to armor resistence or shield resistence or shield regeneration.

5) Heart of Iron III style "waterfall" bonuses. Basically for ground units, you set up traditional tiers (Brigade -> Division -> Corps -> Army). Basically an Army commander would have X Corps under him, which each have Y Divisions which each have Z brigades. This would be a formal organization that the player would set up. The bonuses of the higher ranks filter down at a highly reduced rate, so while a Division adds 100% of his bonus to the troop he directly commands, maybe only 50% of that bonus filters down to the Brigades under his command. (arbitrary numbers, tweaking would be necessary)

[Erik L]

Max rank for ships, similar to the minimum rank. And with this a check when an officer is promoted if he becomes "too senior" for his slot.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Have Aurora launch an "are you sure" dialogue when launching a refit task if the cost of the task is above some threshold (like 50%) of new construction.

It's really easy right now to accidentally launch a ridiculous refit (e.g. a Carrier into a FAC).  More subtle is the fact that a lot of times a refit will be a significant fraction (e.g. 75-80%) of the cost of building a new ship.  In such cases, I'll often want to keep the old ships around and simply build new, since the incremental increase in capability of the new ship isn't worth the expense.  That's why I suggested the threshold at something (50%) which might initially seem rather low.

John

PS - This have gotten 3-4 seconds so far in the The Academy thread where it came up.

Added for v5.1

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Max rank for ships, similar to the minimum rank. And with this a check when an officer is promoted if he becomes "too senior" for his slot.

There is a max rank at the moment for auto-assignment. It's two levels above the min rank. There is no immediate check for officers that get promoted, although they will be reassigned during the round of assignments at the end of the current tour.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

What. a. headache.

Please remove the following rule:

"Military engines are unable to traverse a wormhole created by a commercial jump engine."


I didn't see this rule anywhere except AFTER I had problems; meaning that the description for jump engines does not include this feature. I'll just make believe and it'll be alright though.

I can't remove the rule because it would allow you to create a large cheap commercial jump engine to escort huge military ships. As commercial ships are usually much larger than military ones, there is a corresponding commercial jump drive with different restrictions to the military one. I have added the rule you quoted to the description of jump drive efficiency tech.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Take the "Difficulty level" number out of the set-up screen.

This is the number that makes NPR economies bigger.  It seems like most of the effect that it's having is to induce new players to run at a high level, thereby breaking the NPR AI due to resource crashes.  I think the only practical alternative is to give NPR an infinite amount of home world minerals (but keep the accessibilities between 0.1 and 1.0) - that way you'll get a lot fewer resource crashes.

If you want to have a difficulty dial to turn, I would instead use the "years since start of game for determining NPR tech level" as the dial.  If the player input +10 years, then the NPR would tend to be 10 years ahead in TL of the ones that would normally be encountered; -10 would give NPR that are 10 years behind (appropriate for a conventional start).

I have removed some of the effects of the difficulty modifier for v5.1 but I agree that it is causing some unforeseen issues. I can't give the NPRs infinite home world minerals in case the player captures the homeworld . I could remove mineral requirements for certain tasks, such as construction, although that would give NPRs a major advantage. I like the added years idea as an alternative though. I will give that some thought.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Also, is there a way to load marine companies simultaneously instead of sequentially? I have two assault transports with a total of ten dropships (room for ten companies in there), and the first two companies get a morale drop by the time the last ones are loaded. Because of sequential loading, this takes like a week or so. Perhaps all I have to do is put insane amounts of cargo handling systems in the main transports.

You might try this:
Launch the empty dropships and put each in íts own TG.
Set each of those TGs to load one of the companies. This used to work, but I haven´t done this since 4.8, or was it 4.9?
Yes, it´s a bit of a hassel, but the only way around it, AFAIK

If you load the HQ and click the "Load Entire Formation" checkbox, the whole brigade or division will be loaded concurrently, not consecutively. Another reason why unit integrity is important.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

5) Heart of Iron III style "waterfall" bonuses. Basically for ground units, you set up traditional tiers (Brigade -> Division -> Corps -> Army). Basically an Army commander would have X Corps under him, which each have Y Divisions which each have Z brigades. This would be a formal organization that the player would set up. The bonuses of the higher ranks filter down at a highly reduced rate, so while a Division adds 100% of his bonus to the troop he directly commands, maybe only 50% of that bonus filters down to the Brigades under his command. (arbitrary numbers, tweaking would be necessary)

This is already in the game, along with the waterfall bonuses. You can build Brigade HQs and Division HQs. Battalions link to brigades and brigades link to divisions.

Steve