Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[UnLimiTeD]

I figure something major like scrollbars are not going to happen now that Steve is devoting his programming time on Aurora II.
I hope the screen resolutions will be fixed by then.

[mberkers]

Another suggestion would be some extra commands for ships equipped with jump gate modules.
In addition to "Build jump gate" you could add "Disable Jump Gate", "Enable Jump Gate", and "Dismantle Jump Gate".
Maybe at a high enough tech level you could add "Close Jump Point" and "Open Jump Point". 
I'm assuming here that a jump gate is a large structure that when triggered by a ship, stabilizes the jump point long enough for the ship to cruise through.
Given that, could a jump gate do the opposite? Completely destabilize the jump point so that ships coming through it have a pretty good chance of being destroyed.  Possibly with a small chance of destroying the jump gate itself via energy blowback. . .

MattB

[Himmelhand]

I have a couple requests regarding generation of new systems, etc.

Would it be possible to allow the SM to create new system bodies, or even to specify the gravity/orbital distance of bodies?  This would be very helpful if someone wanted to create a system with a particular structure.   I've been hoping to generate a system with a gas giant having a reasonable temperature with several moons capable of holding an atmosphere, and it's not quite giving me what i need.   I figure being able to mess with individual system bodies could fix that.   Being able to randomize the characteristics of a single body while maintaining certain stats as constant would be delightful as well.

Thank you for your time and effort thus far!  Aurora 2 sounds exciting!

[Sorby]

I'd like to see a new aspect to armor types.   Or, rather, if/how it can be applied. 

The game already uses a simple, logical, row-column-armor type system.   Being a science buff, I'm well-acquainted with the fact that choosing a strong material and adding more of it to strengthen the hull of a ship doesn't make it spaceworthy.   Even today, we use concepts like Whipple Shields, to protect spacecraft from debris.   I don't mean to dis your current system, Steve; I find it suiting.   But it doesn't quite match with what's out there for spacecraft already.   

Not long ago I came across an ablative armor concept called, "Metabolic Plating," whereas the hull can effectively heal itself after taking damage.   The post described a ferrofluid-like ablative layer on the outside of the ship, which would absorb impacts and retain its shape.   Though, the system seems a bit resistant towards Aurora's weapon systems, at first glance. 

With some speculation, I've concluded that only one of these can be added per ship, and it would be a fairly heavy system.   My guess of an equivalent would be something like an added 15-20 layers of armor.   As for something that can do it in with ease, the plasma carronade comes to mind; It could simply vaporize large portions of the ferrofluid layer (For the purpose of the game, somewhere between 60-90 percent, depending on its damage, IMO).   Another consideration would be the laser's penetrating power applying here as well, with a small percentage of its damage leached.   Beyond that, I would imagine most weapon systems losing a lot of power trying to punch through (Perhaps explosions jettison portions of the layer?). 

I guess specifics are up to you, but I'd at least like to see if this could be integrated. 

The post:
hxxp: forum. astroempires. com/viewtopic. php?f=17&t=84453&start=11
-It's got a bunch of links to useful information.   I don't think all the aspects of this particular model should be applied.   Just the ones I mentioned. 
-Also: What's with the link?

[Erik L]

The post:
hxxp: forum. astroempires. com/viewtopic. php?f=17&t=84453&start=11
-It's got a bunch of links to useful information.   I don't think all the aspects of this particular model should be applied.   Just the ones I mentioned. 
-Also: What's with the link?

To prevent spam, links are "delinked" for users with less than 10 posts.

[DatAlien]

Officers coming from an World inhabited by another species as your original one should use the commander theme of the old empire, its a bit strange to have a Melodie Mccrohan graduated from the military academy of your fresh conquered world where the people use names like Tsathorita, Sando-Oth and that like. Even better if you could make the commander themes by population base.

An Option too unload all ship components would be handy too

[DatAlien]

Two things to shipbuilding:
1. The  Ability to use an just assemble option for shipyards, with this option turned on the ship yard could assemble a wider array of ships but it cant build most of the components (as I can no reasons why my shipyards cant build an ship with three gauss canons instead of three railguns and an reactor)
2. The Ability to prefab ship modules that contain ship components in an system that allow the easily build in or replace, the ships that use them would be build without them or with and the replace would take a ship yard. This could be an researchable tech that enables this.

[schroeam]

Two things to shipbuilding:
1. The  Ability to use an just assemble option for shipyards, with this option turned on the ship yard could assemble a wider array of ships but it cant build most of the components (as I can no reasons why my shipyards cant build an ship with three gauss canons instead of three railguns and an reactor)

This was quite a discussion point way back before Steve even released the first beta for playtesting.  He wanted some time frame to allow for development and preproduction of a class of ship, as well as the concept of prepositioning the materials necessary for the next class of ship to be constructed.  With the proper planning you should be able to go from building one class to the next with little to no delay.  Trying to get this changed will be quite an uphill battle.

2. The Ability to prefab ship modules that contain ship components in an system that allow the easily build in or replace, the ships that use them would be build without them or with and the replace would take a ship yard. This could be an researchable tech that enables this.

You can do this already by having your planetary industry build ship components (Population and Production -> Industry -> dropdown menu to Ship Components) which will reduce the time it takes to build each ship.  It will also reduce the refit time, so basically if you have prebuilt all the new components going into the Mod B version then the refit is nothing more than an assembly in the shipyard.  Hope this helps.

Adam.

[Erik L]

This was quite a discussion point way back before Steve even released the first beta for playtesting.  He wanted some time frame to allow for development and preproduction of a class of ship, as well as the concept of prepositioning the materials necessary for the next class of ship to be constructed.  With the proper planning you should be able to go from building one class to the next with little to no delay.  Trying to get this changed will be quite an uphill battle.

Technically, this can be done if the ships are within a certain range cost-wise. I believe it is 20%.

You've got Farragut-C with gauss cannons, and Farragut-R with railguns. A shipyard designated for the Farragut-C can build Farragut-R's (if they are within 20% cost).

[sloanjh]

Technically, this can be done if the ships are within a certain range cost-wise. I believe it is 20%.

You've got Farragut-C with gauss cannons, and Farragut-R with railguns. A shipyard designated for the Farragut-C can build Farragut-R's (if they are within 20% cost).

To be more precise, the criterion is that the cost for refitting from (IIRC) the tooled design to the design-to-be-built needs to be lower than the percentage of the tooled design.  If that is the case, then you can build the design-to-be-built without retooling.  The ship class screen (I think on the last tab) will tell you which other designs can be built with a SY tooled to the design being examined.  If you're going to play this modular design game, you will typically want to tool for the most expensive design, so that the refit cost to alternate designs is small.

So you can use the same SY to build classes which only differ by a few systems, but not which are totally different designs (even if the cost is the same).  Erik implied this by talking about building two different versions of Farragut, rather than building e.g. both Farragut and Spruances.

John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Technically, this can be done if the ships are within a certain range cost-wise. I believe it is 20%.

You've got Farragut-C with gauss cannons, and Farragut-R with railguns. A shipyard designated for the Farragut-C can build Farragut-R's (if they are within 20% cost).

The rule for building different ship classes is the shipyard can build them if the current specified class could be refitted to the other class for less than 20% of the specified class cost. So if you could buld a colony ship in a shipyard and you had a freighter design that had cargo holds instead of cryogenic modules but was otherwise identical, you can probably build the freighter in the same shipyard.

If you look on the DAC / Rank / Information tab of the F5 class window, there is a section that lists which alternative classes could be built in a shipyard that is setup to build the selected class.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I figure something major like scrollbars are not going to happen now that Steve is devoting his programming time on Aurora II.
I hope the screen resolutions will be fixed by then.

The limitations of VB6 are really the problem rather than any desire to make things difficult for users . With C# and WPF, you can easily create windows that resize controls or maintain their relative positions when the window size changes so you will be able to use whatever resolution you like. In VB6 that is extremely hard to do. VB6 doesn't even support mousewheels.

Steve

[UnLimiTeD]

Yeah, who could have ever expected that to happen? I mean, wheels on TOP of the mouse!? Strange idea. We don't plan for that shenanigans.
Well, you gotta work with what you got Good to know the next episode of geek entertainment will be easier on the Netbook/TV-size-screen users.

[Foolcow]

Right now, it is possible to instantly transport geology teams from one planet to another just by disbanding them and reassembling them on the destination.

It seems that officers do not have a defined location if they are not part of a team, and thus can materialize anywhere.

I didn't think this was serious enough to put in the bugs thread, so here it is.

[DatAlien]

There is a little CheckBox called "Assign to every Location" in the commander screen and I think there is a similar on the teams screen but im not sure (this is complet from memories)