Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[martinuzz]

New Research Line: Micro-missiles 1 - 4

Each micro-missile tech reduces the basic size (0.25 MSP) of missiles by 0.05 MSP.
These techs should be rather expensive, and require quite a bit of other missile research before becoming available.

I can see MIRV AMM coming up

[Erik L]

New Research Line: Micro-missiles 1 - 4

Each micro-missile tech reduces the basic size (0.25 MSP) of missiles by 0.05 MSP.
These techs should be rather expensive, and require quite a bit of other missile research before becoming available.

I can see MIRV AMM coming up :twisted:

[UnLimiTeD]

Shouldn't the bomblets have a minimum size of 1 aswell?

[Erik L]

Shouldn't the bomblets have a minimum size of 1 aswell?

They do... But my mines are size 30.

[martinuzz]

More new tech lines.

Recycling efficiency tech. Improves the mineral returns of scrapping and salvaging things.
Researching this tech line 3 times opens up another tech line:

Reverse engineering. Improves the research point gain from disassembling stuff.

[Vanigo]

Add some way to gather information on alien races without capturing one of their colonies - espionage or whatever. A way to find out their government type would be nice, too, so I can decide if invading to help the oppressed alien populace is justifiable or not.

[Caplin]

I'd love to see some expansion of the diplomatic model.
For instance, allys might be able to call on one another for aid in wartime, with success dependent on the rating of your diplomacy team and other racial factors.
I realize this might be a bit complicated, coding wise.  You'd need a way to track states of war and how aid was going, etc.
But I think it would add a lot of potential story making ability to an already great game.  
I'm coming from a world of reading about, and not playing, games like Galactic Civilizations II with extremely detailed diplomatic models.  I'd love something vaguely similar I could actually play.

[martinuzz]

Failure rates modification

I think it would be realistic, if ship components of older tech than currently posessed, add less failure rate when installed on a ship.
This would reflect the ship designer's, and the crew's familiarity with components which have been known and tested for a longer time.

For example, say you have researched ECM 6.
Before you researched ECM 6, your ECM 5 components added x% to the ship's failure rate.
I suggest reducing the failure rate by 20% per tech level researched, that is more advanced than the one installed, with a minimum of 20% of the original value.
So, installing ECM 5 in this situation would add 0.8x% to the ship's failure rate
If the standard failure rate of ECM 3 would be y, in this example, installing ECM 3 would add only 0.4y% to the failure rate.
ECM 2 and ECM 1 would both add 20% of their standard value to the ship's failure rate, as the minimum is 20%

For racial techs, I'm not sure how determining a component's failure rate works, but it would make sense to use the average reduction percentage to determine the component's final failure reduction.
Example: You have Ion engine technology researched, thermal reduction 35%, and fuel efficiency 70%
Now, you create an engine with Ion technology, thermal reduction 50% and fuel efficieny 70%.
These technologies have respective failure reduction rates of 0%, 20% and 0%. This averages to 20/3 = 6,67%.
However, like I said, I'm not sure how calculations work as they are now. If in the example above, thermal reduction does not change the component's failure rate, it's percentage modifier will not be included in determining the component's final failure reduction. In other words: only technologies in a component that affect it's failure rate in the first place, are used in determining the final failure rate reduction.

This would also make the construction of *huge* deathstar ships more feasible. Just use older techs for the components that aren't critical to the ship's doctrine, to help keep it's failure rates from rising sky-high.

[Chairman]

Been playing with the idé of a Terran Empire game, but I would like to use all off the different terran languages name for ships and commanders... Would have been nice.

[Hawkeye]

Been playing with the idé of a Terran Empire game, but I would like to use all off the different terran languages name for ships and commanders... Would have been nice.

For commanders: Select "View your Race" CTRL+F2
There you can select up to four secondary commander name themes.

[On_Target]

Fighter drop pods/releasable fuel tanks.

This would allow a, for instance, 400 ton fighter to be given up to 100 additional tons of fuel storage in drop tanks, so that they could actually have some legs to them.  Prior to combat, you could shed the fuel tanks to drop your size down to 400 tons again, giving you better speed and a smaller size against detection.  With missile ranges being as long as they are even without multiple stage vehicles, this would be a nice boost.  (Also it might mean my fighters could not need a carrier for home system defense--I like to base a nice swarm of them from a PDC but the range tends to be so small for each fighter that an enemy could missile my planet and facilities from outside of fighter engagement distance.  And this is with 25k+ fuel on each.)

Of course, there'd be no way to collect dropped pods, and those pod-laden fighters take up more room in the hanger per unit, so there'd be some tradeoffs besides the initial tech.  Maybe reloading them and carrying spares be treated like box missiles?

[On_Target]

Oh, and the thing that made me realize just how short the legs are on a fighter: task force training outside of carriers.  I had 50 fighters out of gas a ways from home (I'd told them to refuel at 20% or lower, but this seemed to have been ignored for some reason; that, or they decided just beforehand to head far from home), and refueling them with a main fleet (no dedicated tanker at that point) enough to get home was a major pain.

During task force training, could there be an option for ships to draw automatically from a nearby colony/tanker's fuel reserves?  Simulating them popping back for gas as needed during exercises, without interrupting the process, and not having to worry about them suddenly getting stranded a ways from home?  (Option instead of standard because otherwise someone will leave fleet training on for years and run out of gas without realizing it.)

The additional options for conditional actions (e.g. when at 40%/50%/60% fuel) suggested in another thread might alleviate this just as well.  It still would be nice to have a "Resume Task Force Training Upon Refueling/Resupply" option.

In fact, a "Followup" or "Upon Completion" command below "Condition" and "Orders" would be fantastic.  Among other possible orders, "Return to Location Previous to Condition Being Met" would save me a lot of unfun micromanagement (giving me more time for the fun micromanagement!).

[Beersatron]

Oh, and the thing that made me realize just how short the legs are on a fighter: task force training outside of carriers.  I had 50 fighters out of gas a ways from home (I'd told them to refuel at 20% or lower, but this seemed to have been ignored for some reason; that, or they decided just beforehand to head far from home), and refueling them with a main fleet (no dedicated tanker at that point) enough to get home was a major pain.

During task force training, could there be an option for ships to draw automatically from a nearby colony/tanker's fuel reserves?  Simulating them popping back for gas as needed during exercises, without interrupting the process, and not having to worry about them suddenly getting stranded a ways from home?  (Option instead of standard because otherwise someone will leave fleet training on for years and run out of gas without realizing it.)

The additional options for conditional actions (e.g. when at 40%/50%/60% fuel) suggested in another thread might alleviate this just as well.  It still would be nice to have a "Resume Task Force Training Upon Refueling/Resupply" option.

In fact, a "Followup" or "Upon Completion" command below "Condition" and "Orders" would be fantastic.  Among other possible orders, "Return to Location Previous to Condition Being Met" would save me a lot of unfun micromanagement (giving me more time for the fun micromanagement!).

I am fairly certain that fighters train while aboard their mothership - think of it as the flight crews using the simulators instead of wasting expensive fuel!

[On_Target]

I am fairly certain that fighters train while aboard their mothership - think of it as the flight crews using the simulators instead of wasting expensive fuel!

You missed the first part of my post: task force training OUTSIDE of carriers.  Carriers are well and fine for a mobile fleet, but for system defense building a PDC and stocking it full of fighters is a fine move.  Except that PDCs can't take part in task force training, so the fighters need to train outside of it in their own task force and return to their immobile mothership once they're trained.

I'd just train them in carriers and plop them into a PDC once the squadron was ready, but there's 2 issues.
1) Carriers that carry 50+ fighters are expensive to build and maintain, and if you are doing that already why aren't they on the front lines.
2) Giant loss of task force training bonus once you switch anything with the ships in the task group.

[Erik L]

You missed the first part of my post: task force training OUTSIDE of carriers.  Carriers are well and fine for a mobile fleet, but for system defense building a PDC and stocking it full of fighters is a fine move.  Except that PDCs can't take part in task force training, so the fighters need to train outside of it in their own task force and return to their immobile mothership once they're trained.

I'd just train them in carriers and plop them into a PDC once the squadron was ready, but there's 2 issues.
1) Carriers that carry 50+ fighters are expensive to build and maintain, and if you are doing that already why aren't they on the front lines.
2) Giant loss of task force training bonus once you switch anything with the ships in the task group.

Build a tender? Engines, hangars, fuel.