Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[Erik L]

If you look on the Display 2 tab on the system map there is a list of all known ruins

Steve

I lost which system it was in. Though I did find it eventually by scanning all the systems in the System View window.

[Hawkeye]

Hm, there should be a list of all known ruins, not only the ones in that system

[sloanjh]

Rearrange the SY table in the DB so that progress on adding an extra slipway is not lost if one needs to retool.

At present, "add slipway" effectively freezes the yard to build whatever it's currently tooled to build, since giving a retool command (other than the first one) demolishes the existing work on the new slipway, even if it's 99% complete.  For larger yards, for which additional slipways can require many years, this strongly discourages ever adding a new slipway since the target design will end up years out of date, without the ability even to make incremental upgrades (other than those that fit within the "same design" criterion).  This doesn't feel realistic - it seems like pausing construction on the new slipway to retool the active ones should be allowed.

It seems like this could be done by adding a column to the DB table for "new slipway progress" that could be used to stash the amount of work that's been done on slipway expansion while another SY task occupies the "current progress" (or whatever it's called) column.

Note that this is essentially the same problem for slipways that was solved a while back for capacity expansion - if expansion is interrupted, the intermediate progress is now not lost.

John

[sloanjh]

Introduce fractional sizes for turrets.

At present, if a turret is size 4.02HS, then it's rounded up to 5.0HS.  This can lead to weird "step" behavior.  For example, for a size-3 antimissile laser and a desired tracking speed of 16000, there is no difference between tracking speed tech of 5000 km/s and 6250 km/s - both end up with 4HS/laser, even if one goes to a quad mount.

If this suggestion is implemented, then you might also want to reduce the size cost of addition lasers on a mount beyond the first; otherwise there would be little incentive to go to e.g. quad mounts.  For example, the tracking gear size could be 50% of the original cost for each weapon in the mount beyond the first.

At present this effect is somewhat present (i.e. a quad mount might be 1HS cheaper than 4 single mounts), but this is entirely due to rounding effects.  The suggestions above would regularize this effect.

John

[voknaar]

Two words.... Aerospace Fighters!

My idea was they  function as a hybrid of ground forces and space ships. How it would work - they could be kept and maintained in boat bays / hangers when a carrier ship enters orbit of a planet it would then be able to load and unload the fighters to initiate air to ground strikes similar to bombardment except slightly less lethal to populations in several ways first it would do heck of a lot less damage to both ground forces and pops and doesn't cause radiation & dust. The weakness of using them is once deployed the carrier can't leave because the aerospace fighters can't land on the ground surface. SO essentially its a less powerful more long term way ships in orbit can lend a offencive hand in ground combat. Ground forces can attack back perhaps at a small penalty.

But after a small brainwave moment after the above concept a new ground unit could be made called an airfield, which allows a certain number of Aerospace Fighter units to land on planet side, a bit like how PDC's can hold ground units IIRC

Its only a concept idea really, I'm not knowledgable about coding or mathematics about how it'd all fit in nicely with Aurora as it is now.

[Erik L]

Hm, there should be a list of all known ruins, not only the ones in that system

I did find it

*goes off and cleans glasses*

[Erik L]

But after a small brainwave moment after the above concept a new ground unit could be made called an airfield, which allows a certain number of Aerospace Fighter units to land on planet side, a bit like how PDC's can hold ground units IIRC

Its only a concept idea really, I'm not knowledgable about coding or mathematics about how it'd all fit in nicely with Aurora as it is now.

You could just put a hangar in a PDC...

[Erik L]

Another necro suggestion... Some form of tech that extends retirement age...

Stupid 30% bonus scientist with 50 labs thinking she can retire at 72. Pfft.

[Erik L]

A way to scrap installations would be nice.

[voknaar]

You could just put a hangar in a PDC...

Or do that  I don't know the inns and outs of aurora throughly sorry.

[SakSak]

I'm thinking here a new way of doing Orbital Support for ground assaults. 

While we at the moment can drop nukes and whatnot on enemy ground forces, this is a bit of a hit and miss - and more often than not causes some kind of unwanted damage to the existing structures or the environment. 

But what about an option to designate a ship with beam weapons, or the individual weapons within a ship, as orbital support for ground troops.   When engaged in battle, a beam weapon in orbit, capable of doing damage to the planet surface, would add a modifier to a brigade/division combat ability.   

Perhaps limit this so that any beam weapon that would cause more than 1-2 points of damage could also cause environmental/collateral damage, but within this small limit there would be no chance of causing unintended damage from that weapon.   A 'safe' method of providing limited support to ground units.   Connect this ability to either the brigade of division HQ unit (non-HQ units lack the equipment/skill to accurately call pin-point orbital support fire by themselves), and apply a small bonus to all units that HQ commands.   While engaged in Orbital Support mode, the ship would be unable to leave orbit before ground operations are complete, or if it did the ground forces supported suffer a morale penalty for a limited amount of time - perhaps until next combat roll? ("Where's our damned fire support?!" "Scanning asteroids on the other side of the system!" "Well f%&#, they're leaving us here to die?"). 

[voknaar]

Another necro suggestion... Some form of tech that extends retirement age...

Stupid 30% bonus scientist with 50 labs thinking she can retire at 72. Pfft.

Perhaps a biology tech for extending the races average life span?

[IanD]

Modern combat aircraft have a receiver in them that lets them know when they are lit up by a hostile fire control, but my highly advanced spacecraft know nothing until the missiles are inbound, sometimes only five seconds from impact. It would also provide a way to threaten NPRs without actually starting a war.

Regards

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Modern combat aircraft have a receiver in them that lets them know when they are lit up by a hostile fire control, but my highly advanced spacecraft know nothing until the missiles are inbound, sometimes only five seconds from impact. It would also provide a way to threaten NPRs without actually starting a war.

Regards

I like this idea, although rather than implement it as a stand-alone change I will include it when I get eventually around to the EW rewrite.

Steve

[Vulcanphsyco]

You could also divide Fire Controls between Active and Passive Fire Controls.  For when you want to fire something off and not have them know about it when you do (Obviously, the downside is that Passive Firecontrol won't have active sensors, so it's possible there wont be an enemy to blow up once your attack reaches them)