Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[martinuzz]

Even though you cannot send PDCs to training, fighters stationed in PDC hangars will still train.

[On_Target]

Build a tender? Engines, hangars, fuel.

If they're going to stay in their mothership (instead of burning fuel and racking up the maintenance clock), the mothership needs to be a part of the training.  Switching from that ship to the PDC loses a major chunk of training.
(Also, your definition of a tender is my definition of an escort carrier.  Small, dirt cheap, and meant to stay far from the battle--launch fighters at earliest opportunity and retreat to the jump point while they engage.)

Even though you cannot send PDCs to training, fighters stationed in PDC hangars will still train.

Have you tried to do this?  If you're going to train them, you need to form them into a new task group, because when they're attached to the PDC the option to train is greyed out.  If they're in a different group than the PDC, they can't be housed inside.  If you try to recover fighters from a different task group, the mothership absorbs the fighter's task group into its own.

If you have a way to do it I'd love to hear what it is.  As it stands, I don't see a way to train PDC fighters without running into the previously mentioned problems.

[Vanigo]

Even though you cannot send PDCs to training, fighters stationed in PDC hangars will still train.

No, they don't. They should, but they don't.

[martinuzz]

Oh. Sorry, for misinformation.
My memory must fail me, cause I could have sworn I had seen fighters at 100% trained, in one of my PDCs, while I did not have any carrier ships at all.

[sloanjh]

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.

Ok, obvious question time: has anyone actually checked this?  PDC do accrue TF training points while sitting there doing nothing (i.e. without a training mission IIRC) - have you confirmed that fighters in PDC don't?

John

[Vanigo]

Ok, obvious question time: has anyone actually checked this?  PDC do accrue TF training points while sitting there doing nothing (i.e. without a training mission IIRC) - have you confirmed that fighters in PDC don't?

John

Yes. I have.

[On_Target]

Ok, obvious question time: has anyone actually checked this?  PDC do accrue TF training points while sitting there doing nothing (i.e. without a training mission IIRC) - have you confirmed that fighters in PDC don't?

John

Thanks for suggesting that I'm too ignorant to ensure the accuracy of my statements before speaking.  I confirmed it before I made the initial post about the issue.

[Beersatron]

Thanks for suggesting that I'm too ignorant to ensure the accuracy of my statements before speaking.  I confirmed it before I made the initial post about the issue.

He is just being thorough, I too thought that fighters in PDCs accrued training whilst docked in the same way they do in a carrier - it's nice to wrong sometimes!

If you haven't already, it might be worth reporting it as a bug - Steve did just redo some of that code recently so maybe he missed something.

[ndkid]

I think it would be helpful to be able to turn on and off deep space tracking stations. In my current game, I made the mistake of putting some DSTS in a system that the Invaders then moved into. Now, I'm stuck with minute-by-minute advances, because the invaders seem to like moving around such that they constantly enter and exit the range of my tracking station. I'm tempted to just abandon the colony, but what I'd really like, short of the ability to say, "yes, I know there are aliens there, don't interrupt time unless they do something interesting", is the ability to turn those tracking stations off until I want to peek at their existence again.

[ndkid]

Provide an Automated Turns checkbox on the economics screen, so that I can fire off an automated 5-day or 30-day run that is going to churn with small increments for an extended period of time without changing the coloration of all the other windows on my computer the way using the System Map does.

[Vanigo]

Provide an Automated Turns checkbox on the economics screen, so that I can fire off an automated 5-day or 30-day run that is going to churn with small increments for an extended period of time without changing the coloration of all the other windows on my computer the way using the System Map does.

I'd have filed this under bugs, myself. (I see sort of the same issue, but only menu bars and right-click menus change on my system.)

[sloanjh]

He is just being thorough,

What Beer said - "Obvious question" meant "I assume people have, but am just double-checking".

John

PS - It looks like the quote button only gives the most recent reply - any way to get deeper nesting?

[Erik L]

I'd have filed this under bugs, myself. (I see sort of the same issue, but only menu bars and right-click menus change on my system.)

This one probably won't ever get fixed. In theory, if you use the exit command off the menu, rather than the X, it should revert the colors.

[praguepride]

Aliens shouldn't get upset for encroaching on my terf.


Basically, right now my understanding of the diplomacy model is that any time your ships are present in a system where an alien has a presence, it drags on their relationship.


I understand the reasoning behind that, it's not polite to send a fleet of battleships and park them next to the alien's homeworld.

But then again, if an alien colonizes a system in MY home system, they shouldn't turn around and complain that my ships are going in and out of there.


This is especially noticable if you have a "multiple Empire from the same system" game going on. Like the old Exodus game where you have 5 Empires. I noticed this especially once empires started building ships, suddenly all relationships started to tank dramatically and soon my game was stopped as every few minutes one ship ran into another and due to the the difficulty of actually getting diplomatic teams going to preserve this relationship.

I propose the following ideas. Maybe these are in place (/shrug) but if not, perhaps they should be.


1) x2 "sensitivity" in homeworld systems. A bit of a tangent but any relationship penalties should be doubled if it's next to the alien's homeworld. Bonus points if it's an alogrithm based on proximity to your homeworld and there's. For example, if it's a system smack dab in the middle it's not nearly as big a drag as going to their homeworld or a system clear on the opposite side of the galaxy (i.e. one you have no business dealing with).


2) You cause NO drag when it's in YOUR home system. SO if you're on earth and they colonize mars, they can't get upset that you're in your home planet.

3) You cause no (or highly reduced) drag when you were there first. If you already have presence in the system when they come about, they don't really have a good reason to complain, do they.

4) All this is the same on the flip side. So they cause no drag to your relationship if it's in their homeworld and/or they were there first.



On a semi-unrelated note:

Allow teams to be made with people with 0 skill in that area. Right now it is very hard to get espionage or diplmat teams as you have to wait and hope for randomly generated diplomacy people. Why can't you assign a few "trainees"?

I think the penalty is inherent as you have an inferior team as they'd contribute nothing for the team score, but especially for diplomacy it can be years before you can get even a single diplomatic team together, meanwhile you have veritable armies of currently useless, "NO SKILL" commanders. You can assign a commander with no skill to other positions (staff positions, army and naval ships) but you can't assign no skill members to teams? They can't apprentice with experienced members and learn over time?

[Caplin]

Hi,
The issue is quite a complex one, and not new either. Back when Steve first introduced the new diplomacy rules, somebody brought it up. Back then, a couple alternatives were suggested. One being that NPRs simply won't colonize in a system in which you have a colony. I personally feel this too restrictive for no reason. Rather, I favor another mentioned approach, in which you can claim a particular system, with an NPR having a chance based on racial characteristics to ignore the claim and show up anyway.
I agree with Steve's reasoning that often wars have been fought over disputed territory, and would love to see this implemented.