Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[welchbloke]

An option for the map to switch off the display of civilian fleets/ships, while retaining display of player controlled ships.

My shipping lines have so many ships that they utterly dominate the solar system and it's difficult to see anything else because of long lists of ship names. Granted this is a learning game where I have only expanded to one other system after 150 years, with Mars having over a billion inhabitants. The ships might spread out when I expand, but still.

There is already an option for this.  On the F3 screen select the Contacts tab.  There is a contact filter drop down selection, select No Civilians - Hey presto all those annoying civilian contacts disappear  

[Rastaman]

There is already an option for this.  On the F3 screen select the Contacts tab.  There is a contact filter drop down selection, select No Civilians - Hey presto all those annoying civilian contacts disappear  

Awesome, thanks!

New suggestion: Declutter the map controls so that you notice such things while tired in the middle of the night! 

[bean]

One thing I think would really increase the realism of the game would be economies of scale.  At the moment, every ship of a class costs the same, no matter how many are built.  A better option might be to use the formulas here: www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Engineering/Production_Cost_Curves.htm
Ships would probably be about lcs .95, with fighters and missiles somewhat higher.  Cost for ships should be the current for probably about #4.
For those who are confused by what lcs means, it's what factor the last unit will be cheaper than the current if you double the number.  (2 is .95x the cost of 1, 4 is .95x the cost of 2, etc.)

[Shadow]

Another tiny thing: rename military academies to just academies or universities. The current term is misleading, since such buildings train not only naval and army officers, but also scientists and civilian administrators.

[Elouda]

Another tiny thing: rename military academies to just academies or universities. The current term is misleading, since such buildings train not only naval and army officers, but also scientists and civilian administrators.

Alternatively, seperate them into different buildings, each at half the current price. This would allow players a better measure of control in terms of what they want - rather than build MA's and hope they spawn a scientist, I can build a University and hope they do so, but atleast Id know the chances were better...

[Shadow]

Alternatively, seperate them into different buildings, each at half the current price. This would allow players a better measure of control in terms of what they want - rather than build MA's and hope they spawn a scientist, I can build a University and hope they do so, but atleast Id know the chances were better...

Hmm, that's true. I like it.

[ShadoCat]

Finally, the fact that jump drives are ineffective at aiding ships above the tender's tonnage but within the drive's allowance is particularly counterintuitive. I'd suggest that, if no fundamental change is possible/desirable, the game should warn the player if they're installing larger jump drive capability on a smaller ship. Like a message on the small box that tells you the design doesn't have enough crew space, among other things.

There was a discussion about this a while ago.

The main reason for the current system is that Steve wanted to keep the cost of jump ships relatively high.  He didn't like the idea of guppies jumping whales into a system.

That would almost eliminate the cost of JGs for combat purposes.  The current decision is: how many combat ships get reduced combat capability in order to get the group into the enemy system.  Also, since the jump ship is a major investment, you want to protect it.  With small jump tenders, the tender becomes cheaper and may be considered expendables.

EDIT: Oh, another one: either Railgun Launch Velocity or a new specific tech should improve the speed of mineral packets, and at the same time, increase the damage a given packet would cause if the target body has no mass driver to receive it.

That sounds good but do you assume that the increases somehow automatically happen to existing mass drivers (software upgrade) or do you create a whole new line of Mass Driver [tech level] when no other installations have that mechanic?

Neither one really passes the giggle test for me.  Of course, having a mass driver catch packets is a game play hand wave.  So one more might not be too terrible.

EDIT2: One more! Add the ability to rename (or auto-rename) civilian shipping lines. I hate the Mcphatter line.

Heh.

[Shadow]

There was a discussion about this a while ago.

The main reason for the current system is that Steve wanted to keep the cost of jump ships relatively high.  He didn't like the idea of guppies jumping whales into a system.

That would almost eliminate the cost of JGs for combat purposes.  The current decision is: how many combat ships get reduced combat capability in order to get the group into the enemy system.  Also, since the jump ship is a major investment, you want to protect it.  With small jump tenders, the tender becomes cheaper and may be considered expendables.

I see, and I understand the balance reasons. But as I said, if it's going to stay that way, the player should be warned about it since it's not something anyone expects. A simple message or tooltip somewhere in the Ship Design view would be enough.

That sounds good but do you assume that the increases somehow automatically happen to existing mass drivers (software upgrade) or do you create a whole new line of Mass Driver [tech level] when no other installations have that mechanic?

I do assume the former. Many buildings have upgrades that are automatically applied once researched and don't require physical refits. Mines, construction factories, research labs and fuel refineries, to name a few. Similar mass driver upgrades wouldn't be disruptive to the norm.

[Teiwaz]

I read somewhere that "reducing micromanagement" was a design goal of Aurora, and had a few suggestions to make setting up things to run more smoothly easier.

1.  Mineral transport civilian contracts.  Mass drivers make intra-system supply chains nice and easy, but things get tougher when there's a jump[ involved, even if there's a gate.  It would be nice if I could just get the civies to do the ore hauling form my outsystem mining colony.  (And it would increase efficiency in common cases such as when your mining colony is importing infrastructure or mines.  Civvie freighters pull in with mines, drop them off, and load up with ore to take back to where the mines are made. )

2.  Separate "sending" mass drivers from "receiving" mass drivers.  (Later is a grav brake or something?) Right now, it's a little too easy to accidentally have civilians ship the mass driver you want to use to catch mineral packages out to some distant rock to where it's used to inadvertently slaughter your population.  (I avoid contracts for mass drivers alltogether because of this.  But think how easy it would be to just have your geosurvey ground team set up a contract for 3 mass drivers and 50 automated mines, and then it's off to the next rock?) It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that a giant cannon is used to catch incoming packages anyway, right?

3.  "Surpluss" export contracts.  Instead of "supplying x y" have a contract option to "supply all x greater than y. " So, for instance, I could reserve 200k tons of Duranium for further development of my mining colony, but let the civilians know that any Duranium in excess of that can be shipped offworld to where you need it.

4.  Not sure what this would be called, but the inverse of 3.  Have it so that you can set up a contract so that civilians will import X if the colony has less than Y of it.  This would let you have civilians maintain stocks of ordinance, maintenance supplies, fuel, etc.  at your fleet bases automatically.

[Thiosk]

Now that i've mined out the most delicious asteroids, my fleet of asteroid miners are just hopping from rock to rock and mining it out.

There may be a way to automate mining fleets, but i'm not aware of it.  I would like to see a fleet of miners have the capacity to move to a mineral source, as they now can, mine it out, then execute commands such as "load all minerals, move to next source." 

Or perhaps, move to mineral source, make it a colony, drop mass driver, set target to default target, mine source, load driver, uncolony, move to next mineral source.

[Narmio]

Now that i've mined out the most delicious asteroids, my fleet of asteroid miners are just hopping from rock to rock and mining it out.

There may be a way to automate mining fleets, but i'm not aware of it.  I would like to see a fleet of miners have the capacity to move to a mineral source, as they now can, mine it out, then execute commands such as "load all minerals, move to next source."  

Or perhaps, move to mineral source, make it a colony, drop mass driver, set target to default target, mine source, load driver, uncolony, move to next mineral source.

Probably the easiest suggestion to achieve the mining part of what you're after is a Condition "Minerals at this colony exhausted" and a Conditional Order "Move to nearest source of TN Minerals". It would probably require you to create the colonies first, though.

The thing with mass drivers/cargo holds is tougher, but could be done similarly, I think. You'd need a "load minerals at nearest colony" order and an "unload at nearest colony", only there'd need to be some way to distinguish proper colonies that are supposed to have minerals from barren rocks that have been extracted and had the juicy mins left there in a neat pile. A bit messy.

I think it'd be better to have a way to contract civilians to haul minerals - like what Teiwaz suggested. If you set a "stockpile limit" the same way you can currently set a Reserve Level, then any mins at a colony in excess of that will be picked up by civilian freight and taken to the nearest designated demand for that mineral.  Then you just set stockpile limits at 0 on a whole bunch of asteroids, and as soon as your roaming Conditional Order driven miners extract something a civilian hauler comes along and scoops it up.

The problem then is how the civilian orders work - ideally you want them to keep scooping up minerals until they're full instead of grabbing a few duranium off one rock, then travelling all the way back to Earth, then going all the way back out... But trying to intelligently guide that kind of behaviour is a sort of tricky problem.  In fact, it's been recognised as one of the trickiest problems known to computer science!

[Thiosk]

Hm, tricky indeed.  Conditional orders such as that are a good idea.

Even better: build a HUGE asteroid mining station, then tow the asteroids to it for processing!


Next suggestion. 
i havn't tech'd up my geo sensors yet, but I'd love for high-tech geosurvey vessels to have the teams on them.  Queue them up to go to fly to X number of planets in system, flying from rock to rock as they finish geosurvey reports.

The tech level of the geosurvey scanner could be synergistic with the team, speeding the time to complete the team survey, rather than the rating.

[EarthquakeDamage]

Next suggestion. 
i havn't tech'd up my geo sensors yet, but I'd love for high-tech geosurvey vessels to have the teams on them.  Queue them up to go to fly to X number of planets in system, flying from rock to rock as they finish geosurvey reports.

I'd very much like some means of automating survey teams.  It's painfully tedious to fully survey every moon and asteroid in the Sol system, let alone the thousands you find in other systems.

---

On a different note, the overall UI needs work.  Here are a few more suggestions:

• Context menus.  The system and IIRC galaxy maps both have context menus with assorted commands/shortcuts.  Most screens do not.
• Lists should not scroll back to the top when refreshed.  This was done for the Ground Unit list (Population/Economics screen) some time back, and it's a huge improvement.  A good example of a list needing such a change:  The system body screen (F9).  Whenever you add a colony via that screen and the list refreshes, it scrolls back to the top.  This can be frustrating when performing mass geo team surveys, setting up sensor outposts, or whatever.
• We should be able to select multiple items in some/most lists.
  
  When you have a lot of ground units, the list refresh is very slow.  If you're trying to organize new units into brigades and divisions, this delay can be frustrating.  If we could assign HQs to multiple units at once, it'd help enormously.
  
  When giving orders to task groups, some orders (e.g. load/unload ground unit) bring up a list of target units.  We should be able to select multiple units (and not just a single HQ structure, which is already possible with the checkbox).
  
  Side note:  In the same list where we select ground units for (un)loading, we should be able to give the order by double-clicking the unit.  At the moment, we have to click the Add Order button.

[alanwebber]

Steve

What about a system of establishing a ceasefire / armistice if a war has been going on for some time without the need to go to a final solution (obviously you need to have communications). This could occur if one side was getting beaten and felt there was no point continuing.

Alan

[Shadow]

Would it be possible to externalize race/name themes to editable text files, to increase moddability a little?