Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[ndkid]

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.

Well, to make sure we're clear, my suggestion isn't that the system and galaxy maps should change their (rather bad, I grant) menu bar behavior. I'm simply asking for the ability to circumvent it by allowing automating turns to be fired off outside of the System Map.

(I'd be happiest if there were a menu item "Automate Turns" that got a check beside it when turned on, and a menu item for minimum increment, and then do away with the custom interface on the System Map, and just have all the various time increment buttons check to see whether automated turns is on or not. This also has the beauty of allowing the Automated Turns toggle to have a hotkey, which would make my Aurora-using life far, far easier, as I wouldn't have to open the system map, which I almost never use, to skip past two NPRs duking it out offscreen.)

[ndkid]

I would love the ability with leaders, and especially with Civilian Administrators and Scientists, to automatically retire graduates who don't meet some set criteria. At the simplest level would be a "minimum promotion score"; at the most complex would be a full on rules engine that could handle "Has (Energy Weapons AND science skill >= 10) OR science skill >= 20 OR promotion score > 200".

[sloanjh]

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.

Second on the "claiming system" idea (errr I think it was from me in the first place, so I'm not sure if this is double-counting :-) )

Interestingly enough, this is exactly the scenario in the fiction for Steve's latest campaign - the pushy neighbors are surveying Sol and (in the fiction) the Terrans are saying "stop that - this is our system" but the neighbors are acting as if they failed the racial characteristics roll. 

Two tweaks to the suggestion:

1)  The other race should only notice the claim  if you have comm.

2) Maybe the result of a "respect the claim" roll should be some sort of negative score on the relations.  That way, if the alien runs into at a lot of your systems, the alien will begin to feel "hemmed in" and be more likely to go to war.

[Vanigo]

I'd be thinking along the lines of expanding the system control thing to be visible to other empires and affect diplomacy. Like, empires in communication can see which systems the other claims control over, and generally won't enter those systems. Add diplomatic penalties if empires don't acknowledge each others' territory, and bigger ones if they claim control over the same system. Naturally, you'd have to make "no controlling empire" the default system control, but that's simple enough. The hard part would be having NPRs decide when and where to dispute control of systems, and how such disputes could be resolved.

[On_Target]

I would love the ability with leaders, and especially with Civilian Administrators and Scientists, to automatically retire graduates who don't meet some set criteria. At the simplest level would be a "minimum promotion score"; at the most complex would be a full on rules engine that could handle "Has (Energy Weapons AND science skill >= 10) OR science skill >= 20 OR promotion score > 200".

I agree.  Also, being able to pay money to make scholarships for certain branches of science, administration, or military would be FANTASTIC (resulting in a higher chance to get graduates with bonuses in those areas compared to others).  I had 25 years without a single researcher who was Power and Propulsion oriented, but at least a dozen in Bio/Genetics (which I wasn't interested in at all; I resented it being present and stealing all my scientists).  I had at least 15 academies, too.

Either government-funded scholarships would be an option, or even a public campaign to promote certain types of learning among the populace.  Of course, it would take at least a few years before results would really start to show.

[Laurence]

Got four of them here...

Could we get a button or box to cap population of a colony?  Would be nice for roleplay purposes to have a small enclave on another empire's world, but it's limited to a certain size.

An option merge colonies on the same body if they match species and political status. 

An option to give a colony a specific name, rather than tying it to the system body name.  When playing an Earth scenario its easy to get confused as to which is which, especially if one "race" has conquered others.  They all get the same name right now.

A way to flag ground units to attack, rather than the whole bag going into attacking another colony.

[Elouda]

One thing thats recently caught my attention as I move to larger ship designs mounting a myriad of sensors is that there is no way to activate or deactivate active sensors individually, they're always either all on or all off. While this is not a huge problem, it would be nice if you could choose what to have on and what to have off.

[Vanigo]

There should be a way to check a carrier's total tonnage carried. There's a space used/space remaining thing on the design window, but not on the unit details, which would be quite helpful when you've got a nonstandard loadout.

[wilddog5]

I have noted that each mass driver package is counted with regards to movement as a ship, the result being lots of packets = massive slowdown.

Thus the simple mode this would be selected with a tickbox on the new game creation window and rather than using the current method when a package is launched it is recored with a arrival date and sits in the Dbase until that date while it is added to the receiving planets stockpile.

(catches breath)

A new window (sub window) could be added to the mining tab of the planet screen with (for the currently selected planet) the sender/destination planet (this could be separated with a drop down list (so sending planets would list destination and receiving planets would list the sender) the contents (separate column for each material) and the arrival date as most of this probably listed in the Dbase for each packet anyway this should need only small changes as well as the new window providing usefull information for those that chose to use the current system.

(remembers to breath in)

thank you for listening and have a nice day 

[Vanigo]

I have noted that each mass driver package is counted with regards to movement as a ship, the result being lots of packets = massive slowdown.

I wonder if that's why Sol is taking four seconds to draw... probably not; I've got display of mass packets turned off.

I'd like to be able to turn off displaying civilian ships - the inner system of Sol tends to get incredibly cluttered with civilian ship nametags.

[On_Target]

I just was rolling a new series of fighters out in my recent game.  Only to find out that there doesn't seem to be any easy method of scrapping the obsolete ones.  I ended up having to individually abandon ship, pick up survivors, and have a scrap ship nab the wrecks.  This took way longer than it should have, especially since the game had to stop every time a wreck was salvaged, even after I turned off the event notification on it and set auto-turns.  I was cleaning out over 50 fighters in just the one wing, and now I'm a bit loathe to do it for the other half of the old gen fighters.  (On the other hand, they're so old that they're just a drag on the economy from their upkeep, with no real chance of making a difference should invasion come.)

I spent at least 10 minutes looking, but if someone wants to point me in the right direction to an existing solution I'd be more than happy.

Since I don't think it exists: Can we get a way to scrap fighters in orbit, perhaps similar to the way we can scrap missiles stored planetside?

[Vanigo]

Refit costs should be capped at the cost of a brand new ship. It's just silly otherwise.

[wilddog5]

I read in another post with regards to the economy and something called the china problem where if you set the wealth percentage at the gamecreation to below 100% the economy could not increase to 100% to represent the increase in economy over time (i think that is what the post meant).

my suggestion is to have the civilian traders fix this eg every 1000 trades of trade goods or 5000 liner landings (day trips to the wilderness, sightseeing etc (not spending a fortune in the quaint little villages)) = 1% increase.

I also believe that colonies should start with only 10% economy as the people that are more likely to colonise a new world are the less wealthy members of society (Rich people would not want to take up farming, mining etc) this colony ships should decrease the economy if greater than 10% eg 100000 people = -1% economy to represent the addition of less wealthy people arriving and the cost of sorting them into the colony.

You could even have planets with a large amount of trade increase to over 100% economy to represent the huge number of goods flowing through them and the higher general wealth of the population (higher percentage of rich people than average) as a result

feel free to improve

thank you

[On_Target]

I've got a few things I noticed as I moved a strike force to attack an Invader-held system.

1. Ground units in drop pods should be able to be reloaded into transport bays.  I loaded my troops into drop pods within their own fleet (shuttle-carried drop pods in hangars), but I did it too soon (it happened much faster than expected since I put cargo handling on the troop/shuttle carrier) and morale started to drop, but I couldn't get them out of their pods without launching them at an enemy.  Since I was dressing ranks prior to jumping, this wasn't an option.  I can't imagine this would be a hard fix.

2. It would be REALLY nice if battalions and companies could be (automatically, when applicable) broken or regrouped into smaller/larger components.  After a forum comment about 5 companies = 1 battalion, and seeing the troop transport bay automatically change from 4 companies to 1 battalion when the next one was added, I thought I could load a battalion of marines into the transport, and that they would automatically be broken into companies when it came time to load them into their company-sized drop pods.  Quite the disappointment to find out this was not the case.  Doing this would reduce a lot of clutter in GU organization, and allow easier combat.

3. Carriers are counting docked fighters when making squadron jumps.  This can't be right.

4. Engine size being rounded to whole numbers means that hyper drive engine advancement is pointless when less than 1.4 for fighters (rounded down to 1).  Even for other engines, the rounding makes a few advancements utterly without benefit.

[UnLimiTeD]

Economy Blabla

I love those ideas! Would make it so much more satisfying.
Well, from a human point of view.