Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve -

A minor request.  I'd like to have the ability to rename populations.  As things currently stand, races are named, as are planets, but as far as I can tell, I can't name populations.

What I am trying to do is to set up multiple colonies on the same planet for the same Empire.  The Zogs currently have four races in their empire, including themselves, and in several cases they will find it useful to emplace populations from two or more races on the same planet.  Unfortunately, on the System Display the colonies are all identified as "Zog", because the Zogs control them.  On the Population and Production (P&P) screen the populations are identified by the name of the planet and star, but not by the name of the population. 

The P&P screen is fine, because you can look at the details and figure out what you are looking at, but on the system display, and when you are plotting moves to and from a planet with multiple populations of the same race, it gets difficult to discriminate as to which population you are looking at. 

Kurt

I can't remember which version you are on at the moment but the current version shows populations with the species after the planet name on both the P&P window and the fleet window.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

No sure if its been mentioned before, but I would like to give my warships an order to go to a specific heading.

Ex. Turn all ships to 248 degrees.

The game doesn't support this at the moment because movement is controlled on a point to point basis, rather than using speed and direction. In other words, your fleet doesn't move because the game performs trigonometry based on velocity and course. Instead, it performs a simple pythogoras function using your current coordinates and your destination coordinates and dividing total distance by distance covered in the current increment. This is far faster and easier for me and the PC . However, you can create waypoints on the map if you want a fleet to go somewhere that doesn't have a convenient planet or survey location. If you wanted to use a waypoint for bearing 248, hold shift down and drag the mouse on the system map and it will draw a line showing bearing and direction so you can see where to place the waypoint.

Steve

[IanD]

As for Ian:
Thats the entire point. 10 Conventional Industry equal a Mine, a fuel refinery, and a Construction factory. They are not able to produce anything without TN minerals, and thats not going to change.
Aside from wealth, you can use such planets as fleet bases and for research labs.
Though wealth is a good reason in itself on most occasions.

Except that fleet bases need TN minerals for maintenance and you will have to transport every Research complex there from somewhere else, seems little point, leaving wealth. Of course if its an important strategic position, then its worth shgipping in the minerals to maintain your forward elements.
Regards

[IanD]

I can't remember which version you are on at the moment but the current version shows populations with the species after the planet name on both the P&P window and the fleet window.

Steve

In 5.14 I have some six colonies on Earth, all of course huiman. I have yet to find a way to name them North American Sector etc.

To digress, how far away is 5.30, is it worth waiting for as I have finished unifying Earth and could convert to the latest version before I leave Sol with a litttle work?

[backstab]

In 5.14 I have some six colonies on Earth, all of course huiman. I have yet to find a way to name them North American Sector etc.

To digress, how far away is 5.30, is it worth waiting for as I have finished unifying Earth and could convert to the latest version before I leave Sol with a litttle work?

I'll second that one ... It will be very useful for multiple colonies on the same planet.

[jRides]

Fuel pods (that can replace missiles on fighter craft rails would be nice), but also multiple rocket pods sound good, as suggested above.

For the UI can I request that the research list can be sorted by its various column headers(the one at the top of scientist/research labs/completion dates etc). Like you can in the view tech window.

Also when sorting ships in the designs, single ship view and taskforces windows, it would be handy to be able to remove types from the lists as opposed to just sort the order the types/ships are shown in (make them a bit less wieldy).

On this sorting by type etc - would it be possible to add another player designation into ships, just a new field we can sort ships by (Battlefleet/survey/recon/support/carrier fleet/fighter for example), these lists get very long and really only creative naming is keeping me sane, its less of an issue now im getting to grips with the OOB on the task forces window.

[Nibelung44]

I second that, I would like to be able to remove Hull Names. Despite the great interest of Steve AAR, hull names in Russian just clutter my list. If we can add, we should be able to remove too 

[Vanigo]

The combat options pane really needs a way to turn autofire and synchronized fire on and off for every ship or every ship of a given class in a fleet. Turning synchronized fire on for a group of fifty fighters sucks.

[jRides]

Some UI stuff:

Giving ship orders via the Task Group Orders tab, it would be handy if you could select an order and delete that selected order (right now you have to delete the entire list from the last order you gave, and so if you screwed up the first order - your deleting everything). Also it would be nice if we could copy a set of orders, also if we could just change a single selected order from a list of orders.

[sloanjh]

Some UI stuff:

Giving ship orders via the Task Group Orders tab, it would be handy if you could select an order and delete that selected order (right now you have to delete the entire list from the last order you gave, and so if you screwed up the first order - your deleting everything). Also it would be nice if we could copy a set of orders, also if we could just change a single selected order from a list of orders.

This is intentionally left out.  The problem is that a lot of orders depend on the star system in which you are, so deleting orders from the middle of the list can lead to corrupt lists.  That being said, it would still be nice to do for "safe" orders, i.e. those for which the preceding order is in the same system (I think).

John

[Vanigo]

This is intentionally left out.  The problem is that a lot of orders depend on the star system in which you are, so deleting orders from the middle of the list can lead to corrupt lists.  That being said, it would still be nice to do for "safe" orders, i.e. those for which the preceding order is in the same system (I think).

John

I think anything except jump gate transits should be safe, actually.

[Brian Neumann]

I think anything except jump gate transits should be safe, actually.

Actually this is a problem when you have a list of orders.  If for instance there is an order to pick up troops at one planet and unload on another planet.  If you delete the load then the unload is also now out of sequence and when you get to there in the order list it can't be completed.  This will throw an error message and delete the rest of the qued orders.

Brian

[UnLimiTeD]

Would be best to change how thats handled.
If the ship moves to a planet to unload, and finds theres nothing to unload, it should just proceed, give the error message, and not delete everything.
Also, if Ships are able to "refuel within 4 Jumps" they should also be able to find a planet if the jump command is deleted, if they have jump capability or Gates.

[Vanigo]

Tiny maintenance bays are, as far as I can tell, the only ship component in the game with a size that is not a multiple of 0.1 HS. This is pretty screwy.

[Hawkeye]

The combat options pane really needs a way to turn autofire and synchronized fire on and off for every ship or every ship of a given class in a fleet. Turning synchronized fire on for a group of fifty fighters sucks.

I just noticed that there is the option to turn on/off sync fire for a taskgroup on the taskgroup window, History/officers/Misc panel, lower right.
Still, being able to turn it on/off based on ship-class would be nice