Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[ndkid]

Could the event text for an officer retiring contain the posting of the retiring officer, similar to how accidental deaths read? Right now, whenever someone retires, I have to audit every team in the galaxy to see whether the retirement affected any of them.

[sloanjh]

Could the event text for an officer retiring contain the posting of the retiring officer, similar to how accidental deaths read? Right now, whenever someone retires, I have to audit every team in the galaxy to see whether the retirement affected any of them.

Actually, it would be nice if there were a LOT more text in the "goodbye" window for dead/retired officer, e.g. stats, promotion rating, posting, age, (pre-death) health ....  This might be a compromise between the old "keep everyone around including the kitchen sink" behavior and the current "Trotsky*" behavior.  At least we'd get a chance to say good by to our beloved Grand Admiral.

John

* - "Who was that guy?  The name sounds familiar, but I can't find any record of him ever having existed."

[Titus bionicus]

Hi to all,
First, I wanted to thank Steve for making such a wonderful and cool game.
Then, I've recently stumbled upon a banks' novel and I thought it would be interesting to have in aurora something like the Culture's GSV, that is enormous ships which are so big that they contain entire habitats inside so as to transport 100ks of people, without having to freeze them cryogenically.
These would be interesting from a strategic point of view because since GSVs are like movable planets, with their own shipyards and everything they could project power even more effectively than carriers.
I know it would require enormous shipyards to build such beasts, making it nearly impossible to do, still I think it would be interesting to see components like 'big, city-like, habitat' or 'ship construction module' to be added so as to make it at least theoretically possible, also allowing for smaller version of these ships to be actually built.

[bean]

I wish my intelligence officers were a little smarter.  Right now, they're dumb as a box of rocks.  In my current game, I've captured four gravsurvey ships from a power that must not be named, and destroyed one of the same class.  However, in my intel window, I only know a little bit about the class, mostly based on the one I salvaged.  This is absurd, as I have four of them, three completely intact except for a hole in the armor, being taken apart to look at their technology.
Also, could PDCs be clearly marked as such?  It's sort of hard to mistake something on the ground for a ship in orbit.  I ran into trouble with this in the same game.

[ShadoCat]

Hi to all,
First, I wanted to thank Steve for making such a wonderful and cool game.
Then, I've recently stumbled upon a banks' novel and I thought it would be interesting to have in aurora something like the Culture's GSV, that is enormous ships which are so big that they contain entire habitats inside so as to transport 100ks of people, without having to freeze them cryogenically.
These would be interesting from a strategic point of view because since GSVs are like movable planets, with their own shipyards and everything they could project power even more effectively than carriers.
I know it would require enormous shipyards to build such beasts, making it nearly impossible to do, still I think it would be interesting to see components like 'big, city-like, habitat' or 'ship construction module' to be added so as to make it at least theoretically possible, also allowing for smaller version of these ships to be actually built.

This was what I originally wanted Orbital Habitats to be able to do.   I don't think they could be built that way in the current Aurora because of a large, existing, code base.

I'm hopeful for Aurora II.

[Sotak246]

In the planetary combat reports, the enemy damage is just a basic, unit damaged by x%.  I would like to see the type of unit and possible even numbered unit.  Fighting an enemy you would be able to tell what you are facing, Heavy Assault, Marine, etc.  Your intel. people should also have a good idea which specific units you are facing.  So a report such as:  Enemy Heavy Assault 001 took 20% damage.

Mark

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

In the planetary combat reports, the enemy damage is just a basic, unit damaged by x%.  I would like to see the type of unit and possible even numbered unit.  Fighting an enemy you would be able to tell what you are facing, Heavy Assault, Marine, etc.  Your intel. people should also have a good idea which specific units you are facing.  So a report such as:  Enemy Heavy Assault 001 took 20% damage.

Mark

Added for v5.40

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Could the event text for an officer retiring contain the posting of the retiring officer, similar to how accidental deaths read? Right now, whenever someone retires, I have to audit every team in the galaxy to see whether the retirement affected any of them.

I checked the code and current assignment is displayed for both accidents and retirements. If none is shown, he didn't have an assignment. I'll add code to specifically mention "No assignment"

Steve

[ndkid]

I checked the code and current assignment is displayed for both accidents and retirements. If none is shown, he didn't have an assignment. I'll add code to specifically mention "No assignment"

Steve

Here's an example from my last turn:
"Captain James Saunders has retired from the service at the age of 61"
Captain Saunders was a member of the Samuel Wallace Xenologist Team, which is now short-staffed.

Could it be that just due to the order of operations, retiring officers are being removed from their assignments before the event is being written out?

EDIT: AH-HA! Steve, I just had an officer retire due to severe medical problem, and *that* shows the assignment. So accidents and medical problems seem to, but old age retirement does not. Does that help?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

EDIT: AH-HA! Steve, I just had an officer retire due to severe medical problem, and *that* shows the assignment. So accidents and medical problems seem to, but old age retirement does not. Does that help?

That does help! I've confirmed that the assignment text is provided for medical retirement but not old age retirement. Fixed for v5.40

Steve

[Erik L]

Some sort of display option on the System Map for ruins. I've lost a ruined intact city, and I can't find it.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Some sort of display option on the System Map for ruins. I've lost a ruined intact city, and I can't find it.

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

Steve

[sloanjh]

When designing ranged weapons such as a laser in the "Create Reseach Project" window (from the "Design" button), display the damage fall-off-with-range table for the current design as parameters change.

I'd like to see what the difference in damage is between my 20cm C3 UV Laser which only fires every 20 seconds and a 15cm C3 UV Laser which fires every 10 seconds.

John

[sloanjh]

This is an old one, but I figure it's worth a ressurection....

Go to non-integer sizes for beam weapons, and build the power plants into the design.  In other words, in the design window you would specify the recharge time (bounded below by the race's best recharge rate) and Focal Size (and reduced size if any), then Aurora would build a big enough power plant into the weapon to recharge it over that amount of time.

In the example in my previous post, for the 15 cm laser (power req of 6) and C3 recharge technology, you'd be able to choose recharge times of 10s, 15s, 20s, etc.  (10s = 5s*(6power/C3)).  If you chose 10s, it would build a power-3 reactor into the mount; assuming Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Tech (4.5 power/HS), the size of the mount would be 4.66 (4 for the laser, plus 2/3 rounded down for the reactor).  If you chose 15s, it the size would be 4.44 (Power 2/Reactor 4.5=.44 for the reactor in this case).  Note that I'm rounding down so that 3*(2/3) fits into 2HS; you seem to have already done this for reduced size launchers....

For the 20cm laser (power req of 10), it takes at least 20s to recharge at C3, which corresponds to a recharge rate of 2.5/5s.  So the size would be 6.55 (6 for the laser, 2.5/4.5=.55 for the reactor) with a recharge time of 20s.

John

[sloanjh]

Allow non-5HS sizes for sublight engine designs.

I build a LOT of 1000 ton utility ships (scouts, colliers, ...).  At present, I have have a choice between putting 1 engine in, which corresponds to 25% hull mass (lower than I'd typicall like) or putting 2 engines in, which corresponds to 50% hull mass (higher than I'd like).  It would be nice to put e.g. a 7.5 HS or 8 HS engine into such ships so that I could tune their speed to the rest of my fleet (which typically runs at about 10 engines per 120 HS, i.e. a little more than 40%).  Maybe best in this mode would be to allow the designer to pick the power level, then adjust the size of the engine to match.

John