Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[sloanjh]

Change the civie colonization logic so that they can create their own colonies and start populating them wherever there's a habitable planet (e.g. colony cost less than some threshold like 2 or 4 or 10).  In other words, allow civie colonization target worlds to pop up like civie mining complexes do.

It just occurred to me while answering a question about the source/destination that a nice realism effect would be for those pesky civilians to go where they want to, rather than where you tell them to.  This would probably have an interesting effect on the diplomatic game - your civies would be sneaking into alien empires and setting up colonies.  Further mechanics along this line would allow players to "disavow" a settlement in alien territory (so the aliens wouldn't want to go to war with you).  If the aliens attacked others of your species though (even if they were disavowed) it would generate negative diplo points in your population towards the aliens.  This would lead to the need for a civ to police its own border to keep its civies from entering alien space; "arresting" a civie ship would presumably lead to warning points (the ones that happen when ships are blown up to tell the civies to stay out of a system) for its destination in alien space so a civ wouldn't have a never-ending stream of civies trying to cross the border.  And so on....

If one were to do this (especially for 10) it would probably be best to put a "happiness" score on each population, which would be some combination of unemployment, wealth generation, %consumer goods requirements satisfied, colonization cost, total population, etc.  (I really like the consumer goods one.)  The flow of colonists could then be driven by a desire to go from unhappy planets to happy planets.  The trick would be to set it up so that people would want to emigrate from high population worlds like Earth to low pop/undesireable worlds - you'd probably have to throw in a factor like log(total population+1) to the unhappiness to represent the "new frontiers" desire of a few people to move from the "city" to the "wilderness".

John

[ShadoCat]

Allow immigration/emigration between empires.

The amount each month could depend on the living conditions in each empire and how militant the empires are (militant empires are less likely to allow their populations to leave).

This would allow population transfer in multi-government Earth campaigns.

The reason I'm looking for this is because I have an idea for a campaign in which only a portion of Earth's population has TN tech.  This allows a reasonable starting population without inflicting some disaster on Earth.  It also would allow population recruitment for colonization purposes (I thought that this was more realistic than assuming that everyone else would just stay on Earth).

[oleg]

If one were to do this (especially for 10) it would probably be best to put a "happiness" score on each population, which would be some combination of unemployment, wealth generation, %consumer goods requirements satisfied, colonization cost, total population, etc.  (I really like the consumer goods one.)  The flow of colonists could then be driven by a desire to go from unhappy planets to happy planets.  The trick would be to set it up so that people would want to emigrate from high population worlds like Earth to low pop/undesireable worlds - you'd probably have to throw in a factor like log(total population+1) to the unhappiness to represent the "new frontiers" desire of a few people to move from the "city" to the "wilderness".

John

Hey John good post and I really like this idea and it could as well be linked to base species characteristics to drive this behavior. It probably generates some unforeseen scenarios as well.

[Edward Hamilton]

Very minor suggestion: Can the Leader screen indicate whether a given officer is male or female? With some of the name sets I have trouble guessing.  A little embarrassing when I'm doing a write up, and suddenly discover I've been using the wrong pronoun!

If this is already hiding somewhere in plain sight, I apologize.

[Erik L]

Very minor suggestion: Can the Leader screen indicate whether a given officer is male or female? With some of the name sets I have trouble guessing.  A little embarrassing when I'm doing a write up, and suddenly discover I've been using the wrong pronoun!

If this is already hiding somewhere in plain sight, I apologize.

This is actually in the database. It just never made it out into the display code.

[Peter Rhodan]

One thing I find really really annoying that should be able to be fixed easily is that when a cargo ship is told to load something it can't it's orders get wiped.  I often set really complicated multi port routes for cargo ships and it is real bugger when this happens two spots in after writing the movement orders to like 6 different colonies!!
Can you set it so that if a ship is told to load something that has run out or is unavailable - there is in an interupt that specifies the problem then checks to see if the orders are set to cycle - if the are the offending order is cycled as if it has been done whilst if not set to cycle the order list is left intact so you can see what you had planned.
Same with trying to unload something you don't have which is possible now with the above cycle procedure.

[bean]

I have a couple more minor things.  First, could you please detect where missiles are coming from?  It's really annoying to have to work out for yourself who is launching the things, particularly when you can detect the missiles in question 60mkm out, and the enemy is about 40mkm away.
Second, could the estimated mass be calculated based on power and speed?  It's sort of annoying to have to do it by hand when you want it.

[sloanjh]

Don't allow commercial jump drives to make squadron jumps.

It just occurred to me that with the introduction of "standard" jumps as part of the game mechanics (as opposed to a convenience that ignores the game mechanics to avoid micro-management), that squadron jumps are now special in the same way that afterburners on a jet engine might be.  It seems to make sense to limit commercial engines so that they are unable to use the mode that is used in WP assaults.

John

[sloanjh]

"Set Speed" (which takes a numerical value) and "Max Speed" orders for TG which would complement the "Picket" order.

When I'm probing a system, I'm adjusting the throttle on my scout ships a LOT.  I'll typically set a waypoint a few days away from a planet at slow speed (e.g. 1000 km/s), have the scout ship charge up to it at full speed, then slow to something like 1000 km/s (to cut my thermal signature) and creep up on the planet.  What I'd like to be able to do is to set the entire scout sequence in one go when I first enter the system.  Because the speed changes can't be included as orders, I have to break things up into constant-speed sequences.  This leads to a LOT of interrupts where a TG reaches a change-speed waypoint, and I have to go set the next leg of the course and change the speed.  If I could give a "Change Speed" order at target locations, I'd be able to program the whole probe in one go.

John

[voknaar]

Can the release notes section be updated for 5.20 and 5.30 http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,110.0.html

[ardem]

Update on Sensors as per post

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,3329.0.html

[Deon]

Was it suggested to mark designs as "not avaliable to civilians"? Sometimes I want to make a design for a specific task and don't want to have them in tons flying around for civilians.

[Mel Vixen]

Yar somehow my civis got around a Dozen orbitals.

edit: on the other hand would it be nice to have some civilians armed as local police forces etc. 

[sloanjh]

Reverse-sort the research and queued-research panes.

I like to have 3-researchers going in each tech field, with each one having something queued (so as to not lose progress).  Whenever I add a new project (or adjust labs, or ...) the scrollbar resets to the top of the list when it refreshes (actually, what I'd really like is for the scrollbar not to reset, but I figure that that's hard....)  It just occurred to me that the projects that I'm most interested in are the most recent ones, which are exactly the ones at the bottom of the list which are most likely to be off-screen.  If the sort order were reversed, then the most recent projects would be at the top of the list and visible after the reset.

John

[sloanjh]

I just tried out the new (in 5.3) tractor orders, and they're (almost) perfect!

The one improvement I would like would be to place the tow into the target fleet if specified.  In other words, if I'm towing "Genesis 002" and give a "release tractored ships" order with TG "Terraforming Mars" as the target, then I'd like Genesis 002 to show up as a member of Terraforming Mars, rather than a new TG "TR Genesis 002".  When targetting a population, the current behavior of spawning a new TG is fine.

This will indeed cut a big chunk of micromanagement out of my games - Thanks!

John