Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[sloanjh]

For v5.42, the scrollbar no longer resets. If you add a project to the queue, the bar scrolls to the bottom. If you remove a project, the project above it in the list is selected and the scroll bar moves accordingly.

Steve

Ooooh - Shiny!!!!  Thanks for this and the other bug fixes/suggestions over the last few days.

John

PS - I assume that removing the first item on the list moves the selection to the one below it (i.e. the new first entry)?

[sloanjh]

I have been thinking about this one myself for a while. It would also make life easier for new players as sorting out power plants does cause problems. It is a fairly major change though as it would involve component design, the recharging mechanics and all the NPR beam-related design code (and I would have to change all the designs in my campaign . So this is definitely on the list but probably not until a major update and a new campaign for me.

Steve

Agreed (on the reasons for holding off until a more opportune time).  Like I said, I just wanted to throw it back into the mix....

John

[Charlie Beeler]

Agreed (on the reasons for holding off until a more opportune time).  Like I said, I just wanted to throw it back into the mix....

John

If I may interject...  perhaps this (on mount power for beams) should be optional.  Personally I like having powerplants seperate. 

As a matter of fact I'd like to see engines having a power requirement as well.  Similiar in concept to conjectural designs for nuclear pulse and nuclear electric rockets.  Reactor provides power that the engines require to generate movement and use fuel. 

[sloanjh]

Another old one being resurrected:

The ability to specify class missile loadout IDs (e.g. "Anti-Shipping", "Anti-FAC", ...), specifiy multiple class loadouts to a class (keyed by the ID), and give an order "load ordnance at colony/collier X using loadout Y" (the pane for specifying teams/ground units to be picked up etc. could be used for Y).

See this thread in the academy for someone who looks like he needs it....

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,3356.new.html

John

[Beersatron]

Give the civilian shipping lines the ability to refit/upgrade their fleet.

I am on a conventional start and my freighters/colony ships are going at about 1k km/s, the civies have about 5 of each and that is great but in 10/15 years I will have freighters than go 4k km/s but the civies will still have the 1k km/s ships and probably have a lot more of them.

I guess you could maybe track the age of the civie ship against another freighter or colony design being available and then subtract a percentage of the original ship's cost from the new ship cost?

[James Patten]

I'm playing 5.2

I explored a system and discovered enemy soldiers on one of the worlds.  I marked it (made it a colony) and sent my exploration ships on to other tasks.  Much later I was able to bring in soldiers and land them.  However, I don't have anyone to attack, but I know there's soldiers there.  I'd like to not have to bring back a ship with a sensor.

[IanD]

If a TN planetary population is destroyed by Player, NPR or Invaders shouldn't there be a resulting ruin? The Empire assigned and TL would be that of the population before destruction and the level of ruins could be random.

Regards

[Elouda]

Some ideas, apologies if these have already been suggested.

1) Some way to move missiles as cargo. Magazines can hold up to 20 MSP per HS, so allowing missiles to be 'crated' into cargo holds at 1 MSP per HS (or 100 MSP for a standard Cargo Hold) would not be unreasonable, and provide a way to ship them between bases. They would have to be unloaded at a planet before being loaded into a magazine, so you could not transfer missiles from a cargo ship to a collier, etc while in space.

2) The ability to contract minerals and population (and fuel? civilian tanker designs?) for transport by civilians.

3) Ability to order speed changes through the orders list, the same way one can activate sensors and shields.

4) A way to activate active sensors independently for each ship, rather than all on or all off.

5) Some more incentive to build orbital bases. Currently there is very little reason to do so, as PDCs can easily be much bigger, and orbital bases require a shipyard. Either allow them to be built on planets as orbital habitats are, or maybe allow shipyards to build orbital bases up to 2x or even 5x their maximum 'ship' size.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

4) A way to activate active sensors independently for each ship, rather than all on or all off.

You can do this on the F6 Ship window or on the F8 Combat Overview window.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

5) Some more incentive to build orbital bases. Currently there is very little reason to do so, as PDCs can easily be much bigger, and orbital bases require a shipyard. Either allow them to be built on planets as orbital habitats are, or maybe allow shipyards to build orbital bases up to 2x or even 5x their maximum 'ship' size.

The main advantage of orbital bases (which are essentially ships without engines) is that you can tow them somewhere else - or put a single engine on them so they can move themselves. You can't do that with a PDC. Also, if an enemy raid destroys an orbital base you won't suffer collateral damage to industry.

Steve

[Elouda]

You can do this on the F6 Ship window or on the F8 Combat Overview window.

Steve

Im only seeing options to toggle sensors on a per ship basis, not a per sensor basis.

What I meant was being able to engage a specific sensor on a ship, rather than having them all on or off. So a fleet would be able to use their low strength R1 sensors with low GPS values incase of a sudden attack, but leave the more powerful main arrays offline to avoid detection.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Im only seeing options to toggle sensors on a per ship basis, not a per sensor basis.

What I meant was being able to engage a specific sensor on a ship, rather than having them all on or off. So a fleet would be able to use their low strength R1 sensors with low GPS values incase of a sudden attack, but leave the more powerful main arrays offline to avoid detection.

Ah sorry - 'I thought independently for each ship' meant as opposed to on/off for a whole fleet. I'll have to figure out how best to tackle this as the flag for sensors on/off is at the ship level. There isn't a separate table in the DB for individual sensors.

Steve

[bean]

Could you add "refuel and resupply at colony" to the list of possible secondary orders?

[Brian Neumann]

Ah sorry - 'I thought independently for each ship' meant as opposed to on/off for a whole fleet. I'll have to figure out how best to tackle this as the flag for sensors on/off is at the ship level. There isn't a separate table in the DB for individual sensors.

Steve

Any chance you could set up something where there are 3-4 slots to assign different fire control to in the ship design stage.  Then each slot can be activated individually at the ship level.  This way when I design a ship I can assign all of my res 1 sensors to slot 1, my res 16 sensors to slot 2, ect.  When I go to the individual ship display (F6) the toggle for sensors on becomes 4-5 buttons.  One for each slot, and one to activate/deactivate all of them.  This way you get away with out making an entire new table, just expanding the ship table a bit.  Which slot I use is my choice, although it would probably help to keep similiar purpose sensors in the same slots. 

Brian

[Narmio]

Can we please, please stop civilian shipping lines from paying out my subsidies as dividends?  It's Wall Street Bonuses all over again!  When you're a terrible shipping company who only has one freighter four years into the game, and whose annual income is roughly 20-30 because your freighter only does one Earth-Mars trip every month or two, despite that trip taking about 30 hours including unloading, you should NOT be paying a dividend of 500. Twice now the wealth of this bloody company has dropped below the cost of a colony ship because they're paying dividends instead of buying ships.  So when I subsidise them I'm actually pouring money into a black hole.

OK, so that was more of a rant than a suggestion, but essentially:

Dividends based on profits not total wealth. Especially when total wealth is literally 99.95% government subsidies! Or maybe "no dividends for X period after subsidies", or "track earned wealth and subsidised/starting wealth separately". But those seem more complicated than "pay dividends on profits only".