Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[ZimRathbone]

Also, you should find a different way of changing the theme for the Galactic and System maps.  They still stick occasionally, and not just when the program crashes.  I hate having to redo my Windows theme settings after playing.

Yes, that's been annoying me as well ever since I started playing back in 4.9x.

Regrettably this is due to a VB6 bug rather than Aurora per se.

soln 1 get Microsoft to fix it (good luck with that one)
soln 2 rewrite Aurora in a more modern dev environment (see Aurora II)

[Shadow]

I see.

Anyway, please, I'd like the ability to customize an alien race's portrait and flag, even if it requires SM mode. I'm finding myself manually swapping flag and race files to get proper combinations sometimes.

[sloanjh]

Put a "System" filter into the F2 screen display of colonies to choose from.

The "Population Locations" panel of F2 can rapidly fill up.  Putting in a filter that allows you to pick only populations in a particular system can help in finding a particular population.

John

[Thiosk]

I'm not hitler.  I swear.

I just roleplay like I'm in the Warhammer 40k universe, I'm the god emperor, and humanity need fear the alien no longer.

As such, nonhuman species are right out for roleplaying purposes.  They must be eliminated, as per the orbital bombardment thread.

I would like to use ground forces to directly attack populations.   I do not mind collateral damage to development.  Terrible collateral damage and losses.

[jseah]

Here's another one for convienience:

In the ship components section of production, have the ability to build a "package" of components based on a class design.  Rather than flip between the Design window and the Economics window or memorizing the components needed. 

All design names with components buildable by construction factories will show up as one item, eg. "DD Ettin components", in addition to the individual components we have now. 

DD Ettin components, when finished as one construction item, will then add to your stockpile all the components for building the ship. 

[welchbloke]

Here's another one for convienience:

In the ship components section of production, have the ability to build a "package" of components based on a class design.  Rather than flip between the Design window and the Economics window or memorizing the components needed. 

All design names with components buildable by construction factories will show up as one item, eg. "DD Ettin components", in addition to the individual components we have now. 

DD Ettin components, when finished as one construction item, will then add to your stockpile all the components for building the ship. 

I like this idea, it would cut down on micro-management.

[jseah]

Oh, another one:

Can we have the ability to un-modify species?  I know GMed species aren't allowed to have modifications but perhaps there should be the ability to convert between the species and any of it's derivatives. 

So a modified population should be able to convert back to unmodified or convert to any other modified version of the same species. 

[sloanjh]

Here's another one for convienience:

In the ship components section of production, have the ability to build a "package" of components based on a class design.  Rather than flip between the Design window and the Economics window or memorizing the components needed. 

All design names with components buildable by construction factories will show up as one item, eg. "DD Ettin components", in addition to the individual components we have now. 

DD Ettin components, when finished as one construction item, will then add to your stockpile all the components for building the ship. 

(Emphatically) Thirded.

John

[Shadow]

Given you can load ground troops from bays into combat pods in space, you should be able to transfer them to other normal troop bays as well. i.e. from a freshly-captured vessel back to the troop ships.

[Shadow]

About kinetic weapons and orbital bombardment...

I can understand energy beams/particles dissipating due to the atmosphere's resistance. However, that makes a lot less sense for kinetic projectiles. There's at least one serious real life concept, and the presence of kinetic bombardment in many hard science fiction stories is enough evidence that it's at least scientifically plausible.

Off the top of my head, a kinetic projectile used in orbital bombardment would be a solid, aerodynamic, dense metal slug coated in a heat-resistant material, and would only take a moment to lance through the atmosphere. The average meteorite's burned by the atmosphere, but that's because it's just a chunk of rock and not specifically designed ordnance.

Maybe really thick atmospheres (3+ atm) would impair the performance of kinetic rounds. However, such friction in general should be a lot less of a problem for them than it is for largely immaterial energy.

[Thiosk]

What kind of kinetic weapons are we talking here?  Building destroying?  City-sized crater-making?  Or crust-puncturing-apocalyptic?

A "silver bullet" style round, styled after the commonly used anti-tank armor-penetrating rounds we see today, would certainly penetrate the atmosphere and hit the ground.  Damaging things if it hit them of course.  This is how i'd imagine railguns to work on planets.  *plink plink plink*  I wouldn't expect them to be effective for saturation bombing.

Why not just allow an offensive mass driver?  Mass packets penetrate the atmosphere with  no problem, killing millions and destroying infrastructure-- and those aren't even guided.  Talk about low-cost weapons of interstellar terror.

A crust-puncturing type kinetic impact is a fairly low-tech orbital bombardment solution as well.  Find a suitable orbiting 'roid, hook some rockets to it, and sling it into pretty-much anywhere.  Make a whole bunch of poisonous gas, depending on the tectonics and internal structure of the planet.  Good thing we can't move roids currently, because that would be *fun*

[Erik L]

Why not just allow an offensive mass driver?  Mass packets penetrate the atmosphere with  no problem, killing millions and destroying infrastructure-- and those aren't even guided.  Talk about low-cost weapons of interstellar terror.

Mass drivers already do that. As long as the "recipient" doesn't have any of their own.

[Father Tim]

Off the top of my head, a kinetic projectile used in orbital bombardment would be a solid, aerodynamic, dense metal slug coated in a heat-resistant material, and would only take a moment to lance through the atmosphere. The average meteorite's burned by the atmosphere, but that's because it's just a chunk of rock and not specifically designed ordnance.

Right there, you've answered your own question - because kinetic projectiles used in space combat are NOT aerodynamic cores coated in heat-resistant material, they're steel marbles.

So Gauss Cannons & Railguns don't work for orbital bombardment through atmosphere because they don't currently carry/use "specifically designed ordinance."

[Shadow]

What kind of kinetic weapons are we talking here?  Building destroying?  City-sized crater-making?  Or crust-puncturing-apocalyptic?

Mainly railguns. As I just posted on the Bay 12 forums, you'd use missiles to exterminate population, but kinetic weapons for precise strikes*. You could use the latter against populations, but it'd take far longer. And I do recall at least kinetic hits on a planet raise a measure of dust into the atmosphere, so using them for days against civilians would have a similar detrimental result as glassing through nukes.

*Like to destroy PDCs, a specific group of facilities or, to more limited effect, ground units. For the latter, perhaps, you could add a more complex mechanic: being under orbital fire would slowly reduce the readiness of the target ground forces, but more importantly it would impose a significant combat penalty on them as long as they're being fired upon, leaving the enemy quite more exposed to attacks from your own troops. This would simulate support fire from your warships in orbit.

Right there, you've answered your own question - because kinetic projectiles used in space combat are NOT aerodynamic cores coated in heat-resistant material, they're steel marbles.

So Gauss Cannons & Railguns don't work for orbital bombardment through atmosphere because they don't currently carry/use "specifically designed ordinance."

I know how things currently work. Hence why I'm making this suggestion.

It's not unusual for naval guns to be stocked with multiple kinds of ammunition. You wouldn't even have to specify which type of rounds are being used, since the system would load the right one for the job.

[jseah]

Diplomatic rating higher than allied: Maintenance facilities will maintain allied fleets (maybe have a resource use limit).  Shared fuel supply.  (with limit given in diplo window)
 - provision of maintenance and fuel will increase diplomatic rating. 


Currently, I have a friendly (and soon allied) NPR fleet stationed above my homeworld.  Since I'm rather far behind on weapons research, I welcome the defence help.  The NPR and my system is part of a linear chain with the NPR's side blocked by an insane nebulae.  (it's home system is two jumps away)

Since the NPR doesn't seem like it'll want to pull back it's ships, I would like to extend my maintenance facilities and fuel on my homeworld to cover the NPR's ships so it can use my system as a fleet base.