Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[Charlie Beeler]

Add a default order to clear default orders.  In my current game clearing the default orders of 24 gravsurvey ships is a real pain.

There are radio buttons at the bottom of the F12 Task Group Screen to clear both Default and Conditional orders for the viewed TG.

[Charlie Beeler]

I have always been irritated at the way different races in SF strategy games seem to be no more than reskinned aliens.  Aurora has avoided that with the special encounters but NPRs are still kinda bland. 

So here's my attempt at creating a different kind of NPR.  It behaves significantly differently and utilizes different strategies, not as a matter of arbitrary decisions but due to how it is different. 


Special alien race:  Like NPR, but spawns only once. 

The race consists of two populations.  Call them "upper" and "lower" for how the food chain goes.  Both populations are sentient and thus can perform industry. 

Fluff & biology:
Upper eats the lower race and in doing so has a 1/10 chance of hatching another upper race member from the corpse.  They don't have to eat very often but can do so at an extreme rate if given the chance. 
Lower race breeds like rabbits, fast enough to outbreed the minimum rate of eating from the upper race. 

This makes the dynamic very interesting as population constraints are incredibly tight. 


Mechanics:
Upper race has a food rationing system.  Each 1mil population growth requires the death of 10 million population of the lower race.  Population growth of upper race can be set by government policy on each planet from between 5% to 200%.  Population size does not affect birth rate. 
If there is no lower race on the planet, the planet is unsuitable for colonization. (!!)
Every planet that has the higher race dying due to unsuitable colonization causes unrest to increase empire-wide by 5%. 

Lower race breeds at 20%, unaffected by population size.  The population of lower race is not allowed to operate TN tech (see below) and they operate conventional industry fit for their population (population grants effective CIs don't exist to be moved or converted). 
However, since they are essentially food for the upper race, they incredibly restless and are perpetually at the lowest political status.  Furthermore, the garrison and space-firepower required per 1million population increases as the population size increases.  IE. big populations of lower race are incredibly difficult to control. 

When unrest modifier gets below 30%, the lower race instigates a rebellion and becomes an independent non-TN entity.  This will attack any upper race population on the planet and if successful, might even capture TN technology and become an NPR in it's own right.  As an NPR, the lower race is incredibly xenophobic only towards the upper race and starts at war with the upper race. 
The mere existence of a lower race NPR with TN tech inspires unrest on all captive lower race populations by 10%, potentially triggering an empire-wide rebellion.  All future rebellions join this new NPR or form a new one if the old one was destroyed. 
Any such lower race NPR returns to being a normal NPR with all the usual rules (population growth decreases to standard levels and no free conventional industry), fluff-wise being that they were kept in third world conditions and so had higher birth rates. 


Differences to normal gameplay:
Upper race has to perform a juggling act.  Too high lower race growth means they get impossible to control and will rebel.  Rebelling is very dangerous. 

The easy way to solve high lower race populations is simply to eat them.  200% growth per year will cause a population crash. 
However, doing this means the high race population will now increase and start to eat more.  Outgrow the lower race population and you could eat them all on the planet and everyone starves...

This forces the pair of races to continually expand.  There is no option, expand or implode due to rebellion.  The loads of free conventional industry gives a major boost to industrial capacity, to the point that they can support massive expansion.  At the same time, the requirement of strictly controlling higher race population means you cannot have enough population to support large TN economies (although mines and CFs are waste of population), most of which is tied up in shipyards manufacturing colony ships for population control. 

Which leads to a race that is low on tech but fields incredibly huge fleets and expands all over the place. 
Unfortunately for their huge fleets, the amount of firepower required to control their lower race population is exorbitant and forces them to spread out their fleet so smaller, higher tech opponents can defeat them in detail. 

Personally, I'd rather see the AI enhanced for a much more varied NPR based on the racial traits and government selections.  This would make a much more broad spectrum game.  This won't happen anytime soon since it would be a major overhaul of the core code.  Frankly I'm hoping Steve is planning something along these lines for Aurora II.

If you really want each race to be unique there is only one option for now, player controlled NPR.

[AirborneRifles]

WHat about dedicated ECM platforms?  I understand ECM and ECCM in the game as they are now,what I'm thinking is an ECM that you could mount that would give coverage to a whole group of ships.   I thinking of this more in terms of fighters, as a way to make beam fighters more survivable and relevant.   Perhaps some sort ofECM that is larger than an individual ECM but gives a fraction of it's benefit to each fighter in a squadron.   This would allow you to include dedicated ECM craft with a strike package of attack fighters and give them a better chance of closing and surviving.

In a similar vein, how about some sort of jamming weapon?  I understand how Microwaves work right now, but what I'm talking about is some sort of long range weapon whose effect is only temporary.   It could be targeted at a specific sensor to degrade the performance of that sensor.   For example, if you're sending in a strike of fighters and an enemy ship has a R4 sensor, you could have a standoff jammer degrading the performance of that specific sensor to allow your fighters to get in close.   As soon as the weapon is turned off the performance of the sensor goes back to 100%.   ECCM would mitigate the effects of the jamming.

I understand a lot of this is abstracted already in ECM and ECCM already in the game, but I think this could add another element and make beam fighters a bigger part of the equation.

[Thiosk]

I support jamming.  Jamming should certainly affect the sweeps, the bleeps, and the creeps.



I love beams so anything to make beams more awesome is totally awesome.

[dooots]

There are radio buttons at the bottom of the F12 Task Group Screen to clear both Default and Conditional orders for the viewed TG.

That is what I use, but if I could set the secondary default command to clear the default commands I would get one message about there being no more location to survey and I would be done with it.  Then when it comes time to move to the next system I give the orders to the lead gravsurvey ship use the copy button and away they go to repeat the process.

[jseah]

Diplomacy suggestions: share communications link, share galactic maps, share sensor data. 

Galactic map will show you all the explored systems of the empire and the links they have probed.  Comes after sharing grav. survey data.  Any they explore that is a unique system gets flagged as their territory by default (so you know which ones are yours and which are theirs). 
 - Optionally, the names that appear on your map might even be the names they use for it. 

Sharing communications means that if they meet any NPR or spoiler, they will share identification and characteristics of the met ships with you.  And if they establish communcations with any race, you get communications with those races too.  Comes after sharing galactic map. 

Share sensor data.  Any contacts they can see will be shared with you as well.  Active sensor coverage of their ships will allow your firecontrols to target.  Comes after sharing communications. 

[Caesar]

Biosphere

I haven't a clue whether this has been proposed before (I dare take the bet it has), but it would be interesting to see a biosphere introduced to the planets. For a planet to reach a colonization value of zero for your race, it should also have a reasonably developed compatible biosphere. This would make terraforming projects all the more difficult, but perhaps basic levels of plant-life could be introduced early on, which would effectively help alter the atmosphere.

Biological or Chemical warfare.

Instead of arming missiles with radioactive warheads only, it should be possible to deliver special pathogens or chemical agents to alien (or your own) populations. The biology/genetics research tab would be used, and you might include immunity to certain chemical/pathogenic agents in new races you develop.

These weapons would make a planet uninhabitable, and decrease the growth ratio of their populations much more than radioactive weapons, but they would not damage infrastructure. Perhaps they might decrease in effectiveness faster, though, although decontaminating the planet could take huge efforts.

[davidr]

Steve,

In the "Fuel Report/Fuel Situation" would it be possible to filter out the independent civilian cargo/colony ships as the report grows ever larger as civilian shipping lines build vessels and there is nothing a player can instigate in respect to these vessels.

DavidR

[jseah]

Biology tech tree suggestion:
Racial reproduction increase / decrease 5 to 50%

Each level applies a modifier to the population growth rate if the rate is positive. 
Would be incredibly useful in the long term to modify all your populations to have 50% increased birth rates. 

[PandaQ]

Some tech that increases the efficiency of Engineering Spaces.

[jRides]

Set up a somewhat epic late game setup, and have a few suggestions:

Add Gunboats to the fighter Squadrons Window, so squadrons of gunboats can be made too.

Also, an ability/button to print out a fully extended OOB from the Naval Organisation tab in the Task Groups/Naval Organisation tab.

On the Fighter Squadrons Window, can you change the mothership dropdown box to add the class designation of each listed possible mothership, and/or list them alphabetically instead of order created. Another thing which would be cool here is the ability to add each squadron to the Naval Organisation Tab, to the task group containing the mothership they land on. At the moment I create a squadron, designate its mothership, land the squadron then launch it again so I can add it manually (Add TG) to the relevant manually created squadron branch, before recovering them again.

Seconding the Increasing efficiency of engineering spaces:

Larger Cargo Containers, Fuel Storage and Crew Quarters, especially as later in the game the ships get bigger, fuel transports gets especially ridiculous.

Bigger fuel Containers - the numbers of crew required on the larger FTs gets enormous. What would be ideal is the ability to make Fuel Containers in the same way Magazines are made, using Armour, HTK and Size as the variables, anything above 1 HTK classed as military and only available once the relevant level of Armoured Fuel Bunker is researched (I never bother with that as it is as ships generally require a lot of fuel storage and I think (not entirely sure) that it holds a smaller amount than the normal fuel containers).

[Ziusudra]

I think (not entirely sure) that it holds a smaller amount than the normal fuel containers).

Yes, same size but 80% of the fuel (40,000 instead of 50,000).

[sloanjh]

The ability to set a filter on a particular world/population that will ignore neutral events there.

I'm got trade relations with an NPR with ~50 ships in orbit of its homeworld.  Every time my civies leave, I get spammed with "neutral contact lost" messages.  Every time they show up, I get "new contact" spam.  The only way to avoid this would be to park a ship over each NPR world so the contacts wouldn't keep popping in and out, and even then I'd get spammed when new ships were built, activated sensors, etc.

It occurs to me that if there were a way of flagging then NPR homeworld into a "don't bug me - I know there's a lot of ships there" then a lot of this stuff could be filtered out.  Note that I don't want to filter out all "new neutral contract" reports - there are other races that aren't yet friendly that I want to be notified about.

John

[Caesar]

I would love the ability to destroy jumpgates.

[LtWarhound]

I would love the ability to destroy jumpgates.

Like shipyards, jumpgates should be an object that you can interact with.   I'd suggest the ability to destroy it, prefab it (tow it to the jump point and then finish building, allowing for quicker advances) and make the activation detectable on EM sensors - I imagine it would 'flare' during use and that energy spike would be 'easily' noticed at some distance.

*

I'd find it easier to play Aurora if the UI was more user friendly.   Most of my discomfort falls into 'annoying but I can ignore it' category.   Two areas, however, I find really irritating.   

1) The F2 Population and Production screen, the Populations Locations section is a core area of the game, that sees constant use, yet its very user hostile.  It could really use a way to sort the Population Locations list, the biggest improvement would be a way to force it to group locations by system as the default.   I hesitate to suggest a checkbox to set this behavior due to the habit of checkboxes in Aurora to reset (i. e.  going to the F12 screen, Naval Organization tab and having to recheck the 'Show Fleet and Location' box every time is one of those 'annoying but I can ignore it' problems).

2) The F12 Task Groups gets used as much as the F2 screen.   The task group list in the 'Details and Special Orders' section gets excessive quickly.   The Task Force dropdown, what exactly does that do?  If it could be used to restrict the task group list to that specific Task Force, then it would be a useful tool to manage the list of task groups.   It would allow me to separate out my non-combat ships (asteroid miners, freighters, etc) into one list, the pickets/pdc/jump gate static defense into another, and the combat ops ships into a third, and only access the group I want to be working with at that moment.