Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[jseah]

Game simplification option:
Like no overhauls and auto-jumpgates are simplifications, another one would be to make unlimited resources. 

IE. only accessibility is tracked. 
Easy enough to have the checkbox disable mineral loss on mining, sorium harvesting, asteroid mining. 

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System generation options:
No dead end systems - All systems have at least 2 jumppoints. 
No dormant jumppoints - All jumppoints lead to unexplored jumppoints or new systems.  The last system to be generated when the system limit is reached will be generated with a number of jumppoints that makes the number of unexplored jumppoints be an even number. 

[chrislocke2000]

Probably quite a simple one but something that could be very helpful.

In the weapons screen, either continue to highlight on the ship list or have a separate box detailed which ship you actually currently have selected.

At the moment, by the time I have selected a ship, dealt with fire controls and missiles and assigned targets I've typically managed to forget which ship in order I've just set up.

Similarly, in the target list box perhaps you could add a highlight to show hostile ships which have already been targeted by the TG. Would again help when you are taking a more manual approach to allocating weapons - often the case when there are different size hostiles and hence the "target all at same location" button is of less use.

[jseah]

Alternative missiles:

Single-shot weapons mounted on an engine and given to a missile launcher.  Firing controlled from the ship of course. 
Put any normal beam weapon, set a firing range, missile flies over, delivers one shot and runs out of power. 
Might also give an option to mount two shots or more by doubling size, essentially mounting two weapons instead of one. 

Obviously warhead is replaced by weapon + capacitor.  (using the associated beam tech)
So we can have meson missiles, HPM missiles, sort-of-laser warheads, etc. 


Leads very nicely into drone ships.  If the capacitor size gives X power from which the weapon draws to fire, giving multiple shots, then bigger missiles can stick around to shoot a few more times.  Drones are obviously the one for that, with buoys having an interesting new minefield type. 
Drones could then become short range, one-way trip expendable mini-fighters.  Fighter-like action for empires that dislike risking crew.  XD

[Charlie Beeler]

Alternative missiles:

Single-shot weapons mounted on an engine and given to a missile launcher.  Firing controlled from the ship of course. 
Put any normal beam weapon, set a firing range, missile flies over, delivers one shot and runs out of power. 
Might also give an option to mount two shots or more by doubling size, essentially mounting two weapons instead of one. 

Obviously warhead is replaced by weapon + capacitor.  (using the associated beam tech)
So we can have meson missiles, HPM missiles, sort-of-laser warheads, etc. 


Leads very nicely into drone ships.  If the capacitor size gives X power from which the weapon draws to fire, giving multiple shots, then bigger missiles can stick around to shoot a few more times.  Drones are obviously the one for that, with buoys having an interesting new minefield type. 
Drones could then become short range, one-way trip expendable mini-fighters.  Fighter-like action for empires that dislike risking crew.  XD

A limited version already exists, but too my knowledge no one has really explored using it(including me), laser warheads for missiles. 

[sloanjh]

The ability to scrap fighters is nice. Now (I know, I know we are never satisfied!) can we have those scrapped fighters first depositing their ordnance at the population they are scrapped at, currently it appears just to be lost and second when new fighters are built check to see if there are components that can be utilised in the new fighters, like 400 size 3 box launchers from the previous fighters that are now cluttering up my stock pile inventory.

Regards

LOL - talk about high-maintenance users!!!  What does it take to make you happy? ? ? ?  Sheesh!!

Seriously, along these same lines....  I think that refits don't check for stockpiled components (I could be wrong about this, however; they certainly don't stockpile the removed components).  Is this intentional, or an oversight?

John

[jseah]

Refitting ships does check for stockpiled components. 
I am refitting ships in my Central Stars campaign and it does work. 

They certainly don't give you back the other components however. 

[Thiosk]

If I start a game, with the "invader" or disaster boxes unselected,  and then later turn them on, do the associated things start to occur in the game?

IF NOT THEY TOTALLY SHOULD! 

[Ziusudra]

Apparently you can turn invaders off, so I would assume the opposite is true.

[sloanjh]

If I start a game, with the "invader" or disaster boxes unselected,  and then later turn them on, do the associated things start to occur in the game?

IF NOT THEY TOTALLY SHOULD! 

Invaders do turn on.  I turned mine on at year 30 in my conventional-start game, and 16 months later it's affecting 2 systems.

John

[jseah]

Add ability to put notes on the system map. 

Galactic map has this floating labels you can add. 
Perhaps allow waypoints to be renamed and the new name to show up on the system map instead of a number.  (having the ability to "tag" this to a system body would be awesome)

[Ziusudra]

having the ability to "tag" this to a system body would be awesome

The Last button on the Waypoints does this. Select a body and then click that button to create a waypoint there that will follow the body.

[jseah]

Component design with variable sizes should accept text
Example: Sensors
Sensor size should not be a dropdown box but a text input field, like the fields in missiles.  (Design a ship, fit the sensor into the remaining available space)
Similar thing should apply to resolution.  (eg. I might want to design a sensor of exactly 475 tons to counter a known enemy fighter design)

Since the thing works off a formula already, numerical input (properly sanitized) should be pretty easy work into a sensor design. 

Potential list of changes:
Active Sensors / Missile Fire Control
EM & Thermal sensors
Jump Engines
Cloaking Device
Magazine
Missile Launcher
Power Plant
Absorption Shields


Engines should be allowed to have variable sizes
Instead of getting stuck with needing 3.5 commercial engines, simply have engines with variable sizes. 
Requires gunboat and fighter engines to have the 1 per ship restriction lifted or retain fixed sizes for those. 

Ties into above when allowing engines to accept text fields for sizes. 


Maintenance requirements should be visible in component design
With higher granularity in component sizes from text fields, comes the risk that one would design a sensor/jumpdrive that exactly fits into a ship design only to find that after the component is fitted in, it makes the ship have too high of a failure rate. 

Hence, the effect of the component on failure rate (% increase + average maintenance cost per year?  whatever that formula is) should be displayed during the design of the component. 
Crew requirements are already displayed.  It could be stuck in there as well. 

[Brian Neumann]

Steve, you have previously said you might add some special factories for people playing a wandering race with no home planet.  A couple of suggestions after having played such a game 4 times recently.

1.)  Have an ordinance module for ships.  Same size as the current maintenance module and limit it to producing 1 size of missile.  Requires a shipyard refit to change the building speed, or missile size.  Let it have whatever the current ordinance build speed is when designed.  This would allow for some missile production, especially point defense missiles.  It would not help much for normal games, but when you are constantly moving around it would help a lot.

2.)  Have some way to produce officers and crew.  More crew than officers however.  For a standard size module (50hs)  have it produce 1/4 officer and 1000 crew per year.  With a few modules you would be able to replace crew losses and possibly build a few small ships without significant problems.  You would not get many officers from this (1/2 normal compared to crew production).

3.)  A ground forces training center.  Limit it on design to 1 specific unit type and build speed like the ordinance module.

All three of these need to be working while the ships are moving, not just when they are at a colony.  I would also recommend that for missiles and ground forces there must be space in the current task force for them or you can not build any at the time.  If around a colony then there is always room on the ground.

4.)  A temporary gate building ship component.  Takes weeks instead of months but the gate ship is part of the gate and would need it's own jump drive to leave the system.  Once the gate is built the gate ship is stationary and any movement of it destroys the gate.  This would allow for people who want to play this sort of a game without using lots of jump ships.

Just a few ideas for you to contemplate.  You might also want some way to disable paying cash for building things for this type of scenario, or allow a module to produce cash.

Brian

[LoSboccacc]

a separate save file for game universe, so we may easily share our starting scenario

[Thiosk]

a separate save file for game universe, so we may easily share our starting scenario

Yes, a nice "export scenario" and "Import scenario" button would be nice-- chuck out parameters in ascii format.