Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[UnLimiTeD]

Tractors should be bigger to begin with.
But +1.
For modular design, wouldn't transportation clamps be better, allowing to merge two parts into one TCS?^^

[Mel Vixen]

Since Escapepods came up in another thread i would like suggest to make them a actual line of technology instead of them being that abstract as they are now. It would be nice to have a tech that enables pods and makes them lighter while another enlarges the time they survive in space.

Given that losing soldiers in modern wars provokes already unrest in theyr homecountries this could also be a part of aurora - for example 1% gloalunrest for every 1000 lost soldiers (diminishing over time naturally). Secondly it would be nice if the pods weight gets added to the weight of the rescuing ship if said ship has not enough space to harbor all the people inside the pod.

[Yonder]

Given that losing soldiers in modern wars provokes already unrest in theyr homecountries this could also be a part of aurora - for example 1% gloalunrest for every 1000 lost soldiers (diminishing over time naturally). Secondly it would be nice if the pods weight gets added to the weight of the rescuing ship if said ship has not enough space to harbor all the people inside the pod.

I don't think that it's a good idea to model that since it would be impossible to do accurately, without implementing an entire war exhaustion system. Russia lost millions upon millions of soldiers in WW2 and kept fighting, the US public lost all willpower to fight in Vietnam after 50-60 thousand deaths. There are just way too many variables for each specific war and culture to simply model how unrest should be modeled for a specific number of lost soldiers.

[symon]

To say nothing of non-humans, such as the Organism will will spend lives like any other piece of equipment!

[LizardSF]

OK, first, let me qualify everything by pointing out that I'm a n00b and have seen only a fraction of what the game has to offer, so, if some of these are already deeply buried in the game or have been dismissed as unworkable, please politely tell me that and I'll accept it with good grace. These are mostly random ideas in no particular order, prompted by my player experiences or things I liked in other games which I'd like to see in Aurora.

• Matter Transmutation: Some very expensive process which can transform one element into another, pricey enough it would be used in emergencies. I'm thinking something like the base technology being 100 of one mineral=1 of another, with research increasing the efficiency slightly. Normally, this would be an installation, but at high levels it could be a ship component, albeit a very large one and extremely power-hungry.
• Scrapping/Reclamation tech: Under CP, this would cover getting the most out of scrapped items in terms of reclaimed resources. Maybe even a recycling center installation.
• "Go to nearest unmapped/unsurveyed system" order for ships.
• Some kind of way of displaying and filtering systems in a list... "Show me all systems with unsurveyed warp points". I think you can do this on the galactic map, but I'm not sure how.
• A way to quickly see all task groups without orders, or all current task groups and their active orders, again in a list format. "Which freighter was carrying infrastructure, again? Task Group Freight-One? No... Task group Freight-Two? No..."
• Limits on the carrying capacity of planetary surfaces. I'm really surprised Aurora doesn't have this, but it seems you can build unlimited installations on any world. I'd like to see each world have some kind of 'maximum tonnage' of installations, based on its size and on how well adapted it is to you -- the more infrastructure you need to survive, the more 'waste space' your buildings have.
• More surface-oriented stuff, in general. Call me crazy, in a game already overloaded with detail, but I'd like more of a sense of worlds mattering, of cities and starports scattered over the surface (presenting individual targets for bombing), with land/sea mixtures. On the same lines, I'd like to see agriculture play more of a role and not be abstracted into infrastructure per se...I want the chance to find, say, farming worlds that might be mineral poor, instead of basing all my colonization decisions on mining. Likewise, "Luxury worlds"... some planets might be resource poor, but generate a lot of wealth through trade due to luxuries or just being a nice vacation spot. Wealth produced could be based on the number of commercial starports+infrastructure, and reduced by other installations which "lower the property values".
• Civilian universities: I often don't have enough administrators or scientists. Let me invest in the equivalent of DARPA, Student Loans, or other means of generating more bureaucrats and researchers.
• Control tech: Build better bridges or improve overall control structure on ships, leading to low bonuses to all ship functions. In effect, this would be 'built in' training. Missiles would load faster, damage control would be quicker, response time would be improved, etc. Not so much that training or grade could be ignored, but enough to show the effects of better computer systems, partial AI controls, ergonomic improvements, and so on.
• Multi-directional mass drivers: If I have two mass drivers on an asteroid, I'd like aim one at Earth for some minerals, and one at Mars for others. (I suspect this might be in-game already, but I can't figure out how to do it...)
• Icons for task groups and ships: This is probably a non-starter, but it would be nice to be able to assign icons to either task groups, or to task groups and ships, and to see those displayed rather than the traditional circles.
• Sandcasters. Old-school Traveller fans will know what I'm talking about. Commercial ships could carry these to provide some defense against energy weapons, especially lasers.
• Legendary non-command officers. Fans of Star fleet Battles will be familiar with this... every so often, produce a legendary Engineer, Gunner, Navigator, or so on, and let them be assigned to a ship, probably in the same way a team is -- a ship picks up or drops off an officer. They aren't commanders, but instead provide some bonus to a ship function: A legendary engineer acts like an additional Engineering Space, a legendary navigator increases effective speed by 5%, and so on.

Hopefully, at least one item on the above list hasn't been totally beaten to death already...

[dgibso29]

I wouldn't mind a "Continual Capacity expansion to XXX tons" option. I often find myself needing an additional 3000 tons, or with an extra 15 tons that just laughs at me.

It would also serve to prevent it from eating all your hard earned minerals.

[ZimRathbone]

OK, first, let me qualify everything by pointing out that I'm a n00b and have seen only a fraction of what the game has to offer, so, if some of these are already deeply buried in the game

• A way to quickly see all task groups without orders, or all current task groups and their active orders, again in a list format. "Which freighter was carrying infrastructure, again? Task Group Freight-One? No... Task group Freight-Two? No..."

This does exist - its  the Task Force Organisation Screen (ctrl-F4)

[LizardSF]

This does exist - its  the Task Force Organisation Screen (ctrl-F4)

Oh, SWEET. Thank you. I saw that in the menu and kind of "blorped" over it, thinking it was the same as the one you get when you click the Star Destroyer icon.

[Jacob/Lee]

There should be a way to queue shipyard build/modification orders. I have a forgetful nature when I'm focusing on something.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Okay, read the whole thread... *whew*. Stuff I don't think has been mentioned:

1) In the industry/ build things panel, the percentage of capacity used should default to 100 (or ideally, however much industry is not being used) rather than 1.

2) PDCs should cost no minerals to assemble. This is annoying and the quantities are trivial. I would rather spend twice the assembly cost in a premium during production than have to micro the minerals into freighters.

3) Some events should be such high priority that they popup for the player - not just in the event log.  An example would be a first contact or a new hostile contact.

4) Is there a reason new shipnames are always picked alphabetically? Well, rather, it seems like the program is reading each line in sequence rather than randomly picking one of the names.  It would be nice if it was more random.  Or even if there was an 'in order' checkbox.

5) Terraforming is a little too all or nothing. It would be nice if there were increased benefits from terraforming a planet to ideal for the species, rather than just crossing the Line of Tolerance and having everything be soopah-awesome.  For example, perhaps wealth production or growth rate can't max out unless a planet is ideal in terms of temperature and atmosphere (+-very small from species norms) rather than meeting a tolerance minimum.

6) *NPR AI: I started an NPR on Titan, for a bit of kicks at the start of the game. I incremented poorly so they ended up nuking earth while I shot their fleet to pieces.  Long story short tho, now they build single FACs and throw them at me piecemeal. The FACs typically stand no chance and the NPR must 'know' it since it's usually attacking my battlefleet on maneuvers.   The NPR should try to build up a bit more. Unless this is just some quirk of aggressiveness settings... in which case that's awesome. ^^

Alternatively, perhaps its just seeing thermal contacts off the planetary sensor, since the range from titan <-> earth is extreme.

(I can't take the NPR out because it has 4 15kton beam bases and 2 15kton AMM bases orbiting its world. Oo)

I have more suggestions and thoughts and some +1s for others suggestions but I don't want to cause TLDR. Hehe.

Um, I know you arn't really supposed to make threads, but is it alright if you have a bigger idea to flesh out and label it with version number?

[Beersatron]

....

3) Some events should be such high priority that they popup for the player - not just in the event log.  An example would be a first contact or a new hostile contact.

....

You can already set to see the events, if you are on the system map, go to the options on the left and select to show events, that way all events are shown. This works fine for just about every increment except for commander reassignments and combat - where the number of events is too much for the space set aside for it.

If you already knew that, then ignore little old me

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I didn't know that actually, I thought that did something different. It is hella way useful. Thanks 

Maybe that should be on by default :}

OTOH tho I still think there needs to be a better priority structure for events WRT Interrupts. I get so annoyed with meaningless events interrupting a turn that i click through important events. And it would be easy to miss. It would be awesome to have selectable interrupt priority for auto-turns, next to the auto turn selector.

Priority
None - Events that would never warrant an interrupt, because they are too unimportant or have no player interaction. Life pods running out, commander retirements, geosurvey results.
Low - The low end of what currently interrupts, like engineer structure recoveries and unrest and contact lost reports.
High - More important interrupts
Critical - Events that should always interrupt, like first contacts and new systems and new hostile contacts

[Marc420]

Buoy Countermeasures

My apologies if this has already been mentioned, I'll admit to not reading the full 46 pages to get here.   

The idea would be of buoys that are missile countermeasures.   Ie, you tie something that makes heat onto a buoy and kick it out the missile tubes and hope that any heat-seeking missiles get confused and hone in on it instead.   Or, they tie an EM emitter onto a buoy and do the same thing.   Could maybe make one that works on Active Sensors in the same way in that it reflects or re-transmits on the right frequency as to look like a bigger target than it is to an Active Sensor.   Back almost to the idea of tin foil to fool radars.

Actually, being able to tie these things onto a missile would be a fun idea too.   Now its a target the enemy sees that's moving.

On the missiles and bouys, it sounds like you'd need to add three new properties onto the objects and design screens.   These would be values that are added to the bouy or missiles signature.   IE, if a missile already has a thermal sig of H, the value of the new thermal emitter property would be added to that to get the sig that a detector sees.   One each of these properties for Th, Em, and As.   After that, hopefully most of the sensor code would stay the same.

As I keep thinking, the idea also works as a ship component.   Basically allow ships to be decoys that have say the Th or Em signature of a bigger ship.   The stuff you could fit on a missile or buoy should only be able to emulate a small ship.   To get an object that emulates your King Kong short range beam dreadnaughts, you'd probably have to load up a smaller ship with a bunch of these components that add TH, EM or AS return to a ship.   Probably not high morale on that ship, but it would have the distinct tactical advantage that when as they try to come into firing range, the enemy is seeing 5 big superdreadnaughts and trying to figure out which to target, when in reality 3 of the 5 are cheaper decoys.

Of course, the interesting challenge I'm sure is to convince an AI to design, build and use these new counter-measure toys.

But, once I thought of this, I've decided I really like the idea of decoys/counter-measures that can be launched from a ship.   And missiles and buoys seem close to doing it already.

Anyway, thought I'd toss that out there and see if anything comes from it.   

[UnLimiTeD]

Sadly nearly no one uses homing missiles, a guided Missile has more room for warhead.

[metalax]

On low tech missiles, sure, but as you tech up you have more space free and require less of it to get a reasonable sensor. Usually my fourth or fifth generation AS missiles will start mounting a sensor to help drop overkill. Also missiles from mines will almost alwars be homing.