Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[LizardSF]

I've seen how something like this can be done with tractor beams, but I'd really like to see something like how Star Fleet Battles handles  freighters, or the way the SFB Romulan Sparrowhawk ships work. Basically, you have a fixed hull which has engines, the bridge, the general structure, and some universal components, and then you attach modules to them. For freighters, in SFB, this mostly means "Cargo pods", "colony pods", "marine pods", and so on, but in an emergency, they can add weapons pods or carrier pods. For the romulan ships, a more complex method is used where the ships need time to be refitted, but the total time is short because the special function portions are modular and easily assembled or attached.

Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of Aurora, I think mechanically, it could go something like this:
Attachable Pods: Take a short time to be attached; can be attached without a naval yard. Pods cannot carry engines. Pods weigh 10% (arbitrary number) more than they "should", to reflect their connecting machinery and general inefficiencies. A ship has to have attachment hooks; these are a researchable component. The hooks normally take up 5% of the total tonnage of the largest possible pod and take one day per 1000 tons (arbitrary number) to attach a pod. Detaching a pod normally takes only 5 minutes, but research can shorten this (mainly, you might want to dump pods in battle to gain speed).

Modular configuration: Classes designated as being modular variants of each other take half as long to refit from one variant to another, but require significantly more maintenance (because so many components are designed to be removed or must be generic, rather than custom-fitted, there are more weak spots and inefficiencies). They should probably be tightly constrained in total mass, so that all ships in a "family" must be within, say, 10% of each other.

[Shinanygnz]

I've seen how something like this can be done with tractor beams, but I'd really like to see something like how Star Fleet Battles handles  freighters, or the way the SFB Romulan Sparrowhawk ships work. Basically, you have a fixed hull which has engines, the bridge, the general structure, and some universal components, and then you attach modules to them. For freighters, in SFB, this mostly means "Cargo pods", "colony pods", "marine pods", and so on, but in an emergency, they can add weapons pods or carrier pods. For the romulan ships, a more complex method is used where the ships need time to be refitted, but the total time is short because the special function portions are modular and easily assembled or attached.

Based on my admittedly limited knowledge of Aurora, I think mechanically, it could go something like this:
Attachable Pods: Take a short time to be attached; can be attached without a naval yard. Pods cannot carry engines. Pods weigh 10% (arbitrary number) more than they "should", to reflect their connecting machinery and general inefficiencies. A ship has to have attachment hooks; these are a researchable component. The hooks normally take up 5% of the total tonnage of the largest possible pod and take one day per 1000 tons (arbitrary number) to attach a pod. Detaching a pod normally takes only 5 minutes, but research can shorten this (mainly, you might want to dump pods in battle to gain speed).

Modular configuration: Classes designated as being modular variants of each other take half as long to refit from one variant to another, but require significantly more maintenance (because so many components are designed to be removed or must be generic, rather than custom-fitted, there are more weak spots and inefficiencies). They should probably be tightly constrained in total mass, so that all ships in a "family" must be within, say, 10% of each other.

Good idea.  Easier way to do the modular thing though I think - as we already have hangar bays, just have "module bays" that can handle modules you design to go in them.  Add on a tonnage surcharge for the capability, say 10% so a 500 ton module bay would require 550 tons allocated on the ship.  You can then design modules with whatever you want in them and have a shipyard task to swap them over at some discounted percentage of normal refit rate.  Both the surcharge and swap out rate could be improved by tech research.
Real world navies are doing this already or in the very near future, look up the US Littoral Combat Ship and some new European frigates.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I was thinking of the modular thing as well, namely just that the group of very similar civilian modules (cryo, luxury, troop transport) could count as the same thing for purposes of refitting and construction. A bit more hacked in than a full on 'modular' system but it would get the job done. 

[blue emu]

Sorry if this has been suggested already... tl;dr...

On the Shipyard Management screen, when you select "Continual Capacity Expansion" it would be nice if there was a check-box for "Notify when Shipyard reaches xxxx tons". Either that, or "Stop when Shipyard reaches xxxx tons".

[TheDeadlyShoe]

That's really kinda how it sorta works already. If you do a fixed # expansion and cancel it midway you get the partial progress. 

Maybe you should just be able to set your expansion target and it just does continual expansion.

[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.

Guess we all like those even numbers.

[metalax]

That's really kinda how it sorta works already. If you do a fixed # expansion and cancel it midway you get the partial progress. 

Maybe you should just be able to set your expansion target and it just does continual expansion.

The difference being that continual capacity expansion increases the ship yard mod rate as it goes while fixed expansions only add to it at completion/canceling part way.

I do like the idea of being able to set a target size for it to expand to.

[sloanjh]

The difference being that continual capacity expansion increases the ship yard mod rate as it goes while fixed expansions only add to it at completion/canceling part way.

I do like the idea of being able to set a target size for it to expand to.

Seconded.

John

[sloanjh]

Given all the attention given to tractoring in terms of modular design, I think some sort of tractor "power" should be introduced - either through a maximum tonnage per tractor unit, or through a maximum tonnage-times-speed.  I also think it should give a non-negligble mass penalty to mount tractors on a ship capable of towing itself.  It's always bothered me just with "regular" tugs that the engines consume so much more of the mass than the tractor beams.

I think the mechanism that best fits in with the existing military/civie dichotomy (and needing to be able to tow SY) would be to have each tractor unit have a tonnage rating for military ships, with that rating getting multiplied by 5x or 10x when towing civies/installation (or maybe even a bigger 25x or 100x when towing installations).  The technobabble would be that the less violent maneuvers associated with towing civies (and even less so for installations) puts less strain on the link.

The other possibilities would be to have a max power throughput on the link (tonnage-times-speed) - if the power divided by the mass of "the tow plus everything the tow is towing", then the TG speed would be limited by power/total_tow_mass, or to have both military and civie - style tractors, with the civie able to tow more but only lock onto (and/or work when mounted on) ships with civie engines.

Note that the "power" limitation described above takes off the single-tow restriction - it allows daisy-chaining.  If multiple tractor beams are allowed on a ship, then I also see no problem (other than pain coding it up ) with allowing multiple tows by a single tug.

John

[Marc420]

Ships and task groups should automate refueling.
(sorry if this is a repeat suggestion)

The role the player plays in the game is one of a fleet admiral directing an entire fleet.  The fleet admiral normally doesn't have to tell a ship captain to make sure his ship is refueled and supplied. Its the responsibility of the captain to make sure his ship is ready to perform its missions, and this includes making sure the ship is fueled and supplied.  The admiral might occasionally give an order to make sure all tg's in an important mission are refueled and resupplied before they leave, but the fleet admiral isn't constantly going to be telling his captains which gas station to go visit and how often.  As such, I'd suggest automating the refueling and resupply of ships and task groups to the extend possible.

1)  A ship or task group that is at the same location as a refueling source (colony, tanker ship) will automatically top up on fuel given the opportunity.  The same for resupply sources and re-ammo sources.  A ship's captain or tg commander is always going to grab the supplies he can for his ship at any opportunity.

2)  The conditional-type orders on a tg now flip around.  Since the tg commander is assumed to be looking for chances to resupply, refuel, rearm, the conditional orders available set limits on this.  One conditional order would prohibit these action.  Another conditional order would set a max range of how far the tg will travel to go re-up.  The range can either be a distance within a system, or a number of systems to travel to re-up on logistics.

3)  distribution of supplies and fuel within a tg should happen automatically.  A tg commander isn't going to let a ship run out of fuel, then call home to ask what to do about it.  If any ship drops below a certain fuel level, it should get refueled by its tg ships.  In case of emergency systems failures, it should be possible to transfer supplies between ships to avoid having a component fail.  For that matter, it should be possible to do damage control within a tg even if the ship can't store that many supplies.  Who cares if the parts to fix the broken thingy came from a locker on this ship or were shuttled over from another ship in the tg.

4)  The player should have the ability to either 'turn off' or set a reserve value on logistics sources.  Thus, a colony might always be told to keep a million gallon reserve of fuel, and when that limit is reached it stops refueling ships.  Also, you could have the concept of military and civilian supply depots.  If a supply source is set to military only, the commercial ships won't resupply there.

This way, there's a loop that happens regularly(presumably when conditional orders are now checked?) that where each tg checks for supplies within the range that's set for the ship.  If it sees an allowable supply source within that range (which can be zero), it automatically re-ups on fuel, supplies and ammo.

Example, you have a task group patrolling at a jump point in a system, but set to resupply from supply sources within the system.  You then send a ship with fuel and tanker status into the system.  The tg commander sees the opportunity to top-up his fuel reserves and gladly takes it.  He flies his TG over to the tanker, refuels, then flies back.  If as fleet admiral you don't want the tg leaving its post for even a short while, set its 'logistics range' to 0.  Then, if you order the tanker to fly to the tg's location, the tg commander will then gladly refuel, but the TG won't leave its post to travel to the tanker.  If as fleet admiral you don't want the tanker to refuel the local units as it flies off to another important mission, you could give orders to 'turn off' its tanker status until it gets where you want it to go.

This way, the game is less micro-managy for the player, and it simulates at least what our real-world simian race does which is to have a military that's full of scroungers looking to grab whatever they can for their unit.

[LizardSF]

For all I know there's a way to do this, but I can't find it...

Insert Order At Point....: I can't count the times I've done something like set up a huge list of orders, only to discover that I need to put a new order somewhere in the middle of the list. For example, I might have a freighter that's doing a run alternating mines and factories to a colony world. Meanwhile, in the system it's passing through, a scout has run out of fuel. To get it to join the fleet and share fuel means deleting all of the existing orders and re-entering them. Why can't I put an new order somewhere in the list?

For that matter, I'd love to have a "Hull Type Order" system that all ships of a class get as a default. For example, all "Geo Explorer" ships, regardless of class, get "Find the nearest system with unsurveyed geological bodies and survey them. When there are no more bodies to survey, find the next and make a path to it."

Also, instead of "A jump gate constructor makes a jump gate in XXX days", why not "It takes 10000 Jump Gate Construction Points (arbitrary number) to make a Jump Gate". A standard constructor produces 10000 a year. Two ships at the same gate each contribute their construction points. A 180 day constructor contributes 20000 a year, and so on.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

It's not actually a construction project. It's like, wormhole stabilization. 

I think you are explicitly not supposed to be able to rush around with 10 construction ships and insta-jumpgate things.

[LizardSF]

It's not actually a construction project. It's like, wormhole stabilization. 

I think you are explicitly not supposed to be able to rush around with 10 construction ships and insta-jumpgate things.

Fair enough. I can see the balance issues with rush-jobbing it.

[Beersatron]

For all I know there's a way to do this, but I can't find it...

Insert Order At Point....: I can't count the times I've done something like set up a huge list of orders, only to discover that I need to put a new order somewhere in the middle of the list. For example, I might have a freighter that's doing a run alternating mines and factories to a colony world. Meanwhile, in the system it's passing through, a scout has run out of fuel. To get it to join the fleet and share fuel means deleting all of the existing orders and re-entering them. Why can't I put an new order somewhere in the list?

This has been suggested a few times before but the problem lies in the language and variable type that Steve uses for storing the orders and also the fact that each order in the list changes the available orders following it.

So say you want to load Ken & Barbie dolls on Earth to drop off at Omicron Persei 8 which is three jumps away.

Load Dolls at Earth
Transit Jump Point to Alpha Centauri [list of available destinations changes]
Transit Jump Point to Coruscant [list of available destinations changes]
Transit Jump Point to Omicron Persei 8 [list of available destinations changes]
Unload Dolls at Omicron Persei 8

Now, say you want to go to a side route and pick up some Engines on Corellia, if you try to feed that into the middle of the order string you run the risk of all the subsequent orders not making sense because the action/destination isn't available.

I know that you could argue this is a complex example and also that you would add in a suitable loop to bring it back onto the original course. But, I think Steve has made it this way on purpose because it can't be relied on that everybody would be that good at ensuring no erroneous steps.

Or, I could be describing the reasoning completely wrong, my memory fades in an out [/list][/list][/list]

[MattyD]

I recently had a xeno team discover a ruined city but not complete investigation of the planet. It would be nice if the Abandoned Installations (Xeno Needed) message could be updated with

Ruins being investigated by Spongebob Squarepants Xeno Team.


The Ruined City message in the events log, and the lack of change on the population summary page confused me.