Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[Thiosk]

I'll go ahead and repost my request for logistic supply line commands because im seeing sexy activity for a step up in nonnewtonian aurora.

I've been playing Anno a lot lately-- ever try that out?  One thing you do that is very similar to aurora is set up supply lines to regularly move goods from colonies to the home base.  One thing that is a little annoying in aurora is setting up distribution commands-- regularly resupplying worlds that require a pittance of minerals is annoying (maintenance worlds!).  I'd love to take a merchant fleet, have it pick up some number of every mineral, then go from world to world trying to bring the mineral ammounts up or down to reserve.  That way, your world that is a net consumer of duranium but exporter of corundium, will both get duranium delivered, and send corundium on its way, with a single command, rather than a complex set of instructions that cannot be reordered mid stream in the current engine.

Tied into reserve levels, all one would have to do is build the logistic fleets and send them to each planet.  Set the reserve levels for the planet, and the ship will continue going from place to place ad infinitum.  The major ultra key to this working is that the command should not spew error messages if it fails.  If it gets to the planet and can't drop off part of its load, it just doesn't-- it will try to get it on the next circuit.  If it gets crammed full of some mineral, the player will just have to increase capacity.   Needs a trigger to break infinite loops, though.

Fuel and maintenance supplies should have analagous commands.  

Tanker command:  refuel colony from tankers to reserve.  A spot to set a fuel reserve needs to be supplied.  If there is more fuel than X, it will try to load fuel from the planet (the planet is now a producer).  The ship then goes to the next position on the train.  

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I'll go ahead and repost my request for logistic supply line commands because im seeing sexy activity for a step up in nonnewtonian aurora.

I've been playing Anno a lot lately-- ever try that out?  One thing you do that is very similar to aurora is set up supply lines to regularly move goods from colonies to the home base.  One thing that is a little annoying in aurora is setting up distribution commands-- regularly resupplying worlds that require a pittance of minerals is annoying (maintenance worlds!).  I'd love to take a merchant fleet, have it pick up some number of every mineral, then go from world to world trying to bring the mineral ammounts up or down to reserve.  That way, your world that is a net consumer of duranium but exporter of corundium, will both get duranium delivered, and send corundium on its way, with a single command, rather than a complex set of instructions that cannot be reordered mid stream in the current engine.

Tied into reserve levels, all one would have to do is build the logistic fleets and send them to each planet.  Set the reserve levels for the planet, and the ship will continue going from place to place ad infinitum.  The major ultra key to this working is that the command should not spew error messages if it fails.  If it gets to the planet and can't drop off part of its load, it just doesn't-- it will try to get it on the next circuit.  If it gets crammed full of some mineral, the player will just have to increase capacity.   Needs a trigger to break infinite loops, though.

Fuel and maintenance supplies should have analagous commands.  

Tanker command:  refuel colony from tankers to reserve.  A spot to set a fuel reserve needs to be supplied.  If there is more fuel than X, it will try to load fuel from the planet (the planet is now a producer).  The ship then goes to the next position on the train.  

I have added a new "Load/Unload Minerals to Reserve Level" order. This will first attempt to unload every mineral type but only up to the colony reserve level for that mineral and then attempt to load every mineral type above the reserve level. If there is no loading or unloading at the destination, the fleet will move on to the next order.

I've also added a "Load/Unload Fuel (To Set Level)" order. You specify a reserve fuel level as part of the order. The fleet's tankers will either unload fuel to bring the colony up to the reserve level or attempt to load excess fuel above that level.

Finally, I've added a "Load/Unload Supplies (To Set Level)" order. You specify a reserve maintenance supply level as part of the order. The fleet's supply ships will either unload supplies to bring the colony up to the reserve level or attempt to load excess supplies above that level.

Steve

[Thiosk]

you are a god among men

[TheDeadlyShoe]

regarding the 'infinite minerals' thing... running out of minerals is the #1 reason NPRs crap out...  It's hard enough feeding the maw of your industry as a player, even with the relatively rich Sol system and forward planning. NPRs have a lot more trouble handling it.  So every time I find an NPR homeworld I give it fantastic quantities of minerals at middling accessibilities.  This kind of works but it does nothing for NPRs I know nothing about or for pre-generated NPRs.   It would be nice to not have to worry about that... xD

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

regarding the 'infinite minerals' thing... running out of minerals is the #1 reason NPRs crap out...  It's hard enough feeding the maw of your industry as a player, even with the relatively rich Sol system and forward planning. NPRs have a lot more trouble handling it.  So every time I find an NPR homeworld I give it fantastic quantities of minerals at middling accessibilities.  This kind of works but it does nothing for NPRs I know nothing about or for pre-generated NPRs.   It would be nice to not have to worry about that... xD

That's not a bad idea. I might add something to help out NPR capitals rather than all NPR populations.

Steve

[Thiosk]

The grav drive

Auto-hyperdrive is generally avoided because of the performance hit implementing it would cause.  

Would it be possible instead to build a gravity drive that worked inversely proportional to gravitational field?  Grav drive ships would travel quite slow near the star and central planets, while beyond the current hyperdrive range would be able to travel at hyperdrive speeds.  Rather than flags and database checks, maximum speed is simply a function of the position and size of the closest stellar body, where large chunks of that speed function are averaged so a star would have 4 total speeds over its whole distance range rather than a continuous variation (something like 10%, 25%, 100%, hyperdrive.

[wilddog5]

Grav drive

This won't work as it would cause the same problem as the auto hyperdrive (distance checks every incro), only diff is that insted of checking if it is in the hyperlimit it would have to also calc to speed divisions and select the nearest

edit: what about marking planets and JPs outside the huperlimits as hyper targets (body traveling from and to are yes use hyper drive of it crosses the limit no, so travles at normal speed) this means that there is only one check (when it starts travel or when the orders are made) should also work for AI/ Civs

[Thiosk]

you may be on to something there, instead of hoping for a target outside the system, there would be a ring of transit points not dissimilar from survey points, and one could fly to it to turn hyperspace on, and then continue course to the ring on the distant target.  Perfect for both routine and individual  transits over obnoxious distances.

[Thiosk]

A new concept for space stations.

Why do you use orbital habs?  I use them to build giant (100,000 t) maintenance facilities over major planets. 
The way I see things like terraforming modules and maintenance facilities-- both are utterly useless unless present in large numbers; and 200 tons short of capacity makes that first 100,000 tons maintenance space entirely useless as well.

The advantage of modules is no population requirement since they are automated, but a higher cost in material and limitations of scale to shipyard size. 

There has been some suggestion for modular design in the past, and such designs have had some success with tugs, etcetera. 

The Concept:  A fully modular design into which modules constructed and shipped to a planet may be loaded into the space station over decades.  The station core would be quite expensive.
Each module added would be quite expensive.

The scale would be functionally limitless, however. 

This also opens the door to STC style construction, as ever larger modules could be built and loaded into the station.

An alternate construction style is there could be slots-- a station (limit 1 per planet) could have three slots, and the players could build (OR FIND!) modules to attach to each of those slots.  Perhaps the player needs maintenance capacity, so we slot in 3 of those ultramodules.  Research and construction could increase the number of slots.

[MehMuffin]

I posted this in the wrecks thread, but I'll post it again here for redundancy.
I'd like to see more in-depth life pods, maybe a standard crew module could hold the current lifepods, but additional versions could be researched with things like landing capability, encrypted signals to avoid pickup by aliens, engines, and life support systems that could last for a set amount of time?

[Rastaman]

Importance of Commercial Spaceports.

100 tons and 5 Mercassium per cargo handling unit on ships is really cheap. On one example freighter, they take up 0.3% of ship volume and cut the loading time from 80 days to 2 days, on another it's 0.5% and from 10 days to one day. And this is the basic tech level 1 handling system. There is too little reason to build a commercial spaceport. They should feel more significant, not like an afterthought. Something a new colony can be proud of.

Possible solution.  

1. Cargo handling systems are to be (much) larger and (much) more expensive. Only one can be installed per ship.

2. Spaceports: There is a maximum ship/cargo hold size a port can handle per level. Ports still have their loading time bonus, or better the cargo handling system kind of bonus, which is more effective. Cargo handling systems on ships only add their bonus if the port facilities are insufficient.

This way there are large bulk carriers that can only be processed by larger ports, and smaller freighters servicing smaller colonies. You cannot just increase your freighter capacity if you don't have the necessary port capacity, or loading times are much more of a problem.

[xeryon]

I always thought the spaceports should be tied to civilian shipping lines.  With expansions kind of like sector command.  level one would allow one shipping line up to X number of ships to operate.  level 2 would allow 2 lines and increase the allowable number of ships. level three doesn't allow a new line but increase ships.  level allows a new line and more ships... and so on.

This way players could have a little oversight on line creation and management.  I know on one of my games it would have been a god-send to have had a civilian line founded at one of my outlier colonies.

[xeryon]

Double post, but completely new idea based on post in the "New Geological Survey..."

We have the ability to alter the atmosphere of target planets for the purpose of making them more or less habitable but our actions have no effect on the habitability of the planet.

Some examples that come to mind:
Excessively populated planets might require continual adjustments to the atmo to keep it in the habitable ranges.
Extreme mining might alter the orbit, the atmo or even cause a body to physically decay. (ussugu suggested this)
Heavy industrialization might need atmo management on a regular basis as well as cause radiation levels to increase?  (Maybe rename it to pollution levels and not just radiation as it is the dust which causes a more major issue than the actual radiation if I remember correctly)

[viperfan7]

just going to leave this here since I dont want to re write it

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4811.0.html

[chrislocke2000]

One of the things I find a recurring issue with in longer running games is the explosion of jump points that become interconnected across systems the further you expand. As the probability of a new warp point leading to an existing system increases drastically as you explore I find more and more of my games descending into a maze. This is particularly troublesome if you have activated a few NPRs that explore a lot along the way. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to NA so much is the elimination of this problem.

A new method of generating systems relative to one another would really help here, possibly link based on the xy coordinates of other systems on the system map. Alternatively something like the Space Empires game when the systems are generated and mapped upfront would be great. In this case it would just map system locations, warp point locations and connections and that's it to save on creating a huge data base right up front. You would leave the rest of the system generation until you actually visited the system.

On another note, a mini map of the system to help navigation would also be a great help for when you are trying to track your way round all your systems.

Finally if we could have a highlight on the system map of where the currently selected unit is that would help searching for the thing when you have x number of Giliese systems already! I find I'm often doing this when my survey craft finish one system and I'm trying to figure out where to send them next.