Official Suggestion Thread for 5.20 or later

[Jorgen_CAB]

I know this has been said before but I would like sensors to scale more realistically.

This is especially critical when it comes to ground based listening stations. These are quite easy to build and automatically upgrade and their range increase linear which don't make much sense.

I would like to see this on ship sensors and fire-controls as well. It would make spreading out a fleet more important in order to patrol areas, as are establishing ground bases in many places within a system.

It does not have to be an exact measure of diminishing strength due to range and space ratio, but in some way reflect the increased area a scanner has to find things based on range would make things more interesting. At least I think so.

I currently restrict the size of active sensors and level of ground stations to a certain amount or size. I would like it if that was not necessary.

[swarm_sadist]

Can we get planetary scale shields to protect against bombardment?

I just finished a game where the enemy decided to bomb it's own capital to bits to remove my forces (both our capitals were on the same planet). Just having the ability to resist minor missile strikes without meson PDCs built up on the planet would be nice.

[MarcAFK]

Definately seconded, however I'm sure such shielding should consume copious amounts of fuel due to the size of a planetary shield, so i'm sure their utility might be somewhat limited, but it's nice to have another option for defence.

[swarm_sadist]

...however I'm sure such shielding should consume copious amounts of fuel due to the size of a planetary shield...

It doesn't have to cover the entire planet, just the manufacturing centres. IE: Cities and military bases.

Even an imperfect shield like in master's of orion, which simply reduces the amount of hits that damage civilian structures by creating a huge 'stack' of high HTK shield facilities.

There just needs to be some tech, building or unit capable of mitigating the damage of orbital fire.

[alex_brunius]

It doesn't have to cover the entire planet, just the manufacturing centres. IE: Cities and military bases.

Here I see a balancing problem with planetary shields though. Should the same cost shield really be able to cover your entire imperial capital with billions of population and tens of thousands of facilities compared to a shield for simple DSTS in a small outpost?


This feature would need to include a way to determine how much space whatever your protecting takes up on a body.

If you need to go that far to make it accurate we might aswell also throw in underground / armor on all facilities as another option to protect from bombardment too. That protection option should come with significantly higher investment but no upkeep cost like shields. Underground should also reduce the emissions (both EM and Thermal) of a body significantly, as well as provide cover for all ground troops outside PDCs.

[swarm_sadist]

Here I see a balancing problem with planetary shields though. Should the same cost shield really be able to cover your entire imperial capital with billions of population and tens of thousands of facilities compared to a shield for simple DSTS in a small outpost?

I never said it would cost the same, and I never said it should be able to protect everything at once. In master's of orion 3, buildings were a certain 'size' which determined the likelihood they would be hit by weapon fire. A larger building had a much higher chance of being hit. All buildings also had a percent chance of being destroyed per hit (Hit-to-Kill). Shields were buildings that were very large (therefor hit more often than most buildings) and had a low chance of destruction (they absorbed the hits against them without being destroyed themselves).

I only offer this way because HTK and size are already coded into the game in the form of components (for ships). Making buildings act like components to a planet would be simpler than thinking of an entirely different system just for planets.

If you need to go that far to make it accurate we might as well also throw in underground / armor on all facilities as another option to protect from bombardment too. That protection option should come with significantly higher investment but no upkeep cost like shields. Underground should also reduce the emissions (both EM and Thermal) of a body significantly, as well as provide cover for all ground troops outside PDCs.

Underground buildings actually do have a large upkeep cost, but I like the idea of underground military bases too much to complain. New building: heat sinks? Shouldn't hot planets with large atmospheres and magnetic fields act as a cloak naturally?

[JacenHan]

Underground military bases = PDC.

PDCs are essentially bunkers, which is why they start with 5 armour automatically, because they are built into mountains and such. However, planetary shields are pretty interesting idea, if they can be balanced properly. I also like having hot planets/magnetic fields affect EM/TH readings, but I'm not sure how hard that would be to code and balance.

[MarcAFK]

I've been thinking, that perhaps for the same reasons that most energy weapons don't work in atmospheres, maybe planetary shields would be affected also. Perhaps certain gases would stop shields from working or alter their properties, too much pressure might stop shields from working or increase their fuel requirements.
While I'm on the subject, I think powerplants should require fuel and shields should require power. Perhaps a research line could allow normal engines to produce a small quantity of energy for shields or energy weapons in return for temporary reduction of speed?

[Whitecold]

I've been thinking, that perhaps for the same reasons that most energy weapons don't work in atmospheres, maybe planetary shields would be affected also. Perhaps certain gases would stop shields from working or alter their properties, too much pressure might stop shields from working or increase their fuel requirements.
While I'm on the subject, I think powerplants should require fuel and shields should require power. Perhaps a research line could allow normal engines to produce a small quantity of energy for shields or energy weapons in return for temporary reduction of speed?

I have a suggestion to overhaul the entire energy system, adding both an additional layer to Ship design and to Combat.

Beside fuel capacity each ship has an energy capacity, which is determined by the size of the capacitor banks installed, the energy density of those banks determined by the capacitor tech.
These banks are filled by the power plants which convert fuel to energy. Conversion rate should depend on the tech level, with a bonus for large plants. Energy weapons are no longer limited in firing rate by capacitor tech, but instead a new cooling system tech, which determines the maximum rate of fire
Energy weapons, shields, engines, jump drives, maybe sensors all drain energy, of course only when active. This requires the player to balance power plants and capacitors relative to each other, so a warship has enough energy to keep firing during an engagement. Also by increasing efficiency for large power plants, one has to balance fuel efficiency versus redundancy of multiple small plants, especially with the new shock damage.
Energy could also be transferred in hangars, allowing fully capacitor powered fighters for short term use.
Missiles could also get the option to be either capacitor powered or fuel powered.

[Jorgen_CAB]

One other sensor related question.

It would make life in the game much easier if we could activate sensor systems individually. It is so frustrating I can't build all purpose cruisers with all types of sensor resolutions. If I do they will be revealed as soon as I want to switch on a fighter resolution active scanner but not the resolution 240 one.

You can of course cheat this system by envision ships to be sort of modular by using hangars and hulls (stations) with only a sensor system. On larger ships I tend to add large resolution scanners (bigger than res 20) as modular to circumvent this flaw. Although, it would be nice if I did not have to do this.   

[MarcAFK]

I would like to suggest an option to select the starting number of build points for ships and PDCs, it isn't particularly important but whenever I make a scenario which requires significant preconstructed hardware it kinda peeves me to see that negative value under the fast OB screen.

[swarm_sadist]

ARK: PDC only colony pods. Stores several hundred thousand colonists without any sort of thermal or EM signature.
Underground Hanger: Very large but only on PDCs.
Necropolis: Clones or seeds a limited population in case of emergencies using stored embryos.
Cloning Centre: Clones a population, to increase population growth based on the number of buildings and wealth available(as opposed to natural growth, which is affected by radiation, colony rating, current population, etc)
PDC Cloak: To increase the cloaking size, but only on PDCs.
Colony Pod: Can build infrastructure like a large civilian population, when above a planet and with access to duranium.
Production pod: Ship or PDC based that produces maintenance supplies with proper resources.
Active ECM: Produces EM but makes the ship harder to hit with active weapons when activated.

-Have missiles intercepting targets moving perpendicular to their course should follow the hypotenuse of their expected course, not curve to follow their current position.
-Allow colonists in stasis to be transferred from one ship to another. I'm not actually sure if this is already in the game.
-Allow us to force an NPR to surrender, capitulate, sign an armistice, etc, through SM.
-Allow an NPR to be hostile militarily and militarily, but choose not to engage in hostile actions.
-The ability to force civilians to move in convoys in hostile systems.

-Prison colonies: currently I played a game where I captured the enemy homeworld (what appears to be their only world) when another NPR destroyed their last population centre. Now the only remaining population for that race is the 10,000 POWs I have laying around.
-Prison Ships: To transport POWs from one world to another, or to a permanent prison station. Perhaps a brig component?
-Ability to rename populations in the population and production screen. When you do a multi faction start and conquer another player, they both say "Earth - Human" for the population.

-Allow us to input data manually into intelligence: weapon type, damage, rate of fire, range, number, missile size, magazine size estimate, etc.
-Update the strategic intelligence window to show data such as know population centres, manufacturing centres, leaders, mining colonies, civilian companies, etc.
-Have signal interception pick up basic intelligence about a race when close to high population worlds

-Have infrastructure be upgradable to Underground infrastructure, somewhat like mines and automated mines are right now.
-Allow terraformers to clean up atmospheric dust
-Have terraformers produce tonnes of gases instead of percentage of gases (pressure scales with planet size?)
-Have gas pressure dependent upon diametre of planet.

-Mission Packages: Have a ships ordinance/strike group be separated into mission packages you can customize. Have mission packages be on a ship by ship basis, with one being chosen as the default mission package.
-Have a 'variant' option when designing a ship, which will warn you when activated when you go over the retrofit limit; comparing the current design to another of your choosing.
-Have a retrofit tech to increase the BP limit of retrofits.
-Have components which are of a much smaller percentage of the ships total tonnage cost less to retrofit than a large component.

[swarm_sadist]

Wow, I killed this thread. I feel kind of bad about that.

A smaller suggestion. An import-export feature for save game files to allow for save game transfers and backups. Preferably in the start window.

Also, if possible, to have the ship hulls, name templates and so forth be outside the database. Or have them be importable-exportable or updatable.

[MarcAFK]

Killed the thread? No actually people are using the suggestion thread for 6.30, perhaps your suggestions should go there.
Edit: I like the idea of the cloning center, actually It would be nice if pre existing genetic modification center's had an option to instead increase population growth by 250k a year rather than modifying existing population.

[Jorgen_CAB]

A small list of features I would like to see, some might be a repeat of similar things I have said before.


Sensors
I would like for sensor system to become more realistic. As it is it is just to much min/max which is not fair against the AI that often attach active scanners to most of their ships and it is not very realistic. The more scanners the more likely you should be to pick up the correct information in any engagement.

1. At least make the Strength of active and passive sensors cover the area and not be a linear function. Aurora is on a 2d map so making them scan in 3d is perhaps a bit too much. So this would make the range fall of much quicker with larger scanning equipment.

2. Make the detection of object into a random event, it is not realistic to have an automatic barrier where you detect something. It is no more realistic than using the same system for a weapon hitting or missing a target. This would also make it useful to mount active (and passive) sensors on as many platforms as possible or even using several on the same ship for that matter.

3. Passive sensors should not be automatic either, they should initially detect an echo and after a while (the more platforms and the more spread out they are) you will get more robust information about that echo, such as distance/speed and strength. In reality it is not that easy to know these things from a passive emission without an active component.

4. Once something is detected (either with passive or active) it should be much easier to keep tracking it, but you should be able to loose contact.

5. Each object should be detected individually so when you detect an enemy group you should never be sure of their exact composition and numbers since the detection method is randomized.


Research
I really would like research to be much less linear, this is not very realistic. I also feel that the number of labs per team (scientist) in general is too large. By the time you have enough labs to till your scientist to the maximum you will have enough scientists so it will never matter much in the end anyway. There is also a problem with research that give empire wide bonuses are too powerful in the hands of widespread large empires.

1. Make the number of labs available to scientists a new research path that start at one lab per scientist team.

2. Make every lab added to a team have a diminished effect, lets say 5-10% less RP per lab over the first. So if your RP per lab is 100 you get 100 for lab one, 90 for lab two and 81 for lab three and so on. This will represent that increased funding will never yield a linear result in efficiency which is realistic. This will also add the effect that you want to have as many scientists as possible but the skill of them is still very important.

3. Research with empire wide effect should in some way have a cost reduction/increase depending on the spread and size of said empire. For example if you want to research better industrial production it would be influenced by the number of worlds that have industrial complexes and in how many different systems and the number of sectors you have. It should also be important how many industrial complexes you have as a total. The same should be true for all the rest. Sure you could go with a system where each individual complex is upgraded (or a percentage system per planet would be enough) to make it more gradual, but that is more complex.


Terraforming
I would like terraform to be harder and slightly more realistic.

1. Get rid of safe greenhouse and anti-greenhouse gases or at least make them optional (even to the NPR)

2. Make gravity outside certain limits impact negatively on population productivity. Humans would not do well during prolonged exposure to high or low gravity. This would make genetic manipulation more important for colonial efforts.

3. Why do terraforming installations change pressures based on a percentage, that makes no sense. They should do it in some form of units, perhaps tonnage so larger planets are harder to terraform than smaller ones.


Economy and population
I feel that colonial and population management and implementation could be improved in some ways.

1. A planet should have a finite number of maximum population based on size, infrastructure and type. Going over this limit would increase the number of infrastructure you would need on the planet dramatically, even on fully terraformed and perfect planets such as Earth. This could also be tied to a new research option.

2. Population numbers should scale better in the game. I find it hard to play a game where I start with more than 500 million people at the start since large populations quickly make the snowball effect too severe. To many linear features is perhaps the problem here... There should for example be an efficiency modifier you could change along they way for both production (including science) and wealth of populations. So, you can measure improvements or deterioration in the efficiency of populations in general. Population in the game are almost always at 100% efficiency, there are no good way to represent a large country such as India and a smaller one such as the US. You can change Production (which don't seem to work) and wealth at the start of a game but it is permanent. Different societies in the world today have vastly different production efficiency per individual so a country with 10 million people could severely outproduce another with 100 million people. In the game it can somewhat be represented with giving less facilities to one than the other (but it does not solve civilian goods production) but wealth is still given per individual. In the real world rich countries might produce 10-100 times the wealth than a poor country.
I would probably be satisfied if there was a way to change these wealth and production efficiency values as a game progress. Right now I mainly adjust the total population count based on the overall wealth of an Earth nation in the game.

3. It would be interesting if civilian population would interact with the game a little more in some way and if the government type had something to do with this. Perhaps through some form of event system that could be script based and expanded by the community by adding their own events, triggers and effects.

4. Wealth should not be stored in the way we currently does. Wealth that is not used should mainly go back into the economy and just produce happiness for the people that can "endure" a better life. I think that wealth that are distributed back into society should give some form of bonus. Perhaps a small increase in wealth the next year, a small increase in population growth or some other perk. Negative wealth could pretty much be handled as it is now but the effect would be more of a result of how long and how much negative wealth you get each year. Negative wealth should also spawn lower wealth efficiency each year so the negative spiral should increase in speed if you don't take drastic measures in a couple of years.