C# Suggestions

[nuclearslurpee]

Sounds good, but the "boosters" EP multiplier should be researchable levels. a flat 5x i think would be too much, but if you start with a 2.5x and research in .25 increments i think it could work quite well.

To clarify, the 5x is in reference to fuel efficiency. The idea is to mirror the missile boost rule, where missiles can have up to 2x the racial tech maximum for EP boosting, but going over the racial tech level incurs an extra penalty which maximizes at 5x. For example, if the racial boost tech level is 2.0x, a missile with 4.0x EP boost will have a 1/5 penalty to fuel efficiency in addition to the usual inefficiency of boosted engines. A missile with 3.0x boost will have a 2/5 extra penalty, and so on.

In this case I would suggest that you could install a boost of up to 2x the baseline engine power, but with the same overboost penalty as missiles already use. The other question is how to balance costs since otherwise this is a tactically superior option to normal boosted engines since fuel use in combat is usually pretty minimal.

[ArcWolf]

Sounds good, but the "boosters" EP multiplier should be researchable levels. a flat 5x i think would be too much, but if you start with a 2.5x and research in .25 increments i think it could work quite well.

To clarify, the 5x is in reference to fuel efficiency. The idea is to mirror the missile boost rule, where missiles can have up to 2x the racial tech maximum for EP boosting, but going over the racial tech level incurs an extra penalty which maximizes at 5x. For example, if the racial boost tech level is 2.0x, a missile with 4.0x EP boost will have a 1/5 penalty to fuel efficiency in addition to the usual inefficiency of boosted engines. A missile with 3.0x boost will have a 2/5 extra penalty, and so on.

In this case I would suggest that you could install a boost of up to 2x the baseline engine power, but with the same overboost penalty as missiles already use. The other question is how to balance costs since otherwise this is a tactically superior option to normal boosted engines since fuel use in combat is usually pretty minimal.

ah, i get what you mean.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sounds good, but the "boosters" EP multiplier should be researchable levels. a flat 5x i think would be too much, but if you start with a 2.5x and research in .25 increments i think it could work quite well.

To clarify, the 5x is in reference to fuel efficiency. The idea is to mirror the missile boost rule, where missiles can have up to 2x the racial tech maximum for EP boosting, but going over the racial tech level incurs an extra penalty which maximizes at 5x. For example, if the racial boost tech level is 2.0x, a missile with 4.0x EP boost will have a 1/5 penalty to fuel efficiency in addition to the usual inefficiency of boosted engines. A missile with 3.0x boost will have a 2/5 extra penalty, and so on.

In this case I would suggest that you could install a boost of up to 2x the baseline engine power, but with the same overboost penalty as missiles already use. The other question is how to balance costs since otherwise this is a tactically superior option to normal boosted engines since fuel use in combat is usually pretty minimal.

Why not allow us to use whatever engines on a ship that we like and allow us to decide which engine is primary. Probably should not be that much more complicated. You either decide one engine type that is used, based on the ship type, all ships have a primary engine. Or you can switch the individual ship to ALL engines, just like turning on sensors or shields.

Also, while speaking of sensors, I would like to have the same thing with active sensors, they should also be able to be turned on individually and not as a whole. It is quite irritating when I must turn on my 100 resolution active if the only thing I want is to use my resolution 1 sensor. The current way this work just means that I rarely put bigger active on ships than resolution 5, everything else are in small scout crafts.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In order to make civilian ships take a bit less resources I would change how the fuel efficiency technology impact civilian shipping.

In my games I always have my factions stay at 50% minimum efficiency and only lower it with SM when designing ships after investing the research necessary and record each factions actual tech level on an excel sheet or other document.

The thing is that ships are more expensive and they build less but they go way faster so are more efficient. The lower price of the engines is not really good for the game and the ships speed is important for how efficient they are.

I would make some adjustment to how many civilian ships are built and how the fuel efficiency technology impact the civilian fleet. I would have civilian ships always use 50% fuel efficiency engines and instead increase the wealth generation by a small amount for each delivery. I might also increase the cost of the ships by a some amount (for the companies to buy them) to reduce the civilian ships to some degree overall. But they also would earn more money so it will eventually even itself out.

The effect would be less civilians ships but more efficient ones.

I also think that the civilians should build bigger and bigger ships over time, this would also reduce the amount to a certain agree. At least a bit bigger than the largest civilians currently. Some smaller civilians are still good, but bigger ships should also try to find pickups that matches their cargo space and not try to pick up half their cargo space. That would leave the smaller ones to take the contracts that is small or planets with low luxury generation. The bigger ships will generally traffic the routes where there are more cargo to be transported.

As it is, the lower efficiency engines makes the civilian fleet worse and they are able to buy more ships. As they don't actually use fuel there should be some different rule how the efficiency makes civilians ships better. not cheaper and worse. This would to some degree help with game slowdowns later on as well.

[Voltbot]

edit: additional thought, if it is possible to add boosters, could we get the agility to use multiple engine designs on one ship? Example would be using a 50HS engine as my "main" engine on capital ships, with 10 or 15 HS engines to tailor the speed that i want.

It would depend on how (if) Steve would program this. He could make system to add multiple engine types on one ship. However I can see at least one easier way to implement booster. The thing that I said about programming simplicity. If that would be a thing, then booster simple can add their speed bonus on top and that's it. But if Steave would make system for multiple engine types he would get a problem, that is not max speed. Because if ship is not at max speed, then how to process it? Do we turn off only most inefficient engines? That would make awful calculations.

So. It is possible, but I think it's not probable.

[Voltbot]

In order to make civilian ships take a bit less resources I would change how the fuel efficiency technology impact civilian shipping.

In my games I always have my factions stay at 50% minimum efficiency and only lower it with SM when designing ships after investing the research necessary and record each factions actual tech level on an excel sheet or other document.

The thing is that ships are more expensive and they build less but they go way faster so are more efficient. The lower price of the engines is not really good for the game and the ships speed is important for how efficient they are.

I would make some adjustment to how many civilian ships are built and how the fuel efficiency technology impact the civilian fleet. I would have civilian ships always use 50% fuel efficiency engines and instead increase the wealth generation by a small amount for each delivery. I might also increase the cost of the ships by a some amount (for the companies to buy them) to reduce the civilian ships to some degree overall. But they also would earn more money so it will eventually even itself out.

The effect would be less civilians ships but more efficient ones.

I also think that the civilians should build bigger and bigger ships over time, this would also reduce the amount to a certain agree. At least a bit bigger than the largest civilians currently. Some smaller civilians are still good, but bigger ships should also try to find pickups that matches their cargo space and not try to pick up half their cargo space. That would leave the smaller ones to take the contracts that is small or planets with low luxury generation. The bigger ships will generally traffic the routes where there are more cargo to be transported.

As it is, the lower efficiency engines makes the civilian fleet worse and they are able to buy more ships. As they don't actually use fuel there should be some different rule how the efficiency makes civilians ships better. not cheaper and worse. This would to some degree help with game slowdowns later on as well.

It depends on fuel cost. If civilians don't have to pay for fuel, then you're right. But if they have to pay for it, then it can be more problematic.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It depends on fuel cost. If civilians don't have to pay for fuel, then you're right. But if they have to pay for it, then it can be more problematic.

They don't pay for fuel, that is the point. The other point is that it would reduce the amount of civilian ships and that would also be good for game performance.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Another thing I might want to have for performance reasons are able to decide how long log data should be stored in the database. If I want to purge all log data that are older than a year I should. I also would like to have a quick delete button for clearing the log of all combat logs, things like ground combat logs can severely slow the game down if it drags out as it creates a huge amount of data quickly.

[ArcWolf]

Another thing I might want to have for performance reasons are able to decide how long log data should be stored in the database. If I want to purge all log data that are older than a year I should. I also would like to have a quick delete button for clearing the log of all combat logs, things like ground combat logs can severely slow the game down if it drags out as it creates a huge amount of data quickly.

just being able to decide which log data you delete and manually be able to delete (possibly with SM) would be great.

[Scandinavian]

Idea - booster.
   Component, that is basically an engine, that can be put in addition to normal engines and can be turned off to not affect fuel usage, but is stupidly ineffective, like 3x fuel consumption.
Idea is, this component can be mounted on warships to make them rather fuel efficient when not in combat, but have good speed when in combat.
   I know I can do this with tugs or carriers, but it would be great for patrol ships, tat needs some combat power, while being cheap to produce.
   To make it even less attractive to put on every warship it could be able to overheat (get destroyed) after some time of constant usage.
   For programming simplicity it could be created, that it isn't throttable (I don't know if this is right word. It's used in KSP in this context) i.e. It can either be turned off, or work at 100%. It couldn't be able to be set to other values, like 50%.

Allowing slow steaming seems like a more elegant solution than bolting an SRB onto the engine. To me, at least.

[Snoman314]

Also, while speaking of sensors, I would like to have the same thing with active sensors, they should also be able to be turned on individually and not as a whole.  It is quite irritating when I must turn on my 100 resolution active if the only thing I want is to use my resolution 1 sensor.  The current way this work just means that I rarely put bigger active on ships than resolution 5, everything else are in small scout crafts.

I too would like to be able to control active sensors individually.

[Erik L]

I'd like to see the ages of the initial officer corps increased. Seems a bit off to have a 21 year old Rear Admiral. Possibly increase the age 2-3 years per promotion?

[nuclearslurpee]

I'd like to see the ages of the initial officer corps increased. Seems a bit off to have a 21 year old Rear Admiral. Possibly increase the age 2-3 years per promotion?

It is in the next update. 

[Erik L]

I'd like to see the ages of the initial officer corps increased. Seems a bit off to have a 21 year old Rear Admiral. Possibly increase the age 2-3 years per promotion?

It is in the next update. 

Steve needs to get 2.0 out soon then

[nuclearslurpee]

Rework shields for balance vs armor and better roleplay

Currently: Shield strength scales with the generator size in HS as Size^(3/2). This causes the efficiency of shields per HS relative to armor to increase a lot from one tech level to another, with Epsilon Shields (16k RP) being 40% as efficient as Laminate Composite Armour (20k RP), Theta Shields having 48% relative efficiency, and continuing to increase to a maximum of 75% relative efficiency at high tech levels. In practice, a ship with reasonably thick armor will begin taking internal damage once armor is degraded by about 50%, so a shield which is relatively ~50% as effective as armor is in practice superior against any weapon except mesons, and often is preferable even at lower tech levels against lasers or particle lances which penetrate armor effectively.

On the flip side, small shield generators in the few-HS range are very inefficient to the point of being basically useless. This means that putting shield generators on fighters, FACs, or other smaller ships is usually not practical, despite being a very common fixture in sci-fi settings. While the previous point by itself is okay, since it's fine for newer tech systems to change the combat balance, in my opinion the game mechanics should not limit roleplay in this way.


Suggested change: Rework shields so that regeneration rate scales as Size^(3/2) and generator strength scales linearly with size. This means there is still a tactical advantage to building larger shield generators rather than spamming a lot of small ones, but shield generators of any size will remain viable and shielded fighters or FACs will not be suicide booths like they are now. Shield scaling vs armor will be less extreme as well (i.e. closer to a flat line than a steep sloped curve).

Additionally, to keep shields competitive with armor, the shield strength tech line should be changed to omit the 1.5 and 2.5 values, adding 20 and 25-point values to the end of the tech line. The result would look like this:

    Alpha Shields: 1
    Beta Shields: 2
    Gamma Shields: 3
    Delta Shields: 4
    Epsilon Shields: 5
    Theta Shields: 6
    Xi Shields: 8
    Omicron Shields: 10
    Sigma Shields: 12
    Tau Shields: 15
    Psi Shields: 20
    Omega Shields: 25

For all but the last 3 tech levels the relative efficiency of shields is less than 50% that of armor, so there is an interesting design decision at most tech levels. By the end of the tech line, relative shield efficiency versus armor caps out at 56% which is probably superior to armor but close enough that the choice is not nearly as forced.