Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Frank Jager]

An entry box for fuel capacity to determine the range of a vessel with less than its full complement of fuel.

Useful to check carriers / tankers for their true deployment range accounting for a certain amount of fuel used in refuelling operations.

Probably tied to the minimum fuel box in the miscellanous tab of the ship design interface.

[boolybooly]

Active refuelling order against a target fleet, without the need to join the target fleet.

So I can order a tanker to move and refuel a depot station and then move on to do something else.

[Kiero]

It's strongly connected with diplomacy.

Trade Hub component for stations.
Its location (system) might be a point of negotiation. It would require some kind of "deal" system.
When it's all done, normal trade traffic from the alien empire might come to it, also you can ask aliens for resources that you could "pick up" from a specific location (a new order would be required for that).

[boolybooly]

After testing the existing refuelling orders and getting confused some more, I would like to suggest a minor change to the wording of an order to make it clearer how it works.

Instead of "Join & Refuel Target Fleet", it would be easier to understand if it read "Join To Refuel Target Fleet", indicating that the refuel process occurs after joining (as a result of the condition set for the tanker fleet's refuelling state by the order).

Likewise "Refuel from own Tankers" could be "Set to Refuel from own Tankers".

Perhaps similar could be done for the supply orders, i.e. change "Join &" to "Join To"

I know it seems trivial but its because the "Refuel From Stationary Tankers" order includes refuelling so order complete report means refuel is done, whereas the "Join &" orders do not include refuelling, which was very perplexing until the penny dropped about the true nature of the orders. Hope that makes sense.

[Jorgen_CAB]

snip

I think we must agree to disagree, the points have been presented and as always the decision rests with Steve. I think it is clear we play the same game very differently and that influences our respective ideas here.

Though I will say... I do not think it is bad if ground combat is mathematically predictable. For roleplay it might not be every player's ideal, enamored as we are with the idea of a small group of holdouts outlasting the siege until the cavalry arrives. However, strategically it is good to have a predictable outcome to decisions made t an extent, so that the player is rewarded for making decisions and the balance hangs on the decisions of both factions leading to the moment rather than balanced on mechanical edge cases. At the strategic scale ground combat is a game of numbers and technology with some influence of reasonable capability choices, frankly the mechanics are not tactical and I think that is fitting for Aurora.

What I suggest have nothing to about being unpredictable or remotely tactical... it is more about actual strategic choice... the exact thing you are saying that we like to have. The current mechanic does not really give us that. There is pretty much only one good choice in how you assemble your forces. It is all about who can produce the most troops will always win with very few losses. What I suggest will always at least attrition the attacker to some degree and make reinforcement more likely in some scenarios. A base with power armoured marines could potentially hold out for a long time if the invader did not bring a sufficient force to deal with them. Instead of it all being done to mass of troops.

Defending anything with anything really armoured is a waste of resources from a pure math perspective. This is not interesting actual choices. Only role-play will make it into a choice.

So... in the end we want the same thing... I just want more strategic options to use with my forces. As the mechanic stands you either make the world a fortress or you don't bother and just counter invade if able. This is not as fun in my opinion...

In the new version you might want some garrison to defend against raiders, that is at least something. But you will quickly learn the amount of troops you will need for that and that is the amount of garrison you will use, as they will never stand against an invasion more than a couple a days or a week at most anyway.

[Destragon]

Just got another idea for the Formation Template tab of the Ground Forces window:
It would be nice if that tab either had the auto-assignment commander skill parameters that were also added to the Naval Command interface or alternatively, just some boxes that you can check like "police formation", which let the game know that you always want commanders with high occupation skill assigned to formations of this template.

[nakorkren]

Could troop loading be changed such that the speed of loading for a fleet is the sum of the capabilities of the ships in the fleet? As far as I can tell, right now a fleet of ships with troop transports loads one unit into one ship, then the next unit in the next ship, i.e. all serially, when it really should be one unit at a time PER SHIP, i.e. ships can load troops in parallel, or at least the fleet loading speed should act as if that's what's happening. This would make boarding fighters a lot, lot less micro-intensive when you need your troops back on board asap.

If this is already happening, feel free to correct me, but I don't believe that's the case based on my tests.

[Aloriel]

Could we get an option to add X slipways? It'd be nice for those 1000 ton facilities designed to build FACs in bulk.

[nakorkren]

Currently you can turn on/off display of planets, asteroids, moons, etc as well as their names and orbits on the tactical screen, but not comets/comet names for some reason. I would like to be able to declutter the display of Sol, which has a ton of comets.

[nuclearslurpee]

Defending anything with anything really armoured is a waste of resources from a pure math perspective.

I'm very curious how this is true from a pure math perspective. I do agree that armor is modestly less than optimal, but not on mathematical grounds as far as I know.

Cost of armored units scales linearly with armor, but the effectiveness of that armor scales quadratically until overmatch occurs. This works out on a theoretical basis to a perfect balance, because the effectiveness of numerical advantage is also quadratic, but the number of units one can field scales inversely with the cost - armor efficiency goes up as cost^2, numerical efficiency drops as 1/cost^2, and it all cancels out. The disadvantage of armor occurs on a practical basis due to overmatch mechanics (both for armored and unarmored units), but at this point you get into decision-based effects which cannot really be modeled - if the enemy fields more LAV/MAV, infantry are preferable, but too much infantry and the enemy is free to field CAP spam which is countered by armor. The true optimum is not mathematically trivial.

I will readily concede that none of this is relevant against NPRs, but against NPRs a wet mop is as good as a battle tank.

Currently you can turn on/off display of planets, asteroids, moons, etc as well as their names and orbits on the tactical screen, but not comets/comet names for some reason. I would like to be able to declutter the display of Sol, which has a ton of comets.

Yes please.

[nakorkren]

Can we get Commander Health notifications separated into two different notifications?

1) Medical problems
2) Deaths

Medical problems that don't inspire retirement or cause death are not as critical as ones that do. I need to know when my officers have left my service, not so much when they're feeling poorly.

This! Even better would be to make retirements separate between "Was filling a role and retired" vs "Was on the roster but not currently assigned", because as stated above I only really care if it left a role open.

On a related note, would it be possible to have a monthly and an annual summary of vacant positions? That way you could suppress the monthly if you don't care to review it that often. And you could safely suppress all of the medical and death messages, since you would find out fairly soon (within a month or a year) that the position was open, or sooner if they were actively researching something, since you'd get an Open Labs message.

[nuclearslurpee]

Can we get Commander Health notifications separated into two different notifications?

1) Medical problems
2) Deaths

Medical problems that don't inspire retirement or cause death are not as critical as ones that do. I need to know when my officers have left my service, not so much when they're feeling poorly.

This! Even better would be to make retirements separate between "Was filling a role and retired" vs "Was on the roster but not currently assigned", because as stated above I only really care if it left a role open.

On a related note, would it be possible to have a monthly and an annual summary of vacant positions? That way you could suppress the monthly if you don't care to review it that often. And you could safely suppress all of the medical and death messages, since you would find out fairly soon (within a month or a year) that the position was open, or sooner if they were actively researching something, since you'd get an Open Labs message.

Seems like maybe we could leave the medical event as it is, but add an event when a command role is vacated and the auto-promote fails to fill it - but only for roles vacated on that increment so as not to continually tick about all the fighters or freighters lacking a commander.

[joshuawood]

2 relatively small things i have come across recently that may or may not be useful or easy to implement:

A way to know which components are alien in the stockpiles list without needing to rename every component i design

A way to "Transfer supplies to Maintenance facility" the same way you can "transfer fuel to Hub" (not sure on the exact phrasing) Right now it's impossible to fully automate a DSP with maintenance and refueling.

Or the ability for DSP to hold maintenance supplies the same way it can minerals.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Defending anything with anything really armoured is a waste of resources from a pure math perspective.

I'm very curious how this is true from a pure math perspective. I do agree that armor is modestly less than optimal, but not on mathematical grounds as far as I know.

Cost of armored units scales linearly with armor, but the effectiveness of that armor scales quadratically until overmatch occurs. This works out on a theoretical basis to a perfect balance, because the effectiveness of numerical advantage is also quadratic, but the number of units one can field scales inversely with the cost - armor efficiency goes up as cost^2, numerical efficiency drops as 1/cost^2, and it all cancels out. The disadvantage of armor occurs on a practical basis due to overmatch mechanics (both for armored and unarmored units), but at this point you get into decision-based effects which cannot really be modeled - if the enemy fields more LAV/MAV, infantry are preferable, but too much infantry and the enemy is free to field CAP spam which is countered by armor. The true optimum is not mathematically trivial.

I will readily concede that none of this is relevant against NPRs, but against NPRs a wet mop is as good as a battle tank.

Currently you can turn on/off display of planets, asteroids, moons, etc as well as their names and orbits on the tactical screen, but not comets/comet names for some reason. I would like to be able to declutter the display of Sol, which has a ton of comets.

Yes please.

Sure... it is true that two infantry is equal to one marine with twice the armour. But the issue is that in most other situations and weapon use the marine is worse of, thus the regular soldier win, in terms of taking fire AND they do twice the amount of damage while not being twice easier to kill by other weapon systems. The issue is that it is quite common in any fight that weapons overkill... there is no point in comparing two things that never happen. The Marine is ONLY equal when you give it a weapon that is exactly equal to killing the regular guy, as soon as you give them something else their effectiveness plummet fast in comparison (paying twice the cost for anything)... this is why cheap infantry is so powerful as damage sponges. Any weapon more powerful than a regular gun will overkill infantry. If you instead compared say a regular infantry with an HCAP versus a Marine with HCAP... the odds quickly fall in favour of the regular soldier on the overkill factor, even just equipping them with improved personal weapons will have a beneficial effect to the regular infantry in that case too.

But if you ONLY compare the two units they are equal in strength in all accounts, but that is not a practical example.

Two medium vehicle with a MAV and HCAP and light vehicle armour is generally better than one with medium armour, if the opponent have any MAV or similar weapons of their own. The two light ones also will kill more infantry faster, thus protecting your infantry than have half as many of the heavier version.

I have done allot of testing with different formation and the result are quite telling... two combined arms forces... one with lighter forces and one with heavier forces and the lighter force win with ease, mainly due to how weapon attacks are completely randomized between formations.

[nakorkren]

I've asked for improvements to loading of ground units onto ships before, but I think I came up with a better way to manage it that would have prevented the half hour I just spent mindlessly clicking through 200 boarding shuttles to load 200 marine units to go defend against raider ships.

Allow ship classes to specify a template for military unit contained, and then add a command to "Load a Ground Unit per template" (as opposed to the current "Load Ground Unit" which forces you to pick which ground unit you want. That way troops would be handled much like ordinance and fighters are in the class design window, could even be under the ordinance tab and just update the title to "Loadout" or something like that.

Please please please! I really want boarding shuttles (and boarding combat in general) to be a viable strategy, and I think tactically it is, but right now it's a huge tedious slog due to micro.