C# Suggestions

[Blogaugis]

This raises an interesting point whether or not the policing requirements of a planetary population should increase as the planet becomes more full above a certain threshold. For example, when the space taken is at least 50% the policing requirements start to increase more than usual, with the increase being more extreme as the space used approaches 100%.

Found this in the "What is your biggest empire" - thread and thought, this is worthwhile to think about. We do have unrest due to overpopulation, though it makes sense that once you get close to the maximum (lets say 95%) that people get uneasy and begin rioting which leads to an increase in police needed... . And it would make sense that people will increase violence more if they are in enclosed spaces (i.e. installations) - so the need for a non-zero planet which needs installations should be higher than on a zero world... .

I guess I'll repeat my thoughts on this too - if it is going to be implemented, leave a choice whether to use "advanced policing" or not.

And I have another note - there are civilians, who create their own mining colonies with ground units and their own unit templates, at least, if you didn't create your own. Problem is, as technology advances, civilians will still use the old technology that was designed quite long ago. Making these civilian ground units obsolete don't seem to solve the issue...
Are there going to be ways to make civilian spawned ground units upgrade-able some way? Or, at least, so when they create new civilian mining colonies with ground units, will there be a way to make them spawn with the new "racial" technologies, rather the the ones, which were created close to the game start (Duranium tech)?

[Andrew]

For the ship combat screen Filter targets to armed ships.
I am trying to kill a few escorts hiding among over a hundred unarmed merchant ships, it takes time and effort to find and target them it would be nice if I could restrict the list to just ships which are armed, even better if I could use auto-target limited to just those armed ships

[serger]

Are there going to be ways to make civilian spawned ground units upgrade-able some way?
Or, at least, so when they create new civilian mining colonies with ground units, will there be a way to make them spawn with the new "racial" technologies, rather the the ones, which were created close to the game start (Duranium tech)?

We can do it now (v1.13).
Set Show Civilian in Formation Templates on, edit Civilian Garrison template - and they will spawn with edited template.
(Yes, you can abuse it, but it's quite easier to abuse Aurora with SM if you want to cheat with yourself, so I like this feature: it's a government's competence to set what type of police force civilian companies must field to get their mandates.)

[serger]

For the ship combat screen Filter targets to armed ships.

It will be very possible to have target-rich environment with no info about enemy weapons at any of those targets, so with this filter you can get very counterintuitive result.

[Black]

For the ship combat screen Filter targets to armed ships.

It will be very possible to have target-rich environment with no info about enemy weapons at any of those targets, so with this filter you can get very counterintuitive result.

Yeah, filtering with engine type would be most likely be better in such situation, unless the player plays both sides and use warship with commercial engines.

[Andrew]

Your intelligence reports list all armed enemy ships that you know about, using that as the filter would be sensible. I have no expectation that I would shoot at unidentified armed vessels,

[Nori]

Not really sure how to best ask this as I'm not sure what goes on behind the scenes, but I recently lost a decent amount of gameplay as I apparently hadn't saved the game in a while. I've tried to be better about saving since then, but the biggest issue is once you get a game going it can take a rather large amount of time with the game locked up to saved. My games is 131 years in and it takes 94 seconds to save on a SSD. Not insurmountable of course, but it lends itself to saving less frequently.

Anyway, my suggestion is a look at the saving functionality and if there is a way to speed it up a bit.

[nuclearslurpee]

I'd like to suggest a small tweak (bolded below) to the Logistics components for ground forces.

Logistics are a significant demand on ground forces construction, as for any serious (planetary invasion) ground combat campaign logistics requirements are on the order of ~10% of the total force tonnage (see my post in the Mechanics subforum for details on how this can be estimated). As the cost of building so many logistics elements is significant a savvy player will seek to limit this cost as much as possible without compromising tactical or operational (i.e. mouse-clicking) capability.

Presently, the logistics situation is such that we have three options available to us: INF+LOGS (10 tons, 100 GSP, 0.2 BP), INF+LOG (50 tons, 500 GSP, 1.0 BP), and LVH+LOG (62 tons, 500 GSP, 2.48 BP). The distinction between INF and LVH logistics is that the INF logistics can only resupply the formation they are elements of, while the LVH logistics can resupply any formation in their subordinate hierarchy. However, with the 1.12+ changes adding replacement functionality this benefit of LVH is no longer as important, as long as a formation has enough INF logistics to stay supplied for a construction cycle the replacements system will work just as well as LVH for a fraction of the BP cost per GSP. In the past, the ~2.5x BP cost for LVH logistics was a necessary evil as manually replacing logistics elements in large armies was untenable, but now it is unnecessarily expensive since we have a cheaper option that still reduces micromanagement to tolerable levels.

Additionally, the large logistics modules are largely inferior for INF logistics. The smaller modules are cheaper to research, more resilient to enemy fire due to being more numerous, and a bit more flexible if you want to fill out tonnage to boot. The large LOG module for infantry could probably be omitted with no real change in the game.

Thus my suggestion is as follows: Double the GSP value of the large LOG component (but keep the size the same at 50 tons) and make it LVH-only.

In this case we have two options: INF+LOGS (10 tons, 100 GSP, 0.2 BP) and LVH+LOG (62 tons, 1000 GSP, 2.48 BP) which are in roughly equal balance with each other.

This as discussed makes no real difference for infantry, but would make LVH-based logistics more feasible. There is still a +25% premium in BP cost per GSP due to the LVH mount + light vehicle armor, however for that +25% premium the player retains for example the option of not including infantry logistics in front-line formations. At the current +150% premium that option is really not feasible when ~10% of the total force tonnage is needed in logistics units. My suggested change presents an interesting strategic choice to the player which is between more effective frontline formations at greater logistical expense versus frontline formations with greater non-combatant tonnage for the benefit of cheaper overall logistics and slightly lower transport requirements for LOG elements.

EDIT: As pointed out below the transport requirements under this proposal are less for LVH logistics (60% more tonnage-efficient). Admittedly I am not sure if this is a significant balance issue or not. If so, the size of the LOG component can be tweaked until Steve feels the balance of strategic factors is reasonable.

[ISN]

...My suggested change presents an interesting strategic choice to the player which is between more effective frontline formations at greater logistical expense versus frontline formations with greater non-combatant tonnage for the benefit of cheaper overall logistics and slightly lower transport requirements for LOG elements.

Are you saying here that infantry-based logistics would be more efficient with respect to transportation, or am I misreading this? Because that seems backwards: under your proposed change LVH-based logistics provides ~16 GSP/ton while infantry-based logistics only provides 10 GSP/ton.

[nuclearslurpee]

...My suggested change presents an interesting strategic choice to the player which is between more effective frontline formations at greater logistical expense versus frontline formations with greater non-combatant tonnage for the benefit of cheaper overall logistics and slightly lower transport requirements for LOG elements.

Are you saying here that infantry-based logistics would be more efficient with respect to transportation, or am I misreading this? Because that seems backwards: under your proposed change LVH-based logistics provides ~16 GSP/ton while infantry-based logistics only provides 10 GSP/ton.

You're right, I'll fix it.

[ISN]

It would be nice if the minimum distance option were available for the Launch Ready Ordnance order. It's a pretty minor thing, but I don't see any obvious reason why it shouldn't be available, and it would've come in handy when I had to set up a large field of sensor buoys recently. Instead I had to set up waypoints wherever I wanted to place a buoy (unless there's a better way I'm not seeing?).

[Nori]

The last few games I've been playing I do so without jump engines. I just build stabilization ships and only go places that have gates. It slows down exploration, but frees up a lot of space on ships (or frees up a ship type) and it frees up my PP scientists from having to research Jumpy stuff.

Given all that, I was thinking that it would be interesting if gates could be destroyed. Forcing your opponent to use jump engines could be viable. Not sure how the NPRs would decide when a gate should be removed or not and it could be annoying if they snuck into a transit system and destroyed a gate...

[Droll]

The last few games I've been playing I do so without jump engines. I just build stabilization ships and only go places that have gates. It slows down exploration, but frees up a lot of space on ships (or frees up a ship type) and it frees up my PP scientists from having to research Jumpy stuff.

Given all that, I was thinking that it would be interesting if gates could be destroyed. Forcing your opponent to use jump engines could be viable. Not sure how the NPRs would decide when a gate should be removed or not and it could be annoying if they snuck into a transit system and destroyed a gate...

I wonder how you handle JP assaults without squadron jump, although you could just use a single/couple specialized jump ships for that.

[Nori]

The last few games I've been playing I do so without jump engines. I just build stabilization ships and only go places that have gates. It slows down exploration, but frees up a lot of space on ships (or frees up a ship type) and it frees up my PP scientists from having to research Jumpy stuff.

Given all that, I was thinking that it would be interesting if gates could be destroyed. Forcing your opponent to use jump engines could be viable. Not sure how the NPRs would decide when a gate should be removed or not and it could be annoying if they snuck into a transit system and destroyed a gate...

I wonder how you handle JP assaults without squadron jump, although you could just use a single/couple specialized jump ships for that.

I haven't really run into any issues. I just do a standard transit for the entire fleet and that's worked just fine thus far.

[TMaekler]

Some kind of factor for fuel efficiency would be nice to simulate different styles of rocket warfare. This factor would basically increase the fuel demand per engine power unit so the travel distance of ships and rockets would be decreased. Rockets in the Battlestar Universe for example have a way shorter range - and such a thing could be simulated with a global game factor similar to research and all the other factors we now have... .