C# Suggestions

[nuclearslurpee]

On point 3, the issue I've found is more for arch digs in that as soon as you have a construction ground unit dig up a working civ building, it turns it from a dig to a hab world at which point, particularly if the building is 'x infrastructure', civilian colony ships jump in and deliver population, which you might not want and might not realise until you check the eco screen.  Yes you can tell the civvies not to have anything to do with a colony, but when there's a change due to an event, if you're not checking things when you set a colony, you can wind up having the AI screw you up, particularly if the dig is a high cost planet like Venus, or one you never want colonised even if it's 'viable'.  The other thing for automines is more a visual aid.  Most colonies we create start as 'other' unless they've got a ruin on site, but auto-mine sites change colour in the fleet orders menu, and shuffle around if you've got 'view by role' on the eco screen, allowing a quick reference for where you're aiming to actually colonise/terraform versus where you just want mines prior to sending anything there, particularly if it's something that might take a while to do because you've got to build things first.

It doesn't even need to be much, just allow us to decide without dropping anything what body has a particular classification of colony and don't auto-change it.  Space Empires IV and V allowed you to pick a colony type as a player, so just letting us set and reassign so we keep digs as digs and can see our locales for mines/pops if we have to return to things later and have forgotten what's supposed to be what would help.

The "Military Restricted" flag should do what you want as it basically tells all civilian ships to avoid that body. When you establish a new dig site colony, in the Economics window / Civilian Economy tab there is a checkbox along the top row for "Military Restricted Colony" that per this comment from Steve should cause civilian ships to avoid the body. If that isn't working it is probably a bug and should be reported.

N.B. you can rename a colony/population separately from the body it is on, so you could establish a colony on Mars for instance and call it "Mars Dig Site" to keep track of what it's for.

[Ghrathryn]

The "Military Restricted" flag should do what you want as it basically tells all civilian ships to avoid that body.  When you establish a new dig site colony, in the Economics window / Civilian Economy tab there is a checkbox along the top row for "Military Restricted Colony" that per this comment from Steve should cause civilian ships to avoid the body.  If that isn't working it is probably a bug and should be reported.

N. B.  you can rename a colony/population separately from the body it is on, so you could establish a colony on Mars for instance and call it "Mars Dig Site" to keep track of what it's for.

Yeah, presuming you remember to do it before a ground force with construction units find something that causes the arch dig to become a settlement or viable for one, as mentioned before.

Case in point, see attached.  I've not added anything to Mars or Venus in my current game as far as buildings are concerned, and Venus had a 6 building ruined site that's been cleared.  Both became auto-mines because the construction team found automines.  Mars could actually get a civilian colony ship show up if I hadn't already set it to military only, like Venus did in my last game, as they've already found infrastructure there.

I'm not arguing that what's there can't do the job, I'm requesting the ability to allow players to pick on colonise (and manually change after) and have templates to set things up automatically rather than rely on the AI recognition and have to remember to go into a tab you're likely not going to use unless you're establishing the colony for population to tell civilian ships that they're not allowed there just in case the AI decides that 'hey, this ruin has automines, it's an automine now' or 'hey, there's infrastructure here, send in the colonists'.

Honestly speaking, what tabs are ones you look at for a colony in general? Main economy tab and mining are probably the two I care about for most colonies, the others are pretty much only if there's a population, which if I'm not planning a population but find a ruin, could (and did) result in a populated colony where I don't want one right then, or a place being tagged wrong from the AI.

Hell, having templates for colony types could help with automation, because you can set as an example from my current game an automine colony template as needing 100 automines and 5 mass drivers delivered and have a cargo fleet set to automatically do those orders as a standing order.  You tell the game you want to colonise some asteroid, tell it that the rock is an automine and if there's available automines/mass drivers the fleet with standing orders will deliver, or it could even set a construction queue to the nearest populated colony and have those buildings reserved.

[nuclearslurpee]

Honestly speaking, what tabs are ones you look at for a colony in general? Main economy tab and mining are probably the two I care about for most colonies, the others are pretty much only if there's a population, which if I'm not planning a population but find a ruin, could (and did) result in a populated colony where I don't want one right then, or a place being tagged wrong from the AI.

Admittedly, putting the button somewhere more obvious such as the Summary tab would probably be a good idea.

[Droll]

Maybe a way to do STO missile combat is to treat formations with missile weapons like MFCs in combat as opposed to individual missile STO units. This would allow a player to target their STO weapons like they would with a ship while also creating useful grouping for STO missiles to prevent UI clutter/micro. (literally organizing missiles into batteries via the existing ground OOB system)

Its not without problems though - multiple types of missile launchers in the formation can complicate things (so a formation has an MFC for each missile type it has? Idk if that's a good solution)
                                               - this does nothing for the magazine issues.

The only idea I have for the magazine problem is to just assign and use missiles in the planetary stockpile and maybe create missile STO as a separate component under static type units whose tonnage/reload speed can vary based on magazine feed efficiency technologies - kinda like how the BFC quality of beam STOs is determined through normal BFC tech.

[Garfunkel]

Maybe a way to do STO missile combat is to treat formations with missile weapons like MFCs in combat as opposed to individual missile STO units. This would allow a player to target their STO weapons like they would with a ship while also creating useful grouping for STO missiles to prevent UI clutter/micro. (literally organizing missiles into batteries via the existing ground OOB system)

Its not without problems though - multiple types of missile launchers in the formation can complicate things (so a formation has an MFC for each missile type it has? Idk if that's a good solution)
                                               - this does nothing for the magazine issues.

The only idea I have for the magazine problem is to just assign and use missiles in the planetary stockpile and maybe create missile STO as a separate component under static type units whose tonnage/reload speed can vary based on magazine feed efficiency technologies - kinda like how the BFC quality of beam STOs is determined through normal BFC tech.

4 new modules for ground units:

1. Active Sensor
2. Missile Fire Control
3. Missile Launcher
4. Magazine

This actually matches well with the real-world - the notorious Russian S-300 system, for example, has different vehicles for different roles, it's not a single thing handles all because of the size and complexity of the systems. And that's just a Surface-to-Air missile, not a Surface-to-Space missile.

The AS and MFC parts could automatically draw their values from racial tech levels like STO units do, with the addition that player could type in a resolution the way we put in HQ value. Then the launcher module is just a single box of size X as determined by the player and the magazine module is X * Y in tons based on player input.

So an SSM formation would have at least four different units in it. This would be more complex than what STO formations are and of course, I have no idea how the code under the hood works if it's actually impossible to have the hooks to missiles as well as how to handle loadouts without turning the SSM unit/element/formation into a fake-ship at which point it becomes a PDC again which we don't want.

[Droll]

Maybe a way to do STO missile combat is to treat formations with missile weapons like MFCs in combat as opposed to individual missile STO units. This would allow a player to target their STO weapons like they would with a ship while also creating useful grouping for STO missiles to prevent UI clutter/micro. (literally organizing missiles into batteries via the existing ground OOB system)

Its not without problems though - multiple types of missile launchers in the formation can complicate things (so a formation has an MFC for each missile type it has? Idk if that's a good solution)
                                               - this does nothing for the magazine issues.

The only idea I have for the magazine problem is to just assign and use missiles in the planetary stockpile and maybe create missile STO as a separate component under static type units whose tonnage/reload speed can vary based on magazine feed efficiency technologies - kinda like how the BFC quality of beam STOs is determined through normal BFC tech.

4 new modules for ground units:

1. Active Sensor
2. Missile Fire Control
3. Missile Launcher
4. Magazine

This actually matches well with the real-world - the notorious Russian S-300 system, for example, has different vehicles for different roles, it's not a single thing handles all because of the size and complexity of the systems. And that's just a Surface-to-Air missile, not a Surface-to-Space missile.

The AS and MFC parts could automatically draw their values from racial tech levels like STO units do, with the addition that player could type in a resolution the way we put in HQ value. Then the launcher module is just a single box of size X as determined by the player and the magazine module is X * Y in tons based on player input.

So an SSM formation would have at least four different units in it. This would be more complex than what STO formations are and of course, I have no idea how the code under the hood works if it's actually impossible to have the hooks to missiles as well as how to handle loadouts without turning the SSM unit/element/formation into a fake-ship at which point it becomes a PDC again which we don't want.

This is great as it allows one greater customization over the overall missile STO system.
Magazine components could simply draw missiles from the planetary stockpile at a rate that depends on ammo feed efficiency. I think it would be easiest to add their magazine capacity to the formation that they are attached to though (or maybe their parent formation so you can have an ammo formation and a launcher formation).
This would also mean that like ships an M-STO formation would need to have a missile loadout option so the player can choose what missiles are loaded.

Some level of bespokeness/shipyness is unavoidable with M-STOs because they are fundamentally different that B-STOs in that they fire a projectile that is both strategically and tactically tracked. They just behave way differently. I think however that it is important that stuff like missile loadouts and magazine sizes remain consistent with what is going on with ships.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

Some level of bespokeness/shipyness is unavoidable with M-STOs...

Unfortunately, this is why old-style PDCs were removed in the first place.

[Droll]

Some level of bespokeness/shipyness is unavoidable with M-STOs...

Unfortunately, this is why old-style PDCs were removed in the first place.

PDCs were removed because they were literally ships with special rules - you could design a ship with no engines and it would literally be a PDC -5 armor.
Missile mechanics have to be same across ships and M-STOs because it wouldn't make sense for there to be a mechanical difference between a missile launched from the ground and from space.

What I am saying here is that there is common ground between M-STOs and missile ships - the missiles. With new ground mechanics M-STOs can be made so that they arent just ships with +5 armor and no engines, avoiding the pointlessness of PDCs while also not causing mechanical inconsistency.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

My understanding was that the shipyness caused actual bugs and code smell problems, not just an annoying "this is inconsistent" issue. But that's all second hand; I've never seen Steve's actual take.

Certainly, the new ground force system would need dramatic under the hood AND user facing changes to support missiles.

[Droll]

I would like the ability to filter out CMCs both in the misc tab when using SM to teleport fleets and the commander assignment menu when im trying to find my colony amongst a swarm of CMCs I've no interesting in putting people on.

[db48x]

I suggest that a few unobtrusive hint messages be added to various situations in the game.

Just to give a single concrete suggestion, perhaps instead of saying "Orders Completed  DD Sword of Retribution 002 has completed orders.", it could says "Orders Completed  DD Sword of Retribution 002 has completed orders, but there was insufficient fuel in the tanker to fully refuel. Or, indeed, for it to actually take on any fuel at all.".

[83athom]

Something to go along with the carrier/fighter automatic assignment change; Give carriers an order that lets them "Resupply (Parasites) to Template Levels".

Secondly; The option to make multiple "loadouts" for carriers and missile armed ships that they will try to resupply to instead of doing it manually if you want to carry something else for a specific mission.

[xenoscepter]

 - I'd like to request a "Status Report" order, in response to these replies:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12151.msg144548#msg144548

&

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12151.msg144555#msg144555

[vorpal+5]

For Christmas    , a super minor request, to help find faster commanders. When you select a ship in the Commander Window, have the commander selected (if you don't always want this behavior, just add a checkbox to enable the option).

Because right now finding the commander of a ship, when you want to switch allocations is rather convoluted.

[Droll]

For Christmas    , a super minor request, to help find faster commanders. When you select a ship in the Commander Window, have the commander selected (if you don't always want this behavior, just add a checkbox to enable the option).

Because right now finding the commander of a ship, when you want to switch allocations is rather convoluted.

To add to the commander menu theme - right now when you open the commander menu, the bottom right section of the menu where you filter search through commanders by default is set to filter from lowest naval officer rank to highest. This causes problems with loading times later both when assigning commanders and when opening the commander menu (I currently have 4k officers in my game across all branches) as the filtered search refreshes the whole thing every time.