Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[papent]

yes, this is excellent
can i perhaps add it to my db?

Unfortunately my proposed system will not do anything at this time as there is no way to have additional components that create officer positions to ships via DB editing.

[nuclearslurpee]

If we are willing to accept no actual bonus (or malus), it would be neat if Steve exposed a variable to the Misc. Component creation allowing officer assignment based on X skill. This would probably mean some extra work under the hood (exposing Misc. Components at the officers window, adding Misc. Components to the auto-assignment logic) but it would satisfy a lot of roleplay needs without upsetting game balance in any way (as gaining benefits would make Misc. Component-stacking a meta exploit).

[papent]

If we are willing to accept no actual bonus (or malus), it would be neat if Steve exposed a variable to the Misc. Component creation allowing officer assignment based on X skill. This would probably mean some extra work under the hood (exposing Misc. Components at the officers window, adding Misc. Components to the auto-assignment logic) but it would satisfy a lot of roleplay needs without upsetting game balance in any way (as gaining benefits would make Misc. Component-stacking a meta exploit).

If somebody is willing to build a training station filled with Additional Officer Stations to increase officer stats on a yearly basis why not allow?

 
Benefit of Proposal:

• It allows an user to specialize/train their officer corps in what is important to that civilization without depending on the luck of the dice/RNG and is immersive at the same time.

Cons of Proposal:

• Programing time and auto assignment implementation.
• Figure out the correct cost/minerals/HS formula/number 
• Let's discuss and figure out the rest.

[nuclearslurpee]

If somebody is willing to build a training station filled with Additional Officer Stations to increase officer stats on a yearly basis why not allow?

I am thinking more of tricks like putting a bunch of Tactical Officer desks to stack tactical skill and cheese weapon accuracy, or stacking a bunch of mining/terraforming desks to make uber-miners/harvesters/terraformers, and so on. Notably, this shifts the "meta" balance (as little as this term means for Aurora) towards big ships which can stack a lot of officer bonuses, and people already complain enough about big ships being too favored and I'd prefer not to introduce changes which push the decision about ship size further away from the region of "interesting decisions". There is also in the latter example the potential to shift the economic balance, and I know Steve has said he prefers to keep an economic balance where mineral scarcity is a motivating problem in the gameplay loop, so that's one we want to be particularly careful with even if Aurora is a single-player game.

Of course there are ways to deal with this, e.g., programming a limitation to one desk of each type, but at that point we might as well ask to just add hardcoded command components for every skill, which gets suggested quite often already.

[papent]

The consensus of suggestions I'm reading here is in favor of no benefit to the vessel itself but rather improving the specified selection skill of the assigned officer.

Thoughts on that?

[nuclearslurpee]

The consensus of suggestions I'm reading here is in favor of no benefit to the vessel itself but rather improving the specified selection skill of the assigned officer.

Thoughts on that?

I'd probably want a minimum size requirement to activate that mechanic (50 tons/1 HS) but otherwise I don't think that's a problem. Officers already skill-up even if unassigned so this is just paying a premium to accelerate that by a bit. As long as the bonus is not too large and is limited to a single skill it shouldn't be extremely exploitable, obviously in the long term (t -> infty) it is clearly optimal but in the immediate term it is an expenditure of resources that could be used for more immediate impact.

[Norm49]

Having a tab were we can see all event type and edit there colour in the log so we can edit it before a actual event happen. For example if i want to edit the back colour for a ship out of fuel warning i need a ship to actually run out of fuel before i can edit it. With this tab i could edit the colour at any time.

[AbsolutelyNoFires]

1.  When refiting ships at a SY, the "Refit details" gives a count of components needed to complete a refit.  This screen could do with a column showing how many components are in the planetary stockpile.

2.  When a troop transport is loading troops from a planet with lots of different types, the list is very cluttered, and the "2nd Surveyor Team" comes below the "21st" through "29th Archaeology Team".  The list presentation in "GU / Stockpile" is a lot better to navigate, because the unit's short designation is prefixed.

3.  Not sure if you consider it cheating, but maybe an indicator for whether or not I should "Disassemble" a looted alien part.  Perhaps an indicator for parts which I've already disassembled and learned nothing.

4.  I would get a lot of use out of a way to push a tech to the top of the research queue without cancelling and reapplying the whole backlog.

5.  Likewise, a way to push new industrial tasks to the top of the queue, without pushing the existing tasks down first.  And the same for GF too I guess,

6.  I don't think there's currently a way to bulk-apply STO targetting settings, which leads to a lot of clicking when setting up a new batch.

7.  If a task group has only one ship, then the "Ship Combat" tab could be that ship's, removing the need to click the "+" then the ship.

8.  Add controls for monthly vs yearly view to the "Mining" screen - like in the "Wealth/Trade" tab. 

9.  When giving a task group orders, using an "Order Template" removes the existing order queue.  Instead, the template set should be applied after the existing queue with an error if the first system of the template doesn't match the last order in the queue. 

10.  The default order for double-clicking on a location is currently the same for every type of ship.  It would save some clicks for the default order to dependant on ship type (using the same logic as auto-assignment of staff).

11.  It can take around a decade to produce 10 kilotons of static, beam-armed STO ground forces.  Even when the beam components are sitting around in the planetary stockpile.  Maybe there are balance reasons for STO production not to draw from the planetary stockpile - but I feel like it currently takes too long to produce STO units.

12.  Systems I discover get a name from the theme, but if I don't like the name, I pick another.  However, each new system from then on, gets the bad name.  So the name choice should be random from the theme list, instead of predetermined.

13.  Tractored ships should remember which admin command they belong to, and return to it when released.  Currently they stay in the tug's admin command.

14.  Say I have a task group in Earth orbit.  If I order them to enter overhaul, I'll get an interruption after 5s to confirm their order to enter overhaul is completed.  I feel like I ought not to get the interruption for completion of the entering overhaul order, but then again I can see how it would be helpful to know that a group which has travelled far to enter overhaul has arrived.

15.  Currently the ordering of the "History" tab of a task group shows the earliest dates first, and I have to scroll down to the newest dates.  Because my main usage of this tab is a reminder of what these ships are up to, it would save clicks if this ordering was reversed so the most recent dates are on top.

[nuclearslurpee]

Yes more QoL please.

Regarding #11, you can work around this by splitting your STO formation into smaller batteries and building them separately, then combining them once all are built. Not ideal but helps with the build time problem. Really the long-term solution should be changing ground forces training to be the same as every other factory type, you get the same total BP either way so it is not a huge change IMO.

Special support for #12, and the option to use a name theme even in Real Stars games as sometimes I like the system generation of Real Stars but want thematic names instead of Gliese 18264182635217.

[Vandermeer]

Talking about Qol, there is one thing that I recently needed:

Information about the colony body directly in the colony window.
I run two different kinds of strip mining fleets, - one with asteroid miners, one with a holds full of automines. The second one supports by collecting all high access but low amount (10-100k) resource fields that aren't accessible to the asteroid miners because of high diameter. To check for their next target, I constantly have to switch between the system and colony window to cross compare information about my marked/remembered mining site targets, so I don't accidentally send the wrong fleet to the wrong colony.
I can currently circumvent this by putting a note for me into the colony name itself, but I think it would generally be a nice touch if most body information were to be more prominent in the colony window - even if just for RP fluff. ...The terraforming tab has a whole third of it completely empty, where it would fit both spatially and thematically.*winkwink *fudgenudge

Edit: I just realized the body diameter can actually be found on the environment tab already, albeit in unexpected place, but nonetheless. Then that only leaves RP data, which is not really Qol anymore I guess.

[Jorgen_CAB]

QoL for me would be to go from the Galaxy map directly to the tactical map.

It is generally easier to navigate through the Glaxay map than the list in the tactical map.

Make it so if hold down shift and double click on a system the tactical map change to that system.

[wedgebert]

4.  I would get a lot of use out of a way to push a tech to the top of the research queue without cancelling and reapplying the whole backlog.

What I think would be helpful is if there was the concept of something like a Research Institute or Research Agency or something. Instead of assigning projects and labs to scientists, you assign them both to the Research Institute (RI from here on). Projects would be in a queue like the production queue (except no percentage allocation) where they can be moved up/down and paused.

Then you'd assign scientists to the RI. One of those scientists would do the research, any others would just be there in case the primary scientist died or retired.

This would both let you mess with research order without having to remove everything to pick a new priority as well as avoiding the queue being clear on loss of a scientist.


More advanced version

Same as above with two changes

1. You can set the priority of projects like your production queues and the research points would be allocated accordingly
2. You can assign multiple active scientists and a focus (like Logistics). It would then rank the scientists by their research bonus in the specialty assigning labs until either are all allocated or there are no scientists left.

For example, if you have 30 labs and three scientists: A 25%/5 labs, 10%/20 labs, 0%/ 10 labs and 100 RP per lab, you'd get 5*100*1.25 + 20*100*1.1 + 5*100*1.0 RP, or 625+2200+500 = 3325 total RP.

Maybe to balance things, have some sort of penalty for multiple scientists so you can't go crazy. Maybe only the best scientist gets the specialization bonus and everyone else uses their base bonuses.

[YABG]

11.  It can take around a decade to produce 10 kilotons of static, beam-armed STO ground forces.  Even when the beam components are sitting around in the planetary stockpile.  Maybe there are balance reasons for STO production not to draw from the planetary stockpile - but I feel like it currently takes too long to produce STO units.

This would be cool also because you could repurpose obsolete/salvaged weapons for orbital defence. A lot of coastal defence guns (to my knowledge) were repurposed ship guns that nations couldn't build hulls for.

[serger]

Medal condition of achieving 30% and 50% levels for selected bonus, which adds 2 additional features:
1. Story-wise - filling officers with planks (if you are ready and eager to see many medals) without too much micro.
2. Decision-wise - a tool to manage specialists career growth (for example - slow down Fighter Combat and Engeneer specialists in their fighter pilot and engeneer roles, while boosting Reaction for your beam-heavy fleets).

[M_Gargantua]

Maybe to balance things, have some sort of penalty for multiple scientists so you can't go crazy.  Maybe only the best scientist gets the specialization bonus and everyone else uses their base bonuses.

I would really love this as a filler for all my scientists.  It feels weird that i've got dozens of useful minds but can only use a small number at any given time.

Maybe like a 1% bonus for each scientist assigned outside of their specialty, and a 3% bonus for each one in specialty.  So you'd have like a 15% project lead, 3 specialists, and 2 generalists, would be 15% + 9% + 2% = 26% total research bonus.

Sure you can end up cheesing it at the end if you have 100's of scientists, but that is rare and they aren't immortal.  Maybe a LUT with diminishing returns after the initial few.