Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Scandinavian]

For the sake of both verisimilitude and ease of coding, the civvies could also operate their own jump tenders and/or jump-capable freighters.

A jump tender could get, say, 1 Wealth per transit per direction from the transiting civvie, paid by the line owning the transiting vessel (for simplicity this would be untaxed - the tax can be deemed to be rolled into the transport tax at the destination).

That would also give a natural trade-off for the civvie lines between jump-capable vessels vs. when it makes sense to build a jump tender vs. when it makes sense to build non-jump-capable vessels and pay the transit fee. The AI doesn't have to be sophisticated enough to make that trade intelligently, but if at some future date Steve wants to improve the trading AI it would have some mechanical hookups to attach it to.

Since civvies anyway only go between populated colonies, there's only limited risk of them wandering off into deep space and getting eaten by the kraken.

(But eventually there could be private survey vessels, private explorers, etc. There could even be a mechanism for selling exploration/exploitation charters to the civvies, granting monopolies, denying specific systems/sectors to civvie exploration, granting privileges to specific foreign companies that exceed the privileges enjoyed by that empire's state vessels, or imposing extraterritorial privileges as a war concession.)

[Indefatigable]

An option to suppress retirement and death notifications for unassigned personnel.

Same request bump

[nuclearslurpee]

I would like to request that a new standing order be added named "Escort convoy" or similar.

The idea of this is to automate assigning escort ships or squadrons to commercial and/or civilian traffic in systems. In particular, I think this would help to eliminate some of the more tedious gameplay related to a certain recently-added spoiler race, which pushes the game in a direction where the options are micromanagement or suffering significant losses, which I don't think is very healthy and is likely to make said spoiler race unpopular with many players.

A fleet with the Escort standing order will, if not presently escorting anything, look for an active fleet of commercial or civilian ships in the system. If an appropriate target fleet is found, the Escorting fleet will execute a Follow order targeted on that fleet until it either leaves the system or is no longer active.

An "active fleet" of commercial or civilian ships meets the following criteria:

• No military ships in the fleet (to avoid escorting a fleet which already has an escort, presumably).
• Must have an active order (to avoid escorting a fleet which is just sitting idle in planetary orbit).
• If an escorted fleet no longer meets these criteria, the Escorting fleet will cease escorting and seek a new target - if none is found, the Escort fleet should probably return to a population in-system instead of waiting around in empty space, if available (or a jump point? Or maybe waiting around in empty space is okay in practice?).
• If an escorted fleet leaves the system via jump point, the Escorting fleet does not follow them and seeks a new target.

These criteria prevent an Escort fleet from "escorting" idle ships in orbit and fuel harvesters (which are presumably nearly permanently positioned and should have a dedicated guard force, if any), but will allow escorting of a stabilization ship in addition to more traditional commercial or civilian shipping traffic.

It may be helpful to also add a conditional order, such that if a fleet has no Escort target they can return to a designated position - population, jump point, refuel hub, etc.

[Scandinavian]

• If an escorted fleet no longer meets these criteria, the Escorting fleet will cease escorting and seek a new target - if none is found, the Escort fleet should probably return to a population in-system instead of waiting around in empty space, if available (or a jump point? Or maybe waiting around in empty space is okay in practice?).

It's fine that the fleet hangs around in space waiting for a new pickup - it'll typically be near a jump point where shipping will presumably enter the system at some point.

Also, it allows the use of the secondary default order slot for "move to nearest waypoint" or "move to nearest settlement" or "move for refueling", depending on which you want it to do. (As opposed to locking in a specific behavior in the escort order).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I would like to request that a new standing order be added named "Escort convoy" or similar.

The idea of this is to automate assigning escort ships or squadrons to commercial and/or civilian traffic in systems. In particular, I think this would help to eliminate some of the more tedious gameplay related to a certain recently-added spoiler race, which pushes the game in a direction where the options are micromanagement or suffering significant losses, which I don't think is very healthy and is likely to make said spoiler race unpopular with many players.

A fleet with the Escort standing order will, if not presently escorting anything, look for an active fleet of commercial or civilian ships in the system. If an appropriate target fleet is found, the Escorting fleet will execute a Follow order targeted on that fleet until it either leaves the system or is no longer active.

An "active fleet" of commercial or civilian ships meets the following criteria:

• No military ships in the fleet (to avoid escorting a fleet which already has an escort, presumably).
• Must have an active order (to avoid escorting a fleet which is just sitting idle in planetary orbit).
• If an escorted fleet no longer meets these criteria, the Escorting fleet will cease escorting and seek a new target - if none is found, the Escort fleet should probably return to a population in-system instead of waiting around in empty space, if available (or a jump point? Or maybe waiting around in empty space is okay in practice?).
• If an escorted fleet leaves the system via jump point, the Escorting fleet does not follow them and seeks a new target.

These criteria prevent an Escort fleet from "escorting" idle ships in orbit and fuel harvesters (which are presumably nearly permanently positioned and should have a dedicated guard force, if any), but will allow escorting of a stabilization ship in addition to more traditional commercial or civilian shipping traffic.

It may be helpful to also add a conditional order, such that if a fleet has no Escort target they can return to a designated position - population, jump point, refuel hub, etc.

I like the idea in principle, but there are some additional complexities. If there are different fleets available to escort, how does the escort determine which one to follow? Largest by tonnage, largest by number of ships, total cost, distance, some combination of the above or perhaps only potential fleets within a certain distance. Maybe the fleet that it could escort for the greatest time. How do those criteria change if two or more escorts are available - should Escort B become available after Escort A and Escort A is still heading toward a fleet closer to Escort B, does Escort B take over and Escort A looks for a new assignment (to prevent escorts far apart ending up moving to fleets close to the other one due to timing). Probably a few other considerations once I think through it. Also, those criteria probably change if there is a hostile ship present, plus the escort would have to ignore ships that would leave the system before it could join them, which means checking that for every fleet.

[nuclearslurpee]

I like the idea in principle, but there are some additional complexities. If there are different fleets available to escort, how does the escort determine which one to follow? Largest by tonnage, largest by number of ships, total cost, distance, some combination of the above or perhaps only potential fleets within a certain distance. Maybe the fleet that it could escort for the greatest time.

I would probably keep it simple, say: first, select the nearest escortable fleet as target, and if multiple fleets are available sort by tonnage or cost, either one makes sense. As long as it is simple and predictable, it can be used for automation by players which I think is the most important outcome.

How do those criteria change if two or more escorts are available - should Escort B become available after Escort A and Escort A is still heading toward a fleet closer to Escort B, does Escort B take over and Escort A looks for a new assignment (to prevent escorts far apart ending up moving to fleets close to the other one due to timing). Probably a few other considerations once I think through it.

I would probably just go by the "default" order which I think is based on fleet creation date. This should be fine as I don't think players would be creating escort groups of vastly different sizes or composition, and if the player does want to optimize the match between escorts and targets then micromanagement is an option, which is similar as a principle to most areas in Aurora I think.

Also, those criteria probably change if there is a hostile ship present, plus the escort would have to ignore ships that would leave the system before it could join them, which means checking that for every fleet.

Probably there can be a priority level to sort by which commercial fleets are closest to hostiles, if any are present, and if not the logic proceeds as above.

[Polestar]

One possible coding of the automatic escort role:

All purely-civilian fleets in the system are sorted by total build+cargo cost. Sorting happens each time a fleet is created or destroyed, appears in or disappears from the system, arrives at a body or another fleet (move to, join - both count), or begins loading or unloading a cargo capable of being valued, or begins a move order. This is the list of "escortables". As you will appreciate, sorting will need to be reasonably efficient (but, honestly, modern code on non-crap hardware will have no issues).

All escortables are marked eligible or ineligible.
Escortables orbiting a body, even one with military protection, do not, for this reason alone, lose their eligibility. This is advisable for several reasons, of which one is the need not to yank escorts away from valuable fleets only temporarily docked and which will immediately thereafter venture back into dangerous space.
Instead, escortables lose their eligibility if they are docked at such a body or in the same place as such a fleet, and have no follow-up movement orders.

The list of escortables is not re-sorted when ships are added to or taken away from a fleet, but the presence of military ships within a fleet at the time of a re-sort marks it as ineligible until the next re-sort.

All fleets in the system with unfulfilled auto-escort missions are scanned each time the list of escortables is sorted. They are sorted by military power (the calculation of which is not specified here). In order from highest to lowest power, they scan the escortable list, weighting by travel time and escortable value, picking the escortable with highest weight.
(Calculation of opportunities to "swap jobs" is omitted here.)

What does travel time mean? Any escortable has a present position, an estimated time before it moves (possibly zero), and a calculable path of its next expected movement. The math problem here is to draw an intercept line from the present position of the potential escort, to the future position of the escortable fleet at some future time. I may be mistaken, but I think Aurora already knows how to do this(?). Time to intercept is calculated. If greater than the time that the next movement order completes, this escortable fleet is not a suitable target for escorting by this escort. If the calculated distance to intercept, or the distance to the next destination, is greater than some percentage of the escort's remaining fuel range, this potential escortable is likewise ignored.
Otherwise, intercept time acts as a reduction of the value of choosing this particular escortable.
 
A fleet actively escorting will stop doing so for one of several reasons:
The escortable leaves the system, or is destroyed.
The escortable arrives at a destination, and some other escortable has sufficiently higher weighted escort value (here also, a "swap jobs" code would be groovy).
The escortable now has one or more military ships included.
Or, for whatever other reason, it is removed from the list of escortables.
 
Any fleet with an auto-escort mission is marked as being in one or more of several states:
1. Currently escorting.
2. Moving to intercept next escortable.
3. Refueling, and so forth (auto-fuel, auto-supply, auto-sustain-self).
4. No eligible escortables.
5. No eligible escortables within range.
5. Unable to escort (lacking fuel, supplies, movement capability, missiles, etc.).
6. Unable to escort (needs repair, and cannot move to a repair yard).
 
Again, several of these states are non-exclusive.

Note that some of this code would be of great benefit to a fleet marked as a response force, looking for battles to auto-respond to. Or, if such code already exists, then it can be profitably generalised to auto-escort missions.

[chrislocke2000]

I think a big part of the issues with escorts is the sheer number of individual commercial vessels that build over time. Would a better approach be for commercial ships to form task groups of their own so as to significantly reduce the number of journeys that players are trying to cover.

Otherwise just having an order that allows ships to follow through a warp point would be great. 

[Garfunkel]

If there is no convoy system for civilians, then there is no point in creating an escort system.

[Scandinavian]

What about inverting it, so you get the ability to designate an escort task force, and then the merchies follow it around? So you give an order of Escort Fleet > [select planet or jump point from list] > [select planet or jump point from list]. Merchies who are waiting to depart from one or the other planet would see that there is an active convoy escort in the system and hang around and wait for an escort to reach them. Then they would follow the escort.

If we want to get fancy about it, we can let the escort match speed to the slowest following merchie, but it's probably an acceptable level of micro to set the escort speed manually.

[Coleslaw]

Just realized that after rescuing survivors from life pods and selecting the Unload Survivors fleet order at a population, any commanders you rescued do not get unloaded and remain on the vessel. Would it be possible for the Unload Survivors order to also include any officers without assignments onboard the unloading vessel? Or, if they must be separated for whatever reason, an "Unload Unassigned Officers" order for any ship with officers onboard that do not have an assignment?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

If there is no convoy system for civilians, then there is no point in creating an escort system.

Using the above as a suggestion, maybe a simpler option is the creation of Convoy Waypoints (CW). This is currently thinking out loud, not a final draft.

• A CW would have a destination of either a population or a jump point in the same system, a required tonnage of commercial shipping and a required tonnage of escorts. Perhaps also there could be an acceptable speed range so that new ships don't get slowed down too much by obsolete ones.
• Any qualifying commercial shipping with the same destination for their current order will instead move to the nearest qualifying CW, if that CW is closer than their destination.
• Any military fleets without orders that are flagged as an escort fleet will move to the nearest CW that requires additional escort tonnage (taking account of any ships en route).
• Once everything is assembled, the escorts get formed into a new fleet with a speed equal to the slowest of the commercial ships, flagged as an active convoy escort fleet and given the destination specified by the waypoint.
• The commercial fleets are flagged as being escorted.
• An 'escorted fleet' will ignore its current orders and follow the associated escorts.
• Once the escort fleet reaches its destination, all the associated 'escorted fleets' are unflagged. As they are at their destination, they will return to following their normal orders.
• This allows escorts to move back and forth within each system, probably between pairs of Convoy Waypoints, while the commercial ships are handed off to escorts in the next system if required
• It also means that commercial ships with different final destinations can share the same escorts for parts of their journey
• If the escorts are removed mid-journey (perhaps to engage raiders), the commercial shipping will go back to step 2.
• Conditional Orders would be checked before checking escorts for moving to waypoints to ensure they don't run out of fuel/MSP

[Garfunkel]

Well now, looks like we have the beginnings of an excellent convoy system! This will be a great blessing for us who play multi-faction games too as civilian shipping lines can get awfully messy otherwise.

[Droll]

If there is no convoy system for civilians, then there is no point in creating an escort system.

Using the above as a suggestion, maybe a simpler option is the creation of Convoy Waypoints (CW). This is currently thinking out loud, not a final draft.

• A CW would have a destination of either a population or a jump point in the same system, a required tonnage of commercial shipping and a required tonnage of escorts. Perhaps also there could be an acceptable speed range so that new ships don't get slowed down too much by obsolete ones.
• Any qualifying commercial shipping with the same destination for their current order will instead move to the nearest qualifying CW, if that CW is closer than their destination.
• Any military fleets without orders that are flagged as an escort fleet will move to the nearest CW that requires additional escort tonnage (taking account of any ships en route).
• Once everything is assembled, the escorts get formed into a new fleet with a speed equal to the slowest of the commercial ships, flagged as an active convoy escort fleet and given the destination specified by the waypoint.
• The commercial fleets are flagged as being escorted.
• An 'escorted fleet' will ignore its current orders and follow the associated escorts.
• Once the escort fleet reaches its destination, all the associated 'escorted fleets' are unflagged. As they are at their destination, they will return to following their normal orders.
• This allows escorts to move back and forth within each system, probably between pairs of Convoy Waypoints, while the commercial ships are handed off to escorts in the next system if required
• It also means that commercial ships with different final destinations can share the same escorts for parts of their journey
• If the escorts are removed mid-journey (perhaps to engage raiders), the commercial shipping will go back to step 2.
• Conditional Orders would be checked before checking escorts for moving to waypoints to ensure they don't run out of fuel/MSP

Just to be clear, does "commercial shipping" here include both state commercial and civilian commercial or just the latter?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

If there is no convoy system for civilians, then there is no point in creating an escort system.

Using the above as a suggestion, maybe a simpler option is the creation of Convoy Waypoints (CW). This is currently thinking out loud, not a final draft.

• A CW would have a destination of either a population or a jump point in the same system, a required tonnage of commercial shipping and a required tonnage of escorts. Perhaps also there could be an acceptable speed range so that new ships don't get slowed down too much by obsolete ones.
• Any qualifying commercial shipping with the same destination for their current order will instead move to the nearest qualifying CW, if that CW is closer than their destination.
• Any military fleets without orders that are flagged as an escort fleet will move to the nearest CW that requires additional escort tonnage (taking account of any ships en route).
• Once everything is assembled, the escorts get formed into a new fleet with a speed equal to the slowest of the commercial ships, flagged as an active convoy escort fleet and given the destination specified by the waypoint.
• The commercial fleets are flagged as being escorted.
• An 'escorted fleet' will ignore its current orders and follow the associated escorts.
• Once the escort fleet reaches its destination, all the associated 'escorted fleets' are unflagged. As they are at their destination, they will return to following their normal orders.
• This allows escorts to move back and forth within each system, probably between pairs of Convoy Waypoints, while the commercial ships are handed off to escorts in the next system if required
• It also means that commercial ships with different final destinations can share the same escorts for parts of their journey
• If the escorts are removed mid-journey (perhaps to engage raiders), the commercial shipping will go back to step 2.
• Conditional Orders would be checked before checking escorts for moving to waypoints to ensure they don't run out of fuel/MSP

Just to be clear, does "commercial shipping" here include both state commercial and civilian commercial or just the latter?

This is just speculation at the moment, not a hard proposal. It would definitely include all civilians. Once the mechanics are implemented, state commercial fleets could be flagged to act the same way very easily.