Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[nuclearslurpee]

With all the improvements coming to missiles in the next version, could we also get missile series? So that one doesn't have to destroy all ammo or tediously make partial reloads?

Seconded!

[kilo]

With all the upcoming changes to missiles, it would be nice to get passive missiles and MFCs. This would give fleets another stealth option. At the moment, you have to either give your position away when you intend to launch or bring a fighter with an active sensor, Both things give away your intention minutes to hours before your missiles strike.

Additionally, I was thinking about alternative missile fuels. What we have right now is a regular liquid fuel engine only. What might be an interesting addition is solid and hybrid rocket motors. They do have a significantly worse fuel efficiency, aka Engine power hours per fuel mass, but they are easier to manufacture and store. In terms of Aurora that could be translated into a tradeoff between range & speed vs build cost and resource requirements for the engines. Hybrid motors would require less Gallicite and fuel and solids would require none at all, but they would burn maybe Tritanium.

[Akhillis]

It would be nice if the ship and admin command auto-assignment systems could be merged.

From my understanding, atm the two run entirely separately and the lowest priority admin command will take precedence over the high priority ship command. Usually this is desirable, but sometimes I'd like to be able to set the captaincy for my shiny new battleships to a higher priority than the admin command controlling a pair of anti-raider corvettes in a backwater mining colony.

[Jorgen_CAB]

With all the upcoming changes to missiles, it would be nice to get passive missiles and MFCs. This would give fleets another stealth option. At the moment, you have to either give your position away when you intend to launch or bring a fighter with an active sensor, Both things give away your intention minutes to hours before your missiles strike.

Additionally, I was thinking about alternative missile fuels. What we have right now is a regular liquid fuel engine only. What might be an interesting addition is solid and hybrid rocket motors. They do have a significantly worse fuel efficiency, aka Engine power hours per fuel mass, but they are easier to manufacture and store. In terms of Aurora that could be translated into a tradeoff between range & speed vs build cost and resource requirements for the engines. Hybrid motors would require less Gallicite and fuel and solids would require none at all, but they would burn maybe Tritanium.

The game probably should emulate real world fire controls more accurately in general... which means that each fire control have capacity of how many missiles they can control and how many targets they can track. This would also be needed if we could guide missiles to targets without having an active lock on them. You also would need the missile itself to have either an active or passive ability to lock onto and track target in the terminal phase.

Missiles should gain accuracy bonuses from having passive and or active abilities as well as the new module for accuracy bonus.

Missiles should be able to be fired at a passively identified object... if an object somehow is lost the missile should just continue on the same path and able to require anything it detect on the way, not just stop dead in it's track. If the object is required it should then be able to require the target or even change to a new target while in flight if the missile have that ability.

There are allot of things you could do with missile combat to make it a bit more realistic.

I would also not mind if ships would need to be data linked with each other and there was limitations on the distance for sensor fusion to occur between ships, but this might be beyond what Aurora could do for complexity reasons. But it would open up more interesting uses for electronic warfare etc which are highly effective in real life.

[papent]

The game probably should emulate real world fire controls more accurately in general... which means that each fire control have capacity of how many missiles they can control and how many targets they can track. This would also be needed if we could guide missiles to targets without having an active lock on them. You also would need the missile itself to have either an active or passive ability to lock onto and track target in the terminal phase.

Missiles should gain accuracy bonuses from having passive and or active abilities as well as the new module for accuracy bonus.

Missiles should be able to be fired at a passively identified object... if an object somehow is lost the missile should just continue on the same path and able to require anything it detect on the way, not just stop dead in it's track. If the object is required it should then be able to require the target or even change to a new target while in flight if the missile have that ability.

There are allot of things you could do with missile combat to make it a bit more realistic.

I would also not mind if ships would need to be data linked with each other and there was limitations on the distance for sensor fusion to occur between ships, but this might be beyond what Aurora could do for complexity reasons. But it would open up more interesting uses for electronic warfare etc which are highly effective in real life.

Most NATO IAMD systems can track and control over 100 missiles. I doubt that would be a limit in future systems, after all original AEGIS was capable of this over 40 years ago.

The ability to retarget missiles was removed from aurora years ago, I doubt it would return as it still has the same issues.

Agreed on all of your other points.

[AlStar]

[...]
Missiles should be able to be fired at a passively identified object... if an object somehow is lost the missile should just continue on the same path and able to require anything it detect on the way, not just stop dead in it's track. If the object is required it should then be able to require the target or even change to a new target while in flight if the missile have that ability.
[...]

I agree with these changes. It could potentially fit well with the rework of cloaking systems that Steve has mentioned. An add-on part for your missiles that allows them to track thermal signatures would potentially allow for a stealth ship that can sneak up on its targets using nothing but sensitive passives, fire a volley of missiles, then fade back into the black.

[Ush213]

Ya i know i did a whole playthrough as a space trucker. It was great but there is higher element of micro with that playstyle. plus it got messy when i had to attach and detach for various empire operational reasons. This time around i went back to straight cargo ships and fuel haulers for a simpler life. well as simple as Aurora will allow. ha
I think this change to cargo would be good for QOL reasons to because an empty hauler going on a run will get there faster thus meaning faster moving of resources.

Sweet as, just checking you knew about that option.

I wonder where your suggestion would end though: Should tankers get faster with less fuel in the tanks? Other ships as well? Could carriers ditch their small craft to lighten up and go faster? Missiles in magazines? etc.

Well in my mind yes. That's how it is in the real world. But I have no idea how containers are programmed in Aurora so its probably a lot for effect or problem causing then its worth. It would be pretty cool to dump cargo and make a run for it when raiders show up instead of wishing the freighter hauler the best ha.

[Andrew]

No particular reason to expect ships with no cargo or empty fuel to travel at a different speed than when full.(I use speed not velocity specifically)
Newtonian/Einsteinien mechanics are not in effect, there is no accelleration and ships have no velocity so the equations learned at school and universty with mass in them bear no relationship to the activities of ships in this game. In the Newtonian aurora Steve considered at one point they would make sense, but the rocket equations which were developed to model the activity of rockets as they burn fuel are horrendous and not something you want to be carrying out multiple instances of on a normal pc.
We can explain tugs by the drive generating a field over a volume (ship displacement) and when operating without a tow creating a stronger field on the tug. So if you want to be able to dispose of empty fuel and cargo space you need to use tugs ,

[SpaceMarine]

Hello steve gonna keep this suggestion short it is right what it says on the tin, so I was doing my standing orders for my survey ships recently and i released what a pain it is to go into each one and do the exact same set of orders for 7 different fleets, what if we took the assign fleet option in the ship combat UI for fire controls and applied it to standing orders, put it in that window and hit "assign system" or assign All and it would copy paste those orders to all ships of the same class within the same system or across the galaxy. this would reduce RSI and be a QOL improvement id imagine is somewhat easy to introduce since the concept and idea as well as implementation exists elsewhere.

thanks

[nuclearslurpee]

Hello steve gonna keep this suggestion short it is right what it says on the tin, so I was doing my standing orders for my survey ships recently and i released what a pain it is to go into each one and do the exact same set of orders for 7 different fleets, what if we took the assign fleet option in the ship combat UI for fire controls and applied it to standing orders, put it in that window and hit "assign system" or assign All and it would copy paste those orders to all ships of the same class within the same system or across the galaxy. this would reduce RSI and be a QOL improvement id imagine is somewhat easy to introduce since the concept and idea as well as implementation exists elsewhere.

thanks

Seconded. This is doubly a huge problem if you try to play with survey carriers since you constantly have to redo the orders for your parasites.

It would also be nice if "Assign All" (for fire controls and standing orders) applied to all future ships of that class as well, but that would be more work so one thing at a time is good. 

[Black]

It would also be nice if "Assign All" (for fire controls and standing orders) applied to all future ships of that class as well, but that would be more work so one thing at a time is good. 

Maybe it could be set up in ship design window, same way as parasites and other things can be set for design?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Hello steve gonna keep this suggestion short it is right what it says on the tin, so I was doing my standing orders for my survey ships recently and i released what a pain it is to go into each one and do the exact same set of orders for 7 different fleets, what if we took the assign fleet option in the ship combat UI for fire controls and applied it to standing orders, put it in that window and hit "assign system" or assign All and it would copy paste those orders to all ships of the same class within the same system or across the galaxy. this would reduce RSI and be a QOL improvement id imagine is somewhat easy to introduce since the concept and idea as well as implementation exists elsewhere.

thanks

Standing orders are assigned at the fleet level, rather than the ship level, so it wouldn't work simply for ship classes. It could potentially be done for fleets that only contain that ship class.

[SpaceMarine]

in the example case above this would work fine, make it conditional to the fleets containing only the same type of ship for it to work.

[GrandNord]

I have a suggestion about mines and sensor equipped missiles, I've played around a little with them and a problem I have is that, whenever more than one enemy ship enters into the range of the missiles they all end up targeting the same ship, resulting generally in massive overkilling.  Could missiles with their own sensors be changed so that, if several ships enters their targeting range in the same tick they choose a random target instead?

[TheBawkHawk]

For default standing orders, I would love the ability to set default standing orders in the class design screen. It should(?) be fairly easy to piggyback this off of the fleet detachment mechanics. There is already a system in place to automatically rename 1-ship fleets after the ship if it is individually detached from a larger fleet, or if a fleet is split using the "divide fleet into single ships" order. Why not piggyback off of that system, and have it also set the standing orders for those 1-ship fleets to that ship's default?

This would make survey carriers incredibly easy to use. Set the standing orders of the parasites on the class screen, load them into the carrier, and then order the carrier to transit and divide fleet into single ships on the other side. You could have the parasite's secondary standing order to re-dock at their mothership, for a completely automated survey process.