Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[kilo]

Okay guys, let us get back to topic.

You can either build a civilian oiler with a fuel transfer system and place it in a convenient location closer to the systems you are interested in or start building a supply base for long time use. Both have significant advantages and disadvantages. The former is a lot cheaper and faster to set up, while the later gives you a constant foothold. It can consist of a fuel transfer station, a listening post and ground forces including STOs. Ammunition and MSP transfer can be a thing, too.

[joshuawood]

A civilian fueling ship to transfer fuel to ships in flight is literally what i'm already doing...

If you are suggesting moving it to a planet then that doesn't work because i need maintenance otherwise it's just even more micro??

The supply base i'm OBVIOUSLY working on, which is why i said i have no minerals, i need to focus on mining and expanding my other operations before focusing on exploring more.

Which for some reason you have repeated AGAIN. i've said multiple times this isn't a solution, i literally don't have the resources for making a permanent outpost.

i don't know why people are trying to give me solutions other people already have as if i'm some sort of child who hasn't thought about them when the other person said it?

The best solution to my problem in the game (for minimum micromanagement) is the one i'm already doing... on the off chance they do run out of fuel, i just refuel it... 90% of the time that's inside SOL anyway -_-

If you have arguments as to why we shouldn't have a "if <60% fuel" option in the menu, then i'm all ears! but more repeating of the same 2 solutions is just mind-numbing.

I don't see any reason it's unreasonable to suggest an "if <60% fuel" option. if you don't want to use it then...don't?

The most reasonable response so far was the "too many items in the list" which i can understand, if it wasn't only 11 items with space for more already in the UI. Still a reasonable response though even if i don't agree.

[nuclearslurpee]

If you have arguments as to why we shouldn't have a "if <60% fuel" option in the menu, then i'm all ears! but more repeating of the same 2 solutions is just mind-numbing.

I think the main "argument", which has maybe not been stated clearly, is that most folks are having a hard time imagining how "if <50% fuel" is not sufficient, which means the argument is that it's simply not necessary. Specifically:

• It's not clear how a survey ship can arrive in a system with significantly more than 50% of fuel remaining (i.e., enough to do meaningful survey work), survey until under 50%, and then not have enough to get back to base if the fuel requirement to get home is significantly less than 50%. In this case, a <50% trigger is adequate.
• It's not clear how, if a survey ship is arriving in a system with marginally more than 50% of fuel remaining, any meaningful survey work can be done. In this case, a <60% trigger (for instance) seems very pointless as it doesn't really seem to enable any useful gameplay. Although "useful gameplay" is of course subjective.

It would probably help if you could show some kind of example to visualize where these cases occur. It sounds from your posts like you're running into case (b), which is what confuses people as it doesn't seem like a lot of useful survey work could be done with such marginal amounts of fuel, but we might be misunderstanding.

In any case, it's worth noting that just because a change is (or should be, or sounds) easy, or the UI seems to have open space, doesn't make a strong argument for Steve to implement it. If Steve made every change that was "easy" and requested by someone, the game would be incredibly cluttered and user-unfriendly (well, more user-unfriendly...). So even though it does look like there is some blank space in the UI, the suggestion still requires careful consideration, and if there is not a consensus that a suggestion is necessary or useful for many or most players, it is unlikely that Steve will implement it (although not impossible, Steve does after all make his own decisions!).

[Panopticon]

I do kind of feel like more control over the fuel levels would be nice, the need for 60% or higher seems odd to me, but I don't see any reason to exclude it either. Garfunkel suggested a "fuel at x%" option that also is likely supported by the code and would solve any possible issues.

[QuakeIV]

Possible conditions where this can happen (both of which have happened to me):

• Geosurvey ship surveys secondary star or gas giant system and orbits very far away from the jump point while surveying, ship runs out of fuel on the way home and has to be rescued.
• Something (such as the presence of enemies) forces a change of route or evasive action, and the surveyor ultimatley runs out of fuel at some point and has to be rescued.

Its kindof rare but it does happen.

[GrandNord]

One thing about fighters is that you can't really easily make forward fighter bases without having to bring either vulnerable stations somewhere for maintenance, refueling and rearming, or ground facility with hundreds of thousands of workers, which isn't exactly feasible for an outpost or forward base, especially near or in enemy territory.

This makes sense for ships, as you need extensive facilities, dockyards and a lot of personnel to maintain them, but for fighters (and maybe FACs?) more limited teams of mechanics should be able to maintain and service them, no?

I was thinking maybe there could be something like static ground units that could provide maintenance, refueling and rearming for crafts smaller than 1000 or 500tons. Like that you could more easily make fighter bases than can be done now, and they would be ground side, so a lot more resilient than a station to attacks.

Edit : Maybe that should also apply to crafts that are a little bigger too? 2000-3000 tons maybe? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know much about this, but I'd expect you don't need a huge amount of facilities to maintain small patrol boats.

One added benefit would be an increase in the use of this kind of smaller patrol ships or corvettes for PPV or patrol, especially in less populated or unpopulated systems. Currently small patrol crafts are really only a flavor choice and other than RP there is no real reason to make them over bigger, 6000-10000 ships for this kind of role in term of effectiveness against actual enemies. It would be nice to have them easier and more practical to use for some jobs where you can sacrifice some combat power.

[joshuawood]

If you have arguments as to why we shouldn't have a "if <60% fuel" option in the menu, then i'm all ears! but more repeating of the same 2 solutions is just mind-numbing.

I think the main "argument", which has maybe not been stated clearly, is that most folks are having a hard time imagining how "if <50% fuel" is not sufficient, which means the argument is that it's simply not necessary. Specifically:

• It's not clear how a survey ship can arrive in a system with significantly more than 50% of fuel remaining (i.e., enough to do meaningful survey work), survey until under 50%, and then not have enough to get back to base if the fuel requirement to get home is significantly less than 50%. In this case, a <50% trigger is adequate.
• It's not clear how, if a survey ship is arriving in a system with marginally more than 50% of fuel remaining, any meaningful survey work can be done. In this case, a <60% trigger (for instance) seems very pointless as it doesn't really seem to enable any useful gameplay. Although "useful gameplay" is of course subjective.

It would probably help if you could show some kind of example to visualize where these cases occur. It sounds from your posts like you're running into case (b), which is what confuses people as it doesn't seem like a lot of useful survey work could be done with such marginal amounts of fuel, but we might be misunderstanding.

In any case, it's worth noting that just because a change is (or should be, or sounds) easy, or the UI seems to have open space, doesn't make a strong argument for Steve to implement it. If Steve made every change that was "easy" and requested by someone, the game would be incredibly cluttered and user-unfriendly (well, more user-unfriendly...). So even though it does look like there is some blank space in the UI, the suggestion still requires careful consideration, and if there is not a consensus that a suggestion is necessary or useful for many or most players, it is unlikely that Steve will implement it (although not impossible, Steve does after all make his own decisions!).

The main issue with both of these arguments is the assumption that the ship returns home instantly upon reaching exactly <50% fuel, which isn't the case all of the time, i've seen it <45% in some cases.

In my specific case that could mean it got to the system with 55% fuel remaining, meaning it has 5bkm of range left to survey, which could be almost an entire system of surveying, it gets down to <45% because of the way the time steps work in aurora, it tries to go home with the same amount of fuel it took to get to the system, except it's now on the other side of the system from surveying the points. It now tries to go home, fails and gets stuck with no fuel. i would rather it went home, refueled it's tanks to 100% and tried again, hopefully in a closer system (frequently survey ships avoid systems where one of their brothers was recently destroyed, a reasonable response)

People have mentioned other situations with geo survey ships but my experience is almost entirely with gravitational survey ships. in situations where they have the range to survey several systems and i didn't get the warning message that they couldn't find somewhere to refuel, like someone else suggested.

I would argue these edge cases are FAR more common than someone needing <10% fuel, what situations is the <10% fuel command useful? which standing orders (or otherwise) allow this to be used to great affect?

As for your comment on the ease of implementation, that is a very large part of what i would even consider suggesting here. A completely reasonable argument to any suggestion is "it's too hard to do". I wasn't making an argument for the implementation, i was pre-empting someone using that argument.

If steve doesn't want to change it and doesn't agree, fair. But saying "change the way you play" is very very different thing! especially considering the way i'm playing is working fine it just needs 5 clicks once an in game year -_-   

Wanting to save fuel to run away from something on the way home is also pretty valid IMO with raidey bois around hunting for my survey ships

[Garfunkel]

The reason why I suggested that you change the way you survey, not your entire gameplay style, is because even if Steve agrees and adds this option, it will take several months for it to happen. It would seem logical that if you cannot support your exploration ships, that that means you're at the stage where the first X of 4X, exploration, is done for a while at least while you focus on the second and third X's, namely expanding and exploiting. And then resume exploration once you have new colonies up & running. That's not gatekeeping, it's advice that will help you.

Furthermore, from your explanation on how you explore, I'm not convinced that this option would help you anyway. Sure, 60% fuel remaining might save your gravsurvey ships at the distance of 10 jumps but you would just push the frontier further and then end up back here demanding that Steve add 70% fuel option because your ships are now surveying 15 jumps away. Especially at it seems that you use the fire & forget method of surveying, ie having your survey ships use the "Move to System requiring Gravsurvey" standing order. I personally never use that command as I prefer to oversee my explorers a little more closely and I believe Nuclearslurpee does something similar, so hence our surprise that your explorers run out of fuel even with the 50% fuel conditional.

Nobody is saying that the 10% fuel conditional is important to keep, that's something you came up with yourself. And I agree, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that others do so too, that it is a pretty useless conditional now in C# Aurora. It's a leftover from the really old Aurora times when we still had separate GB and FTR engines and fuel usage of engines used a different formula. Also, nobody is saying that having a 60% fuel conditional is somehow bad, that's also something you invented for some reason. The more options, the better!

I was thinking maybe there could be something like static ground units that could provide maintenance, refueling and rearming for crafts smaller than 1000 or 500tons. Like that you could more easily make fighter bases than can be done now, and they would be ground side, so a lot more resilient than a station to attacks.

While I agree that this might be an interesting option, it flies against Steve's goal of getting rid of as many "special rules" as possible with C# Aurora. The need to protect your facilities is also a good gameplay problem for the player to solve.

However, maybe this could be something to combine with the overhaul of Ground Support Fighters, which are currently pretty much useless and desperately need an overhaul. Perhaps a new ground unit type that services them could also provide services similar to maintenance facilities but at a lower rate, so that it doesn't become easier/better to just use them instead of actual facilities, instead of having a hard tonnage limit. That would also be more 'realistic', as servicing a F-22 Raptor is a lot more challenging than servicing a bulk carrier, despite the latter being vastly more massive than the former.

One added benefit would be an increase in the use of this kind of smaller patrol ships or corvettes for PPV or patrol, especially in less populated or unpopulated systems. Currently small patrol crafts are really only a flavor choice and other than RP there is no real reason to make them over bigger, 6000-10000 ships for this kind of role in term of effectiveness against actual enemies. It would be nice to have them easier and more practical to use for some jobs where you can sacrifice some combat power.

There already exists a good reason to use smaller ships over larger ones and it is specifically maintenance. Since a maintenance facility/station can only service a limited tonnage, it can be better to have two small patrol craft rather than one large ship, especially if the ships patrol independently. Let's say your corvette is 2000 tons and your cruiser is 6000 tons. If you use the latter for system PPV and spoiler patrol, then you need to have maintenance capability in the system for 6000 tons as nothing less suffices. But if you use three corvettes instead, you only need to build up a capacity for 2000 tons while also having thrice the sensor coverage. And in case of an enemy excursion, you can bring the corvettes together to fight as a fleet.

But if bringing 6000-ton maintenance capacity to this system is trivial for my empire, then I'll do that and I do not want a hardcoded rule to hinder me. Maybe my Galactic Empire uses 6000-ton patrol boats.

[JacenHan]

There already exists a good reason to use smaller ships over larger ones and it is specifically maintenance. Since a maintenance facility/station can only service a limited tonnage, it can be better to have two small patrol craft rather than one large ship, especially if the ships patrol independently. Let's say your corvette is 2000 tons and your cruiser is 6000 tons. If you use the latter for system PPV and spoiler patrol, then you need to have maintenance capability in the system for 6000 tons as nothing less suffices. But if you use three corvettes instead, you only need to build up a capacity for 2000 tons while also having thrice the sensor coverage. And in case of an enemy excursion, you can bring the corvettes together to fight as a fleet.

But if bringing 6000-ton maintenance capacity to this system is trivial for my empire, then I'll do that and I do not want a hardcoded rule to hinder me. Maybe my Galactic Empire uses 6000-ton patrol boats.

Small note, but since C# v1.0 maintenance doesn't work as a limit like that: it adds up the tonnage of all present ships, so three 2,000 ton ships require the same facilities as one 6,000 ton ship. Of course, in this case having a 2,000 ton ship still lowers your minimum requirement for stationing something in the system, while still giving you flexibility to expand it later.

[nuclearslurpee]

One thing about fighters is that you can't really easily make forward fighter bases without having to bring either vulnerable stations somewhere for maintenance, refueling and rearming, or ground facility with hundreds of thousands of workers, which isn't exactly feasible for an outpost or forward base, especially near or in enemy territory.

This makes sense for ships, as you need extensive facilities, dockyards and a lot of personnel to maintain them, but for fighters (and maybe FACs?) more limited teams of mechanics should be able to maintain and service them, no?

I was thinking maybe there could be something like static ground units that could provide maintenance, refueling and rearming for crafts smaller than 1000 or 500tons. Like that you could more easily make fighter bases than can be done now, and they would be ground side, so a lot more resilient than a station to attacks.

While Garfunkel is right about special rules, I would like to see this specifically as a rule working with fighters, since we already have canonically that fighters are small enough to land on planets it would be nice to have some capability to re-create planetary fighter bases from the VB6 era (when PDCs could have this role). In that case I think they don't use maintenance, working like the Hangar Bay ship component, but a static-only ground unit type representing hangars should be fairly large and thus have a relatively high build and maintenance fee in the usual ground unit mechanics - build cost and component size should be about the same as current hangar components, which is consistent with the STO mechanics.

Since it works as a hangar, you should still need MSP and fuel at the colony, and the ground hangars should be able to reload a fighter using planetside missile stocks. It might be too much of stretch for the mechanics to actually station fighters inside the ground-based hangars, though, but they can remain in orbit and just interact with the ground units and I think that would be okay.

ie having your survey ships use the "Move to System requiring Gravsurvey" standing order.

Using this standard order should pretty rarely cause problems with fuel range on >50% fuel remaining for the same reasons previously discussed - I think the suggestion is mainly addressing the cases where a survey ship drops below 50% fuel due to the increment mechanics due to a marginal survey operations doctrine. Which I think you and I agree is a strange survey doctrine but if someone wants to play strangely I suppose we cannot fault this.

In any case, given that the increment mechanics can cause some issues even with the "return if <50% fuel" condition, especially if you also run in 30-day increments, I think the suggestion does have merit, and I can think of a few possible non-survey cases where having that 10% margin for insurance could be helpful (e.g. running some forms of convoy escorts).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I've read the 60% fuel range topic. I don't plan to add this. The coding is trivial, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining why that condition isn't a typo.

I do use the 10% fuel condition, usually when using small survey ships on vast asteroid belts, so they are close to a fuel source when they are about to run out.

Also, if an empire is not capable of establishing a small refuelling outpost a few systems out, I'm not sure how would they would exploit any valuable systems discovered 10+ transits away.

Finally for joshuawood, this is a very polite and helpful forum. Garfunkel and nuclearslurpee are both very experienced players trying to help, by explaining that the desire for a 60% fuel condition is being created by your playstyle. They have suggested very minor and reasonable changes that would help your empire overall, not just with this specific problem. You would save a huge amount of fuel overall by having a minimal forward-refuelling capability. Obviously you can ignore their advice and play however you like, but you seem to be interpreting that advice as some form of attack.

I know it isn't very common on the internet, but for this forum, even if you disagree, please be polite about it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm not against having more fuel options, more options is always better.

But I would examine my practices if my survey ship needs to go ten jumps away to even start surveying, this is highly wasteful in both fuel and time. Not to mention if they need to go back to only refuel and then back to continue exploring.

In this case I would need to build up strategically placed maintenance and refueling bases for my explorer fleets. This has nothing to do with having more options rather than quit wasting materials and time for my ships to do what they need to do. It also would require less micromanagement in the end too once these places are set up. In the extension these places can also serve as military bases later on if needed so they are a strategical tool to have in the toolbox.

[kilo]

What I would love to see for these strategic bases is surface bound automated maintenance facilities. I would like them to be the same price as normal ones, but without MSP manufacturing and without personal.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

One thing about fighters is that you can't really easily make forward fighter bases without having to bring either vulnerable stations somewhere for maintenance, refueling and rearming, or ground facility with hundreds of thousands of workers, which isn't exactly feasible for an outpost or forward base, especially near or in enemy territory.

This makes sense for ships, as you need extensive facilities, dockyards and a lot of personnel to maintain them, but for fighters (and maybe FACs?) more limited teams of mechanics should be able to maintain and service them, no?

I was thinking maybe there could be something like static ground units that could provide maintenance, refueling and rearming for crafts smaller than 1000 or 500tons. Like that you could more easily make fighter bases than can be done now, and they would be ground side, so a lot more resilient than a station to attacks.

Edit : Maybe that should also apply to crafts that are a little bigger too? 2000-3000 tons maybe? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know much about this, but I'd expect you don't need a huge amount of facilities to maintain small patrol boats.

One added benefit would be an increase in the use of this kind of smaller patrol ships or corvettes for PPV or patrol, especially in less populated or unpopulated systems. Currently small patrol crafts are really only a flavor choice and other than RP there is no real reason to make them over bigger, 6000-10000 ships for this kind of role in term of effectiveness against actual enemies. It would be nice to have them easier and more practical to use for some jobs where you can sacrifice some combat power.

Its fairly easy to create a small forward maintenance base, using a small space station with maintenance modules which is towed into place. The latter can be equipped with both MSP resupply and refuelling capability. Here is an example for just over 500 BP that includes 2m litres of fuel, 2500 MSP and active, EM and thermal sensors. If there is a chance of nearby enemy action, you could deploy it in deep space, rather than near a planet.

Ticonderoga class Maintenance Base      18,949 tons       198 Crew       512.8 BP       TCS 379    TH 0    EM 0
1 km/s      No Armour       Shields 0-0     HTK 36      Sensors 6/8/0/0      DCR 1-0      PPV 0
MSP 2,516    Max Repair 100 MSP
Cargo Shuttle Multiplier 2   
Lieutenant Commander    Control Rating 1   BRG   
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months   
Maintenance Modules: 3 module(s) capable of supporting ships of 6,000 tons

Fuel Capacity 2,000,000 Litres    Range N/A
Refuelling Capability: 50,000 litres per hour     Complete Refuel 40 hours

Maxwell MX-30 Navigation Sensor  (1)     GPS 1920     Range 31.5m km    Resolution 120
Rutherford RE-8 EM Sensor  (1)     Sensitivity 8     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  22.4m km
Rutherford RT-6 Thermal Sensor  (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  19.4m km

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Space Station for construction purposes
This design is classed as a Maintenance Ship for auto-assignment purposes

I don't want to go back to the VB6 mechanics, where a single facility could support unlimited ships, even if small ones, so any ground-based equivalent of the above would effectively be the existing ground-based maintenance facilities without the population requirement (like automated mines compared to manned mines). Therefore, I can't see a reason to restrict to a fixed hull size, given no similar restriction on the existing ground-based facilities. I'm also wary about the complexities around mixing some type of limited hull size facilities at the same location as 'normal facilities'

At the moment, automated mines are something of an exception, so I suppose I could add 'automated MF', but then why not automated factories, etc. I'm not sure I want to go down that route. Also automated mines, orbital mines and manned mines are all different, whereas the orbital versions of MF, refineries, terraformers, etc. have no restrictions. So in summary, I think I am comfortable with the current maintenance options, but you did make me think about it.

[Panopticon]

I've read the 60% fuel range topic. I don't plan to add this. The coding is trivial, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining why that condition isn't a typo.

What about Garfunkel's "fuel at x%" option? That would allow people to do the weird settings without you having to answer questions, and it also reduces the clutter in the standing orders window.