Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[superstrijder15]

I would propose a diffrent solution. A planet dominant terrain can be calculated once a year, taking into account an average of that year. (for example one sample every 30 days) This way you both solve the constant change of terrain on some planets, and make terraformation (both natural and artificial) a slower, more "accurate" process.

This is a good suggestion. There does need to be some care taken for what moment and period to do this with. If you do it once per terran year, then it could still have changing results for a planet with an orbital period of 1.5 years: you could have a different result when you get the top 1 year of it vs. the bottom 1 year. If you instead do it once per local year, then inner planets are much more responsive to terraforming. Perhaps do it once per terran year, but keep a log of 30 day intervals for the larger of a terran year or the orbital period?

[nuclearslurpee]

I'm sure I've made this suggestion before, but cannot find evidence of it:

Please change the "Refuel at Refuelling Hub" and "Refuel from Colony or Hub" conditional orders to function for Refuelling Systems (i.e., traditional tankers). This would make managing survey fleets significantly easier as the option to station a tanker is easier and more robust than the requirement to mount a 10,000 RP + 100,000-ton component or establish a refueling station on a planet. Frankly, since the purpose of the Refuelling Hub is to refuel many ships at once, and the most common use of the refueling conditional orders is for single survey ships, I see no reason why a Hub should be required for access to a conditional order anyways.

[Owen Quillion]

So I'd heard about using prefixes and suffixes for naming themes and mistakenly thought you could pick a *list* of -fixes. I had been planning to do something like [Evocative Adjective] [Gemstone], only to find that apparently the idea is to have [Name List] and a set pre/suffix.

It'd be pretty sweet if we could also do 'compound naming themes' like I originally had understood. I imagine this might incur a bit of overhead somewhere in avoiding duplicates, but personally I wouldn't mind occasionally winding up with two Bellicose Tourmalines or whatever.

Speaking of duplicates, and also probably requiring more work/database space than it's worth, it'd be nice to track how many ships have borne a name. I've got a couple of -2s in my fleet, and I have to occasionally manually ensure the same name doesn't get selected for a new hull, which will probably become untenable when I actually start taking significant losses.

[SpaceMarine]

Simple Suggestion and one much needed from my carrier riddled mind.


Please add "Auto-scrap" we already have "Auto-refit" but not Auto-Scrap, the reason for adding this is obvious, I would like to be able to scrap 100+ fighters without having to manually do it each time through a shipyard instead just setting it to auto do so over time, it would make scrapping/replacing the old fighters with the next generation much much easier

[Erik L]

When creating a race, an option to create a completely new rank structure, i.e. Custom Ranks. And then you get to fill in the blanks.

[nuclearslurpee]

When creating a race, an option to create a completely new rank structure, i.e. Custom Ranks. And then you get to fill in the blanks.

It might be easier to have this handled the same way as other naming themes, so on the Misc tab in the tactical map. I think ranks are the only name theme element we cannot add new ones for.

[Erik L]

When awarding medals, the dialog that pops for the reason. It'd be nice if this was auto-populated by the medal description field.

[boolybooly]

I play manual commander assignment.

In the commander assignment interface, there is a checkbox for available ships, which cuts the list to ships without commanders.

Would be nice if there was similar for the list of commanders, i.e. a checkbox which cuts the list of commanders to unassigned only.

[Pury]

It would be great If the game remembered the state of "Assume Fleet is Jump-Capable" button. Usually I start interstellar travel by using Jump Tender stations, and only after I "secured" the sector do I install jump gates. As many of my fleet's do not have build in jump capability, I have to check this box for each of them every time I move them.

Edit.
It does save it for a specific fleet. Only the new ones are created with unedited boxes. So maybe if we detach a ship from a fleet, or detach a sub fleet, by defult it inherits settings from the parent formation?

[nuclearslurpee]

In fighting some enemies who are fond of missiles, I have noticed that there is a particular behavior which could be tweaked so that NPR combat is a bit more effective.

In cases where there are NPR missile-armed ships armed with the same kinds of missiles, but different sensor resolutions, the ships with shorter sensor resolutions tend to fire independently. Their salvos would be more effective if they synced fire with their longer-resolution counterparts, since one bigger wave is a lot better against enemy point defense than two or more smaller waves.

[Pury]

It would be nice if we could load missiles on Collier's the same way as we load cargo onto cargo ships. With a simple menu that shows diffrent kinds of missiles on a given population. It looks like something that would allready be in game, if not for some reason, but I do not know of any so will just throw this one out

[nakorkren]

Would it be possible to tweak the missile design tool to allow setting a lower-than-max speed (at time of design only) for missiles? E.g. a missile is capable of going 10.2 km/s, but you set it to 10.0 to match another missile design that uses a different warhead type. This lets you fire mixed salvos, enhancing tactical options in missile combat. Presumably you wouldn't get any fuel efficiency from setting to a lower speed, it would solely be to support matching speed to another missile.

[bankshot]

Proposal: allow use of old tech for missile design

I use geo survey scanning missiles for planets that are a long way (usually >50Bkm) from the primary.  To make sure I get a "complete scan" and don't miss anything unusual on the planet I prefer to include thermal and active scanners.  But since I'm designing missiles that need >200Bkm of range I have to keep the scanning payload to missile size 1. Scanners don't work unless they are at least size 0.25.  Advanced scanning techs increase the power required for the scanner. 

For some combinations of scanner and reactor tech the required reactor size is <.25 allowing me to have all three scanners in one package.  But when I discover a new scanner tech the .25 scanner requires more power, potentially making the reactor too big to fit. 

This could be solved by adding a tech level drop down like there is for the create research project screen.  You could then consciously make your decision on the power vs. capability vs size/expense tradeoff.

[bankshot]

Add "Transfer all ship components" order to the current "Transfer all minerals" and "Transfer all installations" orders.  This would allow salvage fleets to offload recovered items for transport instead of having to travel to a colony to offload.

[boolybooly]

Playing today I was comparing stats for laser vs one shot railgun and wondering why anyone would bother building lasers apart from the possibility of putting them on turrets.

Turrets enable faster tracking  but for missile defence you are better off with gauss and for fighter or FAC antiship, railgun or particle beam is better. So laser is a neglected research path in my current 2.1.1 game. I know it has a steeper damage profile but even so that is easily compensated for with a little patience.

I read that railgun charge time would not decrease with shot count in 2.2 which if I understand correctly will make them slower firing than lasers but still smaller if shot count is low enough.

Mulling all that over, what if rail guns had limited shots say default 50 and to give them more shots you need to include magazine per gun so a 200t gun with 150 shots becomes 300t. 

And what if shots consumed MSP?

In that scenario, to reload they have to reload at a reloady places like hangar, ordnance distribution hub, supply ship with shuttle or planet with manned maintenance depots and reload consumes MSP from the reload location (not from maintenance storage on the gun owning ship).

Just a thought.