Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[Bryan Swartz]

From my perspective you kind of answered your own question? 

Weapons in Aurora can be different in effectiveness.   They're not supposed to balanced precisely against each other.  They can have roles that you don't care about (see the number of debates about Plasma Carronades).   The difference in damage profile alone can be significant to some players, while not to others, and will depend as everything on how much you are RPing versus tryharding, and so on.   The fact that they are in different tech fields can also matter. 

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

Lasers have much longer range than railguns and much higher armor penetration. Turreted lasers can be very effective anti-FAC weapons or, for small calibers, dual-purpose weapons for point defense and supporting offensive fire - while laser turrets are one of the weaker beam PD options* having multi-purpose flexibility is often useful.

*Currently; in 2.2 with stand-off missile warheads these may become very attractive in some cases.

The value niche for railguns has historically been (1) close-range DPS and (2) flexibility as railguns are a strong PD option if you don't want to invest in other weapon types.

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.

Yes, this was an overlooked effect of the reduced-shots feature as it allowed much higher DPS (about a factor of 3x, maybe a bit less depending on reactor tech) than intended.

[Skip121]

Hi All,

I don't know if this has been mentioned before (I couldn't see it, apologies if i've missed it) but it's something I'd love to see added.

It'd be great to have the ability to expend ships as targets in order to test out new weapons systems, especially in the early game before you encounter NPR's.

It'd add some great RP for me as I find I don't always know how well weapons function until i provoke a fight with an NPR, not to mention the RP of fleet manouvers/exercises.

I thought this could be achieved by either changing the abandon ship function to a self destruct option and adding a seperate abandon ship where the crew evacuate but the ship remains intact though non-operational. 
Or alternatively, a new option added in ship designer to create a ship with 0 crew but cannot move or use non-automated systems (such as potentially CIWS).  This could even allow the designing of custom target hulls.

It was just an idea for adding something a bit interesting but hopefully not an enormous amount of work.  I'm sure it's much harder than it sounds but thought i'd share the idea!

[Andrew]

You can use SM mode to create another race , give it your ships and then fight out your fleet maneuvers against this test race, restoring your own ships with SM afterwards

[Kaiser]

Hi All,

I don't know if this has been mentioned before (I couldn't see it, apologies if i've missed it) but it's something I'd love to see added.

It'd be great to have the ability to expend ships as targets in order to test out new weapons systems, especially in the early game before you encounter NPR's.

It'd add some great RP for me as I find I don't always know how well weapons function until i provoke a fight with an NPR, not to mention the RP of fleet manouvers/exercises.

I thought this could be achieved by either changing the abandon ship function to a self destruct option and adding a seperate abandon ship where the crew evacuate but the ship remains intact though non-operational. 
Or alternatively, a new option added in ship designer to create a ship with 0 crew but cannot move or use non-automated systems (such as potentially CIWS).  This could even allow the designing of custom target hulls.

It was just an idea for adding something a bit interesting but hopefully not an enormous amount of work.  I'm sure it's much harder than it sounds but thought i'd share the idea!

Totally quote this idea, I know It can be done via SM, but having It embedded directly as option in the game would be great under all points of view.

Just an option to create at shipyards any ship as a target test with 0 crew in order to test missiles and beam weapon, eventually the ship can be tug away in the space before the test.

[Skip121]

Hi All,

I don't know if this has been mentioned before (I couldn't see it, apologies if i've missed it) but it's something I'd love to see added. 

It'd be great to have the ability to expend ships as targets in order to test out new weapons systems, especially in the early game before you encounter NPR's. 

It'd add some great RP for me as I find I don't always know how well weapons function until i provoke a fight with an NPR, not to mention the RP of fleet manouvers/exercises. 

I thought this could be achieved by either changing the abandon ship function to a self destruct option and adding a seperate abandon ship where the crew evacuate but the ship remains intact though non-operational.   
Or alternatively, a new option added in ship designer to create a ship with 0 crew but cannot move or use non-automated systems (such as potentially CIWS).   This could even allow the designing of custom target hulls. 

It was just an idea for adding something a bit interesting but hopefully not an enormous amount of work.   I'm sure it's much harder than it sounds but thought i'd share the idea!

Totally quote this idea, I know It can be done via SM, but having It embedded directly as option in the game would be great under all points of view.

Just an option to create at shipyards any ship as a target test with 0 crew in order to test missiles and beam weapon, eventually the ship can be tug away in the space before the test.

Exactly! Using SM mode to do it feels a bit sub-optimal if there's any possible way of embedding the function as a feature.

[nuclearslurpee]

Exactly! Using SM mode to do it feels a bit sub-optimal if there's any possible way of embedding the function as a feature.

Actually, this kind of thing is precisely why SM mode exists - it's meant to be used freely to enhance your game however you like, not to be considered as "cheating".

[QuakeIV]

Its really pretty far from ideal, I've tried to do that exact thing (some time in the past) and you basically need to spawn a whole new civilization and population, and then SM in some ships for them, only to delete all of that later.  Its pretty jank and I never really did it again.  Its clearly a pretty niche thing, but it would be a lot nicer if formally adopted into the game.  The ability to abandon ship and still have an intact ship that can be fired upon (so that you dont take the personell hit), or even the ability to turn it into a remote controlled drone that can fly at a set speed so you can fire missiles on it would be a pretty nice feature.  Not needed, just nice.

[bankshot]

Feature request:  retirement notices for scientists currently working on projects have N/A for location.  It would be nice if the location is set to the system where they were assigned.  Or perhaps add the research station's planet name to the announcement text along with the tech being researched at retirement. 

[superstrijder15]

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.

And the opposite, people with a job only. For example if I want to give medals to captains who were in a battle and that is like half my fleet officers with a job, but that is only 20% of my total officer core


In a completely seperate thing: conditional orders should have a 'send a message' option. That would help for anyone having conditionals that are not available right now.

[KriegsMeister]

When using limited research administration can we get an increase in game start scientists. I love the way it slows everything down however I keep running into the issue that there simply are not enough scientists to utilize all the research labs, especially in higher population game starts. Current work around is simple to just SM in some more but an automatic scaling factor would be nice

[nuclearslurpee]

When using limited research administration can we get an increase in game start scientists. I love the way it slows everything down however I keep running into the issue that there simply are not enough scientists to utilize all the research labs, especially in higher population game starts. Current work around is simple to just SM in some more but an automatic scaling factor would be nice

From the change log:

When using the Limited Research Administration option, the chance of military academies generating scientists will be increased from 4% to 5% (and from 8% to 10% if the Academy Commandant is a scientist).

[QuakeIV]

Is there not already scaling for the starting number?

[nuclearslurpee]

Is there not already scaling for the starting number?

It should scale the same, since your starting commanders are generated based on the same rules AFAIK.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Is there not already scaling for the starting number?

It should scale the same, since your starting commanders are generated based on the same rules AFAIK.

Yes, that's correct.