Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[alex_brunius]

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

Starting scientists should scale based on number of starting Academies.

[QuakeIV]

I got confused by that too, what he means is can he have an additional scaling factor if the limited research box is ticked (the one where it limits how many labs a scientist can control).

[KriegsMeister]

It doesn't scale properly with high population conventional starts.
Some examples all Jan 1st new game starts with the only changes being population, conventional empire, and limited administration

4 Billion Population, 66 Available labs, scientists can manage 53


6 Billion Population, 100 Available labs, scientist can manage 29


10 Billion Population, 166 Available labs, scientist can manage 51

[alex_brunius]

I got confused by that too, what he means is can he have an additional scaling factor if the limited research box is ticked (the one where it limits how many labs a scientist can control).

It doesn't scale properly with high population conventional starts.
Some examples all Jan 1st new game starts with the only changes being population, conventional empire, and limited administration

My point is that starting scientists (commanders) do scale... but it's scaling based on starting Military Academies.

So the root cause problem here is that number of starting Military Academies don't scale well with population (in either conventional or normal starts).

Even with insane populations it only goes to 2 starting Military Academies for normal and 1 for conventional.



Workaround is to put in more Military Academies manually during setup.

[nuclearslurpee]

My point is that starting scientists (commanders) do scale... but it's scaling based on starting Military Academies.

So the root cause problem here is that number of starting Military Academies don't scale well with population (in either conventional or normal starts).

Even with insane populations it only goes to 2 starting Military Academies for normal and 1 for conventional.

Workaround is to put in more Military Academies manually during setup.

This is correct. Several other installation types also have caps for the automatic generation, for example research labs are capped at 50 and ground training facilities at 10 (you see this in the image). I don't recall the reason for these limits but I think Steve mentioned them at some point and it had something to do with being fair to the NPRs. Oddly, Labs don't seem to be capped for a conventional start IIRC.

Like most things in Aurora I consider these quantities open to change by the player, but the defaults work reasonably well in practice - I'm more likely to keep the same number of starting installations but bump up the starting RP/BP in a higher-population TN start.

[nuclearslurpee]

In my current campaign, I have been using scout fighters on my survey ships to check planets for any hostile aliens before risking my valuable survey ships. I have noticed that when the survey ship recovers the fighter, if the fighter has very low fuel the conditional refueling order is triggered and the survey ship (which can easily refuel the fighter and has lots of fuel left) will turn for home to refuel.

Suggestion: Conditional orders such as "Fuel less than X%" should not include parasites in hangars when evaluating the condition.

[smoelf]

Would it be possible to mark some colonies as "No governor required"? Even if you have just a single DST on a colony it is listed as requiring a level 1 civilian administrator. I never put governors on my listening posts, which means that they often clutter the population view in the commander window, thus making it harder to figure out if any proper colonies are lacking a governor.

Maybe a checkmark to prevent assigning a governor and setting the required administrator level to 0?

[Nori]

Would it be possible to mark some colonies as "No governor required"? Even if you have just a single DST on a colony it is listed as requiring a level 1 civilian administrator. I never put governors on my listening posts, which means that they often clutter the population view in the commander window, thus making it harder to figure out if any proper colonies are lacking a governor.

Maybe a checkmark to prevent assigning a governor and setting the required administrator level to 0?

DST colonies are the punishment posts.. 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Would it be possible to mark some colonies as "No governor required"? Even if you have just a single DST on a colony it is listed as requiring a level 1 civilian administrator. I never put governors on my listening posts, which means that they often clutter the population view in the commander window, thus making it harder to figure out if any proper colonies are lacking a governor.

Maybe a checkmark to prevent assigning a governor and setting the required administrator level to 0?

Added for v2.2. You now have the choice of Automated Assignment, Manual Assignment or No Commander Required. New player colonies will be defaulted to Manual (as they are now). Civilian colonies will be defaulted to No Commander Required.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13090.msg166138#msg166138

[RagnarVaren]

It would be nice if the "Retirement" and "Commander Health" events were split into the different officer types. In my current game I finally reached the point of scientists and governors retiring which I'm interested in seeing but the naval officers and ground officers aren't as interesting and clog up my events.

[lumporr]

Is there a way to automatically rename all bodies in a system according to a naming theme, all at once? I can't figure out exactly what the buttons Rename Body All and Rename Sys All do, but they seem to just rename either the single body or the system, and you have to type in a new name. I've been renaming the bodies in major systems manually, but it's getting to be too much as my rate of expansion increases.

Having an auto-rename for all bodies in a system based on naming themes could really help personalize a galaxy, but I'm not sure how much work it would be to implement a system that checked every known body for duplicate names. It also might be helpful if moons and asteroids could potentially be included or excluded in the renaming process when the user is prompted, but again, I'm not sure how difficult it would be to code such a thing.

[Kaiser]

The possibility to designate populated colonies in a different way, not just granting independence and that's all, for example I would like to have the possibility to designate a colony as a protectorate or a vassal or a March or something else I do not know.

For each designation the player would lose direct control and would have different effects, for example a protectorate would not have the possibility to recruit ground forces or construct military ships, but still would be under the player influence especially for defence and military protection, a vassal on the contrary would have the possibility to realize military stuff but would pay periodic fee to the player and have some diplomatic possibilities.

There are really huge possibilities we can work on.

In theory, Steve could create a list of options which would represent the degree of military-economic-diplomatic possibilities of the new designated entity so that we would have several combination and not predefinite ones.

I imagine it is quite a lot of work, but It would add a LOT of gameplay and variety to the game.

[Indefatigable]

Maximum speed limiter for Auto-turns.

With the smaller increment length selected the turns go extremely fast (atleast in early game). Also the turn-rate of auto-turns depends on your computing power.
I wish there would be a check box where one could limit the minimum time between turns to some value (100ms? 200ms? 500ms? 1sec?) so it would not be so hyper fast and would run at even, predictable pace.

[BwenGun]

This might be a silly suggestion, but have you ever considered having Computer Cores as a seperate system/modifier? The idea being that they functions sort of like an inbuilt officer on your ship, but you select the bonuses you want it to give when you design it. So for example you could have one designed to improve your engine efficiency and sensor range by 5/10% for a material and tonnage cost, or one that gives your Point Defence an accuracy boost. Perhaps making their use less efficient on smaller ships, but provide larger ones with some additional ways to vary design choices and value for money.

I was just thinking about the rapid speed of computing advances we've seen in the last few decades, and how intrinsic they've become for industrial, commerical, and military applications and wondering whether it might make for an interesting research catergory in the game to add a bit more variety to shipbuilding.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Maximum speed limiter for Auto-turns.

With the smaller increment length selected the turns go extremely fast (atleast in early game). Also the turn-rate of auto-turns depends on your computing power.
I wish there would be a check box where one could limit the minimum time between turns to some value (100ms? 200ms? 500ms? 1sec?) so it would not be so hyper fast and would run at even, predictable pace.

You can see all the past increments in the event window, if that is the underlying concern, even though you only see one at once on the Tactical Map.

We've come a long way from VB6 if the problem is turns are going too fast

BTW, performance is noticeably faster in v2.2.