Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[nakorkren]

Loving the updates to the Empire Mining tab. Would it be possible to go further and group the Producing locations by system and provide a system total for each. E.g. show production of each body within Sol, then a total for Sol, each body within Proxima Centauri, then a total for Proxima Centauri, etc?

Typically minerals within a system are collected at one central hub colony, so this would be helpful when determining how to ship minerals between systems to keep a balanced distribution in the scenario where each system isn't fully independent from a mineral standpoint.

[ExecCrawfish]

I've seen a few different proposals for 'geared' engines or more speed options, but while I think something along those lines would be useful and flavorful, there are innumerable ways to implement it, most of which I feel would be too complicated. 

So, I'll take a stab.  The current speed option is nice for tactical purposes, but has few other uses.  The real naval operations that serve as flavor inspiration for so many of our games - and plenty of the SF settings that do the same - feature ships that have efficient cruising speeds and inefficient combat/emergency/flank speeds.  If these are to be translated over, they could be an option that is not strictly better or strictly worse than the two extremes - having high-boost ships with plenty of tankers, or having long-range commercial-engined warships that use minimal fuel. 

This option, whatever it might be called, should give engines an additional operating mode where they run as though their power setting was lower - possibly a single tech that gives a 40% down-throttle, possibly a series of techs going from, say, 20% to 60%.  This mode should be toggleable on individual ships, and should work strictly for military engines with a base power setting of 100% or higher.  This implementation would avoid the need to change any formulas for engine power.  The cost could be added engine weight - likely around 10%.  Currently, a 20HS ion engine at 100% power outputs 250EP - with this design option, a 22HS engine would give either 250EP with higher fuel consumption or 125EP with the fuel consumption of the 50% power setting. 

I think this is the cleanest way I can find to implement the idea. 

[zatomic]

Well since you brought up engines, here's the version of that that's been kicking around in my head for a while.

Currently ships can only have 1 type of engine. My proposal is to allow 2 types of engine per ship. The more efficient engines (overall including fuel efficiency tech, size, and power modifier) would be the cruising engines. The less efficient engines would be boost engines.

Each ship then has a cruising speed (the speed attained with cruising engines at 100% power and boost engines at 0%, and a max speed (speed with cruising and boost engines at 100%). Summary can then show max cruising range/time and max boosted range/time.

If a ship only had one engine type (or I guess 2 types with exactly the same efficiency, though that could just be considered an error), then it's cruising and max speeds would be the same.

At the fleet level interface, there would be a choice to set the fleet to cruising speed which would be the slowest cruising speed of any ship in the fleet, or max speed, which would be the slowest max speed of any ship in the fleet.

This proposal would not require any changes to engine design and if you just designed all your ships with one engine type, would continue to work as is. It would require a little logic for each ship to calculate it's fuel usage and thermal signature based on a target speed based on using the cruising engines up to their capacity first, and then adding boost as needed if the target speed is above cruising speed.

This would probably be a boost to beam ships as currently they usually need higher speeds which comes at the cost of range and fuel use. This would allow beam ships to move around slowly and efficiently while still having a high speed for engagements. It also allows some design space around thermal reduction where the cruise engines are also thermally reduced but the boost engines aren't based on the idea that once your boosting into an engagement, stealth is no longer a concern.

[Therewolfmb]

Hi All,

After reading the ideas about engines I thought I'd pile in my own concept, mostly because more the merrier right?

I liked ExecCrawfish's general concept but thought making a strictly formulaic version would be easier to implement in gameplay and UI.

So the concept:
Currently engine fuel consumption scales (^2) with the boosted power level, and linear with actual speed.

Fuel / Hour ~= (Fuel per EPH)*(Base EPH)*(Power Boost)^2*(Actual speed/max speed)

If we add in a power factor on the (actual speed/max speed), it would approximate a cruise mode being more efficient than full throttle.  This power factor could be controlled by a tech line called something like "Cruising Efficiency" and start at 0 (or 0. 1) and increase to something <1.

New fuel consumption formula would be:

Fuel / Hour ~= (Fuel per EPH)*(Base EPH)*(Power Boost)^2*(Actual speed/max speed)^(1+Cruising Efficiency)

It would probably need a lower limit to how much cruising could reduce fuel consumption.  I like the idea of having the maximum benefit be at half power, and going any lower just scales linearly.  So There would be a Max speed at 100% power and associated range, along with a Cruising range from traveling at 1/2 the max speed.

As far as drawbacks, adding mass for cruising seems like a good choice.  As long as the Cruising efficiency modifier is <1:
1) A cruising enabled ship will never be as fuel efficient as a ship using an equivalent HS of lower fuel consumption engines.
2) A cruising enabled ship will never be as power / HS efficient as a ship using dedicated high power engines. 

Or it could just be a freebie with no drawbacks, but that might not be as interesting design wise.

I like this concept overall because the existing set speed command is all that you need to access this new feature.  Though some QoL add ons to the UI would be:

In the design screen:

Display of Design's Max / Cruising.  Max range would be at 100% speed.  Cruising would be at 1/2 Max speed.

In the set speed command popup
1) "Set speed to max cruising speed" (sets the speed to the highest cruising speed of the designs in the fleet, or the max speed of the slowest design applicable)
2) "Set speed to min cruising speed" (sets speed to the lowest cruising speed of the designs in the fleet)

Thanks for reading.

[ISN]

This is a small thing, but it would be nice to be able to see ruins and constructs on the galactic map -- either some way of highlighting them, or just copying over the Artifacts tab from the main screen. I keep having to switch between windows to figure out where they are.

[Kiero]

I suspect that this has already been proposed:

Properties of entire star systems:
- shields are disabled in this system.
- reduced/increased movement speed.
- hostile environment (damage or increased maintenance consumption)
- reduced sensor range.
- through background "noise" individual sensor types do not work
- nebulae which may have similar properties but are only present in some part of the system, something like Aether Rifts

[AlStar]

We used to have nebulae, which did some of your suggestions (shields disabled and reduced speed... possibly reduced sensors?). I honestly don't recall them terribly fondly - being slow is annoying, and since (at least in the last version) they replaced empty systems, there was no reason to be in them. So you ended up just hoping that you didn't get any long realspace connections in a nebula, since it would slow your entire empire down if one ended up in the middle of your main corridors.

[nuclearslurpee]

We used to have nebulae, which did some of your suggestions (shields disabled and reduced speed... possibly reduced sensors?). I honestly don't recall them terribly fondly - being slow is annoying, and since (at least in the last version) they replaced empty systems, there was no reason to be in them. So you ended up just hoping that you didn't get any long realspace connections in a nebula, since it would slow your entire empire down if one ended up in the middle of your main corridors.

They worked better in a time when missiles were the clearly dominant weapon, since they provided an impetus for races to develop beam weapons. However, until 2.2 the opposite has been true in C# so nebulae would just be annoying without a mechanical rework.

[Kaiser]

Don't know if it has been already suggested, but a button to replace a scientist with another who is currently researching would be nice. At the moment, you have to stop the research and pick up the new scientist, kind of annoying. That is especially useful when you have to manage many scientists, labs and project in long term campaign.

[ISN]

I often use sensor buoys in my games, and in my current game I want to delete a number of buoys for RP reasons. I was hoping to do this using the Missile Salvos screen. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to actually identify which buoy is which from the screen: many buoys have the same launcher, and they all have no target. The Salvo ID that it lists isn't visible anywhere else that I can tell so I can't use it to identify missiles. This could be fixed either by adding a column for System to the salvo list, or by jumping to the location of the salvo when you click on it.

[Warer]

Standing Orders Templates
Apply Standard Order Templates to all same Ship Hulls/Class

SJW: Fleets may have multiple class types

[Warer]

Order Not Possible as a Condition for Standing Orders

[Warer]

Auto Scrap Shipyard order for getting rid of early game survey fighter swarms/fighters period

[AlStar]

Could we get a "Shipyards" button on the main console? (Ideally located in-between the "Mining" button and the "Research" button.)

I, at the very least, would use such a thing far more than the existing "Wealth" button.

Wouldn't say no to an "Environment" button, either; although that's lower priority than being able to quickly look at my shipyards.

[Kiero]

In the Class Design window, would be great to see Maintenance needed when a specific component fails.

And an ability to filter out or show only alien designs.