Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.

Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.

Dev costs for player designed components have already been reduced in slower-research games in v2.6.

[NuclearStudent]

Multistage missile research costs are rather high for reduced-pace research games. It's quite punitive to have to pay the research cost of the base stages in addition to the research for the additional stages. I suggest that multistage missiles get a research discount cost - eg. for a size 8 missiles with size 6 of secondary stages, we only pay the research cost of a size 2 missile.

Multistage missiles are fun and it's a bit silly to discourage them.

Dev costs for player designed components have already been reduced in slower-research games in v2.6.

I actually quite like paying significant dev costs for player designed components in general, because it encourages more strategic aforethought and reuse of components. It's just multistage missiles specifically that I think are overcosted in this department.

[alex_brunius]

After playing around with Ground Combat it feels like something that I'm missing is that feeling that veteran units with alot of combat experience should perform significantly better than a freshly built formation.

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

[Ghostly]

After playing around with Ground Combat it feels like something that I'm missing is that feeling that veteran units with alot of combat experience should perform significantly better than a freshly built formation.

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

I agree, there's not much benefit to having any veteran units other than those who've been sitting around under a commander with GCT for years, never seeing any combat, which is the opposite of how things should actually work. I suppose this is due to the unit Morale also representing their training level, which is awkward, as you would expect Training and Morale to be separate stats, with Training increasing slowly while idling and quickly when participating in combat, and Morale dropping rapidly while taking losses and increasing while inflicting casualties, performing breakthroughs or idling. The ground unit system is already complex as it is, but I think such a change would be more than justified.

[gateisgreen]

While playing Aurora, making notes to not forget about what could be improved.
Few simple suggestions for UI:

1) Economics >> Industry
- add "Construction Rate" per factory indicator, along with "Construction Capacity"; currently only way to check it is to open Race Information, which is in different window

2) Economics >> Shipyards
- it seems, upgrading SY requires some minerals along with wealth, so it would be super handy to have this information in additional columns, for example

3) Economics >> Research
- add "Research Rate" per lab; currently only way to check it is to open Race Information

4) Economics >> GU Training
- add information about minerals cost for training Ground Forces, currently it is only "BP cost" column
- add "Ground Formation Construction Rate" indicator, currently it is in Race Information

5) Ground Forces >> Formation Templates
- for Show/Hide Obsolete models - make obsolete ones visually distinctive from current ones, by changing font colour (white=>gray, for example)

6) Events
- same as for show/hide obsolete models, make filtered events visually distinctive in some way (rarely needed, but I recently misclicked button in Events window and hide certain type of event for many years until I figured something is wrong, well:))

[nuclearslurpee]

The current ground combat model favors heavily armored units mainly to reduce casualties, but the IMO main purpose of reducing casualties should not be to save BP in less replacements needed, it should be to not lose the valuable experience your units gain from battles.

This is not really true. Analysis done by many folks here has shown that heavy armor is generally a less efficient use of BP than light armor/infantry and will end up suffering higher loss rates (in BP) than the lighter units. This doesn't make heavy armor useless at all, as it remains useful in tonnage-bottlenecked situations, but to say that the current model favors heavy armor is not correct.

[alex_brunius]

This is not really true. Analysis done by many folks here has shown that heavy armor is generally a less efficient use of BP than light armor/infantry and will end up suffering higher loss rates (in BP) than the lighter units. This doesn't make heavy armor useless at all, as it remains useful in tonnage-bottlenecked situations, but to say that the current model favors heavy armor is not correct.

Yes, your right. That conclusion was filtered through an assumed tonnage limit as almost always the main practical limit for my invasions in in how much invasion tonnage I can bring.

And I did not mean the specific unit type heavy armor, but all units with heavier armour than infantry (so including also stuff like powered INF armour).

[lumporr]

I think it'd be nice to be able to raise the wealth cap, either via tech or via settings. It'd be fun to roleplay as a vast empire with an enormous debt but huge reserves, having a decade-spanning long economic panic - and I think it might've been mentioned as something that was planned to change back in the C# patch notes (I'd link but I'm stuck on mobile at the moment).