Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0

[nuclearslurpee]

What about a new module called something like "armour repair", that basically slowly (or I do not know, very slowly, also scaling with the tech) repairs the ship's armour in the space whenever it gets damaged improving the survaibility of the ship in battle.

To justify this, I recall some sci-fi movies where thousands of tiny repair drones are stored in the ship and enter in function externally to repair the ship's layers after the battle giving time and chance to reach a shypyard.

How is this any different from shields in practical terms? Since armor is far more space-efficient than shields, I fear the net impact of this module would be to make it an auto-include over shields beyond a certain ship size/cost. Possibly this can be balanced by, e.g., consuming MSP to do the repairs (although that seems a little bit odd since armor is made up of known minerals), but it seems thorny to me.

[Kaiser]

What about a new module called something like "armour repair", that basically slowly (or I do not know, very slowly, also scaling with the tech) repairs the ship's armour in the space whenever it gets damaged improving the survaibility of the ship in battle.

To justify this, I recall some sci-fi movies where thousands of tiny repair drones are stored in the ship and enter in function externally to repair the ship's layers after the battle giving time and chance to reach a shypyard.

How is this any different from shields in practical terms? Since armor is far more space-efficient than shields, I fear the net impact of this module would be to make it an auto-include over shields beyond a certain ship size/cost. Possibly this can be balanced by, e.g., consuming MSP to do the repairs (although that seems a little bit odd since armor is made up of known minerals), but it seems thorny to me.

The shield is the energy layer around the armour, the armour is the phisical layer that "make" the ship, this is how I intend both concepts.
You can damage the shield component or disharge it in battle and then starting hitting the armour.

After that I find odd that a spaceship does not have something that can, I repeat slowly, repair the armour before reaching a base.

The MSP consumption might be a good compromise to counter-balance this.

Also, the AI will benefit of this improving survival chances of its ships.

[Garfunkel]

I agree with Nuclearslurpee that this suggestion is a bit pointless because every military ship would include it, not having it would be stupid. We already have Damage Control as pretty much an obligatory module on each warship, I would rather not have to include a second, similar module.

Plus, it's not odd at all that ships cannot repair armour on their own. No current military vehicle is capable of such a thing. Crews of tanks, planes and ships can jury rig stuff but the armour always requires "a base" to repair.

I think AI is capable of repairing it's ships as long there is no urgent need for that ship.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

A third stat for mineral deposits governing the number of Mines that can efficiently exploit a given bodies mineral deposit for a more "realsticish" feel to longevity of mineral deposits, encouraging spreading out to increase mineral inflows and extending the lifespan of higher accessibility deposits such as those on a factions homeworld, with an associated tech to increase the number of mines that can efficiently exploit a given deposit.

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A "settling in" period for Mines where their productivity starts off low and then goes up to their rated maximum over time to simulate work crews getting familiar with equipment and exploitable veins and high concentration regions being found and infrastructure moved in.

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Over boosting order, allowing for ships to move faster than their rated maximum speed in exchange for a steep increase in fuel cost and triggering extra maintaince checks similar to beam weapons. To avoid "higher speed and range = win" being the case without radically altering how the base movement works.

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Generate pre industrial races as a percentage option instead of a toggle.

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Steve having a really nice day 

The issues with suggestion #1 would be the starting population. Unless you could use all the mines at the start of the game, it would cripple your economy and there will be few planets where you would need more mines than that. The size of a body already restricts population, which in turn restricts manned mines.

Suggestion #2 would add a lot of complexity without adding any interesting decisions. Also, I would have to find some way of representing to the player how different groups of mines, arriving at different times on the same body, have different mining output.

Having pre-industrial as a percentage, like minor races, is a good idea. I will add that to the game.

I'm not averse to some form of afterburners, with associated high fuel cost and chance of engine breakdown. I just haven't come up with the right mechanics yet, which would have to be suitable for NPRs too.

[skoormit]

...
Deploying a ship away from port will always* cost the same or more in MSP than sitting it in port for the same period of time, and the cost can only be equal if no maintenance failures occur.
...

In fact, because a ship does not charge the "regular" maintenance rate while it is being overhauled, the long-term maintenance cost can be reduced by cycling a ship through short deployments followed by overhauls.
If no failures occur during a deployment, the net MSP cost of maintaining the ship over the full deployment-plus-overhaul timespan is 20% less than had that ship been sitting idle at a maintenance location.

For a simple example, consider a 4 month deployment (with no maintenance failures) followed by a 1 month overhaul.
There is no maintenance cost during deployment, and then the month of overhaul will cost the equivalent of 4 months of normal maintenance.
At the end of the 5-month cycle, you have paid the equivalent of 4 months of maintenance.

[skoormit]

...
In further as it stands one can build a 'mothball hangar' that would normally have an insane maintenance cost but can considerably cut down on the maintenance cost of other ships sitting in port, using one designed for the ship above we have:
...

In your example, you build a hangar that costs ~4k bp in order to save ~1.5k MSP per year, while requiring an additional 4,123 tons of maintenance capacity.
Assuming you need to build two maintenance facilities (60BP each) to provide the extra capacity, and with MSP costing 0.25 BP each, your annual savings represents a rate of return on your investment of ~9.1% while occupying 100k workers.

You also have an up-front cost of the shipyard needed to build that carrier (~11k bp, depending on your tech level), and the ongoing workforce that yard requires (almost 10m workers).
You are going to have to make (and use) a lot of these carriers and/or wait a very long time to recoup the cost of that yard.

There are simpler ways to get far better returns in the game.
For example, suppose instead of building that shipyard you build financial centers of equivalent cost.
Let's say 90 fincens. Costs 10.8k bp, and 10.8k corbomite.
Uses only 4.5m workers. Less than half what the yard needs.
Returns annual income equal to 27 times your "wealth per million workers" tech level.
Even if you are still at the starting tech level (100 per million workers per year), and have no wealth creation bonus from your governor or sector, that's 2.7kbp per year.
So a bare minimum rate of return of 25%, using half as many workers.
With a couple tech levels and a modest governor bonus, it's not hard to be making your investment back in two years or less.

[Fattymac04]

I know it's been mentioned before and I know Steve you have commented on it saying if it did happen it would be the go to choice. 

I think all the weapons should be turreted, however have some of them with some drawbacks.  I know turreted railguns would be powerful, but maybe make them limited to only twin mounts.  Or buff gauss with the amount of possible shots

I think it would be more creative to be able to turret all the weapons.

Another idea was about the rahkas, have a advanced option for them as well.  That option would give them fast attack boarding craft that would add ships to their defense of a planet.  Would make it a fun dynamic.