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609

Make Biology Great Again

Quite a few techs in Biology seem like they would help with disease and lifespan e.g. genetic sequencing research

Could have a secondary benefit of improving pop growth rate / leader lifespan? +5 years per lvl genetic sequencing, maybe reduced rate of negative events or cure some diseases like substance abuse problem, +0.5% growth rate?

Similarly terraformimg tech could reduce the proportion required to do agricultural work this freeing up more population for other work. The logic being that the same technology that helps stabilise the biosphere also helps crops grow. Per lvl, -1% proportion required for agricultural

Might make biology on par as a priority

P.S. willing to be told this is already a hidden side effect I missed

6 Likes
610

More generally, I think many of the techs have economic benefits that could be realised “passively”

E.g. reactor tech improving power generation would probably benefit civilians too, with some improvements in productivity

3 Likes
611

Make Biology Great Again 2

Stealing blatantly from guns, germs and steel when I say this, but bacteria and viruses have been a pretty useful weapon and tool in colonial enterprises, both intentionally and unintentionally

I think this could be implemented in three steps

Biological Similarity

We already have stats about gravitational preferences, temp preferences etc, which are essentially descriptions of biological requirements.

Using these a similarly score from 0 - 1 could be made, with two species with identical colonisation preferences sitting at 1.

Diseases cannot pass between sufficiently different species (say, 0.8), but, if you bring your dirty humans onto a planet of near-humans, expect there to be transition between the populations

Disease severity could be more-or-less random, but should decrease over time. The new population would eventually be carriers (I.e. asymptomatic yet infectious).

Therefore, if species a carries disease x to species b, species b will eventually also be able to infect species c with disease x

Passive infection

If a diseases jumps from one species to another, we could expect unrest and reduced population growth. Severe diseases could send a population into decline

Obviously genetic centres can protect populations from this effect and bring about immunity far faster

Active infection

Bioweapons are actively engineered versions of the passive infections, with enhanced transmissibility / lethality /resistance to immunity (researched in biology)

Can be designed to target species with certain habitability preferences, so you could infect a group very different from yours and put yours at no risk

Conclusion

Have more thoughts on the details but first and foremost wanted to hear if this was an interesting idea or a bit too grim?

I hope, however, that this would bring the long-neglected field of biology into the limelight!

612

I have been considering biowarfare for several years, including incubation times, infection rates, mortality rates, mutations, species transfer, etc., and tracking that for each ship and population. That would also entail new techs, new medical buildings/ships, etc..

It would be a substantial addition, so the lack of it is more about finding the time and enthusiasm to add it :slight_smile:

10 Likes
613

The ability to manually set the desired rank for ship classes.

This is one of the first suggestions in this post (posted by Falryx) but never got a reply.

I myself have run into this afew times, while you can click the “Senior CO”, this doesn’t create the desired structure, as for example my CA’s are the same rank as my BB’s.

This would also bring the ships inline with the ground forces, which can be manually set.

1 Like
614

What can you think of a “switch off everything” mode for a ship that is well inside a hostile territory and would like to reduce at most its EM and thermal traces?
Only passive and ELINT sensors on, and the computers to decode the signals.
Engine stop. Communications and external lights off. Possibly landed on a small body, to try to hide and camouflage itself. Like a submarine laying on the sea bottom.

SJW: You can use the existing buttons for Active Off and Shields Off to stop EM emissions. When you stop moving, your thermal emissions drop to near zero. That will have the same overall effect.

2 Likes
615

I was wondering how colonial pressure works and when I was reading through it I was wondering if it would be a good idea to add a modifier to it that deals with unemployment. Higher unemployment creates more pressure and unfilled jobs get weighted more heavily as a colonial destination for civilians. Would allow you to interact with the civilians a little more.

616

It is not a bad idea. My concern is over planning. You can take a few months/years to grow your new shipyards to the desired level, while it takes a few days for the overly efficient civilian sector to relocate all your precious manpower!

As you progress into the game, unemployment is more common than you think and using the destination and source mechanisms become very impotant to ensure people are flowing in the right direction.

There is something that can be done in that space for sure though.

617

Maybe employment would generate a negative colonial pressure and actually work to keep people where they have jobs?

618

To have jobs, you have to build many Installations, and often even more Infrastructures, to home the colonists in bad environments, and Terraformers (on ground and on ships) to increase the attraction of a location.
All of this is often not simple, depending on the minerals (and their availability) that can be collected and/or moved between the populations.
The idea is good in general, but it can risk to remain not much effective, because of these factors.

1 Like
619

In the design window when designing something for the numbers that allow you to add more then one buttons, the 1,5,20,100 buttons please add a 1000 button it would make designing “megastructures” easier please!

1 Like
620

In the Intel window, in the list of the Know Ships Classes, I think it would be useful to present in different colours the military and the commercial ships.
It could show the effective military capability of the aliens.

SJW: That is a little more complex than it sounds, based on what you known about the ship, but I have implemented something on those lines:

Aurora v3.0.0 Patch Notes - Unreleased - #57 by AuroraSteve

6 Likes
621

Large Engineering Spaces, similar to how some other modules have a Large variant. To make big ships look less silly with 50 Engineering Spaces per ship.

10 Likes
622

Maybe already suggested.
In the game main window (i.e., the Tactical System View window), in the tab “Display”, instead of four “Passive vs. Signature N” checkboxes, would it be possible to have only one but with the possibility to input the value of the objects to detect?
If I know that NPRs use mainly 7,000 ton ships, I would like to know at which distance I could see them, not make a rough estimation between 10,000 and 1,000 ranges.

10 Likes
623

I’ve recently been thinking about the ‘Improved Survey Sensor’ technologies as well as the TN-Cargo Shuttles, because I’ve never seen a reason to research either.

If I feel the need for more survey point I just build more survey craft and fitting extra shuttles is inconsequential for freighters.

Therefore I’d humbly suggest, that these parts could instead become smaller with tech.

Especially for the survey sensors this would open up a lot more design space for very small or stealth ships, or even fighters.

Small resupply or courier ships would also appreciate the weight savings of smaller TN shuttles.

3 Likes
624

I find this to be untrue.
While the tonnage of extra shuttles is not a big deal for freighters, the cost of those shuttles is. A reasonably cost-effective freighter can’t just add a bunch of shuttles.

But I do agree that the improved cargo shuttle tech is underwhelming. I generally leave it unresearched for quite a long time.

1 Like
625

Improved Geo/Grav Sensors bring to Advanced Geo/Grav Sensors. They are of the same mass (250 ton) of the Geo/Grav Survey Sensors, but with increasing capability of survey, respectively 2 points for improved and 3 points for advanced.
So, they save you mass, both for one ship and in terms of ships to build (i.e., minerals to use to build ships).
Considering that you could research them when you have also better engines, using these sensors you can build faster and more capable ships.

Improved and Advanced Cargo Shuttles reduce the load time (3 and 5 times). Not a big reduction respect the time to travel between locations, but anyway useful, IMO.

626

Yes effectively Survey sensors get smaller with improvements as you can replace 2 ordinary units with one improved unit for the same survey speed, or double the survey points for the same mass which speeds up surveys.

I also often develop the improved sensors from ruins so very little effort in researching them

627

Something that I feel is missing, are graphs and statistics.
What I mean by that, is, I would love to see general trends of various things in the empire.

A graph of the history of msp/fuel stockpiles of various colonies. Graphs of mineral stockpiles, ship classes usage, missile production/usage graphs/pie charts, population trends, private sector graphs, wealth income/expenditure trends…

The change value is nice, but it doesn’t tell me a lot.
Am I making and importing, annually, more fuel than is expended in training/missions? In earth? in an FOB? what about MSP? do I need to increase production this year, or am I good to expend these resources expanding my mining operations? What is the severity of the shortages? Where should I focus? Can I expand my corundium mines, or do I need more uridium this year? How many industry locations do I have? Where, what are the mineral requirements? do I need to allocate more freighters to this or that route?

The answer to this question right now is by handwriting values at date x, letting some time pass, then comparing manually and estimating the trends with a calculator. There must be a better way, right?

Edit: am aware of the new screens in 3.0. I am thinking of adding to those.

2 Likes
628

Is this sort of what you mean?