What about a more granular/flexible system for conditional orders? I’m thinking about a set of radio buttons to select fuel, MSP, or cargo capacity, etc and then a separate set for full, empty, 10%, 20%, 50%, etc. It would expand the options for players and eliminate the reliance on static set of conditional orders.
Also adding specific minerals/installations to conditional orders would allow you to load corrundium until 50% full, load gallicite until 75% full, then fill up the remaining cargo holds with infrastructure, for instance.
Some or all of this may be supplanted by 2.8 with the ability to set fleets to run civvie contracts
Not sure how the orders are triggered in the code but at some having a conditional orders where one could enter the percentage threshold at which it triggers when assigned to a fleet might help these type of requests and add lots of flexibility to play style.
The reason this is not done is because it would break the game economy and make refitting always the best option over new construction.
Currently, the cost of a refit is the cost of new components times a 1.2x premium, which means that refitting is a less efficient use of your resources in terms for preserving some advantages such as highly-trained crew or lower net MSP consumption. If used components were returned, the premium cost of a refit would be easily recouped (or close enough as makes no difference) and it would no longer be a decision, it would be the obvious best choice every time to refit one’s ships.
Given that refitting already has a lot of advantages, especially since it costs less MSP than a new-build ship, I don’t think tilting the balance more in that direction is a good idea.
I would say if it was added change the trade offs. Perhaps make refit with salvaging old components an option one can select but make it take longer and cost MSP. Not sure this is worth the effort and micromanagement. Might be difficult to get the balance right where it was still sometimes meaningful/optimal but not clearly the right choice.
If you want to keep the old components, you can first scrap the ship, and then assemble a new ship from them and new components. It will take longer than a simple refit (tested on scrapping an old miner - all 10 modules returned). Why not make this the default refitting process, in fact, by simply adding time to remove old components (cannot be accelerated by using pre-made components) and reducing crew grade by “% Refit” percent?
The question is why? Why should I throw an old expensive engine in the trash? I don’t mind waiting more time on refit, as long as it means I won’t lose 250k Gallicite when replacing the old engines of my 249 freighters. Why should I choose between saving resources or saving crew grade if I only need to replace few components? Why should I build a new ship just to return an old expensive DFC?
This means that in the case where you have an older ship and you want a newer ship, you have several options:
Refit the old ship into a new ship. You keep the old crew and all or most of their training grade. The total number of ships in your navy remains the same, which may be good or bad depending on other factors.
Scrap the old ship and build a new ship. Again, the total number of ships stays the same, but you trade crew grade for saving or recovering some minerals.
Keep the old ship and build a new ship. This is often the most expensive option, but you have more ships as a result.
So the answer to
is “because it creates interesting decisions.” Interesting decisions, in turn, are what Aurora is all about from a gameplay perspective. Rarely in Aurora can you have your cake and eat it too.
The upshot is that any change to these mechanics needs to preserve or expand the decision space without trivializing anything. Getting components back and retaining crew grade in the refit process arguably trivializes the decision by making scrapping largely pointless in this case and, unless other changes are made, making new construction relatively more expensive to the point of being an inferior option as well.
If you know about it, yes. Previously, I generally believed that refitting returns at least resources from old components. Until about this point.
In my game, I prefer to refit ships as soon as possible, because there are relatively few of them and because I want to. However, spending tons of resources on improving each component or tons of time on another reassembly of a 200kt ship… is impractical.
It seems to me that some simplification will really be useful here, because this way you will save sanity (reassembling 100~250 ships for each engine upgrade) and some nice little things like the ship history.
Maybe we have too different opinions about this, but I really don’t see a problem in combining points 1 and 2 to benefit from both. After all, this is the purpose of the refit order.
If you need more ships - construct. If you need to improve the ships - refit. If you don’t need these ships anymore - scrap.
Using scrap and construct for refitting purposes looks like a strange solution to me. I really don’t understand why this should be one of the main methods of improving the fleet at all. Why not just make refit more convenient so that it does the same thing? If you are very concerned about the issue of the crew grade, I have already mentioned their decrease depending on the difference between the ships.
This way you won’t have to worry about any issues with frequent minor ship upgrades. If the changes are major, you will rebuild the ship. It’s simple and convenient.
After all, returning components is simply reduces micromanagement if you want to refit hundreds of ships without losing thousands of Gallicit and other resources.
In the ship design window, reduce the ship type list.
Has anybody ever used an “ASW Destroyer” design?
What would that even do in space?
A “Galleon” is an armed transport or a Cruiser with cargo space.
Does anybody use those? Would that even make sense in Aurora, beyond very unusual circumstances?
A “Drakkar” is just a Raider by a different name.
The list goes on.
I’d very much appreciate a very few very basic types (no more than a dozen or so) to introduce the concept and let the list fill itself out via the “New Hull” button over my own games.
A means to clean out the list outside messing with the DB would also be a nice thing.
Hi, my suggestion is adding storage-less version of engineering space. I like big ships and main trouble with them is what you must balance AFR and Maintenance Supply storage space.
For example my heaviest class in this run (named after real cruiser from russian history, not game itself) with current, best AFR/MSP_dumpster and Best MPS/bucket_with_bolts setups.
Replace some engineering spaces with some ES_without_MSP_storage (even for same price and mass) makes for the best.
Given that there are a few naming themes in the DB which are clearly intended for ground units (e.g., Space Marine Chapters), why not allow selecting a naming theme for ground forces formations?
Ideally, each formation type would have its own theme, so my Spesh Marines aren’t using the same names as my Cadian Shock Troopers.
Also, i’ve forget before, update commander name theme file format from “name_male name_female surname” to “name_male name_female surname_male surname_female” since some languages have different forms of surname for different genders. With using “surname_male” for both if femaly is empty.
P.s. sorry if it already implemented, i still not read all patch notes since C# release. Game is great, but overwhelming and demand time to learn all of it’s aspects.
Be nice if, in the intel window - known ship classes, you could set certain ships to not interrupt, so it’d be possible classify ships as non-threats. This would save an awful lot of time with commercial ships interrupting gameplay.
I’d love a way to using the existing naming themes to rename all the planets in a system. You can already select a name for the system, but that just gives all the planets numbers. I like to give my populated systems’ planets names based on a theme, but that can be tedious. Being able to have them all automatically named according to a theme (then adjusting some names afterward) would really help with that.
add more trans-Newtonian/conventional level tech for maybe a more immersive start where it makes sense to send probes (that take very long/slow or very inefficient with sorium etc.) and you build satellites etc.
or just for people that want it to take a bit longer before they hit space age (want a bit more content in between), this could also if AI empires also do research add more delay for them to reach space age or create some more variety in pre-space age AI empires/civilizations one encounters
I am not talking about a lot, just like 1-2 tech layer in between maybe I don’t know if people might like that, it could also be for before trans-Newtonian tech level, like late atomic even maybe before the usual tech start level. It could also maybe somehow allow for more flexibility in doomsday scenarios where you can build a ark ship that is very slow or slowish and uses way too much Sorium I don’t know like a last shot in the dark hoping you make it to a better world lol
I mean we had the ability to do space travel from around the 1980’s
players can focus on organizing their ground forces, playing around with templates for ground forces etc. (design probes/satellites, primitive stations that give research bonuses) and like focus on home planet industry
Currently, each ship or station class design is automatically classified as one of several different categories of ship at the bottom of the design, for commander auto-assignment purposes. For example, a ship with Terraforming Modules will say, “This design is classed as a Terraformer for auto-assignment purposes”.
I propose that we allow the ability to override those automatic designations, as sometimes they will get it wrong. As an example, I will often deploy STO’s along with my terraforming ships or stations for defense from common spoilers. The way I like to do this is to simply add some troop transport capacity to my terraformers. Unfortunately, this causes the terraformer to be classified as a Troop Transport for auto-assignment purposes, which leads to sub-optimal commander assignments.
A simple drop-down list of available auto-assignment classifications that allow the automatic designation to be overridden if desired would be most welcome.
Should Shield regeneration be an interrupt? I think it should not, because it causes a long chain of 5 second interrupts, which can last a significant amount of time and really that has no merit or purpose, it’s a left over from EM change interrupts I think.
SJW: I’ve removed events for shield strength increases. Initial detection of shields and decreasing strength will still generate events.
