Suggest - Features and Improvements

[gaerzi]

Idea for the "color planet by habitability" feature: an extra color (blue?) for planets that can be settled by player faction with a max population of 16+.

[zolobolo]

Would it be possible for Fusion AM to get an update?

I find it to be generally the case that Nuclear rockets are more "cooler" looking then Fusion ones but this I find especially to be the case for AM
As seen below, the nuclear varaint has a nice targeting module and is quite spacious, while the Fusion one is all cramped togehter and does not offer much in the sway of siluette for the warheads and rocket body itself- though I can see the rockets themselfes should have a very interesting shape to them but it does not really come off due to them being so tightly position to each other

I might be mistaken, but I think nuclear rockets and AM got an update after a while and maybe this is why they got more attention to detail

[gaerzi]

Diplomacy feature suggestion: giving ships to another empire.

I'd just like some sort of underhanded way to assist an empire. Here's an example of situation that brought that up:
- Playing as Humans, allied with the Yoral and the Gremalk
- The Ashdar Imperials declared war on the Yoral, so they asked me for help, and I took this as an opportunity to take "back" Gaia from them.
- After that, the Ash Imps, who lost a lot of ships to the Yoral and an important world to me, sued for peace, Yoral accepted and so did I.
- Then the Tinkers, smelling blood in the water, started steamrolling all over the Ash Imps.
- In the meantime, the Yokal offered to join my empire, and on the next turn the Gremalk did the same, so now I've got a lot of legacy warships I can't redesign.

I'd like to buff up the Ash Imps a bit to contain the expansion of the Tinkers, but they're still pissed at me, so I can't offer them an alliance to protect them. I thought about giving them a small world of mine at the other end of the galaxy so they'd at least get to survive the Tinker onslaught, but it actually annoys them further (because of "contested borders"). If I could give them the surplus warships, it'd give them an edge to make their stand.

Vaguely related to that, when annexing an empire it'd be nice if we did inherit their hull designs, so that we can refit their spacecraft and space stations.

It would also make sense if we did get a science boost for any technology the inherited empire has and we don't: perhaps something like getting the tier 1 tech for free (column from guidance systems to interstellar expeditions -- normally by the time you get to annex an empire, you should have them all anyway), 90% of the research done for tier 2 techs (anti-missile to modular outpost column), 80% for tier 3 (retargeting systems to artificial organisms), 70% for tier 4, and so on. Why? Because I did, eventually, go to war with the Tinkers when they asked for nearly all my coin and metal, and I wasn't going to give it to them, so they declared war. I took several of their worlds until they sued for peace. Between wreckage analyses after a space battle, capturing ships and giving them to the scientists and engineers, and seizing several worlds, I did get all the technologies the Tinker had and I didn't, including the race-exclusive Portable Fabrication. It feels weird to me that when an empire joins mine out of their own volition, with all their infrastructure intact and their population cooperating, their tech is lost forever; whereas when blowing stuff up and looking at the ashes it isn't.

[nweismuller]

- In the meantime, the Yokal offered to join my empire, and on the next turn the Gremalk did the same, so now I've got a lot of legacy warships I can't redesign.

It's not immediately obvious, but even in live, you should be able to refit ships that aren't of your racial design using planetary production (although not with instant refit). You'll just have to set the new design when you add the refit job to the queue. The development branch makes it so new hull designs are added when you diplomatically annex an ally, so you'll be able to redesign, build, and refit those legacy ships freely once that change hits live.

[gaerzi]

It's not immediately obvious, but even in live, you should be able to refit ships that aren't of your racial design using planetary production (although not with instant refit).

The interface for refit-through-production is confusing so after a few aborted attempts I just discarded it as something that doesn't work. With your post I took another look and figured it out.

The problem:
- I've got a fleet of spaceship I want to update to the new standard design; but I don't have enough money and metal to do it all at once -- I can at most update one spaceship every two or three turns
- I want to set a planet to do it gradually to free me from having to micromanage that turn after turn
- So I go to refit, it asks me to select a hull, and then I'm sent to the ship design screen but -- and that was the source of my initial confusion -- I don't want to redesign the ship, I just want it to use the new standard design. Turns out the screen simply shows up the ship's current design and you have to recreate your standard design in here manually, which is tedious. As long as you haven't changed anything, the validation checkmark remains grayed out. Originally I hadn't paid much attention to the left window showing that the onboard systems are outdated, I just saw that I wanted to refit the ship and that after selecting it I couldn't go further.

Suggestion:
- Separate the "refit" option into two: "upgrade refit" and "custom refit"
- Custom refit would be the current behavior of modifying the spaceship as it exists, except it wouldn't get the little icons for buying instant refit and instant mass refit. That would make it clearer that you're looking at the ships as they are and go from there.
- Upgrade refit would just apply current design to ships without having to recreate your standard design. No redesign screen.
- One of the options in "upgrade refit" hull selection screen would be "auto", in which it just takes one of the existing ships currently in the system and automatically update it to current design. This, combined with the "repeat build" queue item would let a system serve as a general upgrade and maintenance hub for your fleet during peacetime.
- This would be shown in strings where needed as "Upgrade (ship type)" and "Auto-upgrade (ship type)". E.g., a notification could look like this:

Construction of Auto-Upgrade (Carrier) was completed at Cheleb 1. Our next project will be Auto-Upgrade (Cruiser). Followed by Repeat.

Alternatively, on the redesign screen when refitting, provide a way to load up an existing design. This would make the separation between custom and upgrade unnecessary; though I'd still lobby for auto-upgrade to reduce micromanagement. Here's a mockup of how it could look like:

Spoiler: show

I've added a ⌄ on the opposite side to the ✓.
- if you have several designs for this hull type (e.g. by default transport hulls can be configured for troops and cargo), clicking on ⌄ would make a drop-down list of said designs appear, and then you can click on the one you want to instantly configure the ship to this design
- if you have only one design for this hull type, then perhaps it could only show the crossed tools symbol, not the down arrow, and clicking on it would instantly load it

In any case, the auto-upgrade would use the existing design for the current type.

[zolobolo]

Alternatively, on the redesign screen when refitting, provide a way to load up an existing design.

Did you try the refit scemas available in the dropdown on the left hand side (called Hardpoints)?

You can select from designs geared toward various combar roles and from existing ship designs for that hull

[gaerzi]

Nah, I missed it. Okay, so part of it already exists, just not where I was looking. I honestly thought it was for filtering by hardpoint type (light, medium, heavy, missile, station, system, etc.)...

Auto-design is a cool feature, too. I noticed the auto-design always choose the best power plant available (even if it's seriously overkill, like using a quantum generator on a transport) whereas I generally use the cheapest plant possible for the rest of the config so as to save a little bit on costs.

[bjg]

Could you allow longer save names? Somehow for me it's very often just one symbol short.

[nweismuller]

It would be nice to have some year labels along the x-axis of the Intelligence Briefing graphs so we can better fix when things happened on them. Not necessarily labelling every year, of course, but enough to place points on the graph.

[PrivateHudson]

It would be convenient to have staffing indicators in the form of color-coded strip above or below each building - green for fully staffed, yellow for partially, red for completely unstaffed.

[gaerzi]

Or perhaps have the building icons indicate it directly. A picture being worth a thousand words, here's a mockup of my idea:



One of the factories is unstaffed, so it only shown an outline. The other is partially staffed, so its icon is partially full, and partially outlined. I didn't touch the other buildings, so they're all fully staffed. Even if that's not how the game works.

I think using colored indicators for the buildings would clash with how they're already color-coded: yellow for markets, green for farms, red for mines... So having icons that change between full and just outline would be both clearer and more aesthetically pleasing.

[zolobolo]

Or perhaps have the building icons indicate it directly. A picture being worth a thousand words, here's a mockup of my idea:

I absolutely love this idea: all for dashboarding optimisation.

Staffing is something I just got used to calculating withouth looking at the breakdown but this is elegant and makes for more unique planetary MGMT screen which is always good ! provides usefull info

Also never though how understaffing effect all buildings... migh be a problem there

[Dragar]

That certainly would be a great UI element.

[zolobolo]

Ok, the indicator like this should work even withouth having to alter the staffing mechanic (unless there is a code limitation on displaying the icon or altering their image based on staffing and their rank in the order as there should be no redundant information here

The icons would not be moving together as understaffing only affects the first n buildings per category. Ideally, each improvement type would have different staffing requirement (Mine 1, Farm 2, Lab 3, Factory 4 and Market 5) to make the indicator ideal but because there is some variance and staffing is doen by building type, the information conveyed would be unique enough to warant it. I have put market in as last to increase its staffing requirement in line with the economic rebalance and their icnreased dominant function

The really big question might be if the code even allows to alter the image per category:
1. First factory only outline
2. Second Factory only staffed a third of the way
3. Third factory fully staffed
4. the rest, 2 farms and a mine fully staffed

[Arioch]

The problem here is that turning the icon into a meter really reduces it's value as an icon; a new user may not recognize this outline as a factory, much less understand the meaning of the partial fill.

I think a more effective way to convey this information would be to put a small warning flag on an understaffed building, and then add more information to the tooltip. The building info pane gives pretty good information on staffing, so all we may need is a reference to that pane.



If we want to do a meter of some kind, it could be added to the tooltip, but that gets messy pretty fast. I'm really not sure that this level of detail on staffing is critical to normal colony management.