[Satelite Improvement Idea] Option to turn off Ship Scanning, Only update Trade Info!

[Lazerath]

I was thinking that it would be nice if the Devs either added a setting to satellites and advanced satellites to turn of ship scanning and work only as a trade offer update satellite.

Or add a "Trade Satellite" to the game that only updates trade offers from stations (Or do both actually). This would help people who suffer from massive slow down when wanting to use satellites to keep their trade offers updated with out having to either fly to stations themselves, get NPC ships to update trade offers one darn sector at a time or purchase trade offer subscriptions from factions (which you loose if you go to war with them at that time they are no help).

Personally I would like this to be implemented so I don't have to play modified.

1. Advanced Satellite (Add option to "Turn Off Ship Scanning/Map Update")
2. Satellite (Add option to "Turn Off Ship Scanning/Map Update")

That would be best or else add a Trade Satellite that has the same range as a normal satellite and add the option to the advanced satellite (because you need a longer range trade satellite as well or add an advanced Trade satellite. Which ever is easier and best for performance.

Edit: (Forgot to add the list below)

It would be like this then

1. Advanced Satellite
2. Satellite
3. Advanced Trade Satellite
4. Trade Satellite

End Edit!

Everyone wins in this situation!
Everyone's computer performance would improve if they use a lots of satellites!
Solves one of the things that can DRAMATICALLY affect the games performance!
In My Opinion this is a "No Brainer" and should be done soon.

Whats your opinion?

@Devs - Please discuss this if you have not already!

Cheers

[radcapricorn]

(D'oh, should read the posts more carefully. Disregard).

[Axeface]

A trade satellite with a much larger range than the current sats would be best I think. Gives the player a real reason to use them over normal sats past better performance. Give them like a 100km range, but they only update trades.

[Falcrack]

Yeah, I would like a trade satellite, which does not give vision, but does have a huge (almost sector wide) range for trade updates.

The Sector Satellites mod is really good IMO, if the devs are unwilling to update the vanilla game with something like this.

[Lazerath]

The Sector Satellites mod is really good IMO, if the devs are unwilling to update the vanilla game with something like this.

Yes, the satellite mod is good and I use it when ever I play a modded game. The problem is that it modifies the game! Not everyone plays with mods or wants to always play with mods. I like to bounce between both depending on what the mod adds to the game or fixes whats broken/doesn't work properly in the Vanilla Game.

Fact: Current Vanilla game employment of Satellites kills the game performance if you use more then a handful and it gets even worse as you own more ships you own as well. This would fix one major performance killer in the game and also be an improvement to the game.

Hopefully more people will comment with their ideas/thoughts on this to help get the Devs to make this happen!

Cheers!

[Imperial Good]

Seems kind of pointless since one could just buy a trade subscription with the faction...

I would personally like to see better satellite management options, including satellites time expiring and requiring replacement. One can then assign ships to keep satellites replaced. When a satellite is no longer useful one can de-schedule it for replacement so when it naturally time expires it will be gone. Advanced satellites last longer than normal satellites and research options could be added which reduce the rate of decay (and thus reduce the cost) of satellites.

If player satellite time expiry is not a sensible mechanics then at least add the ability to order a ship to pickup deployed satellites from map view, as currently the only way is by manually flying to the satellite, deactivating it and flying into it.

It would also be nice if in the long term low attention mechanics could be unified so that both in and out of the fog of war behave the same and use the same resources. This would mean that satellites themselves would have trivial performance impact and could not mechanically change how the universe works.

[radcapricorn]

or purchase trade offer subscriptions from factions (which you loose if you go to war with them at that time they are no help).

Having slept on it, I think I shouldn't have edited my initial reply. Trade offer subscriptions are exactly the way to get "lightweight" trade offer updates. Yes, if you go to war, you'll lose them. But you'll also lose satellites placed behind enemy lines, so I don't see how this would be different.

[Lazerath]

Yes, the trade offer subscription works as I already mentioned however, that still does NOT change the fact that using lots of satellites in the current implementation of the game TANKS game performance on most computers especially late game as your empire grows. I know this from dealing with it first hand and my empire was small from what I have read of others on web. My empire was only worth 4 billion! and 2.8 billion was assets.

This is why I brought this up but I also think an interesting idea was brought up. While I don't like the thought of having a time expiration for satellites I think having to repair them from time to time would be a better option. Similar to the maintenance missions offered for satellite repairs etc.

The main point of this change is to help improve game performance for everyone! At least that is my thoughts behind this. Thanks for sharing your ideas and thoughts guys/gals!

Cheers!

Edit: I also forgot to mention that forcing players to use the "Trade Offer Subscriptions" (which is essentially what is happening by not implementing a change like this) because using satellites tanks game performance is a bad way to leave this.