I know that these ideas are quiet extensive, and I don't know how viable they are, but they seem quite intuitive and fitting for the mod:

1) Area fire should have its spacing reduced slightly - the current spacing leaves empty gaps where biters can survive righteous vaporization.

2) The 'Ion cannon' object on a ship should be an actual object, rather than a radar. Currently removing the object simply returns a radar. I feel like removing the object should remove an Ion Cannon from orbit but return an Ion Cannon object.

3 (or 2A)) An Ion Cannon's recharge time should be based on how long it takes to actually fill the Ion Cannon's energy buffer on the ship it's placed on, so recharge time can be improved by building a more robust vessel. (Maybe give it an inherent energy recharge speed - due to the fact that it requires several solar panels to be built.

4 (or 2B)) An Ion Cannon should follow the ship it's placed on. I built an Ion Cannon ship, assuming this was how the game functioned, sent it to Volcanos, and was disappointed to find

Thanks for your ideas

1) I know, there will be an option for the shot density
2) I know. removing the controller, will remove the io cannon. (in the future) WIP
...
Oh one mistake , the ion connon is NOT placed on the ship it is on the orbit of the current planet. as stated in the description. the controller should be installed on a NONE moveable platform. moving the platform is not (yet) supported. Currently I do not remove the ion cannons from the orbit if the controller ist removed or the platform moves. this is WIP

3 you are right, but too complicated (for now). the time is a option in settings. i will keep it in mind.
4 Why? its a satelit ;-) But if it were installable, where would you put the 200+ solar panels you need? But maybe i will implement that the satelites can follow the ship.

Well - to clarify, I'm not suggesting the entire satellite being required to build the 100 solar panels and 200 accumulators. Abstraction is fine. It just feels more intuitive if they object you place is the Ion cannon itself. After all, the 100 panels and the 200 accumulators are used in the recipe - you could argue they're either extending out of the bottom of the platform and we can't see them, or just that you've somehow managed to condense them down into the one structure.

OK, but the mod is (currently) designed to manage ion cannons in orbit (technical assigned by a surface). everything else requires changes to the management and I need time for that first.

OK, but the mod is (currently) designed to manage ion cannons in orbit (technical assigned by a surface). everything else requires changes to the management and I need time for that first.

That's understandable! I was just offering some suggestions for how it could function in the future.

+1 for removing the ion cannon from the surface when mining the cannon on the platform, and refund the cannon (tho it cannot be shipped anywhere else since it's too heavy for a rocket, so it would need to support the ship moving to another planet's orbit and build it there... up to you what to do with this).
Current behavior is broken as with just 9 tiles one could build more ion cannons and mine them asap, and they will still work as nothing happened and without consuming any energy. Not that that is a major concern. Maybe power usage could be increased to balance the fact that cannon's projectiles are free. My current platform has 45 cannons with like 10 solar panels to power it all.

I really liked previous suggestions from @Typhaaris to make the ion cannons the actual entity that counts for the surface, with the possibility to build ships around them and move ships across the universe to deal with enemies, rather than scripting the cannon to the planet's surface and be it forever. I know it's a lot of code change, but I think it would be really cool as well. :)

I'll leave other suggestions/feature requests, feel free to pick/discard/build upon whatever you want from this list:
- add settings to enable/disable chat notifications/sounds messages
- only print/play sounds of ion cannons related to players that are on the same surface of the cannons triggering
- add possibility to ping with the Targeting Device in zoomed out map view
- add setting/possibility to target enemies even if in the fog-of-war
- add callback to rescan an area damaged by an ion cannon so to confirm enemies have been removed and also update map view (otherwise, enemies' red dots still show up in fog of war)
- add gps tag when printing "Targeting ion cannon #9 .." (honestly, the chat.print can be removed as it already shows up in player's alerts with all these info but IDK)

the ion cannons are independent, they have their own solar cells/accumulators
the controller is just the replacement for “shoot the cannon into space” from Vanilla
that's why it doesn't yet have much logic, apart from the fact that it has to be placed ;-)
but the idea is of course expandable. compared with vanilla nothing is broken

• add possibility to ping with the Targeting Device in zoomed out map view

already implemented, use area targeter

• add setting/possibility to target enemies even if in the fog-of-war

already implemented, use area targeter

Interaction in the remote view is very limited by the API. so the current capabilities reflect what the API provides.

I would also love it if the ion cannons could be removed. I currently have 10 positioned over Vulcanus (I have the Explosive Biters mod installed) and as soon as I shoot at a nest with them my FPS drops to 20 or even less. And since you can't activate auto-targeting per surface, I'm sadly forced to leave it deactivated.

@TornBreeze you can remove ion-cannons in the admin menu if cheats are activated

Well, activating cheat mode is pretty stupid because then all recipes are free and everything is already researched. That doesn't do me any good at all.

I talk from cheat mode of ion-cannon! to REMOVE a ion-cannon the way you wanted it. No one is forcing you to use it to add something for free!

but I can't undo the cheat mode. Or at least I can't just reset the research to where it was before the command. I would then have to reset the research again and research everything a third time. (I already had to do that because of another mod..)

i have no idea what you are talking about. in the cheat mode of the ion-cannon you can add, remove and recharge cannons. nothing more and nothing less. no researches are changed!

So even if I type /cheat, I have no way to remove a single ion cannon. There is no setting to remove an ion cannon and there is no information about it in the mod description or FAQ. So if you are not even able to give helpful information, how did you even manage to write this mod?

So even if I type /cheat, I have no way to remove a single ion cannon. There is no setting to remove an ion cannon and there is no information about it in the mod description or FAQ. So if you are not even able to give helpful information, how did you even manage to write this mod?

You've derailed the topic a little but - under Mod Options, on the Per Map tab, if you look for ion cannon, there is a 'cheat mode' checkmark.

You've derailed the topic a little but - under Mod Options, on the Per Map tab, if you look for ion cannon, there is a 'cheat mode' checkmark.

Thank you for the quick and direct information. Unfortunately we got off topic because someone tried to help me and just couldn't explain it properly. (By the way, I looked through the settings several times and completely overlooked this one setting...)

because someone tried to help me and just couldn't explain it properly.

Accusing someone of something when you don't understand it yourself is rude and unhelpful.
Merry Christmas