C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[Steve Walmsley]

In fact, you could build that spaceport in deep space.

Just be prepared for the first four of them to suffer unpleasant mishaps

John

Actually, when you build the fourth one, it will automatically appear at the start of your campaign.

[Whitecold]

Question: If my ship carries a boarding shuttle with a marine contingent, will these marines be properly included in a boarding combat situation? Currently there seems to be no need to be troop transport capabilities onto a ship if you are going to use a drop shuttle anyway.

[King-Salomon]

Questions about boarding:

1) after the marines got into the enemy ship, is the "boarding ship" still needed to stay with the boarded ship or can it moved away?

2) after a successful boarding, will the marines (if the ship could moved away) needed to "transferred" again to there "home-ship" as there might be no troop-transport-bay in the "liberated" one or will they be "teleported automatically" to reduce micro?

3) as boarding might kill all the enemy crew, the "new ship crew" is 0 - will the necessary crew be taken from the Boarding ship (so it might be a good idea to have more crew in boarding ships than needed), any kind of ship and their might be an order to "split crew" between ships or will there just be a min moral of 25% according to "normal under-manning rule" (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104052#msg104052) and the ship is "abandoned on overhaul" with 0 crew but functional? (or might the surviving marines act as temporary crew?)

4) is it possible to add specific a specific ground-troop-formation-typ to a ship-class with troop-bay like a missile or fighter load so that after being build the ship automatic gets the "marine detachment" (which is already on the yard-planet) loaded? - this would reduce the micro if the player decides to add his bigger warships with marine-detachments as this would be added by designing the class and all ships of these class add a formation after being build...

[Steve Walmsley]

Questions about boarding:

1) after the marines got into the enemy ship, is the "boarding ship" still needed to stay with the boarded ship or can it moved away?

2) after a successful boarding, will the marines (if the ship could moved away) needed to "transferred" again to there "home-ship" as there might be no troop-transport-bay in the "liberated" one or will they be "teleported automatically" to reduce micro?

3) as boarding might kill all the enemy crew, the "new ship crew" is 0 - will the necessary crew be taken from the Boarding ship (so it might be a good idea to have more crew in boarding ships than needed), any kind of ship and their might be an order to "split crew" between ships or will there just be a min moral of 25% according to "normal under-manning rule" (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104052#msg104052) and the ship is "abandoned on overhaul" with 0 crew but functional? (or might the surviving marines act as temporary crew?)

4) is it possible to add specific a specific ground-troop-formation-typ to a ship-class with troop-bay like a missile or fighter load so that after being build the ship automatic gets the "marine detachment" (which is already on the yard-planet) loaded? - this would reduce the micro if the player decides to add his bigger warships with marine-detachments as this would be added by designing the class and all ships of these class add a formation after being build...

1) It can move away immediately

2) Currently, the only way to get the marines off will be the normal unload procedure. I might add something to make this easier

3) Good question. For the moment, I think it would be undermanned. It sounds like I do need to have some way of transferring crew on and troops off in space.

4) That would be possible, but not straightforward. I'll give it some thought.

[Kurt]

In fact, you could build that spaceport in deep space.

Just be prepared for the first four of them to suffer unpleasant mishaps

John

Actually, when you build the fourth one, it will automatically appear at the start of your campaign.

Darn it!  I'm getting an increasing itch to re-watch B5 and you guys aren't helping!

Right now I'm watching Legends of the Galactic Heroes Gaiden, so it'll be a while, but I really miss B5. 

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley]

Question: If my ship carries a boarding shuttle with a marine contingent, will these marines be properly included in a boarding combat situation? Currently there seems to be no need to be troop transport capabilities onto a ship if you are going to use a drop shuttle anyway.

Not sure which way around you mean. If the marines are on a boarding shuttle on the the attacking ship, that shuttle would need to be detached and be ordered to attack separately. If the marines are on a boarding shuttle on the defending ship, they will fight to protect the mothership.

[Kurt]

Questions about boarding:

1) after the marines got into the enemy ship, is the "boarding ship" still needed to stay with the boarded ship or can it moved away?

2) after a successful boarding, will the marines (if the ship could moved away) needed to "transferred" again to there "home-ship" as there might be no troop-transport-bay in the "liberated" one or will they be "teleported automatically" to reduce micro?

3) as boarding might kill all the enemy crew, the "new ship crew" is 0 - will the necessary crew be taken from the Boarding ship (so it might be a good idea to have more crew in boarding ships than needed), any kind of ship and their might be an order to "split crew" between ships or will there just be a min moral of 25% according to "normal under-manning rule" (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104052#msg104052) and the ship is "abandoned on overhaul" with 0 crew but functional? (or might the surviving marines act as temporary crew?)

4) is it possible to add specific a specific ground-troop-formation-typ to a ship-class with troop-bay like a missile or fighter load so that after being build the ship automatic gets the "marine detachment" (which is already on the yard-planet) loaded? - this would reduce the micro if the player decides to add his bigger warships with marine-detachments as this would be added by designing the class and all ships of these class add a formation after being build...

1) It can move away immediately

2) Currently, the only way to get the marines off will be the normal unload procedure. I might add something to make this easier

3) Good question. For the moment, I think it would be undermanned. It sounds like I do need to have some way of transferring crew on and troops off in space.

4) That would be possible, but not straightforward. I'll give it some thought.

For #3, historically, warships/privateers/pirates would generally transfer a "prize crew" aboard a captured ship.  This prize crew would be capable of getting the ship to dock, but little else.  Perhaps if ships had the option of being "under crewed", once they achieved that status, either through capture by boarding or combat damage, they would only be able to move, not fire offensive weapons. 

Kurt

[Steve Walmsley]

For #3, historically, warships/privateers/pirates would generally transfer a "prize crew" aboard a captured ship.  This prize crew would be capable of getting the ship to dock, but little else.  Perhaps if ships had the option of being "under crewed", once they achieved that status, either through capture by boarding or combat damage, they would only be able to move, not fire offensive weapons. 

C# Aurora does have rules for under-manning, once the ship falls below half the normal crew. The morale will fall to a minimum of 25%, so that should simulate the prize crew or the marines getting the ship home.

What I don't have at the moment are rules or code for zero crew, which actually works out fine for the above, but if I ever want the concept of intact but abandoned ships (anti-crew weapons, plague, etc.) I will need to address that.

[Hazard]

Regarding boarded ships; prize crews should not be more than needed to run the bridge, engines, sensors, and the engineering command station, and then only partial. The point of a prize ship isn't that you turn it around and press it into service, it's that you bring it home so it can be studied and made compatible with your own control systems.

This includes a lot of relabeling of gauges and translating of manuals.

[Garfunkel]

Quite excited about the boarding changes. To my shame, I've never done successful boardings in VB6, so that will definitely have to change in C#.

This includes a lot of relabeling of gauges and translating of manuals.

Not to mention changing tentacle-controls to finger-controls 

[Barkhorn]

While boarding is still on everyone's mind:

What happens if you abandon ship while being boarded?  Does the ship still become a wreck, or do the boarders automatically succeed?

If a ship is destroyed while repelling boarders, what happens to the boarders?  Do they have a chance to make it to an escape pod, or do they all die?

What happens to boarders who succeed in capturing a ship that does not have troop transport capability?

[Panopticon]

I have a question about system generation.
I assume C# Aurora will have a real stars/randomly generated option, but have you considered giving us the ability to customize our home system at all? I envision something like being able to select sun type, binary/trinary/etc, number of planets, presence and number of asteroid belts, and so on.

[Father Tim]

What happens to boarders who succeed in capturing a ship that does not have troop transport capability?

They (probably) overload its life support capability and suffer the appropriate penalties.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104052;topicseen#msg104052

And they need Cargo Shuttles (or the Troops equivalent) to get back off.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg105591#msg105591

[Father Tim]

I have a question about system generation.
I assume C# Aurora will have a real stars/randomly generated option, but have you considered giving us the ability to customize our home system at all? I envision something like being able to select sun type, binary/trinary/etc, number of planets, presence and number of asteroid belts, and so on.

In the past Steve has said no, because the system generation code is so complex and inter-linked.  It's faster to generate new systems until you get one close to what you want.  (Save for the 'Add Comet' and 'Add Ruins' and 'Add Precursor' buttons in SM mode, F9 (System) window.)

Please note that creating a habitable world is easy.  All you need is a rock (not gas giant) with appropriate gravity and then SM the atmosphere to Nitr-Ox or Nitro-Methane and Greenhouse or Anti-Greenhouse to a reasonable temperature.  Any race created there will be ideally suited to the world.

It is only slightly more difficult to make a Hamun-habitable planet/moon.  Follow the exact same steps above; the only difference is that the "appropriate gravity" and "reasonable temperature" are already picked for you.

[Panopticon]

I have a question about system generation.
I assume C# Aurora will have a real stars/randomly generated option, but have you considered giving us the ability to customize our home system at all? I envision something like being able to select sun type, binary/trinary/etc, number of planets, presence and number of asteroid belts, and so on.

In the past Steve has said no, because the system generation code is so complex and inter-linked.  It's faster to generate new systems until you get one close to what you want.  (Save for the 'Add Comet' and 'Add Ruins' and 'Add Precursor' buttons in SM mode, F9 (System) window.)

Please note that creating a habitable world is easy.  All you need is a rock (not gas giant) with appropriate gravity and then SM the atmosphere to Nitr-Ox or Nitro-Methane and Greenhouse or Anti-Greenhouse to a reasonable temperature.  Any race created there will be ideally suited to the world.

It is only slightly more difficult to make a Hamun-habitable planet/moon.  Follow the exact same steps above; the only difference is that the "appropriate gravity" and "reasonable temperature" are already picked for you.

I am aware of how it was in the past, having done it myself a number of times, while fairly simple it was also not exactly intuitive either, but what if I want   to make a binary system with 3 asteroid belts and 4 Earths? I'd rather not rerun game generation until it gave me an appropriate system and then manually tinker with the atmosphere.

What I sort of envision is a "use custom starting system" on the new game menu, which then brings up a list of options that I mentioned above, that system is used as the start in place of Sol and the rest of the universe is generated normally. Could even save them as templates for future games. Not gonna be mad if it doesn't/can't happen of course, and I just realized this isn't the suggestions thread, but I figure it can't hurt to ask if he has any plans for customization like that.