C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Kristover]

Ship fatigue: With my latest campaign I have ships that are up to 50 years old, starting as a frigate of around 5000 tons, now 10-12 000 ton destroyers. Somehow there should be a penalty for "long lived" ships

I think I like the idea of increasing costs of maintaining ships based on age.  Say 10% increase up to a max of 50% per 10 years over 50 years...or perhaps 1% increase every time the ship is overhauled. I don't feel like I need this change and would be completely fine without it, but I would also welcome something like it if introduced.

[QuakeIV]

It might be reasonable if you look at it as 'spaceframe fatigue', fighter jets at least have a concept of 'airframe fatigue' where the superstructure of the aircraft itself is so worn out that there isn't really a way to fix the thing without effectively building a totally new aircraft.  Maybe aurora could have something along those lines.  Really old ships just start experiencing major structural failures (maybe past a certain point of time a slow-burning exponential growth of maintenance failure on its components, say over the course of 5-10 years) unless you do some kind of complete re-build of the ship at a shipyard.

[Hazard]

It might be reasonable if you look at it as 'spaceframe fatigue', fighter jets at least have a concept of 'airframe fatigue' where the superstructure of the aircraft itself is so worn out that there isn't really a way to fix the thing without effectively building a totally new aircraft.  Maybe aurora could have something along those lines.  Really old ships just start experiencing major structural failures (maybe past a certain point of time a slow-burning exponential growth of maintenance failure on its components, say over the course of 5-10 years) unless you do some kind of complete re-build of the ship at a shipyard.

What do you think an overhaul is for? Given how much time it takes it's pretty much stripping the ship down as much as possible, checking everything and then putting it back again.

[QuakeIV]

Generally that type of overhaul is not actually replacing the superstructure.

[ExChairman]

Overhaul is one thing but rebuilding ships is another matter, in a overhaul you repair/replaces older equipments and a lot of paint. Yea I know its a bit harder than that...
Depending on the shipclass it takes more or less time.
But rebuilding a ship does usually create problems, at least waterbased. But its usually, a lot faster to rebuild a old ship than building one from scratch or there might be problems with shipyard space or its needed for some small task while being rebuilt... Or another explanation...
I have rebuilt my frigates from around 5000 tons to 11000 tons destroyers but in 4 different stages, so its been relative fast and minor builds each time.
But in a "real" world there would be problems with those ships, one way or the other.

I love the starfire way of giving a military engine a possible "burn out" when going full speed in a strategic redeployment, were a commercial engine is slower but built for a steady boost.
Jumping throe a wormhole would also do some wear and tear, I presume at least, this could be decreased with a  jump gate, tuned into the wormhole stresses, or something...

[serger]

I understand entirely those of us, who will prefer strongly to have some reference-names for engine techs. That's space SF, that's cool! Moreover, I'd prefer to have ALL techs having some reference-names, not only branch-and-number names. But we have no such names for nigh-anything (except engines and laser wavelengths), and those we have - are artifacts, those does not correspond well with all other TN narrative.

The last of my VB campaigns, I had DB password and use it to change all tech names to smth like "*-Q smth" (tier numbers in the place of asterisk). Made quiet RP explanations of quantity of layers of some layered TN-composite materials, needed to build corresponding tech, and it was coherent enough to play and believe in it, to have a WORLD in my head. It was, really, a job of work to rename all those DB records coherently, having such a vague notion about game code and no game experience with late tiers mechanics, but it really was fun to play with this name scheme in the upshot.

So, I think it will be close to ideal to have basic branch-tier tech names, and to have reference-name schemes (and some default scheme with current power-and-propultion tech names), with some player interface to create your own name-scheme for techs, the same as for ships and ground units. It can be also a way co contribute in Aurora for us, uploading our schemes to compare and integrate at next release.

P.S. Sorry for my clumsy English, I hope it's still comprehensible in outline.

[Razgriz]

What do you guys think about Keel/Spinal mount railguns?

Or better yet internally mounted?  Essentially a ship built around a gun.  Inspired from The Expanse and Halo (Internal mount MAC cannon or Gauss)

The Rocinante has a spinal mount Railgun and the Amun-Ra stealth frigate has an internally mounted gun.

It would give three levels for all weapons Standard hull/turret mounted guns, larger spinal mounted guns and huge Internally  mounted weapons

Just some thoughts, thanks.

[Rabid_Cog]

I thought spine mounted and internally-mounted were the same thing? The only difference is exactly how much ship you have that is not gun. They are functionally the same, after all. No turret, bigger than normal.

[alex_brunius]

I thought spine mounted and internally-mounted were the same thing? The only difference is exactly how much ship you have that is not gun. They are functionally the same, after all. No turret, bigger than normal.

Technically the difference I think is that you can have several internally mounted guns, but only one spinal.

In fact any weapons in Aurora including turrets could be argued to be treated as internal from a game mechanics standpoint since they are protected by your armor.

I would love to be able to make some sort of spinal railgun or more types of spinal weapons overall, and also would love to be able to put more weapons in turrets ( even if you disable speeding them up for balancing, but just for RP/extra armor purposes )

[Garfunkel]

We already have Spinal and Advanced Spinal for lasers. For Particle Beams, we have Particle Lance. Plasma Carronade doesn't need it as it already starts at big and is even cheaper in C#. Gauss is meant for PD and fighters. So that only leaves Rail gun - which shouldn't be turreted because then Gauss loses 90% of its reason to exist since turreted RG will then be almost always superior to GG in PD role. Spinal mount for RG would thus be the other option and, in fact, it would balance Laser out. Because if you don't have any EW scientists or you want to stick with MK field for RP reasons, you don't have any "big guns" except for making missiles with ultra-short ranges and pretending they are gigantic cannon shells or something.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In respond to ship fatigue I think that it would be sound to make it so that the chance of breakdown a ship will get increases over time... let's say +1% per year. Every time you refit the ship you might reduce this penalty by a certain amount depending on how extensive the refit is... but you will never be able to eliminate the problem and after about 50-70 years you will get too frequent malfunctions that you will need to scrap the ship.

I also think it would be good if a ship could only be refitted to be say 20% less or 25% more than its original weight as well as a hard limit to how a ship can be refitted over time.

[Alsadius]

Given that this is a more roleplay-heavy game than a competitive one, I'm not sure if the ship fatigue thing needs to exist. There's a lot of fiction out there where ridiculously old ships still see use(Battletech comes to mind). Heck, even in the real world, there's wet-navy ships over a century old that are still in active use(one over 200 years old and still sailing, one from the Kaiser's navy of WW1 which has also been sunken and re-floated, and one over a century old and still in use for its original purpose come to mind), and salt water is generally far nastier than vacuum.

[Desdinova]

There's also the gameplay concern that NPRs don't have maintenance.

[QuakeIV]

I mean, on the flip side, the ships in aurora are maneuvering in pretty insane ways compared to ships.  You could reasonably argue that might inflict wear and tear more comparable to what fighter jets have to deal with.  I think its a good point that wet navy ships can potentially be usable for a really long time though.  The Volkhov there being a particularly good example.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Given that this is a more roleplay-heavy game than a competitive one, I'm not sure if the ship fatigue thing needs to exist. There's a lot of fiction out there where ridiculously old ships still see use(Battletech comes to mind). Heck, even in the real world, there's wet-navy ships over a century old that are still in active use(one over 200 years old and still sailing, one from the Kaiser's navy of WW1 which has also been sunken and re-floated, and one over a century old and still in use for its original purpose come to mind), and salt water is generally far nastier than vacuum.

There is a very big differences between a ship and a ship and what they are used for... sure... it is possible to run ships for hundreds of years if they are maintained well enough... pure warships are another thing though as some component of ships simply can't be modernised enough over time and the cost of running them becomes progressively more expensive. Most combat ships simply have too much wear and tear to last more than about 50 years or so, most of those reason have little to do with salt water and corrosion damage which can be fixed through proper maintenance.

I suggested a soft cap... you could run a ship for hundreds of years you just can't run them for very long before they need maintenance at that time.