Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions  (Read 345429 times)

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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #525 on: September 12, 2018, 03:47:31 AM »
Even improved stealth efficiency can't get past a picket. I think it would be interesting to be able to design special jump engines that have a huge jump radius (maybe starting at around 10m km and getting higher with tech?) that can only jump one ship (no assisted transits or squadron jumps). Other downsides could be increased size, as is done with commercial drives, and a smaller maximum size. This would allow a stealth ship to jump in outside point-blank sensor range, or allow a fast, PD-equipped ship to escape more quickly. Obviously, these would be trapped in enemy territory, but that is a danger with any stealth ship design.

This sort of Jump Drive design could also be relevant if you want piracy or raiding ( AKA Space Submarines ) to be relevant weapons. ( If they can't get around jump point pickets they are not going to reach the rear lines ).

These Jump drives would need to take up big enough space to be prohibitive for use on your main warships, but small enough to still allow you to run stealth modules and some cheap reduced sized launcher weapon systems that can quickly and efficiently destroy freighters or civilian ships.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #526 on: September 12, 2018, 06:34:32 AM »

This sort of Jump Drive design could also be relevant if you want piracy or raiding ( AKA Space Submarines ) to be relevant weapons. ( If they can't get around jump point pickets they are not going to reach the rear lines ).

These Jump drives would need to take up big enough space to be prohibitive for use on your main warships, but small enough to still allow you to run stealth modules and some cheap reduced sized launcher weapon systems that can quickly and efficiently destroy freighters or civilian ships.
Currently a jump drive and a cloak are pretty much taking up an entire ship already. I think regular jump drives need a buff in HS requirement first to make room a long range, larger jump drive. Also such a drive should work both ways (jumping into a point from afar, jumping out a good distance away), to not make any jump into enemy territory a suicide mission.
Maybe some other limits are possible to make them unsuitable for regular ships, maybe a maximum speed a cloak works at, or not improving the efficiency of the long range jump drive, but just its maximum size, and thus the maximum size of ship it can be used on.
For "submarines" improved handling of passive detectors would also help. A missile fire control should be able to guide a homing missile close enough to a target to have a 0.25 msp sensor on top of the missile pick up the target for final acquisition.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #527 on: September 12, 2018, 08:30:38 AM »
Currently a jump drive and a cloak are pretty much taking up an entire ship already.

Only at the very first levels. ( First level is Efficiency 3 for both meaning you have 33% left for all other systems if you equip both )

At for example 5:th tech level you will have Efficiency 8 on both meaning you can make a ship with 75% left for all other systems if both are equipped. Basically you could even equip all your warships with it ( even if it would be costly it is within reach ).

At max tech levels ( Efficiency 15 ) You would need to allocate just 13% of your ship to both these systems leaving the remaining 87% free.

For balance any "Raiding" or "Scouting" Jump drive or what you want to call it would need to have a much flatter progression curve in tech, or be made so much significantly more expensive in resources that it's not feasible to equip large parts of your fleet with it.

For "submarines" improved handling of passive detectors would also help. A missile fire control should be able to guide a homing missile close enough to a target to have a 0.25 msp sensor on top of the missile pick up the target for final acquisition.

That's a good idea, and one that I have suggested before. The tricky question is how you don't make it unbalanced ( Basically what prevents everyone from always using just passive targeting? ). It needs to have some serious downsides too besides requiring a 0.25 msp sensor in each missile.
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #528 on: September 12, 2018, 08:58:46 AM »
It would save on a lot of clicking if we could issue the same orders to multiple task forces (or whatever they are now called) at the same time. Specifically I'm thinking of cases where you have multiple fighter squadrons or fac squadrons and you want them all to be heading to a new waypoint or all returning and refueling etc. I know you can save a set of orders and copy over currently but that is still quite fiddly if you want to do for a group of say 10 squadrons and you are regularly updating their orders. Was wondering is some sort of shift click to highlight multiple task forces would be possible.
 

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #529 on: September 12, 2018, 06:50:37 PM »
If you wanted to give a serious downside to self targeting missiles, gives CIWS a significant bonus to hit against sensor equipped missiles. Something about how they're lighting themselves up with the sensor package pinging off. Then you could justify buffing the effective range of missile sensors. So for your big warships, if you want to get your warheads through a heavy missile defense in a proper fleet, you guide them in from a directed fire control. But if your picking off a lone merchant ship, or a handful of troop ships in a surprise attack, the trade off of using more missiles to achieve the same effective damage may be worth it.
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #530 on: September 13, 2018, 01:02:41 AM »
It would save on a lot of clicking if we could issue the same orders to multiple task forces (or whatever they are now called) at the same time. Specifically I'm thinking of cases where you have multiple fighter squadrons or fac squadrons and you want them all to be heading to a new waypoint or all returning and refueling etc. I know you can save a set of orders and copy over currently but that is still quite fiddly if you want to do for a group of say 10 squadrons and you are regularly updating their orders. Was wondering is some sort of shift click to highlight multiple task forces would be possible.
I guess, with the new system, you put them as subfleets in one fleet, send that to the waypoint and there split them up in subfleets again.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #531 on: September 13, 2018, 02:17:28 AM »
Only at the very first levels. ( First level is Efficiency 3 for both meaning you have 33% left for all other systems if you equip both )

At for example 5:th tech level you will have Efficiency 8 on both meaning you can make a ship with 75% left for all other systems if both are equipped. Basically you could even equip all your warships with it ( even if it would be costly it is within reach ).

At max tech levels ( Efficiency 15 ) You would need to allocate just 13% of your ship to both these systems leaving the remaining 87% free.

For balance any "Raiding" or "Scouting" Jump drive or what you want to call it would need to have a much flatter progression curve in tech, or be made so much significantly more expensive in resources that it's not feasible to equip large parts of your fleet with it.
I still think the Jump drive needs a buff (Move it up a tech level or two) to make room for the second drive early enough if you want it available somewhere in the midgame where cloaks become available. The cloak progression line could also be flattened out, with a size reduction for less efficient cloaks. So you can build small, reduced efficiency cloaks.

Quote
That's a good idea, and one that I have suggested before. The tricky question is how you don't make it unbalanced ( Basically what prevents everyone from always using just passive targeting? ). It needs to have some serious downsides too besides requiring a 0.25 msp sensor in each missile.
For one active sensors should outrange thermal sensors, and if you fire at an EM target, your enemy always may turn off their emissions. A further downside could be that your homing missiles pick their targets themselves, any they can detect, which may not be the one you intended. So in a fleet battle this will lead to very poor focus firing.
If you want, you could also give missiles a to-hit modifier depending on the sensor strength and range, but for consistency MFC should be affected by this too. So active sensor head missiles would be more accurate than passive sensor head missiles, and active ship targeting should be more accurate than sensor head missiles, and combined active ship targeting+ sensor head would be most accurate. Please note if you throw in ECCM and ECM on a missile, you are already using up 0.75 MSP, which will definitely push up missile size. ECCM seems like a must, you cannot accept a -20 or -30 % hit chance decrease.

If you wanted to give a serious downside to self targeting missiles, gives CIWS a significant bonus to hit against sensor equipped missiles. Something about how they're lighting themselves up with the sensor package pinging off. Then you could justify buffing the effective range of missile sensors. So for your big warships, if you want to get your warheads through a heavy missile defense in a proper fleet, you guide them in from a directed fire control. But if your picking off a lone merchant ship, or a handful of troop ships in a surprise attack, the trade off of using more missiles to achieve the same effective damage may be worth it.
Passive sensors don't light up, by definition of passive sensors. I also really dislike the idea of giving CIWS a bonus compared to other missile defenses. I for one only install CIWS on civilians, supply ships, my warships have dedicated firecontrol+sensor+guns arrangements for defense.
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #532 on: September 14, 2018, 08:28:36 AM »
A few more thoughts

A ground forces summary screen which shows the location of all ground forces and condition in one place, sortable both by the unit groupings but also location (when you get larger forces working out which planet they are on or what's in transit and to where can be a bit of a headache).

Replace the current fleet detachments UI with a micro map and a click and drag of ships into a desired location. Mini map could also show weapon and sensor ranges so you can make sure you have coverage. With the changes in sensors I think people will have to be detaching pickets and re-organising them far more often so something that makes this less of a fiddle would be great.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #533 on: September 14, 2018, 08:59:03 AM »
A ground forces summary screen which shows the location of all ground forces and condition in one place, sortable both by the unit groupings but also location (when you get larger forces working out which planet they are on or what's in transit and to where can be a bit of a headache).

Already got this one :)

I don't think I have shown a screenshot yet but this is on a tab of the Ground Forces window. You can show a hierarchy by command structure regardless of location, or the hierarchy at each location (in a tree view). I'll add a screenshot when I get home.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2018, 01:07:11 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 
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Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #534 on: September 14, 2018, 03:00:39 PM »
Thinking about the planetary production - especially the area when you have shortages in manpower. There is but little control over where the workers go; just the genral shut down of the different areas - and you can only shut them down completly or let them run fully.
I know that the production efficiency value provides a simple calculation for the entire industry - but I think C# can handle a little more over where the workers go during a shortage, so a little more control might be nice... like being able to control how much of an industry area is going to be shut down (mabye in 10 or 20% steps?).
« Last Edit: September 14, 2018, 03:02:29 PM by TMaekler »
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #535 on: September 14, 2018, 03:40:13 PM »
I guess, space stations will be completly stationary, as they were in VB6 Aurora. Although it might be nice to have a station rotate around another object at a given speed... . At a cost of certain amount of fuel... .
 

Offline Tree

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #536 on: September 14, 2018, 04:49:47 PM »
I guess, space stations will be completly stationary, as they were in VB6 Aurora. Although it might be nice to have a station rotate around another object at a given speed... . At a cost of certain amount of fuel... .
Man, I hope the Moon never runs out of fuel. Would be annoying if it fell back on Earth.
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #537 on: September 15, 2018, 04:07:24 PM »
I guess, space stations will be completly stationary, as they were in VB6 Aurora. Although it might be nice to have a station rotate around another object at a given speed... . At a cost of certain amount of fuel... .
Man, I hope the Moon never runs out of fuel. Would be annoying if it fell back on Earth.
The idea with the fuel came from the base, that propulsion through TN engines happens outside of normal spacetime, and once you stop that engine, the ship stops... :-)
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #538 on: September 16, 2018, 05:46:36 AM »
Quality of Life: Older Modules like "Geological Survey Sensors" should be excludable in the class design window, once the improved versions are available.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #539 on: September 16, 2018, 06:09:00 AM »
Quality of Life: Older Modules like "Geological Survey Sensors" should be excludable in the class design window, once the improved versions are available.

You can make them obsolete and they won't appear (in VB6 and C#).