C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve, I was just taking a look at the changes list and I saw something about Squadron Jumps being handled differently in C# but no elaboration. Did that ever end up happening?

I can't remember if I coded it but the intention was that you could set a fleet up with sub-fleets and have an order to "Squadron jump by sub-fleet". I'll check tonight.

[JustAnotherDude]

Thank you! I was hoping it was something that like that, very nice QOL feature.

[Garfunkel]

Spinal railguns will make an appearance in C#. I just haven't decided how to implement them. Leaning toward similar rules for lasers, with higher calibre available. However, I am also considering some form of weapon that has a higher chance of shock damage.

Hey Steve, has your thinking vis-a-vis Spinal Rail Guns evolved since 2018? Since it seems we're in the final stretch before C# release and I'm starting to grow fond of the idea of Really Big Frigging Guns 

[Steve Walmsley]

Spinal railguns will make an appearance in C#. I just haven't decided how to implement them. Leaning toward similar rules for lasers, with higher calibre available. However, I am also considering some form of weapon that has a higher chance of shock damage.

Hey Steve, has your thinking vis-a-vis Spinal Rail Guns evolved since 2018? Since it seems we're in the final stretch before C# release and I'm starting to grow fond of the idea of Really Big Frigging Guns 

Yes, I still plan to come up with some form of spinal railgun, although maybe not for initial release.

[Bremen]

Spinal railguns will make an appearance in C#. I just haven't decided how to implement them. Leaning toward similar rules for lasers, with higher calibre available. However, I am also considering some form of weapon that has a higher chance of shock damage.

Hey Steve, has your thinking vis-a-vis Spinal Rail Guns evolved since 2018? Since it seems we're in the final stretch before C# release and I'm starting to grow fond of the idea of Really Big Frigging Guns 

Yes, I still plan to come up with some form of spinal railgun, although maybe not for initial release.

I remember seeing a post where you talked about possibly giving them enhanced shock damage, and one idea I had was what if spinal railguns had a chance to cause shield shock damage? That is to say, if they are absorbed by shields they have a chance of causing some of the shield generators to be disabled until repaired.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Spinal railguns will make an appearance in C#. I just haven't decided how to implement them. Leaning toward similar rules for lasers, with higher calibre available. However, I am also considering some form of weapon that has a higher chance of shock damage.

Hey Steve, has your thinking vis-a-vis Spinal Rail Guns evolved since 2018? Since it seems we're in the final stretch before C# release and I'm starting to grow fond of the idea of Really Big Frigging Guns 

Yes, I still plan to come up with some form of spinal railgun, although maybe not for initial release.

I remember seeing a post where you talked about possibly giving them enhanced shock damage, and one idea I had was what if spinal railguns had a chance to cause shield shock damage? That is to say, if they are absorbed by shields they have a chance of causing some of the shield generators to be disabled until repaired.

Shock damage to shields seems like something a spinal mounted microwave weapon could be specialised in... seems sort of thematic for such a weapon. A spinal mounted microwave beam would drain shields quicker and would be able to sometimes cause shock damage to the shield generators.

[QuakeIV]

Regarding spinal mounts in general, I feel like it would be nice if you could actually have multiples of them, and the main tradeoff is purely the fact that you cannot turret them (so your tracking speed is limited to the speed of the ship).  I think that would be a big enough tradeoff (they can be bigger but there is no way to turret them when they are built that way), the ship would need to be pretty fast to make them effective (whereas you could have a slow/stationary thing if you stuck to turreted weapons).

I also want to say I strongly favor the idea of shield shock damage wearing down the emitters, I think it makes sense that you would be beating up on the things if you are blasting away at them with huge nukes or lasers of equivalent power level.  It also would be pretty entertaining if you had damage control crews frantically trying to keep the shields up as the generators blow out.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Regarding spinal mounts in general, I feel like it would be nice if you could actually have multiples of them, and the main tradeoff is purely the fact that you cannot turret them (so your tracking speed is limited to the speed of the ship).  I think that would be a big enough tradeoff (they can be bigger but there is no way to turret them when they are built that way), the ship would need to be pretty fast to make them effective (whereas you could have a slow/stationary thing if you stuck to turreted weapons).

I also want to say I strongly favor the idea of shield shock damage wearing down the emitters, I think it makes sense that you would be beating up on the things if you are blasting away at them with huge nukes or lasers of equivalent power level.  It also would be pretty entertaining if you had damage control crews frantically trying to keep the shields up as the generators blow out.

As they are spinal mounted I would instead suggest that a ship can have no more than 10% of their total weight in Spinal mounted weapons. So really small ships have to use regular beams as spinal mounted ones require a certain volume to even be mounted... but huge ships could potentially mount several of them.

[QuakeIV]

I'll be honest I don't totally understand the rationale of that.  Why limit it in that way?

[Father Tim]

Regarding spinal mounts in general, I feel like it would be nice if you could actually have multiples of them, and the main tradeoff is purely the fact that you cannot turret them

Except all the weapons we're talking about can't currently be turret-mounted in the first place.

[QuakeIV]

Well, in terms of spinal mounts in general, you most definitely can turret lasers.  As to the others I'll freely admit I didn't know that, that seems like it makes them kindof useless by comparison (I never really used railguns or carronades or whatnot in any big way).

[Steve Walmsley]

If you could turret railguns, then missiles would be obsolete

[Garfunkel]

I'll be honest I don't totally understand the rationale of that.  Why limit it in that way?

The default for all beam weapons is that they are hull-mounted. Turreted lasers/mesons/gauss are meant for PD. A spinal laser is a brute force approach for making a bigger than a normal weapon and the name implies (spinal as in spine-like) it's achieved by having the weapon run through the (entire/most) length of the ship. So that's why you can only have 1 Spinal weapon in VB6 and, AFAIK, C# is not changing that. If we can have as many spinal weapons as we want, it just means that they become the new normal.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'll be honest I don't totally understand the rationale of that.  Why limit it in that way?

As other said... regular weapons are already hull mounted like a spinal weapon... the difference is that the spinal weapon runs through the ship. The only scenario where I see that you could add multiple spinal weapons to any ship is by having a size limitations on them.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'll be honest I don't totally understand the rationale of that.  Why limit it in that way?

As other said... regular weapons are already hull mounted like a spinal weapon... the difference is that the spinal weapon runs through the ship. The only scenario where I see that you could add multiple spinal weapons to any ship is by having a size limitations on them.

I have considered adding a 'Twin Spinal' tech in the Spinal & Advanced Spinal tech line.