Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441965 times)

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Offline Ranged66

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2280 on: June 26, 2019, 02:48:06 AM »
Will it be called just 'diplomacy module'? No fancy name like xenocommunication bay? Orbital embassy bay? I suck at naming but still.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2281 on: June 26, 2019, 03:22:45 AM »
Will it be called just 'diplomacy module'? No fancy name like xenocommunication bay? Orbital embassy bay? I suck at naming but still.

I'm open to naming suggestions :)
 

Offline Rabid_Cog

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2282 on: June 26, 2019, 03:37:56 AM »
How about just "Embassy Module"? Gives the idea that the thing has to sit in the other guy's space for a time, not just visit briefly to have an effect.
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Offline Kelewan

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2283 on: June 26, 2019, 05:40:32 AM »
And have an civilian "Officer" aka Embassador on the ship and use his diplomacy bonus
 

Offline Lamandier

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2284 on: June 26, 2019, 07:12:03 AM »
And have an civilian "Officer" aka Embassador on the ship and use his diplomacy bonus

This. I love this idea; would give folks something to do with all those low-level administrators in the officer pool, and it seems more realistic. Could have it so that if there's an administrator on the ship it uses their diplomacy bonus, but if there isn't one aboard it defaults to using the commander's bonus.
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Offline sloanjh (OP)

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2285 on: June 26, 2019, 08:30:55 AM »
Also on diplomacy:

1)  Will the player be able to tell which aliens are trying to talk to him?  This seems like something that is more likely than not to be obvious.

2)  So my understanding is that, for every race you've met, relations will always drift towards the negative unless you have an embassy ship talking to them (in one of their systems?) due to their xenophobia (even if it's only "1").  So if I chance upon an alien scout in a system and we both go our separate ways and don't see each other for 10 years, when I encounter them again they'll want to go to war with me even if they've got a very low xenophobia?

3)  Are there going to be any actions that the player can take that will generate positive diplomacy points?  For example "upheld treaty commitments" by not entering alien systems for e.g. non-interaction treaty.  If not, then it appears that the only way the player can influence things in a positive direction is to have an embassy ship, and the effect of that is capped at one ship.  I was originally going to go down the road of making diplomacy modules VERY expensive and allowing more than one, but there's a lot to be said for "actions speak louder than words".  Perhaps the diplomacy modifier could put a bias (e.g. +10 points towards the good) on all the other events that happen, e.g. a -50 "ship parked above homeworld" might only have a -40 impact if there's a diplomat. 

The challenge I see here is setting things up so the player can positively influence things without having a system that can be gamed by throwing huge resources at the problem - perhaps a law of diminishing returns where the 2nd diplomacy ship is only 80% as effective, the 3rd 64% etc, which would sum up to a max 10x multiplier with an infinite number of ships.

John
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2286 on: June 26, 2019, 08:59:35 AM »
Also on diplomacy:

1)  Will the player be able to tell which aliens are trying to talk to him?  This seems like something that is more likely than not to be obvious.

2)  So my understanding is that, for every race you've met, relations will always drift towards the negative unless you have an embassy ship talking to them (in one of their systems?) due to their xenophobia (even if it's only "1").  So if I chance upon an alien scout in a system and we both go our separate ways and don't see each other for 10 years, when I encounter them again they'll want to go to war with me even if they've got a very low xenophobia?

3)  Are there going to be any actions that the player can take that will generate positive diplomacy points?  For example "upheld treaty commitments" by not entering alien systems for e.g. non-interaction treaty.  If not, then it appears that the only way the player can influence things in a positive direction is to have an embassy ship, and the effect of that is capped at one ship.  I was originally going to go down the road of making diplomacy modules VERY expensive and allowing more than one, but there's a lot to be said for "actions speak louder than words".  Perhaps the diplomacy modifier could put a bias (e.g. +10 points towards the good) on all the other events that happen, e.g. a -50 "ship parked above homeworld" might only have a -40 impact if there's a diplomat. 

The challenge I see here is setting things up so the player can positively influence things without having a system that can be gamed by throwing huge resources at the problem - perhaps a law of diminishing returns where the 2nd diplomacy ship is only 80% as effective, the 3rd 64% etc, which would sum up to a max 10x multiplier with an infinite number of ships.

John

All the above is a good point. I hadn't considered the initial contact followed by long period of separation. Maybe a better option would be to have the Xenophobia function as a modifier against negative actions. So when separated, nothing changes. When in contact, actions perceived as negative become far worse when dealing with a highly Xenophobic race.

Existing treaties already generate positive points, but I will add other ways to generate positive points.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2287 on: June 26, 2019, 12:15:37 PM »
I think the Embassy Module should work on a basis of 1 module per system. So having 2 Embassy Ships in Alpha Centauri will not help but having 1 in Alpha Centauri and 1 in Epsilon Eridani will double the positive diplomatic point increase for that alien empire. Since you then have two different points of contact to maintain good relations via positive propaganda campaigns and such. It also means player would have a reason to build multiple Embassy Ships instead of just one. The counter point would be that the additional ships require a colony - and perhaps these colonies need to be bigger and bigger.

Something like:
1st ship - any contact with NPR
2nd ship - NPR colony of any size
3rd ship - NPR colony of size X
4th ship - NPR colony of size X+Y
5th ship - NPR homeworld

So it essentially gets capped at five ships per NPR. Naturally this should affect the general way diplo-points are earned and lost, so that it isn't possible to abuse the system via five ships with high diplomacy rating commanders maintaining an NPR at peace despite the player repeatedly shooting their ships and capturing their colonies.



As for negative actions, we already have the active sensor and the attack bits from VB6, so in addition we would need:
-discovery of spy ship in owned system (might need two levels of severity, milder for any ship with passive sensors and harsher for known ships with ELINT modules)
-discovery of player ship in owned system
-discovery of player ground forces on uninhabited body in owned system
-discovery of player ground forces on inhabited body in owned system (like auto-mining colony or listening post)
-discovery of player ship/base on gas giant in owned system (so a player harvesting a gas giant in a system NPR views their own is worse than just a player ship cruising through it as it's not only trespassing but stealing Sorium)
-player terraforming an uninhabited body in owned system
-player terraforming an inhabited body in owned system (this should probably be the worst possible war crime alongside completely nuking a colony)

which leads us to a new diplomacy option - friendly terraforming! A treaty between allies (perhaps between trade and research or maybe after research) that allows empires to help terraform the colonies of their allies. Not sure how feasible this would be, coding-wise, but a notification to player via an interrupt that the Fuzzy Raccoon Alliance terraformers have arrived over NastyMcNastyPlanet might be enough, so the player can then adjust the target atmosphere to what they want. And similarly, player terraformers - on the off-chance that they are actually unemployed - would automatically work ONCE the player has sent them to the colony of an ally, so that there is no chance for the player to accidentally commit aforementioned war crime.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2288 on: June 26, 2019, 01:01:33 PM »
We already have the 'Colony pop >10 million' and 'Colony Pop >25 million' distinctions, it makes sense to me to use those.  Perhaps for a 'Consulate module' (1/4 effectiveness) and 'Embassy module' respectively.

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Offline Ranged66

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2289 on: June 26, 2019, 04:59:34 PM »
Multiple owned populations on the same body are currently rather difficult and awkward to handle in Aurora. Will this be easier in C# version?
 

Offline Conscript Gary

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2290 on: June 26, 2019, 10:46:44 PM »
I'm a tiny bit wary about being able to benefit from multiple Diplomacy Modules, if only for the silly potential edge case of building a fleet of embassy ships that would outweigh an alien race's xenophobia by a factor of ten or more. So long as there's some sort of limiting factor to it.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2291 on: June 27, 2019, 03:54:16 AM »
Multiple owned populations on the same body are currently rather difficult and awkward to handle in Aurora. Will this be easier in C# version?

Depends what you mean by awkward. They are still separate populations but they are easy to distinguish because they can all have different names.
 

Offline sloanjh (OP)

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2292 on: June 27, 2019, 08:14:12 AM »
I'm a tiny bit wary about being able to benefit from multiple Diplomacy Modules, if only for the silly potential edge case of building a fleet of embassy ships that would outweigh an alien race's xenophobia by a factor of ten or more. So long as there's some sort of limiting factor to it.

This is exactly what I meant by "a system that can be gamed by throwing huge resources at the problem".  I think Garfunkel's proposal is a reasonable example of how to allow multiple diplomacy modules without falling prey to this problem.

John
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2293 on: July 14, 2019, 11:35:29 AM »
Steve, that's not an OOB, that's a Table of Ordnance & Equipment.

The TO&E tells you what you have, the OOB tells you how it's organized. In the Naval Organization tab the OOB is on the left hand side of the screen.

That is not to say that a TO&E separated by system isn't useful, it certainly is, but it'd be nice if we could click on a system or something and get a TO&E calculated, or an OOB specific for that system, linking up and down where appropriate.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #2294 on: July 14, 2019, 02:09:43 PM »
Steve, that's not an OOB, that's a Table of Ordnance & Equipment.

The TO&E tells you what you have, the OOB tells you how it's organized. In the Naval Organization tab the OOB is on the left hand side of the screen.

That is not to say that a TO&E separated by system isn't useful, it certainly is, but it'd be nice if we could click on a system or something and get a TO&E calculated, or an OOB specific for that system, linking up and down where appropriate.

You have a System OOB on both the Tactical and Galactic map sidebars.