C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[QuakeIV]

The disengagement boosters would also help escape from missile fights.  Its possible to fight at a distance where either side can choose to run away and then the incoming damage is potentially very significantly degraded.  The best way to disengage presently is to turn around and run away such that the missiles run out of range before they can reach you.  Thats also a big part of why missile engagements are less decisive.  Boosters would probably mainly enhance that aspect.

[Bremen]

The disengagement boosters would also help escape from missile fights.  Its possible to fight at a distance where either side can choose to run away and then the incoming damage is potentially very significantly degraded.  The best way to disengage presently is to turn around and run away such that the missiles run out of range before they can reach you.  Thats also a big part of why missile engagements are less decisive.  Boosters would probably mainly enhance that aspect.

True, they'd have some effect on missiles (though if it locked your weapons off for a minute after disengaging, the threat of being hit by missiles when your anti-missile defenses couldn't fire would be a major one), but much less of an effect than they'd have on beams. It's a non-symmetrical change that favors missiles, and that's still a relative boost to missile ships.

You'd also have to keep the tuners running much longer during a missile engagement, greatly increasing the chance of burning out your engines.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The disengagement boosters would also help escape from missile fights.  Its possible to fight at a distance where either side can choose to run away and then the incoming damage is potentially very significantly degraded.  The best way to disengage presently is to turn around and run away such that the missiles run out of range before they can reach you.  Thats also a big part of why missile engagements are less decisive.  Boosters would probably mainly enhance that aspect.

True, they'd have some effect on missiles (though if it locked your weapons off for a minute after disengaging, the threat of being hit by missiles when your anti-missile defenses couldn't fire would be a major one), but much less of an effect than they'd have on beams. It's a non-symmetrical change that favors missiles, and that's still a relative boost to missile ships.

You'd also have to keep the tuners running much longer during a missile engagement, greatly increasing the chance of burning out your engines.

I don't think there would be much difference in the impact on missile versus beam combat defence... it would make both missiles and beams less decisive in general... since missiles are very expensive it could actually impact missile warfare even worse over the long term.

To be honest it probably would at best make combat less decisive on a tactical perspective but certainly not on a strategic scale as you still need to defend some places that can't move anyway.

To be honest I don't think it would upset balance as much as just change some of the game play but probably less than what we believe to be honest. It would generally effect two forces at relative parity but make less impact if there is a bigger disparity in technology.

I think that a change into cloaking or submarine like warfare that Steve said he might explore would perhaps have a bigger impact as an example.

I just would like a bit more tactical variety when technology are relatively even.

[Zincat]

I'm against disengagement in general. At least this type of disengagement, a sudden "speed boost" that lets you escape. I'm all in favor of playing with sensors and such

Disengagement by speed or climate interference was a thing in battles in the past. The more high tech a conflict, in space, the less disengagement makes sense. You say it offers more tactical options. I say that it makes decisions less important. Because well, you can always "flee" albeit at a cost.

I would suggest not thinking of WW2 fights. Nowadays, with radars, satellites and the like, Similar "tech" nations would no really be able to retreat once committed, not in air nor in naval warfare.

I feel that this would be a meta-change to try to tailor the game in order to make wars last longer, while they should not.


I remember reading one of those declarations by the pentagon, I think it was, that nowadays a non-nuclear war between powerful nations (say China-Russia) would be over in a matter of hours, because in that period of time one of the two would lose the capabilities to strike the other, and be reduced to trying to defend with ground troops.

[Bremen]

I think basing gameplay mechanics on "realism", much less a hypothetical realism for a form of war that doesn't exist, is a bad idea. That said, while I can sympathize with wanting combat in Aurora to be more skirmish-y (which would help with the problem of wanting to keep your entire fleet together in one ball of death) I can't think of a way to do it without making beam armed ships even worse off.

[JustAnotherDude]

The issue that needs to be resolved is not a lack of a retreat option, but the all or nothing going nature of most beam fights. Steve even said it in the latest update to Crusade, his entire fleet could have been lost to a single ship and there was nothing he could have done about it, which isn't really interesting or fun. Any mechanic or change that resolved this issue is good, in my books.

[zatomic]

Another approach I've had rattling around in my head related the discussion around engine boosting is to allow multiple engine types on the same ship.

My thought would be to allow each ship to have 2 types of engine. The ship would then have a cruising speed based on the more efficient engines only and a max speed based on all engines. The fleet UI would just have an option to set the fleet to cruising speed (which would be the slowest cruising speed of any ship in the fleet) or max speed (which would be the slowest max speed of any ship).

This would give a boost to beam ships as they currently struggle with being fast enough for combat but being fuel guzzlers when moving strategically. The built in downside to running at max speed (or any speed above cruising) besides less efficient fuel use would be the already higher explosion chance of boosted engines.

As an option, maybe engines only have a chance to explode if they are in use so a ship at or below cruising speed taking damage to one of it's higher boost engines might lose the engine, but not have an explosion chance.

I think this works with all existing modules and techs and just a UI adjustment to quickly set either cruising or max speed for a fleet.

[Zincat]

The issue that needs to be resolved is not a lack of a retreat option, but the all or nothing going nature of most beam fights. Steve even said it in the latest update to Crusade, his entire fleet could have been lost to a single ship and there was nothing he could have done about it, which isn't really interesting or fun. Any mechanic or change that resolved this issue is good, in my books.

But is that really an issue? I contest that. If your ships are slower and you have shorter range than your enemy, you deserve to lose. Do something else. Build fighters, beam or otherwise. Switch to missiles until you upgrade your engines OR your weapon range.

Steve NOTED it. I have always been under the impression that he does not really mind. Technological inferiority is a bitch like that. You lose. And STeve HAD prepared, because he also brough fighters with box launchers, and so he won.

I see absolutely no reason to put in "handholding" mechanics to cater to the needs of inferior civilizations. Althought I am an extreme fan of beam weapons, I see no reason for the game to try and help me if I did not research enough and have not prepared a single contingency plan in case my enemies are faster and outrange me.

I don't see why you consider all or nothing fights an issue. If you don't want to commit to an all-or-nothing fight, don't commit to it. You have other options. Build more ships. Build different ships, aimed at your specific enemy. Guard the wormholes. Switch tactics. In a multi faction start, move to another planet so you are not on the very same planet as your enemies.

I don't want to sound like an asshole. It seems to me you simply want a "skirmish" war. But... nothing stops you from doing that. Divide your ships. Attack from multiple directions. Don't commit to fights, harass the enemy lines. Main battles are bloody because well, they generally are. Send 2-3 ships in multiple directions and hit different targets. You will lose some, but that's ok.
And if your enemy is so superior that none of that works, well yes you have lost a game. It happens

[JustAnotherDude]

The issue is less on the side of things being too hard, but things being too easy. Players will, very consistently, be faster then the enemy because they understand that speed is, in the context of a beam fight, the most important mechanic. Players also tend to be farther ahead down the tech line. This makes wars trivial because you literally need one offensive ship and point defense and you're good. Literally one gun is a it takes. Having a speed and range advantage should be a big deal but it shouldn't be the only relevant variables, it makes both ship design and fighting boring.

[Scandinavian]

The fundamental problem we're trying to solve here - the original sin, as it were - appears to be that kiting is too powerful; any ship that has a large enough range advantage to kill the enemy before running out of maintenance supplies, and any speed advantage whatever, will always win the engagement not merely decisively but without even taking effective return fire.

One possible way to resolve this is to let vessels mount a tractor beam that outranges all possible fire controls (say, out to a maximum range of 5 million km), but does not do any damage - rather it adds mass to the target ship for the purposes of speed calculations during the next increment. Such a weapon would kill kiting, but no otherwise disrupt the beam/missile meta, the fuel economy, the damage economy, or the relative power of shields vs. armor.

It would make jump point blockades harder to penetrate - no more jumping through and flooring the gas pedal blindly away from the jump point in some random direction. But I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.

[Zincat]

The issue is less on the side of things being too hard, but things being too easy. Players will, very consistently, be faster then the enemy because they understand that speed is, in the context of a beam fight, the most important mechanic. Players also tend to be farther ahead down the tech line. This makes wars trivial because you literally need one offensive ship and point defense and you're good. Literally one gun is a it takes. Having a speed and range advantage should be a big deal but it shouldn't be the only relevant variables, it makes both ship design and fighting boring.

I'm sorry but... do you really believe the AI would be able to micromanage something like a "speed bosting" or "tuning" better than the player? No it would not. In fact, it would probably make things worse, as the player is capable of micromanaging better. And so, the situation would be even more unbalanced.

The player, if ahead in technology, would add onto his superior ship speed by micromanaging better, resulting in the AI being even more disadvantaged. Every time you put in something that can be micromanaged, consider that you're favoring the player.

At any rate, we're really clogging the Suggestions thread. If there are people that want to discuss this further, it's probably better to split off to another thread by now in my opinion

[QuakeIV]

I question that it would be pure advantage to the player to provide the 'booster' option.  If the AI has a reasonably solid ability to decide when to run away in the first place, then it will have no problems using the boosters to run away faster.  In general the assertion that AI cant micromanage is not necessarily accurate, it has vastly superior information handling and can 'micro' certain things way better than a human ever could, its in matters of abstract decision making where it suffers.

Its also worth noting the boosters have more to do with beam combat in general, be it with the AI, with another human, or with yourself if you are running a campaign.

[Darkminion]

Would it be possible to add the ability to set alarms to trigger on a specified date? Kinda like the "Send Message" fleet order but for time rather than space. I'm sure one could just make a note somewhere but that would require remembering to check it, having a reminder pop up in the event log would be nice.

[Father Tim]

I don't know about engine boosters, or tuners, or de-tuners, or anti-engine missiles.  The problem I want to solve is my survey cruiser trundles into a nice new system, starts looking around at the planets, and suddenly sees thirty-odd presumably-hostile ships racing towards it.  At this point, I want a "Run Away!" button.

I want to jump to light speed, disengage via warp, hide behind a planet or among some asteroids.  I want to steam into a nearby rain squall, or pour on canvas until disappearing over the horizon, or lose them in the surface clutter.  I want to roll my ships ninety degrees to interpose their wedges, and start building delta-V in a perpendicular direction.

I want to run away with some reasonable chance of success.  I *DON'T* want to feed survey cruiser after survey cruiser into the meat grinder until I "roleplay" realizing something is wrong; then use some sort of custom-built, super-tough 'heavily-defended-jump-point probe ship'.

Mostly, I want to turn situations where I know hours in advance that my ship / squadron / flotilla is going to die and there is nothing I can do about it into a situation where there *IS* something I can do about it.

Because -- honestly -- if eighty percent of my battlefleet runs into a single destroyer that is faster and armed with a longer-ranged beam weapon, far from a jump point, I'm going to use SpaceMaster functions to save my game rather than watch Aurora obliterate hours of investment.

= = = = =

I'm not interested in solving the 'problem' of how does a beam fleet get within its own range of a missile fleet.  Aurora currently has an answer for that and it is 'point defense, shields, and armour to weather the missile storm'.

If Aurora gets some form of short-term speed boost, it needs to disable all weapons' fire (except maybe CIWS) while in use, and for several HOURS afterwards.  It shouldn't be possible to 'sprint' into range and then fight. 

I agree that the goal should be to make combats less of an all-or-nothing affair.

[Father Tim]

I'm against disengagement in general. At least this type of disengagement, a sudden "speed boost" that lets you escape. I'm all in favor of playing with sensors and such.

I am FOR disengagement in general; especially this type of disengagement.

Disengagement by speed or climate interference was a thing in battles in the past. The more high tech a conflict, in space, the less disengagement makes sense.

And I want to simulate (perhaps 'echo' is the better term) battles of the past.  I'm not interested in Aurora's "realism" because Trans-Newtonian Elements aren't real.  I see literally no reason why "The more high tech a conflict, in space, the less disengagement makes sense."

The Honor Harrington universe does not exist because David Weber thinks that is our most realistic future, but rather because he wanted to write Hornblower or Aubry-Maturin books and the actual, historical Age of Sail battles had already been thoroughly mined for fiction.  So he invented a whole raft of future tech that 'just happened' to turn space battles into analogs of Age of Sail actions.  Ships with broadsides and bow & stern chasers and essentially 2-D combat.  Ships that could 'turn and run for it' over the horizon/hyper limit.

You say it offers more tactical options. I say that it makes decisions less important. Because well, you can always "flee" albeit at a cost.

SpaceMaster allows us to magically refit entire ship classes after deployment, because we forgot to add fire control systems during design.  You may say that was an important decision and we should live with the cost of our mistakes, but I say no sane ship architect would overlook such a detail.

Likewise, my ship's crew would not overlook details about range to enemies, range to jump points, weapons reach, travel times at various speeds, etc.  They would know exactly how far my survey cruiser could go from the jump point and still be able to spot an approaching Necron in time to flee safely.  I say, that's the sort of micro-management Aurora should be shielding us from. . .  with a "Run Away!" button.

I would suggest not thinking of WW2 fights. Nowadays, with radars, satellites and the like, Similar "tech" nations would no really be able to retreat once committed, not in air nor in naval warfare.

I *WOULD* suggest thinking of WWII fights.  And Great War fights.  And Balkan War fights.  And Russo-Japanese fights.  And South American fights.  And Steam & Steel fights.  And U.S. Civil War fights.  And Age of Sail fights.  And Imjin War fights.  And Viking raids.  And Roman-Carthaginian fights.  And Greek-Persian fights.

And Star Wars fights.  And Star Trek fights.  And Firefly/Serenity fights.  And Black Fleet fights.  And The Last Starfighter fights.  And Battle Beyond the Stars fights.  And The Expanse fights.  And Royal Cinnabar Navy fights.  And even Blake's 7 fights.

In short, anything and everything that is *NOT* modern (or cold war) wet-navy (and air) battle, where sensors reign supreme and a first-strike missile swarm wipes out your enemy.  I am not interested in seeing Aurora turn into "Harpoon, the PC version".  Such a thing already exists.

I feel that this would be a meta-change to try to tailor the game in order to make wars last longer, while they should not.

Why shouldn't they?  Why should Aurora space combat be so decisive?  How is that more fun than multiple small skirmishes?  If my patrol destroyers are guaranteed to die (uselessly) when an enemy missile cruiser shows up, is it still fun to build and deploy them?

This is like Mass Drivers all over again.  "It's fun to have lots of ships flying around doing commerce, so let's introduce a ground facility to remove the need for that."  I've stopped complaining about mass drivers because I (personally) don't have to use them.

I remember reading one of those declarations by the pentagon, I think it was, that nowadays a non-nuclear war between powerful nations (say China-Russia) would be over in a matter of hours, because in that period of time one of the two would lose the capabilities to strike the other, and be reduced to trying to defend with ground troops.

[sarcasm]  I can imagine how excited the Axis & Allies folks are to make that board game.  "Flip a coin to see who will eventually win, then spend four hours playing it out!"  [/sarcasm]

'Realism' is no replacement for fun, just as truth is no defense for verisimilitude.  If you are suggesting the "One True Way" to play Aurora is 'speed at all costs' because in space, everyone can see you hide and that's 'realistic', then I disagree.  Aurora is NOT "the most realistic space sim ever," it's "a fun game of space combat, exploration, and empire management."

Watching my fleet die because the only way to avoid that is to probe everywhere with missiles and fighters or to mount monster sensors that can light up an entire star system is NOT FUN for me.  Don't force me to play Aurora your way.