Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions  (Read 345110 times)

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Offline Rich.h

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #540 on: September 16, 2018, 10:03:56 AM »
To throw an extra cog in the wheels of jump drives, how about a third type approach? So have a stealth jump drive that has the huge range and single ship capacity, but allow it to only work on "stealth" drives. I am guessing it wouldn't take much to add in a new drive engine type, just make them have a low power thrust output, with larger sizes than standard military and smaller than current commercial drives.

To avoid them being put onto a commercial vessel, just make them give error flags if they are used with components such as cargo bays etc.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #541 on: September 16, 2018, 03:51:17 PM »
Actually, you can already make 'stealth' engines in Aurora. You just need to research and implement the lower thermal signature tech line on that drive.

It drives up the cost of the engine though.
 

Offline JacenHan

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #542 on: September 16, 2018, 04:35:48 PM »
Actually, you can already make 'stealth' engines in Aurora. You just need to research and implement the lower thermal signature tech line on that drive.

It drives up the cost of the engine though.

He is talking about a special jump drive like the one I suggested a couple pages back, not a regular engine.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #543 on: September 16, 2018, 05:27:09 PM »
Seems more like he's mixing up engines with jump drives.
 

Offline DIT_grue

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #544 on: September 17, 2018, 02:15:02 AM »
To throw an extra cog in the wheels of jump drives, how about a third type approach? So have a stealth jump drive that has the huge range and single ship capacity, but allow it to only work on "stealth" drives. I am guessing it wouldn't take much to add in a new drive engine type, just make them have a low power thrust output, with larger sizes than standard military and smaller than current commercial drives.

To avoid them being put onto a commercial vessel, just make them give error flags if they are used with components such as cargo bays etc.

Actually, you can already make 'stealth' engines in Aurora. You just need to research and implement the lower thermal signature tech line on that drive.

It drives up the cost of the engine though.

He is talking about a special jump drive like the one I suggested a couple pages back, not a regular engine.

Seems more like he's mixing up engines with jump drives.

Rich.h was clearly talking about adding a third category of both engines and jump drives with a parallel restriction to the existing division: as commercial jump drives can't move ships with military engines, the stealth jump drive could only move ships with stealth engines (rather than military jump drives that can move anything). Hazard is of course correct that using Thermal Reduction in the role of 'stealth engine' would make more sense than adding another tech line for the purpose.

As for my own initial reaction, I think it looks extremely game-arbitrary without any obvious technobabble logic for why it works that way. (There are obvious reasons you might want to combine the two on a ship, but not why TN physics should insist they must be). While I am tempted by the idea of having an option other than 'frontal assault' or 'survey until you find a back door' for breaking past a defended jump point, I'm not convinced this would be a useful way to try and balance it. (And when I phrase it that way, the dilemma is very iconic Starfire, so it mostly depends whether Steve actually wants to break from that or not - I think either way could turn out to be fun or frustrating depending on the player and the game.)
 

Offline Rich.h

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #545 on: September 17, 2018, 04:11:31 AM »
I think the issue with altering tech lines is that you would quickly loose the speciality of something like a stealth engine. Sure enough you can extend a part of the jump engine tech line so that eventually you get engines that can do a jump 50-100mkm away from the jump point. But then if you have the industrial capacity, why not just make every single military drive a super stealth version and gain the ability to jump entire fleets straight past a JP blockade.

At least with a thrid line of thrust drives & jump drives, it keeps an element of strategic planning for ships types rather than the "one does all"
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #546 on: September 17, 2018, 07:56:55 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#).
I can't find that in VB6. Any tips where I can do that?
 

Offline Rich.h

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #547 on: September 17, 2018, 08:14:28 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#).
I can't find that in VB6. Any tips where I can do that?

Button is on the F5 screen as shown in the attachment.
 

Offline mandalorethe1st

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #548 on: September 18, 2018, 11:15:01 AM »
Will missiles be able to be cloaked and have  thermally reduced engines?  I see this as a way to defeat the late game missile deadlock.   They will also be useful for space submarines, encouraging very large, very hard to find torpedoes with correspondingly large warheads.   
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #549 on: September 19, 2018, 02:08:16 PM »
I had an additional idea for ground combat. Preferential targeting during combat leads to favoring monolithic unit compositions and army compositions to minimize damage, but I was thinking what about preferential targeting against optimal weapon matches during the formation targeting phase, but unweighted targeting during the actual combat phase?
This would represent commanders picking good matches for engaging formations, and it would lead to favor mixing up units, as otherwise your tanks will face mostly heavy guns, while your infantry runs into heavy machineguns. For mixed formations, there is no obvious optimal match.
The bonus could scale with commander skill, making well led armies taking better engagements.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #550 on: September 19, 2018, 04:37:30 PM »
I had an additional idea for ground combat. Preferential targeting during combat leads to favoring monolithic unit compositions and army compositions to minimize damage, but I was thinking what about preferential targeting against optimal weapon matches during the formation targeting phase, but unweighted targeting during the actual combat phase?
This would represent commanders picking good matches for engaging formations, and it would lead to favor mixing up units, as otherwise your tanks will face mostly heavy guns, while your infantry runs into heavy machineguns. For mixed formations, there is no obvious optimal match.
The bonus could scale with commander skill, making well led armies taking better engagements.

This ends up having its own problems as well, either insuring that you want completely homogenous units (IE every formation having the same ratio of tanks to infantry) or else never wanting to mix different types of units on the same front line (if all of your front line forces are light vehicles, preferential targeting doesn't matter).

People keep suggesting preferential targeting and I think it's a bad idea. Random targeting is both keeping things simple and the best way to encouraged combined arms units.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #551 on: September 19, 2018, 05:23:19 PM »

This ends up having its own problems as well, either insuring that you want completely homogenous units (IE every formation having the same ratio of tanks to infantry) or else never wanting to mix different types of units on the same front line (if all of your front line forces are light vehicles, preferential targeting doesn't matter).

People keep suggesting preferential targeting and I think it's a bad idea. Random targeting is both keeping things simple and the best way to encouraged combined arms units.
I don't see how random encourages combined armies, I don't see any synergy effect that makes combined arms. I am looking for some way to punish all tank formations, or any other single unit type formation, and I don't see how to do it without there being some difference if some units are in the same formation or somewhere else.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #552 on: September 19, 2018, 06:04:50 PM »

This ends up having its own problems as well, either insuring that you want completely homogenous units (IE every formation having the same ratio of tanks to infantry) or else never wanting to mix different types of units on the same front line (if all of your front line forces are light vehicles, preferential targeting doesn't matter).

People keep suggesting preferential targeting and I think it's a bad idea. Random targeting is both keeping things simple and the best way to encouraged combined arms units.
I don't see how random encourages combined armies, I don't see any synergy effect that makes combined arms. I am looking for some way to punish all tank formations, or any other single unit type formation, and I don't see how to do it without there being some difference if some units are in the same formation or somewhere else.

Infantry are better at some things and tanks are better at some things, so all things being equal, you'd generally prefer to have armies be a mix of both. However, if units preferentially target what they're good at hurting, then that's a reason not to have both tanks and infantry available as targets - preferential targeting increases your effectiveness if an enemy has both infantry and tanks but does nothing if the enemy is all tanks or all infantry.

I don't see why you're particularly interested in making sure a combined arms army isn't a formation of tanks and a formation of infantry as opposed to two formations of both, though. I think a major point of the combat system so far is that for formations assigned to the same position it doesn't really matter if the formations are big or small or how they're organized.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2018, 06:06:47 PM by Bremen »
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #553 on: September 19, 2018, 09:49:17 PM »
You punish single unit formations with your own single unit formations.  If someone has all tank formations, you bring nothing but anti-tank guns.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #554 on: September 20, 2018, 02:08:19 AM »
You punish single unit formations with your own single unit formations.  If someone has all tank formations, you bring nothing but anti-tank guns.
No. You cannot adjust your unit composition on the fly. That leaves all the advantage to the attacker. The defender cannot know what kind of units an invader will bring, so he cannot make single unit formations, else they can be hard countered. The defender thus needs mixed units, which should be able to defeat any single unit formation that possibly attacks them to make it even worthwhile to attempt a defense.