C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[waresky]

"..money is fake.." ehehe...but no-money = death sure.

[Jorgen_CAB]

There's other things you can do with your tonnage and research points.  You're always giving up something...This in stark contrast with taxes. There's nothing else you can do with spare 'tax rate'.  It is almost universally in games a single-dimensional mechanic that a governor ai can run better than a player unless its lobotomized.

Let's say that you put tax rates in.  More tax equals unrest. Okay, so you get ground units to reduce unrest.  So.... recruiting ground units now *increases* your income instead of lowering it? What?  That's...bad.  And 'martial law' is optimal play no matter how you're trying to RP?  It's nonsensical.  And we're not even talking about how ground units have nothing better to do 95% of the time. Also, to play optimally, now you need to adjust tax rates every time any factor that affects unrest changes, to get the most money.   O Joy.

Yes... i agree this is a huge risk factor when introducing such a mechanics. I think that wealth in the game are not directly correlated with money either but more of a general state of what you can do with more intangible means and the overall state the population are in in relation to it.

Increased tax could in this context mean less wealth, especially if you presume the taxed money is mainly squandered on useless stuff as an example.

In most games taxes are just a means for a player to min/max.... you are always going to use as high tax as you can so worlds don't rebel. Things really don't work like that in reality. Politicians want to stay in office, players are never in risk of getting ousted from their position so they can do whatever they want. Politicians need to explain what they do with the money, players don't. Games rarely punish players like that. Why not assume the player always get the most efficient tax possible and leave it at that.

[Iranon]

Currently, we have the ability to subsidise civilians and to seize civilian ships (in a somewhat flawed manner). Unless we get a nuanced tax system that adds depth on its own, with more colony-bound civilian activity, it probably won't add much.



And now for something completely different: The missile will always get through. That's a bit of an elephant in he living room, especially when trying to have solid evolving doctrines in a multiple-faction game. Less so in a game against the AI, because of the non-competitive nature of the game.
What I find strange is point-blank missile fire ignoring non-CIWS defence gets removed: That quirk adds depth and flavour, and is probably good for variety & balance. More powerful and less risky methods aren't touched even when other changes will increase the problems:

1) Multiple missile variants moving at the same speed are in multiple salvos when fired from one fire control. Emulating frequent Soviet practice of firing 2 almost identical missiles with different sensors gets this effect, even if we don't set out to exploit this by researching the same missile 20 times. There are of course other legit ways to have multiple variant of the same performance - e.g. different agility/warhead/fuel splits.

2a) One missile per fire control is the natural state for fighters in the style of a torpedo bomber. This is not a problem currently, but may be in the future with the changes to sensors (sensor fighters will detect larger sensor ships earlier than vice versa, making small fighters very difficult to intercept).
2b) Short-ranged missile fire controls that just aim to outrange beams are tiny and dirt cheap, again allowing an easy split into many salvos and limiting defensive beams strictly by fire control. Without the constraints (short range, high speed to outrange larger beams) of point-blank fire. Again, the change in the sensor model makes this much more effective.

3) A launching platform exactly as fast as the missile is very difficult to defend against (tested this with a 1000t FAC firing a clump of 91 size-1 missiles in 91 salvos. Scaling this up and using two-stage missiles gets rid of the extreme speed requirement for the launching platform). If this is deemed problematic, we could get a tech line for how many salvos underway a MFC can handle. OTOH, slow missiles may be easy prey to a very fast beam interceptor in area defence mode.

[Steve Walmsley]

Economics is complicated

It is isn't as simple as more tax = more money, because high tax can limit growth, increase tax avoidance or remove incentives for investment. I am fortunate to live in a low tax economy (some might say tax haven), with maximum 20% personal tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, 0% corporation tax (except banks - 10%), yet there is no state debt and we have the same public services as most European countries. Good quality free Health Care, Education, etc.

There are some differences, such as you anyone moving here require a work permit and has to work for five years before qualifying for welfare, yet crime is almost non-existent (local paper front-page headline when 20 pints of milk was stolen) and I have never seen any homelessness. Unemployment rate is 0.8% (not a typo). Raising tax here might damage all the above, if people and businesses relocate.

Aurora 'economics' is about balancing various industrial capacities, availability of workforce, mineral supplies, fuel, maintenance and wealth. Each of those can be affected by the player in some way to maintain the balance. Wealth for example is helped by building financial centres, investing in civilian shipping, creating lots of small colonies to boost trade, pop growth (which is wealth growth) and civilian mining (which requires pop of 10m in system). Tax rates are assumed to be generating optimum revenue as per the Laffer Curve).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

[Jorgen_CAB]

And now for something completely different: The missile will always get through. That's a bit of an elephant in he living room, especially when trying to have solid evolving doctrines in a multiple-faction game. Less so in a game against the AI, because of the non-competitive nature of the game.
What I find strange is point-blank missile fire ignoring non-CIWS defence gets removed: That quirk adds depth and flavour, and is probably good for variety & balance. More powerful and less risky methods aren't touched even when other changes will increase the problems:

1) Multiple missile variants moving at the same speed are in multiple salvos when fired from one fire control. Emulating frequent Soviet practice of firing 2 almost identical missiles with different sensors gets this effect, even if we don't set out to exploit this by researching the same missile 20 times. There are of course other legit ways to have multiple variant of the same performance - e.g. different agility/warhead/fuel splits.

2a) One missile per fire control is the natural state for fighters in the style of a torpedo bomber. This is not a problem currently, but may be in the future with the changes to sensors (sensor fighters will detect larger sensor ships earlier than vice versa, making small fighters very difficult to intercept).
2b) Short-ranged missile fire controls that just aim to outrange beams are tiny and dirt cheap, again allowing an easy split into many salvos and limiting defensive beams strictly by fire control. Without the constraints (short range, high speed to outrange larger beams) of point-blank fire. Again, the change in the sensor model makes this much more effective.

3) A launching platform exactly as fast as the missile is very difficult to defend against (tested this with a 1000t FAC firing a clump of 91 size-1 missiles in 91 salvos. Scaling this up and using two-stage missiles gets rid of the extreme speed requirement for the launching platform). If this is deemed problematic, we could get a tech line for how many salvos underway a MFC can handle. OTOH, slow missiles may be easy prey to a very fast beam interceptor in area defence mode.

I think that missile fire controls should be capped at a certain number of total missiles it can guide and a maximum it can handle firing in one 5 second period. Should be two parameters and can be increased with technology.

Anti-missile beam fire should not care about salvos either, just shoot at as many missiles it can.

I think the term salvos should go away.

It is unrealistic to assume that a relatively small ship with 100 box launched missiles can fire them all within a 5 second window, there would most likely be many reasons for why this is not really possible from a realistic perspective. These kind of mechanics also make beam weapon anti-missile systems completely irrelevant.

Creating a ship that fire missiles in the way you describe is an exploit you can just forbid. Multi-player games usually need lots of house rules anyway.

[Bremen]

I'm actually kind of curious what the emergent gameplay would be of having a missile fire control only able to control one salvo at a time (IIRC this is how it worked in the Honorverse). On the other hand, it would make high fire rate launchers almost useless.

As far as missile point defense, I've always kind of wished PD was more proportional instead of all or nothing (frequently PD will shoot down either all missiles or very few). The best way I can think to handle this, at least for beam PD, would be to have PD weapons work like anti-missiles and pick their targets before firing. So that if, say, you have 100 missiles coming at you, and 200 PD guns each with 50% chance to hit, then two guns would fire on each missile and you would expect 25% of the missiles (.5^2) to still hit. Maybe something similar with anti-missiles targeting individual missiles instead of salvos.

[Felixg]

On the topic of game modifiers.

Can we please get a maintenance % modifier as well? Perhaps break it up to Ships/Stations/Ground or something that way those of us that want it can have maintenance free space stations?

[Froggiest1982]

So I was thinking, with the rewrite bringing up the opportunity to add new options, and the new depth in ground combat, is there any chance of getting a toggle for research capture? I regularly avoid letting my underdog games weaker factions actually invade worlds, only to avoid the underdog suddenly just learning half the advanced tech in the game. I can see where people would want that, but in a fully RP, player controlled game, I don't really want my setup being yanked out cuz a faction stole a bunch of levels of tech I was thematically avoiding.

Well you have just been served sir, have a look at the latest change discussion start new game

 

[Hazard]

Actually, this might be resolvable if we aren't dependent on a population/colony presence for Overhauling, or a point where so many Engineering spaces are dedicated to the station/ship that it doesn't run up a maintenance clock even if it is otherwise subject to the failure rates.

Also would be nice; a smaller maintenance storage bay that can be shoved onto Fighters for ground supply reasons. The current one is 5HS/250 tons, or half the weight of a Fighter.

[alex_brunius]

Economics is complicated

It is isn't as simple as more tax = more money, because high tax can limit growth, increase tax avoidance or remove incentives for investment. I am fortunate to live in a low tax economy (some might say tax haven), with maximum 20% personal tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, 0% corporation tax (except banks - 10%), yet there is no state debt and we have the same public services as most European countries. Good quality free Health Care, Education, etc.

...

Aurora 'economics' is about balancing various industrial capacities, availability of workforce, mineral supplies, fuel, maintenance and wealth. Each of those can be affected by the player in some way to maintain the balance. Wealth for example is helped by building financial centres, investing in civilian shipping, creating lots of small colonies to boost trade, pop growth (which is wealth growth) and civilian mining (which requires pop of 10m in system). Tax rates are assumed to be generating optimum revenue as per the Laffer Curve).

I agree about the basic problem but it sounds like there are ways to give you some control over tax without destroying balance. If Civilian economy is given a bigger role then higher tax levels slowing down long term growth does make sense.

Basically the Economy works like a big basket of wealth ( much like Shipping lines currently do ), the more you drain out of it, the less can get re-invested and the less future growth and tax is possible.

A Short term profits vs long term growth trade-off.

[TCD]

There's other things you can do with your tonnage and research points.  You're always giving up something...This in stark contrast with taxes. There's nothing else you can do with spare 'tax rate'.  It is almost universally in games a single-dimensional mechanic that a governor ai can run better than a player unless its lobotomized.

Let's say that you put tax rates in.  More tax equals unrest. Okay, so you get ground units to reduce unrest.  So.... recruiting ground units now *increases* your income instead of lowering it? What?  That's...bad.  And 'martial law' is optimal play no matter how you're trying to RP?  It's nonsensical.  And we're not even talking about how ground units have nothing better to do 95% of the time. Also, to play optimally, now you need to adjust tax rates every time any factor that affects unrest changes, to get the most money.   O Joy.

I think you're right, in that what is missing is the secondary feedback loop of increased oppression leading to a loss of production. Creating a simple version of a mechanic for that without introducing new parameters is challenging. But one idea is that every time your troops reduce unrest there is a small chance of generating a hostile "rebel" battalion. So if you rely on martial law in the outer colonies then you'd actually be fighting an almost perpetual guerrilla war, with the risk of collateral damage and troop casualties loss that implies.

I should note that this mechanic means that the standard tactic of parking a single garrison battalion on every colony world to deal with overcrowding unrest would now be a high risk strategy. A few unlucky RNG rolls could see the potential loss of your colony. Imho that would be pretty great, a sensible representation of the overcrowding>riot>massacre>mass uprising path that is common throughout history, and a cause of much fun as you have to scramble to bring in extra troops in time.

[Scandinavian]

I agree about the basic problem but it sounds like there are ways to give you some control over tax without destroying balance. If Civilian economy is given a bigger role then higher tax levels slowing down long term growth does make sense.

Basically the Economy works like a big basket of wealth ( much like Shipping lines currently do ), the more you drain out of it, the less can get re-invested and the less future growth and tax is possible.

A Short term profits vs long term growth trade-off.

Except economies don't work like that.

In an industrial economy, the maximum growth path is the path where the economy is at all times subject to the maximum level of aggregate demand consistent with maintaining social cohesion and a habitable ecology. The level of taxation doesn't really enter into this, unless you're approaching the extreme ends of the spectrum (either a command economy where all economic activity is managed by the central bureaucracy, or full-fledged feudalism where the state fails to direct economic activity at all). The complications involved in managing an industrial economy are not straightforward trade-offs between long-term growth and short-term policy objectives. All the real challenges of modern economies are in the realm of political economics - i.e. how to organize large-scale economic planning without creating too many opportunities for personal advantage at the expense of the overall system.

None of which is really in scope for a space naval warfare game.

[Person012345]

I agree about the basic problem but it sounds like there are ways to give you some control over tax without destroying balance. If Civilian economy is given a bigger role then higher tax levels slowing down long term growth does make sense.

Basically the Economy works like a big basket of wealth ( much like Shipping lines currently do ), the more you drain out of it, the less can get re-invested and the less future growth and tax is possible.

A Short term profits vs long term growth trade-off.

If the bourgeoise store all their money under their bed or otherwise keep it where it's not being reinvested, that is a big drain on the wealth (and to some degree is anyway as capitalistic investment is inefficient). Similarly, if taxes are used on economic projects, or otherwise in ways that benefit the economy even if not directly, then they are in no way a drain. As said, it's not a zero sum game where more taxes for government means less money for the economy and the reverse is often directly observable, the economy often stagnates when there is insufficient regulation and public investment. However, there are other cases where, as steve points out, the economy could be hurt by increases in taxes, though this is only really true if the companies have somewhere to flee to (and is only really true within a capitalist framework). Aso dependent upon how the taxes are used.

[Drgong]

Just as a note -

In most capitalistic or mixed economies (AKA current economies of most of the world) are lowered, it allows more money to be kept for consumption or reinvestment.  When taxes are raised, it lowers the amount of money that is available to spend or reinvest.   It is just one factor among many that impact the economy overall (are regulations too light or too strict, how healthy is the credit markets, what are the cost of energy and other basic inputs, income inequality, and so on).   You can lower rates and actually get more income, both by the increase in the economic base, and also less tax avoidance by citizens. 

Since this is a game, it might be just more simple to have some sort of happiness feature, in which lower taxes means happier citizens, but less revenue, even if in real life that is not completely true.   

[Graham]

Economics is extremely complicated and people argue over how it works all the time, let alone how to reasonably implement it into a game while also making it enjoyable and non repetitive.  I do not believe it will be easy to model it in Aurora, and i would rather we did not try, as anything we end up with is likely to be tedious or nonsensical.
Also I don't think it's worth Steve's time, although that is of course up to him.