Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on June 22, 2019, 08:46:14 AM
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This weekend I am adding the functionality for Medals to C# Aurora. In basic concept this is similar to Aurora, so you can create a medal with a name and description, associate an image and assign a promotion score boost (or penalty). A minor addition for C# is that you can flag a medal as allowing either single or multiple awards.
The major change for C# is that I will be adding automatic medal assignment. You can associate a medal with a condition and if a commander meets that condition, the medal is automatically awarded unless it is a single-award only and the commander already has it.
So now I need suggestions for conditions that I can track. For example, discovering a new star system, destroying an enemy ship, taking damage, engaging in ground combat, long-service, etc..
I considered making it configurable, rather than specific, but it is more complex (and more work) to implement. I might add something on these lines later, but for now I am going to use a the specific condition list.
All suggestions welcome.
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The major change for C# is that I will be adding automatic medal assignment. You can associate a medal with a condition and if a commander meets that condition, the medal is automatically awarded unless it is a single-award only and the commander already has it.
Amazing.
So now I need suggestions for conditions that I can track. For example, discovering a new star system, destroying an enemy ship, taking damage, engaging in ground combat, long-service, etc..
A few, then.
Enemy tonnage disabled or destroyed. One medal for the first enemy ship killed, others for progressive tonnages (probably something like 10kt, 50kt, 100kt, 500kt)
Various fighter medals: dogfights survived (if your squadron attacks or is attacked, that's a dogfight), # of enemy ships shot down (number instead of tonnage because we're assuming these are enemy fighters) for 'ace' type medals, length of tour in fighter assignments.
Medals for surviving ship destruction ("purple heart"), judged by whether said officer makes it to the lifepods and is picked up or not.
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Service length and # of command conditions. Being the commanding officer of a fleet in a battle. Medals for service in an Academy. Maybe even just rank insignias, automatically given to everyone of that rank. Civilian conditions could include being governor of an invaded world, scientists could get medals for unlocking certain techs (especially TN Technology).
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One thing I'd suggest to add is the possibility of a randomness factor. So a fleet may engage in a battle, but of all the officers only one gets a special medal for extraordinary deeds, which then offer a story opportunity.
Awards should also be saved posthumously, actually all characters should be saved when they die to keep track of them.
Some ideas for triggers:
-Dying while ship survives
-Defeating an invasion
-Conquering a planet
-Participation in a battle of given size
For battles the best thing might actually be a pop up. The game detects the battle, and then asks if you want to create an award, and if yes, what it should be named. So you can have a '2nd Battle of Epsilon Eridani' medal
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A medal for being attacked while commandeering a civilian ship.
Similarly, a medal for having the commanded civilian ship destroyed.
Medals for grav surveying x survey points (make the number editable or set some possible options)
Medal for single-handedly grav surveying an entire system.
Medals for single handedly geo surveying an entire asteroid, or an entire planet/moon.
Medal for single handedly geo surveying an entire system. Has to have at least 2 bodies that are surveyable.
Medals for geo surveying a total of x survey points (make the number editable or set some possible options)
Medals for conquering enemy ship of x tons
Medal for repelling a boarder.
Medals for destroying, capturing or disabling x enemy tonnage with only an x% of the tonnage under your command being destroyed, captured or disabled.
Medals for destroying, capturing or disabling x enemy tonnage without a single ship/fighter under your command being destroyed, captured or disabled
Medals for destroying, capturing or disabling x enemy tonnage without a single ship/fighter under your command being damaged (armor damage, shield hits and boarding are ok)
Medals for destroying, capturing or disabling x enemy tonnage without a single ship/fighter under your command hit or boarded.
These 4 would be awarded only to the lowest rank officer that qualifies.
Say an entire fleet has 2 task forces, A and B. Task force A destroyes 40.000t of enemy ships (which is enough to trigger the medal), only the officer directly responsible for Task Force A gets the medal, not the commander of the entire fleet. BUT there could be medals made for this case, that could go both to the commander of the fleet (and all officers above him) and to all the ship's captain and officials that were in Task Force A.
If Task Force A and Task Force B both destroy 20.000t of enermy ships (and the minimum to trigger the medal is 30.000t) then only the commander of the fleet gets the medal.
Being the responsible administrator for a population that produced x tons of ships/stations (while under the administrator mandate)
Being the responsible administrator for a population that produced x tons of minerals (while under the administrator mandate)
Being the responsible administrator for a population that produced x wealth (while under the administrator mandate)
Being the responsible administrator for a population that produced x tons of buildings (while under the administrator mandate)
Being the responsible administrator for a population that produced x tons of troops (while under the administrator mandate)
Being the responsible administrator for a population that researched x research points (while under the administrator mandate)
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A few other possibilities from someone who plays the game a lot but has trouble with the forums.
Ships/tonnage lost, Crew Training totals, Exceptional skills after rank, receiving damage, receiving shock damage, missiles shot down, xeno ruins found, surveys/survey points completed, Intelligence gathered, xeno targets found
Also, survey medals. Not all things need be strictly combat-related or combat-adjacent, and I think it'd be cool if there were also medals for things like
- Discovered X tonnage of Y mineral at accessibility at least Z.
- Discovered X aggregate tonnage of all minerals at aggregate or mean accessibility Y on a single body.
Extra cool points if X, Y, and Z are at least partially configurable parameters. I've definitely given out Bronze, Silver, and Gold shovel awards to the Survey Corps; even a couple Platinum shovels to officers who led an effort that culminated in extremely good finds of current critical importance to the empire.
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A medal for being attacked while commandeering a civilian ship.
Did you mean commanding or actually commandeering?
I don't mean to pick on you; I'm just unaware of commandeering being a thing and really excited if it is.
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Right, let's make a little list.
- Transiting an uncharted jump point
- Being part of a system's Gravitational Survey (completing any grav survey point)
- Being the one to complete a Gravitation Survey
- Surveying a planet or moon
- Completing a ground survery of a planet or moon
- Discovering an (X) amount or (Y) availability of (Z) TN material, or any combination
- Completing a fleet exercise order (if that one can be conditionally timed/set to a skill level)
- Being part of a ship of a given crew skill level
- Having hauled (X) amount of (freight) times (Y) distance
- Having produced (X) amount of fuel as a Fuel Harvester commander
- Having mined (X) amount of minerals as an Asteroid Miner commander
- Completing (X) amount of ship tonnage (separating military/commercial)
- Completing (X) amount of ground forces tonnage
- Completing an overhaul as crew
- Performing ELINT duties for (Y) time
- As a xenoarcheology commander, dig up (X) amount of installations
- As a xenoarcheology commander, dig up a (spoilers) unit
- As a ground forces commander, fight off a dug up (spoilers) unit
- Engage in combat
- Take atleast 1 hit in combat
- Take damage in combat
- Take a penetrating hit from a weapon that has a very high chance of killing the ground unit and do not die
- Have your HQ directly engaged in combat (only for Support/Rear Area commanders)
- Be part of the first wave of an invasion (no other friendlies on the ground)
- Be part of an invasion
- Perform orbital bombardment
- Taking an orbital bombardment
- Defend a body from invasion
- Last for (X) amount of time against a notably more powerful opponent [(Y) times more ground combat rating]
- Be boarded
- Perform a boarding action
- Win a boarding combat
- Hit an enemy disproportionately hard (for ships, cascading engine/power plant/magazine explosion, for ground forces, hit and kill a heavily armoured unit with a weapon with a worse than 5% chance to penetrate and a worse than 5% chance to kill after penetrating
- Destroy (weight) in ground units or ships (separating military and civilian)
- Serving as an academy commander for (X) time
- As Chief Engineer, repairing a weapon, sensor system or engine while in combat
- As Science Officer, perform a survey
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Thanks for all the suggestions so far. Bear in mind that the easier the condition is to track, the more likely the suggestion will be in Version 1.0. So discover a star system is easy. An example of a suggestion that would harder would be hard to track is:
"Medals for destroying, capturing or disabling x enemy tonnage without a single ship/fighter under your command hit or boarded"
Tracking amount of tonnage destroyed by each commander is relatively straightforward. Trying to determine whether something 'under your command' was hit or boarded in the same time-frame is much harder. For example, if you launch a fighter from the carrier group you are commanded and the fighter gets hit a billion kilometres away, does that count? What if you destroy one ship and then another one damages a ship in your fleet 2 hours later - does that count? Et cetera.
Try to make the suggestions as specific as possible.
Also, I mentioned in my original post I didn't want to tackle anything configurable. I might weaken on that a little :) but suggestions that require any significant configuration element probably won't happen for V1.
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An extra condition 'when in a fighter-class vessel' would be nice.
A captain of a cruiser who takes down an enemy 10k ton vessel will receive a nice silver bar. A fighter pilot who takes down a 10k ton vessel will be showered with praise and wealth for the rest of his life.
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A couple of ideas:
1. I like the idea of time in service awards - 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
2. Qualification Medals: Assigned 1 year in Position, Commander, Executive Officer, Intelligence, etc. I think there should be a ground equivalent based off command of formation, Infantry, Armor, Logistics, etc.
3. POW medal - For folks that have been captured.
4. Search and Rescue - If member of ship recovers an escape pod.
5. I like the idea of a Fleet Exercise Medal - If taken part in a fleet training exercise of a certain amount of ships (or a single ship which has raised its proficiency past a certain level), than you get a medal.
6. Academy Training Medal - being on an Academy Staff for a length of time.
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An extra condition 'when in a fighter-class vessel' would be nice.
A captain of a cruiser who takes down an enemy 10k ton vessel will receive a nice silver bar. A fighter pilot who takes down a 10k ton vessel will be showered with praise and wealth for the rest of his life.
I guess the trouble there is it is a special feat if done alone. If 20 fighters open fire, who got in the last missile really doesn't matter, and the difference might be under a single 5s increment
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Some more information about how this will work (now I have done some coding).
Firstly, rather than associating a condition with a medal, you will associate a medal with a condition. This is because you might want to assign the same medal to more than one condition, but probably not more than one medal to a single condition. Conditions without an associated medal will just be ignored if they occur.
Each condition has a description, a measurement type and a measurement amount. For example, Discover New Star System will have a Measurement Type of 'Discover Star System' and a measurement amount of 1. Discover Ten New Star Systems will have a Measurement Type of 'Discover Star System' and a measurement amount of 10. You might have conditions of Destroy 100,000 tons of Commercial Shipping and Destroy 1,000,000 tons of Commercial Shipping. Same measurement type but different measurement amount.
I intend to start with a list of basic conditions and allow you to add new conditions by creating a description, choosing a measurement type and entering a measurement amount. Once the condition exists, you can assign a medal to it.
So that means what I actually need is suggestions for measurement types, rather than conditions. That can include measurement types where the amount will only ever be a fixed number such as 1. This methodology allows more flexibility for the player, while not adding too much complexity in coding.
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`Having an (X) number of copies of a specific medal'
It's pretty common for medals that can be awarded more than once to have specific instructions in how to handle having been awarded them multiple times after all.
Unless you just put in an incremental counter for such medals in the commander description.
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Exploration:
- Command the first ship to enter a system containing a world with colony cost no greater than N
- Command a ship that geosurveys N bodies.
- Command a ship that geosurveys a body with alien ruins (of tech level/size N?).
- Command a ship that geosurveys a body with a research bonus of N%.
Logistics service:
- Command a freighter that delivers the first infrastructure to a colony (not sure what to measure for this one).
- Command a colony ship that delivers the first colonists to a colony.
- Perform underway refueling of N liters of fuel. (Perhaps use some multiple of N if the numbers are unweildy. )
- Rearm other ships with N missiles. (Or maybe N should measure tonnage or MSP of missiles. )
Some for chains of command:
- Have a post requiring rank N (perhaps in an administrative command) when a junior officer under you fulfills condition X (e. g. engages in battle, get killed in combat, etc).
- Have a post requiring rank N when a senior officer in your chain of command fulfills condition X.
- Have any post when any officer within N levels of your chain of command fulfills condition X.
- Have at least N subordinate officers in your chain of command. (Or maybe N ships, rather than counting officers. )
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How about a medal for reaching X years old while in service?
I award my staff a medal if they make it to 100 years old before retiring.
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Will there be a limit on the amount of medals a commander can have like there is in VB6? You may have already addressed this when you implemented commanders, but I can't recall if this was changed.
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Will there be a limit on the amount of medals a commander can have like there is in VB6? You may have already addressed this when you implemented commanders, but I can't recall if this was changed.
Not at the moment. The issue may be display but there is room for plenty of medals.
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Travel Conditions:
Made X jumps (all officers)
Made X jumps (commanding officer)
Traveled X million km (all officers)
Traveled X million km (commanding officer)
All officers, meaning commander, bridge crew, commanders of docked parasites, officers or teams on board for transport, commanders in ground units on board, etc. Commanding officer meaning just the commander in charge of the ship making the jump or traveling. The commander would get credit in both categories. I would exclude orbital movement from the travel condition.
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War condition
A member of the army or navy and in system when an alien home planet surrenders.
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How are medals for non commanding officers handled?
I would like an option to award special medals to to them for tasks related to their station,
e.g. to the Science Officer for survey or tactical for killing enemy missiles and ships
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Detect X new alien designs
Detect X new alien ships
Make X new contacts with alien species
Kill X troops with orbital bombardment
Kill X boarders while defending your ship
Survive X boardings
Survive X strength internal explosion (ship survives)
Discover breathable athmosphere planet
Discover 0/1/2 colony cost planet
Specific Skill at level X
Highest skill at level X
Total sum of skills at X
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Is it too early to ask for 'Ship' awards? For example, a Fleet 'E' award for Highest Crew Experience or a Proficiency award for TF Training >= 80%.
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I know it might sound silly, but honestly automated medals are the best feature so far. Small changes big impact. Lovin it.
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How are medals for non commanding officers handled?
I would like an option to award special medals to to them for tasks related to their station,
e.g. to the Science Officer for survey or tactical for killing enemy missiles and ships
At the moment it is just the ship commander. I am open to suggestions about how other officers should benefit. A couple of options:
Option 1) It would be possible to have officer-type-specific conditions, such as Science Officer on Ship that Discovers 10 jump Points, or Tactical Officer on Ship that Destroys 100,000 tons of Shipping, etc.
Option 2) Junior officers receive a partial benefit for each measurement, based on the type of measurement (so Tactical Officer receives half credit for destroyed tonnage or Science Officer gets half credit for survey achievement, etc.).
Other suggestions welcome.
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I know it might sound silly, but honestly automated medals are the best feature so far. Small changes big impact. Lovin it.
Yes, it really adds to the character development aspect. I should have done it years ago :)
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Is it too early to ask for 'Ship' awards? For example, a Fleet 'E' award for Highest Crew Experience or a Proficiency award for TF Training >= 80%.
Probably won't have this immediately, but I am recording everything I need to do it.
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Are the medal conditions "and" or "or" conditions?
Also, and this may be a longer term suggestion, would it be possible to add an option to give a medal to all officers in a fleet or ship? This would make it a lot easier to distribute campaign or battle medals.
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How are medals for non commanding officers handled?
I would like an option to award special medals to to them for tasks related to their station,
e.g. to the Science Officer for survey or tactical for killing enemy missiles and ships
At the moment it is just the ship commander. I am open to suggestions about how other officers should benefit. A couple of options:
Option 1) It would be possible to have officer-type-specific conditions, such as Science Officer on Ship that Discovers 10 jump Points, or Tactical Officer on Ship that Destroys 100,000 tons of Shipping, etc.
Option 2) Junior officers receive a partial benefit for each measurement, based on the type of measurement (so Tactical Officer receives half credit for destroyed tonnage or Science Officer gets half credit for survey achievement, etc.).
Other suggestions welcome.
I noted a few officer type specific medals in my list earlier in the thread.
Regarding partial credit; I'd advise letting the junior officers take full credit, and offering partial credit as an option for the CO. The CO isn't at the station doing the work themselves after all, and they're going to get credit for a lot of things.
Also would it be possible to assign different medals to different types of officers for the same task? Like giving a ground forces officers a different medal for destroying the same amount of ground forces as a naval officer? And can we be automatically assign a type of medal for destroying a specific ground unit type? Because being able to assign a 'SEAD Mission' award for the ships flying into the teeth of orbital defenses to destroy the STO guns sounds like a good idea to me.
Wouldn't be unusual for such ships to get savaged in the exchange.
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Are the medal conditions "and" or "or" conditions?
Also, and this may be a longer term suggestion, would it be possible to add an option to give a medal to all officers in a fleet or ship? This would make it a lot easier to distribute campaign or battle medals.
Award to everyone in the fleet would be a new version of a manual award. Should be relatively straightforward.
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Another question. I have been looking at options to improve on the black background, ribbon-less medals of VB6.
Option 1: Keep the VB6 medals. No work required, but black background looks odd on dark blue, there are no ribbons and there is a relatively small choice of medals.
Option 2: Use medal ribbons on the Commander window instead of the physical medals. This is a simple option as they all the same size, or at least are easy to resize, and I don't have to worry about background. There are MANY available online for real-world medals. There would be plenty of space on the commander window where I would add them in rows as on a uniform and could even add priority of display. I could also add to them to each row of the medal list on the Medal window, rather than needing to clock on the row to see a medal.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_United_States_Armed_Forces
Option 3: Use PNG medals with attached ribbons and a transparent background. This would probably look the most impressive as you would see a row of medals with ribbons but it requires a lot of messing about. Firstly, most of the images I can find are all different aspect ratios, so I would have to crop them to get them to line up. Many of them don't have transparent backgrounds and white backgrounds would look odd. Cropping those that do have transparent backgrounds removes the transparent background, so then I need an editor that can handle that and perhaps add transparent backgrounds to some others. There are also some issues that different medals are shown with different length ribbons so they don't line up neatly.
For example: https://www.usamilitarymedals.com/collections/military-medals
I have been playing around with option 3 quite a lot in an effort to make it work but I am starting to think option 2 is a lot more practical and useful. I would also be able to create a huge amount of choice relatively quickly.
Open to comments and feedback on my musings :)
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Option 3 would awesome, but I wouldn't want to spend too much time trying to achieve it.
Option 2 makes me happy.
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I'll second it. I actually think I would prefer Option 2 over 3 even though 3 would 'look better'. Straightforward, easy to implement, and I think it would look sharp.
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How are medals for non commanding officers handled?
I would like an option to award special medals to to them for tasks related to their station,
e.g. to the Science Officer for survey or tactical for killing enemy missiles and ships
At the moment it is just the ship commander. I am open to suggestions about how other officers should benefit. A couple of options:
Option 1) It would be possible to have officer-type-specific conditions, such as Science Officer on Ship that Discovers 10 jump Points, or Tactical Officer on Ship that Destroys 100,000 tons of Shipping, etc.
Option 2) Junior officers receive a partial benefit for each measurement, based on the type of measurement (so Tactical Officer receives half credit for destroyed tonnage or Science Officer gets half credit for survey achievement, etc.).
Other suggestions welcome.
Regarding partial credit; I'd advise letting the junior officers take full credit, and offering partial credit as an option for the CO. The CO isn't at the station doing the work themselves after all, and they're going to get credit for a lot of things.
I don't know whether it would add too much to the coding... but if there was an option, then whether an empire assigns credit to the commanding officer, their subordinate, or both, would tell you quite a lot about them.
Edit: Actually, I'm guessing that these are all career totals, but while 'battle' is too fuzzy for automatic issue, would 'tour of duty' / 'assignment to post' be a suitably distinct period for analysis?
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I'll second it. I actually think I would prefer Option 2 over 3 even though 3 would 'look better'. Straightforward, easy to implement, and I think it would look sharp.
Yes, I am leaning more that way the more I consider it.
Also, someone suggested mass medal awards for campaigns. I am going to setup it up so you can manually award medals to all officers at a ship, sub-fleet, fleet or admin command level or any level of HQ for ground forces. I'll also set a filter for this so you can award to different officer types. With the significant scope this adds for campaign medals, ribbons would be far superior due to the better use of space and variety of options.
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A suggestion: a medal can remove/replace an older medal. For example: if you discover a star system, you receive the 1-star-system medal, which will be replaced with the 2-star-system medal when you disocover the second. Removing "medal-clutter"...
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What about option 2, but instead of using images for the ribbons, just defining their colours in some kind of dialogue?
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What about option 2, but instead of using images for the ribbons, just defining their colours in some kind of dialogue?
I was looking at some ribbons today and realized it would be easy to generate your own. Looks like I will be building Paint into Aurora :)
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It gets even easier; ribbons are bilaterally mirrored in the vertical, and can be defined with a 'colour, width' coding system describing the width of any of the colour bands on the ribbon. It should be noted that any given nation's ribbons are unique to a given medal of that nation, and that it's very common for medals that have been awarded multiple times to have special markings on the ribbon to explain this. If only to keep a given soldier's rack of ribbons from exploding after a long and fruitful career.
It may be harder to code though.
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It gets even easier; ribbons are bilaterally mirrored in the vertical, and can be defined with a 'colour, width' coding system describing the width of any of the colour bands on the ribbon. It should be noted that any given nation's ribbons are unique to a given medal of that nation, and that it's very common for medals that have been awarded multiple times to have special markings on the ribbon to explain this. If only to keep a given soldier's rack of ribbons from exploding after a long and fruitful career.
It may be harder to code though.
I could probably code that award of Medal A removes Medal B, so you could create medals that have specific ribbons for multiple awards.
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Oh wow, awesome change/addition!
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This is really cool!
One suggestion: add "medals awarded' as a sort criteria in the officer list so that we can review our most decorated officers.
Do you plan to add a "hall of fame" for dead or retired officers also?
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Do you plan to add a "hall of fame" for dead or retired officers also?
One has been in and out several times. The problem is separating the one officer you care about from the two hundred you don't. Steve hasn't yet managed to automate a score for 'interestingness' of an officer, but 'accumulated points from medals' might do it.
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One thing that I think would increase 'interestingness' of officers is if the characteristics attached to officers (brave, rich family, etc), actually had some marginal but real gameplay effect in the form of a small modifier. Something which would actually make it more important to distinguish and select between officers. Right now it is merely cosmetic and for role play purposes. This isn't a must have feature for me by any stretch of the imagination but I think it would be one of those 'neat' little additions to put in if it weren't too much trouble and easy to code (I have no coding ability at all so I don't have the first idea about difficulty degree).
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Do you plan to add a "hall of fame" for dead or retired officers also?
One has been in and out several times. The problem is separating the one officer you care about from the two hundred you don't. Steve hasn't yet managed to automate a score for 'interestingness' of an officer, but 'accumulated points from medals' might do it.
One way to do it might be to save all officers for a short time after death. (One month?) And then have a check box that will save the record permanently.
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I don't think anyone has suggested a 'First Contact' condition yet, for Medals given to those who first make contact with a (new) alien race. Potentially with separate versions for space faring, not space faring, and by the goddess what are those (unknown menace) first contacts.
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I don't think anyone has suggested a 'First Contact' condition yet, for Medals given to those who first make contact with a (new) alien race. Potentially with separate versions for space faring, not space faring, and by the goddess what are those (unknown menace) first contacts.
This sounds easy, but is actually not straightforward due to the way the code is setup. The function that identifies the contact is a new race is several levels down in the code from the detection function and the original detecting object (ship, missile, pop, etc.) isn't carried down through the code. I'll see what I can do.
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Here is a screenshot of the medal ribbons available so far. These are all US-based medals, although some are awarded by other nations to US personnel, and the names are the original ones. I found a site with clean graphics of the ribbons, with every one the same size, rather than a photo of a cloth ribbon or the more common graphics that have horizontal lines across. Now i need to find something similar for other nations, or do some modifications to the image files as I did with the only non-US medal ribbon - the VC.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/MedalRibbons02.PNG)
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Here is the Commander window with the new Ribbon format. There is space for 44 ribbons in total on an 11 x 4 grid. I've also added a button to hide the medals space to provide more room for the search function if required. Medals are displayed in descending order of medal promotion score
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/Medals07.PNG)
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Below is the current list of measurements that are being tracked for automatic medal assignment. A medal condition includes both the measurement and the amount (which could be 1), so you can create different medals for different amounts of the same measurement.
Measurements are best suited to tracking instant events, such as destroying a ship or completing a survey. More extensive events, such as successfully defending a planet over potentially months of game time or taking part in a major fleet engagement over several days, are not straightforward to track with measurements. These type of major events, covering large areas of space or lengths of time, should be covered by the mass award of campaign medals.
Hostile Ships Destroyed
Military Shipping Destroyed in Tons
Commercial Shipping Destroyed in Tons
Successful Boarding Combat
Hostile Missiles Destroyed
Armour Damage Taken
Internal Damage Taken
Ground Forces Destroyed in Tons
Combat Drop - Transport
Combat Drop - Formation
Ship Destruction Survived
Star Systems Explored
Habitable Worlds Discovered
Ruins Discovered
Installations Recovered
Bodies With Minerals Discovered
Jump Points Discovered
Research Points Generated
Research Projects Completed
Length Of Service in Years
I'll continue to add to the list over time.
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I think the combination of auto-awarding simple things - such that player might easily forget - combined with the ability to mass-award manual medals - for campaigns and such - will be sufficient for most purposes.
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Successfully completing a ground combat campaign at least can be easily defined. 'No more enemy ground forces on the body.' I think you do the same thing with Successful Boarding Combat.
Of course, it's entirely possible that the attacker/defender who got defeated but has ships in orbit might then level the planet in a tantrum, but eh. That sometimes happens.
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Haven't seen this suggestion yet (but I may have missed it)
- Medal awarded after n science points researched
Would be nice that your scientists get more medals as they research more and more techs.
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Haven't seen this suggestion yet (but I may have missed it)
- Medal awarded after n science points researched
Would be nice that your scientists get more medals as they research more and more techs.
Yes, it is in the list above as Research Points.
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Great work so far on the medals and ribbons. What I did for Aurora was provide qualified pilots with real life obsolete pilot wings and called them "Naval Space Aviation Badge". I also took the Commando tab and another obsolete badge which I named "Assault Operations Badge" and gave it to qualified officers of the ground forces. I think giving skill badges would be cool as well. Check attachments for examples.
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Great work so far on the medals and ribbons. What I did for Aurora was provide qualified pilots with real life obsolete pilot wings and called them "Naval Space Aviation Badge". I also took the Commando tab and another obsolete badge which I named "Assault Operations Badge" and gave it to qualified officers of the ground forces. I think giving skill badges would be cool as well. They look like this:
If anyone wants to supply ribbon images or badges I am happy to include them. They should be 100x30 pixels. All the current ones are PNG format.
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Great work so far on the medals and ribbons. What I did for Aurora was provide qualified pilots with real life obsolete pilot wings and called them "Naval Space Aviation Badge". I also took the Commando tab and another obsolete badge which I named "Assault Operations Badge" and gave it to qualified officers of the ground forces. I think giving skill badges would be cool as well. They look like this:
If anyone wants to supply ribbon images or badges I am happy to include them. They should be 100x30 pixels. All the current ones are PNG format.
What's the best way to get them to you? PM doesn't offer attachments.
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So-o-o. . . Does someone other than Steve want to whip up a quick program for turning the flags from Aurora's Flags folder into properly-sized award ribbons? A simple stretch-and-squish might work for something like the French tricolour, but the Scottish saltire may turn jagged, and the Canadian maple leaf would be distorted.
It would at least be a start, giving us many to work with, and the harder ones (Brazil, for example) could be left to be done by hand.
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
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How are medals for non commanding officers handled?
I would like an option to award special medals to to them for tasks related to their station,
e.g. to the Science Officer for survey or tactical for killing enemy missiles and ships
At the moment it is just the ship commander. I am open to suggestions about how other officers should benefit. A couple of options:
Option 1) It would be possible to have officer-type-specific conditions, such as Science Officer on Ship that Discovers 10 jump Points, or Tactical Officer on Ship that Destroys 100,000 tons of Shipping, etc.
Option 2) Junior officers receive a partial benefit for each measurement, based on the type of measurement (so Tactical Officer receives half credit for destroyed tonnage or Science Officer gets half credit for survey achievement, etc.).
Other suggestions welcome.
The first option is more flexible as the second. But you have already designed the system to create multiple conditions with different values, why not also add an selection for officer type.
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Any plans on exporting your medal definitions based upon a nation, and be able to reimport it into another nation or another game nation?
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Any plans on exporting your medal definitions based upon a nation, and be able to reimport it into another nation or another game nation?
Nothing yet, but that should be straightforward. There is nothing race or technology specific about the medal and condition definitions.
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Huh, always wanted this as a feature and I think I've talked about it in the past.
Glad that this is going to be added, thanks Steve.
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Successfully completing a ground combat campaign at least can be easily defined. 'No more enemy ground forces on the body.' I think you do the same thing with Successful Boarding Combat.
Of course, it's entirely possible that the attacker/defender who got defeated but has ships in orbit might then level the planet in a tantrum, but eh. That sometimes happens.
Except it cannot make a difference between a listening post with 100 tons of defenders and a NPR homeworld with 667 billion tons of defenders.
For boarding combat though it would work well since they are always fast and deadly.
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
What's the best way to get my files to you? I have the . png's, but PM doesn't have an attachment option.
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
What's the best way to get my files to you? I have the . png's, but PM doesn't have an attachment option.
Can you just attach a zip in this thread?
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
What's the best way to get my files to you? I have the . png's, but PM doesn't have an attachment option.
Can you just attach a zip in this thread?
Sorry, thought you meant through other channels. Resized to what you requested.
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
What's the best way to get my files to you? I have the . png's, but PM doesn't have an attachment option.
Can you just attach a zip in this thread?
Sorry, thought you meant through other channels. Resized to what you requested.
All added to the Medals directory. Thanks.
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Attached is a zip with Danish service ribbons, all 100x30 png as requested.
Edit: Also, can you upload a zip of ribbons you already have? It will be easier for us to see what is already implemented and allow us to fill in any of the ribbons you might have accidentally missed.
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How about a selection of command awards. Such a:
Been in command of a ship (ex: Awarded to any officer who has been in command of any ship)
Been in command of a type of ship (ex: Awarded to an officer who has been in command of a Carrier/Battleship(can be set to the ship types))
Length of command service (ex: Length of time commanding ships rather than length of service overall)
Fighter Pilot Ribbon (ex: Commanded a fighter/Commanded a fighter Squadron)
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So far I have the 300-ish US medals ribbons from the post earlier and I have since added about a dozen from the UK.
What's the best way to get my files to you? I have the . png's, but PM doesn't have an attachment option.
Can you just attach a zip in this thread?
Sorry, thought you meant through other channels. Resized to what you requested.
All added to the Medals directory. Thanks.
The criteria I used for the badges were as follows:
The Naval Space Aviation Badge - Awarded to military officers who have successfully completed the Navy Space Aviation Course (NSAC). NSAC is a required course for all military pilots prior to advanced training on small craft, escorts, logistics vessels, and warships.
The Assault Operations Badge - Awarded to personnel who have completed the Planetary Assault Operations Course or performed an assault drop from space under combat conditions. Personnel perform infiltration drops to conduct assault operations in support of military objectives.
The Commando Tab - Awarded to personnel who have been selected for service in special mission units as pilots or assaulters. Personnel are trained to conduct clandestine operations in deep space, boarding missions, and perform recon and assault operations.
Not sure if this needed, but thought I would share. Hopefully the criteria makes sense for the game.
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How about a selection of command awards. Such a:
Been in command of a ship (ex: Awarded to any officer who has been in command of any ship)
Been in command of a type of ship (ex: Awarded to an officer who has been in command of a Carrier/Battleship(can be set to the ship types))
Length of command service (ex: Length of time commanding ships rather than length of service overall)
Fighter Pilot Ribbon (ex: Commanded a fighter/Commanded a fighter Squadron)
I like this idea. You acquire various commendation and achievement medals as you advance through the ranks.
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Attached is a zip with Danish service ribbons, all 100x30 png as requested.
Edit: Also, can you upload a zip of ribbons you already have? It will be easier for us to see what is already implemented and allow us to fill in any of the ribbons you might have accidentally missed.
All added - thanks!
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Here is the updated Medal window using Ribbons. This is a screenshot from my new campaign.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/Crusade/Medals002.PNG)
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That looks good.
A bit of a bother to set up, but good.
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In that screenshot, are those AND or OR conditions? Would a recipient of a Silver Star need to destroy military shipping, civilian shipping, and ground troops, or would they earn one just by doing any of the three?
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IIRC, all conditions are OR conditions. Fulfilling any of the conditions is enough.
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In that screenshot, are those AND or OR conditions? Would a recipient of a Silver Star need to destroy military shipping, civilian shipping, and ground troops, or would they earn one just by doing any of the three?
Any of the three.
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Here is the updated Medal window using Ribbons. This is a screenshot from my new campaign.
(http://hxxp: www. pentarch. org/steve/Screenshots/Crusade/Medals002. PNG)
Ok, here are some suggestions for renaming some of the medals/ribbons:
Imperial Navy Cross = Grand Imperial Navy Cross
Distinguished Service Cross = Terra Sword of War Cross
Silver Star = Imperium Medal of Gallantry
The Triple Skull = Order of Valorous Service
*Purple Heart = No individual award for surviving the loss of a ship against an enemy of the Imperium
Bronze Star = Imperium Medal for Service (non-combat) or Valor (combat)
*Meritorious Service Medal = The Imperium Medal of Service would cover this award
* Denotes that medal should be rescinded.
Just some ideas to remove some of the references to medals we have today.
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Here is the updated Medal window using Ribbons. This is a screenshot from my new campaign.
(http://hxxp: www. pentarch. org/steve/Screenshots/Crusade/Medals002. PNG)
Ok, here are some suggestions for renaming some of the medals/ribbons:
Imperial Navy Cross = Grand Imperial Navy Cross
Distinguished Service Cross = Terra Sword of War Cross
Silver Star = Imperium Medal of Gallantry
The Triple Skull = Order of Valorous Service
*Purple Heart = No individual award for surviving the loss of a ship against an enemy of the Imperium
Bronze Star = Imperium Medal for Service (non-combat) or Valor (combat)
*Meritorious Service Medal = The Imperium Medal of Service would cover this award
* Denotes that medal should be rescinded.
Just some ideas to remove some of the references to medals we have today.
Here are a list of medals from WH40k. I've included a few but I decided to use the US-style medals to cover the full range of awards (plus I have good graphics for them). I like most of your suggestions though so I will make the changes.
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Astra_Militarum_Awards_and_Honours
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Just a question but will the medal names be editable by us if we want to go with a different naming scheme?
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Medals are completely customizable.
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Here is the updated Medal window using Ribbons. This is a screenshot from my new campaign.
(http://hxxp: hxxp: www. pentarch. org/steve/Screenshots/Crusade/Medals002. PNG)
Ok, here are some suggestions for renaming some of the medals/ribbons:
Imperial Navy Cross = Grand Imperial Navy Cross
Distinguished Service Cross = Terra Sword of War Cross
Silver Star = Imperium Medal of Gallantry
The Triple Skull = Order of Valorous Service
*Purple Heart = No individual award for surviving the loss of a ship against an enemy of the Imperium
Bronze Star = Imperium Medal for Service (non-combat) or Valor (combat)
*Meritorious Service Medal = The Imperium Medal of Service would cover this award
* Denotes that medal should be rescinded.
Just some ideas to remove some of the references to medals we have today.
Here are a list of medals from WH40k. I've included a few but I decided to use the US-style medals to cover the full range of awards (plus I have good graphics for them). I like most of your suggestions though so I will make the changes.
https://warhammer40k. fandom. com/wiki/Astra_Militarum_Awards_and_Honours
Oh, I thought you made those up and then threw in a couple from our current military award system. Is it possible if you made a baseline award like "Imperium Medal for Service", but if the player decides to name his empire "Victoria", that the award would automatically be named "Victoria Medal for Service"?
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There are no "default" medals. You make them all from scratch and can name them however you want.
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What are the medal conditions?
I have in the past awarded medals to new officers based on their promotion score. I.E. 500+ gets a Honor Graduate ribbon.
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What are the medal conditions?
I have in the past awarded medals to new officers based on their promotion score. I.E. 500+ gets a Honor Graduate ribbon.
This is the list at the moment, although I think I added a couple more since then.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10435.msg115099#msg115099
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Hello,
Will it be possible to award a medal to every officier in a TF or Fleet group ?
EDIT : I found the info, it wil be doable :)
Regard's
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Would it be possible to have medals with negative promotion score?
like: a Medal for a commander to survive the destruction of his ship (you are a hero, you survived - good puplic relation) but with negative promotion score (you lost a ship !... you will never be promoted again)
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Would it be possible to have medals with negative promotion score?
like: a Medal for a commander to survive the destruction of his ship (you are a hero, you survived - good puplic relation) but with negative promotion score (you lost a ship !... you will never be promoted again)
Interesting idea, effectively a "demerit" medal. I can see other times it could be useful as well, for keeping your hotshot fighter aces low-ranked enough to keep flying fighters etc...
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Would it be possible to have medals with negative promotion score?
like: a Medal for a commander to survive the destruction of his ship (you are a hero, you survived - good puplic relation) but with negative promotion score (you lost a ship !... you will never be promoted again)
Yes, that works with the current mechanics in both VB6 and C#.
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I think a better metric than tonnage would be the cost of the vessel/unit. If my tech level 5 DD destroys 3 tech level 1 BBs that's impressive. However, if the same DD destroys 2 tech level 5 DDs that would be a more impressive accomplishment. I'm not saying do away with tonnage, but rather including vessel/unit cost.
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The destroying nation may not know the cost or tech level of the destroyed ship, so it would be difficult to award medals on that basis. I used tonnage because that was the historical measure of success for several nations and medals were awarded on that basis. Other medals (Pour le Merite in Germany for example) were awarded based on number of aircraft downed (among other reasons).
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I've added a popup box that will appear for manual medal awards (single or mass) after the medal is chosen, allowing you to enter an optional medal citation. This citation will appear if you mouse-over the medal icon in the commander view. For automatic medals, the citation will be the auto-assignment criteria that resulted in the medal being awarded.
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As a role player, I really like the addition of citation entries. Can you go back and manually enter a citation for an automatically given award for a single officer? If I want to note where they got their 'Purple Heart' or Medal of Honor equivalent?
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As a role player, I really like the addition of citation entries. Can you go back and manually enter a citation for an automatically given award for a single officer? If I want to note where they got their 'Purple Heart' or Medal of Honor equivalent?
Not right now, but it would be easy to add.
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Would it be possible for the 'survived loss of ship' award to automatically register what ship, where and at what date?
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Would it be possible for the 'survived loss of ship' award to automatically register what ship, where and at what date?
Like
"#officer_name survived the loss of #ship_name, a #class_name #designation in the #system_name at #date"
for example,
"Oxford survived the loss of HMS Invincible, a King George BB in Alpha Centauri at 2102"
That would be both cool and useful, and probably not too difficult to add.
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A bit late to the suggestions and not sure if it has already been suggested, but if it's possible a medal for being involved in a task group with a average training rate of certain thresholds for a particular amount of time would be interesting.
So medals could then be introduced for positive promotion contributions for being part of a task group for a year with a high average training rate. And on the reverse negative promotion contribution medals could be awarded for officers that have long served in a task group that still have low training standards across the task group.
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A couple of suggestions for measurements:
- Number of alien races discovered
- Highest population governed as colony governor
- Amount of gases terraformed (added or removed)
- Tons of minerals mined (either orbital mining or as governor of colony)
- Tons shipped (freighter captains)
- Tons of fuel shipped (tanker captains)
- Highest tonnage multiplier of ship destroyed (for example a 5000t ship destroying a 20000t ship gets a multiplier of 4)
- Total damage points inflicted
- Total damage points taken
- Damage efficiency (total damage inflicted divided by total damage taken)
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Reading that brought a few more to my mind:
- Days/years in service (preferably while assigned to some duty, though that sounds more difficult than just calculating how long they've been an officer)
- Number of planets brought to 0.00 habitability by terraforming
- Points of orbital bombardment damage dealt (seems fitting for more xenophobic races)
- Research projects completed
Also, does ground/naval tonnage destroyed also apply to army commanders leading ground units?
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A fun one for roleplaying might be "medals" based upon nationality. I was reading Solarian Empires and you mentioned in the beginning that the French were predominant in the fleet. Having all French officers gain automatic bonus promotion points might be a neat way to automatically gain these results.
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Steve updated the conditions available:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10582.msg119098#msg119098
Destroy Hostile Ship
Destroy 10,000 tons of Military Shipping
Destroy 25,000 tons of Military Shipping
Destroy 50,000 tons of Military Shipping
Destroy 100,000 tons of Military Shipping
Destroy 250,000 tons of Military Shipping
Destroy 100,000 tons of Commercial Shipping
Destroy 250,000 tons of Commercial Shipping
Destroy 500,000 tons of Commercial Shipping
Destroy 1,000,000 tons of Commercial Shipping
Destroy 2,500,000 tons of Commercial Shipping
Destroy Hostile Ground Unit
Destroy 1000 tons of Hostile Ground Forces
Destroy 2500 tons of Hostile Ground Forces
Destroy 5000 tons of Hostile Ground Forces
Destroy 10,000 tons of Hostile Ground Forces
Destroy 25,000 tons of Hostile Ground Forces
Participate in Combat Drop - Formation
Participate in Five Combat Drops - Formation
Capture Hostile Ship in Boarding Combat
Participate in Combat Drop - Transport
Participate in Five Combat Drops - Transport
Destroy 10 Hostile Missiles
Destroy 100 Hostile Missiles
Destroy 1000 Hostile Missiles
Survive Ship Destruction
Suffer Armour Damage
Suffer Internal Damage
Discover New Star System
Discover 10 New Star Systems
Habitable World Discovered
Three Habitable Worlds Discovered
Discover 10 Jump Points
Discover 100 Jump Points
Discover 100 System Bodies With Minerals
Discover 1000 System Bodies With Minerals
Discover Alien Ruins
Completed Research Project
Completed Five Research Projects
Generate 10,000 Research Points
Generate 100,000 Research Points
Ten Years of Service
Twenty Years of Service
Thirty Years of Service
Recover 10 Abandoned Installations
Recover 100 Abandoned Installations
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I like the list of new conditions and already have several medals planned out. One hole I noticed is in Diplomatic/Engineering/Intelligence sorts of criterion. Couple of suggestions for additional triggers that seem in line with the ones above:
Established Communications with Race
Improved Relations with Race (Treaty)
Minerals Mined by Platform/Ship
Ships Salvaged
Jump Points Stabilized
Lagrange Points Stabilized/Constructed
Population/Installations Transported
Cruise Time (over a year without overhaul)
Intelligence Points Generated
Be curious to see if anyone else has suggestions.
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I've added Tons Salvaged (25k, 100k, 250k) and Stabilisations Completed (1, 3, 10).
I'll add more over time.