Aurora RTS

[simon (OP)]

I was playing Dangerous Waters when it struck me yet again how cool it would be if Aurora went live. An option for switching off the difference between commercial and military ships would be nice, I find very discombobulating like playing two parallel

[alex_brunius]

The closest thing to Aurora as an RTS I have seen is probably the indie 4x game Star Ruler.

Extremely high freedom to design how crazy ships you want (including ships that don't have energy to run life support and thus have their crew die within 10 seconds of launching).

And as with Aurora you can slap on as much armor as you want and end up with a very durable (and very slow) ship.


You need to balance engines, weaponry, defenses, fuel and ammo mass for a good performing ship design.

It also got semi Newtonian physics (unlimited speeds, but no orbiting around bodies).

I can highly recommend it even if it is missing some aurora concepts like detailed leaders/hierarchy, component design/tweaking, and long range missile/AMM battles.

[Karma Chip]

I played Star Ruler, and also StarDrive.  While I enjoy RTS, for some reason when it comes to space, I just can't stand anything other than turn based.  Both respectable games in their own right, though.

. . . . An option for switching off the difference between commercial and military ships would be nice, I find very discombobulating like playing two parallel

I'm curious how other people feel about this.  For what it's worth, I found the whole commercial/military separation mechanic brilliant when it comes to balancing mechanics.  Taking that away from the game I imagine would have a deep rooted impact on the game.  The only adjustment I would make to it is allowing a "civil arms policy", to give civilian ships light defenses.  But if the guns get too big, then it's navy issue.

[alex_brunius]

I played Star Ruler, and also StarDrive.  While I enjoy RTS, for some reason when it comes to space, I just can't stand anything other than turn based.  Both respectable games in their own right, though.

As long as your allowed to pause, I always consider real time games superior due to almost always having higher time resolution allowing for more detailed maneuvers and combat.

One thing I really REALLY hate with aurora being turnbased for example is my gauss fighters moving at 20000km/s never being able to move into firing range of an enemy moving at 10000km/s due to the enemy making their 50000km move after my fighters have moved. (Yes I know this is due to my leaders being "worse", but it's still incredibly silly).

Another thing that would improve if Aurora went realtime is resolution of missile combat where 10 time separated salvos could not impact at once if advancing time to far.

I can see no game mechanics that are improved by going turn based, since this in practice only is a limitation of the game.

[Karma Chip]

I read Aurora defines itself as a hybrid of the two, since you can slow down the turns to mere seconds.  Do you notice these problems too when using a tighter time increment?

[alex_brunius]

I read Aurora defines itself as a hybrid of the two, since you can slow down the turns to mere seconds.  Do you notice these problems too when using a tighter time increment?

The first yes ofcourse, 10000km/s delta speed times 5 seconds = 50000km range between the ships which is not enough for most Gauss weapons.

I do agree that Aurora is a somewhat of a hybrid.

[Jorgen_CAB]

A game like aurora could very well be semi-RTS in the since that you reduce the time increments to mere milliseconds when necessary. And larger increments when there is no action taking place that need that time resolution. But the game would need to be multi-threaded to accomplish that because you need a mechanic that intelligently can pace the increments of the game. There is no point in the computer to calculating the possitions of bodies or sensor sweeps with ships once every millisecond when there is no reason for it, but these needs to be a service in the background that can instantly interrupt the time when there is a need to change this. Currently with the language the game is written in it is not possible.

One other interesting change with calculating milliseconds instead of 5 second impulses is that guns would behave more realistic. That is the velocity of a gun would have more of an impact on how accurate it is instead of just the range and weapons could have a wider range of fire-rates etc. Area-fire weapons would be more effective against incoming missiles and handling PD weapons would be more realistic.

It would also make newtonian movement more easy to implement or at least some sort of light version of it. This would at least make ship behave more realistic and certainly not be as fast as they are now in general.

I'm pretty sure that Steve would like to do something like this if he could (or had the time for it), but rewriting the whole game in a newer more powerful language is not that easy to do.

[simon (OP)]

Thanks for the suggestions guys will definitely check them out, one thing I like about aurora is design extends into ships systems, missiles engines turrets et al the scope design freedom is rare.
The commercial/naval split still not my cup of tea,though i understand it comes from IRL shipbuilding

[Karma Chip]

As I understand it, it the commercial/naval split has to do with the pacing of the game. 

The balance is that about a 10k ton naval ship at the start of the game is about average.   However, that system falls apart when you throw in the needs of commercial ships - heavy, bulky, cargo holds and long-range engines.   So if you had a 50k ton commercial ship - not uncommon at the start - that was suddenly made into a military design as well, that spoils the intended pace of the game.  Also, commercial ships are more likely to be working all the time with loop orders, unlike naval ships which may just sit on defense.  Commercial ships don't have to deal with naval maintenance and morale.

But that's just my theory on the reasoning behind it.   Perhaps some of the veterans around here or Steve himself could explain better. 

[sloanjh]

But that's just my theory on the reasoning behind it.   Perhaps some of the veterans around here or Steve himself could explain better. 

Pretty much spot on.  The one thing I can think of that you didn't mention is that Steve is VERY focused on consistency of the pseudo-physics, which results in very bulky cargo holds and the need for technobabble to explain why you can't build naval vessels in that big honking commercial yard.

There was also user feedback - IIRC originally the maintenance rules did apply to commercial designs, but they didn't really add to game-play.  All they did was result in a bunch of micro-management trying to get the freighters in for yard time, so that was abstracted away.

John

[TheDeadlyShoe]

'member that aurora kinda-sorta comes out of Starfire, and they had the same problem there.  Commercial micro didn't add much to the game, there was already  more than enough military micro for anyone. xD