C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Conscript Gary]

The ability to target mass driver packets with weaponry could also be interesting, and sidestep that particular issue.

[Seolferwulf]

Being able to create a corridor through nebulae for ships to move at their usual speeds would be nice.
Maybe a new order to clear away space rubble with weaponry could take of this.
It would create a space in weapon range in which ships can use their normal speeds without obstacles.
As a drawback ships with this order would be easier to detect.

Though I'm not sure if this actually makes sense...
Do ships need armor in nebulae to protect against rubble or because of pressure?

[Person012345]

Being able to create a corridor through nebulae for ships to move at their usual speeds would be nice.
Maybe a new order to clear away space rubble with weaponry could take of this.
It would create a space in weapon range in which ships can use their normal speeds without obstacles.
As a drawback ships with this order would be easier to detect.

Though I'm not sure if this actually makes sense...
Do ships need armor in nebulae to protect against rubble or because of pressure?

A nebula is a big cloud of space dust. I think the reason for restricted speeds is that at high speed, even tiny particles of dust will blow big holes in poorly armoured ships. And you can't just go around firing lasers to clear it out.

[QuakeIV]

Seems to me you could push it out of the way over time.  I'm not saying that should be added, but it seems excessive to declare it impossible.

[the obelisk]

Seems to me you could push it out of the way over time.  I'm not saying that should be added, but it seems excessive to declare it impossible.

It would take an awfully long time to clear an area, and even if you were to do so, the dust in the nebula isn't motionless, so the area will just get filled back in by more dust.

[ardem]

Age of Race

Any chance we can have age changes with Races, that way officers live longer or have alien species living longer then 100 years. A new tech line as well to enhance living age? So instead of hard coding the maximum age you can have it as a fillable field in the Species Tab

[Garfunkel]

Age of Race

Any chance we can have age changes with Races, that way officers live longer or have alien species living longer then 100 years. A new tech line as well to enhance living age? So instead of hard coding the maximum age you can have it as a fillable field in the Species Tab

Like with commander gender, this should go both ways too. Maybe my race of hyper-active marsupials only lives 10 years!

[JacenHan]

Age of Race

Any chance we can have age changes with Races, that way officers live longer or have alien species living longer then 100 years. A new tech line as well to enhance living age? So instead of hard coding the maximum age you can have it as a fillable field in the Species Tab

Like with commander gender, this should go both ways too. Maybe my race of hyper-active marsupials only lives 10 years!

Should age correlate with training rates, for balance? If your commanders only live 10 years, you probably need a constant supply of fresh manpower, while with 150 year old commanders you would eventually end up with a huge officer pool at current rates.

[King-Salomon]

Age of Race

A new tech line as well to enhance living age?

Was thinking about this some time ago too... it would make the "bio" tech sector much more interesting...

it shouldn't be too much of an improvement IMO to not make it too powerful - I was thinking about a tech-line which adds 5 years to live span (and with this employment time too of course) each

so with a 5 level tech line you could add a max of 25 years to your officers...

it also could be locked for the player - to be unlocked with ruin exploration or finding a planet with a special fauna/flora onto it... or interrogating some POWs of a special race etc pp

maybe to further balance it, the % of accidents and the impact of medical problems could be enhanced (which also could lead to an other new tech line which reduces the % of accidents to what it is now...)

[Rabid_Cog]

The "Quick Question about C# Aurora" thread with its discussion about the beam weapon range limits has given me an idea for handling beam weapons fire outside that increment.

I mean, we would all like to be able to fire at ranges over 1.5m km, even at tiny tiny chances to hit, the only issue is one of displaying it on the main map, if I am not mistaken? If that is the problem, then how about simply *not* displaying it? What I mean is, you create 'projectiles' for lasers the same way you do for missiles. They have a speed, they home like missiles (bear with me), they never change target and they dont go dumb when the ship that fired them dies. And then, you don't show these projectiles to anyone. Not the person who fired them, nor the people who they are being shot at.

Its homing property is simply an abstraction of the quantum hoops the firing ship jumps through to predict where a target is going to be in 10 seconds time. At larger time intervals (1minute plus) I can see how this can become shaky, but as these shots should only ever hit at a maximum of 20 - 30 seconds (4 to 6 ticks) out, I think there should never be any grossly impossible situations. Lorewise, you could fluff it as one ship's computer learning the other's randomization algorithms (and using large area attacks, as in the original Starfire). You could even make heading changes destroy all incoming beam fire (human decisionmaking invalidates learning the ship's evasion pattern to predict its future position) if you dont want the potential immersion breaker of "how could that ship have known to aim there when I didnt even know I was going to be there!".

For detection, you can make the ship that fires them experience a 'heat bloom' with higher thermal signiture the moment it does so that the victim can know they are being shot at even before the shot hits.

This has the advantage of unifying beam and missile behaviour into one set with mechanics, with the only difference being whether or not to actually display the projectiles.

[Steve Walmsley]

The issue with longer beam weapon ranges is game-play related.

Currently, if you have two energy-armed fleets and one is faster with longer-ranged weapons, it will win automatically. However, beam ranges are relatively short so a faster fleet with shorter-range weapons will get into range after taking some damage.

Also, a fleet with inherently slower tech could adapt to build speed-optimized (boosted) ships to get into range.

However, if we had beam weapons with significantly more range, the race with the longest range weapons wins, regardless of what the other side does, because they would be torn to pieces trying to close that longer range.

Missiles have great range, but require ammo and can be shot down. Beam weapons can fire forever, with no ammo and no possible defence. Their limitation is range. The five second range is convenient technobabble, but the real reason is to avoid breaking the game by making beam weapons too powerful.

[alex_brunius]

However, if we had beam weapons with significantly more range, the race with the longest range weapons wins, regardless of what the other side does, because they would be torn to pieces trying to close that longer range.

Missiles have great range, but require ammo and can be shot down. Beam weapons can fire forever, with no ammo and no possible defence. Their limitation is range. The five second range is convenient technobabble, but the real reason is to avoid breaking the game by making beam weapons too powerful.

Is that the way it must be though?

Have you thought about the option of splitting up beam weapons into two distinct categories?

Close in ( no ammo ) - For knife fights, Fighters/FAC and PD/CIWS.
Artillery ( ammo ) - For softening up enemy fleets, ranges between that of beams and missiles.


Accuracy could scale with distance such that how early your artillery opens up on the enemy is a tradeoff if it's worth the ammo or your just wasting it, and could be balanced such that larger enemy capital ships are significantly easier to hit at range making them more vulnerable.

I think this could lead to some quite interesting RP and dynamic situations as well. Ammo would ofcourse be much cheaper then missiles ( or even replenished for free ), but does take up part of your mass budget and limit firing time.

[Rabid_Cog]

In VB6 Aurora, sure. But beam weapons fire a lot more than missiles, and with the changes in C# Aurora, will suffer a lot more failure rates. Plinking at an opposing fleet with 1 damage per shot at the edge of max range will probably result in about 0.7 kills before your laser fails.

On the other hand, the gains to be made with removing this cap is the creation of far more interesting weapon systems that could surpass the limit, albeit at cost of perhaps ammunition (not missiles, things that cant be shot down), reduced accuracy, increased failure, etc. Furthermore, you could even change how beam weapons work so that the fire control becomes the only limiter to maximum range and the only issue with firing at 5m km is the absolutely abysmal hit chance. Now you can get longer range weapons by just slapping a bigger fire control on... but that wont make you in any way likely to hit at those insane ranges before your gun blows up from firing 100 000 shots.

I'll go do some thinking. Maybe I can come up with a vaguely reasonable formula that gives a decent chance to hit at close range with a sharply dropping probability at longer (>5 seconds).

I would not suggest there should be some hard difference between Artillary and Close in. I would rather those functionalities be the natural consequences of specialization in features (like ASM vs AMM).

[Peroox]

Low damage, long range beam could be countered by shields regeneration.  Problem is with focus fire of entire fleet on one ship.  Against missile you can use all yours fleet to shot them down, but against beam each ship stand alone.  In game we can't shield targeted ship with formation so you always lose ship one by one.  Of course with missile you can hope to shot down all enemy ammo and retract targeted ship to have more time (ticks) to destroy enemy missile. 

Maybe ordnance type mass driver with kinetic(maybe also plasma?) projetile could be a solution.  Low damage, long range(in compare to beam/railgun), limmited ammo, only active sensor can detect it(or EM if plasma).  Rather hard to shot down by AMM but beam/kinetic defence can change the trajectory of the flight or destroy that type of projectile(or dissipate energy if plasma ordnance). 

[Rabid_Cog]

Valid, but increased weapon failure due to firing already function as limited "ammunition" (number of shots) for them. If you have 2% chance of failure, roughly half your weapons will have had a failure after 50 shots, reducing your total MSP by the equivalent amount. Once your MSP runs out not only will your weapons stop firing as they fail, but you put yourself in a rather tricky situation with regards to making it back to your nearest resupply base.

I think the accuracy modifier could be rather simple. Just multiply whatever existing accuracy formula there is by an additional factor
(min(Weapon 'Maximum' range/Actual range,1)^2)

That means your actual accuracy will drop by a further 75% if you attempt to shoot at someone twice as far as your weapon's maximum effective range. That is, over and above the existing impact that such a massive range has on accuracy (accuracy IS a function of range at the moment, right?). So if you have a 50% chance to hit someone at your 'max' range of 100kkm, then, depending on the current impact of range on accuracy you will at best have the following probability of hitting at these ranges (assuming no other impacts from range):

200kkm - 12.5%
300kkm - 5.56%
400kkm - 3.13%
500kkm - 2% (note, when your accuracy is the same as your weapon failure chance then its a 50/50 split whether your gun will blow up or you will hit the enemy)
600kkm - 1.39%
700kkm - 1.02%
800kkm - 0.78%

At these kinds of accuracies, it becomes a total waste of MSP to fire at all. Your guns have a larger chance to fail than they do to actually hurt the enemy.

If this conversation is going to go anywhere but a "no" from Steve, then I suggest we move it out into its own thread to not clutter this one up.