C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Whitecold]

I'm afraid you forgot that capacity has to be divided by missiles size. 1HS magazine will give you 16 capacity allowing you to carry five missiles, for a total of seven. However I would argue that your example isn't really that good, for in that situation you could five only three times per launcher. If you build them to fire 7+ salvoes magazines are much more efficient way to store missiles than box launchers. So box launchers are already a tredeoff - lower total ammunition capacity in exchange for firing all of it at once.

No, I did not. Assuming size n missiles and you invest 3*n HS into 2 launchers and n HS magazine space, you end up with the 16+2 missiles for launchers vs 20 for box launchers. I am arguing that the trade off is just way off, assuming 9 salvos vs firing the same all at once it is always better to have the box launchers.

I"m afraid you're forgetting "bonus tracking vs missiles" tech. Gauss cannons are very, very accurate and it's very rare for them to need to fire more than two shots to take down incoming shipkillers of equivalent technology level. At least I think so, can't be bothered to do the math right now.

Yeah, that would also need to be nerfed to make low salvo sizes of missiles more useful. Maybe also increase the range at which missiles are engaged by final PD as their speed increases.

[chrislocke2000]

Was just looking back over the rules changes and the new ground units. What has struck me as odd is the need to attach large lumbering tanks to all larger units in order to fit in the HQ component. This is going to look particularly odd if you have a bunch of for example jungle trained troops who then end up with something that would not exactly be fit for such terrain. I was therefore wondering if a split version of these units could be created as an alternative such that a series of light vehicles could do the job of one large mounted unit. I expect along with this you would have to deal with partial damage to the units / loss of some but not all but would think you could have some simple rules that noted if you lost more than 25% or so of units the HQ bonus would cease to function. Hopefully that would be a lot of overhead to maintain some more balanced unit templates.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Was just looking back over the rules changes and the new ground units. What has struck me as odd is the need to attach large lumbering tanks to all larger units in order to fit in the HQ component. This is going to look particularly odd if you have a bunch of for example jungle trained troops who then end up with something that would not exactly be fit for such terrain. I was therefore wondering if a split version of these units could be created as an alternative such that a series of light vehicles could do the job of one large mounted unit. I expect along with this you would have to deal with partial damage to the units / loss of some but not all but would think you could have some simple rules that noted if you lost more than 25% or so of units the HQ bonus would cease to function. Hopefully that would be a lot of overhead to maintain some more balanced unit templates.

While I agree on principle that large vehicle might not be suitable for jungle combat we assume that these vehicles are like tanks today. We could easily immagine them as hovering vehicles with limited flight capabilities that can skimmer over trees and hide pretty much anywhere among the top of the trees and act as artillery for soldiers or lighter vehicles on the ground. I could see future tanks be a cross between a tank and a helicopter more or less with anti-gravity technologies.

[JacenHan]

Was just looking back over the rules changes and the new ground units. What has struck me as odd is the need to attach large lumbering tanks to all larger units in order to fit in the HQ component. This is going to look particularly odd if you have a bunch of for example jungle trained troops who then end up with something that would not exactly be fit for such terrain. I was therefore wondering if a split version of these units could be created as an alternative such that a series of light vehicles could do the job of one large mounted unit. I expect along with this you would have to deal with partial damage to the units / loss of some but not all but would think you could have some simple rules that noted if you lost more than 25% or so of units the HQ bonus would cease to function. Hopefully that would be a lot of overhead to maintain some more balanced unit templates.

Are you sure vehicles are required at all? In the rules post example I can see infantry HQ units only one level below the highest tank-based HQ.

[the obelisk]

In VB6, civilians tend to build mining colonies on their own. While nice, I would like to have more control over, where they are allowed to do that. The game I guess has several parameters as to what would be ideal for the civis to build such a base. Maybe making these available and editable might be enough control. If not, the ideal is always body-individual rights-setting 

If the issue is that the mines are popping up in poor places, economically soaking, I think reworking the system for determining where they open is a better solution, though I'd like to see an economic overhaul in general.

6. Several times now I attempted to create a merchant powers, small nations which relied on trade income to function. I failed every time. The coming changes to trade will help a lot, but the main issue is that shipping lines always build colony ships - even when there is nothing to colonise (small nation don't do much of it after all). Which means their income is spent on useless ships, making it much more difficult for them to grow (they can even fail completely) and creating less taxes. As such I'd love to see an option to prevent shipping lines from building a specific type of ship, so that they would build only what's profitable.

With the economy as simplistic as it is, I don't think you'll manage to do much even with such a change.

I think the game would benefit significantly from a more robust economic model, including things such as tracking the wealth/prosperities of individual colonies, tracking TN minerals sent to the civilian economy as a trade good, requiring shipping lines to purchase TN minerals fur ships, requiring the civilian economy to expend TN minerals to create civilian mining complexes, more robust AI to handle this kind of thing.  Any kind of economy overhaul would require a serious amount of work, however, and at this point I wouldn't want to see it delay the initial release of C#.

[Steve Walmsley]

Was just looking back over the rules changes and the new ground units. What has struck me as odd is the need to attach large lumbering tanks to all larger units in order to fit in the HQ component. This is going to look particularly odd if you have a bunch of for example jungle trained troops who then end up with something that would not exactly be fit for such terrain. I was therefore wondering if a split version of these units could be created as an alternative such that a series of light vehicles could do the job of one large mounted unit. I expect along with this you would have to deal with partial damage to the units / loss of some but not all but would think you could have some simple rules that noted if you lost more than 25% or so of units the HQ bonus would cease to function. Hopefully that would be a lot of overhead to maintain some more balanced unit templates.

Are you sure vehicles are required at all? In the rules post example I can see infantry HQ units only one level below the highest tank-based HQ.

They aren't needed. You can create infantry HQs.

[chrislocke2000]

Was just looking back over the rules changes and the new ground units. What has struck me as odd is the need to attach large lumbering tanks to all larger units in order to fit in the HQ component. This is going to look particularly odd if you have a bunch of for example jungle trained troops who then end up with something that would not exactly be fit for such terrain. I was therefore wondering if a split version of these units could be created as an alternative such that a series of light vehicles could do the job of one large mounted unit. I expect along with this you would have to deal with partial damage to the units / loss of some but not all but would think you could have some simple rules that noted if you lost more than 25% or so of units the HQ bonus would cease to function. Hopefully that would be a lot of overhead to maintain some more balanced unit templates.

Are you sure vehicles are required at all? In the rules post example I can see infantry HQ units only one level below the highest tank-based HQ.

They aren't needed. You can create infantry HQs.

Ah ok so if I have a large infantry formation that needs say 10000 tons of control I can meet this with infantry based hq units? Sorry was not clear to me from the original post.

[Steve Walmsley]

Ah ok so if I have a large infantry formation that needs say 10000 tons of control I can meet this with infantry based hq units? Sorry was not clear to me from the original post.

Yes, you can do that. You can use the single infantry component slot for any size of HQ.

[TMaekler]

I think the game would benefit significantly from a more robust economic model, including things such as tracking the wealth/prosperities of individual colonies, tracking TN minerals sent to the civilian economy as a trade good, requiring shipping lines to purchase TN minerals fur ships, requiring the civilian economy to expend TN minerals to create civilian mining complexes, more robust AI to handle this kind of thing.  Any kind of economy overhaul would require a serious amount of work, however, and at this point I wouldn't want to see it delay the initial release of C#.

The focus of Aurora is the unit design - and we will get a lot of that in C#. And I fully agree that Aurora does not need a delay because of economics rework. If Steve would be interested in an later economics rework, there could be a separate thread created for discussions about it.

The main idea for my initial post was, preventing them from grabbing the ones I would like to mine myself. But I learned since, that I simply need to establish an empty colony there, then they would ignore it.

[TMaekler]

I was wondering if the collected intelligence points of alien populations should decrease over time if no active intelligence is done? It sounded to me that the points stay at the level they once gained forever, but that sounds a bit off to me... . Although a very nice solution in general for espionage.

[Steve Walmsley]

I was wondering if the collected intelligence points of alien populations should decrease over time if no active intelligence is done? It sounded to me that the points stay at the level they once gained forever, but that sounds a bit off to me... . Although a very nice solution in general for espionage.

There are pros and cons both ways. For example, it might be odd from a player perspective if you knew there were 100 factories on a planet last time you checked but now you have no idea because you dropped below the level where that information is available. Either way, it is a compromise.

[TMaekler]

I was wondering if the collected intelligence points of alien populations should decrease over time if no active intelligence is done? It sounded to me that the points stay at the level they once gained forever, but that sounds a bit off to me... . Although a very nice solution in general for espionage.

There are pros and cons both ways. For example, it might be odd from a player perspective if you knew there were 100 factories on a planet last time you checked but now you have no idea because you dropped below the level where that information is available. Either way, it is a compromise.

I see. Maybe you can save the ‚time gone‘ since last active intelligence and every new beginning has to first overcome ‚re-contact-phase‘ and then have full access to previous data. The length of that ‚re-contact-phase‘ could be like 1/10th of ‚time gone‘, capped by a maximum of 6 month.
So gone for 2 years would mean 2.4 month re-contact-Phase, etc.

[TMaekler]

AI empires will be more versatile in C# Aurora. It although would be nice for Spacemasters to give an AI empire a general direction from time to time. To steer global events... :-)
Would that be possible?

[mtm84]

Just saw the ELINT addition, sounds great, but how about a reduced effectiveness fighter only sized module as well?

[Hazard]

I was wondering if the collected intelligence points of alien populations should decrease over time if no active intelligence is done? It sounded to me that the points stay at the level they once gained forever, but that sounds a bit off to me... . Although a very nice solution in general for espionage.

There are pros and cons both ways. For example, it might be odd from a player perspective if you knew there were 100 factories on a planet last time you checked but now you have no idea because you dropped below the level where that information is available. Either way, it is a compromise.

I see. Maybe you can save the ‚time gone‘ since last active intelligence and every new beginning has to first overcome ‚re-contact-phase‘ and then have full access to previous data. The length of that ‚re-contact-phase‘ could be like 1/10th of ‚time gone‘, capped by a maximum of 6 month.
So gone for 2 years would mean 2.4 month re-contact-Phase, etc.

I like this idea. It'd be rather... odd if you had data on a planet/population from 20 years ago and instantly get a complete update on the vastly changed economy of the planet just because an ELINT craft got vaguely close.

I'm not sure I like the idea of having the modules act as EM sensors. I'd rather they used the vessel's EM sensor rating instead as that avoids having to choose between having a large EM sensor to pick up foreign vessels and populations or a large number of ELINT modules to gather intelligence from great range.