But the game can't "Go Ahead Normally" when the NPRs are fighting. The combat works basically on 5 sec intervals once missiles start impacting as you have AAM missile fire cycles, point defence cycles and detections etc. Then there are pauses where you can move by 30 seconds to 30 min and then follows another phase where you are down to 5 second turns again. There is no "automatic" resolution function that adds up the attack value and compares it between both sides and determines a winner. The game is built around a 5 s combat turn, and when combat starts it is very hard to get too much away from that.
So you can't advance the time in time segments of 1 day while an NPR is fighting. It doesn't matter if you are being updated on the battle or not, the database is being updated on a 5 game second basis.
Unless there was an option to automatically resolve NPR combat when it's occurring more than N systems from anywhere you've discovered. The algorithms to do so wouldn't be particularly complicated -- I mean, who really cares if some precursors kill two instead of three of an NPR's ships before being overwhelmed. We can RP the resulting situation either way.
If Steve isn't interested in designing an algorithm for rough combat resolution then I'm sure the community can come up with something. Integrating such a "quick resolution" function with the code would involve a single check made per-system every time the player discovers a new system -- if a system is not within N of one visited by the player, set a "skip" flag. Whenever the player discovers a new system you only have to propagate out from that system to all within N (continuing the recursion if you encounter another "skip" flag, stopping if you don't) to update that flag for every system. It would, of course, only follow jump points that have been explored (because my understanding is that Aurora does not actually pre-calculate the stellar graph, it's invented as jump points are explored?), but that doesn't matter -- undiscovered systems are always treated as skippable, even if they end up next door. Then whenever a ship fires it just checks that flag (which hopefully is in memory somewhere in the system object, not requiring a DB call) and either calls the quick resolution function or continues normally.
And, of course, it would be entirely voluntary.
I admit I'm a Doylist RPer rather than a Watsonian (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist). For me, the purpose of Aurora is to help me tell stories, not to be a simulation. It achieves the goal of being a storytelling aid by being a simulation, but as a Doylist the first goal is always the most important. I recognise I'm different from a lot of roleplayers in that respect, but that's why I'd suggest something like this be voluntary.
If there's some interest in this, we could spin off a thread discussing how to automate a fight.
