Author Topic: Crusade - Comments Thread  (Read 44271 times)

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Offline Father Tim

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #120 on: November 11, 2019, 05:06:55 PM »
Another option however would be to have the game save what installations were destroyed on the planet, and to let the ruin recovery mechanics from the precursor ruins take over from there, with some tweaking.

Perhaps, but I don't think of precursor ruins as "stuff destroyed in fighting" but rather as "stuff turned off and left abandoned centuries ago."

Given that Aurora currently ignores the refit & retooling costs of turning 'three-foot-tall semi-aquatic squidgy tentacly alien' workshops producing their guns into something my nine-foot-tall trilaterally symmetrical methane-breathers can us to build our guns, I'm okay with wrecked stuff contributing zero recyclables towards rebuilding.

We should probably have to use Xenology and recovery tech on ALL alien installations, not just Precursor ruins.  In the mean time, collateral damage can fake it for me.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #121 on: November 11, 2019, 05:19:41 PM »
Another possibility might be to have the facility owner's armor tech reduce collateral damage. It doesn't necessarily mean that every civilization plates all their buildings in top of the line armor, just that improved materials tech probably means the buildings are sturdier.

Except that's not how our history has worked.  Sure, we have far fewer catastrophic failures of buildings because we understand the science better, but we don't build for maximum strength.  We build for minimum cost that will do the job, and since 'the job' is rarely defined as 'endure for centuries' most of what we build today will be gone in a hundred years.  Century-old brick buildings endure time far better then modern concrete, even though they can't be built as high.

Japan is home to temples that have lasted centuries, and houses that won't last two decades.  Not because we can't build houses that will stand up to earthquakes, tsunami, fires & hurricanes until 2200, but because we choose not to.  Maintenance costs on most infrastructure over 50 years old exceeds the cost of a new bridge / building /whatever.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #122 on: November 11, 2019, 05:20:50 PM »
. . .civilian shelters of some sort might be a good idea, especially as weapon power escalates.

I think they're called orbital habitats.  #:-]
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #123 on: November 11, 2019, 10:12:27 PM »
Another possibility might be to have the facility owner's armor tech reduce collateral damage. It doesn't necessarily mean that every civilization plates all their buildings in top of the line armor, just that improved materials tech probably means the buildings are sturdier.

Except that's not how our history has worked.  Sure, we have far fewer catastrophic failures of buildings because we understand the science better, but we don't build for maximum strength.  We build for minimum cost that will do the job, and since 'the job' is rarely defined as 'endure for centuries' most of what we build today will be gone in a hundred years.  Century-old brick buildings endure time far better then modern concrete, even though they can't be built as high.

Japan is home to temples that have lasted centuries, and houses that won't last two decades.  Not because we can't build houses that will stand up to earthquakes, tsunami, fires & hurricanes until 2200, but because we choose not to.  Maintenance costs on most infrastructure over 50 years old exceeds the cost of a new bridge / building /whatever.

More advanced/prosperous civilizations most certainly do build stronger buildings. That's one of the main reasons earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. in industrialized nations tend to kill fewer people. Also even if Aurora doesn't model it, we might expect buildings to be built hardened in preparation for internal violence and accidents - if every day robbers have power armor, and drunk drivers have flying cars then doors (and city buildings) will probably be built to resist power armor and crashing flying cars.

Also, even if I believed you were correct, I think gameplay considerations are more important than realism ones.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #124 on: November 12, 2019, 12:31:49 AM »
Again, we can build stronger than we used to, but it's rare that we do.  We use wood and glass and aluminum where we used to use brick and sandstone.  We use two-by-four framing instead of fourteen-inch beams.

Even our modern, 'stronger' steel-reinforced concrete is less durable than old recipes.
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-2-000-year-old-roman-concrete-is-so-much-better-than-what-we-produce-today

We could ignore realism, but since we lack any appreciable experience with C# Aurora we have no 'gameplay considerations' to judge by.  Is collateral damage too high?  Too low?  Just right?  We don't know yet.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #125 on: November 12, 2019, 12:48:51 AM »
Again, we can build stronger than we used to, but it's rare that we do.  We use wood and glass and aluminum where we used to use brick and sandstone.  We use two-by-four framing instead of fourteen-inch beams.

Even our modern, 'stronger' steel-reinforced concrete is less durable than old recipes.
https://www.sciencealert.com/why-2-000-year-old-roman-concrete-is-so-much-better-than-what-we-produce-today

We could ignore realism, but since we lack any appreciable experience with C# Aurora we have no 'gameplay considerations' to judge by.  Is collateral damage too high?  Too low?  Just right?  We don't know yet.

Most ancient buildings weren't built out of sandstone or Roman concrete - it's just the ones that are still around are. The average modern house is much more structurally sound than the average ancient house was. We don't design buildings to last two thousand years because we don't intend for them to last two thousand years - but we do design them to survive earthquakes and hurricanes.

Roman concrete is not more durable than modern concrete except in certain specific ways, either. The modern stuff holds up much better under stress due to the rebar reinforcement - a good example of how improved materials technology does make structures more durable, in fact.

As for gameplay considerations I was literally responding to a post by Steve who is playing the current version.
 

Offline Scandinavian

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #126 on: November 12, 2019, 01:03:01 AM »
More advanced/prosperous civilizations most certainly do build stronger buildings. That's one of the main reasons earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. in industrialized nations tend to kill fewer people.
That has much more to do with governments being more powerful and better organized, and therefore able to predict, plan for, and respond to such events than it has to do with the skillfulness of their engineers. Most of the fatalities from civil disruption or natural disasters come not from the violence of the initial event, but from the damage done to critical infrastructure which is left unrepaired. How fast your society can patch up a leaking sewer pipe matters much more to the resulting spread of dysentery than the size of the blast required to make it leak in the first place.

Even the damage of the initial event is much more dependent on the level of organization of a society than on its technical sophistication. Having the will and ability to exercise state power toward the enforcement of central economic planning that keeps the private sector from doing dumb things like building in fire breaks or on floodplains, cutting down mangroves, or underbuilding shared arterial transit links is much more important for impact minimization than the particulars of how buildings are constructed.

One could model this with a Civil Defense slider, which imposes a Wealth maintenance cost on all buildings and population subject to collateral damage, but providing a defense against collateral damage. Changing the slider should only change the costs and modifiers slowly, though, because a lot of the effort and impact of civil defense is on a time scale of decades. This defense in turn could be affected by a tech line, to make it scale to the weapon power of the comparable offensive techs, but the policy itself is not a technology; it can go back and forth according to political priorities.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #127 on: November 12, 2019, 04:22:43 AM »
I think they're called orbital habitats.  #:-]

No. Because orbital habitats don't protect populations from collateral damage. Only from the loss of planetary carrying capacity as a result of loss of infrastructure.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #128 on: November 12, 2019, 01:00:39 PM »
The practical issue with "smart" munitions is that their smartness is limited by the level at which you can identify and resolve the targets you want to blast. With typical actual battlefield target intelligence, as long as you have rifling in your artillery barrels, your fire support is probably about as smart as it's gonna get.
Of course but C# is bringing us forward observers as part of ground units so we have the in-game justification for battlefield intelligence alongside intelligence modules for ships as in-game justification for long-distance surveillance and reconnaissance. But my point is that while it instinctively feels "right" to weaken the destructive power of smart munitions to explain why they are not causing as much collateral damage as dumb munitions, it's blatantly false move to make. Well, it's correct for nukes but that's another argument. For conventional munitions, a Paveway IV missile is just as destructive as Mk 84 bomb, the difference is that you only need a single Paveway IV to wreck that command centre, whereas you need 50-100 Mk 84 bombs to make sure you hit it and in that process you flatten the whole neighbourhood.

So if Steve implements smart munitions that progressively get smarter (and even include ECCM to counter defender ECM), then I would very much prefer that the munitions are vastly more expensive rather than weaker. Plus, that means that a cheapskate power would just continue using cheap dumb munitions because while they might not want to glass a planet completely, they don't care about collateral damage as long as there is something to salvage.

(I would also be a bit careful with using the price tag of NATO weapon systems as representative of their design or production costs, let alone their practical combat value; there is a reason the American slang for procurement corruption is "pork barrel.")
While that's a fair point, it's not a valid concern for us here, because the prices are just to show the magnitude of difference in cost between dumb and smart munitions. That's also why I only used US munitions and dollar prices, so that they can be compared against each other, instead of including European/Russian munitions.

I think they're called orbital habitats.  #:-]
No. Because orbital habitats don't protect populations from collateral damage. Only from the loss of planetary carrying capacity as a result of loss of infrastructure.
That's a good point because while it feels like OH would protect portion of the population from collateral damage, it actually doesn't because of how Steve coded them to work. Mechanically, the population doesn't live in the OH, but on the body the OH orbits. It's just that the OH magically allows this to happen regardless of colony cost. So if you glass the planet, the population will be completely wiped out regardless of the number of OH's in orbit.

One could model this with a Civil Defense slider, which imposes a Wealth maintenance cost on all buildings and population subject to collateral damage, but providing a defense against collateral damage. Changing the slider should only change the costs and modifiers slowly, though, because a lot of the effort and impact of civil defense is on a time scale of decades. This defense in turn could be affected by a tech line, to make it scale to the weapon power of the comparable offensive techs, but the policy itself is not a technology; it can go back and forth according to political priorities.
That's a good idea and would be another wealth sink. We don't know if the other new wealth sinks in C# are sufficient, but such a feature - that would then provide protection against collateral damage - could be a cool feature. Although, it might face the problem of electronic hardening, in that it would be useful in only such niche cases that nobody would ever actually use it.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #129 on: November 12, 2019, 01:59:20 PM »
One could model this with a Civil Defense slider, which imposes a Wealth maintenance cost on all buildings and population subject to collateral damage, but providing a defense against collateral damage. Changing the slider should only change the costs and modifiers slowly, though, because a lot of the effort and impact of civil defense is on a time scale of decades. This defense in turn could be affected by a tech line, to make it scale to the weapon power of the comparable offensive techs, but the policy itself is not a technology; it can go back and forth according to political priorities.

That's a good idea and would be another wealth sink. We don't know if the other new wealth sinks in C# are sufficient, but such a feature - that would then provide protection against collateral damage - could be a cool feature. Although, it might face the problem of electronic hardening, in that it would be useful in only such niche cases that nobody would ever actually use it.

Doesn't Infrastructure currently fulfill this purpose?  If I build a thousand extra LGI (or just 'I') on a colony, other installations are that much less likely to be hit, and the increase in ColCost due to bombardment is mitigated if not entirely compensated for.  And some (perhaps significant) portion of the collateral damage causes zero reduction of my industry.

Sure, it has the believability drawback of being able to ship your 'armour' to any colony you like -- and the civilians will do so if you're not careful -- but it's already in the game, costs money & minerals & time to build, and while it scales infinitely it can never be 100% effective.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #130 on: November 12, 2019, 02:15:44 PM »
You're right except for saving population from collateral damage. But yeah, it protects facilities and can be a life saver if colony cost pops up. Civil Defence slider that consumed x% of wealth produced on planet/empire (toggle switch between the two and a slider to adjust the percentage amount from 0 to whatever) would both give facilities more HTK (if possible) as well as save (some of) the population.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #131 on: November 12, 2019, 02:27:45 PM »
The practical issue with "smart" munitions is that their smartness is limited by the level at which you can identify and resolve the targets you want to blast. With typical actual battlefield target intelligence, as long as you have rifling in your artillery barrels, your fire support is probably about as smart as it's gonna get.
Of course but C# is bringing us forward observers as part of ground units so we have the in-game justification for battlefield intelligence alongside intelligence modules for ships as in-game justification for long-distance surveillance and reconnaissance. But my point is that while it instinctively feels "right" to weaken the destructive power of smart munitions to explain why they are not causing as much collateral damage as dumb munitions, it's blatantly false move to make. Well, it's correct for nukes but that's another argument. For conventional munitions, a Paveway IV missile is just as destructive as Mk 84 bomb, the difference is that you only need a single Paveway IV to wreck that command centre, whereas you need 50-100 Mk 84 bombs to make sure you hit it and in that process you flatten the whole neighbourhood.

So if Steve implements smart munitions that progressively get smarter (and even include ECCM to counter defender ECM), then I would very much prefer that the munitions are vastly more expensive rather than weaker. Plus, that means that a cheapskate power would just continue using cheap dumb munitions because while they might not want to glass a planet completely, they don't care about collateral damage as long as there is something to salvage.

A Paveway bomb will also occupy about the same amount of space as as a Mk 84 bomb in inventory, which makes it odd when either supply consumption skyrockets (to account for the greater cost) or remains the same for the same amount of damage in a round.

Actually, smart munitions would probably be best handled as a to-hit modifier and otherwise let it remain the same, potentially with a sufficiently large ECCM advantage over a smart munition modified weapons platform actually degrading the effectiveness of the smart munition beyond that of a dumb munition. You can tell me a lot of things, but a dumb bomb is a lot harder to fool than a smart bomb into landing anywhere but where it should hit.

That's a good point because while it feels like OH would protect portion of the population from collateral damage, it actually doesn't because of how Steve coded them to work. Mechanically, the population doesn't live in the OH, but on the body the OH orbits. It's just that the OH magically allows this to happen regardless of colony cost. So if you glass the planet, the population will be completely wiped out regardless of the number of OH's in orbit.

It gets even worse; populations in orbital habitats can be forced out of the habitats by boarding them, forcing them into highly hostile environments without any protection. Habitats have a number of logic inconsistencies that are very understandable given the fact we're dealing with a game, but still.

I mean, an orbital habitat would include things like manufacturing complexes and everything else other than the raw materials acquisition and immediate processing because, well, why would you force your population to work the construction facilities and fuel refineries down on the planet of imminent death when you can just station them in a close orbit that is much more easily reached from a habitat, especially when it's so much easier to keep them safe in such circumstances?

That's a good idea and would be another wealth sink. We don't know if the other new wealth sinks in C# are sufficient, but such a feature - that would then provide protection against collateral damage - could be a cool feature. Although, it might face the problem of electronic hardening, in that it would be useful in only such niche cases that nobody would ever actually use it.

It would be nice if this was implemented and we could set an 'empire wide' and a 'population wide' setting for this. Because of course you would harden your border worlds much more than you would harden your core worlds when you are faced with a threat on the border.

Doesn't Infrastructure currently fulfill this purpose?  If I build a thousand extra LGI (or just 'I') on a colony, other installations are that much less likely to be hit, and the increase in ColCost due to bombardment is mitigated if not entirely compensated for.  And some (perhaps significant) portion of the collateral damage causes zero reduction of my industry.

Sure, it has the believability drawback of being able to ship your 'armour' to any colony you like -- and the civilians will do so if you're not careful -- but it's already in the game, costs money & minerals & time to build, and while it scales infinitely it can never be 100% effective.

No, because collateral damage tracks population damage and infrastructure damage differently IIRC. Or rather, they track them the same, but points of collateral damage always do population damage, while they may end up sinking into already ruined facilities and thus do no further damage to the planetary facilities.

Also, infrastructure shipping is only done by civilians to places that need infrastructure from places that have infrastructure in the market.
 

Offline Scandinavian

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #132 on: November 13, 2019, 01:37:29 PM »
Quote
It would be nice if this was implemented and we could set an 'empire wide' and a 'population wide' setting for this. Because of course you would harden your border worlds much more than you would harden your core worlds when you are faced with a threat on the border.
Would you, though?

Civil defense is much more about fostering a culture of institutional competence and government-in-depth than specific policy measures that can be applied locally. Of course things like zoning regulations and building codes can be enforced selectively, but the same policies that reduce collateral damage during disasters (natural or man-made) are also policies that make your cities nicer places in general. Why would the core populations accept that frontier provincials get nicer homes, better mass transit links, less risk of their neighborhood burning down, etc. than the core worlders? As a general rule, at least in human empires, the imperial core gets to have nice things before the provincials do.

I can't think of any actual examples of strong civil defense being implemented only to harden specific regions in a risk-based manner like that. Either you cultivate that ethos as a civic virtue throughout your society and civil service, or you don't.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #133 on: November 13, 2019, 02:21:31 PM »
I think a civil defense slider is a bad idea anyways. For the most part, reduced collateral damage helps the attacker, not the defender, since they're more likely to win and it increases the spoils of war. The main reasons a civilization would build stronger buildings - accidents, disasters, and internal violence - aren't modeled in Aurora. So the option to spend more on reducing collateral damage would almost never be used. It also doesn't deal with the original problem, that collateral damage scales faster with tech than it should.
 
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Offline Bremen

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Re: Crusade - Comments Thread
« Reply #134 on: November 20, 2019, 02:04:58 PM »
And just in case things weren't dire enough for the Imperium already, it looks like the Tyranids found a backdoor into the Imperium's unguarded heartland. Double ouch.

I suspect this next battle will make or break the campaign.