Aurora C# Screenshots

[bitbucket]

No joke, I'd genuinely love that.  Detailed casualty reports, watching individual notable soldiers rise up and so forth.  Completely useless and overkill in anything other than a role play sense, but I'd still love it.

At the least though I would enjoy seeing pops depleted to accommodate military construction.  Doesn't have to be 1-1, you can make the pop drained much higher than the battalion's actual combat force is, to account for the significant number of military non-combat positions behind the scenes in each unit.

The population drain would be negligible anyway. Modern day army divisions (low-tech divisions in-game) only number about 10000 troops and it's stated that TN battalions are 10 times smaller than that and make up for lack of numbers with really fancy guns.

[AL]

Just to make sure, can you shift/control - click multiple ships to drag and drop the whole group at once? One of the main issues with my fighter based games was trying to organise hundreds of fighters across my multiple carriers in the naval organisation tab so that I could dock/undock them easily.

[sloanjh]

As a side question:  Are you using Forms or WPF (or something else)?

Thanks,
John

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Just to make sure, can you shift/control - click multiple ships to drag and drop the whole group at once? One of the main issues with my fighter based games was trying to organise hundreds of fighters across my multiple carriers in the naval organisation tab so that I could dock/undock them easily.

You can move individual nodes. If that node has a hierarchy below it, that will move too. So you could arrange fighters in sub-fleets (which you name squadrons) and then drag the whole sub-fleet at once. If you move a single admin command, you could be moving hundreds of ships in different fleets and sub-fleets. The issue with allowing ctrl-clicking is dealing with the complexities when you click multiple branches in multiple locations and include admin commands, fleets and ships. You still should be able to achieve what you need with the new system though.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

As a side question:  Are you using Forms or WPF (or something else)?

Thanks,
John

Windows Forms. I have used WPF in the past and it is more flexible. However, Forms does everything I need and I am a lot more familiar with it. I'm always happy to go with the least complex solution that does the job

[Bremen]

Oh wow, the new naval organization system looks awesome! I used to organize my ships by squadrons; say, have a group consisting of Cruiser squadron 1 and destroyer squadrons 2 and 3, to make best use of jump ships supporting multiple non-jump ships; but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth. This looks like it would work perfectly for something like that. Any chance for a "squadron jump by sub-fleet" order or similar functionality?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Oh wow, the new naval organization system looks awesome! I used to organize my ships by squadrons; say, have a group consisting of Cruiser squadron 1 and destroyer squadrons 2 and 3, to make best use of jump ships supporting multiple non-jump ships; but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth. This looks like it would work perfectly for something like that. Any chance for a "squadron jump by sub-fleet" order or similar functionality?

That shouldn't be too difficult and sounds like a good idea. They would emerge as separate fleets though because the jump would scatter the sub-fleets.

[sloanjh]

Windows Forms. I have used WPF in the past and it is more flexible. However, Forms does everything I need and I am a lot more familiar with it. I'm always happy to go with the least complex solution that does the job

Thanks Steve.  Yeah - the data binding stuff in WPF totally rocks, but I'm growing to hate XAML more and more as time goes by (difficult to debug when you get the syntax wrong, not well documented as to how the syntax works, and seems to favor hard-wired compile-time bindings rather than auto-generated bindings).

I was asking because I didn't remember seeing a tab control in Forms, but I just looked and there it was!

John

[iceball3]

Question on component features, are you planning for the more obscure/buried components to exist or otherwise hold placeholding entries in the C# version? For instance, absorption shields, hyperdrives, particle torpedoes, etc.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Question on component features, are you planning for the more obscure/buried components to exist or otherwise hold placeholding entries in the C# version? For instance, absorption shields, hyperdrives, particle torpedoes, etc.

At the moment they are in the code but may not appear in the UI. Once the C# version is in place it will a lot easier to make changes than in VB6 so I will likely add more tech and more variety of aliens.
 
For example, I have a new concept in mind for the invaders. Rather than being wormholes and random ships, the Invaders will send several huge Base Ships, which act as the anchors for interstellar jump gates. The invasion will be conducted via these Base Ship locations using pre-planned waves (defenders, scouts, construction ships, warships, dreadnoughts, etc. ) and you will be able to end the invasion by destroying the Base Ships.

[Zincat]

For example, I have a new concept in mind for the invaders. Rather than being wormholes and random ships, the Invaders will send several huge Base Ships, which act as the anchors for interstellar jump gates. The invasion will be conducted via these Base Ship locations using pre-planned waves (defenders, scouts, construction ships, warships, dreadnoughts, etc. ) and you will be able to end the invasion by destroying the Base Ships.

That sounds good, however some mechanism should be in place to prevent cheap tactics, considering they are static targets. For example, very strong PD is a must to avoid cheap missile spam that overwhelms PD and just kills the bases with no or little effort. Same for fighters.

Said bases should be hard to kill no matter what the tactic and weapon used.

[iceball3]

That sounds good, however some mechanism should be in place to prevent cheap tactics, considering they are static targets. For example, very strong PD is a must to avoid cheap missile spam that overwhelms PD and just kills the bases with no or little effort. Same for fighters.

Said bases should be hard to kill no matter what the tactic and weapon used.

I do think I've made a suggestion that's oriented around protecting against massive salvos of unarmored missiles in one post or another..

[Garfunkel]

That shouldn't be too difficult and sounds like a good idea. They would emerge as separate fleets though because the jump would scatter the sub-fleets.

That would be great and would make big JP invasions easier to do for the player.

Also, that new OOB screenshot(s) made me salivate. The command structures that I will be creating!

[Sheb]

I still think the best way would be to have a limit on the number of (unguided?) missiles than can be handled by a fire control.

[ryuga81]

Oh wow, the new naval organization system looks awesome! I used to organize my ships by squadrons; say, have a group consisting of Cruiser squadron 1 and destroyer squadrons 2 and 3, to make best use of jump ships supporting multiple non-jump ships; but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.  This looks like it would work perfectly for something like that.  Any chance for a "squadron jump by sub-fleet" order or similar functionality?

That's exactly my problem, I have the same "doctrine", but moving such a fleet (and managing PD ships, that I like to keep as a separate task group, so no "final defense" option) quickly became a logistics nightmare.  This looks like a great solution that allows to keep a relatively small base squadron size (I like 3 or 4 bigger ships, or up to 6 smaller) while being able to attach and detach them from a proper fleet on the fly.  Will the PD in final defense configuration also extend to the whole fleet?


(BTW hello everyone, I've been lurking the forums for some time looking for answers and strategies, I just registered, also to say thanks to Steve, the game is really awesome!! Can't wait to play the new version! )