Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions  (Read 345097 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #930 on: January 13, 2019, 09:06:32 AM »
re Swarm

There is an element of acid to one of their weapons, although there is a defence against it, and the use of it ties in with another tactic.
 
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Offline tobijon

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #931 on: January 13, 2019, 11:40:28 AM »

I'm not a chemist but wouldn't it be possible to split it into less dangerous components and store them separately?
Just add a mechanism to the warhead to mix the components on impact.

I'm a chemist and its components (Cl2 and F2) are also dangerous (though not as much). Additionally, the reaction to create it is likely too slow for an actual bomb, it requires heating the gasses to a high temperature for a long time and as such an impact would only produce a small amount in the time it takes for it too cool down, not to mention the gasses escaping away immediately after impact
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #932 on: January 13, 2019, 12:20:32 PM »
I'm not a chemist but wouldn't it be possible to split it into less dangerous components and store them separately?
Just add a mechanism to the warhead to mix the components on impact.

I'm a chemist and its components (Cl2 and F2) are also dangerous (though not as much). Additionally, the reaction to create it is likely too slow for an actual bomb, it requires heating the gasses to a high temperature for a long time and as such an impact would only produce a small amount in the time it takes for it too cool down, not to mention the gasses escaping away immediately after impact

Also, actually trying to create ClF3 in situ is a waste of energy. Quite frankly you'd be better off putting the same amount of energy directly into the explosion; it'd do more for your purposes.

High power oxidizers aren't like binary poisons or explosives, they don't exploit a quirk of biology to stop a life where either of them alone can't, or stable when separate but react when combined into a more volatile substance that is capable of releasing just as much energy much faster.

They're more of a very high density energy storage medium. There's a reason FOOF and ClF3 were considered as potential rocket fuels, they offer tremendous energy per kilogram of propellant and being fairly heavy atoms also offer good thrust. They just don't get used because they're far, far too difficult to keep controlled and the vast quantities of extraordinarily toxic reaction products they create during combustion.

The most common rocket propellants are basically RP1 (highly purified kerosene) and liquid oxygen for a reason, but swapping the liquid oxygen for either FOOF or ClF3 would create both higher thrust profiles and rocket exhaust composed of chlorine gas, fluorine gas, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, chloro(hydro)carbons, fluoro(hydro)carbons and chlorofluoro(hydro)carbons, which are the first chemical warfare agent used on an industrial scale in WW1, chlorine gas' less pleasant cousin that eats your bones and causes your nerves to always be on causing you to be in agony, stuff your body uses to break down everything it consumes, hydrocloric acid's less pleasant cousin, poisonous and carcinogenic, poisonous and carcinogenic and finally poisonous and carcinogenic. And for the latter 3 that's if it doesn't react with the airborne ozone layer and punches a hole in it either as a catalyst or by reacting directly with the ozone.

Frankly, I'll take the reaction products of RP1 and liquid oxygen, which is largely soot, water and carbon dioxide.
 
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Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #933 on: January 13, 2019, 01:21:30 PM »
How about a high tech research option or ancient ruin tech that could generate a kind of hub system like in "The Expanse" which can be used as a shortcut to the distant systems of your empire?
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #934 on: January 13, 2019, 05:52:04 PM »
The problem with Chemical & Biological warfare is that it starts creeping back into "kill 'em all and move in tomorrow" territory.  I think the assumption about B&C is that it kills enemy populations & ground units, but does not harm installations.  In that case, it needs sufficient downside (perhaps in the chance of rendering the entire planet uninhabitable, or covered in "grey goo," or creating Resident Evil-style enhanced monsters).

Yeah I agree. The coolest way to make bio weapons balanced from a "wipe out everything living and keep all installations intact" standpoint is probably if the bio weapon remains dormant after your civilians moving in and can mutate into a form which risks spreading and wiping out your entire race as well. But that needs a way to counter it too, and then we are most likely just back to square one ( if it's too easy to defend against ). I feel there is too much complexity here that isn't necessary benefiting the core Aurora gameplay as much as some other more basic additions could add, and a large risk of just creating a way to wipe out an enemy mostly effortlessly and take all their stuff.
 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #935 on: January 14, 2019, 01:02:08 AM »
I dont personally think it would be very viable to quickly wipe out a population via chemical or biological agents.  I think youd need to steadily bombard them for some time to overcome their containment efforts.  Some hypothetical super high tech race wouldn't neccesarily find it all that hard to hermetically seal things off, but they may still struggle to avoid getting disintegrated by a nuke.

So I mean, higher cost and more time over target but you keep their infrastructure.  That might make chemical/bio weapons into a reasonable tradeoff against nukes and such.
 

Offline dag0net

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #936 on: January 14, 2019, 02:22:07 AM »
If you can get into orbit to drop bioweapons it's likely you have some kind of edge over the enemy.   

Besides which, just as with any weapon of war, whilst you might have a theoretical defence against it, deploying that defence is another thing entirely, if such potentials were readily made into actuals there wouldn't be an enemy in orbit dropping bombs on you in the first place.   


  If Steve were to include every manner in which complex lifeforms could be destroyed by other complex lifeforms we'd have to bring in Brandon Sanderson to write 1.  0
« Last Edit: January 14, 2019, 07:03:57 PM by dag0net »
People blame god for making life worth living, in the same vein. . . "Work harder Steve!"
 

Offline Jovus

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #937 on: January 14, 2019, 08:07:33 AM »
Brandon Sanderson to write 1. 0

Shall we start a Kickstarter, then?
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #938 on: January 14, 2019, 09:07:41 AM »
Well, you can bring in a terraforming station into orbit once you have suppressed the opponents defences properly. That would quickly ruin the living conditions on the planet by releasing toxic gases into the atmosphere. Unless they can build enough infrastructure people will start to die and there will be riots on the ground.

It will not kill of the soldiers or the army but it will certainly be a terror weapon that works in the games right now...
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #939 on: January 14, 2019, 09:54:07 AM »
Something I have pondered for a while is pressing civilian shipyards into military production during wartime perhaps should be a thing.

A simple thing could be that a civilian yard could retool to a military ship that are 20 times smaller than the civilian yard and this could be more efficient with technology. The retool cost could also be two times more expensive as would then the time be as well and this could also be made more efficient with technologies.

I'm sort of looking on large scale wars such as say the WW2 where there is time and need for re-purposing civilian industry for wartime production. In peace you have a modest amount of military yards to maintain a decent peace time fleet and in wartime you might want to ramp up the production through converting civilian yards into producing military ships.

Military yards should not have this ability and just able to build whatever ships fit their size the way they do now.

In my own games I have allowed this to some extent and I can easily do it through SM... would just be fun if it could be done through a real mechanic with a bit more cost as a side effect.
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #940 on: January 14, 2019, 10:56:00 AM »
Given that Steve has now dealt with the missile - fighter - ship fuel consumption consistency point I was wondering if a similar exercise could be done for fire controls so we don't have the arbitrary 4x tracking bonus for a fighter in an effort to get something to actually fit within a 500 ton limit. The fighters are using the same ship borne weapons so why have a different rule set for them?

Personally I think fire controls are currently way too large in any case and could do with being shrunk to a fraction of their starting size (from some very brief looks at Wikipedia I can see the old Mk 1 Computer that the US used weighed in at a portly 1.3 tons and subsequent systems that were not mechanical in nature got a lot smaller than that). It also strikes me as odd that I can happily build fighters with MFCs that are a fraction of 50 tons and work very well.

If taking a starting 1x range, 1x tracking to 5 tons and going from there sends shivers down the spine perhaps an alternative would be allow for smaller more expensive fire controls and then large cheaper versions as a way to keep consistent but then practically useable. The small fire control would also be a nice buff to energy weapon combatants.
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #941 on: January 14, 2019, 11:46:09 AM »
Given that Steve has now dealt with the missile - fighter - ship fuel consumption consistency point I was wondering if a similar exercise could be done for fire controls so we don't have the arbitrary 4x tracking bonus for a fighter in an effort to get something to actually fit within a 500 ton limit. The fighters are using the same ship borne weapons so why have a different rule set for them?

Personally I think fire controls are currently way too large in any case and could do with being shrunk to a fraction of their starting size (from some very brief looks at Wikipedia I can see the old Mk 1 Computer that the US used weighed in at a portly 1.3 tons and subsequent systems that were not mechanical in nature got a lot smaller than that). It also strikes me as odd that I can happily build fighters with MFCs that are a fraction of 50 tons and work very well.

If taking a starting 1x range, 1x tracking to 5 tons and going from there sends shivers down the spine perhaps an alternative would be allow for smaller more expensive fire controls and then large cheaper versions as a way to keep consistent but then practically useable. The small fire control would also be a nice buff to energy weapon combatants.

In that case fire-controls should be completely redone. A small fire-control should say have a rather limited number of object they can control while a larger one can control more missiles and targets. This would naturally make fighter fire-controls small and ship mounted ones larger because you want to control more objects in flight or potential targets.

The whole fire-control and salvo thing is an awkward mechanic that unfortunately sometimes break the immersion. Fire-controls should instead be limited not only by speed but also on what they can track and/or control.

A larger fire control can track more incoming targets or in case of missiles guide more of them to the target or in case of beams how many weapons a specific control can operate and/or targets it can track in terms of PD.

I would like the whole salvo idea to be removed as a concept at some point, this might be a good opportunity to do so if redone and dynamically remove the difference between fighter fire-controls and ship mounted ones.

Thus a fighter that only fire a single volley of four missiles would have a much smaller fire-control than a ship that might potentially fire several volleys of dozens of missiles each against multiple targets. Those fire-control AI and communications/scanning arrays need to be built way differently.

I also think that fire-controls should radiate some EM signals when active, though much less so than regular active scanners.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2019, 11:54:54 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 
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Offline Father Tim

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #942 on: January 14, 2019, 06:02:58 PM »
I'd be happy if we could just get Point Defense to track X number of missiles in a small area, rather than number of salvoes.
 

Offline dag0net

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #943 on: January 14, 2019, 06:24:57 PM »
Quote from: Jorgen_CAB link=topic=9841.  msg112137#msg112137 date=1547481247
Something I have pondered for a while is pressing civilian shipyards into military production during wartime perhaps should be a thing. 


The same/ilar principle as an economy being limited by private sector generated wealth in a genocidal 'total war' conflict between two species run by monolithic regimes, and whilst the 'features of the engine to automate/enable expanded storytelling' motivation loves the idea, the 'i do hope Steve closes the gap between human and npr capability to exploit the mechanics' part really doesn't ;-)


Whilst I'm typing.  .  .  . 

If the user had a semi-automated(or more automated anyway) method of vessel design, it, or it's results could be co-opted by Steve and the AI.   That is to say that if the user has a set of radio/sliders to play with to design ships based on current/next gen tech and the engine is equipped to generate vessels based on the requirements set.  .  and the ai uses the same set of mechanics then the userbase can be employed to refine ai design mechanics, a capability retained through future issues. 

The system could generate for users a combined package of research for the entirety of the design (as per contract tendering) which results in a completed package, as opposed to researching individual components.   (or retain the same system of individual components ofc.  )

As we can sample from Mr Walmsley's example, the wonders need not cease with the initial release.   I suggest that design revisions (efficiency gains in iterative steps) might be included as a potential r&d step for a fractional gain on components (and/or architectures.  ) Where em6 to 8 gives a third gain, passive em sensor rating 6 size 1 'patch 2' might confer a 5% (or w/e) gain. 

Yahyah, I can bemoan feature creep and suggest it in the same post =)


Re: FC revisions - If any code revision reduced the number of missiles thrown, any performance(engine) loss to more data being tracked per missile/salvo might be gained by limiting the total.   I don't know how well my pc would cope with honor harrington.   Speaking of - wasn't it Weber that had mfc boats that flotillas handed off fire control to?

Data export - Whilst I've seen it referenced many times in a 'gimme mod support' fashion, the ability to export/import certain data (not constituting a save game) would save an awful lot of time. . .  even 'just' extended from what is already there (editable order lists as per templates, fc settings, race/empire starting setups, solar systems) the issue I see is that many paths would require extra work every time the subject of a 'savable' set of data receives revisions.

Sorry if repetitive or whatevs, I do read, but sometimes things go in one eye and out the other =)
« Last Edit: January 14, 2019, 07:28:35 PM by dag0net »
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Offline Ranged66

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #944 on: January 15, 2019, 09:07:03 AM »
Quick simple suggestion:

A checkbox for allowing empty starsystems.


I personally don't like them and always reroll them.