Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441840 times)

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Offline Borealis4x

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #45 on: July 02, 2016, 12:14:36 AM »
Is there anything being done to improve the games play-ability? I don't want to reduce the games scope, but I would like to see you be able to do more with less clicks and have information more readily available and clearly presented. For instance, I had to look up how much infrastructure weighed on Reddit and then had to do a calculation on how many times I could have to make my transport fleets make the trip to get the desired amount on planet. It would be better if instead I could assign a fleet to deliver x amount of something and then they make as many trips as needed.
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #46 on: July 02, 2016, 12:52:23 AM »
There's a setting to ask civilian shipping companies do exactly this.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline ChildServices

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #47 on: July 02, 2016, 01:09:10 AM »
To be fair it'd be pretty good if I could assign my freighters to the private sector so that I can fulfil outstanding contracts without having to pay a third party for it.
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Offline MarcAFK

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #48 on: July 02, 2016, 01:10:33 AM »
Perhaps with C# it might be time for steve to add more comprehensive tooltops, an ingame Aurorapedia perhaps?
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #49 on: July 02, 2016, 06:45:18 AM »
Perhaps with C# it might be time for steve to add more comprehensive tooltops, an ingame Aurorapedia perhaps?

I definitely like the name Aurorapedia :)
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #50 on: July 02, 2016, 07:28:40 AM »
I'm sure there's no need for the extreme detail the wiki goes into, but something that would allow basic information to be accessible would be good. Perhaps every game page should have a button linking to the pedia. First thing you see is a screenshot with labels, under that describes what the buttons do. A basic overview of what the window is used for, and links to appropriate other information.
Alternatively or additionally every button could have a tooltip with that description. Hover over buildings and you see what they cost, produce, shipping tonnage etc.
I'm thinking of shamelessly ripping off the format of Alpha Centauri's pedia. Simple drawings of buildings and tech systems etc might be good here, you can't really see that stuff anywhere else in the game and it might be nice to see.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Borealis4x

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #51 on: July 02, 2016, 12:26:24 PM »
There's a setting to ask civilian shipping companies do exactly this.
But thats not reliable enough, I want to be able to do it with my own ships.
 

Offline Borealis4x

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #52 on: July 02, 2016, 12:32:12 PM »
Being able to shift click and control click to select multiple units would be nice too.
 

Offline Haji

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #53 on: July 03, 2016, 10:48:45 AM »
Since we're talking about UI upgrades here's my wishlist:

1. Create a new window which will show total amount of minerals in the entire empire, the total production of the empire and, possibly, the total resource consumption of the empire the previous year. Recently I've been playing my largest campaigns yet, with numerous production sites and even more numerous mining sites and managing the resources is becoming a real pain. In fact I was forced to send all my production to a central location, from which I teleport resources where needed, just to have a grasp of what I may need or not in the near future, for the purposes of planning expansion of my mining sector.

2. In the fleet orders tab allow us to simply select a destination for a ship rather than having us make the route ourselves. Aurora is already capable of calculating the routes but in my current campaigns I routinely have to set destinations ten-twenty jumps out. Not only is that a lot of clicks it requires me to frequently switch between orders tab and galaxy map tab to make sure I go the right route. To make matters worse my empire continues to expand and in the future I may be forced to create routes thirty - forty jumps long.

3. Simplify assignment of weapons to fire controls. I build a lot of ships with numerous box launchers and assigning them is a pain, even with the ability to copy assignments to other warships. What I'd like to see is an option to attach X loaded missile tubes to Y type of fire control. Since I usually have several missile controls of a single type, this would allow me to very easily assign however many tubes I want to them with two, three clicks instead of dozens of clicks as I have to do now.

4. At the end of the event summary please gives as a simple list of which ships were damaged/destroyed during the increment. I routinely have dozens of ships in battle so checking which one have been damaged is a pain, even when I know which ones have been targeted.

That's all I can think of right of the bat, although those are only changes to the UI rather than the game itself. Other than that thank you for the hard work, the Aurora C# looks fantastic.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #54 on: July 03, 2016, 01:06:57 PM »
1. Create a new window which will show total amount of minerals in the entire empire, the total production of the empire and, possibly, the total resource consumption of the empire the previous year. Recently I've been playing my largest campaigns yet, with numerous production sites and even more numerous mining sites and managing the resources is becoming a real pain. In fact I was forced to send all my production to a central location, from which I teleport resources where needed, just to have a grasp of what I may need or not in the near future, for the purposes of planning expansion of my mining sector.

I'm already working on improved visibility of mineral consumption. On the mining tab in C# Aurora, the consumption of minerals is broken down by mineral type and consumption type (construction factories, ordnance factories, shipyard upgrades, shipyard tasks, ground unit construction, etc.) so it is a lot easier to handle mineral shortages on a local level. Something on a global scale should not be too difficult.

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2. In the fleet orders tab allow us to simply select a destination for a ship rather than having us make the route ourselves. Aurora is already capable of calculating the routes but in my current campaigns I routinely have to set destinations ten-twenty jumps out. Not only is that a lot of clicks it requires me to frequently switch between orders tab and galaxy map tab to make sure I go the right route. To make matters worse my empire continues to expand and in the future I may be forced to create routes thirty - forty jumps long.

You can already this do in VB6 Aurora. Use the 'Show All Pop' options. Select a population and double-click the order in the normal way. Aurora will calculate the route, including any short-cuts via Lagrange points, for any distance.

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3. Simplify assignment of weapons to fire controls. I build a lot of ships with numerous box launchers and assigning them is a pain, even with the ability to copy assignments to other warships. What I'd like to see is an option to attach X loaded missile tubes to Y type of fire control. Since I usually have several missile controls of a single type, this would allow me to very easily assign however many tubes I want to them with two, three clicks instead of dozens of clicks as I have to do now.

You can already assign groups of weapons in VB6 Aurora. Go into the F8 window, select all the missile tubes at once and assign with a single click. Even so, I will be looking at improving this for C#.

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4. At the end of the event summary please gives as a simple list of which ships were damaged/destroyed during the increment. I routinely have dozens of ships in battle so checking which one have been damaged is a pain, even when I know which ones have been targeted.

There is a damaged ships window in VB6 Aurora that lists all damaged ships including fleet and location. That should help, although that is every damaged ship, not just recently damaged). However, I like the idea of some type of increment summary during battles

Quote
That's all I can think of right of the bat, although those are only changes to the UI rather than the game itself. Other than that thank you for the hard work, the Aurora C# looks fantastic.

Thanks - I am enjoying working on it
 
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Offline Haji

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #55 on: July 03, 2016, 01:16:45 PM »
You can already this do in VB6 Aurora. Use the 'Show All Pop' options. Select a population and double-click the order in the normal way. Aurora will calculate the route, including any short-cuts via Lagrange points, for any distance.

You can already assign groups of weapons in VB6 Aurora. Go into the F8 window, select all the missile tubes at once and assign with a single click. Even so, I will be looking at improving this for C#.

Thank you. I did not know that and having those options will save me tens of thousands of clicks. I'd like to add one small thing however - the show all populations helps a lot with moving ships between colonies, but it does not help much with survey vessels, as those usually go to uninhabited systems. What I'd like to see is an option to chose a destination system from all the systems your empire knows of and then optionally to select a destination within the system. But that's just nitpicking, the "show all populations" is still a great option.

Thank you again for the help.

Edit:

I went ahead and checked the fire control assign and it appears I wasn't clear on what my problem was. I know you can assign multiple weapons to a single fire control quite easily. The problem is I often end up with a ship that has for example 200 missile cells and 8 fire controls. This requires me to select tubes 1-25 assign it to fire control 1, than go ahead select 26-50, assign it to fire control 2 and so on and so forth. In this example it's quite easy but in a situation when I have less common missile numbers (for example 14 cells per fire control) it can get quite annoying to do all the calculations in my head in order to ensure each fire control has proper number of missiles and it's easy to make a mistake. This is the part I'd like streamlined, preferably by being able to tell the game to assign X launchers of Y type to Z number of fire controls of W type. This would save a lot of clicks.

Of course I don't know how this would fit into upgrades you're already planning to do, so I don't know how feasible it would be to put something like that in.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2016, 02:30:58 PM by Haji »
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #56 on: July 05, 2016, 06:47:46 PM »
Thank you. I did not know that and having those options will save me tens of thousands of clicks. I'd like to add one small thing however - the show all populations helps a lot with moving ships between colonies, but it does not help much with survey vessels, as those usually go to uninhabited systems. What I'd like to see is an option to chose a destination system from all the systems your empire knows of and then optionally to select a destination within the system. But that's just nitpicking, the "show all populations" is still a great option.

Thank you again for the help.

Edit:

I went ahead and checked the fire control assign and it appears I wasn't clear on what my problem was. I know you can assign multiple weapons to a single fire control quite easily. The problem is I often end up with a ship that has for example 200 missile cells and 8 fire controls. This requires me to select tubes 1-25 assign it to fire control 1, than go ahead select 26-50, assign it to fire control 2 and so on and so forth. In this example it's quite easy but in a situation when I have less common missile numbers (for example 14 cells per fire control) it can get quite annoying to do all the calculations in my head in order to ensure each fire control has proper number of missiles and it's easy to make a mistake. This is the part I'd like streamlined, preferably by being able to tell the game to assign X launchers of Y type to Z number of fire controls of W type. This would save a lot of clicks.

Of course I don't know how this would fit into upgrades you're already planning to do, so I don't know how feasible it would be to put something like that in.
A way to save time is the fact that you'd only have to do that once per class design anyway. To clarify, designate the weapons to fire controls per normal for the first ship in that class you make. Then, whenever you get new ships in the class, click on the Copy Race button under Copy Assign, which is on the top right side of the Combat Overview window. Said button takes the assignment for that ship and duplicates it across all ships of the same class currently in your empire.
 

Offline Haji

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #57 on: July 06, 2016, 03:58:56 PM »
A way to save time is the fact that you'd only have to do that once per class design anyway. To clarify, designate the weapons to fire controls per normal for the first ship in that class you make. Then, whenever you get new ships in the class, click on the Copy Race button under Copy Assign, which is on the top right side of the Combat Overview window. Said button takes the assignment for that ship and duplicates it across all ships of the same class currently in your empire.

I've been using this and for the most part it works fine. The problem with fire controls really begun only recently due to the way I play my campaigns. In one of them I had 20 classes of warships from seven different nations engaged in hostilities and all of them had both missiles and anti-missiles in box launchers sometimes in weird ratios like 14 missiles per fire control. Those were a pain to set up with the worst offender, the Ticonderoga class cruiser having 128 missiles with four fire controls and 384 anti-missiles with 8 fire controls. Those were a real joy to set up.

My other campaign was even worse in certain respects. I had a battleship with 1000 box launchers and 10 fire controls. Seems easy, right? Well.... I was engaging the Swarm. With a lot of FACs. So I had to go assign 10 missiles to each of the fire controls, fire, then add ten more missiles to each fire control for the second salvo and so on. And to make things worse ships ended up with different amounts of ordnance used, which meant that if they fought another battle, copying assignments would be useless.

Of course those are very specific situation, and I doubt many people have such problems. Nonetheless assigning weapons to fire controls is one of the most boring and click-intensive aspects of the game so I'm really looking forward to the changes Steve have mentioned.
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #58 on: July 06, 2016, 07:11:25 PM »
My other campaign was even worse in certain respects. I had a battleship with 1000 box launchers and 10 fire controls. Seems easy, right? Well.... I was engaging the Swarm. With a lot of FACs. So I had to go assign 10 missiles to each of the fire controls, fire, then add ten more missiles to each fire control for the second salvo and so on. And to make things worse ships ended up with different amounts of ordnance used, which meant that if they fought another battle, copying assignments would be useless.

Of course those are very specific situation, and I doubt many people have such problems. Nonetheless assigning weapons to fire controls is one of the most boring and click-intensive aspects of the game so I'm really looking forward to the changes Steve have mentioned.
In this case, it really just sounds like you need more fire controls. Or less launchers of larger size of which load from magazines. In this particular case it just seems like you tactically chose the path of greatest resistance in respects to the UI, even!
 

Offline Haji

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #59 on: July 06, 2016, 07:17:50 PM »
In this case, it really just sounds like you need more fire controls. Or less launchers of larger size of which load from magazines. In this particular case it just seems like you tactically chose the path of greatest resistance in respects to the UI, even!

I kind of did. The thing is most of my campaigns are being role-played and in this case the design was conceived to deal with a certain specific enemy of overwhelming power and was simply used whenever needed. It wasn't the best ship for this particular job, but this is what this particular nation had. I mean, designing anti-FAC ships is easy if you're playing a game. Designing anti-FAC ship when you're roleplaying the game is a little more complicated.