Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441847 times)

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Offline sloanjh (OP)

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #195 on: October 18, 2016, 07:37:15 AM »
The actual ordering mechanics may be an issue, as they aren't really flexible enough to handle multiple options at the moment, except for something like 'unload all', which is simultaneous in VB6 Aurora. Maybe could be expanded to Unload All & Replenish but still not ideal, especially for loading. Perhaps some form of package order, where you have a general catch-all loading order but you can specify numerous options within it (load fuel + cargo + colonists + troops). However, this would be a lot of additional work and I am not sure how often such a complex situation would come up. How often do you have fleets with cargo and colonists and troops, etc.?

Not sure how your code is set up, but if you made "order" an object with an "execute" virtual method that knows what needs to happen then you could have a single "replenish" order that either had a set of check boxes internally telling it what to replenish and/or contained a nested list of "replenish fuel", "replenish ammo" etc order.

Another option would be to two separate "time remaining" counters for "regular" and "replenishment" orders.  That would also probably make unrep code up elegantly - the TG would be moving or whatever on the regular counter while the other counter would be working on other refueling ships.

John
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #196 on: October 18, 2016, 08:40:17 AM »
In current Aurora there are millions of them, and I don't think it makes sense for millions of them to live in the Spacestation except for when it comes to very advanced civilizations with truly massive lategame stations.

So either the shipyards are also made fully automated, or all orbital facilities could need workers from some sort of special smaller pool that live in orbit on the space-station you build.

It could in that case be treated as an entirely separate layer, and all orbital facilities require population to operate as well, although much less then ground facilities.

Maybe orbital habitats should be a special sort of infrastructure building that expands your "orbital population pool", and show up as an object in orbit once finished but are built by industry on the ground.
Surely shipyard workers will just commute up from the surface? With TN tech that would seem trivial. And trying to set up an shipyard without a population should be a major logistical challenge via orbital habitats. I would see deepspace stations as being mostly refueling/repair/ordnance/trade stations, with actual shipyards requiring, in most cases, a planet with a population to supply the workers, unless you make a very major effort.   
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #197 on: October 18, 2016, 08:48:07 AM »
Building on the space station idea, fleets could interact directly with the space station, instead of the population on the planet, and have the option of unloading to (or loading from) the station or using the station facilities to unload directly to the planet. A planet could have more than one station but it would probably make sense to combine them (so ships can use all the station abilities at once). Space stations could also be boarded and captured (if they are defended by troops that could mean some interesting battles), which would also potentially lead to situations where you try to defeat enemy forces without damaging the valuable space stations.

This would also open up raiding in much more interesting way. Suddenly the thought of a stealth raider with a few meson cannons slipping through my lines to cripple my forward supply base becomes a real fear. And that will force some very interesting tactical decisions about how close to the front to build fuel/supply depots, how much protection they need etc.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #198 on: October 18, 2016, 09:27:17 AM »
Surely shipyard workers will just commute up from the surface? With TN tech that would seem trivial. And trying to set up an shipyard without a population should be a major logistical challenge via orbital habitats. I would see deepspace stations as being mostly refueling/repair/ordnance/trade stations, with actual shipyards requiring, in most cases, a planet with a population to supply the workers, unless you make a very major effort.

No it's NOT trivial!

Remember that we are working under the assumption that it's such a big issue to move military 1000 ton+ Spaceships to the surface that they must be built in orbit and kept there.

Even with TN tech your "personal spaceship" would probably weight 1 ton ( similar to the car of today ). The logistics of having 10 million workers commute into orbit daily represents moving 10*250 = 2500 million tons of civilian spaceship per year from ground to orbit and back using civilian technology.

In what kind of universe can you move 2.5 billion tons of civilian ships per year from surface to orbit as a cheap and normal commute to work, but it's too expensive to move the less then half a million tons of ships they build per year a single time into orbit???

Military ships and vessels through all times have had greater capabilities and budgets then civilian vessels do. Building the Military Spaceship on the ground and moving it into orbit once complete ( even if it lacked ability to return or this was a one time liftoff ) is what would be super trivial compared to having millions of workers commute to space and back on a daily basis.

Another thing that points against personal spaceships being available in the Aurora universe is the relative small scale production of fighters that's possible. If it was cheap enough to build hundreds of millions of personal spaceship the military would have their own versions of mini-fighters for sure that can operate within the atmosphere by the thousands and are pretty cheap to make too. Due to armor and heavier weapons these would probably be closer to the 10-100 ton fighters and tanks of today, then the 250-500 ton fighters of Aurora.
 

Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #199 on: October 18, 2016, 10:13:25 AM »
No it's NOT trivial!

Remember that we are working under the assumption that it's such a big issue to move military 1000 ton+ Spaceships to the surface that they must be built in orbit and kept there.
We can solve this by waving the transnewtonian wand.  Something something flow interactions, thus ships will be destroyed if they try to fly into the atmosphere.  Particularly note that we can build ship components, even very large ones, on the surface, and use them in orbit.  From a design standpoint, having to be able to launch from the surface is a huge constraint, and not one that will be accepted.
Orbital launch might well be done via lasers or space elevators.  It's pretty obvious that energy is not the constraining problem in most of the range of Aurora, and that makes orbital launch potentially very cheap.  That said, I'd expect the yard workers to run in multi-day shifts in most cases, sort of like they do on oil rigs.  That, plus the assumption that the employer is bussing them in instead of them taking 'cars' cuts the required commute transport by about an order of magnitude.
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #200 on: October 18, 2016, 10:22:05 AM »
We can solve this by waving the transnewtonian wand.  Something something flow interactions, thus ships will be destroyed if they try to fly into the atmosphere.  Particularly note that we can build ship components, even very large ones, on the surface, and use them in orbit.  From a design standpoint, having to be able to launch from the surface is a huge constraint, and not one that will be accepted.
Orbital launch might well be done via lasers or space elevators.  It's pretty obvious that energy is not the constraining problem in most of the range of Aurora, and that makes orbital launch potentially very cheap.  That said, I'd expect the yard workers to run in multi-day shifts in most cases, sort of like they do on oil rigs.  That, plus the assumption that the employer is bussing them in instead of them taking 'cars' cuts the required commute transport by about an order of magnitude.

So how can the 100000 ton commercial spaceships land on the new planet that has an atmosphere and high gravity to unload colonists and factories?  ??? ::)

Or how does the 10000 ton capacity commercial shipyard you build ( which is bound to weight at least 2 times that amount ) get into orbit?

And why is it so easy to commute millions of shipyard workers but no other orbital infrastructure can be allowed to require workers?

Some handwavium I can accept but alot of this stuff is simply not consistent at all with very similar problems being impossible in one case and trivial in others because... reasons.

You can say what you want about most of Steves other game mechanics and how much handwaving is done, but they are for the most part consistent ( this is what I love about them the most and which helps immersion into the story alot too ).



Even if you bring the needs down by weekly shifts and bussing by 2 orders of magnitude we are still talking about 25 million tons of Civilian craft per year for commuting alone, to produce less then 1/50:th as much tons of ships ( assuming 10 day weeks and 100kg "bus" per worker which is extremely low ).
« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 10:27:02 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Online 83athom

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #201 on: October 18, 2016, 10:27:49 AM »
Also, they may be housed on site for a week or so then rotated around, cutting transport issues even farther. alex, your argument seems to be centered around the idea that the shipyard workers' jobs are business jobs where they travel to and from work instead of the blue collar work that they may have to live near because of deadlines and schedules.
So how can the 100000 ton commercial spaceships land on the new planet that has an atmosphere and high gravity to unload colonists and factories?  ??? ::)
Trans-newtonian physics, shuttlecraft, gravity tethers, etc
Or how does the 10000 ton capacity commercial shipyard you build ( which is bound to weight at least 2 times that amount ) get into orbit?
Its constructed there.
And why is it so easy to commute millions of shipyard workers but no other orbital infrastructure can be allowed to require workers?
This assumes that the workers aren't living in space condos with a space back-yard with their space family. Also orbital elevators, shuttles, etc.
Some handwavium I can accept but alot of this stuff is simply not consistent at all with very similar problems being impossible in one case and trivial in others because... reasons.
Well, those reasons keep the universe from violently collapsing on itself.
Even if you bring the needs down by weekly shifts and bussing by 2 orders of magnitude we are still talking about 25 million tons of Civilian craft per year for commuting alone, to produce less then 1/50:th as much tons of ships ( assuming 10 day weeks and 100kg "bus" per worker which is extremely low ).
This is assuming you can only use the "bus" once and it needs to be rebuilt every trip.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 10:30:38 AM by 83athom »
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #202 on: October 18, 2016, 11:58:48 AM »
This assumes that the workers aren't living in space condos with a space back-yard with their space family.

That's what I'm asking be simulated in that case.

Building Space condos with space back-yards for 10 million workers is not going to be cheap...


This is assuming you can only use the "bus" once and it needs to be rebuilt every trip.

No it doesn't. I'm trying to compare the amount of work/effort needed to transport the finished Military ship once into orbit, and the millions of workers constantly.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 12:00:26 PM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #203 on: October 18, 2016, 12:12:25 PM »
So how can the 100000 ton commercial spaceships land on the new planet that has an atmosphere and high gravity to unload colonists and factories?  ??? ::)
Shuttles, which Steve is looking at adding.
(As an aside, it should probably be possible to build PDCs that can have at least some of these components, for initial launch and secure storage.)

Quote
Or how does the 10000 ton capacity commercial shipyard you build ( which is bound to weight at least 2 times that amount ) get into orbit?
In pieces, obviously.  But there's overhead to having to do in-space assembly without support.  The shipyard provides that support for the ship.
Actually, I'd almost question the assumption that all of the workers must commute to orbit.  I'd expect that a lot of the work happens on the ground, and the resulting pieces are then launched into orbit.  We know this can be done (that's how building components in the factories works) and there's no reason to assume they'd insist on doing everything in space.

Quote
And why is it so easy to commute millions of shipyard workers but no other orbital infrastructure can be allowed to require workers?
I don't know.  Under the current setup, we don't have other orbital infrastructure, except stuff specifically designed for forward basing, where requiring ground-based crew would sort of defeat the purpose.

Quote
You can say what you want about most of Steves other game mechanics and how much handwaving is done, but they are for the most part consistent ( this is what I love about them the most and which helps immersion into the story alot too ).
I'm all in favor of consistency, to be sure.  And I think we're working towards a new equilibrium on that.



Quote
Even if you bring the needs down by weekly shifts and bussing by 2 orders of magnitude we are still talking about 25 million tons of Civilian craft per year for commuting alone, to produce less then 1/50:th as much tons of ships ( assuming 10 day weeks and 100kg "bus" per worker which is extremely low ).
Do you have any idea what the ratio between cars and ship tonnage produced is today?  Let's take Electric Boat, because they only produce one kind of ship these days (the Virginia-class submarine).  They have 13,000 employees, and produce one 7800-ton ship every two years.  If we assume 250 working days a year, that's (rounding shamelessly) 1.2 kg/worker/day.  Yes, there's a lot of overhead included in that number.  Yes, they build nuclear submarines, which means high standards.  Under your numbers, that comes to 1/10th the launched mass, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that EB's subcontractors could lower that by another factor of 2 or 3.  We're in the same ballpark.
Let's try another.  The Boeing plant in Renton produces 42 737s each month, and employs about 11,000 people.  Neglecting work done in other plants (a lot) each worker produces about (42 A/C*41430 kg)/(21 days*11,000 people) = 7.5 kg/worker/day.  I'd suggest taking at least a factor of 5 out of that number, based on how much gets built elsewhere.

No it doesn't. I'm trying to compare the amount of work/effort needed to transport the finished Military ship once into orbit, and the millions of workers constantly.
Yes.  That's a good point, except that we're clearly in a setting where launch costs for personnel and small units of cargo are very cheap compared to today.  (Small refers to the size of each unit, not the total volume).  We can easily put all the pieces of the military ship in orbit.  The problem is that a finished one is too big to fit in our laser launcher, and thus has to be put together up there.
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #204 on: October 18, 2016, 12:46:51 PM »
Do you have any idea what the ratio between cars and ship tonnage produced is today?  Let's take Electric Boat, because they only produce one kind of ship these days (the Virginia-class submarine).  They have 13,000 employees, and produce one 7800-ton ship every two years.  If we assume 250 working days a year, that's (rounding shamelessly) 1.2 kg/worker/day.  Yes, there's a lot of overhead included in that number.  Yes, they build nuclear submarines, which means high standards.  Under your numbers, that comes to 1/10th the launched mass, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that EB's subcontractors could lower that by another factor of 2 or 3.  We're in the same ballpark.
Let's try another.  The Boeing plant in Renton produces 42 737s each month, and employs about 11,000 people.  Neglecting work done in other plants (a lot) each worker produces about (42 A/C*41430 kg)/(21 days*11,000 people) = 7.5 kg/worker/day.  I'd suggest taking at least a factor of 5 out of that number, based on how much gets built elsewhere.

I still think it would be more relevant to compare the ratio of cars to APC/Tanks (other more similar ground based military vehicles), then to ships or airplanes.

In a hypothetical future where everyone has a "spacecar" for orbital commuting a ship or airplane is more akin either interplanetary or interstellar transports (longer distance).


This means military "versions" of the "spacecar" could be as numerous as our APC/Tanks are in today's militaries ( thousands of them ).
 

Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #205 on: October 18, 2016, 12:53:56 PM »
I still think it would be more relevant to compare the ratio of cars to APC/Tanks (other more similar ground based military vehicles), then to ships or airplanes.

In a hypothetical future where everyone has a "spacecar" for orbital commuting a ship or airplane is more akin either interplanetary or interstellar transports (longer distance).


This means military "versions" of the "spacecar" could be as numerous as our APC/Tanks are in today's militaries ( thousands of them ).
Why?  We're discussing building interplanetary/interstellar transports in Aurora, too, so picking ships/airplanes seems only reasonable.
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #206 on: October 18, 2016, 01:34:05 PM »
Reading between the lines here, I suspect most people are happy with the concept of having logistical infrastructure in orbit. However, some rationale needs to be found for the concept that TN ships can't land, while also accounting for the question that if we can shuttle thousands of tons of components into orbit, why can't ships simply land and take-off.

One option is technobabble (and I really need to create a comprehensive TN technobabble manual) stating that TN ships designed for interplanetary and interstellar travel cannot handle gravity wells. The TN ships are designed for travel which primarily takes place in the other dimension (which we need a name for) that is based on liquid physics, with only a small portion of the ship existing in our own dimension. That is why TN ships are so hard to detect, yet become easy to detect once wrecked (as they move fully into our dimension).

One side-effect of the design of TN ships is that gravity wells cause extreme turbulence in the liquid dimension, so once any TN ship is assembled and under power, it cannot move too far into a gravity well without the risk of destruction. However, cheap conventional shuttles (abstracted by the use of cargo shuttle bays or cargo stations, etc) are not affected by this so they handle all the movement of cargo and personnel from the planetary surface to orbit. They also handle the transfer of ships components to orbit, where they are assembled into ships, plus any movement of workers between the surface and orbit. Also many of the workers associated with shipyards are actually on the ground, which is why they are not affected by the destruction of shipyards. These conventional shuttles are only suitable for very short journeys (a few hundred km) and are therefore not useful for journeys beyond orbital space.

Does that pass the giggle test? :)
 
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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #207 on: October 18, 2016, 01:57:46 PM »
Does that pass the giggle test? :)
It passes the giggle test with flying colors, IMO.  Add in restricted payload on the shuttles (say 500 tons) and the whole thing explains what we see reasonably well.
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Offline Scandinavian

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #208 on: October 18, 2016, 02:10:17 PM »
There is an even simpler solution: The hull of spacefaring vessels is designed to operate in weightlessness. If you try to put one down on the ground, the hull will not support its own weight.

You could, in principle, build an atmosphere-capable interplanetary vessel, but why would you want to? The reinforcements that would make it able to land would be completely dead weight once you cleared low orbit, and the situations in which you want to land the whole vessel rather than sending a special purpose landing shuttle are not numerous enough to be a design consideration.

Similar to how you certainly can build an oil tanker that you can beach (and get back into the water, unharmed). Nothing in the laws of physics prohibits it. But nobody does, because there is no use case for that.
 

Online 83athom

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #209 on: October 18, 2016, 02:16:12 PM »
There is an even simpler solution: The hull of spacefaring vessels is designed to operate in weightlessness. If you try to put one down on the ground, the hull will not support its own weight.
That just doesn't work with current game technobabble of the ultra-dense TN materials.
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