Aurora C# Screenshots

[Tree]

My point was that you control the Battleship or Titan 100% yourself. The crew is irrelevant and only "tacked on" as story fluff to explain away why your ships have tons of atmospheric looking windows and and give you some feeling of the battles being more epic...

Game mechanic wise, the crew don't control a single function of the ship, you as the player control all of it yourself, you don't give any orders and wait for them to be carried out, all is controlled via your interface directly with the ship. Not even damage control is boosted by your "crew" but by nano robots that repair your ships...

The crew in Eve is not important, hadly even mentioned anywhere. You never interact with them or manage them in any way at all, you don't pay them anything either, nor do they take casualties that need to be replaced when your ship take damage. The game basicaly ignores crew to such a degree that 90% of the players that didn't bother to read lore in depth didn't even realize there is a crew.

That's very much an irrelevant non-point as I alone order my ships to fire in Aurora, too, the crew is irrelevant in this, so are the all the officers. They're fancy little bonuses, just like tacking modules on an EvE ship.

[Hazard]

My point was that you control the Battleship or Titan 100% yourself. The crew is irrelevant and only "tacked on" as story fluff to explain away why your ships have tons of atmospheric looking windows and and give you some feeling of the battles being more epic...

Game mechanic wise, the crew don't control a single function of the ship, you as the player control all of it yourself, you don't give any orders and wait for them to be carried out, all is controlled via your interface directly with the ship. Not even damage control is boosted by your "crew" but by nano robots that repair your ships...

The crew in Eve is not important, hadly even mentioned anywhere. You never interact with them or manage them in any way at all, you don't pay them anything either, nor do they take casualties that need to be replaced when your ship take damage. The game basicaly ignores crew to such a degree that 90% of the players that didn't bother to read lore in depth didn't even realize there is a crew.

Man those ships in World of Warships are well automated. I can do everything I need to do for the game from the interface and there's not a single shred of otherwise necessary management that would not improve my enjoyment of the game in evidence.

I've no idea where all those lengthy lists of casualties in naval battles come from for the First and Second World War, since the ships are self evidently not crewed at all.

/sarcasm.

[83athom]

That's very much an irrelevant non-point as I alone order my ships to fire in Aurora, too, the crew is irrelevant in this

An interesting point. What if the crew was not only tracked, but casualties beyond certain points make systems start loosing efficiency and losses beyond other points make other systems useless as they're unmanned. When out of combat (repaired via damage control) you could spread your remaining crew out to man all the systems (or all essential systems excluding weapons/FC) at the cost of much higher maintenance failure chances. Maybe a way to track this is to have crew types (gunners, engineers, general, etc).

so are the all the officers.

Not completely true. While Aurora doesn't track second officers, engineering chiefs, etc, the main officers do have purposes in providing those slight bonuses to get that extra little edge out of your ships.

[alex_brunius]

That's very much an irrelevant non-point as I alone order my ships to fire in Aurora, too, the crew is irrelevant in this, so are the all the officers. They're fancy little bonuses, just like tacking modules on an EvE ship.

You should try a ship in Aurora with 0/500 crew alive then... Let me know how well it works out for you!!!

Man those ships in World of Warships are well automated

No, that's just an arcade game, very much unlike Aurora or Eve which both strife to be "realistic" (within Sci-Fi bounds), so the manner of control is totally irrelevant.

[bean]

Also, submarines can crack water through electrolysis for more water, spaceships can't do that unless they harvest it from things like comets or gas giants or such.  Or the occasional planet that has water/ice.

They don't crack water through electrolysis for water, they do it for oxygen.  (Well, nuke boats do.  Diesel boats don't.)  There are lots of differences between the two, and I could go on at length about them.  I was just pointing out why submarines usually use hot-bunking and spaceships shouldn't be expected to.

[mikew]

There's one very important thing they don't have in common with submarines.  A submarine has to have the same density as water.  A spaceship does not.  This is a major volume constraint on the submarine.

Density isn't really a constraint on the volume of a submaring- ballast is relatively cheap and easy to put into the design.  The constraint on volume in that case is the cost and practicality of designing and manufacturing the pressure vessel holding it all.  In a (real) spaceship, the constraint on volume is the mass of the structure containing it and the fuel necessary to accelerate the whole shebang, along with the engines needed to produce the required acceleration.

Mike

[Person012345]

Having crew automation levels vary by tech sounds like it adds complexity to the system without much in the way of appreciable gameplay benefit.

[mrwigggles]

Or difference. I suppose it would make you less susceptible to meson weapons.

[bean]

Density isn't really a constraint on the volume of a submaring- ballast is relatively cheap and easy to put into the design.  The constraint on volume in that case is the cost and practicality of designing and manufacturing the pressure vessel holding it all.  In a (real) spaceship, the constraint on volume is the mass of the structure containing it and the fuel necessary to accelerate the whole shebang, along with the engines needed to produce the required acceleration.

Mike

It very much is a constraint, as any book which even tangentially touches on submarine design will tell you.  Making the submarine bigger makes it slower, noisier, and more expensive.  A submarine's resistance is volume-dominated, in a way that a surface ship's isn't.  There is a definite reason why submarines still hot-bunk and surface warships don't. 
Spacecraft volume is much cheaper to add relative to submarines, because the structure is much lighter, and doesn't add extra resistance on top of that.  I'd be surprised to see hot-bunking on spacecraft.

[TCD]

It very much is a constraint, as any book which even tangentially touches on submarine design will tell you.  Making the submarine bigger makes it slower, noisier, and more expensive.  A submarine's resistance is volume-dominated, in a way that a surface ship's isn't.  There is a definite reason why submarines still hot-bunk and surface warships don't. 
Spacecraft volume is much cheaper to add relative to submarines, because the structure is much lighter, and doesn't add extra resistance on top of that.  I'd be surprised to see hot-bunking on spacecraft.

While I generally agree with you Byron  I see a few qualifications. The main one is that in Aurora at least jump drives create hard (if artificial) limits on mass. In those terms volume isn't an issue, but mass is. In fact if you're a ship designer with a strict mass limit (to match fleet jump drives) then you're going to have to be very strict on unnecessary items like extra beds that might force you to leave that extra shield generator off the design.

The other is that heavy armor plating in Aurora is quite expensive, and that scales with volume. I suppose the same is true for surface ships but they can at least use belt armor rather full armor, something I don't think you could do on a star ship. So I could see lightly armored carriers having plenty of space for extravagant crew quarters, but a massively armored jump cruiser hot-bunking.

[mrwigggles]

you could do belt armor on a space ship. You would need to orient yourself so that your armor belt is perpendicular to who is shooting at you. This sucks if you're facing fires from multiple vectors. Though that would suck without Belt armor too.

[Drizzt321]

They don't crack water through electrolysis for water, they do it for oxygen.   (Well, nuke boats do.   Diesel boats don't. )  There are lots of differences between the two, and I could go on at length about them.   I was just pointing out why submarines usually use hot-bunking and spaceships shouldn't be expected to.

Thank you, I meant oxygen, yes.

It very much is a constraint, as any book which even tangentially touches on submarine design will tell you.   Making the submarine bigger makes it slower, noisier, and more expensive.   A submarine's resistance is volume-dominated, in a way that a surface ship's isn't.   There is a definite reason why submarines still hot-bunk and surface warships don't.   
Spacecraft volume is much cheaper to add relative to submarines, because the structure is much lighter, and doesn't add extra resistance on top of that.   I'd be surprised to see hot-bunking on spacecraft.

I agree resistance isn't necessarily a factor for spaceships, however I'd still expect spaceships to hot-bunk on military ships, at least for the lowest ranking.  Besides tradition.  Simply put, regardless of how advanced, military ships are going to devote as little cubage and mass as possible to crew in order to devote as much as possible to the rest of the bits that make a warship a warship.  Not to say that as miniaturization doesn't improve there isn't room to make it more comfortable, but in order to maximize possible usefulness it is not the highest priority.

More cubage (volume) means more exterior area to protect (armor/shields), makes it more visible (easier to see on sensors), and provides more surface to impact (easier to hit).  More cubage often translates to some amount of more mass as well, which makes a ship harder to accelerate and maneuver. 

That said, of course more commercially oriented spaceships will devote more of that to crew needs, it's the nature of things.  More need to keep the crew happy (or they quit, at least in the real world rather than a game), a small amount of additional volume and mass are relatively inconsequential for a ship that's already very large (think freighter, tanker, etc). 

[Hazard]

Interestingly enough, game mechanics screw around with this. There's a standard amount of space every crewmember can expect depending on how long the design is meant to be deployed, and it grows fast enough that there's no way that you won't eventually end up with full on separate rules for each crewmember as length of expected deployment increases.

But this doesn't matter for civilian designs. Who check length of deployment and how this affects crew morale, yes, but do not get drawbacks for exceeding it. So you can leave them with an absolute minimum of deployment time, but if you try that with your military ships you get issues.

[bean]

While I generally agree with you Byron  I see a few qualifications. The main one is that in Aurora at least jump drives create hard (if artificial) limits on mass. In those terms volume isn't an issue, but mass is. In fact if you're a ship designer with a strict mass limit (to match fleet jump drives) then you're going to have to be very strict on unnecessary items like extra beds that might force you to leave that extra shield generator off the design.

Even on the most constrained of the treaty battleships (built under rules quite similar to the ones you see in Aurora), the SoDaks, they didn't hot bunk during the war, and that was with a lot more crew than they designed for.  They did put hammocks everywhere, but there was enough space to avoid the problem.  And those ships are seriously cramped.  I was rather startled by how small Alabama felt compared to Iowa.  They'll find the mass if it improves crew performance enough.

The other is that heavy armor plating in Aurora is quite expensive, and that scales with volume. I suppose the same is true for surface ships but they can at least use belt armor rather full armor, something I don't think you could do on a star ship. So I could see lightly armored carriers having plenty of space for extravagant crew quarters, but a massively armored jump cruiser hot-bunking.

This is more a quirk of the Aurora armor model than anything.  If the model was more sophisticated, you could only armor the bits that are important to fighting the ship, not the crew quarters.
(The belt is only part of a battleship armor scheme, and not the most important one by the end of that era.  The actual phrase you're looking for is all-or-nothing armor.)

you could do belt armor on a space ship. You would need to orient yourself so that your armor belt is perpendicular to who is shooting at you. This sucks if you're facing fires from multiple vectors. Though that would suck without Belt armor too.

I'd use 'faceplate armor' to describe that, and expect it will exist in space.  Mass is too precious to armor everything.  This was also true of battleships (see link above).

I agree resistance isn't necessarily a factor for spaceships, however I'd still expect spaceships to hot-bunk on military ships, at least for the lowest ranking.  Besides tradition.

What tradition?  Traditionally, submariners hot-bunk, but nobody else does, except maybe on small boats. 

Simply put, regardless of how advanced, military ships are going to devote as little cubage and mass as possible to crew in order to devote as much as possible to the rest of the bits that make a warship a warship.  Not to say that as miniaturization doesn't improve there isn't room to make it more comfortable, but in order to maximize possible usefulness it is not the highest priority.

This fails the history test.  Nobody during the age of treaty battleships (when the British and Americans, at least, were nearly as mass-limited as we are in Aurora) made the crew hot-bunk to save space and weight.  Hot-bunking does carry morale penalties, and for everything except submarines, they're just not worth it.
(Also, I personally expect spaceships to be much more automated than Aurora portrays them as, so the cost of crew is pretty low relative to the whole ship.)

[83athom]

I'd use 'faceplate armor' to describe that, and expect it will exist in space.  Mass is too precious to armor everything.  This was also true of battleships.

Maybe "front-load armor" would be an even better term/description.

Also, I personally expect spaceships to be much more automated than Aurora portrays them as, so the cost of crew is pretty low relative to the whole ship.

Agreed. However, you could also argue that the increased crew count also takes into account mechanics, mission specialists, and system specialists that come aboard and not just the crewmen, gunners, commanders, and engineers.