Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441815 times)

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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #180 on: October 17, 2016, 09:48:05 AM »
You probably don't want to load highly volatile fuels while loading fragile goods and using high power tools to perform maintenance. "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong"
It depends on how you design your fuel system, and where the work is going on.  Modern ships routinely transfer ammo and fuel at the same time during UNREP operations, and that's while they're underway. 

My main worry about making operations sequential is that you might lose a lot of time in ways that don't make sense.  Let's assume we have a fleet that's carrying troops and is escorted by a tanker.  Most of the ships take only an hour or two to refuel, but the tanker takes two days, during which time the troopships are sitting idle.  Once the tanker is loaded, the troops are finally allowed off their transports, which takes another day.  Total time is 3 days, instead of the two that it should normally take.  Or  you can micromanage to avoid this, which is annoying.
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Offline 83athom

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #181 on: October 17, 2016, 10:50:16 AM »
I don't mind non-sequential nature of loading orders (fuel, ammo, etc), but I was more talking about loading while also under overhaul. Honestly, you would need some powerful tools to perform overhauls on a ship with a very dense armor layer. So why would anyone risk a major accident from a minor leak from a fueling line while cutting open a ship to replace systems/armor plates. Or risk a structural failure/depressurization while simultaneously loading a group of children on a field-trip to Mars.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 12:28:00 PM by 83athom »
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Offline IanD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #182 on: October 17, 2016, 10:57:38 AM »
I would like a refuel fleet or subfleet to same fraction of full capacity order. Currently if I move a fleet to a colony/fuel dump that does not have sufficient fuel to refuel the fleet completely I order fleet to refuel then equalise fuel. This is no longer possible and will add a lot of micromanagement to replicate. I would rather have ten ships all with 60% fuel rather than some with full tanks and others empty! When you are trying to keep up with NPRs that ignore fuel it is a useful tactic especially in the early game when resources may not be plentiful.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 11:02:59 AM by IanD »
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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #183 on: October 17, 2016, 11:22:03 AM »
I don't mind sequential nature of loading orders (fuel, ammo, etc), but I was more talking about loading while also under overhaul. Honestly, you would need some powerful tools to perform overhauls on a ship with a very dense armor layer. So why would anyone risk a major accident from a minor leak from a fueling line while cutting open a ship to replace systems/armor plates. Or risk a structural failure/depressurization while simultaneously loading a group of children on a field-trip to Mars.
I agree that allowing port ops while under overhaul would be silly, but that's not what Scandinavian was advocating.  He was pointing out, quite rightly, that operations like fueling and cargo loading/unloading often go on at the same time IRL.  There's no real equivalent of 'minor hot work' in Aurora, and his inclusion of that seems to have thrown you.  I'd agree with him, and say that the best answer is to allow all operations (load/unload of cargo/colonists/troops, fueling, loading ordnance and MSP) to take place simultaneously.  Restricting each ship to one operation at a time is a less good answer, but still sensible.  Restricting the whole fleet to one operation at a time is silly and could be really annoying.  Let's say we're setting up a new forward base.  We have cargo, fuel, troops, ordnance and supplies.  Each is on a different set of ships, and will take 2 days to unload.  If we insist on sequential ops, then it takes 10 days, instead of the 2 it would take if we split each into its own fleet, and there's no plausible explanation for it.
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #184 on: October 17, 2016, 11:44:01 AM »
Each ship in a fleet doing different things in parallel does make sense. I had not thought of the situation where you have dedicated very large ships that could take a very long time to complete their specialized action if they are kept in the same fleet.

Or some sort of "Split fleet while unloading/loading" command that automates the process and merge them back afterwards, but that would seem like a pretty ugly solution.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 12:07:07 PM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #185 on: October 17, 2016, 12:25:21 PM »
If tanker is part of a fleet that it has orders to refuel (i.e. keep topped up), but doesn't have sufficient tech to keep up with fuel usage, the refueling priority should be arranged so that we don't get into a situation where a high priority ship has full tanks after a while a low priority ship in the same fleet is empty.

Suggestion for a different way to handle unrep:  Calculate total fuel burned for the increment by the entire fleet, then calculate the percentage of that which is offset by unrep and apply that percentage to each ship.  So if a fleet burned 50,000 units of fuel in an increment, and had unrep capacity for 40,000 units, then 80% of each ship's fuel consumption would be offset by unrep and each ship would burn fuel at 20% of its unmodified rate.  Note that the interaction of this and the "refuel subfleet" might be a little complicated, so you might need to restrict or eliminate that order.

John

What I may do is have two options for refuel priority. Either by the ship/class priority mentioned in the rule, or by lowest fuel % first. That should solve the problem without too much micromanagement.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #186 on: October 17, 2016, 12:27:54 PM »
I'm quite wary of the refueling changes.

Making ships that are far too thirsty for no tangible gain is an extremely common design mistake, now one is punished harder for it.
Now it's reasonable to design ships for the utmost fuel efficiency possible for given speed requirement and tech (and aiming low with speed requirements unless essential to the role), rather than making a conscious trade-off versus build cost or compactness... because designing them so we can mostly ignore fuel logistics saves considerable investments elsewhere as well as headaches.

It seems a set of changes that, while mechanically complex,could easily reduce depth ("playing around it entirely is the best option" -> fewer legitimate options while the interesting ramifications end up ignored).

Ships won't use fuel any faster or require more fuel. They will just require more thought in how that fuel is delivered and the delivery process will take time instead of being instant The only real difference is that if that if a ship is stranded by lack of fuel, you will need a ship equipped with a refuelling system instead of just any ship.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #187 on: October 17, 2016, 01:05:46 PM »
I've read through the comments on the various options for simultaneous load / unload etc.

I think it is reasonable that a ship could handle more than one type of replenishment. However, that would have to be in a situation where it had simultaneous access to multiple options. For example, a replenishment ship with both fuel and ordnance could transfer both at the same time but two separate ships (tanker and collier) couldn't deliver to the same ship at the same time. I could create a situation where each replenishment ship within a fleet can order its own priorities and the replenishment ships would know what each of the others was doing (so they would work on different ships). This is not order-based though.

I haven't started looking at other types of logistics facilities yet (for ordnance, supplies, cargo, etc) so there is a lot flexibility in what I could do. For example, perhaps colony ships or freighters need shuttles to load or unload cargo at planets without some form of cargo handling facilities. A cargo station might be the equivalent to the fuel station, with a spaceport able to handle both. Perhaps even a spaceport should have some limits to simultaneous cargo handling. Maybe a space elevator becomes an option at some point, or orbital docking facilities.

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.?

I think the best option is probably to keep the major loading orders separate (cargo, colonists, troops) but allow replenishment at the same time as other orders. This could be done by including separate orders (Load Colonists vs Load Colonists & Replenish), or by giving ships options to undergo simultaneous replenishment where possible). Some facilities could handle both (spaceport) while others had to handled sequentially (cargo station, refuelling station). There is a lot of scope for different installations or modules and we would start to see real port-type facilities developing.

Thinking out loud, maybe even remove all the logistics facilities from a population entirely and make them into orbital facilities (including maintenance facilities, fuelling, cargo handling, ordnance replenishment, etc.), which would be created using the ship design process. Essentially once a ship is in space, it stays in space. Anything produced on a planetary surface would be transported into orbit by the orbital facilities or a ship with cargo shuttles ('cargo shuttles' being an abstract element of a ship component designed for orbit/ground interaction). Possibly could have a new type of ship, known as a 'space station', which only has limited armour (or no armour) but has the ability to join with other 'space stations' to form a larger ship (creating a unique class in the process). That way, you could build the orbital facilities over time. Fleets could then interact with the 'space station' (which would have capacity for various types of logistic handling).

Anyway, still considering options :)
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 01:10:11 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 
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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #188 on: October 17, 2016, 02:04:52 PM »
I admit to not using fleets with 'all of the above' very often, but I do think it bore pointing out.  (In fact, I hadn't even made the connection to the fact that the current cargo system, IIRC, works the way I described.)  That said, allowing replenishment tasks to run alongside normal cargo/colonists/troops would be an improvement over making everything sequential.

I'd quite like making space facilities more complex.  What you outline sounds like great fun.

Random thought: it might be possible to reduce the cargo paradox by increasing loading rate when dealing with multiple orders or small fractions of full capacity.  Say that the load time is made proportional to the square root of the fraction of total capacity being used.  So if you have two freighters (1 factory-unit each) and load one with a factory and another with a mine, then you'd get each onboard in 70% of the normal time.  It's obviously gameable by sticking the ship you want to load in with a bunch of other ships, although you usually don't have that much control over where things go.  But it would be somewhat better than we have right now.
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #189 on: October 17, 2016, 04:33:05 PM »
As long as the option still allows you to make slow and painful expansion as earlier TN civilization without tech or even a pre-transnewtonian empire I'm all for advanced options in logistics.

In fact I'd much love to start off with even more detail in the "very early" game, and build small primitive spaceships that slowly explore your home system with "small" 50-100 ton ships, rather then jumping right into 5000 ton + ships built in massive orbital dockyards.

It would be awesome to have to expend much resources and industry just to get your first orbital space-stations and dockyards up and running and into orbit.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #190 on: October 17, 2016, 05:52:51 PM »
BTW a side effect of the concept of putting all logistics into space is that it makes space-based 'populations' much easier. In effect, the ground-based element of a colony becomes the supply source of the orbital infrastructure (infrastructure in this case meaning orbital dockyards, fuelling and cargo hubs, ordnance transfer facilities, barracks, etc.).

The orbital infrastructure would draw from its own stores of fuel, spares, ordnance, even minerals to produce its own spares - maybe even some form of automated orbital ordnance factories (expensive but no manning requirements). If those stores were depleted, the orbital infrastructure would draw on the population below.

If there is no population below, the 'orbital' infrastructure would effectively become 'deep space infrastructure' and could still function on its own resources.

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.

Because stations can be joined together, you could build them at the capital and ship them out in pieces.

« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 05:55:01 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 
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Offline 83athom

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #191 on: October 17, 2016, 06:33:05 PM »
THANK YOU! Oh happy days.  :D Been waiting for that for so long. Time to build Freeground Station (once the update hits).
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Offline baconholic

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #192 on: October 17, 2016, 11:05:00 PM »
This talk about orbital infrastructures having their own stockpile reminded me of a bug I ran into in my current campaign. I used genetic modification center on Earth to create sub species to inhabit the Antarctica and underwater. This put multiple pops on the same system body.

The game will select a random pop from the same system body when trying to perform operations like routine ship maintenance. This will create a problem when you have orbital maintenance modules giving all the pop ability to repair ships, however they can't do it because some of them lack the minerals. Worst of all, the pop that it tries to pull resources from keep on changing, making it a micromanagement nightmare.

Does having multiple resource stockpile on the same system body have any game play benefits? They are on the same body after all, shouldn't they just share a single stockpile?
 

Offline bitbucket

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #193 on: October 18, 2016, 12:13:28 AM »
This talk about orbital infrastructures having their own stockpile reminded me of a bug I ran into in my current campaign. I used genetic modification center on Earth to create sub species to inhabit the Antarctica and underwater. This put multiple pops on the same system body.

The game will select a random pop from the same system body when trying to perform operations like routine ship maintenance. This will create a problem when you have orbital maintenance modules giving all the pop ability to repair ships, however they can't do it because some of them lack the minerals. Worst of all, the pop that it tries to pull resources from keep on changing, making it a micromanagement nightmare.

Does having multiple resource stockpile on the same system body have any game play benefits? They are on the same body after all, shouldn't they just share a single stockpile?

This problem has...annoyed me a bit too in my current game, since I have several sizeable (>25m, so civilian shipping will pick them up and ship them out) genetically modified populations on Earth. Eventually I just ended up building a huge maintenance orbital station, towing it out to Luna, shipping up fuel and minerals, and having my non-commercial ships do all their maintenance out there. -_-
« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 12:23:41 AM by bitbucket »
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #194 on: October 18, 2016, 03:18:57 AM »
BTW a side effect of the concept of putting all logistics into space is that it makes space-based 'populations' much easier. In effect, the ground-based element of a colony becomes the supply source of the orbital infrastructure (infrastructure in this case meaning orbital dockyards, fuelling and cargo hubs, ordnance transfer facilities, barracks, etc.).

The orbital infrastructure would draw from its own stores of fuel, spares, ordnance, even minerals to produce its own spares - maybe even some form of automated orbital ordnance factories (expensive but no manning requirements).

This vision does have one conceptual weakness though. It makes sense to combine the orbital shipyards with these logistics stations in space.

But where do the shipyard workers live?

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.


Another conceptual change that makes sense is mass drivers would logically connect to the space station rather then the ground populations, at least for bigger gravity wells with atmospheres, where it doesn't make sense to have them on the ground. For asteroids and smaller moons without atmospheres though they should probably be on the ground.

Would these components be interchangeable and be possible to put both on the ground and in orbit?

Should there be more such components?

Alot of thought needed here I think to get a good system that makes sense.

« Last Edit: October 18, 2016, 03:21:37 AM by alex_brunius »