C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[Jorgen_CAB]

Not at the moment. You may not want your allies to purchase your fuel, so it would have to be optional. If I go down that route, I might consider having some form of trading where you offer items for sale (including fuel, minerals, installations, ships, etc.) for either money or minerals and set the acceptable level of relations for the trade.

Something I often do in SM is to trade ship components or missiles. It seems logical to not buy a whole ship if your ally have superior engines & missiles, but instead just the parts you need.

This happens allot in my games to... sometimes factions may license build certain components as well so I gift the technology and have some other trade going on.

It would be allot easier of there were some more official mechanic for this in the game, but SM otherwise works ok for me.

[MarcAFK]

Could be setup where you designate items that could be traded but then have to wait for civilian shipping to actually pick up and deliver the goods before you get revenue.

[TMaekler]

Not at the moment. You may not want your allies to purchase your fuel, so it would have to be optional. If I go down that route, I might consider having some form of trading where you offer items for sale (including fuel, minerals, installations, ships, etc.) for either money or minerals and set the acceptable level of relations for the trade.

Something I often do in SM is to trade ship components or missiles. It seems logical to not buy a whole ship if your ally have superior engines & missiles, but instead just the parts you need.

This happens allot in my games to... sometimes factions may license build certain components as well so I gift the technology and have some other trade going on.

It would be allot easier of there were some more official mechanic for this in the game, but SM otherwise works ok for me.

Agreed. Nations do develop variations of their weapon systems for the international market. Would definitely be interesting to have that as an ingame option rather then having to do it via SM mode... . Also, could open up an interesting way for strength through alliance; each nation going into a specific direction research-wise. On the other side, that could be misused as well... .

[Rich.h]

Couldn't recall if this has been mentioned before. Will ship name lists be handled in the same way or will we be able to have multiple class name lists in one file, at present it can get somewhat clumsy having to constantly keep various copies of a shipnames.txt for each class.

[DEEPenergy]

Hi Steve. Are you planning any big changes to diplomacy?

[Desdinova]

How does boarding combat fit in with the new ground combat changes? I love boarding enemy ships, although I do hate that it's locked behind a ton of research points in VB6 (assault infantry -> marine bn -> marine company + combat drop (company) is something ridiculous like 30,000 RP). Is it harder/easier in C#? Can you build marines from the get-go?

[Garfunkel]

All unit sizes are available from the get-go, because there are no longer battalions/companies/brigades/divisions. What unit sizes players use is entirely up to them. Marines are infantry with the boarding combat special ability and all special abilities are also available from the get-go, if I'm remembering it correctly. So you can create a power-armour marines with genetic enhancements and personal weaponry and deploy them in squads of ten if you want. You don't need the boarding combat special ability either, but it makes things easier. Since the size of boarding units is restricted - you can't hardly expect to drop 10k grunts - it's better to have them be as high quality units as possible. You can have them board a ship with their own HQ as well, to get more combat bonuses.

Here are some relevant quotes and screenshot:

The smallest troop transport bay is 100 tons or 120 tons with drop capability included, so you can make very small (fighter-sized) ships to drop off small formations.

Is this a new type of transport specifically for boarding or has it always been like this and I just never noticed?

It is a new type - discussed in some of the C# threads but not in the changes list yet.

Based on comments above and my own play test, I have changed how HQ capacity works. Instead of multiple HQ components, there is now a single component with a configurable capacity (similar to STO in principle).

You select the HQ component and then type in the required capacity. The component cost is Capacity / 2500 and the component size is Capacity / 50 with a max of 500 tons. There is no limit on cost.

Because of this configurable aspect, the HQ can only be placed in the primary slot for those units with multiple slots.

Note the BOARDING COMBAT special ability, only for infantry, on the top right segment:


Post about Genetic Enhancement: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg112049#msg112049

The game mechanic for Boarding Combat: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg111751#msg111751

Also, one thing to keep in mind is that the research cost for Maximum Engine Power Modifier has been halved, so it's easier/cheaper now to research high-speed, boosted engines for your boarding shuttles.

[Steve Walmsley]

How does boarding combat fit in with the new ground combat changes? I love boarding enemy ships, although I do hate that it's locked behind a ton of research points in VB6 (assault infantry -> marine bn -> marine company + combat drop (company) is something ridiculous like 30,000 RP). Is it harder/easier in C#? Can you build marines from the get-go?

Boarding combat details are here. It is cheaper in RP terms than VB6.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg111751#msg111751

[Garfunkel]

Question regarding the new custom tailored-to-fit HQs, does their capacity (size wise) need to include the HQ itself? Or is it sufficient that a HQ capacity is enough for the other units in a formation? If it's the former, it can get tricky calculating the necessary size.

In addition to this, can HQ capacity be changed on the fly in-game, or does the old HQ need to be swapped with a new HQ that has an increased capacity?

[Whitecold]

Not at the moment. You may not want your allies to purchase your fuel, so it would have to be optional. If I go down that route, I might consider having some form of trading where you offer items for sale (including fuel, minerals, installations, ships, etc.) for either money or minerals and set the acceptable level of relations for the trade.

Something I often do in SM is to trade ship components or missiles. It seems logical to not buy a whole ship if your ally have superior engines & missiles, but instead just the parts you need.

This happens allot in my games to... sometimes factions may license build certain components as well so I gift the technology and have some other trade going on.

It would be allot easier of there were some more official mechanic for this in the game, but SM otherwise works ok for me.

Agreed. Nations do develop variations of their weapon systems for the international market. Would definitely be interesting to have that as an ingame option rather then having to do it via SM mode... . Also, could open up an interesting way for strength through alliance; each nation going into a specific direction research-wise. On the other side, that could be misused as well... .

The interesting implication would be what happens if an alliance breaks down. To what extend can you service the foreign designed parts? I would be very wary though if a nation can completely skip techs, unless the entire maintenance is done by foreign specialists. Which could lead to interesting situations in proxy wars.

[Barkhorn]

Some more boarding questions.  I'm also curious to know how these work in VB6 as well:

If a ship is destroyed during boarding combat, can the marines use escape pods, or are they doomed?

If a ship is captured, how do I get the marines out?  The ship probably didn't have troop-transport modules.

[Steve Walmsley]

Question regarding the new custom tailored-to-fit HQs, does their capacity (size wise) need to include the HQ itself? Or is it sufficient that a HQ capacity is enough for the other units in a formation? If it's the former, it can get tricky calculating the necessary size.

In addition to this, can HQ capacity be changed on the fly in-game, or does the old HQ need to be swapped with a new HQ that has an increased capacity?

It includes the HQ Unit. I've been doing this with test campaigns and it hasn't been a problem. The HQ is usually 2-3% of the total.

You can't change an HQ unit but you can swap it for a different one.

[Garfunkel]

I'm building an Excel sheet to ease the problem of creating formations and fiddling with their unit numbers, and one of the things that I'm aiming for is to have a semi-realistic chain of command from company to division level, and eventually corps/army/army group. That means that each formation needs its own, custom-tailored HQ unit as formation sizes can vary wildly. But I guess it's still helpful if the sheet doesn't include the HQ itself, since that way I'll at least get rough sizes and then just throw 2-3% on top for good measure.

[mtm84]

HQs are "command value divided by 50, plus the base unit size" large, to a maximum size of 500.  An infantry HQ with 5000 command value would be sized 100.  Not hard to account for in excel.  I use a big list of pre-made HQ units, but calculating for each formation so you can see it change on the fly wouldn't be hard either.

[Garfunkel]

Yes but an infantry company is different size than an armoured company so I wouldn't wan't to use the same HQ for both since it would be overkill for the former. Similarly, I will most likely use all 9 possible levels of HQs that C# allows (company-battalion-regiment-brigade-division-corps-army-army group-theatre) and each one will have different size requirement. So I'll be having loads of different HQ units. It's not too difficult if I set the composition of every formation in stone before I start a game, but what if I want to experiment with different compositions? Especially because if the size of a particular company changes, it affects the size of every larger formation that includes those companies, which affects every HQ on every level as well.