Tactical Intelligence

[Kurt (OP)]

Steve -  

I don't know if I am not understanding how the Tactical Intelligence window works, or if it is not working correctly, or if it is working correctly and is just cumbersome.  

This is for my 6 Powers campaign, which is using version 3.11.  For the most part I ignore the tactical intelligence screen, because I have five major powers in constant contact, and keeping the intelligence screen updated would take too much time.  When I get ready to fight a battle, that is when I update the intelligence screen as follows:
1.  I acivate at least one active sensor for at least one five second interval;
2.  After the sensor is activated I open the tactical intelligence screen, select the appropriate race (the anticipated opponent), then begin looking through the classes listed there for the entries which contain current contacts;
3.  Once I find current contacts I then rename the class to an appropriate name which will reflect what the race actually knows about the contact, and which will be useful on the system map screen.  For example, for the Japanese I might name the Soviet Kirov class cruisers "Sov CA";
4.  Once I've named the class, I renumber the contacts using the new name, so that the contacts will show up on the system map as Sov CA-001, and so on.

This works fairly well, and in the past it hasn't taken much time to rename the classes and the ships, however, I've kind of run into a problem.  I followed the above procedure for two of the human governments to prepare for a battle, but after step 1 when I began step 2 I found numerous single ship classes listed on the Tactical Intelligence window, and only a few classes with multple ships listed.  This in spite of the fact that the government I was looking at had only four classes of warships in current contact with the enemy, and a few civilian ships in orbit over earth.  Maybe six or seven classes of ships in all, but the other side had twenty-thirty contact classes listed, most with only a single ship for that class.  

Aurora is obviously listing ships of the same class as suspected different classes.  Is there any way I can merge classes on the Intelligence Window or force Aurora to identify them as the same class?

Kurt

[Erik L]

Could they be listed differently because some were moving, and others not?

[Kurt (OP)]

Could they be listed differently because some were moving, and others not?

No, they were grouped together in one large fleet, not moving.  I have found out, though, that if you give Aurora several time advances while the sensors are on, it will begin automatically identifying the contacts as the same class and will group them together.  So maybe that is the answer to my question - Aurora will do what I ask, but over time.  

Steve, I have another question/request, which you may have already resolved for more recent versions of Aurora.  My system map, when opened to Sol, is always very cluttered around Earth because of the fact that five major civilizations are centered on Earth and they have, between them, several hundred ships and PDC's.  This renders the system map useless when focused on Earth, or just less than useful, because there are so many contacts.  It would be nice if contacts were listed on the system map by task group, rather than individual ships, to remove the clutter.  

I know this is more complex than I think it is, but it is really difficult to deal with the system map when there are so many ships.  

Kurt

[SteveAlt]

Steve -  

I don't know if I am not understanding how the Tactical Intelligence window works, or if it is not working correctly, or if it is working correctly and is just cumbersome.  

This is for my 6 Powers campaign, which is using version 3.11.  For the most part I ignore the tactical intelligence screen, because I have five major powers in constant contact, and keeping the intelligence screen updated would take too much time.  When I get ready to fight a battle, that is when I update the intelligence screen as follows:
1.  I acivate at least one active sensor for at least one five second interval;
2.  After the sensor is activated I open the tactical intelligence screen, select the appropriate race (the anticipated opponent), then begin looking through the classes listed there for the entries which contain current contacts;
3.  Once I find current contacts I then rename the class to an appropriate name which will reflect what the race actually knows about the contact, and which will be useful on the system map screen.  For example, for the Japanese I might name the Soviet Kirov class cruisers "Sov CA";
4.  Once I've named the class, I renumber the contacts using the new name, so that the contacts will show up on the system map as Sov CA-001, and so on.

This works fairly well, and in the past it hasn't taken much time to rename the classes and the ships, however, I've kind of run into a problem.  I followed the above procedure for two of the human governments to prepare for a battle, but after step 1 when I began step 2 I found numerous single ship classes listed on the Tactical Intelligence window, and only a few classes with multple ships listed.  This in spite of the fact that the government I was looking at had only four classes of warships in current contact with the enemy, and a few civilian ships in orbit over earth.  Maybe six or seven classes of ships in all, but the other side had twenty-thirty contact classes listed, most with only a single ship for that class.  

Aurora is obviously listing ships of the same class as suspected different classes.  Is there any way I can merge classes on the Intelligence Window or force Aurora to identify them as the same class?

I'm not sure if you have the original TacIntel window or the updated one in v3.1. The original version has names like Alien Class #23 and Alien Race #600 and you have to manually assign contacts. The updated version assigns random names to classes, using system names for races and automatically assigns new contacts to the correct classes, or notifies you if you see a new ship, new class or new race. It sounds like the updated version but if you could confirm that it would be helpful. However, I haven't come across the problem you mentioned so it might also be the older version.

When a new ship is detected, the code checks to see if the detecting race already has a record of the associated class and, if so, assigns the ship to that class. Otherwise it creates a new one. This is done by comparing the ShipClassID on the Ship table to the ActualClassID on the AlienClass table. To check on the problem, open the AlienClass table and see what the ActualClassID is for the alien classes that appear to be duplicated.

Steve

[SteveAlt]

Could they be listed differently because some were moving, and others not?

No, they were grouped together in one large fleet, not moving.  I have found out, though, that if you give Aurora several time advances while the sensors are on, it will begin automatically identifying the contacts as the same class and will group them together.  So maybe that is the answer to my question - Aurora will do what I ask, but over time.

That is interesting, although I am not sure why multiple advances works while a single advance doesn't. The alien ship and class records are created at the moment that a ship is detected so other ships detected in the same phase should still match up.

Steve, I have another question/request, which you may have already resolved for more recent versions of Aurora.  My system map, when opened to Sol, is always very cluttered around Earth because of the fact that five major civilizations are centered on Earth and they have, between them, several hundred ships and PDC's.  This renders the system map useless when focused on Earth, or just less than useful, because there are so many contacts.  It would be nice if contacts were listed on the system map by task group, rather than individual ships, to remove the clutter.  

I know this is more complex than I think it is, but it is really difficult to deal with the system map when there are so many ships.  

Have you used the Hide IDs option? This will group ships of the same class in the same location into one contact line. You can also remove the non-active contacts using an option (assuming that option existed in v3.1).

Grouping contacts by task group would be tricky, not least because you would have no way to know which alien ships within the same location were in which fleet at that location. There must be other ways to make it more intelligent though. Perhaps some type of filter that allowed you to show only contacts of a particular alien race or class, or contacts within a certain size range.

Steve