C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[Bremen]

Last I checked, standard transits cause FC, sensor, shield, and command jam, leaving the jumper helpless.
It's much less time for squadron jumps, but i don't think they'll be moving immediately.
That said, squadron jumpers can already appear a ways off from the point, making it hard to intercept them in reasonable carronade range.
Considering that carronades are still literally just infrared lasers, and suffer the same fire rate penalties for capacitor tech per damage, you're probably just better off padding that tonnage with microwaves, mesons, railguns, etc instead. Same effective range, more effective damage per ton for the most part, unless a carronade alpha strike would put a meaningfully big hole in whatever you're hitting in one shot.

Standard transit does disable sensors and fire controls (not sure about shields), but it doesn't disable engines. So a ship that transits can (and in almost all cases, will) be departing the jump point at maximum speed before you can fire on it.

[alex_brunius]

I intend to stay with the current model for civilian shipping. I hope that the faster execution speed in C# Aurora will significantly reduce any slowdown from civilian shipping.

I think the current model works decently enough. Where I would like to see some more options is in government taxation and missions.

For example be able to temporary tax shipping lines heavier so their growth stagnate or they even are forced to sell off ships to not go into bankrupcy, or lower taxes to promote their long term growth.

Or maybe exempt new colonies from shipping tax to promote more shipping traffic.

Another mission Id like to see is the ability to "balance minerals" between two colonies or ship all minerals using civilians. For missions it could also be cool to be able to set higher rewards and have civilian shipping prioritize what runs will make them the most money.

[Person012345]

Carronades are pretty horrible weapons for JP defense barges, to be honest. The reason is that movement happens before weapons fire, so in the 5 second increment the enemy ships will move off the JP and because carronade falloff is so extreme, 1/(1+range/10,000km), even a relatively low speed ship will be taking a third or less damage from the carronades. And that shot is all you're going to get. If you want a slow ship that guards jump points, you're honestly probably best off with a bunch of box launcher missiles with very short (well, short for missiles, so still millions of km) ranges.

If you want to use carronades efficiently you need to be absolutely sure that they'll be firing from a range of less than 10,000 km, and that means putting them on fast ships.

Is there some meta reason we're assuming that jump point pickets have to be slow?

[Bremen]

Is there some meta reason we're assuming that jump point pickets have to be slow?

Just efficiency reasons. Fast pickets are generally a bad idea since it's expensive and no matter how fast you make them you can't be sure they'll be faster (or have better initiative) than whatever comes through.

[Person012345]

Just efficiency reasons. Fast pickets are generally a bad idea since it's expensive and no matter how fast you make them you can't be sure they'll be faster (or have better initiative) than whatever comes through.

It's not that expensive if they focus on it. I've used a planet-based FAC fleet as jumpgate pickets before and whilst that's not quite the same, I can certainly imagine building relatively small, relatively fast destroyers with cheap carronades to sit on a jump point and harrass whatever comes through. That being said, I have never really used carronades before as I've come to the same conclusions most people have that they're kinda useless overall, so I'm not sure how bulky they are and how feasible that specific idea is.

[iceball3]

Mainly fuel efficiency and maintenance efficiency, really.
Though, a Hangar stocked Battlewagen with good maintenance life to hold faster combat ships sounds like a good way to picket jump points, at least. Many folks just like slow monitors though due to the fact they can focus most of their build points on raw firepower.

[bean]

The scaling for the power plants seems a bit steep, although I very much like the basic idea.  Having the power/size scale by a factor of 2 over a factor of 4 in size is a lot.

[Garfunkel]

Is there some meta reason we're assuming that jump point pickets have to be slow?

I put forth the monitor thing. It works well enough in the specific scenario that I outlined, which for some reason got ignored. When you need to get cheap ships to guard a JP quickly, carronades are a good weapon system to put on cheap monitor hulls. You'll take out JG construction ships quickly as well as certain spoiler ships and surveyors and such. By the time you need to worry about multi task group assaults coming through, you should have a proper defence fleet waiting.

I wonder if the power plant changes are enough to make custom-tailoring reactors to each ship.

[Barkhorn]

If its possible, can we please have an option to have civilian shipping carry minerals?

It's odd to me that they can't carry everything player-owned ships can.

[mrwigggles]

Its probably more of an AI problem and maybe it was also a proformance consideration. Though yes, having them be able to move minerals would be grand.

[Barkhorn]

I was thinking just use the contract system.  If I can have them move automated mines for me, why not the products of those mines?

[Steve Walmsley]

I am currently working through the code for the various component designs (as you can probably tell from recent posts) and I have reached missile engines.

The new engine changes were intended to make all engine types (missile and ship) follow the same set of rules for size vs fuel efficiency. One impact of this change was that applying this new size modifier for fuel consumption would penalise missile engines. However, now I am in the missile engine code I have realised that the VB6 code applies a x5 modifier to fuel consumption for missile engines on top of the modifiers for size, fuel consumption tech and boost tech.

If I don't use this x5 modifier in C#, missile engines won't change very much in terms of fuel consumption vs VB6. The whole point of the changes was to have the same rules for all engines so if (for game play reasons) I wanted to keep the x5 modifier and reduce missile ranges, I need a reason for it. I think my original rationale was that missile engines were one use only and not designed for efficiency.

So maintain same rules for all engines and keep missile ranges as they are (and missile fuel a minor consideration) or keep the x5 modifier and make fuel a serious consideration for missiles.

Thoughts?

[Iranon]

Keep things consistent by default, add the 5x fuel consumption multiplier for engines boosted to more than your usual power multiplier (since those are pushed to something beyond reasonable by your current tech).

This has the added benefit of keeping the power multiplier tech line competitive (already easy to shoot onself in the foot by investing in it too much in VB6; that will become much more punishing).

[MagusXIX]

With the shield changes, I think I'm misunderstanding something.

If a HS10 shield is equivalent to the shields we currently have (100% of VB6 shields) and a HS40 shield is twice as strong (200% of VB6 shields), why would I ever use a HS40 shield when I could use 4x HS10 shields for twice the strength of a single HS40 shield and half the recharge time?

Recharge time is per shield module, right? So if I have 4 size 10 shield modules that each take 300s to charge, that's still just 300s to charge all 4 of them because all 4 are charging independently? Or is it 300s x 4 modules?

Recharge time aside, unless I've misread something it seems like 4x size 10 shield modules (1+1+1+1=4) is still twice as strong as 1x size 40 shield module (1 x 200% = 2.) Am I mistaken?

[Zincat]

Regarding the latest shield changes: I like them with one caveat.

It is great that they no longer require fuel (can be kept on indefinitely, makes them more useful as a defense measure). It is  great they are stronger the bigger they are. Once again, like for engines and generators, it makes sense that a bigger shield generator would have a bonus due to less miniaturization.

I am uncertain, however,  about the fact they recharge for the same fixed amount instead of a proportional amount. Coupled with the fact that larger shields are comparatively easier to destroy, it makes me wonder what the possible usage of large shields will be.

I feel that shield regeneration is very important in a prolonged fight. I don't know if the added shield strength is going to be enough to justify going with one large shield compared to 5 smaller shields which would regenerate a lot faster, and would be harder to kill off entirely.

So maintain same rules for all engines and keep missile ranges as they are (and missile fuel a minor consideration) or keep the x5 modifier and make fuel a serious consideration for missiles.

Thoughts?

My opinion is that missiles do need to be "shorter range" than before. Fuel cannot be irrelevant as it was before. The new fuel formula should have solved that, but now you have found out this bit of code you did not remember about.

Personally, I would still keep the x5 modifier. I think it's a much needed modifier, for gameplay balance reason between the various weapons. I can understand some might not like that, but there's a lot of other arbitrary choices that were made in this game obviously.

I do think that "make fuel a serious consideration for missiles" is a valid and reasonable thing to do. Because it IS so in real life as well, so I don't see why fuel should be irrelevant in Aurora.
Iranon's proposed solution would only work (somewhat) at low tech level, and would be not relevant anymore afterwards. So I would keep the x5 modifier.