Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions  (Read 345145 times)

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Offline MasonMac

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #645 on: November 03, 2018, 08:00:32 PM »
Casualties after ships go beyond their deployment time? Because I have this ship thats been out for 127 years and somehow it still has the same crew.
 

Offline Breadabix

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #646 on: November 04, 2018, 07:01:56 PM »
I would like to see the range of ship commands extended.  For example the survey nearest object order, it has a range of 10 billion km which in most circumstances is ok, then you come across a system where theres planets/asteroids, sometimes hundreds of them, that are 50 billion km away, sometimes more.  Maybe have this as something that is extended as you research better technology, and/or add more survey parts to a ship.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #647 on: November 04, 2018, 08:12:13 PM »
I would like to see the range of ship commands extended.  For example the survey nearest object order, it has a range of 10 billion km which in most circumstances is ok, then you come across a system where theres planets/asteroids, sometimes hundreds of them, that are 50 billion km away, sometimes more.  Maybe have this as something that is extended as you research better technology, and/or add more survey parts to a ship.

I'm pretty sure the 10 Terameter limit is a relic of VB6's performance issues.  C# Aurora's search algorithm can likely handle much longer distances, and may even have already been modified to do so.
 

Offline Tree

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #648 on: November 05, 2018, 02:42:51 AM »
Since we're on surveys, would it possible to add a "survey next five planets/moons" order? Sometimes there's just too many asteroids and I want to survey planets first, so I can't give the "5 bodies" order, but "survey nearest planet or moon" is noticeably slower if you go by 5-days turns. I guess once a ship finishes its survey order, it waits for the end of the 5 days increment to generate its new survey order, while the ships with "survey next five system bodies" have a list to go through and don't waste as much time.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #649 on: November 05, 2018, 03:15:04 AM »
I would like to see the range of ship commands extended.  For example the survey nearest object order, it has a range of 10 billion km which in most circumstances is ok, then you come across a system where theres planets/asteroids, sometimes hundreds of them, that are 50 billion km away, sometimes more.  Maybe have this as something that is extended as you research better technology, and/or add more survey parts to a ship.

I'm pretty sure the 10 Terameter limit is a relic of VB6's performance issues.  C# Aurora's search algorithm can likely handle much longer distances, and may even have already been modified to do so.

Performance isn't the main concern. With a much higher limit, geo survey ships potentially will go sailing off into the middle of nowhere and then run out of fuel. A better option might be for me to introduce a distance option for standing orders at the fleet level or perhaps have 'survey within 10m', 'survey within 25m', etc.
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #650 on: November 05, 2018, 03:16:07 AM »
Since we're on surveys, would it possible to add a "survey next five planets/moons" order? Sometimes there's just too many asteroids and I want to survey planets first, so I can't give the "5 bodies" order, but "survey nearest planet or moon" is noticeably slower if you go by 5-days turns. I guess once a ship finishes its survey order, it waits for the end of the 5 days increment to generate its new survey order, while the ships with "survey next five system bodies" have a list to go through and don't waste as much time.

OK, sounds like a good idea.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #651 on: November 05, 2018, 03:39:17 AM »
Since we're on surveys, would it possible to add a "survey next five planets/moons" order? Sometimes there's just too many asteroids and I want to survey planets first, so I can't give the "5 bodies" order, but "survey nearest planet or moon" is noticeably slower if you go by 5-days turns. I guess once a ship finishes its survey order, it waits for the end of the 5 days increment to generate its new survey order, while the ships with "survey next five system bodies" have a list to go through and don't waste as much time.
You can circumvent this easily by using 1-day turns and Auto-Turns ON options.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #652 on: November 05, 2018, 03:45:51 AM »
Steve.... did you give any more thoughts into changing the Jump Drive requirement and size of the jump ship?

I think there are many changes in favour of smaller ships and I think this could be one good change in favour of bigger ships. It sometimes feel a bit restrictive to build bigger ships at low to mid tech levels because you also need to match them with an equal ship to jump them through jump point. It would open up some more strategic possibilities if we could use smaller jump ships to ferry larger military ships to their destinations.

I mostly end up adding the cheapest things possible to these ships so they require as little build material possible unless I can make a proper command ship out of it. But with increasing size I run out of good command equipment to put in that ship and are left with hangar space to fill them out which is cheap and versatile.

But in general I would like the option to build dedicated jump ships without having to add stuff to it just to make it bigger.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #653 on: November 05, 2018, 03:53:16 AM »
Steve.... did you give any more thoughts into changing the Jump Drive requirement and size of the jump ship?

I think there are many changes in favour of smaller ships and I think this could be one good change in favour of bigger ships. It sometimes feel a bit restrictive to build bigger ships at low to mid tech levels because you also need to match them with an equal ship to jump them through jump point. It would open up some more strategic possibilities if we could use smaller jump ships to ferry larger military ships to their destinations.

I mostly end up adding the cheapest things possible to these ships so they require as little build material possible unless I can make a proper command ship out of it. But with increasing size I run out of good command equipment to put in that ship and are left with hangar space to fill them out which is cheap and versatile.

But in general I would like the option to build dedicated jump ships without having to add stuff to it just to make it bigger.

Although I haven't made the change yet, I think I am going to remove the ship size limitation and just go with jump drive capability.
 
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Offline Tree

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #654 on: November 05, 2018, 04:05:35 AM »
Since we're on surveys, would it possible to add a "survey next five planets/moons" order? Sometimes there's just too many asteroids and I want to survey planets first, so I can't give the "5 bodies" order, but "survey nearest planet or moon" is noticeably slower if you go by 5-days turns. I guess once a ship finishes its survey order, it waits for the end of the 5 days increment to generate its new survey order, while the ships with "survey next five system bodies" have a list to go through and don't waste as much time.
You can circumvent this easily by using 1-day turns and Auto-Turns ON options.
I don't know about others, but auto-turns are kinda painful for me to stop. Takes several tries everytime, and occasionally the system map window slips back behind every other window, it's not too bad if I set it to 2 minutes while NPRs are fighting and it ends up taking me 30 in-game minutes to finally manage to stop the autoturns, but with 1-day, I'd lose a lot of time.
Plus, IIRC, it's still slower for 5 1-day autoturns than a single 5 days turn.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #655 on: November 05, 2018, 04:49:45 AM »
Performance isn't the main concern. With a much higher limit, geo survey ships potentially will go sailing off into the middle of nowhere and then run out of fuel. A better option might be for me to introduce a distance option for standing orders at the fleet level or perhaps have 'survey within 10m', 'survey within 25m', etc.

Easily compensated with a 'refuel at 50%' conditional order.
 

Offline amram

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #656 on: November 05, 2018, 08:01:25 AM »
Some QoL improvements I haven't seen any mention of is a little more autonomy, especially for survey ships.  In my current game, I've just finished solidifying control over my local systems from some persistent and aggressive spoilers and can begin hunting down the NPR I started the game with.  To that end, I currently have over 70 survey ships in full swing and that number is growing.  Keeping them all busy, and ever expanding my horizons is rapidly becoming all I do from turn to turn.

A few things come to mind for ship movement automation and fuel to ease player workload in managing large numbers of ships with automated standing orders.
  • Keeping large fleets of surveyors is a lot of busywork.  You end up not running your empire so much as keeping the ships moving and getting fuel.  Like salvagers, could they gain a little autonomy in queuing up a movement to the next not-fully-surveyed system when the time comes if they have a survey next body order?  Just a transit order, no queued bodies until in system obviously.  Log the intent and if possible, transit accordingly.  Hey, you told me to keep surveying stuff, this system is done, that one isn't, so I'm going to go there, okay?

  • If all available survey tasks are completed, don't make me turn off standing orders to silence the ship, just complain once and fall quiet.  I'm only going to have to come back and turn the orders back on when I find a new system to survey anyways.  Again, just like salvagers, which silently await the next wreck despite standing orders that can't be completed if there are no wrecks around.  Rather than spamming I have no work! every increment, I'd much prefer a single Jobs Done! followed by them going back to work once there is something to do, without me needing to intervene.  Complain but not persistently if there is work, and it cannot be performed by any current design for some reason, like something to survey that is absurdly far away.

  • Auto insertion of refueling when necessary to complete an automated order queue - this would be very useful for all ships.  Checking if the design is even capable of getting there, from either the current position, or nearest fuel, if a fuel threshold will rescind the order before we get there from either current position or nearest fuel and if either case deny the move to avoid stranding the ship.  If we can reach it, check if we'll trigger a fuel conditional on arrival, if so go get fuel now and then queue the order, otherwise just queue the order.

    Something akin to https://pastebin.com/06YYdS9U

  • A small modification to the taskforces display, showing two more pieces of info, possibly near the time/distance to complete orders display.  Show both the fuel/range remaining at orders completion, and range to nearest fuel when at order completion.  I can compute it manually, but it would be far more useful for the game to indicate it to me.

  • If a target is unreachable for the design, given where the current fuel sources/tankers are, complain and move on.  Hey, there's a body I want to survey, I can't reach it, you might want to move a tanker to help me.  Periodically recheck if a fuel source close enough to allow reaching the target exists and queue when available, until then, move on and hit other targets.

  • Could the current behaviour of obliterating the current orders entirely when an automated refuel is triggered be changed to resume the current order after refueling?  Surveyors again come to mind as the most frequent occurrence of this.  They dip below the XX% threshold, it clears the orders, they go get fuel, and then complain they have no work to do, because the system with fuel is fully surveyed already....  Rather than simply obliterate the orders, re-queue them behind a refueling order.  This is not quite subsumed by preemptive refueling, player orders will still trigger the conditional, as might automated moves to a moving target.
 
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Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #657 on: November 05, 2018, 09:18:09 AM »
If they win and take over a population, could you give them all the same abilities as any other NPR, like building ships, training ground troops, and building colonies?
For roleplaying options, it might be most interesting of the SM can choose what kind of player it will become, when it happens. In a multiplayer game he can offer the new position to a potential new player who then plays them as a player - or if no interest, he can set them to NPR.
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #658 on: November 05, 2018, 09:34:31 AM »
Steve, in your posting "Tactical map in background" you wrote: "C# does not have a starting menu bar in the same way as C#." I think the latter C# was meant to be VB6... .
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #659 on: November 05, 2018, 09:41:27 AM »
Unrest should increase when unemployment rate is too high. People do want jobs! - Or if unemployment rises over a certain percentage, the civilian sector will begin employing those people into service industries. Takes them away from you if you later need them for production. However, if it switches around and you begin to have need of workers, and service industries do have more people empoloyed than they per game rules should have, they will (slowly) release those people which then will fill up your empty industries.

This would mostly be for cosmetics - maybe there should be a reasonable punishment for your "service overemployments" applied. But I have no idea at the moment what could be reasonable. Maybe people get lazy and the overall productivity reduces.