C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[QuakeIV]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

This is also something I would support... it should take a considerable effort to terraform really inhospitable planets.

At least I think it would make a bit more sense and be fun at the same time.

[Scandinavian]

Alternatively, restrict in some meaningful way the number of "conscripts" you can press into naval service. Right now you have an unlimited pool of perfectly functional merchant mariners. If the crew requirements for those modules were made actually meaningful, it would impose a real constraint. It could be as simple as having a separate pool of merchant mariners in addition to the naval crew pool, and refill the merchant mariner pool from various economic activities, such as spaceports, shipyards, civilian mining complexes, civilian trade goods deliveries, maintenance facilities, etc.

That way you would still have the distinction between expensive naval crews and cheaper civilian crews, but to get the cheaper civilian crews you would have to maintain an actual space-based civilian society, not just a planetside society with a space navy and barely populated industrial platforms in space.

[jonw]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

This is also something I would support... it should take a considerable effort to terraform really inhospitable planets.

At least I think it would make a bit more sense and be fun at the same time.

I don't think habitat  modules make much sense - thats been specifically removed so that large orbital stations can be conviently build by planet industry, rather than shipyards. The orbital habitat module has been made cheaper, so you can still build orbitals if you want.

However, I've always thought thhere is a weird advantage over the ship terraforming modules rather than the planet modules. Planet terraforming modules require a very large amount of employees, but the ship terraforming modules have a minimal crew requirement. Transporting ground terraforming modules requires 125 000 cargo space, but building ship modules requires only like 100 crew and 25 000 hs. Consequently, I have never used planet terraforming modules and have always used ship terraforming modules, simply because it's easier to accumulate large numbers of them.

I'm not sure this is aproblem with the ship modules but rather than planet modules - if a ship terraforming installation can operate with 100 crew and much reduced physical volume, why does the planet module need to be so bulky and so population-intensive?

[Jorgen_CAB]

Alternatively, restrict in some meaningful way the number of "conscripts" you can press into naval service. Right now you have an unlimited pool of perfectly functional merchant mariners. If the crew requirements for those modules were made actually meaningful, it would impose a real constraint. It could be as simple as having a separate pool of merchant mariners in addition to the naval crew pool, and refill the merchant mariner pool from various economic activities, such as spaceports, shipyards, civilian mining complexes, civilian trade goods deliveries, maintenance facilities, etc.

That way you would still have the distinction between expensive naval crews and cheaper civilian crews, but to get the cheaper civilian crews you would have to maintain an actual space-based civilian society, not just a planetside society with a space navy and barely populated industrial platforms in space.

I have always been a proponent of commercial ships to have a maintenance cost in terms of wealth (say 1/10t of its production cost in wealth per year). This is a cost you would pay the same way you pay other types of facilities worked by populations. So it would just be a monthly cost no matter where the ships are and a simple way of putting some restriction on your commercial fleets. If you wanted to make it a bit more complicated then just apply the cost when the ships are in actual use.

I simply don't like the fact there are NO cost after you constructed them other than using fuel.

This way you don't have to deal with maintenance logistics for your commercial fleets but you will need to pay for their crews work and running maintenance performed by their crews.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

This is also something I would support... it should take a considerable effort to terraform really inhospitable planets.

At least I think it would make a bit more sense and be fun at the same time.

I don't think habitat  modules make much sense - thats been specifically removed so that large orbital stations can be conviently build by planet industry, rather than shipyards. The orbital habitat module has been made cheaper, so you can still build orbitals if you want.

However, I've always thought thhere is a weird advantage over the ship terraforming modules rather than the planet modules. Planet terraforming modules require a very large amount of employees, but the ship terraforming modules have a minimal crew requirement. Transporting ground terraforming modules requires 125 000 cargo space, but building ship modules requires only like 100 crew and 25 000 hs. Consequently, I have never used planet terraforming modules and have always used ship terraforming modules, simply because it's easier to accumulate large numbers of them.

I'm not sure this is aproblem with the ship modules but rather than planet modules - if a ship terraforming installation can operate with 100 crew and much reduced physical volume, why does the planet module need to be so bulky and so population-intensive?

But there is a problem here... requiring population to run terraforming installations is not completely irrational to implement as would it be for maintenance facilities. If they need population to run ON a planet they would need them in space to. If not you should be able to build automated ground based facilities too... it simply make little sense.

In my opinion the logistical compromises to require population is the more fun option... but you could also offer an automated solution for space but it needs to be allot more expensive, as in more expensive than using a habitat and a maintenance module, at least twice that price or something. Population can be a serious resource constraint eventually, often sooner rather than later.

[Father Tim]

I have always been a proponent of commercial ships to have a maintenance cost in terms of wealth (say 1/10t of its production cost in wealth per year). This is a cost you would pay the same way you pay other types of facilities worked by populations. So it would just be a monthly cost no matter where the ships are and a simple way of putting some restriction on your commercial fleets. If you wanted to make it a bit more complicated then just apply the cost when the ships are in actual use.

I simply don't like the fact there are NO cost after you constructed them other than using fuel.

This way you don't have to deal with maintenance logistics for your commercial fleets but you will need to pay for their crews work and running maintenance performed by their crews.

No.  I think that's a terrible idea.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

Sure, absolutely. . .  as long as government-owned 'civilian' vessels like freighters and colony ships and fuel harvesters, etc., also generate wealth over time at least equal to the proposed cost.

What I simply don't like is the ridiculous wealth and infrastructure-generation of shipping lines, or the outright theft performed by CMCs.  The ridiculous profitability of the Earth-Luna run and the near-ubiquity of starting in Sol sytem distorts the 'wealth picture' of Aurora to the point where a game not using such exploits suffers.  Case in point, C#'s new wealth cap added to handle the 'conventional start to TNE conversion' massive boom-bust-echo swing is not only utterly unneeded in my games, but a huge handicap.  Why?  Because I build imperial freighters and colony ships, never build mass drivers, ship all my minerals (and most of everything else) by imperial freighter, ruthlessly claim every mining spot, never subsidise shipping lines, and most of all because I always start in a custom system and never with an easily habitable moon in orbit of my homeworld.  My empires never have enough wealth, and the only thing that stops a massive crash ten years into space is the cushion built up during converntioanl to TNE conversion.

Having broken my game with a system I don't like (the ridiculous amount of money generated by shippping lines), you now propose to double-punish my empire by (one) taking more of the wealth I never have enough of because I use imperial shipping instead of exploiting civiilians for (two) the express purpose of implementing imperial shippping costs.

- - - -

Here's my counter suggestion:  Remove all wealth generation from commercial shipping, and implement costs for moving government items in commercial hulls.  You want those Auto-Mines on Ithaca III?  Then do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

[Father Tim]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

I think that would be pretty terrible.  My number one priority with terraforming modules would be to reduce the amount of workers required.  Risking fifty or one hundred thousand lives over a deadly planet seems insane.

Auto-Mines give us an excellent template.  I mentioned terraforming because it is the most egregious offender -- TF modules are better in every way than TF installations.  Even if the modules had twice the cost, twice the size, twice the worker requirement, and twice anything else we could think of they would STILL be the obvious choice, simply because TF installations can't be moved.

C# Aurora should absolutely rationalize all installation / unmanned installation / module options along a single system.  Extrapolate terraformers and fuel harvesters from the Mine / AutoMine / Asteroid Mining Module relationship.

[Father Tim]

Alternatively, restrict in some meaningful way the number of "conscripts" you can press into naval service. Right now you have an unlimited pool of perfectly functional merchant mariners. If the crew requirements for those modules were made actually meaningful, it would impose a real constraint. It could be as simple as having a separate pool of merchant mariners in addition to the naval crew pool, and refill the merchant mariner pool from various economic activities, such as spaceports, shipyards, civilian mining complexes, civilian trade goods deliveries, maintenance facilities, etc.

That way you would still have the distinction between expensive naval crews and cheaper civilian crews, but to get the cheaper civilian crews you would have to maintain an actual space-based civilian society, not just a planetside society with a space navy and barely populated industrial platforms in space.

So you would like to literally limit my fun to some arbitrary number that you (or, I suppose, the community) consider appropriate.  We currently have a system that represents 'minimally trained' personnel and you want to cap it.

So my 'Age of Sail in space' campaign -- where it is a fundamental part of the fiction (history) that people are literally kidnapped off the street and imprisoned on the ships to crew them, where every reference (fiction and non-fiction alike) describes how these people need to be led by the hand to the line in question and told when to pull it -- this campaign is no longer possible because I'm not allowed to have enough untrained crew.

What about the ever-popular 'space vagabond' or 'Battlestar Galactica' campaigns, where the goal is for eveything the empire possesses to be mobile?  Mine the heck out of a system then move on, all while housing & working the population in as many orbital habitats as necessary, plus a thousand or so freighters to move the research labs & military academies & ground force training facilities and other non-space-based installations.  How exactly can they function if crew numbers are capped by the (non-existent) spaceports & CMCs?

Or a fungal, robotic, or insectoid hivemind (such as Rabid_Cog's Swarm) where absolutely every crewmember is a Conscript because that's what the ficiton calls for.  When the premise is literally every member of the race in question can adequately -- but not optimally -- perform the job of 'spacecraft crew'.

- - - -

If an empire wnats more trained crew, they should build more academies (and/or lower the racial training level).  If you think Conscripts at -10% efficiency are too powerful, feel free to lobby Steve for Planetlubbers at -20 or 25% efficiency. . .  or whatever other number(s) you find appropriate.  But please don't force my roleplaying to live by your ideas of what's appropriate.

[Father Tim]

Research Labs vs Research Facilities
=======================

Currently, Research is performed by installations that are twenty times the size, twenty times the cost, and employ twenty times teh manpower of other installaions.  Most problematically, they produce ZERO effect if 95% complete.

Because of their increased size, they are generally moved from colony to colony in chunks of X twentieths.  Rare is the empire that builds superfreighters to carry 20 mines/automines/factories/etc. or one complete Research Facility.  And common (or so it seems) is the bug that causes some tiny fraction of a Research Facility to go missing, resulting in some SM shenanigans to sort it all out.

My suggestion is to add a new installation: the Research Lab.  The Research Lab would be the same size, cost, and worker requirement as one-twentieth of a Research Facility.  It would also produce one twentieth of the research points, and count as one-twentieth of the amount a Scientist could oversee.*

.

*Along with this change, I would also advocate to redefine the Scientist's admin rating in terms of the 1/20th size labs, rather than the larger Research Facilities.

[Father Tim]

Fractional Installations
==============

Currently, 1.75 mines produce exactly the same output as 1 mine. . . or 1.01, or 1.99, etc.  As a result, any glitch that occurs in construction, movement (loading or unloading), or otherwise effectively causes an entire installation to disappear.  We also have the problem that some larger installations need a single LARGE cargo hold to move them, while others can be shipped piecemeal.

I would like to rationalize this system, and allow any portion of any installation (that can be moved) to be shipped in whatever amount of cargo points is appropriate, and allow partial installations to funciton at partial efficiency.

Yes, at its worst this means one three-quarters of a Research Facility could be on Earth, under the supervision of Reed Richards, and looking into visible light lasers while the other quarter is on Mars, under the supervision of Viktor von Doom, and looking into Ion Drive Engines.  I'm okay with that.

I think the benefit of having two-thirds of a factory still producing something is worth the cost of probably never realizing the other third was 'lost in space' due to a freighter hiccup.

It will also help with the situation where one freighter carying a piece of a large installation is lost to accident or enemy action.  Currently, Aurora is a royal pain to deal with when the Bugs blew up 3/20ths of a Research Facility and now you have to build 0.15 RF and ship it to the colony with other 85%.  In fact, it's enough of a pain that I usually just SM it in.

I would also like it if 'less than one' of an installation would still function at its reduced rate.  So 0.15 of a Military Academy turns out crew per production cycle at 0.15 of its annual rate.  (The computer can handle the math.)  This way I can have 'small academies' or 'casual mines' or 'cottage industry' by deliberately building fractions of installations.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I have always been a proponent of commercial ships to have a maintenance cost in terms of wealth (say 1/10t of its production cost in wealth per year). This is a cost you would pay the same way you pay other types of facilities worked by populations. So it would just be a monthly cost no matter where the ships are and a simple way of putting some restriction on your commercial fleets. If you wanted to make it a bit more complicated then just apply the cost when the ships are in actual use.

I simply don't like the fact there are NO cost after you constructed them other than using fuel.

This way you don't have to deal with maintenance logistics for your commercial fleets but you will need to pay for their crews work and running maintenance performed by their crews.

No.  I think that's a terrible idea.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

Sure, absolutely. . .  as long as government-owned 'civilian' vessels like freighters and colony ships and fuel harvesters, etc., also generate wealth over time at least equal to the proposed cost.

What I simply don't like is the ridiculous wealth and infrastructure-generation of shipping lines, or the outright theft performed by CMCs.  The ridiculous profitability of the Earth-Luna run and the near-ubiquity of starting in Sol sytem distorts the 'wealth picture' of Aurora to the point where a game not using such exploits suffers.  Case in point, C#'s new wealth cap added to handle the 'conventional start to TNE conversion' massive boom-bust-echo swing is not only utterly unneeded in my games, but a huge handicap.  Why?  Because I build imperial freighters and colony ships, never build mass drivers, ship all my minerals (and most of everything else) by imperial freighter, ruthlessly claim every mining spot, never subsidise shipping lines, and most of all because I always start in a custom system and never with an easily habitable moon in orbit of my homeworld.  My empires never have enough wealth, and the only thing that stops a massive crash ten years into space is the cushion built up during converntioanl to TNE conversion.

Having broken my game with a system I don't like (the ridiculous amount of money generated by shippping lines), you now propose to double-punish my empire by (one) taking more of the wealth I never have enough of because I use imperial shipping instead of exploiting civiilians for (two) the express purpose of implementing imperial shippping costs.

- - - -

Here's my counter suggestion:  Remove all wealth generation from commercial shipping, and implement costs for moving government items in commercial hulls.  You want those Auto-Mines on Ithaca III?  Then do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you.

To be honest I don't think that one specific style of play is a good argument for this rather than "fixing" general game balance in regards to civilian trade etc...

Trade in C# have changed so trading in the same system are not as profitable as it once was, so there are some measures of fixing done to that.

There actually is a real issue with being able to build and use something which have no related cost to it... I don't think the cost should be enormous... just enough so you can't spam a commercial fleet and stations without ANY support cost. I don't think that freighters or fuel ships will be very expensive... I would rather target things like terraforming stations, habitats and maintenance facilities that require no population to actually have a cost.

You also would need to pay the merchant marine and do some rudimentary maintenance on ships and neither can be free.

The exact cost would be about balance.

[jonw]

...My number one priority with terraforming modules would be to reduce the amount of workers required.
...TF modules are better in every way than TF installations.  Even if the modules had twice the cost, twice the size, twice the worker requirement, and twice anything else we could think of they would STILL be the obvious choice, simply because TF installations can't be moved.

Agreed

[Jorgen_CAB]

I personally think it would be pretty awesome if you had to build orbital habitat facilities into the mobile terraformers to meet their personnel requirements and keep them running.  Then you could have these truly massive vehicles you have to fly around in order to transform the atmospheres of entire worlds, which kindof makes sense to me personally.

Ostensibly you might even be able to go on the cheap and overpopulate them, so if its your style you can have cheaper orbital terraformers that have to have garrisons to keep the angry populations in check.

e: If that kind of operation were necessary to terraform a world, it would certainly make naturally habitable worlds a lot more valuable than they are now.

I think that would be pretty terrible.  My number one priority with terraforming modules would be to reduce the amount of workers required.  Risking fifty or one hundred thousand lives over a deadly planet seems insane.

Auto-Mines give us an excellent template.  I mentioned terraforming because it is the most egregious offender -- TF modules are better in every way than TF installations.  Even if the modules had twice the cost, twice the size, twice the worker requirement, and twice anything else we could think of they would STILL be the obvious choice, simply because TF installations can't be moved.

C# Aurora should absolutely rationalize all installation / unmanned installation / module options along a single system.  Extrapolate terraformers and fuel harvesters from the Mine / AutoMine / Asteroid Mining Module relationship.

Given that ground based terraforming installation will require 250.000 people in C# why would ANYONE build them and NOT terraforming stations in space (as you pointed out)?

I wonder where the choice in this equation actually lies unless the space based ones are extremely more expensive to build.

So what should be done to "fix" the situation... scrap ground based installations?!?

[Father Tim]

There actually is a real issue with being able to build and use something which have no related cost to it... I don't think the cost should be enormous... just enough so you can't spam a commercial fleet and stations without ANY support cost. I don't think that freighters or fuel ships will be very expensive... I would rather target things like terraforming stations, habitats and maintenance facilities that require no population to actually have a cost.

You also would need to pay the merchant marine and do some rudimentary maintenance on ships and neither can be free.

The exact cost would be about balance.

Okay, but you're defining imperial wealth generation as 'every centicredit collected' and then complaining that salaries and supplies aren't accounted for, and I'm defining wealth as what the government has left over after paying for all thise things.  Neither one of us is more right than the other.

In your view, the merchant marine & space 'infrastructure' is a net drain on imperial coffers, and therefore should cost increasing wealth as it expands.

I counter that those things can be a net gain for "the economy", and that the wealth Aurora shows us is profit after paying for those things you are complaining aren't being paid for.  I say that Aurora is simply not line-item listing that it's paying for them.

- - - -

But really, your point seems to be "you can't spam a commercial fleet and stations without ANY support cost."  And whether -- or to what extent -- that is true I say depends on the empire's overall financial situation.  Which means it should be debated alongside that overall financial situation.  Your point (as I understand it) is essentially "Aurora empires have too much wealth; here's how I would reduce it."  My point is "Aurora empires only have 'too much wealth' due to exploiting commercial shippping.  If epires don't do that, they in fact do not have enough wealth."

You're right, I can't spam a commercial fleet, as hard as I try, because I can't afford it without the large wealth boost of exploiting commercial shippping lines.

- - - -

To ruthlessly summarize all of the recent posts, I think it is a fundamental part of Aurora's DNA to present the player with the choice of the cheap, worker intensive installation (e.g. Mine); the expensive, low- (or no-) manpower version (e.g. AutoMine); and the restricted (perhaps less efficient) ship-mounted module (e.g. Asteroid Miner) that has the benefit of high mobility.