C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[Person012345]

as example?? 

Developing a broad-appeal game for a wide audience.

[alex_brunius]

Developing a broad-appeal game for a wide audience.

No not really... Game development in general is a horrible way to earn money just like music or arts. A top 1% or less get lucky and end up swimming in money ( minecraft/PUBG ) while the majority of developers struggle to make a living while working 12h days and weekends.

[Person012345]

No not really... Game development in general is a horrible way to earn money just like music or arts. A top 1% or less get lucky and end up swimming in money ( minecraft/PUBG ) while the majority of developers struggle to make a living while working 12h days and weekends.

But it's better than developing a niche game for a small audience. As far as making money  goes.

[alex_brunius]

But it's better than developing a niche game for a small audience. As far as making money  goes.

Depends. That's how minecraft started out...

Very few indie games or single man games aiming for a "broad-appeal game for a wide audience" get anywhere at all. They just become very bad clones of what the AAA devs already are doing 100 times better with 500 times more resources. To succeed with an indie game you need to make something unique ( like minecraft or Aurora ).

[StephR]

Has there been any discussion on possible changes to the way combat is controlled? I am specifically thinking about point defenses - it would be nice to be able to set a minimum engagement distance as well as a minimum salvo size.  So for instance, set your AMMs to only fire at incoming salvos that contain at least X number of missiles and are between Y and Z million km distant.

[Steve Walmsley]

Has there been any discussion on possible changes to the way combat is controlled? I am specifically thinking about point defenses - it would be nice to be able to set a minimum engagement distance as well as a minimum salvo size.  So for instance, set your AMMs to only fire at incoming salvos that contain at least X number of missiles and are between Y and Z million km distant.

That doesn't exist at the moment, but definitely could be added.

[Hazard]

I'd quote it directly linked to the originating comment, but there's a typo I spotted.

So a unit with 4 armour would be 50% more expensive with 6 armour.

This should probably be a unit with 6 armour would be 50% more expensive than a unit 4 armour.


Static units should probably get access to the entire arsenal. Given that they can carry/field STO defense guns weighing in at hundreds of tons per piece the guns that can be carried by super and ultra heavy vehicles should not be an issue. It also means that there's an effective response to super heavies and ultra heavies with their heaviest armour ratings that does not demand super heavies or ultra heavies of your own.

This would be balanced by static units not being useful on the offense.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'd quote it directly linked to the originating comment, but there's a typo I spotted.

This should probably be a unit with 6 armour would be 50% more expensive than a unit 4 armour.

"So a unit with 4 armour would be 50% more expensive with 6 armour."

It's not a typo as it is true as stated, but I agree it could be worded more clearly.

[Bremen]

Just a possible balance consideration, but light vehicles seem straight up better than static.

Now, I didn't miss that static can be fortified more. But the rules note that chance to hit is the base chance / fortification level, and in the same situation static shouldn't ever have more than twice the fortification of a light vehicle, whereas the base chance to hit the light vehicle is a quarter that of the static. So even assuming a 6 fortification static vs a 3 fortification vehicle, the vehicle has half the chance to be hit. Since it's proportional, this is true even on planets with fortification multipliers (ie on a mountain world it would just be fortification 12 static vs 6 light vehicle, and the vehicle would still have half the chance to be hit).

Unless the base chance to hit and fortification levels are supposed to be one or the other? It would make sense that a vehicle in a bunker couldn't use its speed to avoid fire, after all. I suppose it's also possible that static can use some components vehicles can't, but even in that case it would mean static are only practical when using those specific components.

Seems like the best way to address it might be to make the base size of Static units much lower, perhaps as low as 3. Since the size of the component is added to the unit and determines cost, this would make static units cheaper and easier to transport than light vehicles, but considerably more fragile (especially when not heavily fortified).

With size 3, that would make a static crew served antipersonnel gun size 15 and an equivalent vehicle size 24. All other things (such as armor) being equal, the static would cost 62.5% as much, a given transport could carry 60% more, and both would have the same firepower. However the static would take twice as much damage if both were at maximum fortification or 4x as much damage if they were not fortified at all, which seems a reasonable tradeoff. Or looking at it another way, for equal resources Static guns would have 1.6x the firepower and .8x the resilience at maximum fortification, or 1.6x the firepower and .4x the resilience with no fortification. Statistically, the advantage would get smaller with larger weapons.

At least, if I'm understanding the system right.

Edit: Looking at it I also think light vehicles might be straight up better than normal vehicles, since you're trading a 37.5% lower chance of being hit by every single attack for a 33% higher chance of surviving some hits (hp 4 instead of 3), though that's less clear and there may be other advantages to larger vehicles not clear from the post.

[Steve Walmsley]

Just a possible balance consideration, but light vehicles seem straight up better than static.

Now, I didn't miss that static can be fortified more. But the rules note that chance to hit is the base chance / fortification level, and in the same situation static shouldn't ever have more than twice the fortification of a light vehicle, whereas the base chance to hit the light vehicle is a quarter that of the static. So even assuming a 6 fortification static vs a 3 fortification vehicle, the vehicle has half the chance to be hit. Since it's proportional, this is true even on planets with fortification multipliers (ie on a mountain world it would just be fortification 12 static vs 6 light vehicle, and the vehicle would still have half the chance to be hit).

Unless the base chance to hit and fortification levels are supposed to be one or the other? It would make sense that a vehicle in a bunker couldn't use its speed to avoid fire, after all. I suppose it's also possible that static can use some components vehicles can't, but even in that case it would mean static are only practical when using those specific components.

Seems like the best way to address it might be to make the base size of Static units much lower, perhaps as low as 3. Since the size of the component is added to the unit and determines cost, this would make static units cheaper and easier to transport than light vehicles, but considerably more fragile (especially when not heavily fortified).

With size 3, that would make a static crew served antipersonnel gun size 15 and an equivalent vehicle size 24. All other things (such as armor) being equal, the static would cost 62.5% as much, a given transport could carry 60% more, and both would have the same firepower. However the static would take twice as much damage if both were at maximum fortification or 4x as much damage if they were not fortified at all, which seems a reasonable tradeoff. Or looking at it another way, for equal resources Static guns would have 1.6x the firepower and .8x the resilience at maximum fortification, or 1.6x the firepower and .4x the resilience with no fortification. Statistically, the advantage would get smaller with larger weapons.

At least, if I'm understanding the system right.

Edit: Looking at it I also think light vehicles might be straight up better than normal vehicles, since you're trading a 37.5% lower chance of being hit by every single attack for a 33% higher chance of surviving some hits (hp 4 instead of 3), though that's less clear and there may be other advantages to larger vehicles not clear from the post.

Light vehicles can only carry light armour and light components (light anti-tank, light bombardment, etc.). So a lot more things can kill a light vehicle and light vehicles would struggle to damage anything heavy. A static unit can mount heavy weapons, STO and CIWS.

For example, a heavy crew-served anti-personnel weapon (AP 2, Damage 1, Shots 6) would have about a 41% chance to kill a Light Vehicle (ARM 2, HP 3) vs 14% chance to kill a Vehicle (ARM 4, HP 4). A light anti-vehicle weapon would have 50% vs the light tank and 15% vs the medium tank. Against a heavier weapon (Heavy AV for example), the light vehicle actually has a slightly better survival rate. Having said that, the lighter vehicles are cheaper so a swarm strategy might work against light or medium vehicles. I do agree I was a little generous on the to hit modifier so I will reduce those a little.

You raise a good point about the fortification vs mobility. If a unit is fortified, it should not be able to use its mobility bonus. It will certainly be the case that for some units types in some terrain, using mobility is better than being fortified.

EDIT: I have reduced the mobility to hit modifiers and updated the rules post.

[Bremen]

I like the change where it's fortification or mobility, personally. Looking at it another way, one could think of the chance to hit multiplier as a sort of "minimum" fortification level. So infantry would have a minimum fortification of 1.66, light vehicles 2.5, etc. This both keeps fortified units from outperforming attackers by such a devastating margin (unless you attack someone with mostly static units, which I wouldn't recommend) and helps specialize units a bit; static units perform best when fortified by engineers, whereas light vehicles are almost as good on the offense as the defense and will make excellent shock troops for an invasion, and infantry and the heavier vehicles are fairly versatile. Though the different equipment options means you'll probably want at least some variety.

[Bremen]

Just giving it some more thought, and I had one question: Do weapons try to specifically target the units they're best against (ie anti-vehicle weapons targeting vehicles with the ideal armor for them to penetrate?). If you haven't settled on that yet, I have some advice that might sound odd. I think the answer should be "no".

As weird as it sounds that heavy anti-tank rounds should be occasionally killing single infantry, I think in practice it works out better, because otherwise it makes it inefficient to mix unit types.

As an example, lets say I invade with a thousand vehicles, and the enemy has 100 anti infantry weapons and 100 anti-vehicle weapons. The hundred anti-vehicle weapons will fire effectively, and the hundred anti-infantry weapons will fire at low efficiency. This works out to 50% of the weapons being efficient.

If I invade with 500 vehicles and 4500 infantry, then either the enemy weapons fire randomly, or they fire on good targets. If they fire on good targets, 100% of them are being efficient. If they fire randomly, then statistically 90 out of 100 anti-infantry weapons hit infantry and 10 out of 100 anti-vehicle weapons hit vehicles; in total, 50% of the weapons are being used efficiently, same as if the invasion was only vehicles.

Obviously the numbers are pretty made up, and in practice you'll probably want mixed armies for other reasons, but I think the general theory is sound; having weapons pick the best targets will make formations of mixed unit sizes much more vulnerable than formations of a single unit size.

Edit: Though thinking about it it might make sense to have units more or less likely to be targeted based on size, to keep it from being easy to clog up targeting with lots of cheap infantry. So against 1000 size 5 troops and 100 size 50 tanks, both would be equally likely to be targeted (since each tank would be 10x as likely to be targeted as each trooper).

[Hazard]

Weapons should generally target the units they are best at destroying; that's how they work in real life, after all. Generally speaking you don't use an AT missile on a squad of infantry, you may need that missile later in the same fight against their IFV or an actual tank after all.

Figuring out which weapon to use on which target at what time is a pretty complex thing though. Might just be easier for Steve to keep out of that mess.

[alex_brunius]

If there should be preferential targeting it might be a good place to add in mobility. An AT gun on a vehicle will be much better at targeting intended target due to it's mobility then a static (towed) or infantry AT weapon.

( Although this does get a bit weird when we use vehicles with multiple weapons, mobility won't help them target both Heavy tanks and Infantry at the same time with 2 different weapon types ).

[King-Salomon]

Weapons should generally target the units they are best at destroying; that's how they work in real life, after all. Generally speaking you don't use an AT missile on a squad of infantry, you may need that missile later in the same fight against their IFV or an actual tank after all.

Figuring out which weapon to use on which target at what time is a pretty complex thing though. Might just be easier for Steve to keep out of that mess.

I have to agree - on the other side, it would be a nice "new skill" for ground commanders to influence the ratio of the "best unit fired upon"