Aurora II

[ardem]

I like the idea of this as well, what you can also do is have a small variance in the outcome of these civilian contracts on research, where the performance might be slightly better or worse then expected outcome.

With my implemented research I give them company names, just for a bit of RPGing
(I tend to think implemented is the final design and theoretical is the stage before e.g Ion Engine, theoretical, Ion Engine E.7 A1, implemented)

I think implemented should be corporate but theroical should be government/uni's like it is really now.

[UnLimiTeD]

I just thought a while about missiles and I think something needs to change.
Nowadays, most missiles have some implemented guidance system, especially of the smaller kind.
In Aurora, though, this is not the case as Sensors take plenty of space that could be used for something else, and warhead size actually matters.
So I figured that this would be a possibility to improve on in the next installment, by differentiating between pure FC and FC+Sensor.
A missile could be build to still require sensor coverage from the big ships, but find it's way into the target automatically.
This could also be used for advanced tactics, like marker beacons to be shot at enemy smegs to still find them.
Also, currently, a Firecontrol can only guide so many missiles at a time, so putting a limit on the total missile size a FC can guide into a target at any given time should maybe be limited.
This would again allow for the good old "park a huge missileswarm somewhere" tactic, but would require the player to invest in massive firecontrols and electronic markers to aquire a target and control that many missiles, and it would make sensor-guided missiles somewhat viable, with a higher homing range.
Even homing missiles that auto-target, but don't aquire a new target on a miss would be a possibility then.

[welchbloke]

I just thought a while about missiles and I think something needs to change.
Nowadays, most missiles have some implemented guidance system, especially of the smaller kind.
In Aurora, though, this is not the case as Sensors take plenty of space that could be used for something else, and warhead size actually matters.
So I figured that this would be a possibility to improve on in the next installment, by differentiating between pure FC and FC+Sensor.
A missile could be build to still require sensor coverage from the big ships, but find it's way into the target automatically.
This could also be used for advanced tactics, like marker beacons to be shot at enemy smegs to still find them.
Also, currently, a Firecontrol can only guide so many missiles at a time, so putting a limit on the total missile size a FC can guide into a target at any given time should maybe be limited.
This would again allow for the good old "park a huge missileswarm somewhere" tactic, but would require the player to invest in massive firecontrols and electronic markers to aquire a target and control that many missiles, and it would make sensor-guided missiles somewhat viable, with a higher homing range.
Even homing missiles that auto-target, but don't aquire a new target on a miss would be a possibility then.

Way back when there was a long discussion about implementing active guidance (as opposed to semi-active).  Steve wasn't that keen then, he may have changed his mind.  I don't disagree with the idea BTW, I was keen on active guidance.  The thing to remember about your example is that active guidance in the real world is incrediably short ranged compared to ship or land (or air for that matter) based platform fire control systems.  It is all a question of power aperture available for a missile versus the guiding platform.  I agree with limiting the number of missiles a FC can control as well.

[chrislocke2000]

Ok so I've not been playing this for at all very long but given its seems like a gem of a game and getting new ideas in early tends to make them easier to implement here are a few ideas:

- Would you consider directional damage for weapons combined with some of the earlier ideas of systems placement in ship design? I love the idea of having to decide if I want to heavily armour the front of my ships at the expense of weaker sides etc.  Similar for placement of modules with perhaps inner, outer and hull locations

- Weapon arcs for non-turret beam weapons, and firing solution arcs for missiles / PD

- Consumables for ships crew to give them other restrictions on length of use before resupply or some decisions as to whether a portion of crew are in cryo v active for portions of a trip

- I might be early on in the game but it seems that there are not that many opportunities to build different structures that influence population happiness / growth rates

- What about a pollution index and facilities to deal with this to impact population happines / productivity etc

Really like the idea about dropping jump points but still having a use for grav surveys and sticking to a tactical approach to combat

[Mel Vixen]

Steve will you use "power" for other things then weapons? If you do Batteries might be nice too f. e.  for lower maintaince-costs (up to ships without generators which have to refuel power) or powering life-support and the drive while the lasers are draining all the energy from the generator in some kind of battle.   

[Vulcanphsyco]

Please Don't remove JPs entirely!

They're one of the things that got me truly interested in this game in the first place, and an element that sort of defines it, rather like the Koi and the Elephents in DF!

Perhaps you could have both of these techs exist simultaniously?

Jump Points/Gates:
+Instantaneous
+Jumpgates grant easy commercial access
+Great Fuel Efficiency
+Jump Groups all arrive at the same time
-Requires Grav Surveys to find Jump Points
-Jump capable ships/Jumpgates expensive to build and maintain
-Disables the vessel making a jump (as now)
-Limited Access to star systems (A system could be only 1 light year away and take 6 jumps to get to)
*Jump Points can be anywhere in system. 

'Hyperdrive'
+High Accessability (If a system is in range, you can get to it)
+Cheaper to build and maintain, and thus can be mounted on most ship designs
+Can go straight to near by star systems without need to survey for Jump Points
+Ships Arrive in System Grav well fully functional
-Less Fuel Efficiency (Somewhat offset by bringing tankers along)
-Effectively lengthens flight paths for both private and federal sectors
-Commercial ships lacking Hyperdrive are without FTL, so not as easily accessable to commercial market
-Possibility for ships to arrive sporradically in both spatial and temporal relation.   
*Grav Surveys present detailed outline of the 'Warp limiter' that marks where the ships can or can't activate their hyper drives, wich will often be beyond midrim at least. 

Also, it should be made theoretically possible to expand research in both fields, but made difficult enough that something's going to suffer.    Could also include an option to disable one or the other in game, just for varieties sake. 

EDIT: OOoooh. . .

Aditional Techs would of course improve utilities.  Perhaps some Jump Points are unstable, and can't be accessed until requisite tech is reasearched.  Increased Stability in Jump Drives increasing size (in area) of Jump Points and reducing the effect of being disabled or blined by jumping.

Similarly, additional research in the Hyperdrive would increase range, fuel efficiency, accuracy, and decrease the 'limit' radius.

[UnLimiTeD]

As that was just a suggestion for current Aurora that doesn't seem to be that easy, I figured coding that anew from the ground up might resolve that problem.
In A2 how about having a small UI for that to define the standard config of ships, maybe dragging weaponsonto firecontrols to assign them, same with Ammo, and set secondary systems, like a backup firecontrol to take over if the first one is destroyed.

[Thiosk]

I'll make a suggestion for the organic development of Research Institutes.  I envision them as akin to universities that develop on planets on their own.  For example: an Advanced Propulsion Laboratory could arise on a planet.  Placing a PP researcher on that planet would allow his modifier to interact with the modifier for the institute.  I see running such labs as substantially more expensive per research point than just placing scientists at research labs, but with two key bonuses.  such facilities act as breeders for talented scientists; the better scientists working at the institute, the better grad students they get in their field, and thus higher bonuses for the next crop of leaders in the field.  The second bonus is that they can spontaneously provide research points on items not being specifically researched, speeding research on all items in the field-- randomly and organically.

I also suggest them as rather rare-- one could go a whole campaign without ever seeing 2/3 of the institutes arise.

[UnLimiTeD]

Hmm, nice point, that reminds me of something else:
When, for unimportant reasons, I was recently checking something on WW2, It came to my mind that in this war, essentially the same weapons, based on the same technology, were used years in a row and yet steadily increased in efficiency.
Maybe it could be possible to have an efficiency quote for technology applied to the prime function, over the time of use?
So 4 years after developing a reactor tech, it has an 8% bonus output?

[voknaar]

Dumb question oh great and wise Steve, but are the basic concepts mentioned in the first page already hard coded and set in stone. Because I had a brainwave of sorts about how travel can occur in real time in real space with the inclusion of using jump points as they are now known in aurora the 1st. If theres no interest in including instant travel of any kind I wont stir the pot on that subject. But if so I'm going to need to upload a word/text document and make sure my math doesn't prove Einstein wrong.  His ghost has friends in high places

[Panopticon]

Something I'd like to see in any build of aurora is disease.  This could be random diseases springing up from contact with aliens and native viruses mutating in new environments, or even weaponised plagues.  Those genetic scientists could have something new to research rather than modifying humans (does anyone really bother with that anyway?) And the results could be deployed with a specially made planetary bombardment missile, or perhaps an espionage team.

Random diseases could be picked up by surveyor teams, or warships that pick up alien life pods.  They could have a random(ish) incubation period and then start their effects, which for simplicities sake would mean the sickness and death or infected personnel.  On a ship this could mean the loss of all hands and it's destruction, but if it gets on a planet (say that ship docked for refueling or maintenance) It could start hitting the population, reducing it and causing economic troubles for the planet.

Could be combated, reducing it's effectiveness by building an installation, "Medical Center" for example.  More of these gives your administration a higher chance of finding a vaccine faster, limiting the damage but never entirely preventing it form being a pain.

[Deutschbag]

That's a very nifty idea. Another means of transmission could be freighters and such. Say, for instance, some disease springs up on a frontier colony world, but it's asymptomatic at the time a passenger ship comes and picks up some infected colonists. The ship goes to, say, Earth. From there, it could spread in every direction.

[Thiosk]

Hmm, nice point, that reminds me of something else:
When, for unimportant reasons, I was recently checking something on WW2, It came to my mind that in this war, essentially the same weapons, based on the same technology, were used years in a row and yet steadily increased in efficiency.
Maybe it could be possible to have an efficiency quote for technology applied to the prime function, over the time of use?
So 4 years after developing a reactor tech, it has an 8% bonus output?

I confess, one thing i'm less keen about is having to create research projects every single time I need to do an upgrade on every component.  But is there a better way to do it?  One thing that caught my eye in the ship design thread was someone was naming their components things like "The Pratt and Whitney" engine or whatever.  Which gave me an idea.  (don't know how viable it is for actual game design).

Once you design a technology, the civilian industry has thus received an order to manufacture it.  Over decades, they continue releasing new models and obsoleting old models, incorporating newly discovered technology.  Sometimes they'll make something kinda crappy-- like an engine that blows up when bumped, or maybe one that with a crummy power\weight ratio.  But thats all you get as a ship designer, you're stuck with that god awful XL-5 engine that makes the horrible grinding noise.  Othertimes they'll make something fantastic, like the YF-11 that can take a fricking torpedo in the side and keep humming at full capacity.  So the player can design the basic outline of a grav sensor for a fighter, for example, and the low bidder starts making the design.  Better richer civilian industry thus translates to tougher, better ships.

I think its awesome, but I don't know that it meshes with the aurora paradigm.  Cheers

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Something I'd like to see in any build of aurora is disease.  This could be random diseases springing up from contact with aliens and native viruses mutating in new environments, or even weaponised plagues.  Those genetic scientists could have something new to research rather than modifying humans (does anyone really bother with that anyway?) And the results could be deployed with a specially made planetary bombardment missile, or perhaps an espionage team.

Random diseases could be picked up by surveyor teams, or warships that pick up alien life pods.  They could have a random(ish) incubation period and then start their effects, which for simplicities sake would mean the sickness and death or infected personnel.  On a ship this could mean the loss of all hands and it's destruction, but if it gets on a planet (say that ship docked for refueling or maintenance) It could start hitting the population, reducing it and causing economic troubles for the planet.

Could be combated, reducing it's effectiveness by building an installation, "Medical Center" for example.  More of these gives your administration a higher chance of finding a vaccine faster, limiting the damage but never entirely preventing it form being a pain.

This is something I have been considering for a while and along similar lines to what you suggest above. Although I hadn't considered the idea of picking up a disease from life pods. Perhaps ships would need special decontamination chambers for picking up aliens. I have have already done a little preliminary work in existing Aurora for this. There is a KnownSpecies table, which tracks on which species a particular empire has data. Each species is rated as Existence Known, Autopsy Performed or Bio Research Performed. This tracking is already happening in v5.42 but there is no visible sign yet in the user interface.

When you pick up life pods or conquer a population, a species moves into the Existence Known status. My intention was to allow an 'Alien Autopsy' research project for each species with a status of Existence Known. This would provide you with information on their biology, such as environmental tolerances. This would lead to a Bio Research Project, that would be necessary for the creation of tailored bio-weapons. This knowledge would be combined with other genetic warfare projects to allow the creation of specific viruses that had lethality rates and contagian rates. I think there might be a thread about this in the dim and distant past. Natural diseases, as you mentioned above, would also fit into this model, with the possibility of mutating to other strains that could attack other species.

This will probably make it into Aurora I at some point. I haven't done any work on Aurora II for a while, partly because my time has been very limited and partly because I have been working on Aurora I. I am beginning to wonder if some sort of gradual transition might be possible, using C# to replace some key existing parts of Aurora and run a program with elements from both languages. I need to look into this further.

Steve

[Charlie Beeler]

Steve, have you considered switching from MS Access to MS SQL Server?  It handles larger databases much better.  The Express edition is free and deployable.