Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on July 20, 2018, 12:05:37 PM
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Quick Question - should mass driver packets be visible to all for C# Aurora?
In VB6 Aurora you detect mass driver packets with sensors. However, the technobabble for why wrecks are visible and ships are not, is that ships operate mainly in the 'Aether' fluid dimension, which means you need to detect them, while wrecks emerge fully into normal space and be easily detected (just as you can easily detect tiny moons at huge distances).
With that in mind, mass packets are a lot more like wrecks than ships so probably should also be generally visible. That would add an extra decision to whether to use mass driver or freighters and provide 'breadcrumbs' when scouting alien systems. Also would be a little better on performance.
Comments?
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I would prefer long term if actual ships ( which can be intercepted and destroyed ) had to make the travels from mining colony to production site, so it can be blockaded, although this would need to be automated for civilians in that case.
For packets always visible works fine IMO especially if it otherwise could have a performance impact.
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I agree that removing mass drivers entirely in favor of more robust orders for freighters (especially something like "Load all minerals when X total minerals available") would be more interesting, but that might be something to save for after a release, or a feature to add in addition to mass drivers. I don't think you would need to make this a civilian thing, as cycling orders makes it pretty easy for the player to manage themselves.
Can mass driver packets even be destroyed? I've never tried it, but if you can't then I don't see any reason to show them in the first place. Otherwise I would err on the side of better performance, since it doesn't seem like it would have a large impact on gameplay.
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Can mass driver packets even be destroyed? I've never tried it, but if you can't then I don't see any reason to show them in the first place.
At the moment, you can't destroy them in C#. However, visible mass driver packets would tell you if there were alien populations in a system, before you detected those populations via sensors (also would pinpoint your populations for aliens). This adds a meaningful decision as to whether to have the convenience, but also the visibility to potential enemies.
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At the moment, you can't destroy them in C#. However, visible mass driver packets would tell you if there were alien populations in a system, before you detected those populations via sensors (also would pinpoint your populations for aliens). This adds a meaningful decision as to whether to have the convenience, but also the visibility to potential enemies.
While I personally don't mind mass driver packets be visible, I don't agree with convenience as meaningful decision criterion. You are playing an empire, not mineral transport simulator. Visibility vs fuel consumption and travel time (for ultra far away comets) should be consideration, as far as convenience goes, you should be able to make a order for your shipping lines to collect the minerals at reasonable intervals.
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... well. I will be honest, it never made sense to me that wrecks were so easily visible. It's... not so easy to do so fast. Same is true for small moons and asteroids.
But aside from that, for the very same reason mineral packets HAVE to be visible. They are not ships so it stands to reason that they should be as easy to detect as asteroids. I very much dislike exceptions to rules, and so by the "rules" of the technobabble, they HAVE to be visible. That it helps performance is just a plus. And if that reveals colonies, so be it.
That said, I also dislike mass drivers in general, but I understand the "gameplay" need for them, to a degree. I try to never use them when I can, honestly.
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Speaking as someone who uses mass drivers extensively, and who is also an advocate for more robust hauling, there should always be trade-offs. Visibility vs fuel consumption seems to be a viable choice.
I vote in favour of packet visibility.
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I know there has been talk of how cumbersome ship orders simulates administrative clumsiness for governments but it's not really true. Governments can potentially control gigantic logistic mechanisms with highly easy and declarative orders at the highest level, it just goofs up occasionally.
This just puts an upper limit on the number of ships based on what one person will put up with and isn't nearly as prone to the same types of errors. Either the rout is correct and keeps going until needs change or the ship dies, or they aren't and get fixed. Government goofups are much more along the lines of loading the wrong crates or whatever on an already established rout. There isn't generally a large scale lack of enough accountants to get themerchant fleets moving.
e: mind you, i fully agree with the idea that fancy shipping nonsense should probably wait to avoid feature creep issues
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to be honest, I would go with the solution which is more performance friendly...
both solutions have pros and contras from a technobable point of view but other than that...
for me the main point would be: what is the performance cost/gain, and will the "gain" of the more performance using solution be worth the cost...
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A vote for performance option.
I never really use mass drivers simply because they feel "too easy" solution compared to setting up a shipbourne logistics chain.
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I like the idea of the packets being visible but if going to do that would also like other player races or NPR’s to be able to interact with them by being able to target and destroy. Having experienced the “fun” of loosing control of a receiving mass driver when you have incoming mineral packets it would be great to be able to use mass drivers as a bombardment weapon as well.
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I'm in the performance camp.
John
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I vote for it being an option, but really, its pretty insignificant. Mass Drivers make the logistics of mining pretty automated on the system scale, then you still have to have a logistics train to get the materials from those systems to your empires heart. But I don't think they really need any sort of breadcrumbs system. Not because they don't need a downside, but because it doesn't take much of a sensor package to find a colony of significance anyway. Doesn't take much time to manually figure out the most likely colonized worlds either, since we get full readings on gravity, atmosphere, and water immediately.
Performance wise, its probably cheaper to always see the packets just so they're not included in detection calculations.
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I'll just pop in to ask a provocative question:
Could a pair of Mass Drivers be replaced by instead giving Spaceports the ability to target a location and "spawn" a temporary civilian freighter that uses the same speed as normal civilian freighters and with cargo/frequency resulting in the same capacity as the mass driver pair? Basically this spawned ship would then make a one time trip to a destination within system to load/unload minerals and then returns to despawn.
The Spaceport could work either in delivery mode or in pickup mode ( but not both ) and target one other location in the same system for automated mineral transfers from the targeted body or to it.
This would make mineral packets both interceptable and lootable, although it might have a performance impact due to the detection ( which could be reduced by reducing the spawning frequency ). It could probably also tie into some logistics techs to make them more interesting.
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I know there has been talk of how cumbersome ship orders simulates administrative clumsiness for governments but it's not really true.
Even if the point was simulating government limitations, there are better ways to do that, to be honest.
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I'm all for making mass driver packets visible as long as the new AI is capable of making intelligent decisions about their use. Otherwise giving the player more flexability as well as another tool for finding enemies while the AI has no idea is just going backwards.
Depending on the circumstance an AI might decide to not use mass drivers due to risk of being discovered, unless absolutely pushed to doing it, maybe for fuel or distance reasons, but once they know they're discovered maybe they can change their mind?
However, maybe enemy mass driver packets should be treated like any sensor contact, you can only see them if they're in res 1 sensor range? I know the technobabble about the aether disagrees with this, and its a huge overhead as discussed before.. Maybe like sensors it could be an option, always detected if in the same system, only detected if in sensor range, or maybe only detected with appropriate level of deep space tracking station?
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I'm voting for performance, but it would be interesting if there were targetable by area defense :)
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Mass Driver packets should be visible. . . and steal-able*.
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*Presumably via Tractor Beams and empty Cargo Holds; or maybe Salvagers.
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Mass Driver packets should be visible. . . and steal-able*.
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*Presumably via Tractor Beams and empty Cargo Holds; or maybe Salvagers.
This is an even better trade-off vs freighters than just visibility. I vote for TB and humbly request a copy of your newsletter.
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Always visible.
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Being visible seems reasonable to me.
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Visibility is fine by me. If nothing else, wouldn't their oddball trajectories stand out?
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Mass Driver packets should be visible. . . and steal-able*.
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*Presumably via Tractor Beams and empty Cargo Holds; or maybe Salvagers.
I don't have a strong opinion on visible or not so go with visible for performance. I also like the possibilities of packet loss due to piracy. Like if some aliens spot juicy mass driver lanes they may target them with raiding operations, or even pirates of your own race spawning at some point creating a need for internal patrolling/policing.
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Mass driver packets being steal-able is an awesome concept, I like it. Nuisance pirate aliens that just steal what they need to keep their really fast stealy-ships going sounds like a very fun thing to deal with in general.
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Mass driver packets being steal-able is an awesome concept, I like it. Nuisance pirate aliens that just steal what they need to keep their really fast stealy-ships going sounds like a very fun thing to deal with in general.
For mass drivers to be stolen, there needs to be an ability to intercept them mid-flight. That could take the form of a mobile 'catcher', but that would mean such tech would exist for 'normal' mass drivers and they would no longer be restricted to planets. That might get complex - what if the catcher moved for example? I know planets 'move' but they do so in a predictable way.
One option might be that a freighter could move into formation with a mass driver packet and use its cargo shuttles to load the minerals. That doesn't change any of the existing rules.
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Mass driver packets being steal-able is an awesome concept, I like it. Nuisance pirate aliens that just steal what they need to keep their really fast stealy-ships going sounds like a very fun thing to deal with in general.
For mass drivers to be stolen, there needs to be an ability to intercept them mid-flight. That could take the form of a mobile 'catcher', but that would mean such tech would exist for 'normal' mass drivers and they would no longer be restricted to planets. That might get complex - what if the catcher moved for example? I know planets 'move' but they do so in a predictable way.
One option might be that a freighter could move into formation with a mass driver packet and use its cargo shuttles to load the minerals. That doesn't change any of the existing rules.
It would raise the question why you could not unload cargo mid flight and let it coast on, transporting stuff without needing a freighter... Or why you could not unload rocks for orbital bombardment. Or unload missiles, letting them coast to their target without needing any fuel. Or unload other ships, for that matter.
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Mass driver packets being steal-able is an awesome concept, I like it. Nuisance pirate aliens that just steal what they need to keep their really fast stealy-ships going sounds like a very fun thing to deal with in general.
For mass drivers to be stolen, there needs to be an ability to intercept them mid-flight. That could take the form of a mobile 'catcher', but that would mean such tech would exist for 'normal' mass drivers and they would no longer be restricted to planets. That might get complex - what if the catcher moved for example? I know planets 'move' but they do so in a predictable way.
One option might be that a freighter could move into formation with a mass driver packet and use its cargo shuttles to load the minerals. That doesn't change any of the existing rules.
It would raise the question why you could not unload cargo mid flight and let it coast on, transporting stuff without needing a freighter... Or why you could not unload rocks for orbital bombardment. Or unload missiles, letting them coast to their target without needing any fuel. Or unload other ships, for that matter.
Not really. So long as the ships would only be loading from the packets, we can point to the need for facility-scale equipment resting on a planetary mass in order to launch the packets on a Newtonian trajectory (rather than the "stop in place unless under thrust" behaviour of trans-Newtonian technologies). And a ship rendezvousing with them is no different than doing the same for any asteroid.
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For mass drivers to be stolen, there needs to be an ability to intercept them mid-flight. That could take the form of a mobile 'catcher', but that would mean such tech would exist for 'normal' mass drivers and they would no longer be restricted to planets. That might get complex - what if the catcher moved for example? I know planets 'move' but they do so in a predictable way.
I would second the idea of having a ship module "Mass Driver", so I can slingshot Mineral Packages to a Space Station at a jump point which then automatically slingshots it through the JP to a station on the other side, which then slingshots it to the target planet... .
Well, just a thought :-)
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Stealing mass driver packets is cool but I don't think gameplay would benefit considerably or that it would even be a smart thing to do in game. If you want to steal an enemies packets you're going to have to go into hostile territory with a freighter and warship protection for maybe 300 tons of minerals every 5 days. And there's the question, if someone is stealing your mineral packets, why not just turn the mass driver off and wait for them to leave? It's what the player would do if a hostile alien was stealing their minerals. Then you have to have the ship continually place itself between the two bodies to steal the packets, does this take fuel? What if the ship isn't fast enough to get between the two planets when they change their position? It opens up continual cans of worms for something that most players (I think) won't use.
TMaekler's suggestion about ship module mass drivers is very interesting, because that would create a some good gameplay decisions. It could be a massive ship module that's meant to be stuck on space stations. Do you set up a more automated empire that uses a lot of mass drivers and requires a lot of space stations but leaves a ton of breadcrumbs for aliens to follow, or do you use less conspicuous freighters instead? A logistics train based on ship based mass drivers would also have the disadvantage of being crippled if a single link is broken. You could even mix them, using ship based mass drivers in a dead end sector and freighters on the frontier.
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Maybe just remove MD from the game, replacing the contracts for the delivery of ore for civilian shipping companies ? And to make for them small (1000-2000 tons) cabotage trucks ?
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Maybe just remove MD from the game, replacing the contracts for the delivery of ore for civilian shipping companies ? And to make for them small (1000-2000 tons) cabotage trucks ?
If it can be worked without causing massive resource drain I can second this idea. Obviously the civillians already can be targeted by forces and so sometimes require a military presence as protection. Perhaps set things so that unlike mass drivers which currently throw out packets almost constantly instead of waiting for them to be a full sized packet for the driver capability, allow the civillian force to take up the role. Either have it so you can set minerals up as trade orders as per the existing civillian trade supply/demand system. Or a check requirement that they only go to collect minerals when there is a sufficient amount at the location to fully fill their hold. In addition maybe make it a default thing that they then drop the minerals off at the nearest populated colony within the system.
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Stealing mass driver packets is cool but I don't think gameplay would benefit considerably or that it would even be a smart thing to do in game. If you want to steal an enemies packets you're going to have to go into hostile territory with a freighter and warship protection for maybe 300 tons of minerals every 5 days. And there's the question, if someone is stealing your mineral packets, why not just turn the mass driver off and wait for them to leave? It's what the player would do if a hostile alien was stealing their minerals. Then you have to have the ship continually place itself between the two bodies to steal the packets, does this take fuel? What if the ship isn't fast enough to get between the two planets when they change their position? It opens up continual cans of worms for something that most players (I think) won't use.
TMaekler's suggestion about ship module mass drivers is very interesting, because that would create a some good gameplay decisions. It could be a massive ship module that's meant to be stuck on space stations. Do you set up a more automated empire that uses a lot of mass drivers and requires a lot of space stations but leaves a ton of breadcrumbs for aliens to follow, or do you use less conspicuous freighters instead? A logistics train based on ship based mass drivers would also have the disadvantage of being crippled if a single link is broken. You could even mix them, using ship based mass drivers in a dead end sector and freighters on the frontier.
You tend to see pretty long trails of mass driver packets already in flight in reasonably big systems, so you could potentially fly down the path of packets and get quite a lot of stuff. In terms of catching them, it kinda seems like it would just amount to intercepting them, which fleets already do when joining task group formations. That part is by all appearances easy. I don't really see the can of worms you speak of.
I could grasp the concept of it not garnering a big gameplay benefit, piracy in general is totally dependent on being able to disappear off sensors and hide. On the other hand, I think this would mainly apply to relatively unguarded systems anyhow. I for one don't always have the resources to build a huge integrated sensor and defense grid to protect every mining operation.
It really depends on how difficult it is to implement. Just using cargo shuttles I think is a good concept at least, since it doesn't require specialized parts (making it viable as an opportunistic thing rather than having to build special ships) and also doesn't demand that said parts be added into the game.
e: Though I do really like the idea of space stations being able to receive mass driver packets, that way you could set up a resource accumulation station in a mining system right next to the jump node. This would potentially serve as both something relatively easy for the enemy (or pirates) to pilfer while also increasing the utility of mass drivers (and their potentially stealable packets) quite a lot since its way more fuel effecient to collect your resources right at the node (rather than making your cargo ship fly potentially quite far into the system and then back again).
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I'm in favor of other empires being able to interact with the minerals as they're in transit, preferably with the minerals being transported by ship. Even something as simple as a greater potential for commerce raiding would add very welcome nuance to the economy.
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drop the minerals off at the nearest populated colony within the system.
I must object to this behaviour. The nearest populated colony is pretty much guaranteed to be the wrong destination. Further, unless it considers jump travel, it will fail as mined systems don't always have populated colonies, and if it does, then the nearest colony has a 50% or greater chance of being in the wrong system. Finally, if body motion is turned on, nearest won't even be a consistent location.
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drop the minerals off at the nearest populated colony within the system.
I must object to this behaviour. The nearest populated colony is pretty much guaranteed to be the wrong destination. Further, unless it considers jump travel, it will fail as mined systems don't always have populated colonies, and if it does, then the nearest colony has a 50% or greater chance of being in the wrong system. Finally, if body motion is turned on, nearest won't even be a consistent location.
All good points, in which case have an option on the trade screen to control this. Currently we have the ability to set a colony to be a source/destination of colonists, so have an additional check box for a colony to be a source/destination of minerals also. In systems where no jump gate exists this simply means you have made a central depot to be collected from. When things get larger with a network of jump gates then there could be a ground facility in place that works in a similar manner to the current sector command. So it will expand how many systems out the source/destination command is obeyed.
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If, eventually or immediately, mass drivers are to be replaced with civilian shipping, I would suggest colonies just set a "target mineral level" where civilians will look for colonies with more than their target minerals (ignoring amounts that are insignificant) to deliver to colonies below their target minerals. An amount for infinite should be included for pure destination colonies.
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If, eventually or immediately, mass drivers are to be replaced with civilian shipping, I would suggest colonies just set a "target mineral level" where civilians will look for colonies with more than their target minerals (ignoring amounts that are insignificant) to deliver to colonies below their target minerals. An amount for infinite should be included for pure destination colonies.
If Steve goes this way, there should be both upper and lower bounds, and we try to keep between them. In fact, if the current colonization control is kept, then I'd like to see that there, too. It is quite annoying to set an overpopulated colony as 'source' only to have it switch to 'destination' because the civvies took too much.
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One thing I'd like to note is that a mobile mass driver unit would also well complement asteroid miners. The miners can all be on ships, but then you need that single installation to send the resources home.
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My vote would be to make Packets visible if one could either disrupt them or maybe steal them ( hook on with a tractor and tow it away, or transfer it to cargo hold within the fleet). Slightly off topic, having the ability to target mass drivers directly could be interesting if the removal of the receiving driver caused Kinetic damage to the planet from the follow on packets.
My personal vote for getting rid of Mass drivers would be a NO!, they are very useful, i tune mine by setting the reserve amounts in the minerals tab so that they only launch the minerals I want to send I. E. send all the Duranium the cheap slow route, and send a freighter for the more valuable minerals or vice Versa, or just weight the reserves to the more needed minerals are loaded onto the packets first.
Cheers
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I suggest removing the simulation of the packets entirely.
They are behave in a Newtonian manner (otherwise they would need an engine, not a MD), and should follow orbital physics. They are also very tiny compared to all other non-TN objects.
They give of no heat, and no trace in the TN space - and as such should be effectively impossible to trace.
Add to that that you cannot interact with them in any way, and you have a somewhat pointless simulation - and a waste of CPU resources. Just let the minerals appear at the target instead of the mined location.
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It's important to still take into account the travel time, mass drivers are generally faster than using a ship, but they still don't instantly teleport across the galaxy. Theyt require some logistic thought to be taken into account from their use, sometimes chains of mass driver, cargo ship, then mass driver again.
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Packets are too much visual clutter. i turned them off an hour after i first used a driver, and only because it took me that long to notice the option.
You can give drivers a huge passive signature when in use, or just give a special case 'mass driver source' sensor contact that shows up if you have anything in system.
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You could also just keep the option to turn them off, just that now includes other empires packets as well.
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In my preferred universe, Mass Drivers would be gone and everything would have to move by ship.
If that doesn't happen then mass driver packets should be 'stealable' via Salvagers. I even like the idea that said Salvager has to keep moving with the packets in order to keep salvaging, and might therefore run out of time to get everything before the packet arrives at its destination. (I believe that Salvagers currently need to be stationary to do their jobs, so that might be too much re-coding.)
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I personally like Steve's concept of just grappling them with cargo shuttles and hauling them aboard. It's far from crazy and seriously punishes unguarded mass driver systems.