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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by Steve Walmsley on Today at 06:40:34 AM »
It would not have to be complicated at all. I think it is pretty weird that a crew can run the ship with active sensors turned off, turns them on for some reason and gets a true representation of the surrounding without any delay. I mean, there is no speed of light in the game, which is okay as it is, but data collection and processing could take time and calculating trajectories for enemy ships are impossible to do in an instant.

You could have target motion analysis. In effect, you take a bearing on the active contact, then move and take another bearing, then move again, etc. By triangulating all the bearings taken, you can calculate distance and speed of the target. However, once again this will be fun the first few times, but the 100th time would be tedious.

The aim of the sensor model isn't to reflect light speed concerns or processing time, because none of those add any real decision-making on the part of the player, other than to add additional micromanagement to get the same eventual information. Aurora is an operational/strategic game, rather than tactical, so its assumed your staff run TMA, etc. and present you with the information required to make decisions.
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by Andrew on Today at 06:00:47 AM »
The delay on activating the radars of an AEGIS ship and tracking all contacts is pretty much zero . Why should hyper advanced computer systems d  o worse, and why would a 5 sec delay actually improve the game?
Many of those 'new' contacts are already being tracked on passive so that further reduces the complexity for the computers.


This is a strategic game, when Aurora tactical combat simulator or Aurora ship commander comes out , then indeed much more detail orientated combat and sensor models will be needed as that will be the core of the game. Adding lots and lots of detail at the moment means that the player needs to take direct control of events every time a ship detects a new contact , which makes running 30 day or even 30 minute turns hard and moves the focus from the empire to commanding every single patrol ship in excruciating detail
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by kilo on Yesterday at 09:42:34 PM »
It would not have to be complicated at all. I think it is pretty weird that a crew can run the ship with active sensors turned off, turns them on for some reason and gets a true representation of the surrounding without any delay. I mean, there is no speed of light in the game, which is okay as it is, but data collection and processing could take time and calculating trajectories for enemy ships are impossible to do in an instant.
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by Bremen on Yesterday at 04:12:34 PM »
If there was one thing about sensor that I would change it is not the detection rules themselves, but introduce some sort of reaction time when it comes to activating them, spotting targets and allowing to shoot weapons at such a contact.

I suppose what you could do is have a detection chance at longer ranges, like at extreme range you have a 1% chance to detect the target every 5 minutes, rising to 100% chance (instant detection) at half of the sensor's effective range. That could have a similar effect in that it would make it easier to detect large fleets than single ships because you'd probably hit 10x 4% chances faster than 1 4% chance - at the very least you'd be quicker to discover something was out there. It might also be interesting if at long ranges you were uncertain how many enemy ships were actually looking at.

On the other hand, IIRC detection is already a significant performance drain, and this could potentially make it several times more computationally expensive depending on how it's handled.
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by kilo on Yesterday at 09:55:30 AM »
If there was one thing about sensor that I would change it is not the detection rules themselves, but introduce some sort of reaction time when it comes to activating them, spotting targets and allowing to shoot weapons at such a contact.
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General Discussion / Refit Preview?
« Last post by IceKobold on Yesterday at 09:28:18 AM »
I'm still new to the game, but several times now I've designed and tooled for an "improved" version of a ship class only to find that refitting to that class will cost almost as much as, or more than, simple building new ships.   I'd like to be able to take a two-tiered approach, with the maximum improvement on new construction and a more limited, economical upgrade for refits, but. . . :

Is there a way to see what exactly would be the time & cost of a refit from an existing class to one being considered, other than the time and expense of retooling to the new class under consideration?  If not I'd think that would be a neat feature to add, so that people can explore options for modernization (or "service life extension") of existing classes.   And learn about what is and is not an economical refit. .  without committing to a retool just to ask "how about this?"
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by Steve Walmsley on September 30, 2023, 01:40:17 PM »
But I would imagine it would be much the same as detecting active sensor strength/sensitivity you currently have to do in the game, so same mechanic. Given enough time you will identify them all and find them. If you get closer your chances just increase.

To be honest it should not be that more micro intensive than the current model. You would not require to get closer, you just would increase the chances to detect something earlier if you do.

Yes, but everyone would have to close on every contact to ensure there were not more ships to be discovered before committing to action. Its the same principle. A lot more scouting needed, which is fun at first but gets a lot more tedious over time.
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C# Suggestions / Re: reserve fleet idea
« Last post by QuakeIV on September 29, 2023, 06:04:25 PM »
I think there has been a huge overreaction to the starfire mothball exploiting and the reaction is making the mechanic not useful at all.
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C# Suggestions / Re: Draft of an idea for a change to sensing
« Last post by Jorgen_CAB on September 29, 2023, 05:42:44 PM »
I think that detection could be less binary and more uncertain as they are in reality thus if there are more ships you are more likely to detect something and even identify some of them but you will never be able to know for sure how many there are unless you manages to follow them for a longer time. It also means that more sensors means more chances to make positive contact too.

So contact should be in three states, something detected but you are not entirely sure what it is or even exactly where it is. You have a firm sensor indicator but you don't know anything more than that something is there and lastly you have a firm lock and managed to identify the source.

Sensors should need more than just detecting something and not be binary... in my opinion it would be more fun.

I don't think that more ships should be easier to detect but it will be more likely that you detect something and further out the more ships that are there. It also would remove the need to spreading them out and micro things.

I also think the game would benefit with more sensor mechanics in terms of stealth, detection and identification. More electronic warfare and possibility to spoof sensors and trick them. Why not be able to trick them to thinking there is a ship when it is just a decoy for example, sending the enemy out on a wild ghost chase for example.

I do think that the game would be more fun if sensors were not binary and there were ways to mask ships, say around planets and asteroids for example.

Sure... it would make "combat" in general more spread out in a system perhaps, but generally I would have no big problem with that. It also would mean that a better sensor are not guaranteed to find something before a worse one, just more likely to do so.

The calculation does not have to be more complicated than now, just a few more states before something is fully identified. Even a passive sensors detection should be able to eventually determine with a very high certainty what enemy design it is, you can in real life as all emissions usually are very unique for each type of platform. I also think this would be a good way to make "Flag Bridges" more interesting... they could be made to influence the chance to fully identify sensor sources as they combine the information from en entire squadron or small task force of ships.

The game used to be like that in the early years. For example, you would have a thermal contact but no ID or even IFF, so you had to get closer and try to identify ship type and race (similar to Harpoon). However, while that is interesting for the first few contacts, it became very tedious after micromanaging investigation of a hundred such contacts. I changed sensor detection to the current model, which assumes target identification, or even target motion analysis, was handled by the your staff behind the scenes so you could get on with deciding how to handle it.

If I ever get around to a more tactical game than Aurora, it would definitely include something on these lines.

But I would imagine it would be much the same as detecting active sensor strength/sensitivity you currently have to do in the game, so same mechanic. Given enough time you will identify them all and find them. If you get closer your chances just increase.

To be honest it should not be that more micro intensive than the current model. You would not require to get closer, you just would increase the chances to detect something earlier if you do.
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C# Suggestions / Re: reserve fleet idea
« Last post by M_Gargantua on September 29, 2023, 11:48:43 AM »
I do like the idea of using Repair yards to move ships in and out of Mothball. But I agree that it should take many months per ship, regardless of BP capacity. Getting a ship into long term layup is a lot more effort than just turning off the lights, and restoring it to combat readiness takes a huge amount of work. It would make even more sense if crew training played a bigger role, as a ship coming out of mothball will often have even worse crew readiness than new construction. At least with new construction most crews would be stood up before commissioning and be taking training and ownership as things are completed before launch.

But above all I would absolutely love the SM toggles to disable maintenance on a per ship basis so it opens up RP options for this in the meantime to a real mechanic.
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