C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[King-Salomon]

My thinking is that there should be 2 kinds of "fighters"

one for space-fights and one for atmosphere fighting...

there would be too many and too mayor differences in design (like wings in space are just a no-go but needed in atmosphaere flying!!!), material, weapon etc for a multi-roll craft (or you say: there is a nano-tech which morphes the hull of the craft for air and space-combat at will instantly but..)

(other than that you could also say "a submarine should be able to be used as a fighter in aircombat... a sub and a aircraft are a whole different thing, the first is build for water the later for air... as are fighter and space-fighters which are for vakuum and don't need to be aerodynamic - even if Star Wars might see it in an other light...)

For Ground-combat I would like to see only 1 fighter type - no sense to add the complex situation even more ... the game will not gain much with 3-10 different fighter-classes...

[Bremen]

My thinking is that there should be 2 kinds of "fighters"

one for space-fights and one for atmosphere fighting...

there would be too many and too mayor differences in design (like wings in space are just a no-go but needed in atmosphaere flying!!!), material, weapon etc for a multi-roll craft (or you say: there is a nano-tech which morphes the hull of the craft for air and space-combat at will instantly but..)

We've had this debate before, but a) such a decision should be made based on gameplay, not what seems fitting for the real world, and b) it's not even true, since in game TNE tech does suffer from drag, so a space fighter could plausibly designed in an aerodynamic shape anyways. And the sheer speed and thrust of TNE tech means TNE aircraft probably wouldn't even use wings.

Personally I'm fine with either dedicated ground and space fighters or true hybrids that can fill both roles, but if we go with the hybrids I think they should be true hybrids, capable of firing the same weapons in both space and ground, or there isn't much point (it just adds extra micromanagement needing carriers in addition to troop transports to move aircraft). I'm partial to the suggestion of missile fighters using special munitions for ground combat, sort of like carrier based aircraft in WW2 could be armed with torpedoes for going after ships or bombs for going after land targets, and then just giving beam fighters a way to fire their beam weapons similarly to if they were engaged in orbital bombardment but doing it as actual direct combat.

[Hazard]

Also important; with enough thrust anything can be made to fly. If it's not controllable enough you need to better place your thrusters.

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my opinion it does not make much sense to build 2-300t support air-craft for planetary combat. You would like to have much smaller platforms that can operate much closer to the ground and they would need to be a bit more specifically tailored for each planet they intend to fight on. Every planet will be unique in some way and modifying and developing smaller aircraft for these purposes seem much more realistic.

Planets have terrain in a way space don't so having more platforms such as 20-40 fighters for every space fighter is a very different type of proposition, you can't even compare these things.

Space to ground "ships" should mainly be assault and transport type ships and could be used to transport ground troops long distances on the planet. But I don't really see them used as combat platforms, that seem like a waste of resources to have them designed for that purpose. This does not mean they could be used as low orbit bombardment platforms using some kind of beam weapon and be more like support artillery. That way you don't have to risk your more valuable assault ships in such positions

I would not even put 2-300t spaceships in the same category as a 10-30t atmosphere drone or fighter craft.

There can also be many pseudoscience reason for why regular TNE space drives don't work close to large massive objects such as a planet, forcing such craft to use two different types of engines if you want them to be dual purpose. Or... TNE engines are usable but not for any type of maneuvering so all they can do is basically take a ship up and down from the ground to orbit where around 500t is the practical limit. Maneuvering them close to a planet is just not feasible so they are not reliable for anything but transport and space to ground artillery.

The limiting factor of TNE engine could, as I said, have more to do with gravity and mass and less with an actual atmosphere. I would gather that most atmosphere flying crafts are some combination of VTOL and Anti-gravity and not JET planes. The VTOL are most likely using its own propellant (or mix) so they are equally usable in space as they are in an atmosphere, so assuming some sort of plasma drives would make sense.

[Garfunkel]

I'm going to argue that Automobiles have seen a similar development in terms of technical complexity that military airplanes have the last 80 years.

Unfortunately that is not the case and thus your analogue fails. A modern jet plane is vastly more complex when compared to a WW2 plane than a modern car is compared to a 1930s car and it's not just one thing, it's literally everything, starting from materials used to build the frame and ending with the electronics. Furthermore, at the peak of WW2, USA spent 41% of its GDP for military production and that had everything included. So the premise of dedicating 10% of current GDP to only building airplanes is a pretty wild exaggeration despite sounding reasonable - even during the Vietnam era, US defence spending did not go over 10% of GDP.

[Scandinavian]

Unfortunately that is not the case and thus your analogue fails. A modern jet plane is vastly more complex when compared to a WW2 plane than a modern car is compared to a 1930s car and it's not just one thing, it's literally everything, starting from materials used to build the frame and ending with the electronics. Furthermore, at the peak of WW2, USA spent 41% of its GDP for military production and that had everything included. So the premise of dedicating 10% of current GDP to only building airplanes is a pretty wild exaggeration despite sounding reasonable - even during the Vietnam era, US defence spending did not go over 10% of GDP.

Even if the analogy worked, contemporary automobile design is a case study in the drawbacks of multipurpose design. Most of what people use automobiles for really does not need capacity for four passengers, a cubic meter and a half of payload, and the ability to go to 150 km per hour. The reason cars are as over-specced as they are driven by the private ownership model and an auto-uber-alles transportation policy. If cars were developed for the actual transportation use cases people put them to, the average car would be much smaller and less powerful.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Even if the analogy worked, contemporary automobile design is a case study in the drawbacks of multipurpose design. Most of what people use automobiles for really does not need capacity for four passengers, a cubic meter and a half of payload, and the ability to go to 150 km per hour. The reason cars are as over-specced as they are driven by the private ownership model and an auto-uber-alles transportation policy. If cars were developed for the actual transportation use cases people put them to, the average car would be much smaller and less powerful.

This is not a drawback it is the strength of what it means to be multi-purpose... do you really want four or five different cars so you can use the one you need for the moment?

[alex_brunius]

Unfortunately that is not the case and thus your analogue fails. A modern jet plane is vastly more complex when compared to a WW2 plane than a modern car is compared to a 1930s car and it's not just one thing, it's literally everything, starting from materials used to build the frame and ending with the electronics.

So exactly like Cars then which use a mainly aluminium alloy light weight chassis today instead of steel, and electronics which is 1000 times more powerful today then what was used to put a man on the moon some decades after WW2.

For reference this is an example image of the wiring in a modern car:
https://blog.caranddriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Zap-Zone-2017-Bentley-Bentayga-inline1-626x352.jpg

Furthermore, at the peak of WW2, USA spent 41% of its GDP for military production and that had everything included. So the premise of dedicating 10% of current GDP to only building airplanes is a pretty wild exaggeration despite sounding reasonable

Actually to further my example using the actual amount of money I listed you would need less then 10% of USAs current GDP to buy the amount of F-35s you claim would be impossible...

And During WW2 USA spent about 1/3:ed each on Airforce, Navy and Army, which means if they spent 41% of it on war they spent about 14% of it on the airforce, which main expense would be, you guessed it, buying airplanes.

The money and wealth available in rich world powers like USA/China is staggering, if an entire nation the size of USA could rally behind a common goal like was done in WW2... Then truly staggering things could be accomplished which may seem "impossible" for us in our consumer / narcissistic focused economy of today. ( Although colonizing the solar system would be a way better goal to rally behind then building hundreds of thousands of fighter jets ).

Even if the analogy worked, contemporary automobile design is a case study in the drawbacks of multipurpose design.

Automobile design being a case study in drawbacks of multipurpose design and being overspecced seem to support my analogy that cars of today have developed just as much as airplanes, if not more. People that argue against airplanes like the multirole F-35 use exactly the same arguments!

[Borealis4x]

Are there going to be extra officer positions for ground forces like there are for ships? Will there be smaller and larger organization of ground forces available (companies, armies, etc).

[Person012345]

Guys, Aurora isn't real life, we can't even hope to try and figure out what the "realistic" behaviour and design of components made out of fictional materials in a fictional universe with fictional properties would be. The prime consideration here should be gameplay, whether we want a multirole pod or specfic pods or both and how they should be balanced to each other should be based on what is best for gameplay and what gives us the most viable choices without creating needless BS. Not based on whether the F-35 is an overbloated project that should have been cancelled long ago but wasn't because the US government is under the thumb of Lockheed Martin and the arms industry.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Guys, Aurora isn't real life, we can't even hope to try and figure out what the "realistic" behaviour and design of components made out of fictional materials in a fictional universe with fictional properties would be. The prime consideration here should be gameplay, whether we want a multirole pod or specfic pods or both and how they should be balanced to each other should be based on what is best for gameplay and what gives us the most viable choices without creating needless BS. Not based on whether the F-35 is an overbloated project that should have been cancelled long ago but wasn't because the US government is under the thumb of Lockheed Martin and the arms industry.

It might not be reality but most of it is based on logical conclusion on some pseudo scientific rules and everything needs to be consistent somehow. At least things need to be consistent with itself to make sense.

A choice always need to be useful or there are no real choice to make. The binary nature of most games, Aurora included many times make this a hard proposition or obstacle to overcome.

[QuakeIV]

Multirole fighters have been real and desirable for a long time.  They are effective and are used by any nation that is able to build large numbers of aircraft in general.  I fully agree with the decision to add general purpose missile pods.  Also, aurora drive systems seem to not require wings at all, at most you'd want the design to be semi aerodynamic but even then there is no way that strike fighters would be flying so low as to actually enter the atmosphere, even if they appear to be 'on' the planet.  The damned things are capable of flying at such incredible speeds that the tiny extra distance to dip into the atmosphere is totally irrelevant to them.  They would probably just make the planet uninhabitable with the shockwaves from their passing.

Also regarding the f-35, I do agree that its a bit dumb to try to instantly go for a super multipurpose stealth fighter, thats not going to be viable for a while yet imo.  The f-35 is supposed to be the first multirole stealth fighter that can also be mass produced.  What?  And then they wanted to try to have four variants with totally different propulsion systems have interchangeable parts.  Thats frakking retarded, VTOL, VSTOL, and conventional aircraft will always have significantly different internal configurations.  It was an idiotic pipe dream.  I'd point out though that the government isn't yet under the thumb of the defense industry really, it was just optimism frakking everyone over.  "hey lets develop a weapon that has absolutely every positive characteristic we want!"  "sure!"  This has happened before in human history, many times.

e: Editied to reflect what i was acutally intending to say, in my defense its like 2am here.

[Viridia]

@Steve Walmsley; quick question, but will the upgrades to ground force strength (if the old research options are being kept), allow for the ground units weapons/stats to increase/be upgraded, like one of your example Leman Russ designs being replaced with a Mk II? Also, are there any plans to introduce a heavy infantry unit, like an Astartes/Clan Elemental?

In all other respects, please keep it up. This is undoubtedly one of the few games I've been most excited for in my life.

[Profugo Barbatus]

I don't think we've seen every option yet on the list, but I'd be incredibly surprised if the Infantry didn't have the option of a Powered Armor, and you could always give them a heavy weapon and just not RP it as a crew served weapon, to accurately represent the firepower of a group of Toads or some Space Marines.

I would really love to see a complete list of the options that exist so far, if only to get an idea of what sort of forces I could accurately create.

[alex_brunius]

Guys, Aurora isn't real life, we can't even hope to try and figure out what the "realistic" behaviour and design of components made out of fictional materials in a fictional universe with fictional properties would be. The prime consideration here should be gameplay, whether we want a multirole pod or specfic pods or both and how they should be balanced to each other should be based on what is best for gameplay and what gives us the most viable choices without creating needless BS. Not based on whether the F-35 is an overbloated project that should have been cancelled long ago but wasn't because the US government is under the thumb of Lockheed Martin and the arms industry.

You should take a look at all the successful science fiction universes. Everything that can be ( without breaking the fiction ) is based on or inspired by real places / cultures / knowledge / behavior to make us immersed in the world and make the world feel plausible and "real".

The same thing is true for all successful games.