I would personally strongly prefer much more delegated management of the empire, but thats a complicated thing to do and very different from the base nature of this game in general.  I'd personally just assume it will never happen and call it a day.

Yes, this is a hard  thing to balance. The problem in my opinion is that different people like different things. In an ideal world, every player would be able to choose what to micromanage and what not to. For example, I might micro the trade goods ferrying while you might might delegate it to the AI, etc. Realistically, this is not a sane thing to ask Steve to code. The question then is where to draw the line where abstraction is concerned. This is ultimately up to Steve, although we can make suggestions. (For the record, I LOVE micro-ing exploration for example)

When I typed "jigsaw puzzle" in my previous mail, I had a bit of an epiphany.  I strongly suspect that there is a class of people who like to fiddle with detail (e.g. microing trade goods ferrying) and I suspect these are the same sort of people who enjoy 5K piece jigsaw puzzles.  So I suspect a lot of the disagreements about level of detail are between people with different "jigsaw affinity" scores   I would characterize Aurora as having a high jigsaw quotient; I suspect it comes from Steve's desire for realism leading to high level-of-detail modeling.

Guilty as charged, I often play Hive Mind in Stellaris 
More seriously, I would love to have Fog of War. However yes, it's very hard to achieve in game. Once again, where do I draw the line? It would be beautiful if we could build "relay stations". Systems and planets would be "instantly interconnected" only if all the systems in between the two systems have a "relay station". Likewise, actually seeing the results of, for example, geo surveys would only happen once a geo survey ship returns to an "instantly interconnected" system. Once the ship does so, you actually get the geosurvey data, while before that you do not.

Interesting you say this.  The other reason I micro exploration is that I have tiny "picket" ships that I place on either side of a jump point with the passive sensors and a small jump drive.  I roleplay instantaneous communication within a star system, while the ships are abstracted to having a regular comm schedule.  This effectively gives instantaneous notice anywhere in the empire when bad guys jump in or if I discover aliens while surveying a new system.

- After the second term of duty, you see the exact numbers. I think something like this could work.

Agreed, except I would be mean and nasty and add an extra hidden fudge factor that changed the reported scores.  So the wonderful research you had leading all your research might be a bumbling nincompoop but REALLY good at hiding it

John

I like that phrase. We violent agree that we agree  Or, we agree that we violently agree  I was referring more the to whole paradox games discussion anyway.

Also sorry for the small misunderstanding about my posts, I decided to break my post in two because it was in my opinion too long, but then I reworked it and it took time, and you were already writing an answer while only the first part was on the forums.

1)  It is a lot of work. <snipped for readability>
Note that this is actually the issue that I'm most concerned about from a game play point of view.  Every decision to give up an abstraction in favor of player control without providing a mechanism for the player to put the abstraction back in increases the burden of playing the game.  This is also the reason I'm so keen for the civilian sector - it abstracts away details I find un-fun. (In fact, I have a vague recollection that I might have been the one that suggested it oh so many years ago.) 

Yes, this is a hard  thing to balance. The problem in my opinion is that different people like different things. In an ideal world, every player would be able to choose what to micromanage and what not to. For example, I might micro the trade goods ferrying while you might might delegate it to the AI, etc. Realistically, this is not a sane thing to ask Steve to code. The question then is where to draw the line where abstraction is concerned. This is ultimately up to Steve, although we can make suggestions. (For the record, I LOVE micro-ing exploration for example)

To reiterate, I would not be against a civilian sector even a bit more developed than right now, just there needs to be at least some level of realism (size of the shipping lines, shipping lines requiring shipyards) and the possibility to direct the civilian sector towards certain outcomes/forbid certain systems etc. Like it is now, the state has basically NO saying in whatever the civilians do, and this is very much unrealistic in any kind of government that is not a Megacorporation Oligopoly or an Anarchy.
In my Galactic Empire, any civilian who gets out of the accepted boundaries is repurposed into liquid fertilizer.

2)  The thing that first struck me when I read your post was "aha!  And the civilization is a hive mind!".  One of the issues with Aurora is having to roleplay fog-of-war; even if you're trying to, it's very difficult.  I remember the days right after Steve introduced AI for the alien races - it was like night and day in terms of the level of tension in the game.  Beforehand, you knew exactly what was out there in the strange unexplored system; afterwards it was more like stumbling around in the dark being afraid of being eaten by a grue.  I just realized what I think is a great comparison: before AI aliens Aurora was basically like a complicated jigsaw puzzle - the trick was putting together the pieces in the right way (although there was random tension when rolling up the aliens the moment you generated a new system).  After AI aliens it was much more of an adventure.  A tough nut to crack is "how to let the player experience the adventure of the scout ship captain that's probing a newly discovered alien system" while at the same time avoiding universal omnipotence.  This is actually one of the reasons I like to handle scouting myself - I always send in two ships and leave one at the jump point to roleplay being able to get the scouting information out.

Guilty as charged, I often play Hive Mind in Stellaris 
More seriously, I would love to have Fog of War. However yes, it's very hard to achieve in game. Once again, where do I draw the line? It would be beautiful if we could build "relay stations". Systems and planets would be "instantly interconnected" only if all the systems in between the two systems have a "relay station". Likewise, actually seeing the results of, for example, geo surveys would only happen once a geo survey ship returns to an "instantly interconnected" system. Once the ship does so, you actually get the geosurvey data, while before that you do not.

This however poses problems. What happens if systems are not "instantly interconnected"? Obviously as a player I must be able to give orders to the ships and planets, else the game cannot work. Another possible example, fleet A, which is in a certain system, has no idea that the nation is under attack in system B because the systems are not "instantly interconnected". But should Aurora forbid me to move fleet A to intercept the attack unless the systems are in instant communication? I feel that in these cases, roleplay is really the only possible solution.
If something like this relay stations and instant connection of systems is ever implemented, perhaps for research and production penalties could be used. Systems and installations out of the instant connection network would have penalties, to model inefficiencies due to information asymmetry. This could be however very tricky to balance, quite controversial, and probably not easy to code.

One could also play the same game with officers - not know that one of them has a high political rating, but instead have it look like a high command rating would be a more realistic abstraction, IMO.  This would better emulate the officer's superiors mis-evaluating him or her for command.  The problem with adding this mechanism comes back to the cognitive burden issue: the player doesn't have enough attention to pay to every officer in the chain of command (or even a few for a significant amount of time outside of combat) to be able to discover the true information about the officer's abilities.

This got me thinking, I had not considered  fog of war for officers. In my opinion, it would be possible and not too onerous. Not for the player nor for the coding.

- A new officer/scientist/governor, fresh out of the academy, is subject to fog of war. Instead of the real, actual values you see something like evaluations.
A governor could show something like:
Rank 4 (this is still needed for assignments)
Mining likely medium expertise, wealth likely low, shipyards likely very low.
And so on, even for officers and scientists. There is a low chance (maybe 5%?) that every single evaluation is just plain wrong, or that a stat is missing, because the character is untested in the field.
- After a term of duty, the mistakes are removed, and for the stats the officer actually has you see intervals. In the above example, mining 20-25%, wealth 10-15%, shipyards 5-10%
- After the second term of duty, you see the exact numbers. I think something like this could work.

Breaking up my original post because it was getting too long. Regarding the possibility of adding uncertainty in general into the control of the empire.

Apart from the issue of civilians, which I wrote in the post above, I too agree that the outcome of certain actions should be less "certain". However I do not see it as a matter of "having less control" over the nation, but rather on having uncertain results in what you do.

A small degree of uncertainty in a game is certainly welcome. It makes the game more interesting in my opinion, less predictable. But that should not, in my opinion, be because the "civilization" gave the "wrong order". But rather due to the uncertain nature of things. In some fields it is already so, of course. For example in combat, the very fact that the resolution system works with chances means that combat is by nature uncertain. A lot of other things, however, are set in stone and perfectly predictable and it's not very realistic.

Research for example. Real world dictates that research is a hard to predict thing. Yet in Aurora, I can know years beforehand the exact day a research will finish. That can certainly be improved.
Production and ship construction is, likewise, something that can be worked upon. In this case, the issue is possible mishaps during the production chain. I think modeling these would be nice.

That said, the issue becomes how to put all these things in the game while avoiding too much micro and avoiding all this becoming just some "things that just annoy the player"

I can think of two ways to do this.
1) Making the cost / time required for certain activities random inside a certain range. For example, researching red lasers costs 1500-2500 research points. You do not know beforehand the exact number, you know only the interval. In truth, the exact number gets chosen in secret by the program, maybe even at game start. But when starting to research red lasers, you do not know in advance when the research will end exactly. This method works well for research, less so for things like production
2) Add a "random events" system with breakthroughs, setbacks and mishaps. This would work equally well for research and production. We already have something similar with ships, with maintenance and component failures. At certain predetermined intervals a chance gets rolled for these events which can speed up (in case of research) or impede (for both research and production) your capabilities and progress.

I believe the second way would work better. However it would be a pretty large change to the game, and a lot of players would probably not like it.

I am frankly a bit perplexed at some of the posts in this thread. They are very different from my way of thinking 
Of COURSE one person does not have that much influence in a nation. But then again, of COURSE I am not playing a person.

When I play Aurora, I AM my nation. From the highest official, to the lowliest gunner aboard a warship. I am the entire population of the race I'm playing.

How else would I instantly know what is happening to every ship, even when they all alone in a system far away? Because I impersonate and roleplay the entire civilization. As such there is no thing as too much control, because I am every single fictional person of the entire race.

Which is why, by the way, I dislike civilians, period. I can understand how they fit into some possible roleplays of a nation, I just don't like them all that much, because I can control them way too little.


I do agree however that civilians need to be developed a lot better, if they are to stay. Steve's latest changes to civilian trade and movements of installations are a step in the right direction, but in my opinion they are not enough.
IF one plays with the civilians, I do not have that much of a problem with "Phantom fuel and minerals" that the civilians seem to be able to obtain. I too have always roleplayed it as the civilians getting their hands of low-grade TN minerals that the state dos not see as pure enough to use. Although I don't like it, as stated above, it's the least "offensive" way to think of the situation.

Specifically however, I think the following capabilities should be added, in order to flesh out the civilians more:
- The ability to ship everything the nation asks for. Minerals, installations, trade goods, ship parts.
- The ability to prioritize a cargo transfer request, if the nation pays more. In that case a civilian ship should ignore other possible routes, and just go and ship that one thing
- The ability to interdict civilians from certain places. If I don't want civilians to go into a system for whatever reason, I should be able to block them. If not, I'll blow them up. Because I refuse to lose my civilization because idiot civilians went into a system with an invader wormhole while I'm trying to lay low. Roleplay is everything.
- The ability to subsidize a planet's production of certain trade goods, if I want to do so, or to avoid the production of certain trade goods. Because when I roleplay an autocratic nation, I should definitely be able to do so.
- A more proportionate civilian fleet, based on the size of the nation / of the number of colonies / of the size of those colonies. Because no matter how rich a shipping line is, it makes no sense for them to create many ships if all I have is a 2 million colony on the Moon. I am unsure if Steve already added something along these lines.
- The existence of "shipping line shipyards". Because it makes no sense that shipping lines can create ships from nothingness. They need to have their own "company shipyard", which can also be blown up. It should cost wealth and time for them to rebuild it if it gets blown up.

I think all these would definitely be steps in the right direction.

I don't know if this is in the cards for Aurora, but I would love to see it happen.  I would love a system like Europa Universalis 3's "Mean Time To Happen" mechanic.  Just about everything that could possibly have an element of uncertainty did not just happen based on a progress bar.  It had a percent chance to occur every day, such that sometimes things would happen ahead of schedule, some would be behind schedule.  Usually they also weren't binary; it wasn't a percent chance to convert X province to Y religion, for instance.  It was a chance to make progress on converting the province.

This way you have much less knowledge and control over how and when things happen.

er that's called Stellaris

Sort of yes, sort of no.

Stellaris is more like Europa Universalis in space than Crusader Kings in space. Not least of which because Crusader Kings actively simulates every barony and up. It'd be like if every square on every planet in Stellaris was a fully active AI participant in the game with its own goals and priorities and you had to deal with them and their attempts at dynasty building to remain in charge of your empire. And it's not; most of it is simply abstracted away into larger entities that matter.