Author Topic: Colony Automation  (Read 6060 times)

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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #15 on: January 13, 2018, 02:14:25 PM »
No... as it stands my suggestion would not be very interesting. It had to be as part of a different economic system where the civilian part of the game take a bigger role, much like in Distant World for example.

The way that I role-play was just a way to put it in context.

Just because you use house rules does not mean you play sub optimal within that rule set, everyone play by the same rules. That means it is a good testament to that it does work and will produce the result that I said it would.

I know that some people like to be able to control everything but in a game where you introduce balance it imply don't work. Without house rules this game are instantly broken and essentially you only play against yourself because there are no resistance what so ever.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2018, 07:05:41 PM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline ChildServices

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #16 on: January 13, 2018, 08:38:12 PM »
No... as it stands my suggestion would not be very interesting. It had to be as part of a different economic system where the civilian part of the game take a bigger role, much like in Distant World for example.
Then it wouldn't even be the same kind of game. If that happened, I'd prefer to just go play Distant Worlds, since it's substantially better presented and much smoother to play in general, if it's going to become similar to that.

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Just because you use house rules does not mean you play sub optimal within that rule set, everyone play by the same rules. That means it is a good testament to that it does work and will produce the result that I said it would.
Your ruleset isn't the rules of the actual game, though, so it's sub-optimal. If any one of your players decided to actually play Aurora "properly" at any point in the campaign, they'd probably win.

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Without house rules this game are instantly broken and essentially you only play against yourself because there are no resistance what so ever.
So the solution is to make the AI better, not remove half to a third of the gameplay.
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #17 on: January 14, 2018, 04:21:33 AM »
Then it wouldn't even be the same kind of game. If that happened, I'd prefer to just go play Distant Worlds, since it's substantially better presented and much smoother to play in general, if it's going to become similar to that.
Your ruleset isn't the rules of the actual game, though, so it's sub-optimal. If any one of your players decided to actually play Aurora "properly" at any point in the campaign, they'd probably win.
So the solution is to make the AI better, not remove half to a third of the gameplay.

Aurora is not a good game if you exploit the game mechanics to "win", completely broken since there are many loopholes, especially against the AI. It essentially will be opposite to what you want and remove almost everything down to a select few options, the rest is just illusory non options.

This game is not meant to play to "win" in the normal sense because there are no way to win. You are supposed to set your own limitations and be imaginative, this was the original purpose of the game the way I understand it. Since there are no condition to "win" the game that definition is left up to you when you play. Your definition of winning are as viable as mine, there is no "proper" way to play this game.
Space Master is a direct feature of the game so you can just magically give you everything you want, that is per definition the most efficient way to beat anyone in the game if you want to be a bit silly about it, but that is a cheap shot argument... ;)

In a house ruled game if you break the rules you cheat and automatically forfeit the game.

Aurora is too complex for a decent AI. It tries to be too many things at one time and no AI can even remotely compete with that. The AI in Aurora are basically scripted bots. Only meant to give you some entertainment while you build your civilization the way you imagine your story.

There are many ways the game could be improved to increase both realism and automation. In my opinion an expanded civilian/state economy would make the game even more fun and more actual important choices to make rather than more less important/fun repetitive decisions. But that is just my opinion.

« Last Edit: January 14, 2018, 06:27:24 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #18 on: January 14, 2018, 06:40:06 AM »
It's just the player intentionally playing in a suboptimal way for fun and to create a story.

Point of history:  When Steve started Aurora, he repeatedly said that one of his prime motivators was to generate content for his fiction writing.  So to a large extent the primary purpose of the game is to allow the player to create a story, hence the fiction section of the forum.  IIRC this is also what motivated some of the flexibility of the rule set in the game.

John
 

Offline ChildServices

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #19 on: January 14, 2018, 08:27:23 AM »
Aurora is not a good game it you exploit the game mechanics to "win", completely broken since there are many loopholes you can abuse against the AI.

This game is not meant to play to "win" in the normal sense because there are no way to win. You are supposed to set your own limitations and be imaginative, this was the original purpose of the game the way I understand it. Since there are no condition to "win" the game that definition is left up to you when you play. Your definition of winning are as viable as mine, there is no "proper" way to play this game.
Space Master is a direct feature of the game so you can just magically give you everything you want, that is per definition the most efficient way to beat anyone in the game if you want to be a bit silly about it, but that is a cheap shot argument... ;)
The first sentence just reads like: "If you can learn to beat the AI then it's a bad game." Nearly every game with AI is gonna have that issue unless the game is extremely basic. Hey... wait a second...

I definitely wouldn't mind if Steve actually did create the option for hard win conditions. It'd give me something to work towards so that I'm not basically just playing until the game starts to slow down and then re-rolling a new one.
All I can say about your argument that a debugging/GMing tool is intended for you to always use to cheat and kill everything with is this: ¯\_(?)_/¯

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Aurora is too complex for a decent AI. It tries to be too many things at one time and no AI can even remotely compete with that. The AI in Aurora are basically scripted bots. Only meant to give you some entertainment while you build your civilization the way you imagine your story.

There are many ways the game could be improved to increase both realism and automation. In my opinion an expanded civilian/state economy would make the game even more fun and more actual important choices to make rather than more less important/fun repetitive decisions. But that is just my opinion.

It seems like your entire argument as far as why the game should be so radically altered into an aquarium game is because the AI is bad. I really don't think it's such a tall order to make the AI not suck, that what you've suggested is the only alternative.

I mean, really...
Doctors hate him! Local Australian smegposter mastered Aurora's economy in four easy steps! Click to learn more!:
  • Put automated mines with mass drivers in as many places as humanly possible
  • Automate the movement of resources from those mines using freighters on looping pickup/dropoff orders back to...
  • ... a handful of forge worlds which are close together (probably including the capitol) and which make up 90% (arbitrary number, but probably at least that much) of your production capacity and research.
  • spam money printer colonies everywhere else that's easily terraformed

Those four things are all the AI needs to know how to do in order to compete with a human in the economic aspect of the game, so that it doesn't have to cheat as much. I don't really believe this is going to be impossible to make bots do even if they're basically scripted. And neither do you for that matter, since you more or less want the civilian and state economy to be able to do all of this automatically with minimal player input.
Really, I think any further depth that exists in this part of the game is simply imagined. In the case of veterans it's because they've been playing the game with personal limitations for so long, and in the case of newbies it's because of the arcane UI.

This cycle of contradiction has occurred in nearly every back and forth between us so far... but, well...
I don't think this game tries to be very many things at all. It can be, just because of the flexibility of whatever ruleset you decide to play under (the same way Distant Worlds can), but from a cold and purely mechanical perspective? The perspective that actually matters for a game's AI? Well, from that perspective, the current VB6 version doesn't seem like it wants to be much more than a very logistically-oriented wargame. Since the vast majority of C#'s actual mechanical changes seem to be about combat and military organisation/logistics, I'm inclined to think that this isn't really gonna change for the foreseeable future. Unless the next 3 pages of the changelog are all about empire management and civilians.
I've already said it, but if you wanna make the AI into an obstacle for players, the "wargame" is the main part you need to make them better at. Even if they just made ships that aren't horrendous it'd be a massive improvement.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2018, 08:35:54 AM by ChildServices »
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #20 on: January 14, 2018, 06:53:53 PM »
What I want is a revamped economic system and a more involved civilian population and a bit more realism in planetary economic growth.

You as a player would still make all the hard choices but would not need to personally set up mineral runs or industrial ques,

Instead colonies industry would be civilian as they are in reality and have always been in history. The player who essentially are the state would concentrate in the state business.

You could subsidize colonies so civilians tend to develop them in a certain way. That would be industry in different forms.

You would then use contracts to build state property such as research facilities, academies, naval yards etc.. You should not be able to just hijack an entire planetary industry for military means. If you give out too many contract then civilian goods and morale should go down. If you put your faction at war status the civilian should be more willing to do contracts etc..

I don't see why civilian corporations could not do their own explorations and build their own colonies as well in the same manner they build mining complexes, that does not mean the player or state do the same or that you could restrict the civilian economy from doing it. But they would most likely do it much cheaper but you would not control where they build colonies.

What I propose will not take away choices, it would make the economy more interesting, add choice which would be less binary, it would be more dynamic and depending on more factors.

But that is just my opinion that a more involved civilian economy would be more fun and remove some tedious mechanics from players hands as you would easily automate the boring parts.
 

Offline Person012345

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #21 on: January 14, 2018, 07:28:38 PM »
What I want is a revamped economic system and a more involved civilian population and a bit more realism in planetary economic growth.

You as a player would still make all the hard choices but would not need to personally set up mineral runs or industrial ques,

Instead colonies industry would be civilian as they are in reality and have always been in history. The player who essentially are the state would concentrate in the state business.

You could subsidize colonies so civilians tend to develop them in a certain way. That would be industry in different forms.

You would then use contracts to build state property such as research facilities, academies, naval yards etc.. You should not be able to just hijack an entire planetary industry for military means. If you give out too many contract then civilian goods and morale should go down. If you put your faction at war status the civilian should be more willing to do contracts etc..

I don't see why civilian corporations could not do their own explorations and build their own colonies as well in the same manner they build mining complexes, that does not mean the player or state do the same or that you could restrict the civilian economy from doing it. But they would most likely do it much cheaper but you would not control where they build colonies.

What I propose will not take away choices, it would make the economy more interesting, add choice which would be less binary, it would be more dynamic and depending on more factors.

But that is just my opinion that a more involved civilian economy would be more fun and remove some tedious mechanics from players hands as you would easily automate the boring parts.
This really only caters to, again, a specific roleplay. What if I'm playing a hive mind? Or an incredibly autocratic society?

To expand, right now you can RP anything. If you want to say that corporations, for instance, play a major role in the defense of the empire (something I did in the one AAR I wrote up) then you can. The fact that you control them is unrelated to the RP aspect. It might be nice if there were some mechanism to allow your suggestion, but I don't think blanket forcing it on all empires is the right choice, because some people don't want to RP their empire that way. And once it's out of their control it can no longer be RP'd as something it isn't. I think that if we're going to add an expanded civilian sector it would need to be tied to something, perhaps government type or whatever and it could become really complicated, perhaps not worth the effort.

Frankly though, I think the large amount of control you have is the best place for the RP side. If you control things, you can make them behave how you want and thus roleplay them as anything you want.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2018, 07:38:15 PM by Person012345 »
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2018, 12:51:56 AM »
This really only caters to, again, a specific roleplay. What if I'm playing a hive mind? Or an incredibly autocratic society?

To expand, right now you can RP anything. If you want to say that corporations, for instance, play a major role in the defense of the empire (something I did in the one AAR I wrote up) then you can. The fact that you control them is unrelated to the RP aspect. It might be nice if there were some mechanism to allow your suggestion, but I don't think blanket forcing it on all empires is the right choice, because some people don't want to RP their empire that way. And once it's out of their control it can no longer be RP'd as something it isn't. I think that if we're going to add an expanded civilian sector it would need to be tied to something, perhaps government type or whatever and it could become really complicated, perhaps not worth the effort.

Frankly though, I think the large amount of control you have is the best place for the RP side. If you control things, you can make them behave how you want and thus roleplay them as anything you want.

Perhaps, but the current model already have civilians and corporations running around doing things and you already have a civilian economy in the game so I don't think it would hamper much in that regard, it would just make this part of the game less tedious and simpler yet a bit more involved in decision making. You would just need to make the decisions less frequently, you still would make decisions on your economy as before.

You could simply add an option to turn off population morale so contract will always be followed without question. Morale on population as it is now must still be a problem for that kind of RP though. So being able to turn it off could be good as it is right now too for such RP.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2018, 12:55:10 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Hydrofoil (OP)

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Re: Colony Automation
« Reply #23 on: January 15, 2018, 02:24:45 AM »
im reading this forum thread and seeing people talking as if this cant be implemented in a way where both sides can get what they want. Like i said before im not looking for this to be some sort of core functionality im looking for something that the player can toggle on or off as they choose for each colony. so minmax players can still play the way they want and those that feel some more automation would benefit the game also get what they want.