Author Topic: Collateral Damage  (Read 7032 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Garfunkel

  • Registered
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • ***********
  • Posts: 2781
  • Thanked: 1048 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #30 on: October 16, 2018, 06:24:51 PM »
That's pretty much how automines function currently.  They're not 100% automated, but rather the crew is so small (compared to 50,000 people) it's not worth tracking.
Well yes, that's how I RP my auto-mines and listening stations - that there's a small crew maintaining and servicing them, but mechanically they are self-contained, automated packages that you just drop down wherever.
 

Offline Garfunkel

  • Registered
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • ***********
  • Posts: 2781
  • Thanked: 1048 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #31 on: October 16, 2018, 06:41:07 PM »
Keep in mind that the Second World War, one of the most vigorous wars ever fought with one of the highest per day casualty rates, killed on average 10 000 soldiers per day and twice that many civilians. Certainly, a part of that was deliberate action to commit genocide, but another sizable chunk was battles being fought in and around urban areas as well as the results of deprivation of food and other resources necessary to maintain the war effort.
Well, that is a bit misleading because such a vast amount of civilian casualties in WW2 came from the Holocaust and other similar war crimes. But if you look at actual urban battles, we have a great case with Arnhem, where the British paratroopers fought the Germans - so it was a surprise operation that did not give time for civilians to flee - and the town was subject of artillery and aerial bombing, as well as fierce street fighting over a period of 9 days. Dutch authorities recorded only 452 casualties, whereas combined British and German casualties were about 3.5 thousand dead. Arnhem had a population of about 90 thousand back in the WW2 period. So that's a very small percentage. In Stalingrad, less than two thousand civilians died, though numbers are really sketchy as Soviets drafted significant numbers into militia and factories, and many others had time to flee the city. In contrast, the 1939 siege of Warsaw caused 18 thousand civilian casualties in 20 days, most of whom perished due to aerial bombing, out of a total population of about 1.3 million. Still a fairly low percentage.

The overwhelming majority of civilian casualties came from the unrestricted strategic bombing campaigns, from the few extended sieges (like Leningrad), from war crimes and anti-partisan operations, and finally from disease & malnutrition & starvation. Now, these are certainly elements closely related to warfare, but they are not the outcomes of actual battles. They are, somewhat crudely, represented in Aurora by changes to the population growth via radiation and atmosphere changes; ie nuclear winter does not depopulate the Earth immediately, just slowly kills people off. As there is no current system that would model agriculture or maintenance of civilian populations, I don't mind that collateral damage to the civilian population being a bit too high, but the VB6 levels were far too high, in my opinion. Since Steve already confirmed that for C# the amounts of collateral damage will be reduced, I'm happy. I just wanted to clear up this very popular misconception that fighting itself, even in urban areas, produces large amounts of civilian casualties, which it does not.
 
The following users thanked this post: King-Salomon

Offline QuakeIV

  • Registered
  • Commodore
  • **********
  • Posts: 759
  • Thanked: 168 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #32 on: October 16, 2018, 10:50:44 PM »
Yeah, as far as I know civilians tend to be able to flee cities just fine before the battle gets there.  Remaining alive after that fact tends to be a lot more challenging to them, but yeah.
 

Offline MarcAFK

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 2005
  • Thanked: 134 times
  • ...it's so simple an idiot could have devised it..
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #33 on: October 28, 2018, 06:15:25 PM »
I haven't read through this whole thread yet, but consider the potential for infrastructure to reduce ground combat or bombardment collateral damage.
You could 'shore up' a world thats being heavily fought over by removing unneeded installations wile simultaneously dumping on infrastructure, maybe only underground infrastructure? Consider it burying your buildings or something.
" Why is this godforsaken hellhole worth dying for? "
". . .  We know nothing about them, their language, their history or what they look like.  But we can assume this.  They stand for everything we don't stand for.  Also they told me you guys look like dorks. "
"Stop exploding, you cowards.  "
 

Offline Rabid_Cog

  • Commander
  • *********
  • Posts: 306
  • Thanked: 28 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #34 on: October 29, 2018, 05:10:12 AM »
This could be done by simply giving underground infrastructure the highest amount of HTK for its size/cost. Say, double or triple that of normal infrastructure.
I have my own subforum now!
Shameless plug for my own Aurora story game:
5.6 part: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4988.0.html
6.2 part: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5906.0.html

Feel free to post comments!
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5452.0.html
 
The following users thanked this post: bro918

Offline Hazard

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • H
  • Posts: 643
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #35 on: October 29, 2018, 05:19:11 AM »
IIRC underground infrastructure no longer exists. It's now low-gravity infrastructure.

Also, right now all facilities have a chance to be destroyed equal to 2/size. Cost varies, with larger facilities costing more compared to their size.
 

Offline Garfunkel

  • Registered
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • ***********
  • Posts: 2781
  • Thanked: 1048 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #36 on: October 29, 2018, 03:10:39 PM »
And rubble is a thing that now exists, and it protects surviving installations from damage. So the more rubble, the less chances for stuff to get wrecked.
 

Offline Father Tim

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 2162
  • Thanked: 531 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #37 on: October 29, 2018, 03:21:50 PM »
And therefore, yes, adding a whole pile of (extra) Infrastructure to a colony will reduce the chance of losing vital Installations.  And since 25 Infrastructure takes up the same space/HTK as one Construction Factory or AutoMine -- but consumes less minerals -- it makes for better (or at least, cheaper) 'armour' for your industry.
 

Offline Garfunkel

  • Registered
  • Admiral of the Fleet
  • ***********
  • Posts: 2781
  • Thanked: 1048 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #38 on: October 29, 2018, 04:08:42 PM »
So now it's not only an RP thing to do for humanitarian reasons, but a valid strategy, to pile X amount of infrastructure on a planet... just in case. Like the countries on Earth that still build bomb shelters.
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #39 on: October 29, 2018, 04:42:09 PM »
And therefore, yes, adding a whole pile of (extra) Infrastructure to a colony will reduce the chance of losing vital Installations.  And since 25 Infrastructure takes up the same space/HTK as one Construction Factory or AutoMine -- but consumes less minerals -- it makes for better (or at least, cheaper) 'armour' for your industry.

Since the chance for "rubble" to absorb hits is based on the ratio of destroyed installations to intact installations, excess infrastructure will actually protect you less than you'd expect.

Consider a Planet A with 50 factories vs Planet B with 50 factories and 500 infrastructure. After losing 25 size* worth of installations, Planet A has lost half its installations, and thus future collateral is reduced by 50%. After losing 25 size worth of installations, Planet B has lost 25% of its installations and thus future collateral is only reduced by 25%

Note that if you do the math the infrastructure will still reduce the number of factories you lose (though oddly enough it will actually increase the rate of population loss). It just wont reduce it by half like it might appear at first.

At first I was surprised and wondered if the infrastructure actually increasing population loss was a detrimental bug. However after thinking about it I don't think it's a big issue. It can also be thought of as an aspect of population density; on a planet with 5 million inhabitants and a bunch of factories, those people are probably mostly in urban centers and vulnerable to collateral damage, whereas if you have 5 million people and only a few mines they're probably mostly spread out across the planet.

*I think factories are 1 size and infrastructure is .1? But regardless of the actual numbers the underlying point still applies.
 

Offline Father Tim

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 2162
  • Thanked: 531 times
Re: Collateral Damage
« Reply #40 on: October 29, 2018, 07:03:43 PM »
*I think factories are 1 size and infrastructure is .1? But regardless of the actual numbers the underlying point still applies.

It would be more accurate to say Infrastructure is size 2 and factories are size 50.