Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: MJOne on January 07, 2019, 05:17:07 AM
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Hi!
Thank you Steve for one of the best games ever made. You are a true genius!
I know this is a sensitive matter, and I WILL NEVER spread the secret passwords, I swear on my mother's life. Honest to God.
But I have tracked down the main reason why the game bogs down after 70 years or so. The Commercial Shipping(+200 ships).
I managed to edit the Database so that all the new Shipping Lines start with negative wealth, hence they will never build any ships.
So you have to haul all the goods yourself, just to be clear.
I would like to share that Database here, but only if you Steve, would permit it.
I turned 40 second 5-day turns(without any NPR's yet), into 5 seconds. Much better!
The same goes for the NPR's, they have negative values, I checked it.
Though I would recommend that you play without a starting NPR, and slowly clean them up as they generates while you are exploring.
I also plan to edit the Beam Weapons and Beam FC's to have alot more range.
Is it okay Steve if I share the edited Database, but still password protected with your original password that I will never ever in my whole life divulge to anyone. I promise.
Have a nice day everyone!
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of course we are waiting for the new C# version for the real speedup
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as good as the intention is... I am thinking this is highly contraproductive...
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10217.0
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I am well aware of Aurora 4x C# version and can’t wait to play it.
I have been waiting for years!
But how long until it’s released?
Summer would be optimistic right?
So I got to year 78 in one week.
10 major colonies(a capital in each system + logistics), 50 lesser colonies. (3 billion pops) and 1. 5 million tons of wartime navy + 300 fighters + 150 FACS.
5 million tons of ”civilian” ships.
5 millions tons of space stations.
4000 construction factories.
120 research centers.
Etc. . . etc. . .
Regular TN 500 mil start Sol.
I just thought someone would like it before the master-piece comes out
King-Salomon, it wouldn't change anything. The database would still be protected with Steves original password. You would be in an equal position.
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While it would seem to fix turn slowdowns I shudder at the horror of the micromanegment this must entail. I agree that at later stages the slowdowns can become horrible, but in truth they are never something that causes massive issues. Being a non realtime game means you can have Aurora running it's turn in the background while doing something else for a few minutes. I would argue the real issues come with gertting spammed with messages in 5 sec intervals (aka all your NPR combats and the like). Having to rely 100% on comercial shipping would only add to that problem with getting more time stops for the latest bout of frieghters/colony that have finished their set of orders.
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Hi Rich. h :)
No not really. It depends how you setup your logistics, I tend to make my colonies semi-autonomous.
A capital colony that sucks in all the resource in that system. It keeps a buffer of minerals to keep itself going 1 year or so in isolation.
The rest goes to Earth through logistics using a Mineral Loading colony in a system. Often an empty asteroid.
Then I have 5-10 mass drivers shooting minerals to that colony. This mineral loading colony have 1 mass driver shooting back to the capital colony. It also has no reserve level of minerals. Meaning, the main capital colony will send more to that mineral loading colony more than it sends back to the capital colony. Hence a build-up occurs.
I then have small freighters(10kt) on repeating orders collecting the minerals from that mineral loading station and transporting it back to Earth.
For all the other installations I transfer them in bulk on large freighters(100kt-400kt).
Then I have a few freighters for intra-system transportation stationed at every capital colony.
That way you do not need to micro-manage alot. There is no use in having alot of saturated colonies that can easily be merged into one system capital colony, that can take care of everything that system needs.
It all depends on your planning and naming scheme.
But I do recognize that you need alittle more micro-managment, but not alot.
You do basically the same when setting up civilian contracts. From Point A to Point B, X amounts.
It also depends on what you value.
The speed gain is MUCH more worth than what you lose in fiddling. I can play this alot longer before it gets unbearable. But to be frank, I have a 4000-5000 erous computer that is one year old. But cutting 40-60 seconds 5 day turns into 5 second five day turns, is GREAT.
This is just an option I presented to those who was interested in not having to end their campaign because of slow downs. BUT ONLY IF STEVE AGREES, see my first post.
Do not PM me or anything, you will never get the modded database before STEVE gives it a green light.
It will still be under the same protection as the original so you won't be able to change anything.
Honestly, with all do respect Sir, it seems that you are just trying to find any argument against this that feels abit on the weak side. But I do respect your argument.
The thing that makes Aurora 4x great is the micro-managment and freedom it gives the player.
It is by far the best game in that aspect. Nothing comes close. For a creative guy like me it is a true blessing.
Anyways, have a nice one :)
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Bankrupting the civilians is a good solution to endgame lag, but what about the NPRs? They still build hundreds of hsits. I don't know if they use similar mechanics in regards to hipping lines, do they even have 'civilians"?
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Bankrupting the civilians is a good solution to endgame lag, but what about the NPRs? They still build hundreds of hsits. I don't know if they use similar mechanics in regards to hipping lines, do they even have 'civilians"?
For freighters and colony ships, they only have civilians. There didn't seem to be any point in having two types of AI for NPR colony ships and civilians, so they are all created in shipping lines. This is true for C# too.
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Bankrupting the civilians is a good solution to endgame lag, but what about the NPRs? They still build hundreds of hsits. I don't know if they use similar mechanics in regards to hipping lines, do they even have 'civilians"?
For freighters and colony ships, they only have civilians. There didn't seem to be any point in having two types of AI for NPR colony ships and civilians, so they are all created in shipping lines. This is true for C# too.
Doesn't that mean NPRs can't carry minerals from a system to another, or is that abstracted for them?
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Bankrupting the civilians is a good solution to endgame lag, but what about the NPRs? They still build hundreds of hsits. I don't know if they use similar mechanics in regards to hipping lines, do they even have 'civilians"?
For freighters and colony ships, they only have civilians. There didn't seem to be any point in having two types of AI for NPR colony ships and civilians, so they are all created in shipping lines. This is true for C# too.
Doesn't that mean NPRs can't carry minerals from a system to another, or is that abstracted for them?
Mineral movement is automatic, although it does mean they won't create colonies or move automated mines.
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Would it be possible for at least the player's shipping lines to move minerals?
Because as it stands now, getting interstellar mineral shipments set up and running smoothly is pretty finnicky. If the stockpile on the mining world ever runs completely out, the cargo loading will fail and break all your orders, meaning you have to re-do them. It'd be more realistic with civilian shipping lines doing all the mineral transport too. The US military might use lots of rare earth elements, but they rely on civilian shipping to import them all.
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In my opinion, as it stands now the real issue with running without civilian shippings is the lack of fuel. Sure, you can build cargo ships, colony ships and such. But the fuel cost will be horrendous.
Especially in the early tech levels, you will also have problems having enough refineries. So as it stands now I consider a playthrough witout civilian shippings to be very slow and painful XD It can be done, of course. Just, fuel will be your number one concern for a long time.
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Hi Zincat
I have never had any fuel issues. Ever in Aurora.
And I have played this for years.
There is more than plenty of fuel.
My current campaign is 90 years in, no civ shipping.
I use Excel alot to keep track of every detail in my campaign.
From what experience ingame without civilian shipping have you reached that conclusion?
I normally have 1-2 1500kt harvester bases and 40-50 fuel harvester ships 100kt each.
I make much more than I can ever get rid off.
How do you setup your fuel infrastructure?
What techs do you pick in the beginning?
How much do you value Sorium?
If you do everything systematic and take it step by step you will avoid almost every shortage, even the common duranium shortage.
Remember that you need to get your economy going before building large fleets.
Its the bread and butter of every civilization.
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Hi Zincat
I have never had any fuel issues. Ever in Aurora.
And I have played this for years.
There is more than plenty of fuel.
My current campaign is 90 years in, no civ shipping.
I use Excel alot to keep track of every detail in my campaign.
From what experience ingame without civilian shipping have you reached that conclusion?
I normally have 1-2 1500kt harvester bases and 40-50 fuel harvester ships 100kt each.
I make much more than I can ever get rid off.
How do you setup your fuel infrastructure?
What techs do you pick in the beginning?
How much do you value Sorium?
If you do everything systematic and take it step by step you will avoid almost every shortage, even the common duranium shortage.
Remember that you need to get your economy going before building large fleets.
Its the bread and butter of every civilization.
I agree that fuel or pretty much any resource is not a problem as long as there are no external preasures in the beginning. Note that not every campaign run like that and if you are fighting for resources, are in a technology and military contest pretty much from the start of the game things come in a different light.
I always find that resources and fuel in particular is a constraint... military ships always contend with as much speed as possible to keep up with the oposition, thus can and will push the limits of fuel resources.
If I start an isolated Earth start I can easily wait with exploration for a long time until I'm ready if I game the system... if I role play I never do that and would explore like crazy and very soon run into hostile strong oposition of some kind. Often something with higher technology than me, I give NPRs huge bonuses so they are a threat.
But most of the time I run multiple faction games.... these are high stakes campaigns from day one.
Anyway.... removing civilians can be an option... but I think it breaks NPRs and make them even less of a challenge. I will just wait for C# before I start a new campaign... :)
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Hi Zincat
I have never had any fuel issues. Ever in Aurora.
And I have played this for years.
There is more than plenty of fuel.
My current campaign is 90 years in, no civ shipping.
I use Excel alot to keep track of every detail in my campaign.
From what experience ingame without civilian shipping have you reached that conclusion?
I normally have 1-2 1500kt harvester bases and 40-50 fuel harvester ships 100kt each.
I make much more than I can ever get rid off.
How do you setup your fuel infrastructure?
What techs do you pick in the beginning?
How much do you value Sorium?
If you do everything systematic and take it step by step you will avoid almost every shortage, even the common duranium shortage.
Remember that you need to get your economy going before building large fleets.
Its the bread and butter of every civilization.
I should put things in context, my bad. I always play conventional start, with at least 2 NPR races and all spoilers active. I understand that this is not how most people play.
Jorgen_CAB hit the nail on the head, at least with how I play.
In this scenario I feel that I simply cannot take it easy. I don't have time to take it slowly. Every obstacle becomes a significant problem, as I am far, far behind in tech and everything else from the very beginning.
By the time I start expanding, the NPRs have explored many systems. As I don't have any fleet whatsoever at the start, any spoiler I encounter is a roadblock for quite some time.
It's not that there's not enough sorium around. The problem is that extracting and refining that is a significant investment in a situation when even building geosurvey ships feel tough. As for harvesters, while they are efficient, they're not easy to set up when you start with nothing at all.
In such a situation, having the civilians doing the hauling / moving colonists etc is a really big deal. And I feel that having the fuel required is more a problem than building the ships to haul / move colonists, because a fuel shortage can creep up to you and the resource investment is quite big.
Anyway, that's just how I play. I imagine all these things are less a concern with a normal start. But I simply can't play any other way. It HAS to be a conventional start ;D
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Hi Jorgen_CAB
I agree, thats why I didn’t stated one scenario and talked about another, that is just confusing for everyone.
Still, I do not have those issue, even with NPRs generated from the beginning.
But at the same time, I have +1000 of hours of experience playing Aurora 4x.
I never proclaimed that this would be anything else than a fix for certain particular scenario.
Just to be clear. Otherwise I would have stated that.
Also it depends on your mineral and fuel resources generated in Sol.
Speed is only ”relevant” if you are weaker than your opponent and have less weapon range. The main goal is to invade anyways. So just stay the course and wear it out. Its rare for me to get armor damage from the ai. I have spread out the whole flak/gauss umbrella on all the platforms in the fleet(30 ships or more per fleet, 500-1000kt total) other than that, they are very specialized in their role. And bring many colliers. Also think of all the different situations you might bump into when designing your fleet so you can handle all types of scenarios. A huge, well stocked, fighter-bomber group can handle many types of scenarios. Heavy super fast ASMs can also be to some use against certain enemies.
Carrier warfare neglects the speed gap, and I am heavy into carrier fleets + boarding.
Why destroy a ship when you can steal it(tugs can be useful sometimes) and refit/reverse engineer or scrap it?
That saves you resources.
Never designs something generic, give it a specific purpose.
In Aurora 4x, patience is KEY.
And respect the economy.
Do not ignore the cost of anything.
Anyways. . . . yeah I really really really am looking forward to Aurora C# :)
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I've done this myself and it eventually was pointless as the NPRs ended up with more than enough ships to bog down turn times. In order to truely take advantage of aurora without having your turn times ruined you need NPRs off (or maybe just keep 1 spoiler on at a time).
Which is fine in a way as at least the old Aurora does still work fine as a campaign tracking software where you run everything yourself.
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Hi Jorgen_CAB
I agree, thats why I didn’t stated one scenario and talked about another, that is just confusing for everyone.
Still, I do not have those issue, even with NPRs generated from the beginning.
But at the same time, I have +1000 of hours of experience playing Aurora 4x.
I never proclaimed that this would be anything else than a fix for certain particular scenario.
Just to be clear. Otherwise I would have stated that.
Also it depends on your mineral and fuel resources generated in Sol.
Speed is only ”relevant” if you are weaker than your opponent and have less weapon range. The main goal is to invade anyways. So just stay the course and wear it out. Its rare for me to get armor damage from the ai. I have spread out the whole flak/gauss umbrella on all the platforms in the fleet(30 ships or more per fleet, 500-1000kt total) other than that, they are very specialized in their role. And bring many colliers. Also think of all the different situations you might bump into when designing your fleet so you can handle all types of scenarios. A huge, well stocked, fighter-bomber group can handle many types of scenarios. Heavy super fast ASMs can also be to some use against certain enemies.
Carrier warfare neglects the speed gap, and I am heavy into carrier fleets + boarding.
Why destroy a ship when you can steal it(tugs can be useful sometimes) and refit/reverse engineer or scrap it?
That saves you resources.
Never designs something generic, give it a specific purpose.
In Aurora 4x, patience is KEY.
And respect the economy.
Do not ignore the cost of anything.
Anyways. . . . yeah I really really really am looking forward to Aurora C# :)
If you play in, say, a conventional start and you spend the majority of the research on exploration and explore as much as possible you will quite often meet some nasty aliens long before you are ready to deal with them. At least if you play such campaigns with no previous hindsight that there are precursors or other potential aliens out there that might be hostile. I usually end up facing hostile aliens with very rudimentary patrol ships to guard Earth and colonies as a result. This is not bad play, it is intentional... ;)
In multi-faction campaigns you don't have time to make ship designs perfect or homogeneously designed... you always need ships yesterday and it's better to have a decent fleet now than an optimized fleet tomorrow, the same goes for conventional starts where you explore allot and meet aliens before you are ready for them. Also... from a math perspective it is better to disperse regular beams around a fleet even it it means you have a few fewer beams overall, the reason is that you can't be focused fired and you have way more HP where it counts. There are also a good case to be made regarding ASM and AMM missile ships, having both systems on a ship means you have greater flexibility of overloading in one or the other direction for an overall slightly lower ability in any one balanced load out.
In almost all of my multi-faction games (6+ earth factions) no faction can ever have a fleet that is not in some state of flux, mixed with many different technology levels and age of the ships and ships in different experience and training levels etc... generalist ships is often mandatory in such environments to some degree since it is usually the fastest and more easy way to get a decent fleet out the door to make the opponent think twice of attacking you.
The problem I have had with many single earth starts is that I had no real external pressures and could practically make my economy perfect and keep a minimal fleet in comparison to the economy. I could practically dictate when I needed to do what and engage a potential enemy with little to no real thought. I usually abandoned those campaign rather quickly because they just felt it was me playing alone with no real challenge, this was why I pretty much have abandoned playing single earth faction games entirely in the last few years.
Guzzling engines is important so you can have more mission tonnage per ship and still maintain a speed advantage or at least on par with the opposition... in tight games this is sort of an engine power race even at roughly the same tech levels. If you can pump up enough fuel to support it then having faster and/or more mission tonnage per ship it is worth it.
Also... if you don't feel enough pressure from NPRs just crank up their difficulty to three, four or even five times so they always have more technologies than you when you meet them.
One benefit with using no or in some cases only one NPR is that the game will take longer to slow down to a crawl... most of my recent campaigns have only had some precursors in them other than my own factions. That certainly speed things up...
I don't want to tell anybody how they should play their games but... in "my opinion"... if there are no real pressure I would get bored building up an economy in pretty much isolation. This is one reason I think C# will be more interesting. The AI in C# seem to be allot more capable and so a real option even in multi-faction games as additional external pressures. The change to maintenance, sensors and missile ranges will also have a great impact on ship design and deployment in a way that will force fleets to become more dispersed and less reliant on one speed setting, you can't now place an unlimited number of 6000t ships at an outpost anymore. You will want smaller scout ships and escorts to be faster than capital ships to avoid them if you encounter them and this will make the dynamic of ship design more interesting. The fact that bigger ships now just will be more efficient than smaller ships is great as well and will make ship designs so much more engaging and difficult, it will be much harder to know what an "optimized" design actually is.
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The challenge comes more from self-defined challenges than the enemy, for me. I try to beat calendar milestones. I pretend that there is huge political pressure to open the frontier as quickly as possible. But I consider multi-nations so incredibly unstable, and all too often you have guns over butter to the point that the system uses up all its resources on basically dominance games, which is depressing.
I don't want a promising game derailed because somebody fired PDCs point blank at the planet, with no chance of interception. I don't mind reading the AARs of campaigns like that, but it isn't something I want to play.
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Interesting discussion.
The best strategy to 'win' the game is start with no NPRs, turtle in Sol and build a balanced fleet, which I never do :)
I either start with multiple races so that each one has to race into space to compete, or I give a single player race a reason to get out of Sol (such as some form of disaster). I find the best games are the one in which you face a significant challenge with forces that are in no way ready to face it :)
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No, the best strategy to 'win' Aurora is to play a methane-breathing race and turtle on your homeworld in a nebula, so enemy ships (even spoilers) are drastically slowed by their thin armour, and their missiles are useless. Also, your ideal worlds are deadly to the vast majority of your enemies, and colder than they like. Terraforming their worlds to your ideals can be quick-and-easy genocide (for both fun and profit)!
Oh, and exterminate those vermin "civilians" whenever and wherever you see them. Their inevitable bloat and mass will eventually kill your game so keep them under control as long as possible.
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Interesting discussion.
The best strategy to 'win' the game is start with no NPRs, turtle in Sol and build a balanced fleet, which I never do :)
I either start with multiple races so that each one has to race into space to compete, or I give a single player race a reason to get out of Sol (such as some form of disaster). I find the best games are the one in which you face a significant challenge with forces that are in no way ready to face it :)
Do you think this (the ability to turtle in peace) is likely to change with the new NPR AI? In the past, it's seemed like most of the AI threats (other than Invaders) haven't been very good/aggressive at going after your home system. I've seen some instances of "about to be overwhelmed by an alien horde" in the "what's going on in your empire" thread, but my personal experience has been that pretty much only having to deal with annoying jump gate construction spam (other than Invaders).
Or are you saying that turtling is a better strategy simply because it activates fewer NPR (that by definition will be in contact with your empire) and so it delays the point at which you need to deal with aliens, and so that you'll end up with fewer aliens?
I can see both good and bad aspects to having quicker risk to Sol. On the one hand it adds the element of challenge (and fear :) ) that you mention, which I like. In this respect, it would be very similar to adding the AI in the first place - the sense of not knowing what's going to jump out and bite you at any moment. On the other hand, it runs the risk of making the game too difficult - I personally would be frustrated if 80% of the time I had superior alien civs invading Sol and killing off my civilization, especially since I almost always do a conventional start. This is one reason I (and I think everyone else) almost always turn off Invaders - they're too powerful for early game.
A few thoughts on game mechanics to address the above (assuming the AI NPR will be better able to build a multi-system empire):
1) I think (maybe not for 1.0) improved diplomacy is VERY important. In particular, the potential for aliens to be (useful) allies instead of enemies. On the one hand, we don't want to end up in the SM2r4 situation where most of the aliens you meet will be your friends and allies, and so the game becomes a case of simply trying to find the most friendly aliens you can (and/or the GFFP situation where it's too easy to exploit the resources of conquered aliens, so that it's cheaper to conquer than to ally). On the other hand, having all the NPRs against you (and presumably each other) encourages the turtling strategy, so that you activate fewer NPRs. So whatever happens, I think a way to make turtling sub-optimal is to figure out how to make activating NPRs a good thing on average.
If you go down this road, I see the game ending up with multi-race coalitions, and the player would need to navigate which coalitions to work with and which to avoid. I think a reputation system in diplomacy would be really important in that case (shades of Crusader Kings here): If you wipe out race C, then races A & B with whom you have contact will have a lower opinion of you. In addition, allied races should be much more likely to help/support you in an offensive war than in a defensive one. Unfortunately, that's probably a difficult AI system to write and make good and balanced. OTOH, it sounds like your new AI might have the framework (in terms of competing needs and drives) to support it. OTGH, I can't think of another point - I just wanted to say On the Gripping Hand :)
2) It will also require attention to (early game) balance and ability to wipe out other races/worlds. I think you're already going down this road, but it should be VERY difficult to knock off a home system (not just home world), so that if the aliens do find you early in the game they can't just roll over you. I think this is what you've tried to do all along with ground combat. This also comes back to diplomacy - if other NPR (e.g. E & F) that an invader D is in contact with notices D has concentrated forces, then maybe that raises the probability that they attack (although the noticing part hard to rationalize given that the communication model is such that races will only have knowledge of things going on in systems with which they have physical contact).
This segues me to thinking about communications. It would be VERY interesting if non-Newtonian physics introduced an instantaneous communication system that spanned the entire galaxy (analogous to radio in modern warfare). That would you to be in touch with other races with whom you don't have physical contact. There would probably need to be some technobabble about why this only works for races whom you've meet - maybe there's some weird quantum race code/entanglement that means you have to have been in the same system with the other race before it worked, otherwise you'd be able to hear all the undiscovered races out there and be able to eavesdrop on their comms and maybe discover huge tech from highly advances races and .... The "entanglement" technobabble (which wouldn't quite be entanglement, since it would need to be contagious in the sense that one entangled device could pass that ability on to another device) could lead to another aspect of diplomacy analogous to Civilization's "I'll sell you contact with Empire X that you haven't met yet" trade interaction. This would give a lot more power to infiltration/diplomacy/spying functions - if you have the code for another race, they can tell you they're being invaded and scream for help even if you're not adjacent. Similarly, if you can insert a scout ship into another empire, the scout ship (or embassy) can report back even without courier ships.
3) So the way I see it playing out is that the game mechanics are lined up so that:
A) Exploration is good - it gives you new planets to colonize and the opportunity to activate NPR that are likely to be friendly
B) On average, aliens should be friendly, but every now and then you should run into something nasty (like the bugs)
C) The bigger your alliance structure, the less likely other races should be to join it (or any other big NPR coalition). Note that this should be measured in total strength, not just ally count.
D) Global communication technobabble lets the various races have a much better understanding of the galactopolitical situation (how big empires are, who's getting invaded, ....). For example, one aspect of alliance should be that races in the alliance will automatically share com codes for newly discovered races with each other (at risk of a malus if violation is found out), so that the new race can judge alliance size. The technobabble should also (maybe) support knowledge of how many systems colonies are located in, to be able to judge the size of an empire.
E) The incentives to war would be either being meeting bad guys who encroach on your territory, or deciding you're penned in and need to go to war with someone to re-open lines of expansion.
I strongly suspect all of this would be really difficult to set up and balance, especially for C# 1.0, but it's nice to think about....
John
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I'm one of the people that really pump up the NPRs, so I'm looking forward to anything that makes the game harder. And I really dislike turtling until I have optimized fleets. It's just too easy to defend Sol right now, if you are not aggressive in expanding.
On the other hand, it runs the risk of making the game too difficult - I personally would be frustrated if 80% of the time I had superior alien civs invading Sol and killing off my civilization, especially since I almost always do a conventional start. This is one reason I (and I think everyone else) almost always turn off Invaders - they're too powerful for early game.
I also always play conventional starts. And always leave invaders on. Guess what my number one cause of death is? Except from turn time death, that is...
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On the other hand, it runs the risk of making the game too difficult - I personally would be frustrated if 80% of the time I had superior alien civs invading Sol and killing off my civilization, especially since I almost always do a conventional start. This is one reason I (and I think everyone else) almost always turn off Invaders - they're too powerful for early game.
I also always play conventional starts. And always leave invaders on. Guess what my number one cause of death is? Except from turn time death, that is...
Drat - didn't hedge quite enough. Should have said "almost everyone else" :)
John
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3) So the way I see it playing out is that the game mechanics are lined up so that:
A) Exploration is good - it gives you new planets to colonize and the opportunity to activate NPR that are likely to be friendly
Absolutely. The first 'X' is eXplore, after all. And the next two are eXploit and eXpand.
B) On average, aliens should be friendly, but every now and then you should run into something nasty (like the bugs)
I disagree. On average, aliens should be hostile. About one in five (or four) should be friendly, weighted by their strength relative to the player's. Smaller, weaker, less advanced races should be most likely to want to be friends, whereas higher-tech races should tend to aggression.
C) The bigger your alliance structure, the less likely other races should be to join it (or any other big NPR coalition). Note that this should be measured in total strength, not just ally count.
Yes, for the same reasons as (B) above. Peacefully incorporating all the (remaining) intelligent species of the galaxy probably makes for pretty boring game.
D) Global communication technobabble lets the various races have a much better understanding of the galactopolitical situation (how big empires are, who's getting invaded, ....). For example, one aspect of alliance should be that races in the alliance will automatically share com codes for newly discovered races with each other (at risk of a malus if violation is found out), so that the new race can judge alliance size. The technobabble should also (maybe) support knowledge of how many systems colonies are located in, to be able to judge the size of an empire.
There already is instant galactic communication with every race one has ever met. It would be nice if there was a direct Diplomacy-screen way to ask for info on all species someone else has met, and even to pass messages to them.
Even though most Aurora players roleplay some sort of comm lag (speed-of-light, or jump-point limited, or whatever) doesn't mean Aurora should hard-code such a thing.
E) The incentives to war would be either being meeting bad guys who encroach on your territory, or deciding you're penned in and need to go to war with someone to re-open lines of expansion.
So long as we avoid Starfire's 'inevitably-suicidal NPRs' behaviour, I'm fine with that.
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I disagree. On average, aliens should be hostile. About one in five (or four) should be friendly, weighted by their strength relative to the player's. Smaller, weaker, less advanced races should be most likely to want to be friends, whereas higher-tech races should tend to aggression.
Differences in strength and tech as calculated by the game taking everything into account, or based on what intel is available to the alien race ?
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B) On average, aliens should be friendly, but every now and then you should run into something nasty (like the bugs)
I disagree. On average, aliens should be hostile. About one in five (or four) should be friendly, weighted by their strength relative to the player's. Smaller, weaker, less advanced races should be most likely to want to be friends, whereas higher-tech races should tend to aggression.
Agreed that the higher the power ratio, the more "insistent" the race should be. OTOH, I strongly suspect that (social system) evolutionary pressure would lead to races that start wars with pretty much everyone they meet (even if they exclude races that are significantly more powerful) would fare more poorly than races that tend to cooperate. Perhaps a better way to phrase what I was going for was "most races should be neither overly friendly nor overly hostile". In that case I think it makes sense for the outliers to skew in the direction of hostile. So maybe 80% (4/5) neutral-ish, 16% (4/5 of outliers) hostile, and 4% friendly.
There already is instant galactic communication with every race one has ever met. It would be nice if there was a direct Diplomacy-screen way to ask for info on all species someone else has met, and even to pass messages to them.
Even though most Aurora players roleplay some sort of comm lag (speed-of-light, or jump-point limited, or whatever) doesn't mean Aurora should hard-code such a thing.
I don't remember the details of the diplomacy screen, but if Steve has it set up so you can change your diplomatic treaty status with a race that you're cut off from, I suspect it's just because it would be too much of a pain to code up the alternative.
But the point I was trying to make was that in order to gauge the aggressiveness of other races, "you" (in which I include NPR) need to be able to talk to races that they're in contact with and that you've never met, or that you're cut off from. Or (see below) isolationist empires who don't let your non-military shipping roam around through their empire need to be viewed as highly aggressive in the AI logic ("so what do they have to hide"). I realize that it knocks out a lot of fog of war, but I'm having trouble seeing from a practical game play point of view how the AI (and the player) is going to make judgments without it. OTOH, those judgments might be "they might be really big, I think I'll not poke them" which takes us back to the 80% neutral thing - only reckless races would attack someone they don't have a lot of knowledge about because they can't roam in their empire.
I disagree. On average, aliens should be hostile. About one in five (or four) should be friendly, weighted by their strength relative to the player's. Smaller, weaker, less advanced races should be most likely to want to be friends, whereas higher-tech races should tend to aggression.
Differences in strength and tech as calculated by the game taking everything into account, or based on what intel is available to the alien race ?
This was my point about instant communication. The AI should have a mechanism for gauging (roughly) the strength/size of your empire and your aggressiveness. Since you can only get information from empires you border (and can only observe border systems with other races) this is difficult. An alternative would be to enhance diplomacy to take "open borders" into account. If you're able to send scouts throughout the other empire you'll be able to see any wars they're having; if they prevent you from doing so (or you prevent them) it should be viewed as a highly aggressive act. In this case there would have to be logic that gave a diplomatic penalty to races that transit your empire to get to an empty system and then colonize it. And maybe not have "open borders" be all or nothing - maybe have a "number of transits" depth that you permit your neighbor to penetrate.
To swing back to a previous theme, if the civvies had a mind of their own (going out and exploring without you), this might give the needed mechanics. If your civvies have access to trade/travel in the other empire, they'll be able to give you intel on what's going on (including rumors of war picked up in interspecies bars). And if all the civvies got expelled that would count as a hostile act (or if civvies got blown up when entering alien systems, or if civvies from a neighbor system kept trying to enter your empire after you told them no). Again, this would center around a more nuanced diplomacy model.
It also occurs to me that misbehaving civvies could be a way to prevent turtling - you'd have to physically blockade the jump points to prevent civvie transits; it's hard to believe that turtling without any exploration would be politically sustainable.
Given the above, I think that the magic instant communication technobabble can be put aside if the diplomacy (and possibly/probably civvies) is upgraded to be much more nuanced in terms of being able to run around in other races' star systems, enough to make judgments about their strength, size and aggressiveness. My recollection is that Steve is already moving in this direction. I think what would be really interesting would be to fold this in with civvie exploration that would create diplomatic "challenges" and remove the possibility of turtling.
John
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I think what would be really interesting would be to fold this in with civvie exploration that would create diplomatic "challenges" and remove the possibility of turtling.
I think that would be terrible. I think any change to Aurora that "removes the possibility of X" would be terrible, because sometimes I want to do X.
I'm already dealing with the bug that my shipyards can be destroyed without ground bombardment.
I'm already dealing with the bug that civilians will steal my minerals if I don't 'Colony-claim' every somewhat-exploitable rock in inhabited systems.
I sometimes deal with the bug of civilians freezing (or, almost) my game with lost ships, uncompletable orders, or sensor wonkiness. Now that they design their own ships instead of copying mine, they're also crap at dealing with nebulae.
With C# Aurora, I'm going to have to deal with the bug of needing cargo shuttles to unload my ships, and almost certainly with the bug of them being shot at after they've landed on the planet.
Thankfully mass drivers and missiles can be safely ignored, and the Meson changes come with an undo button so I can revert them to old behaviour if I prefer. Civilians should have an 'Only move trade goods and luxury passengers' button (that also prevents CMC generation).
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I have to agree with the fact that I would be against civilians creating diplomatic challenges. Because the only solution for me would be to remove civilians completely. As in: murder them. There is a limit to what I am willing to tolerate regarding civilians
I already completely hate both CMC and civilian sorium harvesters.
Who gave civilians the right to steal strategic resources?
I'm being serious here. No nation, no matter what its government (except maybs megacorp nation, but that's another story) would let civilians hog strategic, extremely limited resources. We are not talking of semi-rare stuff here. We're talking of extremely limited resources of military and strategic significance. No nation would let a random Joe mine and sell these resource to the highest bidder.
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They're not limited, there's millions tonnes of those minerals of them all over the galaxy.
It's just like civilian iron mining.
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They're not limited, there's millions tonnes of those minerals of them all over the galaxy.
If you are playing in an empty galaxy maybe.
If you play a multiple races start, or with multiple NPR, or both, you will be fighting over every single ton of duranium. Assuming you can actually defend the systems where the minerals are.
It's just like civilian iron mining.
That's completely untrue. Because in Aurora, there is the SMALL logistical problem of having such minerals in other systems which you have to reach and control in order to exploit. Also, there is NOT something like a global market like we have on Earth. You either mine the stuff yourself, or you do without the TN minerals.
I reiterate, no sane nation would let civilians mine something like this.
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The lack of market is not because Steve doesn't want it, it's because it hasn't been added to the game yet, because civilian shipping lines conjure their ships out of thin air, only paying a wealth cost. You CAN buy every ton of minerals they mine and you CAN buy every liter of fuel they harvest. It's not like that stuff is gone for good the moment a CMC or FH pops up. And even with multiple races starting in Sol, there is generally enough minerals to go around - it's only Earth that runs out fast. I guess it's possible to be really unlucky and have most of Sol system be barren, but that's why you have SM, so you can fix things later if necessary. I've run multiple multi-faction Earth starts and neither the CMCs nor the civilian FHs have been an issue, though once I needed to SM a bit more Duranium on Earth so that all factions could actually get into space - but once they have that initial geo-survey and freighter capability, the problems are all solvable.
Now, I'm not saying that your experience is invalid, but that the issue is not as prevalent or as catastrophic as you make it sound. And yeah, commercial entities do all mining in reality, even "strategic" resources like uranium and crude oil, and that's the way things have generally been in human history, with the occasional national "corporation", largely temporal exceptions.
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Civilian and state operations in Aurora is a fine line of what the player want to do with his or her role-playing. In some factions I basically view more or less all "state" or player controlled industry as actually being civilian and role-play the problem it can bring as much as the benefits it also bring.
This usually mean that the more dictatorial government get severe efficiency penalties but have a greater way to impact how resources is used... the more open the industry is for the civilian part of the economy to dictate the direction the more efficient that industry is but I then role-play problems to compensate in other ways.
One "problem" with allowing the civilian part to take a more prominent role in the game is that you will have to make it suit all kinds of government types and species out there. A democracy will not function in the same way as an Imperial Roman type faction.
The current system give a relatively good middle ground to do whatever you like with the economy. I often just view the "civilian" economy of POP to be the part you really can't do anything about... you simply need that part to function normally. The part that is left is where you the player can do your role-playing deciding whet the people living in your imagined world are doing. I never view things from "my" perspective I always try to view things from the people in powers (which can be politicians, corporation or just very influenced and wealthy people) do or want to do.
As one example I often leave a big part of dictatorial regimes populations as part of the neutral population in an Earth start. I only imagine the real POP to be the educated and wealthy enough to count. There are many ways to imagine how things can be used in Aurora. If I started a campaign of the current Earth then for example I would need to reduce India's and China's population to a much smaller number and leave the majority part of it as neutral population. Current GDP and other economic factors would have to guide me into some good starting conditions. I would probably look at the wealth as an indicator at roughly where I would need to end up in terms of GDP or something.
The best part with Aurora is that you can do whatever you want with it... Steve is a great guy for sharing his tool with us.
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The best part with Aurora is that you can do whatever you want with it... Steve is a great guy for sharing his tool with us.
I one hundred percent agree with you.
I agree with you, but my problem comes when people suggest 'improvements' that interfere with my ability to "do whatever I want with Aurora." I understand that people want, for example, speed-of-light comm lag in their games because they never RP a campaign without it and it would really help them if the software took care of the fiddly details instead of them having to manually measure the distance and divide by 300,000 km/s to figure out when the rest of their fleet is allowed to start moving towards the alien ambush. . . but for my sake please implement it with an 'off' switch so I can RP an empire with FTL coms to match the FTL sensors the game already gives me.
I'm thrilled that C# Aurora is going to let me put 12 Marines on every Sloop-of-War that I build, but annoyed that said Sloop will have to land them via jollyboat instead of letting me 'dock' at the 'pier' of Planet Jamestown.
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Hi Jorgen_CAB
I agree, thats why I didn’t stated one scenario and talked about another, that is just confusing for everyone.
Still, I do not have those issue, even with NPRs generated from the beginning.
But at the same time, I have +1000 of hours of experience playing Aurora 4x.
I never proclaimed that this would be anything else than a fix for certain particular scenario.
Just to be clear. Otherwise I would have stated that.
Also it depends on your mineral and fuel resources generated in Sol.
Speed is only ”relevant” if you are weaker than your opponent and have less weapon range. The main goal is to invade anyways. So just stay the course and wear it out. Its rare for me to get armor damage from the ai. I have spread out the whole flak/gauss umbrella on all the platforms in the fleet(30 ships or more per fleet, 500-1000kt total) other than that, they are very specialized in their role. And bring many colliers. Also think of all the different situations you might bump into when designing your fleet so you can handle all types of scenarios. A huge, well stocked, fighter-bomber group can handle many types of scenarios. Heavy super fast ASMs can also be to some use against certain enemies.
Carrier warfare neglects the speed gap, and I am heavy into carrier fleets + boarding.
Why destroy a ship when you can steal it(tugs can be useful sometimes) and refit/reverse engineer or scrap it?
That saves you resources.
Never designs something generic, give it a specific purpose.
In Aurora 4x, patience is KEY.
And respect the economy.
Do not ignore the cost of anything.
Anyways. . . . yeah I really really really am looking forward to Aurora C# :)
If you play in, say, a conventional start and you spend the majority of the research on exploration and explore as much as possible you will quite often meet some nasty aliens long before you are ready to deal with them. At least if you play such campaigns with no previous hindsight that there are precursors or other potential aliens out there that might be hostile. I usually end up facing hostile aliens with very rudimentary patrol ships to guard Earth and colonies as a result. This is not bad play, it is intentional. . . ;)
In multi-faction campaigns you don't have time to make ship designs perfect or homogeneously designed. . . you always need ships yesterday and it's better to have a decent fleet now than an optimized fleet tomorrow, the same goes for conventional starts where you explore allot and meet aliens before you are ready for them. Also. . . from a math perspective it is better to disperse regular beams around a fleet even it it means you have a few fewer beams overall, the reason is that you can't be focused fired and you have way more HP where it counts. There are also a good case to be made regarding ASM and AMM missile ships, having both systems on a ship means you have greater flexibility of overloading in one or the other direction for an overall slightly lower ability in any one balanced load out.
In almost all of my multi-faction games (6+ earth factions) no faction can ever have a fleet that is not in some state of flux, mixed with many different technology levels and age of the ships and ships in different experience and training levels etc. . . generalist ships is often mandatory in such environments to some degree since it is usually the fastest and more easy way to get a decent fleet out the door to make the opponent think twice of attacking you.
The problem I have had with many single earth starts is that I had no real external pressures and could practically make my economy perfect and keep a minimal fleet in comparison to the economy. I could practically dictate when I needed to do what and engage a potential enemy with little to no real thought. I usually abandoned those campaign rather quickly because they just felt it was me playing alone with no real challenge, this was why I pretty much have abandoned playing single earth faction games entirely in the last few years.
Guzzling engines is important so you can have more mission tonnage per ship and still maintain a speed advantage or at least on par with the opposition. . . in tight games this is sort of an engine power race even at roughly the same tech levels. If you can pump up enough fuel to support it then having faster and/or more mission tonnage per ship it is worth it.
Also. . . if you don't feel enough pressure from NPRs just crank up their difficulty to three, four or even five times so they always have more technologies than you when you meet them.
One benefit with using no or in some cases only one NPR is that the game will take longer to slow down to a crawl. . . most of my recent campaigns have only had some precursors in them other than my own factions. That certainly speed things up. . .
I don't want to tell anybody how they should play their games but. . . in "my opinion". . . if there are no real pressure I would get bored building up an economy in pretty much isolation. This is one reason I think C# will be more interesting. The AI in C# seem to be allot more capable and so a real option even in multi-faction games as additional external pressures. The change to maintenance, sensors and missile ranges will also have a great impact on ship design and deployment in a way that will force fleets to become more dispersed and less reliant on one speed setting, you can't now place an unlimited number of 6000t ships at an outpost anymore. You will want smaller scout ships and escorts to be faster than capital ships to avoid them if you encounter them and this will make the dynamic of ship design more interesting. The fact that bigger ships now just will be more efficient than smaller ships is great as well and will make ship designs so much more engaging and difficult, it will be much harder to know what an "optimized" design actually is.
Hi Jorgen_CAB
Well, first off, patience is not equal to turtling. Hence why I used the word patience. English is not my native tounge, but I will try to explain anyways.
Rather with patience I mean that I spend 25-30% of the time in excel documents. I make long plans and form my strategies according to my situation. Just as I do when I run my company in RL.
However, danger lurks at every step of the way, that doesn't mean that your grand strategies are invalid. Your foremost weapon against anything is the economy and the logistics around it.
The economy will setup your boundaries. Hence you need to pay attention to population growth, minerals, fuel and wealth. And not waste anything. A surplus of population at any colony might be useful somewhere else. Minerals sitting idle is no good, and think about where the best investment is, ship or planet components. Fuel dictates your reach and endurance. Wealth will decide how hard you can push your economy. Everything needs to be balanced like a clock. Hence why I spend so much time making formulas in Excel and forecast my Empires situation 5 - 10 years onwards. The gain is no less in the details.
Patience also means, how you go about exploring and how you engage your enemies. Do you use the old WW2 style of attacking from behind AS distance or do you head straight in guns blazing, both are valid tactics. But what will be the consequences of either of those? Where and what do I stand to gain or lose? How much minerals and fuel is a net loss in a missile battle?
You also need patience when designing all your techs and ships, by taking things step by step and make economically sound decisions.
Patience also means, plan your logistics. Maybe take a couple of hours and paus the game and setup a solid logistic system that can be scaled. How much emtpy cargo space am I burning fuel for? But it is also necessary to make a solid military decision in this regard as well.
You could even timetable your moving of assets, every day an automine sits idle is a netloss of X amount of minerals that can be mined elsewhere. But that is perhaps taking it too far. :-)
But what would be more sensible would perhaps let´s say, make a calculation how long it will take an asteroid miner with 10 vs 30 asteroid mining modules to pay its own cost back to the empire vs automines that are twice as expensive.
All these things does not necessary mean Turtling per se.
That set aside, I was honoring the topic and focused on "increment time" improvment. People who have a hardtime playing 100 years in, might benefit from NOT starting with NPRs.
I will set another testgame with a couple of NPRs and see how much this improves the game, just for the kicks of it.
On a last note, indeed overcoming a tough challenge is much more worth than winning an easy game.
But in as far as exploiting a game mechanic, is as bad as making poor decisions. So that was what I ment with patience is KEY.
Take your time and think things through, but not as an insult but as a tip from the coach.
Anyways, have a good day Sir :-)
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Hi Jorgen_CAB
Well, first off, patience is not equal to turtling. Hence why I used the word patience. English is not my native tounge, but I will try to explain anyways.
Rather with patience I mean that I spend 25-30% of the time in excel documents. I make long plans and form my strategies according to my situation. Just as I do when I run my company in RL.
However, danger lurks at every step of the way, that doesn't mean that your grand strategies are invalid. Your foremost weapon against anything is the economy and the logistics around it.
The economy will setup your boundaries. Hence you need to pay attention to population growth, minerals, fuel and wealth. And not waste anything. A surplus of population at any colony might be useful somewhere else. Minerals sitting idle is no good, and think about where the best investment is, ship or planet components. Fuel dictates your reach and endurance. Wealth will decide how hard you can push your economy. Everything needs to be balanced like a clock. Hence why I spend so much time making formulas in Excel and forecast my Empires situation 5 - 10 years onwards. The gain is no less in the details.
Patience also means, how you go about exploring and how you engage your enemies. Do you use the old WW2 style of attacking from behind AS distance or do you head straight in guns blazing, both are valid tactics. But what will be the consequences of either of those? Where and what do I stand to gain or lose? How much minerals and fuel is a net loss in a missile battle?
You also need patience when designing all your techs and ships, by taking things step by step and make economically sound decisions.
Patience also means, plan your logistics. Maybe take a couple of hours and paus the game and setup a solid logistic system that can be scaled. How much emtpy cargo space am I burning fuel for? But it is also necessary to make a solid military decision in this regard as well.
You could even timetable your moving of assets, every day an automine sits idle is a netloss of X amount of minerals that can be mined elsewhere. But that is perhaps taking it too far. :-)
But what would be more sensible would perhaps let´s say, make a calculation how long it will take an asteroid miner with 10 vs 30 asteroid mining modules to pay its own cost back to the empire vs automines that are twice as expensive.
All these things does not necessary mean Turtling per se.
That set aside, I was honoring the topic and focused on "increment time" improvment. People who have a hardtime playing 100 years in, might benefit from NOT starting with NPRs.
I will set another testgame with a couple of NPRs and see how much this improves the game, just for the kicks of it.
On a last note, indeed overcoming a tough challenge is much more worth than winning an easy game.
But in as far as exploiting a game mechanic is as bad as making bad decisions. So that was what I ment with patience is KEY.
Take your time and think things trough, but not as an insult but as a tip from the coach.
Anyways, have a good day Sir :-)
Well... this is pretty much how I approach the game as well to understand the mechanic and know what is the most optimal thing to do.
But where we differ is in the role-play area... I don't do what is best for me. People do what is best for them and from their point of view in the game... I think that is the major difference in play-style.
People in large masses are not rational and decisions are made with lots of bias, lack of information, egotism and just stupidity (or brilliance depending on the outcome ;) )
I full understand what you come from, but that is not really the way I play Aurora... I, most of the time, play up to ten factions at the same time as one example, trying my best for each to have a unique personality and culture.
I also have MANY game mechanic restrictions and rules addition to the game to make it very different from just straight up playing the game. Most of this in order to provide real challenges that comes with it... to provoke situations to be solved not only with brute force etc... some factions value human life and well being more than others which provide for very different focus and philosophies between factions. In one game I had a faction that valued wealth and social power as the most important thing and used it to get what it wanted through corruption and playing other factions against each other. They could not give a rats ass about missiles and troops and was among the strongest faction in my game. If you opposed them too much they could crash your economy or rally everyone else against you.
We all play the game in our own way, no way is the wrong way... ;) ...I just think that gaming the system to play optimally is no real challenge and not very fun so I just don't do that and incorporate real world politics, cultures and ethics. This impact how you can develop an economy and to what degree you are allowed to divert resources for military and how you conduct exploration. In the real world this is as much (if not mostly) politics than economics and so is wars.
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I have to agree with the fact that I would be against civilians creating diplomatic challenges. Because the only solution for me would be to remove civilians completely. As in: murder them. There is a limit to what I am willing to tolerate regarding civilians
I already completely hate both CMC and civilian sorium harvesters.
Who gave civilians the right to steal strategic resources?
I'm being serious here. No nation, no matter what its government (except maybs megacorp nation, but that's another story) would let civilians hog strategic, extremely limited resources. We are not talking of semi-rare stuff here. We're talking of extremely limited resources of military and strategic significance. No nation would let a random Joe mine and sell these resource to the highest bidder.
Kinda probably massively off topic.
Funny, cause in the real world almost no nation on earth gets to decide what happens to it's strategic resources. . . and then there's HRC getting bribed to recommend no interference in the US letting go control of uranium stockpiles. . . Or the invasion of Iraq, or the IAEA. . . the IMF, the 'war' on OPEC. . . or the Chinese campaign to foment dependency. Not that they're the first, creating a state of economic reliance in potential enemies is an old old strategy. . . which kind of relies on them relaxing their own strategy of reliance on internal resources. . . or never adopting such an attitude in the first place. So common it's the norm, a very far cry from 'no nation would. '
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Kinda probably massively off topic.
Funny, cause in the real world almost no nation on earth gets to decide what happens to it's strategic resources. . . and then there's HRC getting bribed to recommend no interference in the US letting go control of uranium stockpiles. . . Or the invasion of Iraq, or the IAEA. . . the IMF, the 'war' on OPEC. . . or the Chinese campaign to foment dependency. Not that they're the first, creating a state of economic reliance in potential enemies is an old old strategy. . . which kind of relies on them relaxing their own strategy of reliance on internal resources. . . or never adopting such an attitude in the first place. So common it's the norm, a very far cry from 'no nation would. '
I have to insist. No situation on Earth is a fitting analogy to the universe of Aurora and TN materials.
TN materials are:
1) Absolutely indispensable. You have to HAVE these materials, or you're planet bound. There are no alternatives. There will never be any alternatives. You cannot hope to research substitutes, you cannot hope to find anything else that you can use to fund your space nation. There is simply no way that technological improvement can make up for lack of TN materials. In the real world, technological improvement means that old materials/resources/fuel types or whatever get replaced. Think of wood-> charcoal->oil->electricity etc. In TN aurora this does not happen, you need TN materials. You have them or you die. Even spoiler races, civilizations which supposedly existed for extremely long times, found no alternatives to them. There is no resource on real-world Earth that is even remotely as important as TN materials.
2) Limited and non renewable. You have a set amount per system, you will never be able to replace them. Perhaps they do increase in millions of years... (read Steve's latest technobabble post about TN materials in the c# aurora forum) but that's a timescale not compatible with the life of a biological race. Since you keep using them, you HAVE to expand constantly in order to have more materials. Since they are limited and non-renewable, every ton you use today is a ton that will not be available for future generations. If a nations has no more TN materials, it WILL day as a spacefaring civilization. No exceptions, no possible way to circumvent this. As a matter of fact, if spacefaring civilizations keep expand they WILL die one die (as space-faring civilizations at least) because the galaxy will be empty of TN materials. And that's the end of the line. Once again, there is no equivalent to that in the real world
3) There is no way to trade them. This is due to game limitations, but it basically mean every ton you do not mine is a ton lost forever.
If you factor all of the things above, which are in part due to game-limitations of course, you can safely say there's simply nothing in the real world that is even remotely comparable to how rare and indispensable TN materials are for a spacefaring nation. Not even water, because while lack of water results in the death of a nation, there are (costly) ways to obtain water if you don't have readily available reserves. There are NO ways to obtain TN materials. The universe that Steve made is basically a grimdark reality where every spacefaring civilization is going to die one day due to lack of TN materials. Or be reduced to enclaves surviving on worlds incapable of communicating with one another.
As of such, no sane nation would ever waste such an important resource. It is literally your lifeline. If you are without, you are space dust. You can bet that any amount of TN materials would be strictly regulated and reserved by the state. And that was the point I was making before. While nations can be stupid, greedy, miopic etc. you can be assured that when presented with something as completely indispensable as TN materials, they would not squander them.
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Ah, but then your earlier argument relies on everyone in this hypothetical scenario to agree what is squandering and what is useful. And that's something where human history has ample examples of people disagreeing vehemently. We've wasted millions of barrels of oil on making plastic, and not only for genuinely critical products that would be difficult or impossible to make otherwise, but also for completely wasteful stuff like putting a few fruits in a plastic wrap. And we waste aluminium on making cans and furniture instead of reserving it for aircraft. Perhaps they aren't quite the same because as you said, in Aurora there is nothing that can replace TN-minerals, but the principle is the same:
humans waste important stuff if the scarcity isn't immediately obvious to everyone, and especially if that waste provides profits and/or quality/ease of life improvements. We are not purely logical or rational beings.
Also, this is pretty massively off-topic. Thanks OP for making this, I'll give it a try since C# seems to be at least few months away and my Aurora fever is rising.
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Ironically of course, it is an emotional need that we have for things to feel logical. Not one person would bother with science but for emotions. Emotions that are of course, logical.
As to the resources thing I entirely agree, money is finite in practice if not in reality, time is finite to all men, there are many many things which we cannot get back again and whose misuse can spell disaster to the goals of and death to the corpus of any man or beast or machine, and yet there they go into the past and loss, with goals unfulfilled.
Somebody somewhere encounters a scenario every minute of every day that they believe will end their life/civilization/community/family/hope and does nothing useful about it.
/bans self from thread :)
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Kinda probably massively off topic.
Funny, cause in the real world almost no nation on earth gets to decide what happens to it's strategic resources. . . and then there's HRC getting bribed to recommend no interference in the US letting go control of uranium stockpiles. . . Or the invasion of Iraq, or the IAEA. . . the IMF, the 'war' on OPEC. . . or the Chinese campaign to foment dependency. Not that they're the first, creating a state of economic reliance in potential enemies is an old old strategy. . . which kind of relies on them relaxing their own strategy of reliance on internal resources. . . or never adopting such an attitude in the first place. So common it's the norm, a very far cry from 'no nation would. '
I have to insist. No situation on Earth is a fitting analogy to the universe of Aurora and TN materials.
TN materials are:
1) Absolutely indispensable. You have to HAVE these materials, or you're planet bound. There are no alternatives. There will never be any alternatives. You cannot hope to research substitutes, you cannot hope to find anything else that you can use to fund your space nation. There is simply no way that technological improvement can make up for lack of TN materials. In the real world, technological improvement means that old materials/resources/fuel types or whatever get replaced. Think of wood-> charcoal->oil->electricity etc. In TN aurora this does not happen, you need TN materials. You have them or you die. Even spoiler races, civilizations which supposedly existed for extremely long times, found no alternatives to them. There is no resource on real-world Earth that is even remotely as important as TN materials.
2) Limited and non renewable. You have a set amount per system, you will never be able to replace them. Perhaps they do increase in millions of years... (read Steve's latest technobabble post about TN materials in the c# aurora forum) but that's a timescale not compatible with the life of a biological race. Since you keep using them, you HAVE to expand constantly in order to have more materials. Since they are limited and non-renewable, every ton you use today is a ton that will not be available for future generations. If a nations has no more TN materials, it WILL day as a spacefaring civilization. No exceptions, no possible way to circumvent this. As a matter of fact, if spacefaring civilizations keep expand they WILL die one die (as space-faring civilizations at least) because the galaxy will be empty of TN materials. And that's the end of the line. Once again, there is no equivalent to that in the real world
3) There is no way to trade them. This is due to game limitations, but it basically mean every ton you do not mine is a ton lost forever.
If you factor all of the things above, which are in part due to game-limitations of course, you can safely say there's simply nothing in the real world that is even remotely comparable to how rare and indispensable TN materials are for a spacefaring nation. Not even water, because while lack of water results in the death of a nation, there are (costly) ways to obtain water if you don't have readily available reserves. There are NO ways to obtain TN materials. The universe that Steve made is basically a grimdark reality where every spacefaring civilization is going to die one day due to lack of TN materials. Or be reduced to enclaves surviving on worlds incapable of communicating with one another.
As of such, no sane nation would ever waste such an important resource. It is literally your lifeline. If you are without, you are space dust. You can bet that any amount of TN materials would be strictly regulated and reserved by the state. And that was the point I was making before. While nations can be stupid, greedy, miopic etc. you can be assured that when presented with something as completely indispensable as TN materials, they would not squander them.
To be honest I don't get this logic at all and as others have pointed out... WHO exactly is deciding what is a good use of these materials?!?
I'm pretty sure people could dream up plenty of good uses for these materials to make their lives better, fuller and richer and then some!?!
This mindset might work in a dictatorship to some degree, but even there you have corruption and the want's and needs of the rich and powerful who like to live lavishly at others expense.
Very few people are willing to offer their lives to the common good as a core of their tenant and forgo emotions, passions and all that NONE logical crap.
Why would not the civilian part of an economy know what is best for itself... to be honest I never understood this fascination with the notion of the human state capable of pure logic on such scales... to be honest this will not happen until our brains get replaced by AI or something.
Everyone can play the game however they like... the current civilian infringement of player agency is ok. I don't think Aurora is about simulation on very detailed level, you need to invoke your own imagination for that or not if you prefer that. I think the game could need a few more interesting civilian mechanics down the road... but I think we have to be careful and not pain the game into a specific corner in terms of the narrative stories we can tell or these system must be very deep and complex to reflect all the multitude of human and alien societies out there.
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Hopefully without derailing a discussion that has gone so interestingly off-topic :), if the original poster's suggestion isn't ideal, then what is the best way to minimize slow-down a hundred or more years in? Without hobbling NPRs, if possible. I've run my faction rather benevolently, but in hindsight I wonder if I shouldn't have wiped out every NPR I came across so their ships no longer exist to slow down turns.
And while I've got some ears, maybe someone can tell me how to avoid errors in PD final fire? Search says some few of have had this problem, but I've never seen an explanation of how to resolve it. It doesn't seem to be affecting most players, but over several versions of Aurora the bug hasn't been fixed. Thought my ships were the only source of the error, but some NPR out there is now generating the error messages ... I've clicked through it enough to become painfully aware that they have 126 PD weapons (or 126 more than whatever took out the missiles, since I'm not entirely sure if the error kicks in before or after the missiles are taken out).
Mentioned previously in the discussion, I don't remember seeing where I can buy fuel off of civie FHs in manner similar to buying the product of CMCs. I'll look again when the game isn't locked up, but I don't want to look in vain if that isn't accurate.
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Hopefully without derailing a discussion that has gone so interestingly off-topic :), if the original poster's suggestion isn't ideal, then what is the best way to minimize slow-down a hundred or more years in? Without hobbling NPRs, if possible. I've run my faction rather benevolently, but in hindsight I wonder if I shouldn't have wiped out every NPR I came across so their ships no longer exist to slow down turns.
And while I've got some ears, maybe someone can tell me how to avoid errors in PD final fire? Search says some few of have had this problem, but I've never seen an explanation of how to resolve it. It doesn't seem to be affecting most players, but over several versions of Aurora the bug hasn't been fixed. Thought my ships were the only source of the error, but some NPR out there is now generating the error messages ... I've clicked through it enough to become painfully aware that they have 126 PD weapons (or 126 more than whatever took out the missiles, since I'm not entirely sure if the error kicks in before or after the missiles are taken out).
Mentioned previously in the discussion, I don't remember seeing where I can buy fuel off of civie FHs in manner similar to buying the product of CMCs. I'll look again when the game isn't locked up, but I don't want to look in vain if that isn't accurate.
Outside what the OP said there are not that much you can do. The civilians and NPR will take up allot of the CPU cycles.
You get the fuels by filling up your tanks from civilian fuel harvesters... you pay for that in wealth if my memory serves me. So you don't buy it in the same way as minerals, you still need to go and get it. CMC you just have to direct the massdriver to your planet or colony in the system.
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The only way to speed-up late game is the Thanos way.
1) Kill or conquer all NPRs.
2) Use SM to create a pirate faction to wipe out most of your civilian shipping lines.
3) Have enough DSTS on each system so that all ships moving in them are constantly being tracked, so you don't get interrupts for ships moving in/out of sensor range. If you don't have multiple player factions and you've dealt with NPRs already, this point is moot.
Civilian fuel is bought automatically when you order your tankers or ships to refuel from civilian fuel harvesters.
No idea about the PD final fire issue as I have never encountered it.
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The only way to speed-up late game is the Thanos way.
Lol, I checked the start of the thread to see what Thanos said before the Avengers allusion kicked in.