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Posted by: Hydrofoil
« 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.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« 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.
Posted by: Person012345
« 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.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« 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.
Posted by: ChildServices
« 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.
Posted by: sloanjh
« 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
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« 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.

Posted by: ChildServices
« 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.

Quote
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.

Quote
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.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« 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.
Posted by: Person012345
« on: January 13, 2018, 11:40:18 AM »

Just to say, his suggestion wouldn't facilitate roleplaying or a roleplaying style, it'd facilitate his particular roleplaying style. As someone who is heavily into the RP aspect rather than the gamey aspect, I don't like his suggestion either as it limits the options I have to roleplay. The fewer hard and fast rules empires have to live by the easier it is to imagine a wide variety of scenarios. So I am not for reducing the amount of deciding you are allowed to do either, as you are I am only in favour of reducing needless clicking where possible. I actually enjoy managing as much of my empire as possible and once ran a game with like, 10 or so player controlled factions without any real issues.
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: January 13, 2018, 09:29:56 AM »

This turned out to be much longer than I thought it would.
Hehe... That's what she said.

That is not even slightly true because this is how I actually play the game using house rules. First of all I usually play with multiple human controlled factions so it is a must unless I want to go insane from micromanagement.

The decisions I need to make is how each colony should grow within a five to then year period. I can only change the production roughly once every year and only a fraction of it. I can only turn around a planets production into mostly war production in a few years. Before that they are on long term production schedules and I often have some planets producing. War in these kind of conditions also tend to be low intensity wars, no one really want's to fire the big gun because everyone are afraid on being on the loosing side.

But it is true. Everybody who either does the bare minimum of roleplaying (me), or just doesn't roleplay at all, is just going to pick whichever focuses will let them actually access the core of the game: space wars. You can roleplay that all of your factions are scared of wars for whatever reason, and then do things to arbitrarily keep them all at even levels in power so that there's actually some basis for it, but it's still just make-believe. It's not really supported by any of the mechanics, and I don't view results gained from roleplaying as real practical evidence that a system works.
Why do I view roleplaying as bad evidence? Because it's effectively arbitrary in the game. It's just the player intentionally playing in a suboptimal way for fun and to create a story.

And that's not an attempt to belittle you for playing the game in a way that you feel is fun, because a lot of Aurora fans seem to have fun the same way. I just don't think you understand what's going to happen when your house rules become actual game mechanics and get into the hands of minmaxers like me. I read this and all I think is:
"I will have less choices to make and less things to do, so now I have less actual game to play."

Quote
But you could also introduce this with a slight update to the economically model in the game. The civilian industry should be much more important and dynamically expand industry in planets anyway as well as consume resources. You should rather set up contracts with the civilian part of the population when you want government stuff produced. I think it should work more closely with how you interact with the civilian fleets.

I promise you, the decisions you make are fewer but in general the have a bigger impact and is important when you do them, they also require you to think hard because you can't easily change your mind later.

But I already know exactly what needs to be built, so let me build it. I think until you add actual working internal politics to the game, leaving your empire's development effectively in the hands of the RNG is really not ideal. In my eyes, it would just remove actual gameplay for the sake of simulation or roleplaying.
The game would become, as @froggiest1982 amusingly called it, an "aquarium game" :)

You see, the decisions I make now are all probably just as high impact as the ones you make under your house rules, they just have a large number of individual pieces as far as actually implementing them goes. All I want is to eliminate the repetition of the micro involved in implementing my strategies.
To imply that what the player is doing has less long term impact because they have to perform more individual actions is silly. And to imply that if the player had less direct control over the game, they'd have more strategic options available or more "deep" ones, is even more silly. The only reason your system would be more deep is because you're making a hundred decisions in one go, whereas somebody like me would rather only make 50-60 if that's all he needed to do to achieve certain goals.

The core of my desire for more automation comes from keeping the game basically how it is, only a little easier to play. I just think I shouldn't have to perform any task more than once per match if that task itself isn't all too enjoyable or individually important. Those tasks should be much easier to repeat.
Games like Factorio support that very concept with things like automated construction blueprints, and something in the same vein as that would work perfectly with Aurora. I'm even fine with it if it has to be eventually unlocked through technology or something else, although preferably before the point where it'll start to really matter.

As for how this would work:
At every single new colony I'd like to be able to apply a colony "blueprint". All I'd do is load a thing, and (using my ideal "blueprint" for every non-factory world as an example) it'd automatically apply terraforming targets, stockpiles, a demand contract for certain facilities (usually a few construction factories and terraformers), and the order to repeatedly construct financial centres until there's no pop to support more (and to start again when there is).
Maybe optionally add in a toggle that automatically disables and then puts a supply contract out for all of the terraforming installations on the planet when both 1) the terraforming targets that were set by either myself or the blueprint are met, and 2) the planet is habitable. That way these expensive and bulky facilities return to the supply system and can be used elsewhere once they're not needed, so I don't have to remember where they've gone. Alternatively: civilian terraformers.

Coupled with this, I'd like to be able to just place an empire-wide construction order for certain transportable installations, similar to Distant Worlds' "ship production order" screen.
My designated construction worlds would distribute the contract amongst themselves based on their production rate at the time, resource availability, and when their factories will actually be available. Then they'll get to work fulfilling my request after finishing whatever manually assigned tasks they have. Once the facilities are built, they'd be automatically added to a supply contract wherever they are.

Quote
The current system is also harder to have the AI keep up with the player in efficiency. With a slower less controllable system you can always have the AI cut some corner here and there and it is harder to abuse the mechanic to min/max. Min/max mechanic should be reduced as much as possible if you want the AI to be a bit more competition in general, there simply need to be less good or bad decisions and more bad/bad or good/good decisions to make.

Going to war should always feel like a huge gamble unless you are a super power and there are no other powers even close to rival you. Since there are no internal social pressures in the game aside from RP most decisions in the game then become rather binary.

But then again, this game is all about RP in the first place... there are too many loopholes in the game mechanics and you may Space Master anything you want at any time.

I disagree that this is even a game about roleplaying, let alone all about roleplaying. You don't even want to know what I think about not being allowed to minmax just because the AI is dumb.

I actually think this is a game that is mostly about space warfare, with a very detailed logistical side to it. Because this is a wargame, I see that the best way to make the AI competitive is for them to make better tactical decisions and to have better ship design guidelines. That way they'll have the tools they need to actually make you think twice about going to war, which would also satisfy your desire for war to be a gamble. Although, it'd be less of a gamble (RNG MAKES HULK ANGRY) and more of a problem which, in order to solve, will require a lot of strategic manoeuvring, scouting, and preparation, so that you can seize the initiative and hold it until you win.

Admittedly, they'd still be pretty dumb on the empire building front, but I think that can be remedied if you'd implemented my idea of colony blueprints by just giving them good blueprints to work off of. Wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be a vast upgrade.
Besides, they could just keep using cheats like they (and basically every other 4x game's AI) do now. They'll still be a pretty substantial threat if all you do is give them better ships and the ability to have more consistent doctrine.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 13, 2018, 03:22:35 AM »

I disagree that there'd be more or more important choices. You'd just go for whichever industry focus' RNG is the most likely to allow you to build war materiel, because that's what this game is mostly about: wars.

I'm sounding like a broken record now but, like, the granularity is the game.

That is not even slightly true because this is how I actually play the game using house rules. First of all I usually play with multiple human controlled factions so it is a must unless I want to go insane from micromanagement.

The decisions I need to make is how each colony should grow within a five to then year period. I can only change the production roughly once every year and only a fraction of it. I can only turn around a planets production into mostly war production in a few years. Before that they are on long term production schedules and I often have some planets producing. War in these kind of conditions also tend to be low intensity wars, no one really want's to fire the big gun because everyone are afraid on being on the loosing side.

But you could also introduce this with a slight update to the economically model in the game. The civilian industry should be much more important and dynamically expand industry in planets anyway as well as consume resources. You should rather set up contracts with the civilian part of the population when you want government stuff produced. I think it should work more closely with how you interact with the civilian fleets.

I promise you, the decisions you make are fewer but in general the have a bigger impact and is important when you do them, they also require you to think hard because you can't easily change your mind later.

The current system is also harder to have the AI keep up with the player in efficiency. With a slower less controllable system you can always have the AI cut some corner here and there and it is harder to abuse the mechanic to min/max. Min/max mechanic should be reduced as much as possible if you want the AI to be a bit more competition in general, there simply need to be less good or bad decisions and more bad/bad or good/good decisions to make.

Going to war should always feel like a huge gamble unless you are a super power and there are no other powers even close to rival you. Since there are no internal social pressures in the game aside from RP most decisions in the game then become rather binary.

But then again, this game is all about RP in the first place... there are too many loopholes in the game mechanics and you may Space Master anything you want at any time.
Posted by: ChildServices
« on: January 12, 2018, 10:15:52 PM »

As said above... when you have a few planets to look after then the idea of micro manage this a few times a year is ok but not when you have hundreds of colonies.

The current mechanic are very gamey, if I may say so, and I don't really think it adds much to the game in the long term... what I suggest is instead that the player make long term planning instead of short term planning with his colonies. Not only is it more realistic, it also actually is HARDER to plan ones economy that way which produce more IMPORTANT choice instead of chasing short term goals with little real impact since most of those choices are self evident (most of the time). I usually call them choice by illusion because you really only have very few "real" choices to make with the current mechanic, there almost always are only one good choice you should take in order to expand your economy in the most efficient way.

I disagree that there'd be more or more important choices. You'd just go for whichever industry focus' RNG is the most likely to allow you to build war materiel, because that's what this game is mostly about: wars.

I'm sounding like a broken record now but, like, the granularity is the game.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 12, 2018, 08:45:28 PM »

As said above... when you have a few planets to look after then the idea of micro manage this a few times a year is ok but not when you have hundreds of colonies.

The current mechanic are very gamey, if I may say so, and I don't really think it adds much to the game in the long term... what I suggest is instead that the player make long term planning instead of short term planning with his colonies. Not only is it more realistic, it also actually is HARDER to plan ones economy that way which produce more IMPORTANT choice instead of chasing short term goals with little real impact since most of those choices are self evident (most of the time). I usually call them choice by illusion because you really only have very few "real" choices to make with the current mechanic, there almost always are only one good choice you should take in order to expand your economy in the most efficient way.
Posted by: Hydrofoil
« on: January 12, 2018, 04:39:56 AM »

I think the problem with this is that minmaxing and the extreme granularity of strategic/tactical choice (i.e you basically make every tiny little decision at every step of the way) is almost the entirety of what makes the game so rich and complex. Automation of any form should take that into account. It's why I think being able to save/load production templates and having far more involved use of civilians is a better solution, and far truer to the game, than basically removing all player decision making in research and industry construction as you've suggested.

And the old "all is manual" way of moving things around that we have now would still be available, and viable due to its efficiency over waiting for civilians to actually fulfil contracts. It'd add a choice of having a state-run supply train versus a civilian one, based on the logistical value of that train.

It was mentioned earlier in the thread that at most in longer games the player only really has 3-4 actual planets that need looking after. That is a limit of the current game as by that point the game is slowing to a crawl due to DB processes. However, this is going to be radically different we are going to see larger games with more colonies etc. Now what I'm proposing is not to get in the way of those that want to micromanage everything. What I'm proposing is to give the player the choice. Allowing the player to hit a button or toggle and set some rules on the automation I don't think is too much to ask and still, it probably would be possible for players to interrupt the automated process and add their own construction queues in. In the end, i believe its the players choice what they want to do. I know i like micromanaging things but even Aurora makes my head hurt sometimes and id love to just set a colony going with the governor and let them start building with a focus but still be able to but in with my own stuff. Its kinda how local government and national governments work in an abstracted way anyway, Local councils/governments set out zoning areas for things but national government can but in aswell from time to time and tell a local council/government "build that there".

Also i never mentioned anything about Automating research in my initial post :)