C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Hazard]

Well, I was basically thinking like this:

Mining potential would be the total amount of minerals a given planet could dig in a year, let's say that we're at 300 mines with a mining rate of 10 tons per year per mine, so 3000 tons in total.

Weighted share of minerals by availability would go, for example, go with Duranium (0.7), Gallicite (0.2) and Mercassium (0.1). Total availability is 1.0, total mining rate is 3000 tons, Duranium has 7 shares of the mining rate (total mined in a year 2100 tons), Gallicite has 2 shares (total mined 600 tons) and Mercassium has 1 share (total mined 300 tons). Total mined is 3000 tons of material.

Weighted share with loss of potential from lack of availability would go 0.7 Duranium, 0.2 Gallicite, 0.1 Mercassium, 0.3 unavailable, 0.8 unavailable, 0.9 unavailable, total 2.0 unavailable, and mine 700 tons of Duranium, 200 tons of Gallicite and 100 tons of Mercassium. The remaining 2000 ton capacity is 'wasted', dredging up Newtonian materials from the depths of the aether that are not relevant to the game or otherwise just expended effort that is not useful. There would still be 3000 tons of material mined in total even 2/3rd of it is discarded.

Being able to turn certain minerals off in a mining operation is helpful in this case because it lets you go for 0.7 Duranium and ignore the impact and loss of efficiency due to low availability of other materials, you'd still need to account for the 0.3 unavailability rating though. So in that case you'd be mining 2100 tons of Duranium, 900 tons of discarded waste material, and not touch the Gallicite and Mercassium deposits.

Being able to turn off certain minerals in a place where you are always mining the maximum possible of the mineral wealth of the planet with the availability ratings only impacting ratios of the materials dug up would kinda break the system because it'd allow you to use this setup to mine 3000 tons of material from an availability 0.1 material from a planet with only one or a few materials, and would render a body with all minerals at 1.0 availability but in small quantities strictly inferior to a body with vast quantities of all materials at only 0.1 availability simply because that body is going to be mined for a long time to come.

[QuakeIV]

I for one think in general it would be nice if at some point mineral mining was de-simplified so you could focus purely on mining the stuff you actually want.

[alex_brunius]

I would like to see a few more ship components and installations to make pre-TN gameplay a bit more fun for those of us that like starting from almost nothing:

- Pre-TN colonization transport module ( Similar to Cryogenic but with say 1000 or 2000 capacity of 10000 ) so you can get a small offworld colony started
- Pre-TN engine techs ( 1 or 2 more levels with say 50 or 100 times worse fuel efficiency )
- Ability to build additional Conventional Industry as an installation
- Ability to make a very basic sensor / MFC ( I guess could also be handled like ICBM Launch Control but a pre researched version of each for ships too )
- Ability to make a very basic magazine ( I guess could also be handled like ICBM Launch Control but a pre researched version of each for ships too )
- Pre-TN slow geo-surveying ship module ( I mean we do start with the ability to mine them on our homeworld so with enough time/effort why not find them on other worlds? )

[Hazard]

pre-TN engine tech isn't marked by low efficiency, it's marked by their engine power. The most basic TN engine has a 40 EP to hullsize ratio, the pre-TN Conventional Engine has a 1EP to hullsize ratio.

It'll get where you want it to get, but it's going to be slow as molasses getting there.

Efficiency doesn't offer high engine power or speed, it offers lower fuel costs for the same distance for the same weight of vessel. No seriously, range of the ship doesn't change when you shove in a stronger or weaker engine with the same engine efficiency modifier as long as the weight of the ship also remains the same.

[AlStar]

I was thinking that a government corruption mechanic could make for some interesting gameplay/roleplaying opportunities.

Basically, the way I see it working is as a tab on your Military Academies that goes from "uncorrupt -> lightly corrupt -> corrupt -> heavily corrupt", which can be changed one pip every (say) 5 years.  Uncorrupt would work as per usual, while increasing corruptness would cause your Military Academies to generate (a lot of) wealth, representing the ability of wealthy citizens to purchase ranks in the military well above their levels of competence.

The flip side of this would be an increasing percentage of leaders who spawn with substandard or possibly even negative modifiers in their abilities.  To get around the fact that players will (obviously) just not use these leaders, some (all?) of these leaders will have a "political appointment" tag - all leaders with political appointment tags must be assigned to an appropriate station before you can start appointing regular leaders, and all political appointments cannot be reassigned for a minimum amount of time (probably a year or two. )

So you'll have to dedicate some percentage of labs to idiot scientists, or small, out of the way colonies to drunken administrators, or assign a commander to your gas harvester so that they're not blocking you from assigning a promising recruit to an actual ship of the line.

Political Naval Officers maybe should also come with a "must be assigned to a military vessel" tag, so you can't just throw them into your transports. . .

[alex_brunius]

pre-TN engine tech isn't marked by low efficiency, it's marked by their engine power. The most basic TN engine has a 40 EP to hullsize ratio, the pre-TN Conventional Engine has a 1EP to hullsize ratio.

It'll get where you want it to get, but it's going to be slow as molasses getting there.

Efficiency doesn't offer high engine power or speed, it offers lower fuel costs for the same distance for the same weight of vessel. No seriously, range of the ship doesn't change when you shove in a stronger or weaker engine with the same engine efficiency modifier as long as the weight of the ship also remains the same.

I'm aware of that but what I am after is making pre-TN ship design feel a bit more plausibel with you needing to assign more than 1-2% of the ship mass to fuel which is silly when our real rockers today use something like 90%+ and that's still not enough for SSTO.

[mtm84]

I'm aware of that but what I am after is making pre-TN ship design feel a bit more plausibel with you needing to assign more than 1-2% of the ship mass to fuel which is silly when our real rockers today use something like 90%+ and that's still not enough for SSTO.

I believe handwavium stipulates that even pre-TN ships are constructed in orbit.  But yes fuel/mass vs delta-v would still be a major problem.

[Hazard]

I was thinking that a government corruption mechanic could make for some interesting gameplay/roleplaying opportunities.

Basically, the way I see it working is as a tab on your Military Academies that goes from "uncorrupt -> lightly corrupt -> corrupt -> heavily corrupt", which can be changed one pip every (say) 5 years.  Uncorrupt would work as per usual, while increasing corruptness would cause your Military Academies to generate (a lot of) wealth, representing the ability of wealthy citizens to purchase ranks in the military well above their levels of competence.

The flip side of this would be an increasing percentage of leaders who spawn with substandard or possibly even negative modifiers in their abilities.  To get around the fact that players will (obviously) just not use these leaders, some (all?) of these leaders will have a "political appointment" tag - all leaders with political appointment tags must be assigned to an appropriate station before you can start appointing regular leaders, and all political appointments cannot be reassigned for a minimum amount of time (probably a year or two. )

So you'll have to dedicate some percentage of labs to idiot scientists, or small, out of the way colonies to drunken administrators, or assign a commander to your gas harvester so that they're not blocking you from assigning a promising recruit to an actual ship of the line.

Political Naval Officers maybe should also come with a "must be assigned to a military vessel" tag, so you can't just throw them into your transports. . .

Okay, first? The amount of wealth that would go into buying those commissions is going to be trivial compared to actually running the military, or the long term drain on military resources due to corrupt practices of corrupt officers. And I don't just mean in the loss of lives, munitions and equipment due to those officers being incompetent in combat, I also mean things like the procurement office giving their palls in the military industry sweet deals in return for a cut of the profits, or crates of military equipment and supplies (even if it's just crates of food and shelters) disappearing into the black market, with the conspiracy dividing the price of the sale while turning around and telling the logistics branch to bring more supplies.

There's a reason corruption is a pretty serious charge for officers and enlisted both.

Second, political appointees are already a thing in this game; it's the politically connected trait (IIRC of the top of my head), and it counts as a double strength qualifier when calculating promotions. As such, politically connected but poorly qualified officers often promote more quickly than their more competent but less connected officers. This only applies to military officers though, administrators and head scientists aren't affected by the promotion system after all. For those, what matters is their administrative rank and skills, as those the maximum size of the colony they can be appointed to or the number of labs that can be assigned to them, as well as what bonuses they offer.

[alex_brunius]

I believe handwavium stipulates that even pre-TN ships are constructed in orbit.  But yes fuel/mass vs delta-v would still be a major problem.

It's a good point. A more complete improvement of pre-TN tech isn't possible without reworking some mechanics, for example so that getting out of the gravity well and into orbit is on the same order of magnitude expensive fuel wise as getting around inside the solar system.

My suggestion was not that ambitious though, just a few balancing and small "minimum effort" additions to make it feel a bit more plausible, and possible to have some interesting scenarios set in this tech level which also could include space warfare.

A larger rework is probably not meaningful unless you try and make Newtonian Aurora complete with Delta-V budgets and so on, which actually seemed to be something Steve was toying around with quite a few years back.

[ReviewDude01]

Suggestions - ship military concepts - ideas:
Ship Components - Jump Engine. Add option to design personal jump engine only for smaller minerals cost and tonnage. Cost and tonnage can be lower with increased "max ships jumped tech") Good starting number is around 0.5 of size of full sized jump engine.

Ship Components - Anti-sensor paint camouflage - coating Add option to add % reduction of heat and other signatures. The differences between cloak is that if the ship paint is damaged, can be in game simulated as min. 1 point of damage taken. The effect of coat or paint is broken. Another difference is that coat or paint is probably almost no tonnage little mineral cost and relatively little % effect.

Ship Components - Military Engine overthrusting - overdrive - afterburner Add option that some designed military engines can be overcharged to 150% or more speed for a limited amount of time. After this time they can go down to under 100% maximum speed, guzzle a lot of fuel or could also break and be damaged until repaired. Smaller ships could be easier to design with this. Design efficiency wise in game for medium or larger ships it could be viable to outrun a missile salvo, once.

If desired, same concept can be added for shield generators and sensors. This overcharge designs would need a tech!

Add military ship sensor software or sensor uplink tech makes all ships with same sensor component in a single squadron or fleet having % increased sensor range - efficiency. This % can be relatively low and is here to make many ships with same sensors more viable for RP purposes primarily.

Add variable outermost armor layer options Standard armor, reactive, reduction-based, energy-proof, exact names of these armors are intended examples only. Reactive blocks up to 5 or more points of damage but all adjacent armor squares in a grid are destroyed in the process. If there is no armor down from reactive ship takes damage from armor. Reduction-based. Damage of 1 or x  point is ignored entirely. Incoming weapon can be ricocheted. Damage of more than x deals full damage to armor. Example: Standard ablative face hardened outermost armor layer is more expensive and weights more than standard armor but also blocks up to 1 point of damage. Incoming 1 damage shots are ricocheted entirely (can be with 3% chance to destroy armor anyway). Incoming 4 damage shot destroys 4 grids of armor, not 3. Example of energy-proof or anti laser reactive type lasers and energy beams deals only 50% or lower damage when this type of armor is hit as a first grid of armor.

Add SM option to delete all active missile salvoes in a system. Useful to fasten the game in case of rare performance issues due to many salvoes in a system. Can happen in some circumstances.

[ReviewDude01]

Military ship component Anti-Missile Countermeasure launchers Unlike AMM or ship PD size of 1 Anti-Missile countermeasure component is based on % of tonnage of carrying ship. It adds a % chance that every incoming missile from salvo will miss the ship which deploys countermeasures. Countermeasures are countered with missile ECCM and can be deployed only once per component. AI logic of deploying countermesures is simple. IT uses 1 launcher per incoming missile salvo together with last line defence or point blank PD as multiple countermeasure launches does not stack.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Add military ship sensor software or sensor uplink tech makes all ships with same sensor component in a single squadron or fleet having % increased sensor range - efficiency. This % can be relatively low and is here to make many ships with same sensors more viable for RP purposes primarily.

If Steve would look into the sensor model and do something with it I would like to see sensor working a bit more like modern sensors.

That would mean that active sensors are not 100% accurate and it will take time to identify and position targets. Then having many sensors would make this process go allot quicker and finding fire solutions possible further out at the fringes of sensors capabilities.

It would even be interesting if sensor lock would go even faster if sensor crafts were separated in different places, the further apart the more likely it is to triangulate the target profile.

I would also like it if active sensors only give and approximation of the weight and you might get more and more accurate information about weight in time, but you don't get full identification of the enemy craft. You would need ELINT to identify any eventual sensors to identify targets depending on historical data.

The more fog of war we can get the more interesting space combat can get, you could even model communications to some degree as communication blackout between ships might be important to not reveal positions from EM and ELINT sensors.

Then you add electronic warfare components, spoofing sensor buoys and all manner of interesting gears. If you can cloak a ships mass you probably could do the reverse and fool someone to see a big ship that is not really there.

There could be some really interesting stuff done with sensors...

[mtm84]

So I appreciate the... “arcane” calculations (may they never be spoken) that are used for armor, but wouldn’t it be simpler to use the volume of a spherical shell instead?  Armor columns would be based on internal component volume and you can calculate any number of layers and armor strength based off the starting point of the thickness of 1 layer of strength 1 armor.

(Also I won’t have to bash my head in trying to match how armor is described as working with how it actually works >.>)

[TMaekler]

An option for SM Mode: Initiate civilian mining colony on planetary body; regardless if civilians would have colonized there or not. This way SM can manually create civilian activities for story telling purposes.

[Father Tim]

So I appreciate the... “arcane” calculations (may they never be spoken) that are used for armor, but wouldn’t it be simpler to use the volume of a spherical shell instead?  Armor columns would be based on internal component volume and you can calculate any number of layers and armor strength based off the starting point of the thickness of 1 layer of strength 1 armor.

(Also I won’t have to bash my head in trying to match how armor is described as working with how it actually works >.>)

Instead of the current system using the surface area of a sphere?  Nope.

Your suggestion would be equally complicated, then add one more step, and all with a less-easily-visualized formula.