C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[alex_brunius]

When on the topic of point defense.

Wouldn't it make sense if there was a point in researching range upgrades to Gauss cannons and if weapon range had a bit of impact on final fire PD as well?


I mean if our incoming missiles travels at say 40'000km/s that means that during a 5 second increment it will travel 200'000km. A Gauss cannon with 10'000km range should have a significant disadvantage in how much volume of fire it can output compared to one with 50'000km range due to being able to open fire only in the very last 0.25 seconds instead of the last 1.25 seconds.

If a Gauss Cannon can fire 5 rounds per 5 seconds an even rate of fire would mean it's actually only within range long enough to be hit by 1 round for the 10'000km range Gauss and only 2 rounds for the 50'000km Gauss. Even if we assume the Gauss cannon fires bursts up to 1 second long and then reloads for 4 seconds the 10'000km range Gauss still is at a significant disadvantage only having time for 25% of a full burst, and that could be even worse vs faster lategame missiles.

I guess what I'm asking for is a more logical resolution of the last 5 seconds of missile approach vs PD. And also more weapons capable of firing faster than once every 5 seconds, for example a 10cm laser with 12 recharge rate capacitors logically should be able to fire 4 times each 5 second increment ( 12/3 = 4 ).

This would naturally require a rebalance of point defense weapons, probably increasing the range and/or rate of fire of Gauss a bit and potentially nerfing laser PD a bit as well.

[Steve Walmsley]

At this stage of development, I don't want to make any significant changes to combat, as it works well. The concept of salvos also needs to exist as it is used in many different parts of the code. The simplest fix is probably to allow fire controls to target multiple salvos in a single firing phase. I'm not at home at the moment, but I will check later how easy that would be to implement.

[Whitecold]

When on the topic of point defense.

Wouldn't it make sense if there was a point in researching range upgrades to Gauss cannons and if weapon range had a bit of impact on final fire PD as well?


I mean if our incoming missiles travels at say 40'000km/s that means that during a 5 second increment it will travel 200'000km. A Gauss cannon with 10'000km range should have a significant disadvantage in how much volume of fire it can output compared to one with 50'000km range due to being able to open fire only in the very last 0.25 seconds instead of the last 1.25 seconds.

If a Gauss Cannon can fire 5 rounds per 5 seconds an even rate of fire would mean it's actually only within range long enough to be hit by 1 round for the 10'000km range Gauss and only 2 rounds for the 50'000km Gauss. Even if we assume the Gauss cannon fires bursts up to 1 second long and then reloads for 4 seconds the 10'000km range Gauss still is at a significant disadvantage only having time for 25% of a full burst, and that could be even worse vs faster lategame missiles.

I guess what I'm asking for is a more logical resolution of the last 5 seconds of missile approach vs PD. And also more weapons capable of firing faster than once every 5 seconds, for example a 10cm laser with 12 recharge rate capacitors logically should be able to fire 4 times each 5 second increment ( 12/3 = 4 ).

This would naturally require a rebalance of point defense weapons, probably increasing the range and/or rate of fire of Gauss a bit and potentially nerfing laser PD a bit as well.

The same actually holds true for Laser PD, which right now seems pretty much inferior to Gauss weapons, because again area defense seems useless, and thus range doesn't matter, because the missiles are just too fast.

[misanthropope]

if the parameter you're tweaking is relative speed, there is a fine line between "area defense is worthless" and "a FAC screen can kill ungodly waves with area defense".  beam accuracy at range seems the safer lever to pull on.  if the tracking time bonus is finally enabled in c# that should help beam defense considerably.

[Scandinavian]

But something will need to be done about the beam weapon range vs. missile speed ratio. Because as it stands, missiles of comparable tech level will cross the engagement envelope of beam weapons in two or three 5-second increments. Unless you have beam weapons suffer basically no accuracy degradation from engagement range, that renders final defensive fire strictly superior to area defense (1 shot at maximum accuracy vs. fewer than two shots on average, the first of which is at less than half accuracy). Changing the accuracy profile by range of beam weapons enough for that to matter under this attack geometry would radically modify beam combat as well, assuming it is even possible.

[Hazard]

Regarding salvos: PD FCS should probably consider all hostile missiles in range as fair game in a given increment.

[Indefatigable]

Hello Steve, how are the increment turn times looking as you keep adding more content and fuctionality?
I recall last year you mentioned something like what used to take 30 seconds, now takes 3 or less seconds in C#.

[Steve Walmsley]

Hello Steve, how are the increment turn times looking as you keep adding more content and fuctionality?
I recall last year you mentioned something like what used to take 30 seconds, now takes 3 or less seconds in C#.

It's probably a greater improvement than that. I haven't played my campaign for a few days (touring the Scottish Highlands at the moment) but I was running turns early in the week with 5 races in Sol and it was still less than 1 second for each increment.

[JacenHan]

I don't know what the current status of the AI is, but how are you planning on having the AI handle same-system empires? Will it share jump points with the other empires, or try and claim one or more for itself, and would that change if there are more/fewer jump points than empires?

[Steve Walmsley]

I don't know what the current status of the AI is, but how are you planning on having the AI handle same-system empires? Will it share jump points with the other empires, or try and claim one or more for itself, and would that change if there are more/fewer jump points than empires?

I haven't coded Diplomacy yet, It's the last major area to code. However, the AI already classifies systems based on their importance so a combination of that and species modifiers will probably determine how it handles that type of situation.

[DEEPenergy]

Anything big planned for diplomacy Steve? I would love something simple like Paradox war score to demand planets, systems, disarmament etc.

[chokuto]

Anything big planned for diplomacy Steve? I would love something simple like Paradox war score to demand planets, systems, disarmament etc.

That is not simple. Something like Paradox's warscore needs to be thought of from the start. It also wouldn't really work in Aurora because you could capture a planet and just freighter all the stuff away.

[Marski]

Either age is catching up to me and my search-fu has gone rusty, or there geniunely isn't an answer to this:
Has uncle Stevie mentioned if he fixed the "area defense" point-defence mode for beam firecontrol not firing on targets if its only one 5-second instance in range?
Currently fighting a war against a race for the 18th year now, and every battle in this miserable stalemate of a space-somme is a tedious process of having to spend an entire day manually assigning targets for firecontrol one after another.

[Father Tim]

I'm pretty sure he hasn't.

Generally, missiles move first -- and if they reach the target, they roll to hit -- then ships move, so it's entirely possible to fly out of Area Defense range of a salvo.

Area Defense never worked well, and therefore wasn't used much, and therefore didn't have much 'push' behind fixing/improving it.

[Steve Walmsley]

Anything big planned for diplomacy Steve? I would love something simple like Paradox war score to demand planets, systems, disarmament etc.

I don't have a war score concept. Also it would be difficult to know how well you are doing without some idea of the capabilities and scale of your opponents. If France fights Germany, each will have a reasonable idea of how well they are doing. If two races that don't know much about one another fight over a few border systems, they don't have a frame of reference. I might be inflicting twice as many casualties as I am suffering, but that doesn't help if my opponent is 5x larger for example.

It will probably be more about claiming territory or setting up neutral zones. Having wars that can end with an agreement, or even understanding what your opponent wants will be a major improvement over VB6.