...I suppose I'm suggesting a complete overhaul of the images for the solar system so that at least the large terrestrial bodies everyone colonize will have the correct images, and that everything else could just have generic placeholder images.
I second the notion. The solar system, at least, should have correct images. Back in 2013 when I took a look at it, I hesitated to try making my own planet image pack because the system Aurora uses to select planet images seemed too confusing.I seem to have gotten a handle on it, most systems randomly choose certain images for certain body types, but sol seems to have default images for bodies, which is often wrong or arbitrary. The only hesitation I have for suggesting an official overhaul is the fact that my image pack essentially steals images without proper licensing. I currently lack a stable enough internet connection to perform proper research, I know that nasa itself doesn't copyright images, but there are a dozen other places these pictures come from such as the ESA, etc, which may have different requirements and at minimum I need to write down the actual origin of each image and provide proper credit.
A check box in the Research tab that automatically allocates the maximum research labs to the selected scientist (while honoring the amount available)
Perhaps 10%, it would take a while to build up that far and if you're ignoring the event log that long it's your own fault.
Since larger compressed fuel storage systems have recently been added, what about also adding smaller versions (ie small, tiny compressed fuel storage) for use on fighters?
Option to randomly select a name from a list instead of going in list order.
A check box in the Research tab that automatically allocates the maximum research labs to the selected scientist (while honoring the amount available)
My suggestion is that the unrest notifications shouldn't break automatic turns unless the unrest rises past a threshold, perhaps just 1%. That would help for the usual case where the civlian lines alternately add colonists and infrastructure to a planet, causing the unrest to rise and fall my tiny amounts.
At the moment, unrest doesn't end automatic turns. I've just checked the DB and it is flagged as a 'No Interrupt' event.
In terms of the image packs - that is something I haven't looked at in a long time. If someone has a list of the correct images for each planet, I can update the database accordingly.The best I can do is images of every object over 1000 km diameter that's been visited by a probe, will that do? XD
An option in game setup to disable all missile tech for player and NPR empires for that game. Possibly leave it in for Precursors and Invaders to make them truly challenging threats. This would enable beam slugging matches to really be an option and make planetary invasion to deal with hostile worlds more of a requirement instead of just bombing them into submission(Mesons could still be used if you really wanted to destroy a world from orbit).
You need to be a little careful here. With beams only, as soon as one race has higher speed and longer ranged beam weapons, he can't lose.
This is one of the reasons I restrict beam ranges (in addition to the light-speed issue). As they have unlimited ammo, they can easily destroy any opponent with shorter-ranged weapons. Even if the opponent is faster he may still be in trouble unless he can get in range reasonably quickly.
Zincat, I've noticed in my games that civilians don't construct certain designs until after I've already designed my own version. It seems you only need to *design* the ship type you want them to build, and that you do not need to actually build it yourself. I had the opposite problem as you in my last game, where my civies were only building freighters. The moment I designed my own colony ship (after I got fed up with waiting for them to build one) they cranked out a bunch of their own.
I would like to request some changes in the civilian shipping companies ship generation algorithm.
Basically, in this game I had yesterday/today, my shipping line started launching ships but no matter how much I funded it, it would still launch only colony ships. No freighters at all.
Would it be feasible to add some if checks to civilian ship creation? Before a shipping line decides what to build it should run a check, something like ...
if there are no civilian (shiptype)
build (shiptype)
That way there will always at least be one of each type. It'd help relieve some early game frustration and it seems pretty logical to me. Do we know what the odds of never getting a civilian FT/CS/FH over a reasonable length of time (say ... 5 years) are?
I've added the ruin chance to the game and game setup windows. It is normally 20% for any terrestrial world, terrestrial moon or small terrestrial moon with gravity > 0.4G and temperature between 200K and 360K (about -73C to +87C).
When a character who has an assignment dies, there should be an interrupt. Oftentimes a colony governor or team member will die, leaving the colony ungoverned or the team short a member and I won't notice until way too late. Maybe it could work like unused research labs: "The colony at Venus does not have a governor." or "Geological Survey Team does not have 5 members." The general problem being that some personnel deaths are important enough to warrant an interrupt so that the player knows that something needs to be fixed, while the majority of officer deaths (particularly unassigned officers) aren't worth noting. This applies mostly to assignments that aren't automatically replaced by the auto-assign system.
Request:
Can the Build and Load Time Box moved to the right side of the Class Design Screen? They disappear when using Reduced Height Windows., which makes Freighter/Troop Design a bit hard.
The same goes for the Show Civilian Designs Box.
Programmable mines.
Such as "Fire at first hostile contact", "Wait 60 seconds on hostile contact, if still there then fire", etc.
Request:
"Stable" and "Source of Colonists" being unlocked for all population levels on Civilian Colonization Status, not kicking in only when population hits 25 million.
The 25m pop level is so the civilians have some independence. If you could set stable and source for all colonies, the civilians would effectively just be your ships.
The matter that I ran into was with population sites utilizing UI; they just kept unloading colonists and there was no feasible way to keep them from dying.
I actually think the idea of a bomb type weapon that uses the launching vehicle's speed is pretty intriguing, but I'm not sure if it fits with the lore idea of inertialess drives.
Give it a range of speed x 5 and maybe have it work like missiles fired within 5 seconds of their range (normal beam PD can't shoot it down, but I believe CIWS still can) and it would open interesting tactical possibilities as a single shot and then reload version of a beam fighter. It would still have the problem beam based fighters have where it's almost impossible to get through AMM defenses, though.
... We can sort of do this with waypoints and sensor missiles, but the missile has to reach the waypoint first. It would be much easier if the missile locked on to any emissions it encounters along the way.
The abillity to set min and max rank requirements on ship classes. Right now captains are commanding 20k ton ships and officers above R3 are commanding a single fighter, as all military classes require at least an R3 officer . The admiral might be an excellent fighter pilot, but it just feels weird from a rp perspective.
Maybe make the TF commander automatically the commander of the flag ship said TF is based on. Right now the TF commander is based on the flag ship of said TF but is not the commanding officer of said flag ship, you have to assign a different commander.
I think this would go well with another suggestion I read here in the suggestion forum: hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=8005. 0
Minimum rank required is set on the DAC / Rank / Info tab of the Ship Design window.
This is in line with reality - you don't want your admirals distracted by running a ship, that's what their flag captain is for.
A "Maximum Rank" thing might be nice though. It IS weird to have your admiral run a shuttle.Or a lord who jumps into a fighter. *cough*
I actually think the idea of a bomb type weapon that uses the launching vehicle's speed is pretty intriguing, but I'm not sure if it fits with the lore idea of inertialess drives.
Give it a range of speed x 5 and maybe have it work like missiles fired within 5 seconds of their range...
That was pretty much my idea. That these can work as early game weapons for making Carrier fighters/bombers somewhat potent before TL4-5, but after that they are marginalized and not really used anymore...+1
I know it has been asked before. But we could really use some way to move to distant companions stars. There's so many of them, 1000+ billion km away from the main star. And they often have planets. It's just so... irritating, seeing them but not being able to reach them...
2nd the motion to be able to move to distant companion stars. either a return to hyperdrive or some other method...
Or a mechanic for adding in a LP even if were only in SM.
Perhaps we could get more spinal mounted guns? Maybe stacked ones, too. I'm thinking spinal mounts of just about every gun (railguns and gauss cannons). If you remember Halo, their ships have massive spinally mounted gauss guns. I really want to replicate that.
Could ships undergoing refit be persuaded not to try executing their default orders? It's a bit annoying having to clear default orders, then forgetting to reset them later, just because they finished their overhaul before their refit completed and they keep interrupting your turns to tell you they can't find any new survey targets in Sol.
I mean, it's not like they're going anywhere until the refit is completed. ;)
A research line allowing twin, triple, quad spinals? Please? :(I am for the research for twin/triple spinals. And like how Rich.h said " To have more than one would be just two ships strapped together." I have seen many sci-fi ships that are just that, 2 ships slapped together. Although, that said, you could make a module ship and do just that. A main ship piece and 2 weapons modules each with a few turrets, missiles, and a spinal weapon. Oh, and on the Carronade part; normal research gives you 500mm for it already and goes all the way to 800mm, an advanced spinal version would take it to 1200mm. The 800mm does 168 damage and almost reaches the max beam range, for example.
Or maybe double, triple, quad sized spinals?
Oh boy, 500 mm spinal carronade of doom XD
I am for the research for twin/triple spinals. And like how Rich.h said " To have more than one would be just two ships strapped together." I have seen many sci-fi ships that are just that, 2 ships slapped together. Although, that said, you could make a module ship and do just that. A main ship piece and 2 weapons modules each with a few turrets, missiles, and a spinal weapon. Oh, and on the Carronade part; normal research gives you 500mm for it already and goes all the way to 800mm, an advanced spinal version would take it to 1200mm. The 800mm does 168 damage and almost reaches the max beam range, for example.Oh my bad, 3200 millimetre then:
Ofcourse the obligatory "Also, Railgun and Plasma Carronade turrets also please"
twin, triple, quad spinals
twin/triple spinals
Railguns can't be turreted in fast tracking turrets because of balancing reasons. They would make Gauss obsolete as point defense with their cheap volume of fire.....How. Perhaps at lower tech levels yes turreted RGs would beat out GCs, but they can already do that without turrets. With their demand for a reactor and such would make GCs pull ahead fairly quickly.
I would still like to see them inside a turret without speed/gear boost possible, for protection, management and RP reasons.
....How. Perhaps at lower tech levels yes turreted RGs would beat out GCs, but they can already do that without turrets. With their demand for a reactor and such would make GCs pull ahead fairly quickly.
Hell noone gripes about lasers and mesons out performing GCs until ROF 3. And worst comes to worst GCs would get like a 50% tracking gear penalty. Due to forces involved with firing the RG or something.
Not sure if I've posted this prior...That's already a feature man.
A window or something that shows all known ruins.
That's already a feature man.I barely use the system display.
I barely use the system display.Addendum: A toggle to show all anomalies detected.
I'll amend my suggestion. As above but outside the system display :p
So heres 1You can already do this by transferring infrastructure to the colony that is formed by the new species. The infrastructure will support them, and you can just use normal colony vessels (cryo storage) to move them from one world to the next.
Started messing around with genetic modification. Its not impossible to made a species however that earth (or other of your colonies) are completly uninhabitable.
You might work around this sometimes by setting up your gene mod operations on planets that are within the tolerance range of the new species... but I think habitats would be easier.
Make it so you can target a habitat (or task group of them) to send members of a new species to (as a holding, until they can be shipped off to their final actual colony)
Q-Ships.Hmm, how do you suppose this be approached? Have military tonnage be taken into account for maintenance, as opposed to total tonnage, for instance? It is tricky to figure.
Ships built like Civilian, but mounting military systems.
Hmm, how do you suppose this be approached? Have military tonnage be taken into account for maintenance, as opposed to total tonnage, for instance? It is tricky to figure.
Oh, yeah, suggestion from me! Perhaps we could make the "structural shell" ship designs also buildable from manufacturing industry, like orbital habitats currently are? Primarily because they have no engine, armor, or weapons capable, I suppose.
One nice adjustment I would like to see is the event message for scientist that improve their skill have a shorthand for what field they are in.
Current: Through experience as a project leader, Scientist Steve Wamsley has increase his Research Bonus to 30%
Suggested (using Construction and Production for example): Through experience as a project leader, CP Scientist Steve Wamsely has increase his Research Bonus to 30%.
This will be nice to have for events update.
Added for v7.2Through experience as a project leader scientist steve walmsley has increased his game design rating to 30%
2. Random slow generation ship arrives into system. Might be good tech, might be out of date, but they will try to settle with say, 1 million population on a planet.Wouldn't really fit with the feel of the game.
3. Random chance for a "Fleet of ships" race that travels from system to system with a large fleet mining it out and moving on. (Most likely this is a bad idea as it would bog the system down, but it still a cool idea)So the Swarm which is already in the game.
Research/Engineering split.
I've been hesitant to suggest something like this because it sounds complicated, but maybe it is not so bad in practice.
Basically: Remove techs that progress basic technology (like new power plant tech, or EM sensor level) from the current research list and add them to a new list for theoretical research.
Theoretical research would use a fixed pool of RPs that is not determined by research labs, only by other factors like scientist skill or anomaly multipliers. Alternatively, only a fixed number of labs can be used for theoretical research at any one time - 5? 10?. The RP cost of theoretical research would not escalate to the same degree as the RP cost of regular research ("Engineering"), because there is no expectation of an increasing # of research labs. A simple way to implement this would be to generate theoretical RPs automatically, and the player simply insta-buys theoretical projects when they can afford the cost. Mechanically, this is very similar, although perhaps it is not as strong for narrative purposes.
The idea is that even smaller empires can keep up in basic technology. Right now, larger is always better; more wealth, more RPs, more technology. With a science/engineering split, both the small empire and the large empire might have the same level of basic technology. However, the larger empire would still have a large advantage in engineering; it would be far easier for them to build large sensors, large engines, powerful jump drives, etc.
There are numerous basic techs that would still make sense as remaining in engineering, like colony cost multiplier or engine multiplier.
Missile Agility Bonus
Random thought: Missiles get a small % bonus to agility based on the number of missiles the engine has. This would cap out somewhere (8x?), but it would mean missiles arn't literally always better off with a single engine like they are now. There is a RP premium for researching single engines for missiles, but it is so small as to be a nonfactor IMO.
Remove the interrupt when a ground-based geo-survey team levels up a member. - It's nice to know but doesn't always require immediate action.The first doesn't interrupt. Its the fact that the rating of a team changed that causes the interrupt. To the second; That's already a thing.
Add an interrupt when a ground-based geo-survey team completes a survey. - They start spamming messages. Might as well pause the game and allow the player to deal with it.
I would like to by able to flag some officers to be saved (as a hall of heros or such) after their retirement or death.
Not that Terra-forming isn't great already but...That's an effect which works on geological timescales, not the sort of timescales you see in Aurora.
How about bringing radiation into play? Perhaps a Trans-Newtonian gas that blocks radiation while making an atmosphere "sticky". Terra-forming Mars in Real life would not work as depicted here because Mars no longer has a molten core and doesn't produce enough of a magnetic field to stop the stellar winds from blowing away what little atmosphere Mars has.
Sorry, it's just the "astronomy geek" coming out in me.
...the ability to auto-award medals.
I'd also really like a .06HS fuel tank. The current 'Crew Quarters - Fighter' uses .04HS but on ships small enough to make use of it, it just ends up resulting in a 497 ton fighter. There's nothing else that that'll fit in there, so I always end up replacing it with 'Crew Quarters - Tiny' to make it an even 500 tons despite the fact that it doubles my crew and the spare berths/deployment time adds nothing appreciable to my vessel's capabilities.I'm glad it's not just me who is doing that sort of thing. Having to go and manually put in a bigger crew quarters to get a neat fighter size always seems a waste, but I find the odd sizes bother me. The option to make use of that spare 3 tons would be great.
In the early game what I'd love to see would be an option to alternatively hide/show colonies with staff and/or assets on them. I seem to always be looking for my Geo-survey teams or tying to pick a place to next send them. Being able to see only those colonies with teams or to omit colonies with teams on them would make navigating the list much easier.Here is a tip, abandon the colonies that you are done with (surveyed and without team). It doesn't delete the materials or your knowledge of whats on it, only installations and teams on the surface. When you want to put mines back on them, it will recreate the colony automatically.
How would this affect those of us who don't research components, just the requisite tech? I almost always play with SM mode and instant research my ship comps.
Could we have missile armor scale with size somehow? It seems a bit bizarre that the same amount of armor provides the same protection to a size 20 missile as a size 1 missile.Because that is's the total weight of armor on the missile. 1 MSP is 1/20th of a HS (50 tons) so is 2.5 tons. 2.5 tons of armor should provide the same protection as 2.5 tons of armor. A better way to RP it is like a dome shaped piece of armor on the front of the missile instead of a coating around the whole missile.
One nice adjustment I would like to see is the event message for scientist that improve their skill have a shorthand for what field they are in.
Current: Through experience as a project leader, Scientist Steve Wamsley has increase his Research Bonus to 30%
Suggested (using Construction and Production for example): Through experience as a project leader, CP Scientist Steve Wamsely has increase his Research Bonus to 30%.
This will be nice to have for events update.
Added for v7. 2
Accidentally stumbled upon
Through experience as a project leader, Scientist ___ ___ has increased his Research Bonus to __%
Ok, that's normal but when he gained Bonus he had 0 research labs because of temporary push another project.
After testing this behavior it seems Scientists only need to be pretend to work on a project.
Maybe I'm wrong and they raise even without this, maybe it's working as intended.
Please check it and if necessary add a proper query.
Could we have missile armor scale with size somehow? It seems a bit bizarre that the same amount of armor provides the same protection to a size 20 missile as a size 1 missile.My impression is that Steve is really unhappy with missiles having armor/HTK at all; on a per-ton basis it doesnt make alot of sense even as is. Ofc, you can handwave it as 'surviving near misses'.
Inertial LocksWouldn't that affect the missiles coming from the planet as well? That would just mean that meson PDCs are the way to go for both the player and the NPR (even though NPR don't build PDCs, which means that they would start having to). My 2 cents is that planetary shields would be a better use of resources because you would still be able to hit the enemy yourself.Off-Topic: show
Wouldn't that affect the missiles coming from the planet as well? That would just mean that meson PDCs are the way to go for both the player and the NPR (even though NPR don't build PDCs, which means that they would start having to). My 2 cents is that planetary shields would be a better use of resources because you would still be able to hit the enemy yourself.Throw in some technobabble about 'the outgoing missiles are synchronized with the inertial lock'.
Mesons already dominate thick-atmosphere orbital battles; there's no real way to change that without changing either mesons or the atmospheric penalty. Hell, even without an atmosphere 10cm mesons are ridiculously good at slugging+ are good PD. It's not like PDCs can pick their range.
Note that even if both sides have to play fair with the Inertial Lock, it doesn't stop defensive missile fire. PDCs could still fire up and out, but the flight delay would limit missile response times and range. Basically, take five minutes off the flight time of a missile, applied right at the start - you'd still be plenty effective, if a bit vulnerable to baiting tactics. The major fault for missile silos would be that any anti-missile asset within range of the atmosphere could gun down outgoing missiles with the same ease that defenses gun down incoming ones. Oh, and most AMM designs would likely flame out on the way up. NBD if their targets also hit the field, but bad for covering orbital assets or hitting enemy ships.
IMO, the trouble with a linear defense like a planetary shield is that it's just more hitpoints to be smashed flat by a superior attack fleet.
It could even just assign as many as are available if the amount typed in is larger than the number of available labs, rather than showing an error dialog and then doing nothing.Please add automatically assign new research lab to (1) top project as long as possible without stopping auto turns (simple, just code) or (2) add a checkbox to projects so we can designate a specific project. Still log the event but speed up the game.
What I am hearing right now is "Masons are really effective in planetary defense, beam weapons are pretty well useless, and AMMs are the only things that offer a real option to Masons in planetary defense, so you know what would be cool? Nerf all missiles when it comes to planetary defense so Masons get to be even more effective and AMMs get nerfed to the point where they can't really compete with the old Mason strength, and beam weapons stay just as useless."You could still launch missiles from orbital space stations, at least.
I don't see that as a great idea. I am all for Aurora being a mix of realism and great story telling but when we go off into fantasy land for great story telling I can't really justify giving fewer viable options instead of giving more. Its a cool idea and all but the effect I see coming from that is all PDCs would be mason based and nothing else. To me that just takes away story potential rather than adding it and its not a change being made to fit realism or anything so I can't really see a pro from either an RP side or a game play side.
What I am hearing right now is "Masons are really effective in planetary defense, beam weapons are pretty well useless, and AMMs are the only things that offer a real option to Masons in planetary defense, so you know what would be cool? Nerf all missiles when it comes to planetary defense so Masons get to be even more effective and AMMs get nerfed to the point where they can't really compete with the old Mason strength, and beam weapons stay just as useless."If you're trying to use beam weapons in a heavy atmosphere, you have to use them from orbitals *anyway*. Everything apart from mesons is literally useless in PDC combat right now. If I had a magic wand, or could mod things, I'd just remove mesons from the game entirely - or at least remove them from the standard research list and make them a secret tech. I never use mesons in my own games. They always have and always will be the 100x best weapon for orbital combat as is. If you have a suggestion for fixing that I'd love to hear it.
I don't see that as a great idea. I am all for Aurora being a mix of realism and great story telling but when we go off into fantasy land for great story telling I can't really justify giving fewer viable options instead of giving more. Its a cool idea and all but the effect I see coming from that is all PDCs would be mason based and nothing else. To me that just takes away story potential rather than adding it and its not a change being made to fit realism or anything so I can't really see a pro from either an RP side or a game play side.
Why not independently scalable windows? That would enable us to have multiple windows on screen at once. (As in a split or quad screen) It would be a ***** to code, but hey; it's useful.
Inertial Locks
An Inertial Lock is a planetary facility capable of instantly negating the Transnewtonian pseudovelocity imparted by small TN-era ship drives within a suborbital radius of a planet, most notably the drive of any practical missile design. Larger drives, even those of fighters, are immune to the effect.
Any missile salvo that intercepts a population or ground force on a body protected by an Inertial Lock would have an additional flight time added to it, similar to ICBM flight time mechanics. Speed would be the sole determinant of this flight time. Even a moderately capable point defense array would thus be capable of destroying a far disproportionate # of incoming missiles. Although such missiles speed would have dropped to essentially that of a sitting duck, the inertial lock's interference would make missile ECM far more capable than normal.
Inertial locks would be permanent installations owing to the immense complexity of the fine tuning process adapting it to a local geomagnetic field. The primary cost would be in Boronide for the massive power requirements. They could be destroyed as normal as a side effect of ground combat, but the easiest way of defeating them would be attaining total ground superiority. Alternatively, they could be PDC-mounted
It would be relatively easy to slot Inertial Locks into existing gameplay, but interaction with NPRs is a little more problematic. Since NPRs do not build PDCs, they would not benefit much from Inertial Locks once any orbiting space stations are destroyed. They would work well with any conflict between two player races, but to work for NPRs it requires either PDCs or some other means for ground forces to contest a beam-armed opponent in orbit.
if you're talking about in the Class Design screen, you can sort by hull name, size, or cost as well as the default alphabetical.
radio buttons on the bottom rite
Another trick is to use prefixes. For a while I would name all civilian ships using X Y or Z prefixes, like the "X200 Hauler"
you can already do that with tractor beams ^____^Oof, I was worried they'd seem a bit similar!
When you think about it carefully, mines don't make much sense. Why is it that a mine on a world with two Accessibility 1 minerals produces twice as much overall as a mine on a world with one Accessibility 1 mineral?i think its to avoid a situation where say a planet with 1.0 duranium and 1.0 neutronium is worse for producing Duranium than a 0.7 Duranium planet.... without having to fiddle with assigning mines to specific resources.
i think its to avoid a situation where say a planet with 1.0 duranium and 1.0 neutronium is worse for producing Duranium than a 0.7 Duranium planet.... without having to fiddle with assigning mines to specific resources.But why shouldn't it work that way? You're also getting neutronium in that case. It's not even that weird. For the sake of simplicity, the mine expends equal effort on all resources on the body, which is less weird than the current situation, where the mine appears to be able to clone itself if and only if there are other minerals about. Or maybe each mineral has its own special extraction equipment/process, and there's no crossover between them. But in that case, why does the number of workers stay the same regardless of the number of minerals being produced? I can't come up with a good in-universe explanation for the current mine rules.
But why shouldn't it work that way? You're also getting neutronium in that case. It's not even that weird. For the sake of simplicity, the mine expends equal effort on all resources on the body, which is less weird than the current situation, where the mine appears to be able to clone itself if and only if there are other minerals about. Or maybe each mineral has its own special extraction equipment/process, and there's no crossover between them. But in that case, why does the number of workers stay the same regardless of the number of minerals being produced? I can't come up with a good in-universe explanation for the current mine rules.Maybe it could be assumed that the material in which you're extracting trans-newtonian materials is all the same stuff, and the main differences between the mineral stores of planets is what ratio of this strata actually contains the minerals, on top of difficulty in accessing due to depth, etc. So the same amount of mines will harvest the same amount of material, but the percentage of that material being useful depends on how much of it is the trans newtonian stuff, capped out at the extreme instance a planet having all accessibility: 1 minerals available.
Note that in no circumstance does this proposed rule make the amount of minerals being produced go down relative to the current rules. And you're getting more total minerals from each mine on the planet with higher accessibility. If Duranium is all you're after, then it looks a tiny bit weird, but less so than the current situation.
Maybe it could be assumed that the material in which you're extracting trans-newtonian materials is all the same stuff, and the main differences between the mineral stores of planets is what ratio of this strata actually contains the minerals, on top of difficulty in accessing due to depth, etc. So the same amount of mines will harvest the same amount of material, but the percentage of that material being useful depends on how much of it is the trans newtonian stuff, capped out at the extreme instance a planet having all accessibility: 1 minerals available.I did think about that, but even that's not very logical. If we assume that there's a giant cylinder of TN minerals that they eat from the top down, why the cap of accessibility 1? That means the maximum concentration possible for any mineral is at most 9%, or at least 9% of the maximum possible concentration of TN minerals. Why? It makes very little physical sense, and even less when you consider how minerals run out at different rates. If I have 100,000 tons of Accessibility 1 Gallicite and 10,000,000 tons of Accessibility 0.5 Duranium, it's awfully convenient that all of the Gallicite is concentrated in the top 0.5% of the column that's mostly Duranium. If some sort of overall accessibility cap was implemented, and accessibility either couldn't sum to greater than 1 or could go above 1 and had to sum to less than 11, I would have less problem with this. Also, I'm pretty sure this explanation doesn't resemble actual geology.
I would really like to see a "wait until shore leave is completed" order. Right now, sending my explorer ships back for shore leave means either removing their auto-order or being interrupted every time, wait for shore leave to finish, and then remember to put the order back on. It would be very helpful to have an order making them stay here until morale is back up.I send them in for an overhaul to solve this problem. But it would be nice to have this as an option.
I did think about that, but even that's not very logical. If we assume that there's a giant cylinder of TN minerals that they eat from the top down, why the cap of accessibility 1? That means the maximum concentration possible for any mineral is at most 9%, or at least 9% of the maximum possible concentration of TN minerals. Why? It makes very little physical sense, and even less when you consider how minerals run out at different rates. If I have 100,000 tons of Accessibility 1 Gallicite and 10,000,000 tons of Accessibility 0.5 Duranium, it's awfully convenient that all of the Gallicite is concentrated in the top 0.5% of the column that's mostly Duranium. If some sort of overall accessibility cap was implemented, and accessibility either couldn't sum to greater than 1 or could go above 1 and had to sum to less than 11, I would have less problem with this. Also, I'm pretty sure this explanation doesn't resemble actual geology.Well, it's worth assuming that trans-newtonian minerals are not part of actual geology, at least not the same geology that's governed by newtonian physics that we know of. Whether the stuff is actually physical as we recognize it or phantasmagorical in some manner depends on individual interpretations. Beyond this point, while the idea seems cool, you might be looking too far into it.
I did think about that, but even that's not very logical. If we assume that there's a giant cylinder of TN minerals that they eat from the top down, why the cap of accessibility 1? That means the maximum concentration possible for any mineral is at most 9%, or at least 9% of the maximum possible concentration of TN minerals. Why? It makes very little physical sense, and even less when you consider how minerals run out at different rates. If I have 100,000 tons of Accessibility 1 Gallicite and 10,000,000 tons of Accessibility 0.5 Duranium, it's awfully convenient that all of the Gallicite is concentrated in the top 0.5% of the column that's mostly Duranium. If some sort of overall accessibility cap was implemented, and accessibility either couldn't sum to greater than 1 or could go above 1 and had to sum to less than 11, I would have less problem with this. Also, I'm pretty sure this explanation doesn't resemble actual geology.The giant cylinder part may not be right, but getting many minerals associated together and being mined at the same time is very like actual mining. Very rarely will a metal mine just produce one thing, it's almost always multi-product, often half a dozen or more. They're not always obviously related by their physical properties, the same mine can produce gold, copper, molybendium, lead and platinum from the same ore body.
Not a good suggestion. "What does an open ended game that lets you have the freedom to do anything need? RESTRICTIONS, YES!" (Erik, wee need a facepalm emote)
The giant cylinder part may not be right, but getting many minerals associated together and being mined at the same time is very like actual mining. Very rarely will a metal mine just produce one thing, it's almost always multi-product, often half a dozen or more. They're not always obviously related by their physical properties, the same mine can produce gold, copper, molybendium, lead and platinum from the same ore body.I'm aware that minerals may be mixed together in real life. But in Aurora, each mineral is treated totally separately. Why is all of the Gallicite mixed in with only 0.5% of the Duranium? For that matter, when geology teams make discoveries, it's always, IIRC, of a single mineral at a time. If the minerals behaved more like they were linked, I wouldn't have much trouble accepting this line of reasoning.
If you imagine the TN deposits as being utterly separate and unrelated to each other, then I agree the current setup does seem odd. But if you imagine a planet's TN deposits as being a number of intermingled deposits, each one containing a variable grade of multiple TN ores, then I think the current system is close enough.
I see it working as your miners start on the best ore bodies, the one with the most amount of ores occurring together. When they are used up, they have to move to harder to work deposits (lower accessibility) with less concurrent ores (some minerals run out).
I'm aware that minerals may be mixed together in real life. But in Aurora, each mineral is treated totally separately. Why is all of the Gallicite mixed in with only 0.5% of the Duranium? For that matter, when geology teams make discoveries, it's always, IIRC, of a single mineral at a time. If the minerals behaved more like they were linked, I wouldn't have much trouble accepting this line of reasoning.In real life platinum is treated totally separately from gold, from silver, from iron, etc. I don't see people going out and getting gold iron rings for example. As for geology teams, we will assume you are recalling correctly since I don't remember either, and say as they map the planet they collect samples from all over and then spend most of their time in some sort of mobile lab that they analyze the material and due to the analyzing process and the way the human brain works they focus on one mineral at a time.
I agree that assuming each mineral is completely separate is probably a bad idea, which is why I'm leaning towards the idea of using a square root. Mining on a body with a single mineral would be limited to about 3.3x the rate on a body with all 11 minerals, which would make work on those bodies with a few high-prevalence low-accessibility minerals significantly more attractive without breaking the game completely. You'd get more in total from a body with more minerals, and it smooths out a lot of the weird spikes you'd otherwise see.
In real life platinum is treated totally separately from gold, from silver, from iron, etc. I don't see people going out and getting gold iron rings for example. As for geology teams, we will assume you are recalling correctly since I don't remember either, and say as they map the planet they collect samples from all over and then spend most of their time in some sort of mobile lab that they analyze the material and due to the analyzing process and the way the human brain works they focus on one mineral at a time.That's my point. At the very least, we can be reasonably certain the deposits the geology teams find are individual, as there aren't other minerals added at the same time.
Also, why are you assuming accessibility 1 is equal to 1%? You have used that in a couple of the previous posts you have made on this topic, and I think its weird since accessibility does not necessarily have anything at all to do with percentages. For all we know accessibility 1 is equal to 9.09% of the total composition of the world and if all 11 minerals are present that encompasses the entire make up of the world.I'm not. I acknowledged that it could be as high as 9% but there's no logical reason why you couldn't have 18% Duranium in a given vein. The 0.5% number is based on my 'giant cylinder of minerals' analogy, and referred to the fraction of the deposit of the first mineral that had the second mineral in it.
For that matter, when geology teams make discoveries, it's always, IIRC, of a single mineral at a time.
One thing that bugs me about Aurora 4X is that a world, once completely habitable can have a pretty much infinite number of people and installations.
What is Earth's population cap? The laws of physics don't seem to cause one; people don't suddenly become infertile once the population hits X billion. Perhaps there is a point where everyone feels too crowded, but most of the Earth is effectively empty; we're not anywhere near it today. The real limits are set by the fraction of land which can be used for agriculture, the amount of agriculture which can be accomplished without using arable land, and the number of calories you can get for a given set of inputs. Technology has given us such great improvements to the latter that we're actually not using all of the arable land that we could be, and we still have more food than we can eat. I think this is a situation where the trans-newtonian technologies that the game introduces have pushed the limits so high as to be entirely unknown.Indeed. We don't even begin to cover the more nutter things.
The rest of your suggestion is asking for more simulation here and less abstraction, so I don't think a cap of any kind would be the right way to satisfy you. I think terraforming could be more interesting if it took into account more factors about the planet though, such as the hydrology.
Indeed. We don't even begin to cover the more nutter things.In Aurora terms a lot of that can/should require Infrastructure
What is Earth's population cap? The laws of physics don't seem to cause one; people don't suddenly become infertile once the population hits X billion. Perhaps there is a point where everyone feels too crowded, but most of the Earth is effectively empty; we're not anywhere near it today. The real limits are set by the fraction of land which can be used for agriculture, the amount of agriculture which can be accomplished without using arable land, and the number of calories you can get for a given set of inputs. Technology has given us such great improvements to the latter that we're actually not using all of the arable land that we could be, and we still have more food than we can eat. I think this is a situation where the trans-newtonian technologies that the game introduces have pushed the limits so high as to be entirely unknown.
The rest of your suggestion is asking for more simulation here and less abstraction, so I don't think a cap of any kind would be the right way to satisfy you. I think terraforming could be more interesting if it took into account more factors about the planet though, such as the hydrology.
One thing that bugs me about Aurora 4X is that a world, once completely habitable can have a pretty much infinite number of people and installations.
I'm aware that minerals may be mixed together in real life. But in Aurora, each mineral is treated totally separately. Why is all of the Gallicite mixed in with only 0.5% of the Duranium?
Suggestion: Passive Sensor Suppression (SM toggle)To be honest though, we could very well do without the str1 passive sensors by default, seeing as one could make a size 0.1 or 0.2 sensor, and it would be considered commercial, too.
This would disable passive sensors in a system. It's mostly for processing combat more quickly in situations where both sides are engaged with actives but sensor checks are chugging increment processing times.
Alternatively, it could suppress the str1 passives possessed by default.
you can make a 'target drone' by adding an enemy faction, and then giving it ships for you to shoot.I've done that several times. I've been playing long enough that I rarely have serious questions about the effectiveness of my weapons, but there are days when you need to answer a weird mechanical question and the easiest way to do so is to shoot at things. My most recent use of this was an attempt to use the 5 second missile timing exploit with multi-stage missiles, but it didn't work.
Some way to pause a task group so that it hold position without having to clear the orders would be nice.A current, relatively reliable way to instigate this is by setting the task group speed to 1. Moving three orders of magnitude slower than normal is good for stalling movement to a relative complete standstill, though for very specific positioning might be more reliable to just wipe the task list. Though, worth noting that your ship will fail just about all maneuverability speed checks made against it, leaving it vulnerable to attack of all sorts. That said, your thermals will be about zero, essentially making your ship go invisible to thermal readings, though not to active sensor or EM readings.
A current, relatively reliable way to instigate this is by setting the task group speed to 1. Moving three orders of magnitude slower than normal is good for stalling movement to a relative complete standstill, though for very specific positioning might be more reliable to just wipe the task list. Though, worth noting that your ship will fail just about all maneuverability speed checks made against it, leaving it vulnerable to attack of all sorts. That said, your thermals will be about zero, essentially making your ship go invisible to thermal readings, though not to active sensor or EM readings.
Unless I'm just ignorant and there's a way to do this already: generic orders for ground units transport.
Just getting a few dozen construction brigades from A to B shouldn't involve this much clicking if we don't care about the niceties.
Jumpoints: Allow assigning a jump capable Taskforce to a jumpoint that will then ferry across other taskforces that try to move through the jumpoint.This already works. If you have a ship with a jump drive on the JP, any and all craft that it can pass through will be passed through. It doesn't allow civilian trade, but that's probably realistic. Shipping lines aren't going to be wild about going into the great unknown with only your word that the tender will be around when they want to come back.
Allow assigning a jump capable Taskforce to a jumpoint that will then ferry across other taskforces that try to move through the jumpoint.That's already a thing.
An alternative to using jump-gates.Like a jump drive that already exists? Or something else that wouldn't fit with the mechanics?
Allows civilian trade without a jumpgate.If you put a commercial ship with a large jump drive on the point, works the same.
Costs having to station jump tender at the jump point, with a throughput limit (and fuel cost for jumps?) as the jump-drive takes time to recharge.Partially already a thing. Jumping gives a sickness where you cant see or jump for a short period.
This can be done manually at present (except civilian use) but requires lots of micro-management to add/remove jump tender to the taskkforce before/after the jump.You can just sit a large ship with a large drive at the point and it can jump anything, and you don't need to add it to the task force that is jumping. And you don't need one at both sides, it work at both when one is at just one of the connected points.
If you put a commercial ship with a large jump drive on the point, works the same.He was talking about shipping lines, which don't use jump tenders.
A current, relatively reliable way to instigate this is by setting the task group speed to 1. Moving three orders of magnitude slower than normal is good for stalling movement to a relative complete standstill, though for very specific positioning might be more reliable to just wipe the task list. Though, worth noting that your ship will fail just about all maneuverability speed checks made against it, leaving it vulnerable to attack of all sorts. That said, your thermals will be about zero, essentially making your ship go invisible to thermal readings, though not to active sensor or EM readings.
I would further suggest that when a new line forms it starts with its initial investment money already spent in terms of ships. Otherwise I've seen them sit on their initial investment capital and even pay it out as dividends without building ships and then being stuck with having but a single ship.This is a good idea.
I would further suggest that a bit of programing is implemented to stop the mass effect in Aurora civillian shipping. If I give a contract I've seen every single spare ship head off to the place where the pick up is...regardless of the fact that there are only 10 mines to move and that 10 faster ships are racing on ahead of the ship and that there are contracts now free (as everyone and their dog is heading off to the oort cloud to pick up 10 auto mines). And similiar programing to preven the big dumps where there is 50K extra population available on a colony and 3 million colonists are landed on it. Basically I would loop over the companies and assign a job to each company until no jobs remain to be assigned.I thought that that bug got fixed. I'll have to check, but I believe that several years ago, Steve added code to check for all inbound colonists when calculating where to send new ones.
I would further suggest that NPRs have to deal with fuel but it an abstract way. The ships track fuel use and at 50% they return to their "home base" and refuel but that the NPR ships have no limitations on their movement if they run out of fuel on the way home. Or you could say that they can do their thing until they do run out of fuel and then must return to their "home base" to refuel but again without any restriction on speed. They can't "run out of fuel" (as it is now) but they at least have to automatically go back to their "home base" from time to time. This will hopefully put a logicistics limit on NPRs without imposing a huge programing effort.It might be worthwhile to do this for shipping lines. Look at the ship's range, and reject any trip that is beyond said range. Computational load should be relatively low.
I would also suggest that the price paid for civillian fuel should be increased significantly. I would leave the price the same and just charge that per 1000 l rather than per 10 000 l. Civillian fuel is extremely valuable and very cheap which makes the harvesters less valuable to the company.Definitely. I always groan when they buy one of the stupid things because it's never going to pay itself back. (At least if you use them for revenue. I haven't used them much as a means of getting more fuel. May have to try that.)
I'd like to be able to set a commander name theme per species in my empire, not just a single set for my empire as a whole.There is a part in the race window that you can select additional name themes to be drawn for your empire.
From an RP perspective, I don't want to force the aliens who join my empire to abandon their own names in favor of human-style ones.
There is a part in the race window that you can select additional name themes to be drawn for your empire.There is, and I've been using it, but it looks like it selects one of the 5 themes randomly without any correlation with the commander's homeworld/training location (which is the only indication I can find of the commander's species).
A way to designate a world as off-limits to civilian colony ships. I'm trying to set up a severely limited colony on a Venusian world so that PDC morale doesn't go too far down, but civilians keep sending colonists in larger numbers than my orbital habitats can provide.Once it reaches 25m pop you can. Alternatively you can stop sending colonists from the source planets. Option 3 is to ban the body from the system view (F9).
Appologies if they do exist in the game and i just havnt gotten the right tech for it in all my games but... Id like to see Bio weapons added to the game
You could dump chlorine gas into their atmosphere :)Technically, that's a chemical weapon.
Technically, that's a chemical weapon.
Add an option to coordinate the completion dates of all current construction projects to the 'Industry' tab of the 'Population and Production' window.
The player specifies the desired date of completion and clicks the button. Then the game attempts to distribute the colony's construction capacity between the current projects in order to complete them all on the specified date.
If the projects cannot be completed by the specified date, then 100% of the construction capacity will be allocated to finish all of the current projects at the same time as quickly as possible.
If the projects can be completed by the specified date, then only enough construction capacity will be allocated to finish all current projects by that date. Any additional capacity is left unallocated.
It might be simpler to specify the time to complete (in days or seconds or whatever) instead of the date of completion. This way the functionality could be presented with a single text box and a button.
So we all hate it when that great scientists has an earth attack, or when we loose experienced officers through health issue. It'd be nice to have a line of Biology research that boost life expectancy. It would fluff out biology a bit too.Yeah, these Earth attacks have really disturbed at least two of my games already. All the dead officers, a shame. (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_razz.gif)
It would also improve population growth I think, which would also be fine.Actually either not, or opposite. :) If the fertile years stay constant, then increased life time will actually reduce the population growth average.(->more people, but a smaller part of them is reproducing) If the fertile years expand in proportion to longer life-time, it will just stay constant.
When the life expectency is prolonged then all affected parameters should also prolong. Meaning to get promoted or increase a statistical value should take proportionally longer. Otherwise the longer life expectency gives an imbalance to the game (don't know how much of an imbalance - but definitely one).For one I wouldn't like that with the promotion, because it is timed to exactly one year, and adding imbalance to that is ugly. But on the other hand, just as Sheb staid, promotion is not dependent on time, but total officer count. I had plenty 60+ old commanders and lieutenants in my time because they never got promoted as the combined skill-to-free-positions cross section was not in their favor. There would be more officers as they die less, so there is this imbalance, but enlarging promotion period will not hinder this.
Why? Promotion depends on the number of officers you have, not time, so our command structure wouldn't get more top-heavy. And yes, it would increase the effectiveness of academies... But is that a bad stuff?No, that really doesn't seem too much or cheating.
What about ground force staff officers, like for fleets?That would be pretty good. Maybe at Corps/Army level you can have staff officers in addition to the actual leader of the corps. I'm not sure how much you can do with it from a gameplay perspective though. A guy for training, a guy for his combat bonus, a "public affairs" guy, and the general himself?
Could we change the 'Continual expansion' box for shipyards to an 'expand to'? I often find myself needing to get a shipyard to some specific value which isn't divisible by 500, and it's annoying to have to keep an eye on the shipyard when I'm doing so. Instead, set it so that it expands to the value you give it, and then sends an alert, with a target tonnage of 0 triggering the system as it currently works.This would be great. Especially for commercial yards, where you always use the 10,000 tons increase anyway.
Also would be awesome for all the OCD people like me around who hate ending up with a shipyard at 4783 tons.I'm with you on that. The other way to deal with that is to only use the stepwise expansions, which always round to the nearest hundred. But that's annoying when you want to add 200 tons, and have to keep checking the completion percentage to make sure you get it when it's at or just above 40% done.
Active projects (in expected order of completion; tokens): A(2),B(2),C(1) at {40%,40%,20%}
Queued projects (in priority order; tokens acquired/required): D(0/3),E(0/2)
Project A completes, freeing up two tokens, given to D, but not enough to start D, so:
Active projects: B(2),C(1) at {66%,33%}
Queued projects: D(2/3),E(0/2)
Project B completes, freeing up two tokens, D has enough tokens to start, but not E so:
Active projects: C(1),D(3) at {25%,75%}
Queued projects: E(1/2)
Project C completes, E can start:
Active projects: D(3),E(2) at {60%,40%}
Queued projects: none
Active projects. A(2),B(2),C(1)
Queued projects: X(5/5),D(0/3),E(0/2)
Here, adding project X to the front of the queue, and giving it sufficient tokens effectively results in:Active projects: A(2),B(2),C(1),X(5) at {20%,20%,10%,50%}
Queued projects: D(0/3),E(0/2)
By extension, you could inject tokens at any point in the queue:Active projects: A(2),B(2),C(1)
Queued projects: D(0/3),X(5/5),E(0/2)
When projects A & B complete:
Active projects: C(1),D(3),X(5)
Queued projects: E(1/2)
You don't have to inject the full number of tokens needed, either:Active projects: A(2),B(2),C(1)
Queued projects: D(0/3),X(4/5),E(0/2)
Also, can we please get an event message when shipyards and GFTFs are built? It's annoying to go to the shipyards tab, see a new one, and think 'how long has that been sitting there?'.There already is an event when they are constructed.
Why do we not have live fire exercises? I was expecting to get the chance of testing my ships and crew before feeding them to the spoiler races... (and if that or something like that already exists, how do I do it?)Task Force Training. Its the big button in one of the TG order window.
Task Force training. Its the big button in one of the TG order window.I know task force training, I meant like shooting missiles at allies to get them experience, you know, test the crew and see how it holds up
I know task force training, I meant like shooting missiles at allies to get them experience, you know, test the crew and see how it holds upThere are about three different ways this could be read:
Could we get the ability to add notes to specific bodies/colonies, either on the F9 system generation screen, or the F2 economy screen. It would help with general fluff type info to flesh out the RP of the game if we were able to add things.Would be pretty nice, actually! I agree this should be something that needs to be added.
In general EVERYTHING that has an interrupt should allow the player to disable that interrupt. We did already intentionally check 'autoturn' after all.Not like this has been requested thousands of times already. [/sarcasm]
Is there any possibility of a 'laptop mode' for lack of a better phrase that can be used in the game creation menu makes the tabs 1366x768 and adds a scroll bar on the side? I don't know whether it would be feasible but off the top of my head a modified CSS may be able to do it, if Aurora uses a CSS. . .The simple answer is "no".
I don't know, either way it seems like something that would allow people with a laptop to play it on train journeys and the like.
An indicator on the system survey data chart/screen that the body has had a ground survey performed. Once you abandon the "colony" it becomes increasingly difficult to remember which bodies you surveyed with a geoteam. This could be something that shows up in the lower window when you click on a body rather than an additionaly column.Yes, this please. For instance, in the F9 system display, where (blank)/S/M indicates survey+minerals status, add 'G' to flag ground survey completed (supersedes 'S') would be very helpful.
The cube is geometrically correct but other factors could be used to balance it for game purposes.
Why do you say that cubed is correct when the surface area goes like R**2?
John
I am continually informed that my definition of "simple" doesn't alway match up with other peoples meaning of the word. But the culprit was lazy thinking on my part more than anything else.
I was thinking about that as well, but the surface area goes up at a pretty steady pace with planet mass. Surface Area < Volume, usually.Well, surface area is going to scale with the square of radius, while mass scales with the cube of radius. But gravity scales with the inverse square of radius, so the surface gravity scales linearly with radius. So in theory, and assuming constant planet density, the required time will scale inversely with the radius of the planet.
Well, surface area is going to scale with the square of radius, while mass scales with the cube of radius. But gravity scales with the inverse square of radius, so the surface gravity scales linearly with radius. So in theory, and assuming constant planet density, the required time will scale inversely with the radius of the planet.Doesn't the inverse square law only apply to the diminishing effects of gravity over range, with the radius in question being said range?
Doesn't the inverse square law only apply to the diminishing effects of gravity over range, with the radius in question being said range?I'm not using the wrong math, but we're into some moderately esoteric physics, so I'm going to have to show it to explain. If I'm misunderstanding you, then I'm preemptively sorry.
Volume and mass are almost directly linearly correlated (granted, given the same density). With mass being directly tied to gravitational pull on a linear basis...So I think in this case you might just be using the wrong maths. Surface area of the planet would be a lot better value to terraform by. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, though.
I'm not using the wrong math, but we're into some moderately esoteric physics, so I'm going to have to show it to explain. If I'm misunderstanding you, then I'm preemptively sorry.
The shell theorem states that a spherically symmetric body will behave as if it is a point mass concentrated at its geometrical center, and that it doesn't matter if it is solid or hollow. So we can calculate the gravitational force on someone standing on the surface of the Earth using the mass and radius of the Earth, just as we do to work out the pull on the moon. It also states that anything inside a spherically symmetrical shell will not be affected by that shell's gravity at all. The parts closer to you are counterbalanced by the parts farther away. This means that someone digging down into a spherical planet will see exactly what someone would see if they were peeling away the planet instead.
(The second part isn't particularly relevant, but it is interesting, so I'm not going to take it out.)
Now for the math:
1. The planet's mass is equal to rho*4/3*pi*r^3, and we'll assume that rho (density) is constant. The acceleration due to gravity on a planet's surface gPlanet (assuming that the second object is small relative to the first one) is G*mplanet/r^2. If we substitute in the equation for the planet's mass we get G*rho*4/3*pi*r^3/r^2, which simplifies to G*rho*4/3*pi*r.
2. The pressure on a planet's surface P is (slightly simplified) equal to (MassAtm/4*pi*r^2)*gPlanet. If this doesn't make sense, consider conservation of momentum. The pressure on the piece of air just above the ground must be equal to the force of gravity on the column of air above that piece. Otherwise, the air would be accelerating upwards or downwards. Either would be bad if sustained.
3. Let's assume that each terraforming platform produces so many tons of atmosphere each year, dMassAtm. Using this we can work out:
dP = (dMassAtm*gPlanet)/(4*pi*r^2) = (dMassAtm*G*rho*4/3*pi*r)/(4*pi*r^2).
Cancelling terms, we get:
dP = (dMassAtm*G*rho)/(3*r)
In other words, the change in pressure is proportional to density (smaller planet for a given mass means less surface area to spread the weight out across and higher gravity) and inversely proportional to radius (bigger planet means that you have to pump out more mass). In aurora terms, we'd spec the terraforming machines on Earth, and then multiply the rate by the relative density and by the inverse of the relative radius.
Make sense?
The important part here is your number 2 - the pressure on the surface is (assuming atmosphere depth is much smaller than radius) the weight of the mass of air above you (i.e. mass per unit surface area) times the planet's surface gravity.Exactly. If you're doing really serious atmospheric modeling, you take variations in gravity into account, but it isn't worth doing here.
The total mass of the entire atmosphere is then simply that times the surface area, which goes like radius squared. I considered folding in surface gravity when I pinged Paul about R^2, but since the range of habitable surface gravities isn't very big (5x-ish at most) I didn't think it was worth bringing up that complexity.I think it's very worth bringing up, to reduce how strongly planetary scaling cuts the effectiveness of terraforming stations. If we assume that density is pretty much constant, the range of habitable planetary radii is also going to be 5-ish, too. With varying density, it might be 50% larger. This means that the ratio between large and small planets is going to be in the double digits, and large worlds will take forever to terraform. Folding in gravity takes the scaling from square to linear (approximately).
The reason I'm going here is to make sure people understand that your original point (scale by relative surface gravities) is the real thing they should be paying attention to, both since that's the thing with a selection effect to not vary much and because that's what Aurora tracks, not the dependency on density. They're both correct formulae, it's just the surface gravity part is a lot simpler to grok IMO.Fair enough. I did suggest that originally, then went into the full math to explain why it was important, but it's mathematically easier to use density when you do that.
John
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and large worlds will take forever to terraform.
<Snip>
I see no problem with this part. Reshaping a world should be the work of generations, and not "Sister Jenny found a planet on her lunch break, it should be ready for the Amish Colonists by Tuesday."Then you should have a problem with the other side, which is that terraforming of small worlds will be unrealistically short. Regardless of anyone's views on the optimal time for terraforming, a model which scales with the square of the planet's diameter is a bad one.
I don't know if this has been fixed but could the way combat experience is given out be looked at? So far as I can see no experience is given out to ships that use their weapon systems in combat which seems wrong.The problem there is defining 'combat', particularly for missile-armed ships. Otherwise, it would be easy to get really, really good crews by building conventional-engine training missiles.
I hope this has been fixed since 6.10.
Defining combat isn't a problem...shooting a weapon at a hostile target is combat.Actually, crew skill above 10% is something which isn't easily cheated without the DB password. Point taken, but it's not so much 'cheat' as 'loophole'.
I'm not sure when the game has an SM mode that allows pretty much anything that it is necessary to put in "cheat protection."
Sure I can designate a rock as a hostile and shoot a missile at it, but the fact is it costs me a missile. Maybe a cheapso missile but still one that took resources to build.Look at how cheap missiles can be made. A size 1 missile with 0.99 MSP of minimal-multiplier conventional engine and 0.01 of fuel would cost next to nothing.
And frankly a live fire excersize is better than a simulator any day of the week. Actually I'm not sure I can designate the rock as hostile...I can just designate it as a target? Or am I not following what you are trying to say Byron?You can't designate a rock as hostile. You can shoot at waypoints. If you require hostile targets, then it's a bit harder to exploit. Although now I'm thinking about leaving a spoiler PDC alive and neutered to use instead.
It is just that currently you gain no experience from sucessful combat which seems odd. A group of ships that sucessfully ingages and destroys every inbound missile launched at them over a 10 min period will gain 0 combat experience. Maybe I'm nuts but I'd think they would have learned a lot from that experience.I agree that it's odd, and I'd like to fix it. The best solution I can think of would be based on actual damage to hostile targets, with the training bonus based on what the target is, so shooting at freighters would be less lucrative than shooting at warships. That may or may not be manageable to implement, and it doesn't game nearly as easily as other options.
Actually, crew skill above 10% is something which isn't easily cheated without the DB password. Point taken, but it's not so much 'cheat' as 'loophole'.Maybe have crew grade scale explicitly with the capabilities of the ship (so a higher grade crew refitting to more advanced weapon systems, most specifically beam fire control and missile quality, will have their grade lowered somewhat, but still be higher than lower grade crews), and then make it so grade increase is based on the difficulty of the shots your ship makes?
Look at how cheap missiles can be made. A size 1 missile with 0.99 MSP of minimal-multiplier conventional engine and 0.01 of fuel would cost next to nothing. You can't designate a rock as hostile. You can shoot at waypoints. If you require hostile targets, then it's a bit harder to exploit. Although now I'm thinking about leaving a spoiler PDC alive and neutered to use instead.
I agree that it's odd, and I'd like to fix it. The best solution I can think of would be based on actual damage to hostile targets, with the training bonus based on what the target is, so shooting at freighters would be less lucrative than shooting at warships. That may or may not be manageable to implement, and it doesn't game nearly as easily as other options.
Why don't fractional WH have a %age chance to destroy an armor block? So a 3.4 WH would destroy 3 armor block, and have a 40% chance of destroying a fourth.
Maybe have crew grade scale explicitly with the capabilities of the ship (so a higher grade crew refitting to more advanced weapon systems, most specifically beam fire control and missile quality, will have their grade lowered somewhat, but still be higher than lower grade crews), and then make it so grade increase is based on the difficulty of the shots your ship makes?That would be an interesting idea, although it's not at the top of my list of reforms I'd like to see for crew. The problem is how to scale it properly, particularly because BFCs have two factors.
I would require hostile targets, otherwise you could be shooting at rocks or waypoints and while "live fire excersizes" are good they aren't that good.Agreed. It also avoids minelayers being the best ships in the fleet.
You could also for missiles scale the experience with the (cost of launched missile/most expensive missile of that size) but that is likely a pita to program and has its own issues.That's not a bad suggestion, although it isn't perfect. First, it would be easy to build a weird training missile. Size 1.1, maybe. Or, if rounding is implemented, some size that doesn't get used for anything else. Second, the most expensive missile might be a special-purpose one considerably more expensive than normal. It's better than counting all missiles equally, certainly, but I still don't think it's the right solution.
Also keeping a neutered spoiler about is different from firing cheepso missiles how exactly? In both cases your are exploiting the mechanics, and if someone wants to do this in aurora I think that is an issue between them and their confessor.There's a fine line here. You don't want to create a system where it's too easy to make exploits, but this isn't a multiplayer game, either. And my point was that a neutered spoiler could be used to bypass a system which required you to fire missiles at a hostile target if firing was all that was required.
The issue of fake wars and crew grade is a big one in Starfire so I'm familier with what can be abused but I still think the current system is in dire need of a good (or Good and KISS) suggestion on how best to implement a better solution.I think our best bet is to base it on damage to hostile ship targets. It's hard to fake that, and with a bit of careful design, gaming the system will be limited and come with tradeoffs. You can get XP by shooting up the civilian fleet of the people you're conquering, but then you won't get it when they surrender, for instance.
But if you base it on damage dealt, carrier crews will never get anything.That's a necessary consequence. Also, carrier crew training is somewhat less important than fighter crew training anyway.
Basing it on damage dealt also precludes point defence ships for the most part. And speaking from experience the escorts might infact play critical roles in combat.I was assuming (but didn't state) that killing missiles would also count. Probably on a flat points per missile kill basis for reasons of simplicity.
The system is Starfire Assistant basically rates the intensity of the combat and then rolls to see if the crewgrade improves. The SM decides on the intensity based on the battle in question. I don't see how this could be 1:1 brought over though.I don't think it can at all. Aurora doesn't do discrete combat, and human judgements need to be removed where possible.
Carriers can be handled in that the mothership gets training based on the damage the fighters based on it do.How and why, though? First, carrier crew training doesn't seem to do all that much (although I admit to not using carriers that much). Second, this doesn't make much sense. How does the fighters attacking make the carrier better? Third, fighters aren't permanently attached to motherships in a way that makes this sensible.
The fighters assigned to a mission are launched from a mothership, the game knows which mother ship that was.But we don't have 'missions' per se. What if the fighters weren't assigned to the ship they launched from? What if I had a specialized FARP carrier that cycled fighters through? What about the ship they recover to?
The carrier crew grade I assume speeds up re-arming and repair.I'm not sure of that, actually.
As to how to give out the points...base it on the fact the fighters were in combat and then give a flat point value per fighter reflecting the "ground crew" pre-launch and post-recovery activities. Basically something like a CV launches 60 fighters in a strike...they launch missiles and damage something or another and return to the carrier to rearm. The carrier gains (on landing) 60*(x) points of crew grade. What (x) should be I've no real idea.You'd have to be careful to make sure that only fighters which actually did damage give the bonus. Otherwise, you get slightly absurd cases where one fighter in a wing engaged an enemy and the bonus is based on the whole wing. Also, you'd want to normalize by the size of the carrier wing so that big carriers don't overpower smaller ones. (This is also a problem with regular ships, actually. It would make sense to at least somewhat normalize the damage done by crew size when determining training gain.)
Is loading/rearming fighter in combat any different than doing it and then having the fighter fire on note live targets?That's another reason not to worry about it. It's a lot easier to simulate rearming under combat conditions than it is to simulate actual combat.
Intelligence: Alien Turret Contacts.Interesting thought, but how would you justify that? It doesn't feel as if Aurora sensor technology could give us that level of intelligence. I mean, how could you know the tracking speed of a turret?
Make it possible to determine if, how many, and how big turret emplacements are on vessels. However, to be even to see them first, they need to be visible as if they were a ship of the same size at it's position. For instance, a resolution 20 sensor would see a 20 HS turret out to it's max range, but would need to be closer to see a 10 HS turret. The game, however, won't tell us what kind of turret, how fast it goes, or it's armor based on this info, just the size and quantity.
When a turret has a contact designated as a target however, if the turret is seen by active sensors, the active sensors will report the turret's tracking speed, up to the speed of it's target. For instance, if a 12,000 km/s turret is tracking a 6,000 km/s target, intelligence will report the "Estimate Tracking Speed" of the turret to be 6,000 km/s, until it tries tracking something faster.
Interesting thought, but how would you justify that? It doesn't feel as if Aurora sensor technology could give us that level of intelligence. I mean, how could you know the tracking speed of a turret?Maybe something along the lines of the fact that the turrets spin so fast, the tidal forces could register a contact signature?
Maybe something along the lines of the fact that the turrets spin so fast, the tidal forces could register a contact signature?Ooh, the scientific realists on the forum aren't going to like that one!
Yes, very jargony and not accurate to science I guess, but. . .
That, and an ability to see dead characters...
Interesting thought, but how would you justify that? It doesn't feel as if Aurora sensor technology could give us that level of intelligence. I mean, how could you know the tracking speed of a turret?Doppler. Just look at how fast the turret is turning. They can do quite a bit of this kind of stuff with radar today. No need to get complicated.
How about the ability to put shipyards, fighter factories, construction factories, ordinance factories and maybe even reasearch labs on big civilian ships: I want to build a totally nomadic race.I think it would be hard to get the game balance right on this. A lot of the game is about logistics, and ordinance factory ships, for instance, would be a dramatic change. There is no such thing as a supply line if you can move your entire military infrastructure on demand to the battlefront.
Doppler. Just look at how fast the turret is turning. They can do quite a bit of this kind of stuff with radar today. No need to get complicated.Really? You're the expert on such things, so I guess that's something else I can chalk up to how amazing technology is these days. In that case adding turret tracking speed to intelligence reports seems very reasonable.
Really? You're the expert on such things, so I guess that's something else I can chalk up to how amazing technology is these days. In that case adding turret tracking speed to intelligence reports seems very reasonable.Pretty much. They do clever things like identifying ships based on doppler resulting from their roll (inverse synthetic aperture radar, where you basically build a profile of the ship from slices, working out the height of each slice from the doppler) and identifying aircraft from blade count in their turbines (non-cooperative target recognition). Suggesting that you could work out how fast a turret could turn is not beyond the realm of possibility.
I want SBMHAWKsThat is a thing. Make a less than 1000 ton "ship" design with nothing but box launchers filled with missiles that are equipped with active sensors (and a fire control). Have a ship with hangars deploy the "pods" and jumps them (they can jump using another ship's jump drive), have them launch the missiles at a waypoint close to JP as they come in, and the missiles will seek out enemy ships in their range. A perfectly viable tactic and design already possible in game.
That's an interesting idea. I rushed max jump efficiency in my game so it should be doable right now with the tech that I have.The 1000 ton pods don't need jump drives. Any ship with a large enough jump drive acts as a Jump Gate when parked on a jump point (up to the max jump size of course). And the squad size is only for squadron jumps, so you can jump as many pods through as you want with the standard jump.
Thinking about the turret ID thing more, I'm not sure it makes sense to have the turret have the same size as its MSP. Classifying things requires having a resolution significantly greater than their size. Detecting that something is there is often easier than working out exactly what it is. A good rule of thumb is 3 to 4 pixels is necessary to do anything, so treating the turret as having a third to a quarter of its MSP is probably adequate.Missile Size Points? I'm having a hard time grasping what you're trying to communicate. Most ship components are measured in Hullspace, and overall ship size is often in that granularity, except for fighters.
This would also be useful to add to the geological survey report screen, along with a way to filter results for surveyed/unsurveyed objects.An indicator on the system survey data chart/screen that the body has had a ground survey performed. Once you abandon the "colony" it becomes increasingly difficult to remember which bodies you surveyed with a geoteam. This could be something that shows up in the lower window when you click on a body rather than an additionaly column.Yes, this please. For instance, in the F9 system display, where (blank)/S/M indicates survey+minerals status, add 'G' to flag ground survey completed (supersedes 'S') would be very helpful.
Missile Size Points? I'm having a hard time grasping what you're trying to communicate. Most ship components are measured in Hullspace, and overall ship size is often in that granularity, except for fighters.I meant HS, not MSP. I don't know why I typed MSP. Oops.
What would be useful is if the "formation editor" allowed for the distance 5,000 km as the minium interval. So I can tell a ship be 5,000 @ 30° from the protected ship as opposed to the current minimum interval of 10,000 km.Isn't that what Area Defense fire is for? It's less convenient than final fire, sure, but I guess that's the cost of positioning your ships that far from each other. Formations still have a use, at least, it's just harder to "final fire" for something so far away.
I would also suggest changing "Final Defensive Fire" to be at 10,000 km for a ship shooting at inbound missiles targeting itself but at whatever the the range to the ship being hit by missiles this 5 second turn for the other ships in the formation. So a ship 20,000 km away will engage the missile hitting its consort but at a hit probability calculated by the range to the consort (in this case 20,000 km). Based on what I saw this may be the way that Final Defensive Fire is working but not having to pack all your ships into a sphere 10,000 km across with the primary target in the centre would make formations easier to use.
Remove the +10 maneuver rating that all missiles have default. This will hit both ASMs and AMMs rather hard. As to be honest, when is the last time you actually put agility into a missile, AMM or ASM? Maybe set it to 1Maybe to add on to this, we could make the Maneuver Rating per 1 Agility worth of maneuver points to be calculated as MR = Agility/(Size^0.9), to make it so agility point devotion gradually becomes better on larger missile sizes? The main reason for this being a sort of economies-of-scale, combined with the fact that by making bigger missiles you're trading off a huge amount in the sense of firing volume.
As it stands, we all know that tiny missiles going as fast as possible are by far the best. Very often even in AMM designs, you don't even see the addition of maneuver until the mid-late techs, when the speed lost by adding a couple more points becomes worth it. I figure this is primarily because all missiles by default start with a fairly large bonus to this. 10 maneuver rating at mid techs is still .1msp saved on an AMM, for a literal 10x to their tohit chance. Hell I can't honestly say I've ever felt the need to apply maneuver to ASMs either.
I feel that a change like this might help to reign in AMM spam a bit and comparatively buff turret based defenses because of these.
1. Missiles will need be a bit slower to hit anything because of the need to actually install some maneuver (especially at low techs), making them easier to track.
2. AMMs will need to devote a larger portion of their space to maneuvering, while still probably being the most powerful due to reload rates.
3. Larger missiles might actually see a surge of usage, due to the extra space needed to get the hit% up, forcing designers to step up a size in missiles. The rare size 2 AMM would also likely see a surge in usefulness as for the same range and speed it'd have 2x the hit chance. (at 1/4th the spam)
I dunno, it's just a thought. But it's always seemed odd to me that you can literally get away with never putting points into maneuver until the end.
Maybe to add on to this, we could make the Maneuver Rating per 1 Agility worth of maneuver points to be calculated as MR = Agility/(Size^0.9), to make it so agility point devotion gradually becomes better on larger missile sizes? The main reason for this being a sort of economies-of-scale, combined with the fact that by making bigger missiles you're trading off a huge amount in the sense of firing volume.Could be worth a try.
I am a tad worried about the -10 base maneuver rating making fighters really really hard to hit with anything you throw at them, given a tech level, though.
when is the last time you actually put agility into a missile, AMM or ASM? Maybe set it to 1
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 10
Speed: 37400 km/s Engine Endurance: 5 minutes Range: 10.5m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.718
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 374% 3k km/s 120% 5k km/s 74.8% 10k km/s 37.4%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 0.468x Gallicite Fuel x50
Missile Size: 1 MSP (0.05 HS) Warhead: 1 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 22
Speed: 28800 km/s Engine Endurance: 5 minutes Range: 8.8m km
Cost Per Missile: 0.8404
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 633.6% 3k km/s 198% 5k km/s 126.7% 10k km/s 63.4%
Materials Required: 0.25x Tritanium 0.5904x Gallicite Fuel x50
As to be honest, when is the last time you actually put agility into a missile, AMM or ASM? Maybe set it to 1Quite often. My AMMs always get agility (and in fact, it was recently proved that you need quite a lot of agility in high-level AMMs. Some of my ASMs get it, too, although not as much.
But one thing is that the speed of missile to speed of target isn't a linear relationship. A very fast missile has a problem that the warhead is only effective at about 1 km (after that the plasma is probably to thin to do anything) so basically 1 km divided by the speed of the missile is the time the detection, and detonation system has to work. Otherwise basically the missile detonates ahead of or behind the target.It's a pretty trivial problem, all in all. Modern engineering is capable of making systems that do just that on a daily basis, with a bit of predictive software. Also, that's not how nuclear weapons work in space. They do damage via X-rays, not plasma, and there isn't a hard limit on the range of their damage. But given the consistency of the damage we see in the game, they're clearly detonating at a set standoff.
At the end of the day I'm not wholey happy with the way it is done now, but I'm not sure what to suggest as an alternative. I dislike the current system since it basically keys off "speed" and this results in a total distortion of the game around the question of speed. At some point for missiles speed starts to be deterimental in reality.The only case I know of of speed being detrimental was the AA fire control system of Bismarck, which had a minimum speed that was faster than the speed of the Swordfish. In practical terms, a faster missile is generally better. Particularly because this is Aurora, and things don't have momentum like they do in real life.
The only case I know of of speed being detrimental was the AA fire control system of Bismarck, which had a minimum speed that was faster than the speed of the Swordfish. In practical terms, a faster missile is generally better. Particularly because this is Aurora, and things don't have momentum like they do in real life.Well TBH, there isn't much that's slower than the swordfish.
Well TBH, there isn't much that's slower than the swordfish.There are lots of things slower than the stringbag, but very few are airplanes.
But my point still stands, that missiles in general get FAR too much maneuver by default. And because of this, are also intrinsically much faster than they really should be, because it's better to max their speed bonus over putting stuff into agility.I wouldn't totally disagree with that. But there's a difference between suggesting that we reduce the basic maneuver bonus and suggesting that faster missiles should have a lower chance to hit.
But my point still stands, that missiles in general get FAR too much maneuver by default. And because of this, are also intrinsically much faster than they really should be, because it's better to max their speed bonus over putting stuff into agility.
As I showed in my previous post agility is critically important for anti-missiles. They may not be as important for shipkillers, but isn't it fine to have a statistic useful for one type of ammunition and useless for other? I mean I use sensors on my missiles quite often, but I never put them on anti-missiles, so I'd say their fine.True... But missiles don't start default with a sensor rating. If they did, AMMs would actually be quite a bit more effective, because if a salvo is destroyed, and the other salvos from other ships were close enough by, AMMs would redirect onto the other salvos. Effectively making the multiple AMM fire controls we regularly use worthless, as you'd just fire at 1 salvo and let the missile's onboard sensors handle it from there..
Why should maneuver get a bonus. Missiles don't get free fuel, free armor, sensors, or warhead. Why then free agility?They do, actually get free engine efficiency. To elaborate, a 1.00 multiplier on engine efficiency at MSP 5, the max missile engine size, and one fourth the size of the smallest engine drive, while also requiring no crew onboard.
I mean if missiles got a free sensor included, and this scaled with the missile size, then there'd be something to counter the bonus that AMMs get from all that maneuver. But there isn't.A sensor being added just for it being a missile seems superfluous. There's already a reason to design really big missiles with sensor space heavily devoted; they're called buoys.
And as it's been stated that tere are no plans to tweak the armor system to make larger missiles more practical. There must be SOMETHING to make it worthwhile to load a missile larger than size 6.Shock Damage? Long Range missiles? Long Range MIRV-style short-range-missile carrier stage? Armor penetration? Mines? Sensor buoys?
It's a pretty trivial problem, all in all. Modern engineering is capable of making systems that do just that on a daily basis, with a bit of predictive software. Also, that's not how nuclear weapons work in space. They do damage via X-rays, not plasma, and there isn't a hard limit on the range of their damage. But given the consistency of the damage we see in the game, they're clearly detonating at a set standoff.
The only case I know of of speed being detrimental was the AA fire control system of Bismarck, which had a minimum speed that was faster than the speed of the Swordfish. In practical terms, a faster missile is generally better. Particularly because this is Aurora, and things don't have momentum like they do in real life.
To answer the first point. A nuclear explosion in space does not, and frankly cannot produce xrays in any large number. This is because xrays are produced by atomic processes (the compton effect or bremstrallung) and in a vacuum there are no atoms to produce this effect.http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Nukes_In_Space (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Nukes_In_Space)
That being said, it is possible to produce a nuclear device which converts some of its energy into xrays via a sacrificial "plate/sphere/etc" but this material exists for only microseconds before it is reduced to plasma by the conversion process itself. This leaves you with a warhead that is fine for frying the crap out of russian or us ICBM guidance systems but which won't make a significant impact on the material struture of the missile. The last is true so long as the range to the target is greater than a few hundred meters. Xrays like any other form of EM radiation are governed by the inverse square law.I am aware of the inverse square law, which would also apply to your hypothetical 'plasma nuke'.
I have done gamma-beta coincidence measurements with nano-second timing accuracy but the system for that is entirely hardware. If I want a safety system with msec reaction times I also use hardware. A fast boolean processor with a burnt eprom program (which is nothing more than AND/OR type logic) is still 1 msec reaction times. Software is CPU cycle determined and usually is >>5-10 msecond.And the guidance system couldn't be hardware why?
I have no idea why you feel the bismark's guns have anything to do with missile on missile intercepts.I didn't want to say that there was absolutely no case where more speed was not harmful, but it is vanishingly rare.
I said that the system we use now works fine for point defence. Your chance to hit is fixed till the missile is faster than your tracking speed then it drops linearly with the target speed. Missiles that are moving too fast compared to their target have the problem of blowing past them while the missile hardware is saying "blow up" the best thing is to match speeds, maneuver close and then detonate. But for a counter missile it is nearly alway in a head to head engagement.The missiles are trans-newtonian. This means, among other things, that they can slow down arbitrarily if they need to. I'm usually not the one to say this, but current physics doesn't really apply here.
Yet the slower missile is at a disadvantage even though it nearly always involved in a head to head intercept, where what matters is the closing velocity and isn't important at all which of the pair moves at what velocity. There is no mathematical difference between a 10K km/s missile intercepting a 50K km/s missile, a 50K km/s missile intercepting a 10K km/s missile and a 30K km/s missile intercepting a 30K km/s missile. Those are mathematically identical situations, but the game strongly differentinates between them. They are even more clearly identical if you say that the fuse issue is irrelevant and the standoff range issue is irrelevant. In all cases then I can switch to a frame of reference where one missile is at 0 km/s and the other is at 60K km/s and from symetry I can swap which missile is stationary and the situation is again unchanged.This isn't even remotely true in Aurora, because of TN physics. Assume that the missiles have some low-level dodging programming, because it costs them trivial range, and they don't have to burn remass like real space missiles would. Suddenly, which missile is faster becomes absolutely critical. A 50K km/s missile can dodge approximately 5 times as far as the 10K km/s missile, or counter dodges much more effectively. The 10K km/s missile can't really hope to intercept the 50K one, simply because it will spend too much of its speed countering dodging, and then the 50K one will be past.
I thought it was assumed that the missiles were dodging inbounds, and the fuel cost of that was just ignored to avoid an annoying level of micromanagement.I thought the incoming missiles were just falling off of target, not that the target was doing anything other than speeding directly at its own target. There wouldn't really be any micromanagement in having AMMs cause fuel damage to the salvo when they miss. The most you'd have to do is a few minor adjustments at the design phase, but that's not micromanagement.
I decided to put my reply in a separate thread, but during the course of coming up with it, I came up with an idea that deserves to be here, too:
It might be interesting to look at making missiles with agility bonuses slightly harder to hit, on the assumption that they're using their maneuvering systems to execute dodges at a level that isn't apparent on-screen. The bonus shouldn't be as high as the to-hit bonus of the same amount of agility, but it would raise the utility of agility in ASMs.
Only if a fraction of the salvo's fuel is removed every time it executes a successful dodge against an AMM.I can't see a significant enough fraction being removed. The time spent dodging is going to be fractions of a second, and unless there's some way to dramatically increase fuel flow during that time, that means you'll be losing fractions of a second worth of fuel. The overall effect is so small it will be lost in the noise.
That's a neato idea actually. I like the idea that you might just drown the enemy salvo in low-tech AMMs to kill their range.I can't see you killing enough range without some rather dramatic reinterpretation of the current technobabble. Where does the fuel go?
The fuel is expended avoiding AMMs. It's less that the fuel is destroyed and more that the missile is delayed by a few seconds by averting its course slightly and then put itself back on it again in order to avoid being hit.I understand that. The problem is that it's hard to justify evasion taking enough fuel to actually be worth tracking in-game, and really really hard to justify it taking enough to make attempting to run ASMs out of fuel worthwhile. You're talking fractions of a second spent dodging, so unless you can burn fuel much more rapidly during that time, it's a rounding error.
It would be pretty fantastic if we had a way to group together alien ships so that they didn't clutter the screen so many when in large groups. Additionally (or alternatively), it'd be nice to be able to simply collapse large groups of alien ships that are in the same position without having to set up groups for the aliens, again to remove some clutter from the screen. So if, for example, you had something like this:
It could collapse that group of civilian Fuel Harvesters to something simply like, "FH x9", and that group of spaceliners to "SS x15" (or however many there are), or, if both were in the same position, "FH x9, SS x15".
The ability to build or design star systems in their entirety would make custom scenarios and maps very possible.
At present, if I want to use Aurora to make an interesting system map for another game, I have to either ignore the marvelous system maps, or keep hitting "Generate New System" until I get something close enough.
What I would love to be able to do is use Aurora to handle my star maps (and generate system summaries) for any of several pen and paper RPGs. The present rules for maintaining different map information for separate player races fits my needs perfectly, as I can simply update various dummy faction maps as different groups gather more information about the galaxy.
For bonus nostalgia points, this would touch on Aurora's roots in Starfire Assistant, serving as a player aid for arbitrary set-ups and games.
I can already connect systems to other arbitrary systems, and generate populations, installations and ships to make a system map interesting, and this would make my Rogue Trader game simply awesome. I'll be able to keep track of known Warp travel routes by adding jump points, and only revealing the connections to other dummy factions at my discretion.
Go to the Contacts tab and click "Hide Active IDs".
I may add something on these lines for C# Aurora when I get to system generation.
No idea if these have been suggested before, but here's a couple leader related ideas:
1. Retired/Dead leader temporary storage vault (. . . you can come up with a better name, but for me that sounds cool)
I haven't been playing Aurora 4x for long, but a little digging told me that apparently there used to be a tab for all dead officers, but it was removed.
Having a list (probably accessible from the main leaders window) that would include the name, history and basically everything else there is to know that could be known before death/retirement would really serve no gameplay purpose, but for increased depth and roleplay, I think it should be there. I'm sure we all want to remember those officers who did something big or survived something dangerous.
Having this list store dead/retired leaders only for a set amount of time (let's say a year by default) and allowing the player to customize the amount of time their info is stored (to possibly help with any technical issues or in case some people who know they don't have a great memory can have more time to check their dead) would prevent the list getting too long and taxing.
From this list (or vault like I originally called it) there could be an option to permanently store an officer and maybe write them an epitaph (although they will probably wonder why are you writing one if they just retired) or a button to store the officer's info/history to a text file for later reading.
I have zero idea on how difficult that would be to implement, but there you go.
2. Hospital/medical technology.
Pretty straightforward. Lessen the chance of harmful medical conditions, increased natural life span, so your leaders will die less often.
Also maybe safety technologies to cut down the chance accidents? Gotta remember those seat belts.
Component Suggestion: Offender Field/Flak Field/Interfering Barrier/etc
[snip]
What's the purpose of this design? Mainly:
-To incentivize missile armor.
-To quelch or at least make-sane AMM spam against large ships.
-To allow a means of taking the edge off of extremely large, quantitous salvos, where fire rate of weapons becomes nearly irrelevant.
-To allow more fancy formation options, and to allow environments where beam weapons are the best answer as a result. For instance, a mothership that may be in the center of a great citadel-ish formation which would be a surrounding or directional arrangement of support craft mounting these fields.
In fact, thinking about this, I think the reason why AMM missile spam is a problem, and why we don't see more large beam weapons is one in the same, that armor is ablative rather than (at least partially) absolute. If higher tech level armours (or a new type of shield) ignored the first point of damage then it would have a dramatic effect on game balance. I guess Steve has already gone some of the way with shock damage, which is a very cool mechanic, but I don't think that removes the sandblasting approach.Technically already exists, the Absorption Shields.
Technically already exists, the Absorption Shields.They're still in, you just have to get lucky with ruins or salvage a spoiler equipped with it.
That said, I'm not sure if they actually still exist or not, they might've been removed.
They're still in, you just have to get lucky with ruins or salvage a spoiler equipped with it.Is it considered meta when you've set up a secondary layer of obsfucation within the first? Hah! Though, thanks for letting me know. Is there any information on the absorption shields specifically around? I'd like to know how they work and last I checked they weren't on the wiki.
Another thing could be a limit on the number of missiles that can be handled by a single fire control.I like this one. It's quite realistic (up until fairly recently, this was a major limitation on naval SAMs) and it would cut the problem immediately. It also fits the general principle of solving problems with the least new stuff possible.
Even with ablative armor (say damage of strength 1 is negated) there would still be the issue that anti-missile measures can be largely negated by simply putting all missiles into a "super" volley.How? If I take 100 strength-1 AMMs but have ignore-1 armor, all of them will bounce off.
Even with ablative armor (say damage of strength 1 is negated) there would still be the issue that anti-missile measures can be largely negated by simply putting all missiles into a "super" volley.How? If I take 100 strength-1 AMMs but have ignore-1 armor, all of them will bounce off.
What I meant is that ablative armor armor doesn't encourage using multiple missile volleys. It would remain the case that the best way to get past an opponent's missile defenses is to throw all your missiles (which would of course need more damaging warheads) into a single volley.True, but if you have to use ASM rather than AMM the absolute numbers of missiles in any volley will be much smaller, making current point defense more effective. It would also force a more realistic choice for players between AMMs that are only useful for missile defense (and targeting fighters/FACs that are too small for an absorption shield/armor) and ASMs that can also damage enemy warships.
How? If I take 100 strength-1 AMMs but have ignore-1 armor, all of them will bounce off.True. But it does force a gap between AMMs and ASMs, and will usually drive up the size of the missiles required, both of which cut down on how many missiles can be flying at you.
What I meant is that ablative armor armor doesn't encourage using multiple missile volleys. It would remain the case that the best way to get past an opponent's missile defenses is to throw all your missiles (which would of course need more damaging warheads) into a single volley.
That said, I still like proxy kills as a mechanism for controlling large salvos. It doesn't render gauss weapons useless against other ships, and it breaks fewer things.Great idea, here are two thoughts:
Other implementation thoughts:
Make the kill chance somewhat based on missile size (large missiles being more resilient). This should provide some counterbalance against the trend towards small missiles.
Force a minimum size on the proxy warhead so you can't just load your size-1 AMMs up with proxy warheads at high tech levels.
I don't see why a hard limit should be applied to technological progress, it seems to me that if you have the tech to make size 1 proxy-kill warheads then you should be allowed to.A fair point. I tend to think out loud, although small proxy warheads do move the equilibrium towards smaller proxy missiles, which means that it's efficient to proxy-kill small salvos. That may or may not be a bad thing. If it is, a minimum size is important.
Great idea, here are two thoughts:Nuclear EMP is a result of interaction with a planet's magnetosphere, not something generated by a nuclear detonation in deep space. I'm not sure if it would be possible to make a nuke generate an EMP on a meaningful scale in deep space, if for some reason you wanted to do that instead of killing your opponent with X-rays.
If you call it an EMP warhead then the proxy damage is actually damage to the missile control systems, so how about just varying the kill chance with armor? The better the missile radiation shielding (roughly speaking armor) the better the survival chance against the EMP pulse. That in turn favors larger missiles worth putting armor on. You could also hand wave a bit to say that larger missiles are more resilient as the controls are buried deeper, but that's a bit of a push.
Instead of making it a special proxy warhead, why not implement as a feature of all missile warheads, representing the natural EMP from the nuke going off, but with a sharply scaling effectiveness based on warhead strength (kind of like shock damage). The proxy kill chance could be the square of the AMM warhead strength for instance, so 1% for strength 1, but 81% for strength 9. That seems pretty fair as the EMP blast from the nuke gets bigger.Besides the fact that that's not how nukes work (I don't blame you for not know this, as nuclear effects are the area I'm familiar with where common knowledge is most wrong), I'd push very strongly for a cap on proxy percentage no higher than 50% (maybe 75%), and have the lethality scale inversely with yield above a certain point. Under your math (and assuming that cost scales linearly with warhead yield), against a sufficiently large salvo (ignoring direct hits), a size-10 warhead is 10 times as effective per unit cost as a size-1. Actually it's more so, because 100 1% hits will leave 36.6% of the targets intact vs 0% for the 100% killer. In practice, direct hits will skew this somewhat in favor of the smaller missiles, but 100% is a very long lever, and should not be attainable. More missiles in a salvo should always be worse for the defender, not something he's totally indifferent to, although I agree that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. The reason for scale-down is to encourage medium-sized AMMs.
I don't think it would be effecient to proxy kill small salvos if the missiles are overkilling their targets. Still a waste of a missile.Sort of. My point was that if we assume that missile cost is basically directly correlated with size, small proxy warheads change the balance between proxy kills and direct kills. Let's assume we have a 25% PK warhead on a size-1 missile, which has 50% of the PH of an equivalent direct-kill missile. In this case, the equilibrium salvo size for the proxy missile is 5. If we raise the relative PH to 75%, then it drops to 2.333. (That's not a typo. Multiplying the numbers out, we expect .75 direct kills and .25 proxy kills per equivalent direct-kill hit).
On the other hand, you could probably achieve the effect you want just by making proximity kill warheads their own (heavier, more expensive) beast that essentially enables you to deter the use of large salvos.I'm leaning towards that being a good idea. Minimum warhead size of 1 MSP would be sufficient to mitigate the worst of the effects.
Sort of. My point was that if we assume that missile cost is basically directly correlated with size, small proxy warheads change the balance between proxy kills and direct kills. Let's assume we have a 25% PK warhead on a size-1 missile, which has 50% of the PH of an equivalent direct-kill missile. In this case, the equilibrium salvo size for the proxy missile is 5. If we raise the relative PH to 75%, then it drops to 2.333. (That's not a typo. Multiplying the numbers out, we expect .75 direct kills and .25 proxy kills per equivalent direct-kill hit).Thanks for the EMP in space correction, always good to learn new things. Guess we'll need to come up with a new technobabble name for Steve to use :-)
Thanks for the EMP in space correction, always good to learn new things. Guess we'll need to come up with a new technobabble name for Steve to use :-)Best option there is probably enhanced-radiation weapons (neutron bombs). A couple of US ABM systems used them, although I'm not 100% sure of the logic involved.
If you went with a dedicated PK warhead approach, what PK chance and direct damage numbers would you suggest for a minimum size 1 MSP proxy warhead?A good question. A minimum of maybe 10%, rising as you get better warhead tech. Direct damage would be based solely on your existing warhead tech (maybe *0.5), but it's more or less irrelevant as you expect to mostly shoot at totally overwhelmed missiles.
A good question. A minimum of maybe 10%, rising as you get better warhead tech. Direct damage would be based solely on your existing warhead tech (maybe *0.5), but it's more or less irrelevant as you expect to mostly shoot at totally overwhelmed missiles.I think you'd need at least *0.5 damage modifier, otherwise you'd just make all your ASMs with dual purpose proxy warheads.
I think you'd need at least *0.5 damage modifier, otherwise you'd just make all your ASMs with dual purpose proxy warheads.
That's actually nice!Perhaps it could be instant within a system, and impossible outside that? But even then there would be extra micro management as you'd probably want to carry spare officers around with every fleet, to prevent an accident removing a captain just before an important battle.
Another thing I'd like is to stop officers from teleporting around. Maybe not force you to move them manually with shuttle but make them take a long time off-screen to arrive, to simulate them being underway.
Would be less of an issue if you have XO's on big ships.That's true.
Another thing I'd like is to stop officers from teleporting around. Maybe not force you to move them manually with shuttle but make them take a long time off-screen to arrive, to simulate them being underway.
I was wondering why ships don't cost wealth to keep operational (think crew wages or in the case of a hive mind race food).I think the reason why ships don't run huge wealth upkeep costs is because constructing the ships themselves incur a significant wealth cost over time, and also the idea that running the crew is inexpensive compared to other expenditures, to the point of the fact that it isn't significant to any empire actually capable of building and maintaining a fleet.
As it is a tiny population can keep an arbitrarily large fleet running provided there are the needed minerals for maintenance from auto mines.
I think it would make more sense that to support a fleet a reasonable economic base is need which would be best represented in a constant wealth cost. This cost for a ship could be proportional to the number of crew on the ship.
I think the reason why ships don't run huge wealth upkeep costs is because constructing the ships themselves incur a significant wealth cost over time, and also the idea that running the crew is inexpensive compared to other expenditures, to the point of the fact that it isn't significant to any empire actually capable of building and maintaining a fleet.That isn't currently true though, so why should it be in the future? The US Navy budget for 2016 was about $160bn, with $46bn for personnel costs, and $50bn for operations and maintenance, so crew and running costs represents the majority of the US Navy budget. I guess you could argue that TN spaceships are exponentially more expensive to build than conventional warships, but is that true?
Thanks, that helps, but I'm more talking about situations like this, where that option doesn't seem to do anything:Maybe Steve can write an option for C# where those informations only show up as a PopUp when you MouseOver the individual dot?
As a whole, I think terraforming could use more detailing for what happens once temperature and atmosphere concerns are addressed. For example, atmosphere without an ecosystem could degrade with oxygen turning to CO2. Pollution could also be an issue worth adding, requiring you to use terraforming installations and workers to remove dangerous gases from your otherwise breathable atmosphere.
It would be cool if upon the destruction of a shipyard, debris were to rain down on the planet it was based at and kill civilians in proportion to the mass of the shipyard. Something similar to mass driver impacts.
It would be cool if upon the destruction of a shipyard, debris were to rain down on the planet it was based at and kill civilians in proportion to the mass of the shipyard. Something similar to mass driver impacts.
I think mass driver impacts do this because the kinetic energy is large enough to make them cause damage even if they hit an unpopulated area. A shipyard would mostly burn up in the atmosphere and even if some pieces hit a city and people are killed it would not be effects that are noticable on a planetary scale.Well, Aurora seems to operate on a model where people are uniformly distributed over a planet's surface so that's unlikely. I think it has more to do with the relative mass and velocity of the objects in question. For that matter, there's no a priori reason to suppose a shipyard would fall out of orbit if it got destroyed. The debris will mostly stay in orbit. What does fall will be going more than two orders of magnitude slower than the slowest mass driver projectile, and will probably be lighter to boot. Simple anti-meteor defenses would be enough, even if they have no in-game effect.
Well, Aurora seems to operate on a model where people are uniformly distributed over a planet's surface so that's unlikely. I think it has more to do with the relative mass and velocity of the objects in question. For that matter, there's no a priori reason to suppose a shipyard would fall out of orbit if it got destroyed. The debris will mostly stay in orbit. What does fall will be going more than two orders of magnitude slower than the slowest mass driver projectile, and will probably be lighter to boot. Simple anti-meteor defenses would be enough, even if they have no in-game effect.
The shipyards are built in large part out of TN materials, so as far as I know they don't actually orbit due to the nature of those materials. They also probably wont readily burn up, since duranium is able to handle nuclear weapons to some degree. Since they don't leave wrecks behind, I tended to assume that when destroyed they fell into the planet rather than sticking around in space like ships do.If they don't orbit, then wouldn't they float away from earth instead once they've lost their lock on their gravitational frame of reference? Assuming they weren't in Earth's path in it's revolution around the sun, that is.
The energy of an impact generally increases with the mass of the impactor times the impact velocity squared.That would be the definition of kinetic energy, yes.
While large objects falling at orbital speeds (10-15 km/s) is certainly still problematic, the atmosphere will slow it down quite a bit.As a rule of thumb, anything which has a lower sectional density than the atmosphere (10 tons/m2 for Earth) is going to reach the ground slowly. Anything with a higher sectional density is going to reach the ground fast.
A 10 million ton shipyard coming down at orbital speed is'nt to be sneezed at however.Why would it be coming down in one piece? That's fantastically unlikely to occur as a result of getting shot at. It's likely to remain in orbit initially, and come down in a rain of small pieces over a considerable period of time.
I think it will be great, if construction and R&D output will count as some non-linear model. Linear output regularly provoke some strange effects, as nearly instantaneous construction and development cycles (new fire control or small engine model developed or constructed in 1 production cycle, that can be very short - I usually set it to 24 hours, for example, that is quite realistic and suitable on the other hand). I think it will be some "base time" for such processes, and pumping project with resources must change completion time in some negative power function, not a simple linear.I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, what you say is true. But it would be a tradeoff against micromanagement. IRL, we'd have a lot more parallel projects running of different sizes. Replicating this in Aurora would be annoying because you'd have to manage those projects. I'd generally just headcanon it as 'this small FC was developed over the last few months in parallel with whatever the team was also working on'. If necessary, wait a few months after you design it before you give it to the research team.
Well, honestly, I'm not suffering from micromanagement. As a rule, I enjoy it. :DMy goal is not to minimize micromanagement. If I wanted that, I'd play something else. My goal (which, so far as I've seen, is also what Steve does) is to balance micromanagement against enjoyment, and I don't think that setting it up so that you gain a significant advantage if you spend more time on your research lab allocation is a good example of that.
But speaking about less peculiar gamers, if our goal is to minimize micromanagement horror, than it will be great to have some joint progects interface. For example, you can create some new ship class R&D joint project, fill it with specific projects of FC, weapon, radar, etc., select or deselect some colonies, that must participate in this joint project, and then quite simple algorithm can allocate labs, so that all specific projects will end virtually synchronous.
...They [shipyards] also probably wont readily burn up, since duranium is able to handle nuclear weapons to some degree. Since they don't leave wrecks behind, I tended to assume that when destroyed they fell into the planet rather than sticking around in space like ships do.
...Personally I would prefer things work out in such a way that they fall into the planet because that is way cooler than just drifting off into space.
Ia. Strengthen main weapon (i.e. missile) damage effects and simplify their design. Missiles with such closing-in speed needs no warhead - they are their own WHs per se, and they must be crippling or killing for any ship, if they pass through active defence. This change will kill two birds. First, it will strengthen the role of active missile defence, making it mandatory for any main battle ship. Second, it will simplify missile design tasks for game AI, making it less miserable.
Trying to fix the balance this way would promote smaller and even higher amounts of AMMs.
I would prefer going the other way around and giving ships with thicker armor 1 point of damage absorption so that AMMs don't scratch them.
Aurora doesn't need even smaller and more missiles going around IMHO.
...Trying to intercept something going 20000km/s while being relatively tiny is going to be very hard...
Some simple naming suggestions, partly touched in my big post, but partly different at all, and so - can be considered separately.
(RP-motivated only.)
Fighters (as type of hull design) - rename to small crafts (small-sized crafts?) or simply crafts.
Because there are not only fighters in this mass range. Fighters Factory - correspondingly.
Thermal Sensors - rename to TN-noise Sensors (Noise Signature correspondingly).
EM Sensors - rename to TN-pulse Sensors (Pulse Signature correspondingly).
Because there are not thermal and not EM (electromagnetic) - there are both FTL waves (while thermal and all EM emissions are light-speed emissions, and therefore cannot be seen by 5-sec pulse at more distance, than 5 light seconds = 1.5 mkm).
Geology - rename to Planetology (GEV to PSV).
2 reasons: 1st - "Geo-" is "Earth-" in latin, but our Geology vessels and teams must survey another planets; 2nd - Geology and Gravitational (GSV and GEV) are quite alike by cursory glance and it is easy to mix up.
Commanders - rename to Staff or Leaders.
Because there are not only commanders even at Naval Officers Leader Type page, and there are administrators and R&D staff there.
Scientist andResearch - rename to R&D.
Because there are not only science research there - bigger part of it is an engineering (development, not research).
Errmm... I don't insist, but. Marine - is for wet fleet (from latin "mare" - sea, seaside). And space fleet infantry is a Space Infantry. ::)
Hide "-A" suffix for body names of one-component star systems (a "Sol", not a "Sol-A", etc.)
Some simple naming suggestions...[snip]
Abbreviations for hull types can be altered by player by adding hull types, though this is not very handy method now, because there is no way to remove unnecessary, dublicating hull types (as I understand - because many of these types can be used by NPR, so deleting can cause critical bugs).
As for marines - this suggestion was nor serious. :)
As for types of "ground" units - their abbreviations are set in stone (renaming procedure doesn't work for abbreviations), and so - radical renaming attempt causes total nonsense.
I can rename units and types of units. But cannot rename their abbreviations. Renaming interface have a field for new abbreviation, not only new name, but abbreviation remains intact really.
Just a small flavor thing I though of while watching a spectacular network of mass drivers. When an enemy is in orbit of either the launch point or destination of a mass driver package, there is a chance for the minerals to hit (this would naturally apply to your ships over an enemy world that fires/receives a mass driver package). Don't know the amount of damage it should do, but maybe it should be somewhere between 1:1 to 1:5 compared to the damage:tons.Doesn't make much sense. The mass driver package isn't going fast, and I think it has a beacon built in. Dodging is easy, and wouldn't be visible at the level of granularity we have in the game.
I'm pretty sure that I've heard of other media which reference marines in space.
Why is it that mining is free without any cost to wealth? That doesn't make much sense IMO.Whats going to take payment, the planet? Seriously though, it does make sense because the mines are government owned, so they get a majority of the minerals extracted without needing to pay. This also helps to explain why civilian shipping lines don't use apparent minerals to build and why they pay you when they build ships. Because the numbers present in the geosurveys are representing the government share of the minerals.
Whats going to take payment, the planet?
are representing the government share of the minerals
Heat-generating installations to warm up the really-cold places. There are some bodies, which while habitable, are just too damn cold, even with greenhouse factor 3. I figure enough fusion plants working the heaters might help.
Alternatively, mirrors elsewhere that redirect light to a given planet. Could even be cooling down that place, and warming up the target.
I think that bioweapons should be added. You could use them to kill the population of a planet without damaging the surface structures. Also each species would need different biological agents to kill it.
I think that bioweapons should be added. You could use them to kill the population of a planet without damaging the surface structures. Also each species would need different biological agents to kill it.There is a warhead tech line that enhances radiation while lowering damage done. This is essentially what you are asking for but balanced.
There is a warhead tech line that enhances radiation while lowering damage done. This is essentially what you are asking for but balanced.Oh OK then. What about adding a way for civilians to ship minerals from mining colonies and a way to automate your own mineral shipping with a conditional order.
Oh OK then. What about adding a way for civilians to ship minerals from mining colonies and a way to automate your own mineral shipping with a conditional order.All CMCs have a mass driver. You can order them to shoot the minerals across the system.
All CMCs have a mass driver. You can order them to shoot the minerals across the system.I know I mean my mining colonies. The Cargo ships are civilian.
I know I mean my mining colonies. The Cargo ships are civilian.Ah. No method currently implemented to automate civilian shipping to ferry minerals around. You have to wither put a mass driver on the source and destination, or have a repeating order for one of your own cargo ships (not civilian) to just go back and forth between the mining colony and the destination of the minerals.
Ah. No method currently implemented to automate civilian shipping to ferry minerals around. You have to wither put a mass driver on the source and destination, or have a repeating order for one of your own cargo ships (not civilian) to just go back and forth between the mining colony and the destination of the minerals.Yes i know. I hope for this to be implemented in aurora 7. 2.
Separate population names from body names. So you could have more distinguishable colonies.I think you're already able to rename the colony while keeping the planetary body named the same.
Separate population names from body names. So you could have more distinguishable colonies.
I think you're already able to rename the colony while keeping the planetary body named the same.
If a theme is selected for a system and Real Stars are switched on, the theme will not be respected for adjacent systems - ie, the real name will be used, instead of the one generated according to theme, regardless of there being a theme set. I think this might be unintentional; after all, if you want the generic Wolf 235, Gliese 753, etc names, you would have switched the theme off. If themes were respected on Real Stars games, you could have real stars with automatic themed names, rather than the defaults.
terraforming_potential = planet.terraforming_pressure(time)
if (planet.terraforming_active) {
for (gas in ALL_GASES) {
if (planet.get_gas(gas).pressure != intended_atm.get_gas(gas).pressure) {
needed = intended_atm.get_gas(gas).pressure - planet.get_gas(gas).pressure
if (abs(needed) <= terraforming_potential) {
terraforming_potential = terraforming_potential - needed
planet.get_gas(gas).pressure = intended_atm.get_gas(gas).pressure
} else {
if (needed >= 0) {
planet.get_gas(gas).pressure = planet.get_gas(gas).pressure + terraforming_potential
} else {
planet.get_gas(gas).pressure = planet.get_gas(gas).pressure - terraforming_potential
}
terraforming_potential = 0
}
}
if (terraforming_potential == 0) {
break
}
}
if (terraforming_potential == planet.terraforming_pressure(time)) {
planet.terraforming_active = false
events.add("desired atmospheric composition reached")
}
}
A fighter sized fuel tank. 1 ton, carries 1000 Liters and costs .3 Boronide.Id be down for that. But at the same time I kinda wish you could build "drop tanks" to go in box launchers. Incase you want to send your fighter on a particularly long range mission, but dont need its normal full armament. "Firing" the fuel tank will add the fuel from that missile to the fighters current load.
Not sure if this is exactly what the previous poster was talking about, but I'd like to see the following events interrupt increments;There are differences between Turn interrupts and Auto-turn interrupts. The first stops turns mid way and is more taxing for the program, the second just stops the auto-turn cycle until you increment time again.
completed research
production of a single research lab
production of shipyard
completion of shipyard operation
production of ship/ground unit
I also don't think dropping off teams warrants an interrupt.
There are differences between Turn interrupts and Auto-turn interrupts. The first stops turns mid way and is more taxing for the program, the second just stops the auto-turn cycle until you increment time again.
The complete research, production of shipyard, completion of shipyard operation, and ground unit training are all already auto-turn interrupts. While completing research labs would be a handy interrupt, it would get really annoying and tedious quickly at the rates of production you should have (and idle labs are already an interrupt).
While Turn interrupts seem more useful than auto-turn interrupts, they are more annoying and counter-intuitive when you are supposed to be queuing these things so nothing is wasted.
I think it would be a good addition to add different kinds of missile systems, like radar-guided and heat-seeking missiles of today. You could use a normal active sensor, and that wouldn't change from how it works now, but you could also implement a system allowing for missiles to have thermal sensors, so they target the largest thermal source they can detect on their target, or EM sensors, to target either sensors or shields. That would also add a new counter-missile system in decoys, which could use "noisemakers" which send out EM signals, or "flares" which clutter thermal sensors, attempting to draw them off target.Technically that is already a thing. EM sensor equipped missiles will seek out enemy active sensor sources and thermals target largest thermal contact. However these only take effect if active contact is lost and the missiles sensors pick up the target on its own.
I think it would be a good addition to add different kinds of missile systems, like radar-guided and heat-seeking missiles of today. You could use a normal active sensor, and that wouldn't change from how it works now, but you could also implement a system allowing for missiles to have thermal sensors, so they target the largest thermal source they can detect on their target, or EM sensors, to target either sensors or shields. That would also add a new counter-missile system in decoys, which could use "noisemakers" which send out EM signals, or "flares" which clutter thermal sensors, attempting to draw them off target.It's a cool idea, but how does it work with the current generalized armor? Can you hit the sensors/shields bypassing armor? If not, then why are all your targeted missile strikes splashing against armor across the length of the ship, then suddenly all hitting the engine as soon as the armor is breached? I think for this to logically work Steve would need to move more towards localised armor, which opens a huge can of worms.
It's a cool idea, but how does it work with the current generalized armor? Can you hit the sensors/shields bypassing armor? If not, then why are all your targeted missile strikes splashing against armor across the length of the ship, then suddenly all hitting the engine as soon as the armor is breached? I think for this to logically work Steve would need to move more towards localised armor, which opens a huge can of worms.Well I can understand the difficulty hitting internal systems like sensors or shields, I would have to take some time to think of how that could work without remaking armor. Engines have to have an external element to generate thrust however, meaning that it would work by the missiles going behind the ship, then powering as close to the engine as they can before going boom.
Well I can understand the difficulty hitting internal systems like sensors or shields, I would have to take some time to think of how that could work without remaking armor. Engines have to have an external element to generate thrust however, meaning that it would work by the missiles going behind the ship, then powering as close to the engine as they can before going boom.But then shouldn't non-guided missiles should also have a chance to cause direct engine damage (just be happening to hit near the engine opening? Can-of-worms!
Engines have to have an external element to generate thrust however, meaning that it would work by the missiles going behind the ship, then powering as close to the engine as they can before going boom.Not necessarily. There are plenty of Sci-Fi that I've read that describes types of internal engines that are basically mass chambers, energy drives, or gravity drives. Just because they produce enough heat to be visible from long range via sensors doesn't mean they are external. Also you could have the main bulk of engines tucked away in your armoring while having only the exhaust ports sticking out the back (if you want to think of the engines as advanced forms of traditional rockets).
Not necessarily. There are plenty of Sci-Fi that I've read that describes types of internal engines that are basically mass chambers, energy drives, or gravity drives.But Aurora engine names are fusion rocket engine names.
But Aurora engine names are fission-fragment rocket engine names.Could be the types of reactors used to produce the energy for said internal drives.
Would it be possible to add filter to System Generation and Display window for C# Aurora? Something like display only systems with colonies. As the number of discovered systems increases there are lot of systems that are not really useful, and I have to scroll through a long list to find systems with my colonies.What do you need to search the System Information window for? I look at it when I'm surveying a new system, but after that I very rarely scroll through it from one system to the next. I might go to a specific system for info on minerals there, or something like that, but that's about it.
Has there been any discussion of Force Directed Graphs for auto-arranging the interstellar maps?A few times. But a lot of people prefer making their own maps. Plus, hidden connections and one-way points kind of defeat the coding to auto arrange the map.
Since everything is being rewritten in C#, perhaps now would be an opportune time to replace the male pronoun in the event reports with the singular "they". Male and female pronouns would also work, but I imagine a singular they would be easier and faster to implement.Actually, it should only be a few lines of code and would change very little. But I know very little of C# as I've mainly used C++ or Java.
Actually, it should only be a few lines of code and would change very little. But I know very little of C# as I've mainly used C++ or Java.
How about expanding the uses of PoWs. (...) Or you could return PoWs to an alien population to boost your political standing with them. Or you can store them on your worlds to eventually turn into forced labor units.If you have 'collected' enough PoWs, you could release them as a separate colony.
If you have 'collected' enough PoWs, you could release them as a separate colony.I imagine one problem of using PoWs as it's own colony is that: almost all PoWs you'll get are folks who work for the military of their home-nation, one way or another. Getting a massive quantity of crewmen for the express purpose of sticking them on a colony seems... like a bad idea. Getting them to reproduce will be difficult as well, for instance, if a nation made a policy to sterilize their interstellar soldiers or use only soldiers of a single sex for the exact reason of preventing a sexual colonial kidnapping.
It would be pretty easy to accidentally detonate the Earth in that case -for instance when a CMC grows in size, or if you type in the wrong number on a logistics run.
World gen setting that lets you force all or a percentage of RNG-spawned NPRs to be Human.Steve already mentioned adding a "lost colonies" setting allowing you to find NPRs of the race you're playing.
Being able to search for minerals based on a set number of jumps from a selected system.
Right now you can search for e.g. Duranium in either all surveyed systems or a single system. It would be awesome if you could select a system, like Sol, and search for e.g. Duaranium in systems one jump away from Sol or two jumps away from Sol. Would be really helpful when establishing colonies in deep space, and you want to ensure access to all minerals within a reasonable distance.
Organising your salvos isn't too hard. In large battles, though, it can get difficult to make sense of what you've actually done to your enemy's ships. I'd like it if the game tracked exactly how much of your ordnance (maybe even down to numbers of specific missile types and their warhead values) that an enemy contact has been hit with and how much energy weapons fire (in damage points) that it has received. It'd be great if, ontop of this, your intelligence information included a statistic for each enemy ship type's "average damage before kill" that becomes more precise as you kill more of them.This is an amazing idea, yeah.
Organising your salvos isn't too hard. In large battles, though, it can get difficult to make sense of what you've actually done to your enemy's ships. I'd like it if the game tracked exactly how much of your ordnance (maybe even down to numbers of specific missile types and their warhead values) that an enemy contact has been hit with and how much energy weapons fire (in damage points) that it has received. It'd be great if, ontop of this, your intelligence information included a statistic for each enemy ship type's "average damage before kill" that becomes more precise as you kill more of them.
World gen setting that lets you force all or a percentage of RNG-spawned NPRs to be Human.
If you have 'collected' enough PoWs, you could release them as a separate colony.
Espionage Teams are actually killed when discovered. Would love to have a chance of capturing them which can provide some opportunities for RP (something along the line of 'Bridge of Spies')... .
Doublepost for full suggestion:
Rather than have NPR units ignore fuel costs, how about instead having them use fuel, as normal, but rather than stopping on no fuel, they will instead run at 1/3rd speed for commercial, 2/3rd speed for military. When they run out of fuel in this state, they will continue doing what they're doing, but queue up refueling at next convenience, with a bit of extra priority.
When they go to refuel, they will have a stored amount of "fuel used below 0", an amount that will instantly be deleted from the colony in question (resetting the "fuel used below 0" value), before adding fuel directly to the tank of the ship.
This'll basically make it so that NPRs are at least penalized for operating far outside of their spheres of influence without having some attackable logistics line to show for it.
This is an amazing idea, yeah.Could always only track "ADTK" based upon the last however many kills, or filter away all kills before a certain date.
Worth noting, though, that Average Damage To Kill might be anywhere to extremely random, to extremely weapon profile dependant. I.E., thin skinned ship getting hit by large penetration weapons, vs same ship getting sandblasted apart by gauss or railguns. This is mainly due to ships not necessarily having a distinct HTK, as the HTK number for ships is actually the cumulative HTK of all internal components, and not actually directly deterministic of how fast it'll die to internal damage (for instance, 10HTK 1HS magazines won't contribute much to the ability of the ship to not die.)
Currently, until you research and build brigade and division HQs, you suffer a bleed of your best ground combat commanders. The guys with good scores get promoted beyond base rank, but there's no higher-authority slots to put them into, so eventually they get fired for not getting assignments.Or an Army command much like the Fleet command.
Suggestion: Block promotions for ground combat commanders until higher-echelon technologies are researched.
Or an Army command much like the Fleet command.
Something small for a change. Could jump engines get a heading in the list of ship components at Class design screen so that they are clearly divided from normal engines? I have together over 20 active designs of them and this would help navigating that long list.Don't see how that would fit. We have sections for Hull, Engines, Beam weapons, Missiles, Strike Groups, and Sensors. Why would we separate the engine grouping into two separate groups?
Don't see how that would fit. We have sections for Hull, Engines, Beam weapons, Missiles, Strike Groups, and Sensors. Why would we separate the engine grouping into two separate groups?... would fit?? That list goes for several screens... currently like 7 for me with 13 headings. Shields and electronic warfare seems grouped together but even Magazines have their separate section.
They can be captured. If they are, the enemy gains some intelligence.
Declaring a emergency! Would be nice to enroll civilian shipping in an emergency, make them transport refuges, needed infrastructure, give fuel to stranded ships, etc.That could work with a sufficient penalty. Perhaps you should need to compensate the civilian shipping lines at double build cost when you appropriate a ship? Otherwise you could use a perpetual state of emergency to skip the mineral and shipyard time costs of building freighters and colony ships.
Declaring a emergency! Would be nice to enroll civilian shipping in an emergency, make them transport refuges, needed infrastructure, give fuel to stranded ships, etc.You can kinda roleplay it. You can steal their ships and after a month or two destroy those ships (without wrecks) and pay the shipping lines enough so that they can buy new ones. That way you are effectively borrowing their ships for high costs.
I would love a separate colony category of "Asteroid Mining". It is a bit annoying when colonies with nothing but ships with asteroid mining modules are hidden in the "Other Colonies" category.And for Ground units screen and other places there already exists "list of all ships parked at this colony" function so filtering such ships for asteroid mining may not be too hard. Or "ore is disappearing while they are no mines" could be used.
Population and production->Populated systems:
When renaming colony put the old name in the textarea, already selected, so one doesn't need to write it again if one wants only to fix a typo or other small change. But if you want to change it completely you can just write the new name directly.
This already works so for renaming of task groups but for colonies one is presented with a blank name in the Rename popup.
I would love a separate colony category of "Asteroid Mining". It is a bit annoying when colonies with nothing but ships with asteroid mining modules are hidden in the "Other Colonies" category.
I do not know if any of this has been suggested, but for the civilian leaders:
1. Each system have a governor for the entire system and passed down a fraction of his abilities to each colony in the system.
2. A empire/federation/ leadership position for all systems. Under would be the sector Governors, the system Governors and the planet Governors. The tile of the empire wide leader could be determined by the empire theme.
3. The empire wide leaders could have a cabinet, Minister of war, industry, science, mining, terraforming etc.
I realize this would be a lot to add.
Could we got an ability to rename fire controls in ship? In Class design would suffice though in Combat assignments with "Copy to TG"/"Copy to Race" would be great so you can change it together with PD mode. It would make reading the event log less confusing, if you can see which targeting is done by, say, "BFC-1" and which by "BFC-2" with more weapons under it.
Without this direct ability, I may start using to design BFCs twice, named the same just with "-A" and "-B" suffix, to be able to distinguish them then. Or using even number of weapons :| .
Declaring a emergency! Would be nice to enroll civilian shipping in an emergency, make them transport refuges, needed infrastructure, give fuel to stranded ships, etc.
An intel screen for enemy missile types similar to the ship one. It contains a log of the speed, warhead, sensor strength, size, etc of encountered missile types.
Something small for a change. Could jump engines get a heading in the list of ship components at Class design screen so that they are clearly divided from normal engines? I have together over 20 active designs of them and this would help navigating that long list.
Could closing pop-ups via X in the corner mean "NO" instead of "YES"?
Multiple times I misclicked and ordered refitting of my tanker (because his name is from A) to some other class. I am then asked if really want it with 400%+ refit price. I close the window via X, meaning "don't do it" but game takes it as "do it".
"X" treated as a default answer and default answer being "do nothing" would make more sense to me. See behaviour of "are you sure you want ot delete this file?".
Could _horizontal_ scrollbars be added to few areas with lists of components? The screen is divided there into several smaller panes and the important information is often in the end of row (differentiating code, hits left, repair value):Repair value can be found as twice the cost in Class design but in overall this issue currently wrecks use of name of manufacturer before the name and code of ship component a bit. Yes, I am using 1280x800 laptop with Reduced Height Windows but the issue of just a bit too long names for these component lists is surely on other displays too. And trying to use short names of components just so they can fit in these places sounds like a less interesting option.
- Population and production->Industry->Ship component stockpile
- Individual unit details->Damage control->Damage allocation chart
- Individual unit details->Damage control->Damaged systems
It would be pretty fantastic if we had a way to group together alien ships so that they didn't clutter the screen so many when in large groups. Additionally (or alternatively), it'd be nice to be able to simply collapse large groups of alien ships that are in the same position without having to set up groups for the aliens, again to remove some clutter from the screen. So if, for example, you had something like this:
It could collapse that group of civilian Fuel Harvesters to something simply like, "FH x9", and that group of spaceliners to "SS x15" (or however many there are), or, if both were in the same position, "FH x9, SS x15".
Declaring a emergency! Would be nice to enroll civilian shipping in an emergency, make them transport refuges, needed infrastructure, give fuel to stranded ships, etc.
ok so I am on an old version so this may have been changed but please make missiles able to be < size 1
Is it possible to see which asteroids, planets, moons have had completed geo survey team planetary survey from the System map? Cause I want to be able to quickly check which places I have already done geo survey, and remove them from my colony list to reduce clutter.
I suppose I could just rename the ones that have had geo survey team completed.
Completely silly idea -
Space whales that you can preserve or hunt down for resources.
Rebalancing Box Launchers.
I've been embroiled into a rather lengthy debate on the balance between box launchers an Launcher+Magazine.
On one hand, Box launchers can hold 6MSP per HS of missile. They can't externally reload, but they also can't explode either. They also only die one by one, instead of dumping all your missiles if one blows up.
Unarmored Mags store a maximum possible 20MSP per HS, which sounds great, until you add the launchers in, which are 20x larger than a box launcher.
This leaves us with an issue that the same tonnage in boxes can have not only a larger apha strike, but can even compete in sustained fire by only linking some launchers at once. This is made worse by the fact that box launchers can be researched really quickly, often well before max storage efficiency for magazines has been reached.
This leaves launchers with only the fact that they can be resupplied in-flight by small colliers as a solid advantage (which, granted, C# will help with).
I propose that Box Launchers have a significant chance, when destroyed, of causing the loaded missile to detonate. Ejection chance can perhaps reduce this, but it should be significantly higher than magazines (100% at no reduction, maybe 25% at max reduction).
Fighters, which probably can barely handle the hit that just shot them, won't really care that the box launcher also blew up.
But it will no longer be viable to put 5000 tons of box launchers all over a 7000ton ship and have it outcompete a 7000ton launcher-based ship.
This will also provide a better choice between launchers and boxes, as you still can pack 5000t of boxes into a 7000ton ship, just don't expect it to survive if it gets shot at. Or you can have the added safety that proper magazines and well-designed launchers provide.
Normal Launchers -
(75% efficiency) Size 5 Magazine: 75 MSP
Size 5 Missile launcher at 5 HS, stores 5 MSP
Total HS: 10
Total Firepower: 1 per salvo
Total Sustained Firepower: 16, low cooldown.
Box Launchers -
Total Firepower: 14
Sustained Firepower: 14, instant.
"No launcher storage" normal launchers -This has several effects.
(75% efficiency) 75 MSP magazine at 5 HS
Size 5 Missile launcher at 5 HS
total HS: 10
total firepower: 1 per salvo.
Sustained firepower: 15, low cooldown
Whereas the "no launcher storage" box launchers -
9 size 5 box launchers = 6.75 HS
45 MSP magazine is 3 HS
total HS: 9.75
total firepower: 9
sustained firepower: 9, instant.
This leaves us with an issue that the same tonnage in boxes can have not only a larger apha strike, but can even compete in sustained fire by only linking some launchers at once. This is made worse by the fact that box launchers can be researched really quickly, often well before max storage efficiency for magazines has been reached.This isn't quite true. There are some use cases where conventional launchers really dominate, and reduced-size launchers can go quite a ways to even the balance.
Time advancement buttons on the event log would be nice. Currently I have to switch back to the map window to advance time, and then try to switch back to the event log while the program is running so that I can track the events as they scroll by. This wouldn't really big a big problem if the event log didn't keep having the tendency to hide behind the map at random while time is running.Run one increment at a time?
Maybe most people don't hover over the event log as time is going by and I'm just weird, but it's the best way I've found for me to keep track of things as they're happening. Like I said, though, while time is processing the window likes to hide behind other windows. It's frustrating to no end.
Should be an easy suggestion:Does the "absorb task group" command work, or is that one bugged? If it isn't bugged with terraformers, you can have a single terraformer TG just absorb every other on in the same position from the task groups orders tab.
Can we have a better way to delete and/or merge task groups?
Because I have ~30 terraformers I'm towing around one at a time right now. Once they're all at their destination, they all end up in their own task groups, which I have to merge manually one at a time. This then leaves me with 29 empty groups to delete. So my idea is two new buttons; a "Merge TG's at this location" button, and a "Delete empty TG's" button.
Naval organization, could also do this, if I'm not mistaken. It's a little tricky though, and requires some experimenting.Yes. Once you have all those terraformers together, use "Organization branches - Add" and "Assign ships - Add TG" or you can use "Assign ships - Add Ship" to add them one by one. Once you transport them to one area, even with multiple TGs, select the branch and use "Create TG - Branch only" to put all terraformers into one TG. Just note this checks for members of given branch only in the spot of currently selected ship so you need to first select one of those terraformers.
Sensor sensitivity * cumulative signature strength * 1000km
distance from the sensor platform, rather than generating a sensor contact, the game makes a special contact at the sensor platform's position on detection (viewable only by the owning race of that sensor platform), and it reports the average bearing used in the previous calculations, as well as the cumulative signature strength. Lost contacts would allow you to view old reports of this kind.Make jump gates a ship module. I'd make them huge, so they would be hard to move, and I would not allow any ship with them to have engines, so they cannot move under their own power.So you would build them in a normal shipyard and then use tugs to get it to JP? That sounds like current mobile jump gate designation, just a tender with both commercial and military jump engines. The only difference would be shipping lines could go through too. But what if it moves or gets destroyed while they are already on the way? If you make all jump gates movable you need to also rewrite how NPRs and shipping lines react to their ships getting stranded on the other side. I guess this not-too-big change could lead to big rewrites.
This would be a lot more realistic for a few reasons. First of all, they'd be destructible. Second, a station with a jump gate could have other equipment too; sensors to monitor the gate, fuel to refill transiting ships, maintenance modules to repair ships, maybe weapons to guard the gate. Third, they'd be very expensive, instead of the current gates, which are free.
@BarkhornMissiles already got slapped into the dirt with the most recent update logs, and gauss was already "good enough" under the previous paradigm.
Even if this only changes fighter v fighter combat and adds a logistical overhead, id be excited.
Each CIWS has a 50% base chance toHit the new CIWS would fire 10-30 rounds per increment, the old system could fire 1-6 rounds per increment, that means in a salvo of 7 missiles one is always guaranteed to hit in VB6, potentially all 7 could get through without being engaged. My system would mean that an 11 missile salvo would be needed to guarantee a hit, with the same possibility of all 11 getting through. This is all per CIWS.
You could use a single missile salvo on targets you have identified as having PD forcing the CIWS to use 1 Ammunition Crate on only a single missile. If there are multiple CIWS and they all fire this will increase the ammunition consumption. Using a Size 1 Missile this creates an like for like scenario where the ship with the deepest magazine wins, like VB6 Aurora.
Alternatively you could then disengage, or force the other ship into direct combat.
The point is to make all the weapons in Aurora into more of a rock, paper & scissors fight where each system has its owns strengths and weaknesses. I dont believe that CIWS should be able to fire at the same rate for the entire duration of the ships life without some additional drawbacks.
Regards
Frank
People already fire lots of single-missile salvos, with the aim of overwhelming their opponent's fire control capabilities.Do you mean you would like to have the option to have flock of little gauss cannon-like weapons against few-missiles-lots-of-salvoes tactics?
I don't hate the idea; I actually really like it for fighters. Maybe make a Gauss tech that lets you make a super-small yet still fairly accurate Gauss cannon, the drawback being that after X number of firings, it has to be reloaded in a hangar.
Might be kinda strange that, given enough time your fighters could kill battleships with what amounts to a machine gun.Battleships should have enough weaponry, shielding and smaller friends around to not allow that.
Missiles already got slapped into the dirt with the most recent update logs, and gauss was already "good enough" under the previous paradigm.
AMMs already take up the niche of "logistics-intensive anti-missile system" anyway, and tracking miniscule metal fragments that could be anywhere from a pound to a few grams apiece seems a bit unnecessary, all things considered.
Add two more sizes of beam fire controls: 0.75x and 8x.How about doing away with discreet sizes entirely and just let us type in numbers?
Alternatively allow all sizes between 0.25x and (5x or 10x ?) in 0.25 increments.
Thats actually something I would like to remark upon. I think that if the player wants to make an absolutely gigantic piece of hardware to do a job, then they should be allowed to do so. Essentially, compensating for their lacklustre technology with sheer scale and cost. It would make things a lot more potentially interesting I think. If trying create machinery well above what you should be capable of results in dminishing returns, then after a certain point you would be defeated by an equivalent economy building lower tech equipment. On the other hand, it would let you vaguely try to defend yourself against the attention of much more advanced empires.Sooo... what about any number between 0.1x and 10x as a size multiplier here?
A suggestion regarding long voyages.
Specifically what I'd like to be able to do is select a TG and order it to go to a specific system. I don't like that I have to do all the pathfinding myself.
If we had the ability to order a TG to move to a specific system, combined with the custom conditional orders I suggested above, we could totally automate interstellar mineral, MSP, and missile shipments, all of which right now are a bit of a hassle.
Basically I'm just tired of specifying every single jump on a voyage that's possible dozens of jumps long. Its especially bad for long range gravsurvey ships, which are almost always taking the longest trips in your empire.
Suggestion:
Simplify shipyard expansion. Merge all the orders like "Add 1000 tons to capacity" orders into one "Add X tons to capacity" with a field to input exactly how many tons we want to add.
Edited to add this addition:
Do the same thing for adding slipways; let us add more than one at once.
Suggestion:
Add a maximum rank option on the DAC page of the ship design window. I should be able to prevent rear admirals from being assigned to fighters.
The maximum rank is two levels above the minimum. So if you set R1 for a fighter, no one will be assigned to a fighter unless they are R3 or below.
Seems like I'm not yet allowed to post proper links D:
Related suggestion:
Make the population limit subject to at least one tech. Specifically something like "civil engineering". To represent arcologies, i.e. single, huge buildings that are self-sufficient cities. Imagine how many people could fit on Earth if all of it was covered in 1-2 mile tall buildings each a city in itself. That's way more than 50 billion.
I don't know about other players, but twenty-something planetary administrators, brigadier generals, and naval captains somewhat break my sense of immersion. On the naval side, I can ... sort of ... remedy this by changing the initial rank (in the scheme I'm using) from lieutenant commander to lieutenant, but that's no help for that twenty-three year old ruler of Earth nor for the young scientists in charge of 60 labs (nor for the first initial crop of naval officers).
An easy "solution" (I grant that the current setup might actually appeal to some players) would be to make initial commander ages early 30s instead of early 20s. I can better stomach 30 year old lieutenant commanders (or even lieutenants if they're senior enough to command ships at the game's level of granularity) or head scientists ... colonels would still be a stretch, but beggars can't be choosers.
Less easy, but probably not difficult to code would be a dynamic means of establishing initial age at world/game generation, so that those (especially, perhaps exclusively military) commanders that get/would get auto-promoted in the initial commander crop are aged appropriately for their (maybe soon-to-be) rank. If colonel is to be the R1 rank for ground troops, perhaps their initial ages could be set separately---they should be (or I'd like them to be, at any rate) significantly older than the navy's lieutenant commanders.
A slightly related "problem" are the brigadier generals commanding Marine companies, which might fit a Star Wars-esque imagining (Han Solo didn't look like he could fit an entire battalion, much less any larger formation into that stolen shuttle), but doesn't quite fit with what I'm imagining for a force structure in my game.
It's all really minor stuff, but should be fairly headache-free to address if my suggestions appeal. :)
I'd argue that that would require new technologies to contrive to make close range 'orbital combat' an actual thing. Otherwise everything in halo can be modeled with railguns (mac guns are railguns according to the lore), and you can see the guns are engaging at a considerable range, as do the games railguns. Then the boarding pods can be simulated by boarding pods, which the game already has.I'm saying you never have military assets parked in orbit, which makes providing beam defenses to a planet with an atmosphere impossible.
Add another type of vessel, besides "PDC" and "Ship" to represent military orbital facilities. Right now there's no good way to RP any universe that makes heavy use of orbital defenses, like the Orbital MAC Stations in the Halo universe, for example. Right now all combat happens either in interplanetary space, or on the surface, orbital combat is sorely lacking.Technically, SMAC stations do have their own stationkeeping thrusters that they use when they fire (every 5 seconds). And you can build a ship with no engines then mass produce them from an " Orbital Construction Facility" (Shipyard). There is also a hand "Extend Orbit" order which does make a "Station" orbit the body further out (but then maintenance is a B unless you have that turned off).
I just don't think the build model really fits with space stations.Shipyards here are orbital installations while the UNSC's were primarily ground based (except for the installation in a nebula that constructed the Infinity, and space based construction of cruiser class and up). Not really much is known about the construction of SMAC platforms, but it is pretty safe to assume they are constructed at either a Construction Platform (https://www.halopedia.org/UNSC_construction_platform) or a Refit Station (https://www.halopedia.org/Refit_station) which are space based facilities but still shipyards. Its also safe to assume that the platform was built/moved into place by a refit station, as they were essentially mobile shipyards with their own engines and slipspace drive.
The ISS wasn't built in a shipyard then towed into place, it was put together piece by piece in place. I imagine the SMAC stations in Halo were as well.
Further, this could combine with how orbital habitats are built. Instead of having factories churn out fully-built habitats, have them make habitat sections, which can then be assembled with construction ships. I'd also combine this with jump gate construction. Unifying systems is good, especially for a game that's already as complicated as Aurora.I agree that there is a bit of contradictory rules when constructing certain things. That does need a bit of cleaning up.
Suggestion:
Make rail guns do the same damage across their entire range. They fire solid projectiles, they don't need to worry about diffraction like lasers do.
Now if those were plasma cannons (not talking whatever the "carronade" is supposed to be), the plasma "bullets" might dissipate after the magnetic pocket that contains it wears out and that could explain decreased damage at range. Also explains why they have apparently unlimited ammo---figure gas-compression tech and good batteries could give that appearance despite that being as finite as solid projectiles.
Have to do the same with Gauss cannons, if we're applying that logic. We also have to explain how the projectiles eventually disappear. Hmmm ... maybe the TN materials evaporate? That might help explain why I have to maintain a parked ship in orbit with tons of materials when it's simply floating in a vacuum. ;)
Now if those were plasma cannons (not talking whatever the "carronade" is supposed to be), the plasma "bullets" might dissipate after the magnetic pocket that contains it wears out and that could explain decreased damage at range. Also explains why they have apparently unlimited ammo---figure gas-compression tech and good batteries could give that appearance despite that being as finite as solid projectiles.
A 'carronade' is a term from the age of sail. Due to a variety of factors warships were generally standardised on the concept of 8, 16, 24 and 32 pounder gun batteries. Frigates were the lightest of these ships, small, agile and generally equipped with a single deck of guns no heavier than 16 pounds. If they had another deck, it was probably 8 pounders.
This made these frigates fast ships and excellent for scouting, but not really suited to a battle line.
Ships of the line however carried batteries of big guns, often on 3 decks that were loaded from top to bottom with 16, 24 and 32 pounder guns. This made them very powerful in naval artillery, but slow and lumbering at best.
So what happens when you take a ship of the line and tear off the top gun deck?
Well, you get a heavy, slower frigate than normal that's absurdly overgunned for its size with its batteries of 24 and 32 pounders, but with crap for range. These ships were called carronade frigates.
And that's kind of the role the Plasma Carronade has in game; a big weapon system that's rather close in and horrifyingly good at breaking other ships.
I think we can assume the railgun projectiles aren't suffering from TN drag since that drag will cause huge warships to instantly come to a halt, and yet the railgun projectiles can engage at range.
You are right, I forgot a step (switching from long guns to short guns), but razee frigates were generally the ships equipped with carronades. Mostly because normal frigates were a little fragile for the throw weight a carronade battery could offer, so they needed to be more sturdily built in comparison. Razees were perfect for that because all the other bits were already in place and all that was needed was removing the superfluous top gun deck.
It also meant you had a use for captured ships of the battle you couldn't maintain on that level. Well, for more than spare parts anyway.
No, warships don't instantly come to a halt, it takes 5 seconds.
Since no projectiles travel for as long as 5 seconds even we have no way of telling if they suffer from drag or not, but I think we can assume they do suffer from drag since for example railgun damage is reduced at range.
Gauss seems to be too short range / inaccurate for it to have time to matter.
If projectiles didn't suffer drag why can't I fire them from 400 million km away at a stationary target?
Accuracy I guess?
Thats not really true, mechanical accuracy of the gun would have nothing to do with short range hit chances, which purely have to do with your ability to predict where the target will be in five seconds. (and possibly tracking speed of the gun is also a factor, if the target moves faster than the gun can precisely slew)
So like lets say the gun has a certain (very narrow) cone in which it can hit stuff. It doesn't matter at super close range, where the only issue is swinging the gun to the correct orientation quickly, but 400 million kms out, its a big factor.
Yes, we do indeed know for a fact that the mechanical accuracy of the gun doesn't matter at all in Aurora, because if you take the same gun and slap on a twice as good fire control you always will get twice as high hit chance, meaning mechanical accuracy is not considered an issue in any weapon.
What I am talking about isn't hitting at 400 million kms out though, but at for example twice or +10% of the current max range...
If mechanical accuracy is NEVER any issue at all at current ranges, and with a good enough FC you could get 100% hit chance out to max range, then why is it suddenly such an insurmountable issue that you get 0% chance to hit at current max ranges +10%?
My point is that the current max ranges are totally arbitrary and don't make any logical sense from an accuracy perspective, they only make sense from a projectile damage perspective where the projectile and beam loses all damage potential beyond a certain range. ( Which for projectiles is consistent with being slowed down like ships are ).
Institute a system like Hearts of Iron has for production efficiency. In HoI, if you build a lot of sherman tanks, you get better at making them. So the later ones are cheaper or are built quicker than the earlier ones.
This would be useful for ground units, missiles, fighters, and ship components.
How about adding the "geological team survey complete" info to the System View and/or Geology Survey Report pages.
Also, in the Teams tab, it seems that you should be able to see the teams that you have created and their location.
How about adding the "geological team survey complete" info to the System View and/or Geology Survey Report pages.
Also, in the Teams tab, it seems that you should be able to see the teams that you have created and their location.
It would be really neat to be able to "Part out" ships to MSP, even if it over time.
I would like to see the whole "Team-system" overworked (maybe after C# is finishes in a later version) - the main point is that you can create them at will with no time and at every place/body you want and be able to delete them at will... even if you don't want to do this, there is no way to handle them easily...
with the new system that allows more than 1 "officer" at a ship like CO, Exec, Tac, etcpp it could be possible to create "ships" (like special shuttles, or even a "Inquisition cruiser") with a special module for each sort of team - you still need the team-members but the "ship" would be the team in most aspects
the "special module" would need 5 Officers/commanders etc with the needed skill to function - could also be part of the "auto assessment (maybe with the option to not allow administrators, researchers etc), if one of the team members is a navy officer he/she is the commander of the ship but not of the team - these ships would be able to get orders to use the "team ability's" like "survey ground", "research ruins" etc - maybe even with a auto-function like survey ships atm
basically it would be the same as teams atm but with the need to use ships to transport the teams, for RP it would be better to create special ships for them and that teams are not just created/deleted at will at every body you choose...
I guess the new system with more than 1 officer on a ship would be great for this, to give teams more fluff and RP - the "team-site" could still be used to list the "team-ships" and check/uncheck if a ship should have team-members, which kind of team members, where the ship is atm, etc
I am a fan of using the same game mechanics at the most parts in a game were they make sense - and using the (new) ship mechanics for teams looks like a win-win for me :)
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also I would like to see some "color coding" at the summary page of a body like "No" in red if the body was not team-surveyed, green "yes" if it was... green colour coded ruins and research bonus if any, etc ... just some "one view, all seen" QOL improvements - but that is an other can of worms i am afraid...
Could we have a button to rename a system or body for all player races, not just the currently active one?
Its not a major thing, would just save a lot of clicks.
I haven't coded anything yet, but I am thinking of disabling the ability to create teams on any body without a minimum population (perhaps 1m). This is particularly for espionage teams so you can't just create them on alien worlds. For geology teams, I could add some default orders for shuttles to move them around automatically.
Or, I remove the concept of teams entirely and replace them with new ground force capabilities. Thinking out loud....
1) Espionage team replaced by a scout function for ground forces. Scout formations can land on alien worlds to learn about the alien population (size, industry, tech, ground forces). They are have (expensive) stealth capabilities boosted by the formation commander (stealth bonus replaces espionage). They can be hunted by hostile ground forces or have a chance of detection by any civilian population (much higher if not same species).
2) Geology team replaced by geological survey capability for ground forces and ground survey becomes a significantly larger task requiring more personnel - to prevent simply creating vast number of geo-survey formations. Geology bonus based on the formation commander
3) Xenology team replaced by Xenoarchaeology capability for ground forces. Surveying and deciphering alien ruins becomes a significantly larger task requiring more personnel. Xenology bonus based on the formation commander.
4) Diplomacy team replaced by small but expensive ship module that can only function when in the same system as an alien population. I also change NPR responses so that their reaction to alien ships in the system is based on ship size and reduced if the ship has a diplomatic function. Diplomacy skill is based on the ship commander.
Ability to manually design solar systems for use ingame.
Right now, the only guaranteed system we have is Sol. I'd like the ability to in future versions of the game, hand the game a well managed CSV file that dictates a system or systems that would be added to a roster for systems to be generated when visiting new systems, OR be able to grab them at will when using the "create new system" button in the F9 menu.
What might be possible is to save systems created in game for future use (assuming version compatibility) and add some tools to modify systems in-game.That'd be great.
Good idea. I've added 'Rename System All' and 'Rename Body All' to the System View in C# Aurora.Even better would be something like 'Rename System/Body for selected races', opening a dialog with checkboxes for all races.
In VB6, and in what C# currently looks like, Box launchers seem to be just better than regular launchers 90% of the time.
At the moment 100 Boxes takes up the same space as 20 0. 25 mod launchers and 170 missiles of magazine space roughly, giving you half as many missiles but 5x the alpha strike. And those 0. 25 launchers still have a x100 reload. In C# aurora 0. 25 size has been increased to 0. 3 so the ratio will be even more favourable to the boxes.
In VB6 and in C#, this means that the enemy will require 5x as many beam weapons to shoot down all of the missiles.
In VB6 due to the long range of AMMs, they could engage the single box launcher wave with many salvos, meaning that box launchers could often be worse against fast firing AMMs. due to the lower amount of missiles. However with the missile changes of C#, the range of AMMs has been decreased if I am not mistaken, which would favour one single large wave.
Would also be useful to have for intelligence info on ship classes, especially on the first increment in multi empire earth starts, where all classes detected during the first increment get random names as the races have not detected each other before.You already can do this via Space Master. Check the diplomacy window carefully with SM turned on.
- Box launchers hit while containing a missile will explode in C# Aurora.Whether or not this has any effect depends on the details. If it works like magazines currently do, than empty magazines get hit first. Also one could launch all missiles (or just a few to create empty launchers, which get hit first) at a dummy target when overwhelming incoming missiles are detected, loosing the missiles is better than loosing the ship after all.
You already can do this via Space Master. Check the diplomacy window carefully with SM turned on.Yes, but only after the empires have detected each other, and having to manually rename all starting classes per empire for each pair of 8 empires is very much clicking. There is other ways around it, like only sm-creating the ships after the first time increment, and it won't happen to me again, but knowing that does not help when it has already happened after designing and creating all the classes for all these empires. So it might be a function that is nice to have
Would it be possible for C# Aurora to change the movement mode when issuing new orders? ATM a ship stops where it is when giving a new order and then resumes moving when the order is executed. However this is very odd in a close combat or in real life where a ship would continue on its course and speed until the new order is executed. Would love to see that behaviour also in C# Aurora.
Is this really true or am I missing something here? Box launches having 0. 15 size vs 0. 25 size should mean 100 Boxes take up the same space as 100*0. 15/0. 25 = 60 max reduced size launchers when I do the math. Changing it to 0. 3 would mean 2:1 ratio or a 2x greater alpha strike, no more.
I haven't tackled the inexperienced fleet penalties yet, so I will bear this in mind when I do. There are some complexities though. Not all orders involve direction and the ship should only stop anyway if you remove the existing order and give a new one. Some form of abandon current order and move to next might be an option (with a delay) but the issue is that the second order may not make sense unless the first is completed. Another option may be that the crew operates on its own initiative until it responds to an order (moving away or toward the enemy depending on morale). In general though Aurora ships all stop when completing their orders list as it would not make sense for them to continue in the same direction.
I haven't tackled the inexperienced fleet penalties yet, so I will bear this in mind when I do. There are some complexities though. Not all orders involve direction and the ship should only stop anyway if you remove the existing order and give a new one. Some form of abandon current order and move to next might be an option (with a delay) but the issue is that the second order may not make sense unless the first is completed. Another option may be that the crew operates on its own initiative until it responds to an order (moving away or toward the enemy depending on morale). In general though Aurora ships all stop when completing their orders list as it would not make sense for them to continue in the same direction.
Similar to the button to export all designed ship classes as a text file, would it be feasible to have a similar function for racial techs/components/missiles as well? A common issue I run into when discussing Aurora with friends of mine who play it is that attempting to reverse-engineer someone's ships accurately from just the export data is pretty much impossible, and even with the help of the technology summary screen it's a tedious process- especially if someone is using tactics like not making use of the highest tech level available to them for whatever reason, or if a component is simply old.
It'd also be a great boon for people attempting to do any sort of multiplayer interaction that doesn't involve hotswapping database files (design competitions and such, I'm personally setting one such friendly brawl between two folks at the moment which is what prompted this suggestion).
I think a lot of people like that trying to reverse-engineer is not exact. Not to say that sort of button won't be useful :)
tachyon technologies, between both a displacement drive (or "wink" drive) also a tachyon gun that "teleports bombs into or around other ships" source is from the Odyssey One Book series
tachyon technologies, between both a displacement drive (or "wink" drive) also a tachyon gun that "teleports bombs into or around other ships" source is from the Odyssey One Book seriesYour tachyon gun idea is basically what mesons do. Mesons don't interact with anything, and when they decay they release a huge amount of energy. You can control how long a meson takes to decay when you create it. So what happens is, the fire control computer decides how far away the target is, and thus how long the meson should take to decay. The meson is fired, it passes cleanly through the armor because mesons don't interact with anything. Then, assuming the FC was accurate in it's distance measurement, the meson decays inside the ship, and goes off like a bomb.
Fires are much more dangerous in space. Spaceships are enclosed systems, you can't just vent the heat and toxic smoke the way you can on Earth. On the other hand, ships will be designed presuming that you need to close down entire sections of the ship at a time from air flow, either because of a hull breach or because of a fire or any other disaster, so fire control is a lot easier; just let the fire consume all oxygen and if possible use the cooling system to chill the local temperature to below the ignition temperature. Or, for that matter, open the burning sections to hard vacuum, it'll resolve itself soon enough.
I'm not advocating that particular use of POWs, but I would like to see them have some added effect or utility in the game. I run across planets that have survivors and POWs on them, but I can't really do anything with them, as far as I can tell.
That is a bug in VB6. The random POWs you find are from old games. They aren't being deleted correctly.
Genius!
"Are they dead?"
"Yes"
"Are you dead?"
"No."
"Success!"
Ha!
Genius!
"Are they dead?"
"Yes"
"Are you dead?"
"No."
"Success!"
Ha!
Kurt!!! Welcome back!!!!!
John
its easier to understand in the book but basically they convert the bomb into tachyons, as barkhorn said its almost exactly like mesons work, i also thank the other techs from the books would work awesomely hear armor that reflects lasers to 99% of there energy or armor that absorbs light 99% that its basically cloaked but is absolutely susceptible to laser fire, antimatter blasts, much like missiles but made for close combat (not exactly a good idea for this game) and power plants that are black holes that consume refuse and random matter for fuel but are detectable by gravametric censers but effect the accary of the tachyons (mesons) and last but not least tachyon censers that take a "snapshot" of the local spaceQuote from: Rayuke link=topic=8107. msg106917#msg106917 date=1519854934tachyon technologies, between both a displacement drive (or "wink" drive) also a tachyon gun that "teleports bombs into or around other ships" source is from the Odyssey One Book series
how would tachyons help teleport something? they are just particles moving faster than light
As instructed:We directly key in tracking speed when designing turrets, so having the same option for FC makes sense. Selecting tonnage as well and getting a range might be advantageous.
One of the main issues I've been finding with beam ships is that continuously scaling costs for more advanced beam fire controls as tech advances. With that in mind, I'd like to propose that its costs only scale with the multipliers applied to it, the tech advances being "free" bonuses.
In further thoughts: What I'd envision to make beam FCs better: Higher base cost to compensate a bit the non-escalating costs. "Sliding" values for range and speed instead of fixed multipliers, allowing for more precise fine control of the values, with a minimum and maximum value. Said value might just be the present 25% and 4x, or it could be set by tech, starting closer to 1 and increasing back to the present possible values (or other values, although that might present some issues with absolute max range due to light speed).
In the System Information screen, Jupiter is listed as having the same magnetic field strength as Earth. According to Wikipedia, this should be around 20 times that of Earth. (Unless I misinterpreted "magnetic field" and it's measuring something different instead. )
(Also, Saturn should be somewhat less than Earth, but the two are listed as having the same magnetic field. They're close enough that it's tricky, since magnetic field strength varies over the surface of Earth, but Saturn's average is less than the typical minimum for Earth, so it should be something from 0. 32 to 0. 84. )
I suggest rethinking tracking speed to account not for the target's velocity, but instead its radial velocity. A target moving directly towards or away from you has much lower radial velocity than one moving tangentially to you. If you've ever gone skeet shooting, or defended against air attack in Silent Hunter 3, you'll surely have noticed it's much easier to aim at and hit targets moving directly towards or away from you. It is also occasionally easier to aim at a target that is farther away than one that is closer, because farther targets will have a lower radial velocity. A turret may be fast enough to track a target out near max range, but not fast enough to track it at close range.
This I think would provide a welcome buff to FAC's and fighters. It would mean that turreted beam weapons would have optimal range bands, instead of always being more accurate as distance decreases. This would mean fighters may be able to get in under the minimum effective range of the main guns, while remaining out of range of defensive armament.
Shouldn't this thread be closed, since C# Aurora Suggestions thread exists? Or is it still useful to Steve as a sort of filing cabinet of dreams and hopes? :D
I don't know if this is the place to make the suggestion or if this the "galactic empire" option in the game (i assumed that was Star Wars) but it would be cool to have a Asimov Foundation/Empire theme in the game. I would be down to make it or help out.
Also, posthumous promotion/medal awards.
Mainly because its partly a roleplaying game, thusly players would probably find that to be an enjoyable thing to do.
Tie the two together. Commanders get retained on a dead/retired list for a short period, say ~60 days (long enough that you don't accidentally skip over their death when running a 30 day turn) and are only retained on the dead/retired list if the player grants them a medal.Mainly because its partly a roleplaying game, thusly players would probably find that to be an enjoyable thing to do.
I figured roleplaying was the reason :)
There used to be a dead/retired commander list in the Commander window, but it got removed because long games made it incredibly slow to load, if I recall.
Currently C# is holding on to the dead commanders in memory until you shut down the game, although you can't see them. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to display those and let you decide which ones to store in a hall of fame.
It could be automatic. Retain any person who did any of the following
1) Commanded a ship or ground unit that took or dealt damage
2) Commanded a ship that jumped into an undiscovered system
3) Made some measure of espionage progress
4) Researched a technology
5) Governed a population, perhaps over some population threshold.
6) was marked for retention by the player