Author Topic: Hangars in C# Aurora  (Read 10466 times)

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Offline Jovus

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #30 on: May 10, 2019, 10:44:14 AM »
4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

I would want the system to be more like underway refueling, where you only have to issue one order even if the execution takes an extended (or variable) amount of time.

I'm theoretically interested in this kind of restriction, but does it really add anything to the game? Say you can launch x00 tonnes per 5s and Aurora handles everything (squadron management, TG assignment with sensible orders, etc.) automatically with the push of a button; does that mean anything more interesting than having a few more 5s ticks in preparation for combat, aka tedium?

In the one case I can think of where it does make a big difference - being jumped by the enemy or jump-point carrier assault - it seems only to add immense frustration rather than an interesting mechanic.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #31 on: May 10, 2019, 11:32:43 AM »
So you can't have armored base to put your fighter inside ?
Steve mentioned some time ago that he was thinking of possibly making a new ground-based facility to house fighters. Whether that could be armoured or not wasn't mentioned, and he hasn't brought it up since. So for now, plan to do this:
You can, but they have to be orbital installations.

Since commercial hangars are now a thing, it means that we get to do a decision - armoured military hangars that consume maintenance as they orbit or unarmoured commercial hangars that are free but extremely vulnerable.
 

Offline Iceranger

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #32 on: May 10, 2019, 05:56:52 PM »
So you can't have armored base to put your fighter inside ?
Steve mentioned some time ago that he was thinking of possibly making a new ground-based facility to house fighters. Whether that could be armoured or not wasn't mentioned, and he hasn't brought it up since. So for now, plan to do this:
You can, but they have to be orbital installations.

Since commercial hangars are now a thing, it means that we get to do a decision - armoured military hangars that consume maintenance as they orbit or unarmoured commercial hangars that are free but extremely vulnerable.

I think the commercial hangers does not maintain military ships...
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2019, 07:49:32 PM »
4) I definitely don't want a system where you have to launch or land parasites a few at a time. That would get tedious really fast and I don't think it adds anything to game play.

I would want the system to be more like underway refueling, where you only have to issue one order even if the execution takes an extended (or variable) amount of time.

I'm theoretically interested in this kind of restriction, but does it really add anything to the game? Say you can launch x00 tonnes per 5s and Aurora handles everything (squadron management, TG assignment with sensible orders, etc.) automatically with the push of a button; does that mean anything more interesting than having a few more 5s ticks in preparation for combat, aka tedium?

In the one case I can think of where it does make a big difference - being jumped by the enemy or jump-point carrier assault - it seems only to add immense frustration rather than an interesting mechanic.

It would most likely be allot more than 5s... more likely minutes or many minutes per launch.

And this would be as meaningful and it takes time to rearm, refuel and resupply ships.

In the real world you should be glad if more than 70% of any crafts on a carrier capable ship is fit for service at any time. The logistics to launch and retrieve crafts also are pretty complex in the real world, especially of you want to avoid serious injuries and damage. In the real world there also is a huge difference on the sortie rate where you might be able to sortie like four times in a day but at a terrible drop in serviceable crafts and after a day or two the sortie rate will be down to 1-2 sorties a day per craft. The amount of sorties or things you can do in game are just not very realistic. In fact... someone that have low maintenance costs and very good logistics will have a considerable advantage in the real world because of these limitations. Many people stare blindly on hardware's optimal performance but in real life that is only one part of the picture and not always the most important one.

not saying all of this should be modelled, but in real life this is often more important to a military than anything else as long as the equipment can perform what it is meant to do.
 

Offline SevenOfCarina (OP)

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #34 on: May 10, 2019, 09:24:28 PM »
Launch time does make a massive difference. Large early game carriers would likely take an hour or more to empty their hangars, time during which they are massively vulnerable to ambushes and the like. With how fast missies are relatively, the time from the detection of a missile combatant to the time of missile impact is measured in minutes, this is not enough time to launch the entire fighter screen. It creates meaningful decisions : Do you launch your AMM fighters only and let the missile ship get away? Do you launch a mix of ASM and AMM fighters? Is launching an extra sensor fighter worth sacrificing an extra missile fighter? Do you keep a portion of your fighter wing constantly on patrol to ensure fast response times? Is that worth the cost in maintenance? Do you risk keeping your entire wing in the hangar to ensure optimal performance for an ambush?

Effectively, it balances out the current overwhelming superiority of parasites, not by nerfing them directly, but by imposing strategic considerations in line with what real world carriers have to deal with. I'm guessing it'll have to be counterbalanced by a slight buff to fighter, though.
« Last Edit: May 10, 2019, 09:28:11 PM by SevenOfCarina »
 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #35 on: May 11, 2019, 12:09:33 AM »
That would probably need some kind of order to maintain a constant floating patrol around the carrier, else it would be kindof horrid to keep that running manually.
 

Offline Jovus

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #36 on: May 11, 2019, 04:40:39 AM »
Launch time does make a massive difference. Large early game carriers would likely take an hour or more to empty their hangars, time during which they are massively vulnerable to ambushes and the like. With how fast missies are relatively, the time from the detection of a missile combatant to the time of missile impact is measured in minutes, this is not enough time to launch the entire fighter screen. It creates meaningful decisions : Do you launch your AMM fighters only and let the missile ship get away? Do you launch a mix of ASM and AMM fighters? Is launching an extra sensor fighter worth sacrificing an extra missile fighter? Do you keep a portion of your fighter wing constantly on patrol to ensure fast response times? Is that worth the cost in maintenance? Do you risk keeping your entire wing in the hangar to ensure optimal performance for an ambush?

I'm for meaningful decisions, which is why I was asking if there were any here. And you've done an admirable job pointing out a case where they might be.

This still doesn't seem to hold up much, though. Under a system where missile flight times and wing deploy times are on similar scales, you probably end up with people running a CAP doctrine (in addition to providing other defensive umbrellas). That sounds cool, but we're back to Aurora's limitations in automatic order handling and templating making deploying a carrier force a massive exercise in tedium.

... current overwhelming superiority of parasites ...

Suffice to say we seriously disagree, here, especially with the slew of changes coming in C# that massively favour larger ships.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #37 on: May 11, 2019, 02:13:45 PM »
If you want to add depth to Carrier Fighter handling then the obvious way to do it IMHO is to open up hangar design choices based on realistic restrictions for Carrier Operations.

This means that either through alot of design parameters (when designing hangars), or through separate modules that can be designed you would add capabilities that assist with the fighter turnaround. This is done in combination with reducing the size penalty on Hangars which is currently "abstracted" to facilitate such things.

I'm talking about things like:
- Launching speed, how many Fighters that can be launched per minute ( could also have tradeoff of module size vs cooldown similar to missile launchers if done as a separate module ).
- Recovery speed, how many Fighters that can be landed per minute
- Refueling speed, how many Fighters that can be simultaneously refueled and what speed it's done at
- Rearming speed, how many Fighters that can be simultaneously rearmed and what speed it's done at
- Repairing speed, how many Fighters that can be simultaneously repaired and what speed it's done at
- Maximum size of fighters that can be handled by all the above
( if done as separate modules some kind of "free" baseline that permits very slow operations would be needed for ships with a single parasite or small utility hangars where adding all the modules to manage operations would just be messy and don't add fun gameplay )
- Armor/Damage control ( If done by designing hangars ) could add interesting depth to prevent parasites and munitions on them going boom in secondary explosions.

The goal of this would be to allow you to tailor Carriers for alot of different roles like Jump assaults ( that can launch loads of fighters super fast ), for long range standoff ( slower turnaround ), for defense (launching anti missile fighters fast) or maybe just for logistics/transportation with minimal turnaround. You could also tailor Carriers based on what kind of fighters they are meant to operate which can have design and operational impact.

Much of the tools to do this might already be mostly present given the rework to ship rearm/refuel that has been done, but it would still probably be quite a complex undertaking.
 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #38 on: May 11, 2019, 03:30:02 PM »
I strongly support the idea of increasing the depth of carrier ops.

It can make a world of difference at the strategic level how capable your carrier is at keeping a large amount of strikecraft running simultaneously over an extended period of time, versus a ship that is capable of a huge surge of activity and then is out of it for a while.  That basically amounts to endurance, how many attacks can your fleet weather before its exhausted and unable to keep its strikecraft going.

Tactically the speed at which you can get all of your stuff into the void quickly can make a world of difference if you are on the attack or were surprised somehow and your carrier isn't ready to go.

However I argue this should be all talk and no action (aside from perhaps trying to make provision for adding this in the future) until there is some initial version of C# playable and in peoples hands.  I still believe Steve probably draws some motivation from people playing the game, or he would be a lot less interested in the community.  The sooner we get there the better for everyone.

There is the saying that the last 20% takes 80% of the work, which is mainly true, so I am still exceedingly antsy personally.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2019, 03:31:53 PM by QuakeIV »
 
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Offline xenoscepter

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #39 on: May 20, 2019, 07:00:53 PM »
I would like to think the Cargo Handling System and it's later versions could be re-purposed to affect launch / recovery rate too.
 

Offline Person012345

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #40 on: June 05, 2019, 09:37:07 PM »
Steve mentioned some time ago that he was thinking of possibly making a new ground-based facility to house fighters. Whether that could be armoured or not wasn't mentioned, and he hasn't brought it up since. So for now, plan to do this:
You can, but they have to be orbital installations.

Last I heard on the subject was this:

Quote
If you have maintenance facilities, you can have fighters based at a population. If you give them a support order, they can't be targeted by normal naval combat. If you want to keep them away from ground combat as well, you can put them on support of a rear-echelon formation. Fighters in active combat can be targeted by AA units, hostile fighters equipped with AA weapons and by orbital bombardment support (more on that when I post the orbital bombardment rules).

I will make it so that fighters with the ground support order are maintained normally. The attacking force can bring in its own maintenance facilities, which will allow them to 'base' fighters on the ground.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2019, 09:41:44 PM by Person012345 »
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #41 on: June 06, 2019, 01:13:15 PM »
I think the commercial hangers does not maintain military ships...
That is correct but you can put in a small maintenance depot, just big enough to maintain the fighters, inside the hangar too and that will work - IF I've understood the new mechanics correctly.

Last I heard on the subject was this:

Quote
If you have maintenance facilities, you can have fighters based at a population. If you give them a support order, they can't be targeted by normal naval combat. If you want to keep them away from ground combat as well, you can put them on support of a rear-echelon formation. Fighters in active combat can be targeted by AA units, hostile fighters equipped with AA weapons and by orbital bombardment support (more on that when I post the orbital bombardment rules).

I will make it so that fighters with the ground support order are maintained normally. The attacking force can bring in its own maintenance facilities, which will allow them to 'base' fighters on the ground.
Ah right, I forgot that part. Yeah, for players who wish to use fighters on all/most colonies, it won't be much of a hassle to bring in a handful of maintenance facilities for the relatively small number of fighters based there. Then for the more important/critical sites where you might have way more fighters, we'll build orbital military hangar-stations that can be moved by tugs as the frontier pushes forward.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Hangars in C# Aurora
« Reply #42 on: June 06, 2019, 01:58:58 PM »
For that matter, while I'm unsure about how large the components are, you can build a number of maintenance ships to set up maintenance depots in deep space, or service deep space stations that are for example guarding jump points.