Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions  (Read 345113 times)

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Offline Rich.h

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #600 on: October 11, 2018, 05:20:26 AM »
I may have missed someoe else already putting similar ideas forward, but had a few thoughts about spoilers today. For me personally I tend to find two spoilers somewhat boring and they become nothing more than a hump in the road in one case, and a micromanagement annoyance in the other. As such I will address each seperately.

So first up then is the Star Swarm, the general method by which they work with workers building more ships is great, but lacks anything else. Once you discover them and design a class of ship to take out the fighters with little to no damage the queen becomes a simple matter of long range missiles (and lots of them). If you encounter them again at any point it is a simple rinse and repeat. So a couple of ideas:

1. Have a missile type craft in the swarms arsenal, something like a bio missile that functions in the same manner as mesons (skipping shields and armour). This means you now have another tactical layer to consider, and could be quite the shock when you think you are safe using a mob of AMM against the meson fighters and suddenly a whole lot of fast blips appear.

2. Since the basic goal of all life is to procreate and spread, have the Star Swarm follow suit. So to start with a swarm will be found in a system, they will have a queen, a few constructors and the fighters. More than often first contact is the case of you  quickly loosing the craft that discovered them to the fighter onslaught. Instead of however having the Swarm being reactive make them proactive, so they could have a fleet breakdown as such:

A queen (one only ever in a system
Jump capable "princesses" that move to an ajoining system and turn into new queens with a small amount of resources
Workers that gather materials
Missile type larger drones to defend the queen
Soldiers as they are now.

With this makeup the swarm could follow a simple method. The queen lays eggs of X number of soldiers, then lays worker & drone eggs in a set ratio. Once the total number of Soldiers + Drones + Workers reaches a set amount the queen lays a special egg, this hatches and jumps to an ajoining system through an explored JP. The young new queen then grows up and using a small stockpile hatches out a minimal force of Workers and Soldiers, she then continues as a normal queen. Once a queen finds she has no explored JP's left without that do not contain a swarm, she stops hatching young queens and goes into a cycle of maintaing her swarm at peak condition.

Doing this would mean that if you do not activley work on wiping out the swarm in a system you run the risk of them spreading and causing major problems for all in the galaxy, with NPR's activating spoilers this could easily result in you happening upon a massive nest spread over many systems.


Ok and the second spoiler race.

The Invaders, here is a race I no longer use in Aurora, simply for how annoying they end up becoming. Not dangerous just annoying, much like the Star Sawrm you can develop very effective designs build to wipe out the Invaders without much trouble, but the wormhole system means you end up with a lot of micromanagement of systems with wormholes. Now I understand what a huge task it would be to have a method of traversing the wormholes and taking the fight to the Invaders, so how about a method where you can at least plug the gaps as such.

So currently you get a wormhole appear and assuming you win the battle with no major problems, you now have to have something nearby to monitor and deal with any future threats. How about to begin with with have a tech line branched off the jump tech line somewhere mid way in advancment that unlocks, this allows you to develop either the means to get rid of the wormhole, or we could have some device that renders them inert but still present. We have jump gates that stabalise a JP so the opposite perhaps, a gate that destabalises the wormhole, rendering it unpassable, yet it could be taken down in future if you decided to try and farm the Invaders technology or such. Also both of these device types would mean the system in question would be unable to have a new wormhole open up inside it.

That deals with the problems inside your boarders, so outside of them then we need a change in Invader behaviour. The Wiki always descived them as bogey men who just want to wipe everything out, so they should act as such. Currently they seem to act a little random, a ship comes through the wormhole shoots at things and may decide to then fly oout of the system on another task. Let's have them build up forces and properly purge  8) So a wormhole opens, and a few smaller vessels come through, they attack anything inside a set radius of the wormhole position then return to the wormhole and wait (If they endup being destroyed then the counter for this system stays set at "bring in small ships"). A counter then moves onto the next stage and in time brings in larger vessels, these do exactly the same thing but in a wider radius (again the counter stays the same should they be destroyed). Finally the counter moves up and in time we get big nasty death machines, these proceed to wipe out everything owned by anybody in the entire system (again a counter reset).

Once this phase is complete the force then joins up leaving the initial scout force to stay at the wormhole. This force then heads out through the nearest explored JP and attacks everything it finds in this system, then moves on and so on. In this way they are laying waste to everything they can find. If they get destroyed then the original counter resets back to the second phase back at the entry wormhole, and once again we get a force build up. If we look at this from an NPR activation it could be possible they wipe out the entire NPR and find themselves with no explored JP's. In this case the force returns to the wormhole and waits until a new JP network connection is made then moves towards it and continues onward.

In this scenario it would make sense to have a set limit on the number of wormholes allowed to be active at any one time in the galaxy, for nothing else other than CPU power and the devestation multiple forces could create. But it would mean you have the chance of occasionally coming across entire worlds that have been glassed, with mountains of wrecks in system from where the Invaders swept aside an NPR in their purge. In addition there would be genuine reasons to try and find any active wormholes and develop access traties with an NPR if you happen to have the technology to close them, for both your civilizations benefit.


I think these methods could give an interesting dynamic to both these spoilers and force you to have very different ways of dealing with them, in addition I don't think either requires a massive overhaul of the code they already use, just a small expansion on them. As for the final spoiler race I don't think much needs to be done, curently they fit their role and lore well and looking at the second idea changes it makes perfect sense with how often they are encountered.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #601 on: October 11, 2018, 06:39:19 AM »
Something I have thought a about several times are the mineral report.

It is showing at the end "Projected Usage"... this is all nice and such but I really would like to have Yearly Projected Usage" this would be much better to know the rate at which minerals are consumed over one year versus the incoming minerals to that site.
 
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Offline Father Tim

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #602 on: October 12, 2018, 04:44:36 AM »
I had a few thoughts about spoilers today.

<SNIP>



I quite like your idea of Star Swarm 'Princesses' spreading to neighbouring systems, but I would hate to see the Swarm start using missiles.  They're pretty much the only faction that don't, and I want more non-missile-users, not less.

As for the Invaders, I haven't encountered them enough to form a really solid opinion.  Generally when I find a wormhole it means the death of my exploration cruiser, so that system gets marked 'off limits'.  On the extremely rare occasions when a wormhole opens in one of my inner systems, half my fleet (or more) is immediately stationed there to kill anything that comes through.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #603 on: October 12, 2018, 05:30:31 AM »
I will be revisiting every spoiler race to make them more interesting, plus I plan to add new spoiler races. Some details below for the existing spoiler changes if you want them:

1) Precursors now have 'real' ground forces rather than the pop-up robots. They are still robotic but now you will be fighting Centurions and Praetorian Combat Mechs (plus other types). You will also be able to damage abandoned installations so wiping them out from orbit will no longer be a good option. Because the AI needs to worry about fuel, Precursors may also deploy harvesters and logistics infrastructure to support their forces. Finally, they will have a more consistent approach to the composition of the forces, which will vary by game. This is all coded.

2) Swarm will be expanded to include more ship types, although still no missiles. Eventually, they may become similar to Tyranids from WH40k. They will also have ground forces, which will probably use vast numbers of low quality units on front-line attack, supported by occasional very powerful units.

3) Invaders, which were inspired by Andromedans from SFB will move more in that direction. They will have a consistent plan, rather than being a random menace, and will have bases that support their inter-galactic invasion, rather than wormholes. You will be able to defeat that invasion by destroying the bases.


 
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Offline Ranged66

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #604 on: October 15, 2018, 05:45:33 AM »
A suggestion on the ground combat:

Population could contribute some troops/strength as well, depending on the loyalty and happiness of the planet.  A planet that loves its empire will have many patriotic citizens taking up arms themselves to help fend off the invaders, while a planet that already hates the ruling empire might even aid the invaders in getting captured.
 
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Offline amram

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #605 on: October 17, 2018, 02:35:21 AM »
Quote from: Ranged66
A suggestion on the ground combat:

Population could contribute some troops/strength as well. . . snip. . .
I would tend to agree that some of the citizenry would volunteer if it seemed to them there was a need to.   

A few questions come to mind if we consider the citizenry rising up to join the fight:
  • Can they leave the infrastructure that supports them in hostile environments to go fight?
  • Are they self armed in entirety, or to some percentage?
    • If not self armed, can the soldiers arm them and if so, how many guns can they distribute? Presumably 100k soldiers do not have enough guns to arm 4 million volunteers.   You have probably already lost the orbitals so good luck shipping in more guns before the fight is over.
    • If they are self armed, do all civilians possess a gun or only some fraction.  Does the fraction that volunteer apply only to the armed percentage, or the total population yielding both armed and unarmed volunteers
    • What value, if any, might unarmed volunteers hold?  Some bonus to recovery/replacement rates for lost personnel?
  • Should player government and/or commander traits and/or administrator traits be used to influence the expectation/willingness to accept/seek out volunteers?
  • Is there a limit to how many will be useful at any given task?  Absurd example, 1 million civvies trying to do the work that was done by 100 personnel will probably get nothing done, just get in each other's way.
    • Is there a tipping point?  Seems reasonable that while too many would be detrimental, too few would benefit from adding some more.
    • Are there any roles they might be a viable substitute?  Seems plausible that for any such role, while too few and too many both don't get enough done, the optimal quantity might also not get enough done.
  • Should they be affected by research as if they were a ground force unit?  I would think yes, today we can buy guns far better than we could have in the 1800's, research tends to advance what we can obtain.
  • Can they leave the infrastructure to venture out into the hostile atmosphere to be resistance fighters?
    • If not, you won't be doing much resisting staying bottled up in the domes
    • If you can leave the dome to resist, how likely are people to resist knowing the hostiles can simply vent every dome they encounter and let your supplies run out to end you.
    • If its a breathable atmosphere, then resistance in any taken populated areas seems plausible.   Outright combat or just a modifier to efficiencies?
  • Is there really a point where the civvies would be so disloyal as to turn on you?
    • The grass would have to be known, not thought, but known to be greener on the other side of the fence before they turn on you.   Wealthier, benevolent, and have treated conquered planets well already?  The civvies might just try to trade you in for a better life.
    • xenophobia, biological/environmental compatibility, and ability to even communicate is likely to be a factor.   Even if the grass is greener, do they leave the planet suitable for you, or terraform it to them and leave you restricted to infrastructure in perpetuity?
    • if you know the grass is definitely greener right here, then its a choice between helping and apathy, not rebellion.   If the invaders are known to mistreat the conquered, apathy is less likely, if they are known to exterminate it seems absurd, and in both cases, rebellion/assisting the invaders seems incredibly unlikely.

Perhaps none of that matters at all and it all simply hides behind abstractions, and you get 'given' a number of civilian combat units presumed to have equal traits but lesser abilities than standard soldiers, at the cost of some population loss, and what you do with them is up to you.   Presumably once the battle is over any surviving volunteers auto disband and rejoin the population.
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #606 on: October 17, 2018, 04:03:10 AM »
A suggestion on the ground combat:

Population could contribute some troops/strength as well, depending on the loyalty and happiness of the planet.  A planet that loves its empire will have many patriotic citizens taking up arms themselves to help fend off the invaders, while a planet that already hates the ruling empire might even aid the invaders in getting captured.

The 19th century was the time when conscription ruled, and it was all about who could get the most men into the field, but since then, total manpower became less and less important compared to the amount of weapons you can afford, which is why we have many more professional armies again.
In Aurora the cost of equipment and weapons is likely only to rise, and the value of people without the proper equipment and the proper training to use it will fall.
Loyalty might matter in how easy it is to pacify a planet, but generally I'd consider the value of untrained volunteers nil, and if you do want to train a militia, you can spam large quantities of PWL equipped light infantry to fit the bill.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #607 on: October 17, 2018, 05:55:32 AM »
The 19th century was the time when conscription ruled, and it was all about who could get the most men into the field, but since then, total manpower became less and less important compared to the amount of weapons you can afford, which is why we have many more professional armies again.

Isn't that just because there have been very few straight up actual wars between large modern forces of similar powers?

I mean sure you can point to things like Desert Storm or the 2003 Invasion of Iraq but desert warfare is a bit special and tend to disproportionately favoring the side with a technological edge and air-supremacy, since there is nowhere to hide.

I don't think the Modern US forces would have done equally well if they had to go back into the jungles in Vietnam for example and fight man to man against an enemy that for all intents and purposes can afford to arm somewhere in the ballpark of 100-1000 men for the same $ price as getting a single US soldier there costs. And this holds true pretty much no matter how advanced weapons or how much firepower you have. The limitation isn't in either firepower, range or accuracy of weapons if you will be fighting close range combat in low visibility conditions.

The combat ability of untrained men also depends greatly on morale and motivation. If your fighting in defense of your home for the survival of your race against alien slime scum your probably a bit more motivated than if your fighting for a corrupt middle eastern dictator that hides in a bunker and expects you to die so he can conquer more oil and become even richer.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #608 on: October 17, 2018, 05:57:41 AM »
A suggestion on the ground combat:

Population could contribute some troops/strength as well, depending on the loyalty and happiness of the planet.  A planet that loves its empire will have many patriotic citizens taking up arms themselves to help fend off the invaders, while a planet that already hates the ruling empire might even aid the invaders in getting captured.

The 19th century was the time when conscription ruled, and it was all about who could get the most men into the field, but since then, total manpower became less and less important compared to the amount of weapons you can afford, which is why we have many more professional armies again.
In Aurora the cost of equipment and weapons is likely only to rise, and the value of people without the proper equipment and the proper training to use it will fall.
Loyalty might matter in how easy it is to pacify a planet, but generally I'd consider the value of untrained volunteers nil, and if you do want to train a militia, you can spam large quantities of PWL equipped light infantry to fit the bill.

True... but increase in weapon power have also shown that asymmetric warfare have become way more dangerous as well. In fact asymmetric warfare are extremely dangerous today, what if they could be supplied things like nukes and the like. Just the introduction of the regular gun with its ease of use and lethality have shown how powerful or difficult it is to fight an enemy that have no uniform and defend no particular ground, tanks are virtually useless as are air-force and the like.

I think Aurora could simulate asymmetric warfare as well as regular warfare since they are both equally important.

Problem with asymmetric warfare is that it is purely a political, cultural or ethical driven and you can only defend against it with force and fight it with soft methods.

Aurora currently only deal with conventional warfare. The more powerful weapons get the more dangerous asymmetric warfare will become.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2018, 06:00:01 AM by Jorgen_CAB »
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #609 on: October 17, 2018, 11:02:37 AM »
It has always been difficult to fight against an enemy that has no uniform, nor needs to defend any particular ground.

This is true today, it'll be true tomorrow and it has been true in history.

Historically that has been fought either through law enforcement efforts or flat out genocide. The only way to fight such an enemy is by denying them anything to hide behind, and you can do that by convincing the general population that they're better served ratting them out, or by ensuring there's no general population left to support them.

The gun has not really changed this fact. A war still needs the resources to pursue that war.

The only thing that has changed in this equation is that people in general have grown less tolerant of genocide and similar tactics to pursue the conclusion of an asymmetrical war.
 

Offline King-Salomon

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #610 on: October 19, 2018, 03:45:15 PM »
Thinking about ground combat again:

maybe combat in deadly environment (pressure, temperature, breathable air) should be much more deadly than fighting in an earth-like environment..

I mean, a simple hole in a pressure-armour would kill the soldier in these while it would maybe just scratch or wound him on earth... you can train you troops for better fighting in theses areas but that does not result in a less deadly environment if the breather/suit/vehicle is penetrated

to add these in combat looses could make fighting in not earth-like environments much more interesting (and would give some races with other environment stats more exclusive pro/cons) nothing too strange but maybe something like this would work : factor for casualties = 1 + colony costs of the planet   [with  colony costs capmax 2)   so there would be up to 3 times more looses in a deadly environment when fighting the same battle as on earth...

wouldn't make much difference when colony cost is for both sides the same, but attacking a high pressure species (or maybe spoilers) on their high pressure home planet would be much of an achievement...
 

Offline Ranged66

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #611 on: October 20, 2018, 04:41:44 AM »
In Aurora VB, civilian spaceliners act like colony ships with low capacity.  They won't move unless there are destinations that normaly colony ships would visit too available.

Small change suggestion: Make civilian spaceliners able to ferry their tourists between stable planets too.  This could add some other interesting elements like beauty/tourism scores for planets.  A world with large rings or moons of gas giants could be great destinations for those luxury liners because of the spectacle in the skies above.

Could even make them travel between uncolonised worlds in gated systems to act like cruise ships, loiter around a bit in orbit with a beautiful view before leaving again.  Or add the possibility to make luxury bases/space stations at those beautiful locations that luxury liners will ferry tourists to and from.

It's little fluff stuff like this that makes me love space 4x games when they do it.  Distant Worlds has part of these too and you can make some decent income by maintaining your empire's wealthiest citizens with resort bases.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #612 on: October 20, 2018, 12:12:57 PM »
Quote from: Ranged66
A suggestion on the ground combat:

Population could contribute some troops/strength as well. . . snip. . .
I would tend to agree that some of the citizenry would volunteer if it seemed to them there was a need to.   

A few questions come to mind if we consider the citizenry rising up to join the fight:
  • Can they leave the infrastructure that supports them in hostile environments to go fight?
  • Are they self armed in entirety, or to some percentage?
    • If not self armed, can the soldiers arm them and if so, how many guns can they distribute? Presumably 100k soldiers do not have enough guns to arm 4 million volunteers.   You have probably already lost the orbitals so good luck shipping in more guns before the fight is over.
    • If they are self armed, do all civilians possess a gun or only some fraction.  Does the fraction that volunteer apply only to the armed percentage, or the total population yielding both armed and unarmed volunteers
    • What value, if any, might unarmed volunteers hold?  Some bonus to recovery/replacement rates for lost personnel?
  • Should player government and/or commander traits and/or administrator traits be used to influence the expectation/willingness to accept/seek out volunteers?
  • Is there a limit to how many will be useful at any given task?  Absurd example, 1 million civvies trying to do the work that was done by 100 personnel will probably get nothing done, just get in each other's way.
    • Is there a tipping point?  Seems reasonable that while too many would be detrimental, too few would benefit from adding some more.
    • Are there any roles they might be a viable substitute?  Seems plausible that for any such role, while too few and too many both don't get enough done, the optimal quantity might also not get enough done.
  • Should they be affected by research as if they were a ground force unit?  I would think yes, today we can buy guns far better than we could have in the 1800's, research tends to advance what we can obtain.
  • Can they leave the infrastructure to venture out into the hostile atmosphere to be resistance fighters?
    • If not, you won't be doing much resisting staying bottled up in the domes
    • If you can leave the dome to resist, how likely are people to resist knowing the hostiles can simply vent every dome they encounter and let your supplies run out to end you.
    • If its a breathable atmosphere, then resistance in any taken populated areas seems plausible.   Outright combat or just a modifier to efficiencies?
  • Is there really a point where the civvies would be so disloyal as to turn on you?
    • The grass would have to be known, not thought, but known to be greener on the other side of the fence before they turn on you.   Wealthier, benevolent, and have treated conquered planets well already?  The civvies might just try to trade you in for a better life.
    • xenophobia, biological/environmental compatibility, and ability to even communicate is likely to be a factor.   Even if the grass is greener, do they leave the planet suitable for you, or terraform it to them and leave you restricted to infrastructure in perpetuity?
    • if you know the grass is definitely greener right here, then its a choice between helping and apathy, not rebellion.   If the invaders are known to mistreat the conquered, apathy is less likely, if they are known to exterminate it seems absurd, and in both cases, rebellion/assisting the invaders seems incredibly unlikely.

Perhaps none of that matters at all and it all simply hides behind abstractions, and you get 'given' a number of civilian combat units presumed to have equal traits but lesser abilities than standard soldiers, at the cost of some population loss, and what you do with them is up to you.   Presumably once the battle is over any surviving volunteers auto disband and rejoin the population.
No matter how advanced the weapons get, conscripts will always be useful.  Maybe not on the front line, but there's always room for more workers behind the lines.  This is likely to only get MORE true as combat units require more and more supplies.  These conscripts can be building and operating logistics infrastructure; driving trucks, paving roads, laying rail lines.  They can also be building emplacements; you don't need Navy SEALS and laser guns to pour concrete.
 

Offline DEEPenergy

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #613 on: October 20, 2018, 02:08:00 PM »
I think this has been talked about before but remove the restriction that jump engines can only jump ships as large as the ship they are mounted on. In other words a 4000 ton ship should be able to jump an 8000 ton ship if the jump engine is rated for that size.
 

Offline Shuul

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions
« Reply #614 on: October 20, 2018, 05:01:01 PM »
I wonder if it is possible to add some tooltips with C# aurora?
 
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