Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Ulzgoroth]

What's the resolution when a weapon hit with low damage hits a ship part with high HTK?

I've been wondering if my sandblasting with 10cm railguns is suffering because of this being worse than linear.

[Garfunkel]

HTK tanking is a valid thing because if the component isn't outright destroyed, nothing happens. So yeah, sandblasting against big commercial ships that have multiple huge engines (these have loads of HTK) can get ridiculous. Or that's my vague memory of how it goes.

[Snoman314]

From memory, if there's penetrating damage, after the roll to randomly select the next component to take damage, then if the damage is equal to or greater than the HTK, the component is destroyed, remaining damage reduced by the HTK, and then another component is selected if any damage remains. If damage is less than HTK, then a random roll is made to determine destruction, where the chances of destruction are damage/HTK. So a 10 HTK component getting hit with 1 penetrating damage has a 10% chance of being destroyed. 90% of the time the damage is lost.

I'm not sure of my math, but I think that if you had 10x 1 damage hits on a 10 HTK component, you'd have a 65% chance of destroying it after the 10 hits.

[Ulzgoroth]

A wiki check seems to indicate that it was linear in old Aurora and that probably hasn't been changed.

Which means that statistically doing damage in small doses is as good as large (armor aside), but it does carry increased variance.

[smoelf]

I have sent a diplomatic ship to a newly discovered alien race, however, it seems that in all systems where I have contact with them, they are requested or demanding that I leave the system with my diplo ship. Is this is function of their xenophobia? It seems to me that diplo ships are the only way to increase relationship with them to be able to enter their systems with other ships, but how will that be possible, if even my diplo ship is requested to leave?

[db48x]

There are five levels of “request”, as I recall (the wiki no doubt has exact details, and there are many forum posts from Steve to read). Each one represents a higher level of importance that the race holds for the system. Each one is accompanied by a deduction of points from that race’s opinion of your race. The amount of the deduction is determined by the level of importance, but also by the tonnage of the ship(s) that they are sending the messages to, and whether or not ships of those ship’s class have ever been observed by the other race to fire any weapons. Edit: specifically, they will completely ignore a single ship provided it has a diplomacy module, it has civilian engines, they don’t know it has weapons, it is less than 10,000 tons, and it’s not in a particularly valuable system. If it is in a valuable system, but all the other conditions are met (or the race has only one system) then they won’t ignore it but they will only penalize you 10% of normal.  Xenophobia does also matter, as a xenophobic race automatically rates all ships as being more threatening than a non–xenophobic race.

Simultaneously, your ships with diplomacy modules are sending reassuring platitudes back, which raise their opinion of your race. The amount that their opinion is increased is mostly related to the diplo ship’s commander’s diplomacy skill, plus a random factor. There are no messages at all that this is happening. I have in the past suggested that the ambassador should occasionally send a progress report back to indicate to the player that he is doing something, but to no avail. Edit: their xenophobia also reduces the amount that their opinion is increased.

If you manage to raise their opinion of you to +200, they will ask to sign a non–aggression pact (higher level treaties do exist, so don’t stop there). If it goes below −100, they will start shooting. Since all that matters is the net change in opinion, it is perfectly possible to leave an inoffensive diplomacy ship in one of their systems and still gain points every cycle, provided the demand to leave isn’t too strong. You want to find a system where they have a colony and at least occasional ship traffic that isn’t their home system. Or you want your diplo ship to follow one of their exploration ships around.

[Hazard]

Or you can do the proper imperialistic thing and remind the locals as to their position with a more energetic sort of diplomacy, kinetic, plasma, or laser energies involved as desired, but most will really hate you after that for some very valid reasons.

[db48x]

Or you can do the proper imperialistic thing and remind the locals as to their position with a more energetic sort of diplomacy, kinetic, plasma, or laser energies involved as desired, but most will really hate you after that for some very valid reasons.

And if they were xenophobic they would have hated you anyway.

[Ulzgoroth]

Ground combat: are there any contexts where HAC is a sensible weapon choice?

The case against: HAC has a wildly unbalanced AP/damage profile, with 5x AP and 2x damage. I don't believe there are any targets that achieve a similar distribution. For almost all units except infantry, armor is at most equal to HP. So in the ideal case where you manage to get a target that exactly matches your AP...the HAC will be generating less than half as many wounds as a HAV would do to its inadequate damage. And the HAV weighs less.

The closest thing to a good case for it would have to be found in infantry, since HPA infantry can have armor double their HP. But they still don't have a high armor multiplier, so you've got to be fighting up a steep tech gradient. If the enemy has armor 50% better than your weapons, that makes a good fit for MAC. For there to be any point in going to HAC you need an even higher ratio.

Am I missing something, or is it really only for fighting vastly superior infantry or handicapping yourself for the sake of roleplay?

[smoelf]

Is there a general consensus regarding recommended length of construction cycles?

I seem to remember from the early days of C# that some of the changes (including performance, I think) made it reasonable to consider reducing the construction cycle from 5 days to 1 day. However, in recent weeks I have come across several other elements that are calculated per construction cycle (such as CMC's), which has made me wonder if there is a balance consideration in the 5 day-cycle and if I should consider returning to that. As an example I might be getting more CMC's than expected if it makes a check every day instead of every 5 days.

[Steve Walmsley]

The game is balanced around 5-day cycles. I made a serious effort with C# for the generation chance of various events to be affected by increment length, but I can't guarantee I got them all.

[smoelf]

The game is balanced around 5-day cycles. I made a serious effort with C# for the generation chance of various events to be affected by increment length, but I can't guarantee I got them all.

Excellent. That also makes it a lot easier when starting new games, since I always forget how many seconds a day is 

[Zerkuron]

After a long pause I started Aurora again.

Downloaded the installation package for 1.13, put the 2.3 patch in followed by 2.3.1

Started a new (conventional) game with all difficulty settings at 100 (standard).

Noticed 1000 conv. construction industry generating 115 000 CP and one lab with 0 bonus generating 20 000 RP per year.

Is this the new normal? Or is something wrong with my game files?

[Steve Walmsley]

Is your decimal separator a comma?

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10637.0

[Zerkuron]

Is your decimal separator a comma?

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10637.0

I have tried both. But I think I found something.

For some reason my racial modifies are set to 100 instead of 1.
Creating a new game fixed it for me.

Sry for not looking at every potential cause of unexpected behaviour.