v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[serger]

In atmosphere, this energy most immediately goes to the surrounding air which produces the characteristic shockwave most are familiar with. It's not true that the shockwave decays as 1/r³ as the superheated atmosphere still gets pushed out with the blast and that energy will be transferred to a target, although the actual nature of the damage may vary substantially due to the lower per-particle energies involved. Thus 1/r² is the right first approximation.

Well, I must agree that 1/r^3 is too simplistic - it's about air ball heating, not shockwave: in the air (0-5000m) shockwave is about 1/3 of nuke's energy, while 1/6 to 1/5 is heated air ball (that is around 1/r^3 decay).
Another 1/3 is UV to IR reemission, that will not produce momentary inner damage, though it can overheat the ship.

Speaking of small light life-pods - I'd say they have small chances to withstand nuke closer than several kms, and in 5 sec they have no chance to go this far in normal space.

Though, on the other hand, Aurora Lore is telling us that these velocities are effectively projective, so it's not clear what Aether's velocity it will represent.
To avoid these questions, I'm supplementing Aurora Lore for myself with a notion, that guns and emergency catapults are just transferring their pods and impacts through Aether, not through normal space, so it's like small hyper-jumps, and they are obviously able to open it in any direction even through the planet body (though haven't enough precision to target inside another hull). So, it's quite convenient, that life-pods are jumping outside of the ship at the distances up to 10 000 km nearly instantly, and so they are quite safe from explosions, that destroyed their ship.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

How complete is newtonian aurora and is it under development or is it considered finished? Is there a download?

Abandoned, at least for the foreseeable future. The problem was that it was actually quite hard to run an Aurora-scale game using real-world mechanics

If I go back to this in future, I would probably keep to planets and restrict the need for long interplanetary flight (some form of jump engine that can function outside gravity wells). That would keep speeds down for combat and avoid the long-range travel. This is years away though, if at all.

[SpaceMarine]

Hey steve, I just wanna say thank you for some of the great changes coming in 1.13 especially to carriers but in regards to that would you be willing to look into the UI for using carriers and finding ways to improve it (I know suggesting to improve the UI practically blasphemous) as i feel thats the main thing stopping people from using carriers, these changes that are already in 1.13 will make beam fighters much m ore viable and will also buff carriers across the board but ease of use is the main obstacle so am wondering if that would be possible.

And I would be willing to help with this as i have various suggestions on how this could be improved, at the very least some things that would just help reduce overall confusion with how the interface is currently.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Maybe start a new thread specifically for carrier ops suggestions. I am using beam fighters in my current campaign and they are proving very useful.

[SpaceMarine]

Maybe start a new thread specifically for carrier ops suggestions. I am using beam fighters in my current campaign and they are proving very useful.

Alright also awesome to hear as we all know steve whenever you start using stuff in your campaigns you tend to pay it extra attention so this would be a great time to do so.

[chrislocke2000]

The further 1.13 changes look great but I feel that large ships are getting a lot of love here that is taking away some of the Rock Paper Scissors v smaller ships. Would be good to look at some up side to smaller ships to balance this - maybe another look at efficiency benefits of multi slipway shipyards for example.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The further 1.13 changes look great but I feel that large ships are getting a lot of love here that is taking away some of the Rock Paper Scissors v smaller ships. Would be good to look at some up side to smaller ships to balance this - maybe another look at efficiency benefits of multi slipway shipyards for example.

Small ships already have a pretty significant building advantage over larger ships. You need less people to build small ships faster, you also can get more yard space faster up and running to pump out smaller ships faster than larger ships.

Large ships is long term more effective as you get more bang for the buck per tonnage which is important long term.. but in order to gain that benefit you need to invest more into research and infrastructure.

I think the balance are relatively good between them to be honest.

[Borealis4x]

Would Steve consider adding in a different resource to limit ground installations other than population?

I hate how Research Facilities, which should have a very small, if any, population requirement due to the specialized skills needed to work there, required a population of 1,000,000!

Even if you assume that a vast majority are supporting industries, that is still far, far more people involved than there should. You can't build secret moon research bases without shipping literally a million people to said "secret" base which is a big shame.

What if Research Facilities required a huge amount of power from a new Power Grid ground installation?

[Iceranger]

The further 1.13 changes look great but I feel that large ships are getting a lot of love here that is taking away some of the Rock Paper Scissors v smaller ships. Would be good to look at some up side to smaller ships to balance this - maybe another look at efficiency benefits of multi slipway shipyards for example.

In C# generally large ships get loved much more than smaller ships, compared to what we had in VB6

[captainwolfer]

In atmosphere, this energy most immediately goes to the surrounding air which produces the characteristic shockwave most are familiar with. It's not true that the shockwave decays as 1/r³ as the superheated atmosphere still gets pushed out with the blast and that energy will be transferred to a target, although the actual nature of the damage may vary substantially due to the lower per-particle energies involved. Thus 1/r² is the right first approximation.

Well, I must agree that 1/r^3 is too simplistic - it's about air ball heating, not shockwave: in the air (0-5000m) shockwave is about 1/3 of nuke's energy, while 1/6 to 1/5 is heated air ball (that is around 1/r^3 decay).
Another 1/3 is UV to IR reemission, that will not produce momentary inner damage, though it can overheat the ship.

Speaking of small light life-pods - I'd say they have small chances to withstand nuke closer than several kms, and in 5 sec they have no chance to go this far in normal space.

Though, on the other hand, Aurora Lore is telling us that these velocities are effectively projective, so it's not clear what Aether's velocity it will represent.
To avoid these questions, I'm supplementing Aurora Lore for myself with a notion, that guns and emergency catapults are just transferring their pods and impacts through Aether, not through normal space, so it's like small hyper-jumps, and they are obviously able to open it in any direction even through the planet body (though haven't enough precision to target inside another hull). So, it's quite convenient, that life-pods are jumping outside of the ship at the distances up to 10 000 km nearly instantly, and so they are quite safe from explosions, that destroyed their ship.

Oh, a simple explanation would be: The nuclear warheads detonate in the Aether, instead of in the real world, because the majority of Trans-Newtonian ships are in the Aether. Thus, life pods don't have to get far away, they simply have to drop out of the Aether, so that the explosions aren't in the same dimension as the life pods.

[xenoscepter]

The further 1.13 changes look great but I feel that large ships are getting a lot of love here that is taking away some of the Rock Paper Scissors v smaller ships. Would be good to look at some up side to smaller ships to balance this - maybe another look at efficiency benefits of multi slipway shipyards for example.

 - I'd handily disagree, to be honest with you. The Point Defense changes mean smaller escorts are more viable as they no longer need the same overhead for FCS. Having all Size-Reduction Tech for missile launchers available from turn one, even in a Conventional Start, buffs all missile ships across the board and not just large ones. The changes to Active and Passive Sensor models have hugely benefited smaller ships over larger ones. With engines being able to be designed in sub 1HS models, truly tiny fighters are possible for the first time ever. Fighter Sized Fuel Tanks and the introduction of smaller Maintenance Storage Bays have benefited smaller ships tremendously.

 - The only changes I can think of that were heavily skewed towards larger vessels are the shield changes and the change where Beam weapons now consume MSP.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

The further 1.13 changes look great but I feel that large ships are getting a lot of love here that is taking away some of the Rock Paper Scissors v smaller ships. Would be good to look at some up side to smaller ships to balance this - maybe another look at efficiency benefits of multi slipway shipyards for example.

 - I'd handily disagree, to be honest with you. The Point Defense changes mean smaller escorts are more viable as they no longer need the same overhead for FCS. Having all Size-Reduction Tech for missile launchers available from turn one, even in a Conventional Start, buffs all missile ships across the board and not just large ones. The changes to Active and Passive Sensor models have hugely benefited smaller ships over larger ones. With engines being able to be designed in sub 1HS models, truly tiny fighters are possible for the first time ever. Fighter Sized Fuel Tanks and the introduction of smaller Maintenance Storage Bays have benefited smaller ships tremendously.

 - The only changes I can think of that were heavily skewed towards larger vessels are the shield changes and the change where Beam weapons now consume MSP.

Change to maintenance model, increased pressure on officer corp (b/c of admin commands+multiple officers/ship+officer bonuses are a bigger deal now), shock damage rules, fuel efficiency, electronic warfare

All of these changes benefit bigger ships>smaller ships imo. I probably missed some.

[xenoscepter]

Change to maintenance model, increased pressure on officer corp (b/c of admin commands+multiple officers/ship+officer bonuses are a bigger deal now), shock damage rules, fuel efficiency, electronic warfare

All of these changes benefit bigger ships>smaller ships imo. I probably missed some.

 - Fuel and ECM/ECCM was always skewed to larger ships anyway, so that's somewhat of a moot point. Shock damage is certainly skewed in favor of large ships, but then again small ships tend to be more fragile as a rule anyway, so it's also kind of moot. Increased pressure on the officer corps is certainly something that encourages larger ships. The maintenance module doesn't favor one or the other; in my opinion the old model very clearly favored larger ships over smaller ones, as any maintenance threshold over a ship's tonnage was effectively "wasted".

[nuclearslurpee]

Change to maintenance model, increased pressure on officer corp (b/c of admin commands+multiple officers/ship+officer bonuses are a bigger deal now), shock damage rules, fuel efficiency, electronic warfare

All of these changes benefit bigger ships>smaller ships imo. I probably missed some.

 - Fuel and ECM/ECCM was always skewed to larger ships anyway, so that's somewhat of a moot point. Shock damage is certainly skewed in favor of large ships, but then again small ships tend to be more fragile as a rule anyway, so it's also kind of moot. Increased pressure on the officer corps is certainly something that encourages larger ships. The maintenance module doesn't favor one or the other; in my opinion the old model very clearly favored larger ships over smaller ones, as any maintenance threshold over a ship's tonnage was effectively "wasted".

Increased pressure on the officer corps is a bit of a moot point - part of the C# design for officers was to give each rank a role in a mature fleet through admin commands (for high-ranking officers e.g. admirals) as well as the non-command officer positions e.g. Aux Control, Main Engineering, and so on. Given the 2:1 ratio between successive ranks (if auto-promote is used) it is I think quite rare to find ships that would use for instance one CAPT, two CDRs, and four LCDRs thus there are plenty of lower-rank commanders left over to command smaller ships. At the same time, while a larger ship class is broadly better as the core of a fleet there are many ancillary roles which must be filled for which smaller ship classes are often the best solution. No one needs a 100,000-ton dedicated sensor ship for instance, 5,000 tons will do.

I think perhaps the issue some people have is that the game mechanics do favor a fleet design that includes large capital ships, and if one wants to stick to smaller ships this is admittedly not going to lead to the best efficiency. However, Aurora is IMO realistic in this regard if we assume that loosely replicating IRL naval history is realism (in the immortal words of a famous sci-fi character, "There's always a bigger fish warship"). That said, I think the mechanics really support a well-designed balanced fleet with ships at different size points to fulfill different roles but based around the capital ships as the core of a fleet - again, fairly realistic.

That being said, if officers are a problem this suggests that perhaps the player needs to invest a little bit more into academy construction to support their expanding fleet. I certainly tend to underestimate how much I need another academy until I actually do in fact need it.

[tornakrelic]

Does ticking the 'No Maintenance Required' box get rid of weapon failure maintenance as well as standard maintenance in v. 1. 13? I know ships would still need MSP for damage control but I haven't been able to tell if the ships weapons still fail.