Lost Mechanics

[Bgreman (OP)]

Instead of opening a new thread for each "lost mechanics" question I have, I'll just post them all in this thread.

First, to collate my prior threads:

This thread lays out how civilians pick ships to build: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4825.0.html

This thread describes how commander health affects them: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4817.0.html

This thread describes unrest mechanics and how populations change Political Status: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4831.0.html

[Bgreman (OP)]

My next question is orbital bombardment and ground combat collateral damage.  I can't seem to find a post (either because it is lost or my search skills are terrible) for the orbital bombardment mechanics (population damage, dust/radiation, and installation damage).  Additionally, the Ground Combat rules post(s) do not include information about collateral damage.

Could I get some information on those mechanics for posterity?

[sublight]

This probably isn't 100% right, but as I understand things orbital bombardment generates 1 point of dust and radiation per point of warhead damage by default. The Enhanced Radiation tech line can alter this.

A direct population bombardment destroys one structure per point of damage, so a strength 4 warhead could destroy 4 automines or other non-infrastructure installations.

Bombardment of PDC or ground forces appears to do half damage to the associated population, so a strength 4 warhead striking a PDC could destroy 2 automines or other structures on the planet.

Ground combat collateral damage appears not to generate radiation or dust, but otherwise works similar to bombardment collateral damage. It appears that populations suffer the equivalent of a strength 1 hit if any defending ground force unit takes damage, but it may be 1 point of damage per damaged defending ground unit. It's been a while since I've had more than one colony defender take damage in the same cycle. Also, I don't know how/if this applies to attacking forces.

Civilian losses run roughly at 0.025m per point of damage, at least on low population worlds. Infrastructure gets damaged too, but I'm not sure what the correlation is or if there is some random variance.

[Steve Walmsley]

My next question is orbital bombardment and ground combat collateral damage.  I can't seem to find a post (either because it is lost or my search skills are terrible) for the orbital bombardment mechanics (population damage, dust/radiation, and installation damage).  Additionally, the Ground Combat rules post(s) do not include information about collateral damage.

Could I get some information on those mechanics for posterity?

Planetary bombardment causes 100,000 deaths per point of damage, creates one point of dust per point of damage, creates radiation damage equal to the radiation damage rating of the missile and inflicts infrastructure damage equal to (Pop Death in millions * 20). It also damage installations according to the following process.

A planetary 'damage allocation chart' is created for each attack. This is similar to the DACs for ship classes. Each installation has a target size so each line on the DAC is equal to the target size of each type of installation (e.g. construction factories) multiplied by the number of those installations on the planet. So if all you have on the planet is 100 construction factories, 90 fighter factories and 10 ordnance factories, the chance for each type to be hit is 50%, 45% and 5% respectively. Some installations are larger and therefore are more likely to be hit. For example, Research Labs, Genetic Modification Centres, Military Academies, Sector Command and GFTF are all size 20, Spaceports are size 40, Civilian Mining Complexes are size 10, Terraforming Installation are size 6 and Deep Space Tracking Stations are size 2. Everything else is size 1.

Collateral damage is a little complex and based on the readiness losses taken by both sides. Here is the pseudo code for when damage to attacking units is checked

Base Destruction Chance = (10 / Combat Ratio) * 10
Destruction Chance = Base Destruction Chance / (Current Morale / 100)
Readiness Loss Modifier = 1
If Destruction Chance > 1000 Then Readiness Loss Modifier = Destruction Chance / 1000
If RandomNumber(1000) <= DestructionChance Then Readiness Loss = (RandomNumber(50) / (Current Morale / 100)) * Readiness Loss Modifier
Collateral Damage = (Readiness Loss / Readiness Loss Modifier)

For damage to defenders, the code is the same except for the first line which is now:
Base Destruction Chance = Combat Ratio * 100

All the collateral damage is added together and then a planetary bombardment attack is carried out with a strength equal to Collateral Damage / 50. However, in this case the population casulaties are lower than a standard planetary bombardment and are equal to 25,000 x damage. There is also no radiation damage.

Steve

[Bgreman (OP)]

Working on sussing out the parameters for meson cannons, it looks like:

Range is approximately quadratic with respect to focal size but there are rounding issues.  The same goes for PWR.

Size is approximately linear with respect to focal size; I'm assuming rounding issues cause the deviations.  The same goes for HTK, though the deviations are larger in this case.

Focusing tech acts as a straight multiplier to the range, but also has an effect on cost.

In general, the costs, materials, and development cost of components is difficult to figure out from the input parameters, but the general rule of thumb of "higher tech and/or bigger = more expensive and difficult to research" is straightforward.

[Bgreman (OP)]

Requesting info on Ruin Mechanics.  How does the xenoarchaelogy team's rating affect the number of installations discovered, and the length of the xeno team's efforts?  How does the xeno rating for the engineering brigade affect things?  What is the base rate for installation recovery?

What can be recovered, and what are the tech chances for each type of installation recovered?

All this stuff is in a few threads scattered on the forum, but some of it is obsolete and it is certainly decentralized.

[ollobrains]

wasnt it u needed a xeno team and engineering brigade to recover the abandoned facilities and avoid the issues that can arrise out of digging around in those old ruin areas

[Erik L]

You need a Xeno team to decipher the ruins and open them for exploitation. An Engineer brigade is needed to recover material and such. It is advisable to put a couple of pure combat ground units with the engineers as they may activate robotic defenders.

[ussugu]

It is advisable to put a couple of pure combat ground units with the engineers as they may activate robotic defenders.

YES!  Played many games and explored lots of ruins and never saw the defenders.  Then, last game, I found some and I was totally unprepared for them.  Planet was way off and took a lot of shuffling around to overcome them.  I prepare lots better now.   

[Bgreman (OP)]

I'm aware of the broad strokes of how this works.  I'm asking for the specific numbers, like the other posts in this thread.