C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[sloanjh (OP)]

I have no problem with the idea of a threat that requires the player to actively patrol systems. However, there needs to be an in-game rationale and capability for that threat to exist. For 'pirates' to exist they need:

1) A shipyard to build their ships
2) Maintenance facilities to support them
3) Fuel Production facilities
4) Ordnance factories if they are missile-armed
5) Some way of building or acquiring all of the above and transporting/towing them to their destination
6) Population to man all of the above.
7) An economic rationale for their activity - why not use their ships for trade instead? Why is piracy more profitable or desirable when the potential (and likely) downside is destruction of their ships and loss of their lives?

It will be easier in C# Aurora to hide such facilities (due to reduced sensor ranges), but they still need to be created and moved to their destination. Also, the easiest way to destroy the 'pirates' would be to locate and destroy their support infrastructure so they would need defences for that too. I know 'Civilians' have support infrastructure we don't see but that infrastructure is not an active threat (and could be logically added if really needed).

BTW we aren't talking about a few guys in a skiff using RPGs to threaten a tanker. The 'pirates' in Aurora would be operating in deep space within the constraints of the Aurora economic model. Also, even if we draw parallels with Somali pirates, in the Aurora-verse the Western Powers would likely solve the problem by nuking the entire Somali coast.

Devil's advocating here:  I suspect very few pirates in the classic era (covered by the ultimate reference Sid Meier's Pirates! ) built their own ships.  Haven't done a lot of reading on it, but I suspect piracy was very much centered on non-aligned/un-incorporated population centers, which in turn is coupled to force deployment difficulty.  Or, as someone said, piracy is a criminal activity, not a nation-state activity (which is covered by privateering). 

So for piracy to be realistic, the government structure of Aurora would need to change to have much less of a "hive mind" model (referring to a conversation a year or so back about how much micro-ing players should do and how much control they should have over details of the empire - hive mind is 100% centralized control/microing) for the parts of the civilization - the pirates would "swim in the populace".  In this model, civilians would have exploration ships that would search for habitable worlds, and when they found them the civies would start their own colonies, with or without government assistance.  Those colonies wouldn't be part of your empire unless regularly visited by your military forces, and would act against the empire's interest if the player's back is turned.  A lot of this centers on communication time, sensor reach, ability to fingerprint a ship with sensor data, and transit time - if all ships in the empire are tracked in real time or if a merchant can transmit an ID of a raider, a pirate ship can't vanish back into the populace after striking.  It also probably requires a lot more small ship traffic, e.g. fighter or LAC size, in the civilian economy - I think most of the new world pirates were still a bunch of guys in skiffs (who would close and board rather than getting into broadside duels). 

So I see pirates as being in a small fast ship (that might be small enough able to be built in a factory rather than shipyard) that might have a popgun on board and/or has ability to land boarders.  This would lead civvies to also mount minimal weapons (to shoot the skiffs), which would give the opportunity for another type of pirate - the rogue merchant, which would be a well-armed merchie that would take other merchies.  This would also give them the excuse for showing up in a regular port which cargo of questionable origin - as long as the port authorities didn't examine the paper trail to well (lack of hive mind again) they could sell the cargo and take advantage of civvie maintenance facilities in the usual way.  Privateers would also fit into this model - they'd either be merchies with a letter of marque or custom-built light raiders.

As someone mentioned up-thread, piracy would be suppressed by having government forces exert control of populations through military or security forces, which would require changes to Aurora.

The problem with the above is that this isn't the way the civvie sector in Aurora is set up, because the game is set up with a high "hive mind" level.  Per the previous discussion, that's what a lot of players want, even if IMO it's unrealistic - a game where the player doesn't have any affect isn't a game, it's a simulation that you watch, so this is a gameplay/game fun decision.  The civvie sector in Aurora is also fairly highly simplified IMO - I suspect in a "real" Aurora civilization there's be a LOT more small intra-system small craft, and also a lot of short range inter-system craft that took advantage of the jump gate network.  It would be a lot of effort for Steve to set up the code to manage all this, along with the code to track criminality levels based on level of policing etc.

So while I think pirates are possible/likely using Aurora physics, I don't think the game's civvie simulation is rich enough yet to avoid having them seem like magic (appearing out of thin air).  Actually, if the civvie ships weren't track individually but were statistically generated it would make pirates a lot easier (they'd simply be another flavor of civvie generated), but that goes against where Steve wants to go with civvies.

John

[sloanjh (OP)]

On a somewhat related and possibly prerequisite note, an idea is perhaps some non-commercial civilian ships. Police frigates, pleasure yachts, bounty hunters, mercenaries, corporate guards, etc, some of which may be armed. They perform no actual function, just fly from place to place. They fight if hostile ships come in range, but dont go seeking enemies. They are armed with outdated tech (maybe 1-3 tech levels behind current tech, only created if the result > 0).

If they get destroyed, they cause a temporary small malus to wealth generation of colonies in nearby systems.

The function of these ships gameplay wise?
Battlefield terrain to use up attackers resources or forces them to avoid these ships (or get shot at)
Things for enemies to attack that hurts you less than a full nuclear assault on a homeworld or a lost fleet.
Raiding targets for small fleets
Hooks for potential future development such as pirates (Pirates dont build ships, they steal/buy these and use em till they break)

With regards to the pirates, I dont think pirates appearing to be civilian ships is going to work very well unless they only appear to be that way while inside sensor range. Can still be a bit noticable if they are off conventional trade routes.

This is the sort of change I'm talking about for intra-system traffic in my previous post.

John

[alex_brunius]

I have no problem with the idea of a threat that requires the player to actively patrol systems. However, there needs to be an in-game rationale and capability for that threat to exist. For 'pirates' to exist they need:

1) A shipyard to build their ships
2) Maintenance facilities to support them
3) Fuel Production facilities
4) Ordnance factories if they are missile-armed
5) Some way of building or acquiring all of the above and transporting/towing them to their destination
6) Population to man all of the above.
7) An economic rationale for their activity - why not use their ships for trade instead? Why is piracy more profitable or desirable when the potential (and likely) downside is destruction of their ships and loss of their lives?

It will be easier in C# Aurora to hide such facilities (due to reduced sensor ranges), but they still need to be created and moved to their destination. Also, the easiest way to destroy the 'pirates' would be to locate and destroy their support infrastructure so they would need defences for that too. I know 'Civilians' have support infrastructure we don't see but that infrastructure is not an active threat (and could be logically added if really needed).

BTW we aren't talking about a few guys in a skiff using RPGs to threaten a tanker. The 'pirates' in Aurora would be operating in deep space within the constraints of the Aurora economic model. Also, even if we draw parallels with Somali pirates, in the Aurora-verse the Western Powers would likely solve the problem by nuking the entire Somali coast.

I do have some ideas about spoilers or NPRs that will fulfill a 'raiding' function, using a logical rationale for their behaviour and with an economic support structure. However, having pirates in the classical sense is difficult to envision within the logical constraints of the game.

I totally agree that for piracy to make any sort of sense there are alot more other features that need to be in place first.

- Expanded Civilian trade, instead of a few large shipping companies that move bulk trade we need to have smaller civilian traffic that pirates can "hide" in or start small to take over smaller spaceships, which can be retrofitted to military
- Blurred lines betwen Civilian and Military ships, or at least the ability to convert between them.
- Expanded Civilian Economy, where flow of goods, people, wealth and raw materials as well as creation and consumption of goods/materials outside government control is better modeled.
--- ( part of above ) Civilian shipyards, so that pirates can buy or upgrade civilian ships into smaller military ships.
--- ( part of above ) Civilians that consume fuel and fuel trade, so that pirates can buy fuel outside of government control.
--- ( part of above ) Civilians that consume arms and arms trade, so that pirates can buy arms outside of government control.
--- ( part of above ) Civilians that need maintenance, so that pirates can buy maintenance services outside of government control.
--- ( part of above ) Civilian land combat units, so that pirates can recruit/gain control of such in use of boarding. ( Could also be very nice to have for uprisings )
- Colonies outside of government control, and the whole spectrum from lawful heavily protected core worlds to "wild west" fringe colony worlds where little to no government presence and control exists outside the main strategic mining operations.
- A way to raid and get past jump point blockades. If pirates are limited to a single system it won't be hard for a large Empire to flush them out. This is also needed if you want government raiding with "submarine style" military ships that can operate behind enemy lines and sap their supply-lines.
- A way for pirates to board Civilian freighters that is less risky and safe enough that they can be mostly guaranteed to be able to secure it's cargo.


The conclusion I draw is that the game needs to develop into a very performance heavy and likely micromanage heavy direction with a lot of civilian more activities modeled that might not be desirable for the playability of the game, if we want it to support a universe where piracy can happen. I see uprisings from unrest and long distance to capital / minimal government military presence as more realistic and fun and achievable goals on the road in this direction.

Ofcourse you can also just fudge it all and spawn free military ships for pirates, but I don't think that's a solution Steve or many of the fans of Aurora would like.

[Jovus]

Or, as someone said, piracy is a criminal activity, not a nation-state activity (which is covered by privateering).

Now there's a beautiful idea that would fulfill the 'space pirate' niche while making it make sense.

Pirates in Aurora don't exist. However, privateers do.

NPRs (and the player! very important!) can choose to, in a sense, subsidize piracy. These would definitely be civilian ships, and you'd start this by paying some money and clicking a toggle on at least one of your civilian shipping lines. Then, said shipping lines would be enabled to build military ships (and maybe salvagers?) that remain under civilian control, with the designs based on your current research in the same way as civ ships currently are.

These privateers (operating under a set of dedicated AIs handling formations, targets, naval philosophy, etc.) would then go about targeting vessels of other civilizations (prioritizing commercial or civilian vessels) with whom you are at war, costing you some small amount of funding every time they destroy an enemy ship (or maybe gaining you funds from plunder if we like that instead) to simulate your Admiralty board approving lawful prizes, head money, etc.

Why do this instead of building up your own navy? A couple of reasons

- first, these guys are cheap. They're primarily financed by private concerns (namely those shipping lines) rather than your global wealth, and primarily make money for those global shipping lines (rather than you)
- second, and quite important, NPRs with whom you have established communications would consider acts of privateering far lesser provocation than sending an actual war fleet. It's not nothing, but on the high seas of the liquid dimension letters of marque are an understood political category. At least usually, depending on their racial AIs.

If we wanted to get really fancy, we could maybe also, in a vague way, assign areas of operation for these privateers. Nothing so specific as 'only work in this system' but we might be able to specifically forbid privateering in a handful of systems based on our largest sector capital level. Or we could, costing us more money than leaving them at loose ends because we have to make up the expected difference in prize money, contract them to provide escorts for civilian or commercial shipping in a system. Or plenty of other options, none of which are essential to the idea.

[Scandinavian]

Devil's advocating here:  I suspect very few pirates in the classic era (covered by the ultimate reference Sid Meier's Pirates! ) built their own ships.  Haven't done a lot of reading on it, but I suspect piracy was very much centered on non-aligned/un-incorporated population centers, which in turn is coupled to force deployment difficulty.

Also, mutineers taking over a naval vessel and setting up their own protection racket. In the Auroraverse, spaceship crew is relatively small, presumably reasonably well paid and treated as skilled professionals. In the era of tall ships, crews were huge, considered not quite full-membership humans, and treated rather shabbily. So sometimes the sailors would realize that they were a long way away from anywhere that was expecting them to come back, in an era when ships could feasibly simply go missing due to some happenstance misfortune, there were a whole lot more of them on the vessel than there were officers and marines, and those officers and marines were really not doing anything to endear themselves. At which point there would be a short round of fragging (usually richly deserved; 16th and 17th century military officers were generally swine that needed gutting), a quick repainting of the vessel name and ditching of official insignia, and a freshly minted freelance vessel available for local trade, smuggling, or the odd spot of remunerated violence.

Further, the glory days (if that is the right phrase) of piracy was a period where civilian vessels could feasibly be (and often were) outfitted with military grade weapons and protections. While there were dedicated warships built, the line between merchant vessel or civilian conversion warship and purpose built ship of the line was neither as wide from a technical perspective, nor so rigidly enforced from a cultural one as it would become in the 19th and 20th centuries. So the difference between a merchantman and a raider would sometimes come down to how many cannon his next port of call had, or how well disposed the locals were toward his particular vessel and crew. Also, vessels could more easily mask their identity and affiliations in an age before real-time vessel tracking. And many more vessels were independently owned and operated, where today civilian vessels have huge on-shore supporting organizations that governments can express their annoyance toward if their vessels get up to naughty things.

[DEEPenergy]

I dont think that pirates in a conventional sense make sense logistically in the Aurora universe due to the massive logistical restraints placed on the fielding of ships. Aurora pirates, if they existed, would never prey on deep space civilian freighters when it makes much more sense to prey on the cargo shuttles that supply them, meaning pirates would likely never stray too far from the surface of a planet. Pirates make much more sense as an NPR theme, one focused on breaching ships and capturing cargo, ships, and passengers then it does as swashbuckling in space.

[Garfunkel]

Though swashbuckling in space is so cool, I fondly recall Spelljammer 

[Barkhorn]

I dont think that pirates in a conventional sense make sense logistically in the Aurora universe due to the massive logistical restraints placed on the fielding of ships. Aurora pirates, if they existed, would never prey on deep space civilian freighters when it makes much more sense to prey on the cargo shuttles that supply them, meaning pirates would likely never stray too far from the surface of a planet. Pirates make much more sense as an NPR theme, one focused on breaching ships and capturing cargo, ships, and passengers then it does as swashbuckling in space.

Preying on cargo shuttles doesn't make a lot of sense for a few reasons.  First, you're so close to the planet that you're easily visible.  Who will buy the goods they just saw you steal?  Theft in deep space is much easier to hide.  Second, if cargo shuttles are abstract, why wouldn't there be abstract police forces?

A big benefit piracy adds is that it could provide NPR's or players with a plausibly deniable way to attack each other; privateers.

[QuakeIV]

I don't know if that makes sense, since they are in reach of relatively cheap and potentially prolific planetary armed forces that could murder their cargo raiding vessels.

[chrislocke2000]

I have to say I’m not a fan of the space pirate thing. Does not seem an easy fit with the Aurora scheme of things. If you wanted to push patrols etc perhaps adding a system level defence requirement on top of a planet level defence requirement would be a way to do that. Points would come of mobile ships and you would need minimum levels before which merchant ships would be happy to trade. If that defence value deteriorated over a period of time rather than just drop when ships were not present then a patrol system would then become a key way of meeting this. To my mind though I don’t think that really adds anything much to the game play and is more of a faff.

[totos_totidis]

I have an idea for a new spoiler.  What about some sort of high tech npr (maybe maxtech?) with no jump drive technology.  They are a localized threat and the only way for them to gain jump drive would be to reverse engineer it.

[Barkhorn]

I have to say I’m not a fan of the space pirate thing. Does not seem an easy fit with the Aurora scheme of things. If you wanted to push patrols etc perhaps adding a system level defence requirement on top of a planet level defence requirement would be a way to do that. Points would come of mobile ships and you would need minimum levels before which merchant ships would be happy to trade. If that defence value deteriorated over a period of time rather than just drop when ships were not present then a patrol system would then become a key way of meeting this. To my mind though I don’t think that really adds anything much to the game play and is more of a faff.

The problem with that is that it's just as easy to exploit as PPV currently is.  In VB6, I deal with PPV by shipping non-functional, super-cheap PDC's made of nothing but the cheapest missile launchers I can build.  I would just do the same thing to get by this system; super-cheap hulks made of just cheapo missile launchers.

But if pirates are a real threat that actually fly ships around, I'll have to build real, functional ships.

[Garfunkel]

Why don't you just SM the ships then?

I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but you're willfully exploiting the system. Every gaming system is, to some extent, open to exploitation. Aurora already gives us SM, that allows us to cheat us as much possible. Why should we worry about non-obvious exploits? I'm all for closing obvious exploits, the sort of stuff that will happen during "normal" gameplay, but there is little point in trying to close abnormal loopholes, the sort of stuff that people need to search for. Those things will always be present in a system as complicated as Aurora is, and since it's a singleplayer game, there really is no need to prevent the player from exploiting, if the player is adamant on exploiting.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The way that Aurora is built I don't think a pirate functionality make much sense since we are in control of pretty much everything and it is a platform for role-play rather than traditional gaming.

There are no point in exploiting the game mechanics in any way, i would rather say that doing the reverse is the way to go.

You should instead create a specific player controlled faction that act as the pirates and actually make them a threat. You don't need very efficient or good ships in order to take on civilian ships and this will force you to have a patrolling force to deal with them.

If you don't have the patience to do this then just imagine the pirates and build the patrol ships that you need and go from there. Use the PPV values as a guideline and build proper patrol ships and set them on different patrol patterns as a simulation of policing the civilian traffic.

I also find it quite amusing that people feel it necessary to abuse game mechanic in a game like Aurora since you can just SM yourself anything you want at any time anyway and it is not cheating either since you are the only one there anyway. While setting up restrictions actually will make things more interesting and challenging overall.

[Barkhorn]

Why have any mechanics at all then?  I mean, what is the purpose of anything in the game if you can just SM or imagine it all?

I'm happy SM is a feature, but the more mechanics Aurora supports on its own, the better.