Author Topic: 4.1 Suggestions  (Read 9276 times)

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Offline IanD

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #90 on: May 06, 2009, 03:56:56 AM »
Steve wrote
Quote
This is a common request . The problem is that a refit or a repair might be a fairly minor task. If you change the EM Sensor for a better one, should that rewind the maintenance clock for the whole ship by potentially ten years

While in the terms above it seems unreasonable to rewind the maintenance clock when in for a minor refit, when a vessel goes into dockyard hands for repairs the chance is usually taken to fix all the maintenance problems at the same time. Perhaps there needs to be a threshold at which maintenance kicks in automatically. E.g. if you go into a base to get the latest search sensor then you would not expect maintenance as well. If on the other hand you have significant damage (>25%?) then maintenance should automatically take place at the same time, and be shorter since you are replacing/repairing a significant number of systems with a new one (or to be as good as new) and therefore not need maintenance.

Regards
IanD
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #91 on: May 08, 2009, 10:37:34 AM »
Throw an event notification and interrupt for any "status change" of a hostile contact.

Fairly frequently (I've got 2-3 such situations right now), I have one fleet performing passive (or even active) surveillance of an enemy (NPR) fleet for long periods of time.  For example, I just had a pair of NPRs come through a WP and park there, right next to my jump ship that was picketing that WP.  I ran with short updates (e.g. a few 5 seconds, then 30 seconds, the 5 minutes) for a while to see if they would do anything - looks like they just intend to sit there.  I need to go back to long updates (e.g. 1 day) in order to be able to advance the game clock, but am afraid that they'll suddenly decide to move and Aurora won't notify me - they'll just silently disappear as a contact, without even a "contact lost" message or an indication of which way they went.  I think I've also noticed instances where a re-established passive contact doesn't throw an event, so I can have ships blunder into a Precursor.

What I'd like is that, whenever an NPR/Precursor which is being tracked as a hostile (or neutral?) contact decides to change its current orders, Aurora drops to a 5-second increment and throws an interrupting "status change" event.  That models what would actually happen - the crew of the observing ship would notice the change and behave appropriately.  A "status change" should also be thrown when a hostile contact is lost, or re-acquired (even if on passive).

John
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #92 on: May 08, 2009, 01:04:19 PM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Throw an event notification and interrupt for any "status change" of a hostile contact.

Fairly frequently (I've got 2-3 such situations right now), I have one fleet performing passive (or even active) surveillance of an enemy (NPR) fleet for long periods of time.  For example, I just had a pair of NPRs come through a WP and park there, right next to my jump ship that was picketing that WP.  I ran with short updates (e.g. a few 5 seconds, then 30 seconds, the 5 minutes) for a while to see if they would do anything - looks like they just intend to sit there.  I need to go back to long updates (e.g. 1 day) in order to be able to advance the game clock, but am afraid that they'll suddenly decide to move and Aurora won't notify me - they'll just silently disappear as a contact, without even a "contact lost" message or an indication of which way they went.  I think I've also noticed instances where a re-established passive contact doesn't throw an event, so I can have ships blunder into a Precursor.

What I'd like is that, whenever an NPR/Precursor which is being tracked as a hostile (or neutral?) contact decides to change its current orders, Aurora drops to a 5-second increment and throws an interrupting "status change" event.  That models what would actually happen - the crew of the observing ship would notice the change and behave appropriately.  A "status change" should also be thrown when a hostile contact is lost, or re-acquired (even if on passive).
I had already made some changes for v4.1 that will help to do this. Because I am trying to improve performance, the sensor code now deletes any contacts that are not maintained, except for active ship contacts and transponder contacts. The active ship and transponder records are retained for keeping track of the last known location of alien ships for the TacIntel window. This means that any thermal, EM or GPD contacts will be flagged as new when they are re-established and will generate an event, although they won't generate an interrupt if they are associated with a current active or transponder contact for a friendly, allied or civilian ship.

As a result of this suggestion, I have also added an event at the point where contacts are checked for possible deletion. Any lost thermal or GPD contacts will be logged. I won't log lost shield contacts because you may get spammed in a battle as shields regenerate a little and then get knocked down again. In addition, any active ship or transponder contacts belonging to a race flagged as neutral or hostile will be logged at the point they drop off sensors.

Steve
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #93 on: May 08, 2009, 02:44:12 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
As a result of this suggestion, I have also added an event at the point where contacts are checked for possible deletion. Any lost thermal or GPD contacts will be logged. I won't log lost shield contacts because you may get spammed in a battle as shields regenerate a little and then get knocked down again. In addition, any active ship or transponder contacts belonging to a race flagged as neutral or hostile will be logged at the point they drop off sensors.

Thanks.  My one remaining concern is "how do I get notified of an existing contact changes course to come attack me"?

Another thought: when I lose a contact, is there any way to know its last reported location (when contact was lost)?  This would help avoid the "they just vanished" effect when working with a large timestep, i.e. tell me which direction I need to go to regain contact.

John

[EDIT] PS - on the lost shields issue, why not log it only if the shields are undamaged?  That will avoid the combat issue.  OTOH, I suspect it will be rare to be holding a "shields" contact that isn't also a thermal contact if the target is moving.
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #94 on: May 08, 2009, 05:38:10 PM »
It would be nice if I could set some defaults for a class that would automatically be enabled whenever the ship comes out of the yard.  Things like transpoder being on, fire control assignments done (especially for pd weapons), etc.  I like to set up the weapons mix on my ships with specific fire control assignments, eccm assignements and final or area pd enabled.  This way even if I slip up with a long a time between interrupts an enemy missile race does not wipe my ships out because they have no pd active.  It also makes combat simpler at the start as the weapons are already set up and I only have to pick targets for offensive fire.

Brian
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #95 on: May 13, 2009, 09:18:13 PM »
I know the screens are already crowded, but a "active sensors on"/"active sensors off" buttons on the task force (F12) and unit (F6) screens would be nice.  It's possible these are already there and I'm missing them - at present the only way I know to do this (other than an order at a way point) is through the combat control (F8) screen.

EDIT - Oh.  That would be the "combat settings" tab on the unit (F6) screen  :oops:
John
 

Offline schroeam

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #96 on: May 14, 2009, 02:12:26 PM »
Steve,

How about the ability to change the task force speed through the task force orders list?  Give the option of "% full speed" or "specific kps".  That way we can set up close approach orders without having to go back in to change the TF speed.  It would be especially useful if you want to move to a jump point, change speed to 1 (minimize Thermal Sig) then jump and be as invisible as possible while your passives gather all the data they can.  Just a thought I had while trying to do that very thing... funny how that works out  :)

Adam.
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #97 on: May 14, 2009, 08:04:39 PM »
Quote from: "adradjool"
Steve,

How about the ability to change the task force speed through the task force orders list?  Give the option of "% full speed" or "specific kps".  That way we can set up close approach orders without having to go back in to change the TF speed.  It would be especially useful if you want to move to a jump point, change speed to 1 (minimize Thermal Sig) then jump and be as invisible as possible while your passives gather all the data they can.  Just a thought I had while trying to do that very thing... funny how that works out  :)

Adam.

I'd like to empatically second this one.  This is the sort of thing I do all the time, and it's a bit of a pain to give orders to a waypoint, wait for the message that the ship has arrived, adjust the speed, give new orders, and repeat.

John
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #98 on: May 20, 2009, 11:11:09 AM »
Add ability to filter out obsolete designs when selecting a second stage in missile design

John
 

Offline schroeam

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #99 on: May 20, 2009, 08:14:12 PM »
Steve,

How about having the commanders who are part of teams displayed as assigned instead of unassigned?

Adam.
 

Offline welchbloke

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #100 on: May 24, 2009, 03:14:49 PM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Quote from: "adradjool"
Steve,

How about the ability to change the task force speed through the task force orders list?  Give the option of "% full speed" or "specific kps".  That way we can set up close approach orders without having to go back in to change the TF speed.  It would be especially useful if you want to move to a jump point, change speed to 1 (minimize Thermal Sig) then jump and be as invisible as possible while your passives gather all the data they can.  Just a thought I had while trying to do that very thing... funny how that works out  :)

Adam.

I'd like to empatically second this one.  This is the sort of thing I do all the time, and it's a bit of a pain to give orders to a waypoint, wait for the message that the ship has arrived, adjust the speed, give new orders, and repeat.

John
You can add me to the list of people asking for this feature.
Welchbloke
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #101 on: May 25, 2009, 04:56:47 PM »
Introduce missile design "series" and "generations", e.g. "Sparrow-A", "Sparrow-B", "Sparrow-C", etc. such that Aurora knows that these all fulfill the same role in a load-out, and that the Sparrow-C is the most advanced version.

The idea here is to cut back on micro-management of (default) missile load-out of ships.  The problem comes as new missile designs are introduced to replace obsolete ones - there usually aren't enough of the new time fill the magazines of all ships.  For example, in my campaign, I've got Tomahawk-A, Tomahawk-B, and Tomahawk-C.  If I could specify that my destroyers loaded "30 Tomahawk" (note the lack of a generation specifier), then all I would need to do is specify "load ordinance" and Aurora could use as many Tomahawk-C as available, followed by Tomahawk-B and Tomahawk-A.  It Could also help during the missile design phase, since there's no (or at least I haven't found a ) "copy design" button.  If instead there was a "new generation" button on Tomahawk-C, Aurora could use the same masses in Tomahawk-D - all I'd have to do is adjust them if I wanted e.g. to trade off speed for range in the "D" generation.

John
 

Offline Sotak246

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #102 on: May 26, 2009, 06:24:47 AM »
I really like this idea for missle generations.  I have been wanting something like this but having trouble coming up with a good plan to put forward, Sloanjh came up with a great one.  I really  like the "new generation" button idea.

Mark
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #103 on: May 26, 2009, 06:26:06 PM »
Change tractor rules so that the engine power used to calculate speed is Max(A,B), rather than A+B (where A and B are the total engine power ratings of the tug and tow, respectively).

I've encountered a (higher-tech) race with beam-armed warships with a speed of ~5700 and huge active search radius.  My current missile-armed warship design can only do 3333 - it's ~2 generations of engine tech behind.  I recently upgraded engine tech, and will soon have tugs built of the same mass as my missile ships and which can do 9000.  If I have these new tugs take my missile ships under tow, then they'll have a combined speed of ~6167, which means they'll be able to dance away from the bad guys while plinking them with missiles.  This feels like a bit of an exploit - it basically allows tugs to be exchangable engine pods.  By only using the engines of one ship, the exploit gets weakened to something that feels more appropriate - the combined speed in that case would be 4500.

I don't feel strongly on this one either way, btw - it's just a thought.

John
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: 4.1 Suggestions
« Reply #104 on: May 27, 2009, 03:45:27 PM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
Introduce missile design "series" and "generations", e.g. "Sparrow-A", "Sparrow-B", "Sparrow-C", etc. such that Aurora knows that these all fulfill the same role in a load-out, and that the Sparrow-C is the most advanced version.

The idea here is to cut back on micro-management of (default) missile load-out of ships.  The problem comes as new missile designs are introduced to replace obsolete ones - there usually aren't enough of the new time fill the magazines of all ships.  For example, in my campaign, I've got Tomahawk-A, Tomahawk-B, and Tomahawk-C.  If I could specify that my destroyers loaded "30 Tomahawk" (note the lack of a generation specifier), then all I would need to do is specify "load ordinance" and Aurora could use as many Tomahawk-C as available, followed by Tomahawk-B and Tomahawk-A.  It Could also help during the missile design phase, since there's no (or at least I haven't found a ) "copy design" button.  If instead there was a "new generation" button on Tomahawk-C, Aurora could use the same masses in Tomahawk-D - all I'd have to do is adjust them if I wanted e.g. to trade off speed for range in the "D" generation.
An interesting idea. I have already added functionality for v4.1 that will fill magazines with alternative missiles of the same size if the standard loadout is unavailable so I could modify it for this idea. I'll handle this when I start going through the suggestion thread properly.

Steve