Author Topic: C# Aurora v0.x Questions  (Read 183863 times)

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Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #135 on: October 01, 2018, 08:29:19 PM »
You are.

Infantry supply units can only function within the formation they are part of. Vehicle supply can be drawn from by units further down the HQ chain.
It might be nice to eventually also give a special purpose to airborne supply units.

I wonder how practical ground supply pods would be. They get used up (like missiles but not ground support pods) to provide supply, and the fighter can fly back to the carrier for more.

Probably not practical, especially since the fighters would be dealing with surface to orbit weapons on their runs, but kind of amusing.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #136 on: October 02, 2018, 12:35:18 AM »
You are.

Infantry supply units can only function within the formation they are part of. Vehicle supply can be drawn from by units further down the HQ chain.

That make sense.... thanks. 
 

Offline King-Salomon

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #137 on: October 19, 2018, 03:25:38 PM »
just a question for understanding about turrets on land units:

the turret-weapons for the new STO weapons are the same we design for starships right? What about the (starship-like) armour of the turrets that were added in the design?

Will the extra armour have any impact? will it be just  "dead weight" or maybe automatically removed from size and costs? Or will we have to design turrets with and without armour for these?  ???

or am I just wrong in my thinking?  :-[
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #138 on: October 19, 2018, 03:52:04 PM »
just a question for understanding about turrets on land units:

the turret-weapons for the new STO weapons are the same we design for starships right? What about the (starship-like) armour of the turrets that were added in the design?

Will the extra armour have any impact? will it be just  "dead weight" or maybe automatically removed from size and costs? Or will we have to design turrets with and without armour for these?  ???

or am I just wrong in my thinking?  :-[

It would be dead weight, so you need to design ground-specific weapons if you generally armour your turrets.
 
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Offline King-Salomon

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #139 on: October 19, 2018, 04:05:07 PM »
It would be dead weight, so you need to design ground-specific weapons if you generally armour your turrets.

OK thanks :)

but an other thinking... wouldn't that mean that there is a lot of "weapon spam" in the weapon list?  let's say, 4-6 different (weapons, #shots etc) ship turrets with armour, 2-3 additional turrets without armour... and all listed in the weapon-field...

would it be possible/reasonable to add a "check" if a turret has armour and not list it in the weapon list for ground-units?

or maybe, add a checkbox at the weapon/turret designer to select "shipweapon", "Ground-weapon" or both to reduce the weapon spam in the lists?
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #140 on: October 19, 2018, 05:35:45 PM »
Will STO contacts fade away from being 'known' over time or if a faction loses Active Sensor coverage?
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #141 on: October 19, 2018, 06:32:06 PM »
Will STO contacts fade away from being 'known' over time or if a faction loses Active Sensor coverage?

Once an element is flagged by a particular race, it stays flagged.

I could add something to change the flag under certain situations, such as the parent formation being moved or the element choosing to remove its fortification (simulating a move).
 
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Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #142 on: October 19, 2018, 06:58:11 PM »
I note the collateral damage calculations specify 10 damage for infantry instead of 1. I assume that means it uses tech modified values?

In that case perhaps collateral damage should be reduced by the armor tech of the owning side? Otherwise it seems like it would cause a situation where collateral damage becomes exponentially larger as your tech levels rise, since both weapons will be dealing more damage and ground units will have higher defenses.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #143 on: October 20, 2018, 02:54:24 AM »
Once an element is flagged by a particular race, it stays flagged.

I could add something to change the flag under certain situations, such as the parent formation being moved or the element choosing to remove its fortification (simulating a move).

Please do. Otherwise you will occasionally get times where your STO units get hammered even though they had yet to open fire.

I note the collateral damage calculations specify 10 damage for infantry instead of 1. I assume that means it uses tech modified values?

In that case perhaps collateral damage should be reduced by the armor tech of the owning side? Otherwise it seems like it would cause a situation where collateral damage becomes exponentially larger as your tech levels rise, since both weapons will be dealing more damage and ground units will have higher defenses.

Collateral damage has become more devastating as weapons technology becomes more powerful IRL. The only reason cities like Baghdad didn't end up flattened during major wars is because greater weapon accuracy made that unnecessary.

Steve, does collateral damage in rubble still cause civilian casualties and dust build up? I'd say it should do the first (if to a smaller extent) and to full extent the second. And can rubble be cleared or is that permanently part of the planet now?
 

Offline Whitecold

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #144 on: October 20, 2018, 03:30:54 AM »
Collateral damage has become more devastating as weapons technology becomes more powerful IRL. The only reason cities like Baghdad didn't end up flattened during major wars is because greater weapon accuracy made that unnecessary.
But that is exactly the point. A WW1 artillery piece will likely deal more collateral damage than a modern howitzer with GPS guided ammunition, even though the second will me much more lethal. Of course WW2 bombers inflict much more collateral damage than WW1 bombers, which has a lot to do with how much damage they inflict in the first place. (Well, collateral damage was pretty much the the usage of heavy bombers)
So overall I would say the category of weapon should be more important than the tech level of the weapon for how much collateral damage is inflicted.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #145 on: October 20, 2018, 04:24:53 AM »
I note the collateral damage calculations specify 10 damage for infantry instead of 1. I assume that means it uses tech modified values?

In that case perhaps collateral damage should be reduced by the armor tech of the owning side? Otherwise it seems like it would cause a situation where collateral damage becomes exponentially larger as your tech levels rise, since both weapons will be dealing more damage and ground units will have higher defenses.

Yes, it is modified by tech. More powerful versions of the same weapon type will do more damage. As defenders improve their armour, it will take more firepower to overcome them.

Also, as tech levels rise, population and industry will likely be larger so the collateral damage may not be much different in proportion.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2018, 04:34:56 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #146 on: October 20, 2018, 04:28:53 AM »
I note the collateral damage calculations specify 10 damage for infantry instead of 1. I assume that means it uses tech modified values?

In that case perhaps collateral damage should be reduced by the armor tech of the owning side? Otherwise it seems like it would cause a situation where collateral damage becomes exponentially larger as your tech levels rise, since both weapons will be dealing more damage and ground units will have higher defenses.

Collateral damage has become more devastating as weapons technology becomes more powerful IRL. The only reason cities like Baghdad didn't end up flattened during major wars is because greater weapon accuracy made that unnecessary.

Steve, does collateral damage in rubble still cause civilian casualties and dust build up? I'd say it should do the first (if to a smaller extent) and to full extent the second. And can rubble be cleared or is that permanently part of the planet now?

Damage to rubble doesn't cause civilian casualties or dust. The assumption is that civilians generally won't be in destroyed areas and the fires that would contribute to atmospheric dust have burned through already. It's not perfect, but it is intended to simulate that collateral damage has diminishing returns if an area has been fought over for a while.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #147 on: October 20, 2018, 04:33:46 AM »
Once an element is flagged by a particular race, it stays flagged.

I could add something to change the flag under certain situations, such as the parent formation being moved or the element choosing to remove its fortification (simulating a move).

Please do. Otherwise you will occasionally get times where your STO units get hammered even though they had yet to open fire.

STO units can only be attacked once they fire.

There are two arguments here. One is that once they move the enemy can't tell what they are. On the other hand, once one side identifies a hostile formation, they will continue to know its capabilities. At some point ELINT will be extended to cover identification of hostile formations based long-term observation, in which case, the STO units will be flagged as such when their formation is identified even in the first scenario.
 

Offline space dwarf

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #148 on: October 20, 2018, 06:10:36 AM »
But for how long can the STO units be attacked?


And yes, I feel that it would be a good idea to have a "change positions" command/option for STO-equipped ground units which removes them from any identified lists, but also makes them incapable of firing for a week or two while they are moved to new locations and reinstalled. Then you could implement stuff like "if the STO units are actually being detected at the moment they are moved, the detector can tell that they were moved and that therefore the planetary STO is weak and ripe for a surprise attack"
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: C# Aurora v0.x Questions
« Reply #149 on: October 20, 2018, 06:32:52 AM »
But that is exactly the point. A WW1 artillery piece will likely deal more collateral damage than a modern howitzer with GPS guided ammunition, even though the second will me much more lethal. Of course WW2 bombers inflict much more collateral damage than WW1 bombers, which has a lot to do with how much damage they inflict in the first place. (Well, collateral damage was pretty much the the usage of heavy bombers)
So overall I would say the category of weapon should be more important than the tech level of the weapon for how much collateral damage is inflicted.

Except none of that has anything to do with armour technology and everything to do with targeting technology and techniques. Being able to park a 500 kg bomb directly on top of an enemy fortification to destroy it means you only need 1 bomb, but if you've got an 80% chance to miss you are going to drop at least 5 and probably 10, or more, because then you can be very confident it's been destroyed.

If anything, this is an argument that who has the ECM/ECCM advantage should have an impact in collateral damage calculations rather than armour or weapons technology levels.

Yes, it is modified by tech. More powerful versions of the same weapon type will do more damage. As defenders improve their armour, it will take more firepower to overcome them.

Also, as tech levels rise, population and industry will likely be larger so the collateral damage may not be much different in proportion.

Well, given that the number of combat rounds and the number of shots fired per weapons category is likely to remain the same roughly speaking I'm not so certain about that. And there's a few units that get better armour relative to low level technology, so that's even more shots fired. If anything, more collateral damage is likely to accumulate during a planetary invasion relative to the population and facility numbers rather than less or equal.

And planets with high fortification modifiers suffer more collateral damage because it doesn't care about fortification, but unit combat calculations do.

Damage to rubble doesn't cause civilian casualties or dust. The assumption is that civilians generally won't be in destroyed areas and the fires that would contribute to atmospheric dust have burned through already. It's not perfect, but it is intended to simulate that collateral damage has diminishing returns if an area has been fought over for a while.

This gets really weird once you start ground combat on planets with no atmosphere then. I get your point that on planets with a breathable(-ish) atmosphere and close enough to their star to support growing crops with minimal infrastructure support (so basically very low colony cost planets) atmospheric soot caused by fires resulting from combat are a major concern, but a planet that's not capable of doing that and has no (native) biosphere will not have the sort of fires that impact atmospheric dust. Either there's no atmosphere, so any dust and soot enters a ballistic trajectory that's going to fall back down in days at the most and more likely seconds or minutes, or the atmosphere is so unhealthy to crops and the population in general that all biomass is internal in the colony's infrastructure and there's a not inconsiderable investment in the atmospheric processing equipment to scrub dust and other contaminants out of the air without it ever getting ejected into the atmosphere. And this gets worse if the planetary atmosphere pressure is higher than the native population's tolerances.

So... collateral damage should probably always produce atmospheric dust, although certain classifications of planet may produce more/less dust than normal.

STO units can only be attacked once they fire.

There are two arguments here. One is that once they move the enemy can't tell what they are. On the other hand, once one side identifies a hostile formation, they will continue to know its capabilities. At some point ELINT will be extended to cover identification of hostile formations based long-term observation, in which case, the STO units will be flagged as such when their formation is identified even in the first scenario.

Right. That's fair. And I get that the intelligence side of the game needs a lot more work. It'd be nice if extended ELINT observation would eventually let you target enemy formations directly with orbital fire.