C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[xenoscepter]

@Steve Walmsey

Hey Steve, could we have really small engines? Like >1 HS? Maybe 0.1 HS Minimum? The reason for this request is that I'd like some Micro Engines for Fighters. Not that it would make the game better or whatever, but I would just like Micro Engines. If no, then cool.

Cheers!

[JustAnotherDude]

This is already a thing, Xeno.

[Garfunkel]

You can see the smallest possible engine size here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg102620#msg102620

on this chart:

[Jorgen_CAB]

I would like to take a new crack at the mothballing of ships after I have played some with the new Rule the Waves 2 game, a game which share many similarities with Aurora in that it is a ship design game foremost.

I really think that having a similiar system of reserve, active and mothballing would work really well... especially with the new system and how training is handled.

Here is a version I think would add to the game in terms of dedcisions you would need to make.

Mothballing
Any ship in this status will not require maintenance and its clock will slowly degrade over time but will never actually have any failures. This means that if you mothball a ship for a very long time you will have to spend some time to refit and get it ready for duty.

A mothballed ship will quickly loose all its training until you basically only have raw recruit that have to man the ship once you activate it.



Reserve
Any ship in this status will only be doing routine maintenance and the crew will be ordered to service one in a while to do drills or it might be part of the occasional naval exercises.

These ship would pay normal maintenance but would have a slow degrading of fleet training and will over time reach down to raw recruit status but that would take a very long time.

Taking a ship from reserve to active should be equivalent as taking a ship from overhaul into active in the current game.

Calling up a mothballed ship to active service should require the ship to be overhauled to at least a certain degree before brought into service again.


Active
These ships are actively in duty and ready to do battle at any time. They will do regular fleet drills and perform patrol duties.

Maintenance clock of these ship would run maybe 30% quicker than what is normal today.


Age
I also think that old ships should begin to age and its maintenance clock run quicker. If you upgrade the ships some of that effect should be halted but eventually you should need to scrap ships due to age alone. You will never really be able to replace a ships hull structure, should be prohibitively expensive.

I also think armour should be MUCH more expensive to upgrade than it currently is.


I think that ships status could then be selected with the new fleet management system in the same way you handle the fleet training system. It is just that each type Fleet Training, Active, Reserve, Mothball will have different effect on the ships.

There is a real decision to make in what status you want a specific ship to be which is an interesting one, in my opinion any way...

[Doren]

Here's a couple of suggestions from me.

Sizing
Something that irked me in Aurora was how cheap it is to research very small modules which are pretty much always put on fighters and missiles.

Maybe the research cost should start costing more if you are trying to make really small things.  Right now missile and fighter engines are basically free to research since game calculates the cost based on how large the engines is (with addition of the engine power of course).  I think it would make designing fighter engines a bit more interesting since now you would have to think twice if you would research specialized equipment on each design due to research costs.

It kind of makes sense that cutting size of a very powerful engine by half is going to be very difficult process

I would love to see there to be a double curve on equipment size cost calculation.  Even with sensors and fire control.

Missile designing
I have to say that I'm not an expert missile user and I mostly play on Nuclear thermal -> Ion tech so I do not have a lot experience with Mag pulse and later tech.

I think when ever I'm designing a missile I think I've never thought "I should not go max engine power" and I kind of feel like it is a bit problematic that more power seems to be always better for missile designs.  Very fast missiles should have really bad range.

I kind of feel like missiles right now are a bit too much of a all or nothing weapon.  Either you completely annihilate your enemy with them or the opponent has too strong PD and you cannot get through.

I was wondering if missile designs could use some more diversity.  Right now there seems to be 3 types of missiles: “Torpedoes”, Target Missiles and Long range missiles
Torpedoes are basically missiles shot at so close range that VB Aurora does not allow PD to trigger on them on the 5s pulse.  This mechanic is going to change in C# Aurora as far as I've read change log
Targeted Missiles are missiles that are being shot at the enemy who are in range of a sensor and fire control.  These can wary in range from couple million km to a hundreds of million kms.
Long Range Missiles are two-staged missiles being shot at waypoint and have usually billions of kms range.

Most of the designed missiles are Targeted Missiles and range is usually picked by enemy sensor range to out range their missiles.  Depending on opponent's tech level this can be easy with no compromises or it can be hard with a lot of compromises.  Usually a lot of compromises might lead to designing Long Range Missiles.
I kind of feel that it is way too easy to design generic missile with +50m km range with fast speed and good warhead strength.  I feel like it should be a lot harder to break 1-10m range with one staged missiles if they are max power and still have significant warhead.  This would mean that most of the +10m range missiles would have to be two-stage missiles and their launchers would eat a lot more space on the ships or they would have to accept being a lot closer to the enemy ships to be able to mount as many smaller launchers.

So all in all a hefty nerf to missile ranges which would require tweaking the power modifier fuel consumption or perhaps how much each fuel unit would give fuel to missile.  Maybe agility could also play a bit bigger role on the overall hit chance though I'm a bit afraid to touch it due to AMM

I kind of feel like it should be possible to make faster missiles than what you can do now easier but compromising heavily on warhead and range.  (I think range would be in couple hundred thousands of km).  These kind of missiles would be more of a support missiles instead of primary weapon type: fast enough to be very hard to PD down but not strong enough to complelty annihilate opponent just weaken them before closing in for turrets.
I hope to also nerf PD so that they should struggle against very fast but weak missiles or they should take significant amount of research and space on the ship.  I think this is kind of happening right now if you fire AMM missiles at PD ships.

TLDR: missile range should be more heavily restricted on most powerful engines instead of difference being 50m,12km/s vs 70m,10km/s it should be like more like 500k,12km/s vs 10m,10km/s

[Steve Walmsley]

TLDR: missile range should be more heavily restricted on most powerful engines instead of difference being 50m,12km/s vs 70m,10km/s it should be like more like 500k,12km/s vs 10m,10km/s

Missile ranges and fuel calculation have changed in C# Aurora (see the changes list). I'm finding in my campaigns that the only missile designs using max power are short-range AMMs

[Jovus]

It has probably been brought up before, but this thread is too big for easy searching, so I apologize but I'm going to bring it up again.

It would be unutterably awesome if C# involved some way to customize interrupts without tweaking the DB itself. Turning off maintenance interrupts or fuel interrupts, turning on population unrest interrupts, etc., along with the ability to change your mind while still in the game.

Even more unutterably awesome would be the ability to customize interrupt priority by source. For example, I could say, "Interrupt when maintenance failures happen, but not from this ship. Tell me when the population on this world increases in unrest, but not the others. Don't bother me about ground combat on these three worlds."

[vorpal+5]

Has it been considered to add more surprises (and FUN) to the colonization efforts by adding anomalies and oddities? Basically a system body can have from 0 to 3 oddities that might be good or bad. Some will require efforts to deal with, some are permanent or passive.

Nothing super original compared to others games, but this is akin to the concept of 'Goody Huts' for Sid Meier Civilization. Really, I think all Sci-fi 4X games have this kind of stuff on their planets (Endless Space, Stellaris, Galactic Civ III).

This can require a bit of efforts in writing so they are diverse enough, but I'm sure a lot of us would gladly help.

Can also be seen as an extension of the current ruins feature but more diverse. It can be about a dangerous semi-intelligent animal in a jungle world, some left over nanite cloud in a chasm of an asteroid, a strange (abandoned?) pyramid in a desert world, etc. The more the merrier. It would add mystery and thrill and make system body more unique also.

There is no need to create a complex 'event system' to deal with these oddities. Either you leave it alone and it add a passive effect or you click on the 'handle the issue' button and it solves the issue. In both cases, you spend (or earn if a good event) resources (colonists, money, supply etc.).

"Ah yes, this planet. A nice one now with 10 millions colonists and 100 industries, and good corbinite concentration. But these seemingly intelligent octopus in the sea are posing problems as they tend to mind-control unwary colonists."

Passive effect (per month): Loses 0.1% of colonists total
Solving1 (button A): A massive effort (cost 50.000 money) can be undertaken to get rid of these octopuses in the sea by adding a targeted neurotoxin in the water.
Solving2 (button B): We can put these octopuses (pi?) in a natural reserve and study them (cost 250.000 money). This will prevent any nefarious activity while giving us a chance to study them (1% a month to gain 500 RP in Biology)

Etc

[swarm_sadist]

For the new Spoiler Race:

Have their numbers regenerate when attacked, requiring a massive assault that will kill them off for good. You go all the way or they will just replenish their numbers, using your wrecked units and technologies against you the next time you fight them.

[Ranged66]

Facility idea:

Interstellar mass driver

Must be built on closest planet to system primary. Needs 2.5 mil population to be operated. Can target other interstellar mass drivers across jump points. Only 1 per system with limited annual tons of material.

[Jovus]

Facility idea:

Interstellar mass driver

Must be built on closest planet to system primary. Needs 2.5 mil population to be operated. Can target other interstellar mass drivers across jump points. Only 1 per system with limited annual tons of material.

Slightly different proposal: no limits on the # per system or the location in-system, but every time you fire one, it requires a small amount of minerals of certain types, which are consumed. This is to model the mineral package being sent with a small 'one use' jump-field generator in order to punch through the jump point. Surcharge is a simple ratio to the packet size, so you don't have to optimize firing schedule.

A given interstellar mass driver can only send through a single jump; if you want your minerals to go further, use another in the next system (and pay the surcharge again).

A possible problem with this is that naturally people are going to want to start putting these one-use JDs on missiles, but I think that can be gotten around by saying these jump generators are too unstable for engines of any power, much like commercial JDs can't handle military engines but moreso.

[totos_totidis]

I have an idea about the Rakhas.
Since the Rakhas are the remenants of an ancient civ it would make sense for there to be a much greater chance of ancient ruins on their planets.

[hubgbf]

Facility idea:

Interstellar mass driver

Must be built on closest planet to system primary. Needs 2.5 mil population to be operated. Can target other interstellar mass drivers across jump points. Only 1 per system with limited annual tons of material.

If you want to simplify mineral logistic, what about teleportation?
technobable say it will only work with pure TN materials, and only if there is only one TN material at the same time, as you have to fine tune the teleporter for this element.

No consumer goods, no living being, no component, etc...

Perhaps as an option ?

Rerouting civilian mass driver component is also possible.
Will only work when stationed on a jump point, and for mineral packet only, be it a station or a ship. If there is no such component when the packet arrive, it is destructed by interacting with the jump point, creating a blast effect dependant on the quantity and quality of the TN material (sorium will made bigger boom).

My 2 cents

[Cyborg29]

I would like to suggest a simple change to the way VB6 handles inexperienced fleets: instead of the fleet stopping while it acknowledges new orders, have it follow the last order given until it does so.

[Father Tim]

I would like to suggest a simple change to the way VB6 handles inexperienced fleets: instead of the fleet stopping while it acknowledges new orders, have it follow the last order given until it does so.

Definitely this.

(Though a nagging little voice in the back of my mind says Steve already made this change for C# Aurora.)