Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 442005 times)

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Offline Zincat

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #705 on: April 11, 2017, 06:10:57 AM »
Having your massive battleships be more problematic logistics wise then several smaller screens is a good thing, not a bad thing.

I understand the concept, but I do not agree with your proposed method. We're in space here, we're not putting these ships in a drydock. Also, this is maintenance, not armor repair (which is done in a shipyard already).

This is a "future" scenario, in which you can suppose EXTREME modularity in ship building. I would assume that the jump drive, say, of a battleship and a destroyer are actually pretty similar, just the battleship one has a lot more "small jump modules", thus being bigger.  So I do not see a reason to add a "maximum ship size that can be maintained".

That would only revert us back to the fact that you need like 150 or so maintentance facilities in order to maintain a battleship, and so you have just one or two planets who can do that, while everywhere else you cannot do any maintenance at all.

What could be done instead, IF Steve wants to keep some difficulty in maintenance of larger ships, is a non linear increase in maintenance time when the ship is larger than the sum of the maintenance facilities present at a certain location.

Say, if a ship is 30000 tons, and the place only has 20 1000 tons maintenace facilities, the effective rate of maintenance is not 20000 but 15000 or 10000. An appropriate formula would have to be proposed, one that is sensible and encourage you to use more facilities, while not being excessively punishing in case you are "below cap". Probably with a cutoff point beyond which it does not get any slower.


I still prefer linear and no limits, mind you. Just stating that an increase in maintenance time would be appropriate and preferrable in case a limitation of some sort has to be put in place, compared to a "hard block" which completely makes maintenance impossible if you do not have x facilities.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #706 on: April 11, 2017, 10:10:40 AM »
I plan to stay with the new maintenance rules; partly for simplicity, partly to prevent unlimited ships being maintained by a limited set of facilities and partly to offset some of the previous limitations on larger ships. While possible to have some form of system that limits both total capacity and maximum ship size, I don't believe the additional complexity would result in a similar improvement in game play.

I may still play around with some of the parameters once I get the first test game up and running (still months away I suspect) but I want to stick with the basic principle.

Progress is mainly behind the scenes at the moment so no new screenshots are likely for a while.
 
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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #707 on: April 11, 2017, 10:22:28 AM »
This is a "future" scenario, in which you can suppose EXTREME modularity in ship building. I would assume that the jump drive, say, of a battleship and a destroyer are actually pretty similar, just the battleship one has a lot more "small jump modules", thus being bigger.  So I do not see a reason to add a "maximum ship size that can be maintained".
Why would we assume that?  The way the design system works seems to suggest the exact opposite.  Jump drives are very finely engineered to their specific size, and you don't get any benefit from trying to build a jump drive that's 1 HS bigger/smaller than the existing one.  A bigger ship is going to have bigger components. 

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That would only revert us back to the fact that you need like 150 or so maintentance facilities in order to maintain a battleship, and so you have just one or two planets who can do that, while everywhere else you cannot do any maintenance at all.
So?  Under the new system, you also need 150 maintenance facilities if you want to have 150,000 tons of ships supported there.  Unless the typical maintenance station supported less than 1,000 tons in the old system, then you're actually going to be worse off.  I usually built more than 5 of my large-size ships.  If we pick an exponent like I've suggested, the crossover point is way above 150 stations, so it makes all ships except those that are really absurdly huge easier to build.

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I still prefer linear and no limits, mind you. Just stating that an increase in maintenance time would be appropriate and preferrable in case a limitation of some sort has to be put in place, compared to a "hard block" which completely makes maintenance impossible if you do not have x facilities.
I don't think anyone was suggesting that.  There are already rules in place for dealing with total tonnages above the size of the facilities.  We just apply those to individual ships that are above the cap.  So a 30,000 ton ship at a facility with a size cap of 20,000 tons gets treated like a fleet totaling 30,000 tons at a facility with 20,000 tons of capacity.

I plan to stay with the new maintenance rules; partly for simplicity, partly to prevent unlimited ships being maintained by a limited set of facilities and partly to offset some of the previous limitations on larger ships. While possible to have some form of system that limits both total capacity and maximum ship size, I don't believe the additional complexity would result in a similar improvement in game play.
While I agree that the current system goes too far in limiting larger ships and allowing unlimited FACs on 5 maintenance facilities, I think that a system where the maximum single-ship tonnage and total tonnage limits are the same goes too far in the opposite direction. 
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Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #708 on: April 11, 2017, 10:35:14 AM »
I just spotted a major loophole in the maintenance rules:
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Overhauls will proceed at a slower rate (and use fewer MSP) if the total tonnage of the ships being maintained exceeds the Total Maintenance Capacity. However, ships undergoing overhaul will not suffer maintenance failures in this situation.
I think we've just reinvented mothballing.  Design a PDC with a single maintenance module, and then build it on a moon.  Then send all of your extra ships to overhaul there.  Obviously, the overhaul rate would be incredibly slow, but they're not suffering maintenance failures, and their clocks are effectively stopped.
My suggestion would be to introduce a size cap and prevent overhauling if the ship is above that cap.  There are obviously other ways to solve this problem, and my bias towards some sort of size cap (there are many possible implementations) is obviously showing.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2017, 10:41:51 AM by byron »
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #709 on: April 11, 2017, 10:47:22 AM »
This is a "future" scenario, in which you can suppose EXTREME modularity in ship building. I would assume that the jump drive, say, of a battleship and a destroyer are actually pretty similar, just the battleship one has a lot more "small jump modules", thus being bigger.  So I do not see a reason to add a "maximum ship size that can be maintained".

We actually do know for a fact already the the ship components are NOT modular unless we design them as such since they need to be first researched and then produced. Especially jump drives due to their size being tailored to ships.

But this gives me another interesting idea. What if the "Max Repair MSP" stat of ships could be worked into how many facilities are need to make full maintenance possible?

That way a Battleship designed with a 2500 ton engine would need lots of facilities to maintain, but a modular Battleship design with many smaller 250 ton engines instead would need 10 times less facilities for maintenance to be possible (assuming no other components have higher MSP values).

To make the suggestion more concrete: [Max Repair MSP] / 100 * [Ship Size] = "Ship Maintenance Size" which does not impact how much facilities it needs, but limits if full maintenance is possible. A 30'000 ton Battleship with a 1'000 MSP Max Repair Engine for example would have a "Ship maintenance Size" of 300'000 ton and could get 50% Effective Maintenance Rate (EMR), even if it's alone at a maintenance facility with 150'000 ton max total capacity. In doing so it would only occupy 15'000 ton capacity ( Actual ship size * EMR modifier )

That would only revert us back to the fact that you need like 150 or so maintentance facilities in order to maintain a battleship, and so you have just one or two planets who can do that, while everywhere else you cannot do any maintenance at all.

Not necessarily. As specified in the new solution there is a concept of partial maintenance, so it might be possible that you could do some maintenance still on Battleships with sufficient capacity for smaller ships, but not for the large one. ( As demonstrated in my example above ).
« Last Edit: April 11, 2017, 10:53:21 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #710 on: April 11, 2017, 12:57:13 PM »
I just spotted a major loophole in the maintenance rules:I think we've just reinvented mothballing.  Design a PDC with a single maintenance module, and then build it on a moon.  Then send all of your extra ships to overhaul there.  Obviously, the overhaul rate would be incredibly slow, but they're not suffering maintenance failures, and their clocks are effectively stopped.
My suggestion would be to introduce a size cap and prevent overhauling if the ship is above that cap.  There are obviously other ways to solve this problem, and my bias towards some sort of size cap (there are many possible implementations) is obviously showing.

I was wondering if anyone would spot this :)

I considered mentioning it but bear in mind the clock isn't effectively stopped. The quote reads "Overhauls will proceed at a slower rate (and use fewer MSP) if the total tonnage of the ships being maintained exceeds the Total Maintenance Capacity. However, ships undergoing overhaul will not suffer maintenance failures in this situation."

Overhaul increases the 'Last Overhaul Date' at five times the normal advance of time. If you lower the maintenance facilities too far and decrease the Effective Maintenance Rate below 20%, the speed of overhaul rate will fall below the normal advance of the clock, which means that while the ship is not suffering failures, it is building up its clock. You can keep the clock stable at about 20% of the required maintenance facilities for overhaul.

it can still be useful as a holding measure if you have too many ships for the maintenance facilities but you aren't really saving on MSP very much either. Keeping ships in a permanent state of overhaul would require one fifth of the maintenance facilities and use about 80% of the normal MSP (compared to maintaining the ship normally) but you lose the flexibility to respond quickly if attacked. It could be considered a form of mothballing though.
 

Offline db48x

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #711 on: April 12, 2017, 05:05:53 AM »
As long as you're adding cool equilibrium conditions to terraforming, could you please add one to represent the loss of atmospheric water vapor by disassociation of the hydrogen from the oxygen, with the hydrogen then escaping the atmosphere over time? Presumably this would happen faster around stars that produce more UV, and on low-mass worlds. Asking for a friend.

 ;) Ok, Ok, it's not a serious request. Actually, I came in to ask why your formula doesn't seem to include the temperature. Possibly I'm missing something? Maybe temperature and pressure are always so linked that the pressure term handles it?

 

Offline Titanian

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #712 on: April 12, 2017, 08:46:57 AM »
Does a ship in overhaul count as the quadruple of it's tonnage? Otherwise, there is another problem with the new maintainence rules: If my facilities can support a total tonnage of T at any time, they can actually support 4*T with proper micromanagement. By having three fleets away from the facilities but right next to, and one in overhaul, and then cycling them in short cycles into overhaul.
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #713 on: April 12, 2017, 11:47:11 AM »
Does a ship in overhaul count as the quadruple of it's tonnage? Otherwise, there is another problem with the new maintainence rules: If my facilities can support a total tonnage of T at any time, they can actually support 4*T with proper micromanagement. By having three fleets away from the facilities but right next to, and one in overhaul, and then cycling them in short cycles into overhaul.
I don't really follow this? There is a rather long time penalty for a ship to come out of overhaul early, which would prevent you moving it out of maintenance range.
 

Offline Titanian

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #714 on: April 12, 2017, 03:02:09 PM »
If you switch them every five days, then every fleet will only take these five days to finish their overhaul, as overhauling reverses the clock at four times the normal speed. So you don't have to take them out early.
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #715 on: April 12, 2017, 03:24:36 PM »
If you switch them every five days, then every fleet will only take these five days to finish their overhaul, as overhauling reverses the clock at four times the normal speed. So you don't have to take them out early.
That makes sense. Of course its tedious beyond belief, and clearly abusing the system though, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't just play with maintenance turned off instead?
 

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #716 on: April 13, 2017, 03:09:07 AM »
Sorry to bring this up again in case I missed a major rules change... but with the new maintenance system, aren't we encouraged to simply build hangar PDCs instead of in-orbit maintenance?

In the current version, that is a more or less balanced option - completely eliminates ongoing costs, but is usually much more expensive upfront (at least for large numbers of small-ish ships) and limits flexibility.

In the upcoming version, it looks like maintenance facilities are going to be more expensive than equivalent hangar capacity and should be built only for the ability to overhaul, if at all.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2017, 03:10:40 AM by Iranon »
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #717 on: April 13, 2017, 03:24:20 AM »
Sorry to bring this up again in case I missed a major rules change... but with the new maintenance system, aren't we encouraged to simply build hangar PDCs instead of in-orbit maintenance?

In the current version, that is a more or less balanced option - completely eliminates ongoing costs, but is usually much more expensive upfront (at least for large numbers of small-ish ships) and limits flexibility.

In the upcoming version, it looks like maintenance facilities are going to be more expensive than equivalent hangar capacity and should be built only for the ability to overhaul, if at all.

Some things to consider though (including changes from the 7.2 change log):

- Your going to be able to increase capacity of maintenance facilities via techs now, x2 capacity from a 16000 RP tech should half their cost per capacity.
- Maintenance facilities also can be used to produce MSP, and will be 3 times more efficient at this then factories. Since MSP cost now will be more expensive and important since they represent all upkeep costs as well, your going to have to build them anyways if you don't want to dedicate part of your other industry to just building MSP.
- MSPs also will be used for other things such as repairing Titans, and are no longer received for free when ships are created.
- If Maintenance facilities still end up unreasonably expensive for what they do I think their cost will very likely be balanced/tweaked.


http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8151.msg84277#msg84277
« Last Edit: April 13, 2017, 03:41:19 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #718 on: April 13, 2017, 10:04:31 AM »
Sorry to bring this up again in case I missed a major rules change... but with the new maintenance system, aren't we encouraged to simply build hangar PDCs instead of in-orbit maintenance?

In the current version, that is a more or less balanced option - completely eliminates ongoing costs, but is usually much more expensive upfront (at least for large numbers of small-ish ships) and limits flexibility.

In the upcoming version, it looks like maintenance facilities are going to be more expensive than equivalent hangar capacity and should be built only for the ability to overhaul, if at all.
Have we had any indication that ships in hangars won't consume MSPs anyway? I can't see a yes/no answer anywhere but don't think you should assume they won't. 

(I also seem to remember a discussion with Steve around orbital infrastructure where he suggested that TN ships may not able to land on planets with gravity wells, which would rule out most hangar PDC cases)
 

Yearly reports please

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #719 on: April 20, 2017, 04:57:20 AM »
Great game!

I would love if we can have a forced stop of time at every new year and be presented with a yearly report that shows the progress of your Empire.  If we can extract that to an excel document would be a very nice bonus.

The report could contain:
Finance
Construction (Factories built etc)
Minerals mined/consumed
Fuel harvested/consumed
Ordnance
Shipbuilding
Research
Military losses
Colonization
Population growth

You get the idea.
If the game could save every year: Super!
10 years: great! 5 years: good!

This would make it feel even more like you were in control of the Empire.  Making 5 year plans etc.
And give you a good overview what the next 5 years should focus on.