Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441748 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #270 on: October 20, 2016, 10:59:46 AM »
Well, why don't we just factor in the gravity of the body in question when considering what we're trying to do? It's kind of ridiculous to treat a super-earth with 3g the same way as a 10-km asteroid with 0.00005g. Why not just impose a upper gravity limit on where you can use PDC hangars and restrict them to small bodes with microgravity that doesn't disrupt the aether enough to disable engines? You can still have your giant PDC hangers, you're just going to have to build them into asteroids instead of on earthlike planets.

Just for simplicity. It would be extra work without extra game play if players had to know the tonnage limit for every different system body. The same applies to terraforming (at the moment anyway) with the size of the body not affecting the amount of atmosphere required.
 

Offline bitbucket

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #271 on: October 20, 2016, 11:05:16 AM »
Just for simplicity. It would be extra work without extra game play if players had to know the tonnage limit for every different system body. The same applies to terraforming (at the moment anyway) with the size of the body not affecting the amount of atmosphere required.

Make it a simple cut-off point then; for example, on a system body with more than 0.01g, you can't dock anything bigger than fighters/FAC into PDCs?
 

Offline bean

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #272 on: October 20, 2016, 01:00:43 PM »
Yes... but isn't that really a bit of an exploit? I mean, I can see the possibility of large PDC hangars on asteroids say, or small moons. That seems kind of realistic. But if we're talking about parking a 20kT warship designed mainly for zero-G in an underground hangar in Arizona...

Just because we can do something in the current version doesn't mean we should be able to do it.
Agreed.  I was pointing out that things which are currently possible (and the ultimate in exploits here is the use of PDCs to 'mothball' ships, payoff being 3-10 years depending on tech) would be inconsistent with the new technobabble, not advocating that they be kept.

This would be interesting to do for shuttles/ lift capacity too, so with ×2 gravity you need twice as many shuttles  ( they each manage half the cargo to orbit. )
The math doesn't really work that way.  It's a lot more complicated, depending on the nature of your launch system.  I'd suspect that the infrastructure is going to dominate in most of Aurora, not the physical payload of the shuttles themselves.
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Offline BwenGun

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #273 on: October 20, 2016, 01:52:47 PM »
There is also the question of how orbital to surface combat is handled. If TN beam weapons function normally in a gravity well then perhaps the current restrictions on beam weapons in atmosphere are removed, or lessened, and the combat becomes between PDCs and orbital warships, with the PDCs benefiting from better armour and perhaps more powerful beam weapons. If that is true, then there needs to be some reason that orbital warships can't simply wipe out ground forces.

Well logically space based forces should be able to wipe out unsupported ground based forces easily anyway. Even if you don't have lasers to burn down through the atmo you can just drop kinetic strikes using rocks, debris and especially dense Ensigns. The problem with kinetics would be that even if you're using relatively small, hardened KSVs they're going to do some serious collateral, and of course if launched far enough away ground based scanners would likely be able to detect and vector said relatively slow (at least in a TN military environment) projectiles and feed that data to ground based defensive lasers to shoot down. Now lasers are preferable because they're precise, and require very little in the way of resupply.

That said space based lasers run into problems against ground based due to the fact that a ship based power supply is always going to limit, to a certain extent, how much actual damage the laser can do through the atmosphere. Whereas groundbased lasers can draw from entire planetary power grids and thus can afford to be both large enough and powerful enough to punch up through the atmosphere and out into low orbit. Not to mention planets are generally speaking wonderful natural heat sinks for the operation of lasers compared to the finite heat sinks available to ships.

Though the big advantage a ship based laser will always retain over one based in a PDC is that it can always dodge. A PDC is stationary, and once its fired it's not exactly going to be difficult to find and obliterate with concentrated fire, or even by pulling the ships further out and throwing some rocks down the gravity well. Leading to some interesting strategic decisions, do you have lots of small PDCs that mount a few lasers and sufficient armour to survive a one on one engagement with an enemy ship, thus allowing you to activate them slowly in order to wear the enemy fleet down whilst retaining a few hidden points to use when the enemy finally brings the troop transports close enough to be vulnerable. But at the same time risk those same small PDCs being easily found and overrun by enemy ground forces if they are willing to land troops in the teeth of a determined ground based laser grid. Or do you build massively armoured PDCs with multiple huge lasers capable of knocking out enemy ships, shrugging off hits, and resisting ground based attack at the same time.

Past that you could also add an army unit type, mobile surface to orbit lasers, basically mobile ship killing lasers whose entire purpose is to shoot and scoot as much as possible, granting ground based forces some measure of anti-space weaponry without having to build and ship PDCs. Useful for either strengthening a worlds defences (or even as a stopgap defence before PDCs can be built), or to accompany invasion forces in order to provide some backup against enemy airpower and potentially even space forces in case the invading force manages to lose control of orbital space.

At the moment, I believe, units can stay hidden in PDCs before heading out and engaging enemy units and thus revealing themselves. It might also be an idea to potentially give units a limited ability to just naturally hide, representing the fact that any space based military would recognise that modern surface units need to be able to hide themselves from orbital forces in case they lose control of orbit to prevent those units being vaporized in short order. With perhaps a small chance every day or so that a unit will be discovered, in part or full and thus open itself to orbital fire and so lose some strength and cohesion. You could even add the option for ground forces to attempt to fade into the background and attempt to carry out a low intensity war, using small units to prevent orbital strikes taking out to many of them in one go whilst continuing the war until hopefully the navy turns up to turn the tables on an invader.

All of which would make for quite an interesting way of approaching conflict in the game. The ability to heavily fortify planets with hidden surface installations would make planetary invasions a lot more chancy, with the risk of lost or heavily damaged ships much more likely. Far more so than now, where a force capable of wiping out orbital stations and driving off the enemy defensive fleet is much more easily able to assume complete control and if necessary lob TN missiles down the gravity well to quash the obvious resistance before landing troops. Instead invasions could become a little like sieges, with space based forces probing the ground based defences, seeking to tempt the defenders into revealing a few PDCs here and there in order to knock them out before guaging when to launch the invasion, all the while hoping the defenders didn't hold back too many PDCs or Ground to Orbit laser brigades to make a mess of the descending drop pods and the ships in relatively low orbits for ground support operations.

Not to mention interesting strategic options, whereby you could pour defences into chokepoint systems with the aim of using it to draw away an enemies fleet and ground strength in order to fight a long slow siege to wear down the planets defences. Or have rapid reaction forces of mobile infantry units supported by Ground to Orbit Laser battalions in fast transports, designed to jump in with small fleets on the frontier, land on mining asteroids/early stage colony worlds. The hope being that the GOLS battalions have the punch to catch whatever relief forces an enemy sends out off-guard, and either delay the retaking of those positions by dint of forcing them to be wary and call in reinforcements. Or blow up their initial force and then force them to either cede that ground or send another force to retake it.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #274 on: October 20, 2016, 03:14:03 PM »
Make it a simple cut-off point then; for example, on a system body with more than 0.01g, you can't dock anything bigger than fighters/FAC into PDCs?

I don't think even that cutoff adds anything, though.

Honestly, I'd just say that ships can land, but they're not designed for it. Basically leave it as it is now; ships can load/unload cargo with planets, do it faster with a spaceport, and can dock in PDCs/PDCs can fire missiles at ships in space. You'll still probably need to work out cargo transfer for space stations, but I'd suggest just doing it like the fuel transfer and have it use basically the same system whether you're transferring between planets or or ships/stations.
 
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Offline baconholic

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #275 on: October 20, 2016, 04:01:52 PM »
Why don't we just split up the current PDC functions into orbital weapons platform and ground base barrack/hanger.

The orbital weapons platform will simply be a wing of the space station. It will not suffer from atmospheric interference like the current PDCs do. Basically it'll be an immobile ship.

The new barrack and hanger will function as a planetary installation. Each barrack will house 1 battalion and each hanger will house 1 fighter.

To simulate atmospheric fighter combat, we can have fighters under 500 tons add their PPV during each ground combat phase. This way the assaulting force can bring a huge fleet to destroy/capture the space station orbiting the planet, but they'll still need assault carriers with <500 ton fighters in order to support the ground combat.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #276 on: October 21, 2016, 02:23:47 AM »
Just for simplicity. It would be extra work without extra game play if players had to know the tonnage limit for every different system body. The same applies to terraforming (at the moment anyway) with the size of the body not affecting the amount of atmosphere required.
The math doesn't really work that way.  It's a lot more complicated, depending on the nature of your launch system.  I'd suspect that the infrastructure is going to dominate in most of Aurora, not the physical payload of the shuttles themselves.

Alot of stuff in Aurora have math that "doesn't really work that way" in reality  ::)

Even with the TN technobabble Aurora is not really modelling economy of scale except for warship armor for example. And I'm thankful because it would be a pain to calculate and estimate for example factory output or infrastructure needs if they used a non-linear formulas instead.

My point was that if shuttles are worth the effort of adding they should be a meaningful constraint, and as such having gravity impact their efficiency in a linear way ends up closer to reality then it having zero impact does.


To be honest I feel that Steve is missing a big opportunity in Aurora to have the planets feel unique and special when he is hesitating to use their gravity, surface area and other properties in as much of the game mechanics as possible.

I think it would help alot to make the game more immersive and tell interesting stories if you didn't just terraform planet #20 in a long row of planets that in game mechanics feel identical to eachother until it also can sustain infinite population, but if you actually had to spend 5 times as long time to terraform the planet due to it's larger surface area, and in return it could sustain 4 billion instead of the 300 million the smaller moon can sustain, but as a tradeoff the large size and gravity put extra requirements on your shuttle needs.
( just example numbers )

I'm sure there are many other areas and game mechanics where the same concept could be expanded into like:
  • Planets with larger surface areas and larger biospheres could slow down ground combat resolution ( harsh fighting for years on the huge planet with endless jungles )
  • On low gravity bodies assembling PDCs might be much easier
  • A large amount of water/hydrosphere might reduce the surface area you can live on without infrastructure
  • Certain planets could have other unique traits or economical bonuses ( similar to the research anomalies )

« Last Edit: October 21, 2016, 03:02:29 AM by alex_brunius »
 
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Offline Zincat

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #277 on: October 21, 2016, 07:15:20 AM »
OK, I've read back though and we are getting quite complex :)

Fair enough. I will admit to that  :) I liked my version, but so be it.

4) If ships can't land on planets then, under the current technobabble, there are lots of potential consequences around fighters and missiles not being able to move from surface to orbit (and vice versa), with subsequent impact on PDC hangars, ground-based weapons, etc.. Instead, we could change the currently proposed technobabble by saying that turbulence in the fluidic Aether near gravity wells is proportional to the mass of the object moving through the Aether. Once that mass exceeds 500 tons, there is a serious chance of damage to a vessel.

Now we actually have a reason for the previously arbitrary limit of 500 tons on fighters and all the complexities around fighters and missiles go away. It becomes very similar to the current game, except that we have logistics in orbit. How does that sound?

Well, it's acceptable. However I will still say something that in my opinion is way too unbalanced. And that is PDCs. I think it's actually a serious problem, because PDC become way too convenient compared to ships, especially with lack of maintenance. And hangars. I think the problem needs to be addressed.

PDC already have the tonnage advantage compared to ships of similar size. And also they have 0 maintenance.  While ships in orbit cost a lot of minerals and have overhaul downtimes. Now, it makes sense for said maintenance to be lower than ships, but not 0. Especially on planets with no atmosphere (no protection from space) or dangerous atmospheres, there SHOULD be a constant cost in order to keep a PDC operational.

I propose a PDC maintenance perhaps half the amount of a ship in orbit. On the plus side, it should work without maintenance facilities, it's just a flat cost. Bonus points if Steve codes it so the maintenance is dependant on the atmosphere type (you know, maintenance on a corrosive pressure cooker like Venus...)

Same with hangars, as it is it makes no sense and is unbalanced. I can build a 1.000.000 ton hangar, store my whole fleet there and pay no maintenance. Why? I really think this should be changed,  like this it is unbalanced.

<snipped for legibility>

I agree on all accounts, I'd LOVE to have more diversity based on planet type  :)
« Last Edit: October 21, 2016, 07:23:37 AM by Zincat »
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #278 on: October 21, 2016, 07:48:23 AM »
Sounds like it should be quite simple to have PDCs require a bit of maintenance now assuming the 7.2 changes are rolled into the C# version since maintenance was changed to use MSPs instead of resources:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8151.0

( Reading through the thread of 7.2 changes just increase the desire to play with all these glorious changes even more )
 

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #279 on: October 21, 2016, 07:51:50 AM »
I think having PDCs cost maintenance, albeit less than ships and not requiring maintenance facilities, sounds very sensible.

Although I'm going to miss zero-cost mothballing, quite a few of my most fun battles involved reactivating thoroughly obsolete ships that I would have scrapped without this.
 

Offline ryuga81

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #280 on: October 21, 2016, 08:52:32 AM »
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=8497. msg98164#msg98164 date=1476953241
OK, I've read back though and we are getting quite complex :)  I still like some of the proposed changes though so lets go back to a simpler version.

This all began because I was answering a question on replenishment at the same time as other orders and then suggested moving all logistics into orbit.  The subsequent discussion went from that point because we needed a reason to keep ships in space.  That reason then sparked a series of different consequences.  So how about this instead:

1) We have technobabble that states ships can't land on planets, so logistics is generally in orbit (fuelling, cargo transfer, maintenance modules, etc).  This will make non-planet based logistics much easier and will makes orbital space and the early game more interesting

2) if a planet exists, the logistics facilities will draw on its resources, otherwise they will use their own.

3) If orbital facilities don't exist, ships can mount 'shuttle bays' that allow slower interaction with the planet.

4) If ships can't land on planets then, under the current technobabble, there are lots of potential consequences around fighters and missiles not being able to move from surface to orbit (and vice versa), with subsequent impact on PDC hangars, ground-based weapons, etc. .  Instead, we could change the currently proposed technobabble by saying that turbulence in the fluidic Aether near gravity wells is proportional to the mass of the object moving through the Aether.  Once that mass exceeds 500 tons, there is a serious chance of damage to a vessel.

Now we actually have a reason for the previously arbitrary limit of 500 tons on fighters and all the complexities around fighters and missiles go away.  It becomes very similar to the current game, except that we have logistics in orbit.  How does that sound?

IMHO it is still too complex.  I believe we can assume all maintenance and refueling is handled by a swarm of TN drones and shuttles that haul stuff and personnel back and forth and take care of simple overhauling (but not complex damage repairs, that's done at shipyards), so even if maintenance/refueling systems are land-based (as they are in current version), actual logistics are done in space and ships do not need to "land" (except fighters, that are small enough to land).

It is only logical to consider that the planetary stock of fuel and maintenance/replacement parts is not effectively kept in orbit, but transferred on a need basis, in this case the requirement of an orbital station or ship-mounted shuttles adds a layer of unnecessary complexity. 

Building a maintenance facility, in this case, also means building drones/shuttles and whatever it takes to operate in space, and it also explains why a maintenance/refueling facility is not "targetable" in space (once a threat is revealed, all drones/shuttles are called off and scattered on the surface, so any attack has to be carried through usual orbital bombardment or planetary invasion).
 

Offline Black

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #281 on: October 21, 2016, 10:20:03 AM »
I like the possibility of crippling enemy forces by destroying their orbital infrastructure. It allows you to hurt your opponent in situations where you don't have enough ground forces to occupy the planet and without turning the planet into nuclear wasteland.

As for the PDCs they have some advantages over orbital stations or ships, but by deploying them on your planets you are risking your population and ground infrastructure in combat (at least in situations where enemy is using missiles).

Orbital stations can also be refitted and transported or towed to different locations. You cannot disassemble existing PDC to transfer it to different planet or to use it to guard a jump point or your fuel harvesters orbiting moonless gas giant.
 

Offline Father Tim

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #282 on: October 21, 2016, 08:27:51 PM »
In my Aurora, ships land on planets.  In my Aurora, ships are BUILT on planets.  Ships are loaded and unloaded on planets, usually by six muscular people and some sort of wheeled conveyance.  My Aurora is the Aurora of space westerns like Firefly/Serenity, Star Wars, and Battle Beyond the Stars.  My Aurora is also the Aurora of the Age of Sail.  My ships have 74 one-sixth size Gauss cannon and two fire controls.  My captains put them down on convenient moons to patch holes in the hull.

When they came for my planetary shipyards I said nothing, because I wasn't a shipyard worker. . .  I ruthlessly (and relentlessly) used SM mode to compensate for Aurora's new "bug" of considering shipyards orbital; instantly repairing or replacing any damage caused by space combat.  Only ground bombardment could damage my yards.  Certainly, I never attempted to tow twenty-four square miles of desert to another planet.


A logistics system that means it takes more than five seconds for Precursors to load up with another faceful of missiles?  Awesome, I love it!  The inability of ships to load fuel and cargo at the same time?  *shrug*  I'll deal with it.  To me its no different than the decision that Factories should take 50,000 cargo points instead of 45,000 or 60,000.  It just is.  And if it changes, I'll deal with that too.

But moving all my factories and logistics and whatnot into space?  No thank-you.  That's not the flavour of story I'm telling.  If it IS your flavour I wish you all the best of it.  Enjoy.  It's not something I want in my Aurora.  If there ends up a switch for "Orbital shipyards & factories vs Ground only" I'll be delighted.  For both of us.

In the mean time, if we need to move logistics into space in order to make orbital populations work, well, I'd rather not have orbital populations then.
 
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Offline Garfunkel

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #283 on: October 21, 2016, 11:30:59 PM »
I'm all for shuttles and space elevators. Funny timing that Father Tim posted above how his ships always land on planets - my Aurora ships have never landed on planets. Shipyards couldn't be built until a spaceport and a mass driver were in place (the former to send people up and the latter for cargo and I removed the initial SY). Cargo handling system encompassed tiny shuttle craft to make it possible to load/unload on bodies without a spaceport. Shipyards are massive orbital constructs where workers operate like modern day oil rig crew and Earth orbit is jam-packed with shuttles. That's my Aurora.

So getting actual shuttle/orbital lift capacity, including SPACE ELEVATORS, is fantastic in my book.
 

Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #284 on: October 22, 2016, 10:16:50 AM »
I'm the same, I've always considered ships to be orbital only and the cargo handling systems to be shuttle bays etc.

I think the simplification is fine although would still like to see some different ground units and aircraft that can be deployed in addition to just troops.