C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[iceball3]

I wonder if any titan-based Anti-missile capability is in order.
How well do titans fare against mesons and missiles, Steve?
I wonder, as a lot of events where a ship would have clearance to drop titans to fight other titans, or ground drops in general it sounds like they'd similarly be capable of laying out some serious anti ground bombardment and meson fire.
Sure, bombardment messes ground stuff up, but ground combat does too a bit, yeah? If a low yield missile can invalidate a titan, then it sounds like it'd be a lot more efficient than dropping another titan, unless ground units in general are made a lot smaller (or missiles made bigger).
Another concern, is that if you land titans to attempt to take/fight PDCs, could ground based mesons be turned against them to devastating effect?
I know AI does none of these things (yet), but it does concern me how much arbitrarily large meson defense networks can already go towards shattering attempts at creating a beachhead.

[Garfunkel]

Frankly, you could scrap the Titans and it doesn't seem like the game would grow worse for it. It'll work in some games and contexts, but not really in most.

I really hope you're going to allow us to er disallow titans,  last thing I'm gonna want is my NPR running around with giant robots

Unless I'm going to play a WH40K game, the "titans" in my games will actually be atmospheric air/strike force. They will depict helicopters, ornithopters and jet planes. Since heavy assault is tanks. That fits neatly with the mechanics as well - it doesn't make sense for 'copters and fast fliers to get damaged in the same manner as ground forces.

[Rye123]

Actually, since there are so many ideas for customising the Titans, why not just make Titans like mobile PDCs? You could add random stuff to them and it changes their mass. Do away with the 3 default Titans, and then players can create their own Titans.

So the ship design menu will have 3 options - Ship, Titan or PDC.


Then again I'm not sure if Titans will have such a big effect on the game to warrant such a change...

[QuakeIV]

I like the mobile PDC idea.  This isn't in any way neccesary, but warhammer has titans that can be boarded, and they have giant fortifications all throughout the legs and divisions of troops defending the titan from boarders.  That would be cool as hell to have ingame, especially if the titans could get up to large ship scale in terms of investment.

Again, not needed, just would be really cool.

[Zincat]

To be honest, I don't like most of these latest suggestions about titans.

Ground combat needs improvements compared to the current situation. That's undeniable. New units needs to be added, new mechanics too. Probably, a complete redesign/rebalance.

However, a lot of the suggestions I see in the last two pages or so aim to make titans something else. Something more complex and probably hard to code and balance. Something, plainly put, that is not just "another ground unit".

I am not saying that something like that cannot be implemented. However, that is only AFTER ground combat has been revamped and we know more of how the new ground combat is going to work. Until that happens, there's no sense in making "movable PDCs". How would they work, interacting with normal troops? Having anti missile capabilities. How would that be balanced, against normal troops?

All these changes can be discussed, weighted, implemented only after ground combat is overhauled into something that can actually support all this. Until that happens, titans should mostly be normal ground units to preserve balance and coherence across the board. The extra bombardment attack they have right now is just about the limit of what I would consider an acceptable advantage over normal troops, with the current rules.

[Barkhorn]

I kind of agree that Titans are not what we need right now.  The AI doesn't even do ground combat right now.  I don't really see any sense in devoting any effort into ground combat mechanics that aren't ever going to be used.

Basically, until the AI can make and use troop transports and/or dropships, this is just arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

[Rye123]

To be honest, I don't like most of these latest suggestions about titans.

Ground combat needs improvements compared to the current situation. That's undeniable. New units needs to be added, new mechanics too. Probably, a complete redesign/rebalance.

However, a lot of the suggestions I see in the last two pages or so aim to make titans something else. Something more complex and probably hard to code and balance. Something, plainly put, that is not just "another ground unit".

I am not saying that something like that cannot be implemented. However, that is only AFTER ground combat has been revamped and we know more of how the new ground combat is going to work. Until that happens, there's no sense in making "movable PDCs". How would they work, interacting with normal troops? Having anti missile capabilities. How would that be balanced, against normal troops?

All these changes can be discussed, weighted, implemented only after ground combat is overhauled into something that can actually support all this. Until that happens, titans should mostly be normal ground units to preserve balance and coherence across the board. The extra bombardment attack they have right now is just about the limit of what I would consider an acceptable advantage over normal troops, with the current rules.

Yeah, I agree. It's just that if we're gonna suggest all these customisation options for Titans, we may as well just all put it all in one package.

But yeah, I agree that it's not really necessary now, especially since the AI doesn't even do ground combat.

[Jovus]

Clearly, the only appropriate solution to the problem is to build an entire separate, exceedingly-detailed game to simulate ground combat, designed to interface with Aurora both for initial setup and for results translation.


...


I started that off as a joke, but it would be pretty awesome.

[TMaekler]

Question on Commander Careers:
The automatic assignment in VB6 often switched officers between the same spot on identical ships or offices - which I always found to be a bit strange. Is there a way to include a routine which checks if an officer was assigned to one spot on ship A and if he is auto-assigned to the same spot on ship B that he is kept on ship A?

[Steve Walmsley]

Question on Commander Careers:
The automatic assignment in VB6 often switched officers between the same spot on identical ships or offices - which I always found to be a bit strange. Is there a way to include a routine which checks if an officer was assigned to one spot on ship A and if he is auto-assigned to the same spot on ship B that he is kept on ship A?

The problem occurs because in VB6 officers are unassigned after a fixed period of time (the tour length). That doesn't happen in C#.

In C#, an officer will only undergo auto-assignment if he is currently unassigned, or he is a junior officer moving to a ship command position, or he had to leave his old command because he was promoted. In all those cases, the new assignment cannot be similar to his previous assignment.

[Titanian]

Since now the rank of an officer needed for the different positions is fixed and not a minimum requirement as before and not anymore mostly decided by the player on a whim, will promotion rules become more flexible? Currently, the fixed ratio of officers in ranks meant I set the required officer ranks for my ship classes to match. As this won't be possible anymore, it seems we will have to design ships in very specific ways and build the correct numbers of them to keep officers of all ranks employed evenly. Or will promotion be more 'on demand', like when a survey officer of rank two is required, but not available, promote one with fitting ability from the lower rank?

Even fighters and FACs and such now need rank 3 commanders, because they have weapons?

Since an officer immedeatly gets kicked out of his command when promoted, what happens when there is no open position for his new rank, and no spare officer for his old position?
And since the auto-assingment intervals don't happen anymore, an officer who gets promoted and put into a position where his skills are completely useless (because there is no better fitting one available in his new rank that instant) will never move to a better fitting position until his next promotion, completely wasting his abilities (which were the reason he actually got promoted) for several years?

[ChildServices]

Can we also throttle certain ranks to only have a certain number of people when auto-promotion is active? E.G restricting the top rank to 1 person at all times?

[Steve Walmsley]

Since now the rank of an officer needed for the different positions is fixed and not a minimum requirement as before and not anymore mostly decided by the player on a whim, will promotion rules become more flexible? Currently, the fixed ratio of officers in ranks meant I set the required officer ranks for my ship classes to match. As this won't be possible anymore, it seems we will have to design ships in very specific ways and build the correct numbers of them to keep officers of all ranks employed evenly. Or will promotion be more 'on demand', like when a survey officer of rank two is required, but not available, promote one with fitting ability from the lower rank?

Even fighters and FACs and such now need rank 3 commanders, because they have weapons?

Since an officer immedeatly gets kicked out of his command when promoted, what happens when there is no open position for his new rank, and no spare officer for his old position?
And since the auto-assingment intervals don't happen anymore, an officer who gets promoted and put into a position where his skills are completely useless (because there is no better fitting one available in his new rank that instant) will never move to a better fitting position until his next promotion, completely wasting his abilities (which were the reason he actually got promoted) for several years?

A good point about fighters and FACs. I've added an extra rule that any ship of 1000 tons or less is always the lowest rank unless it has one of the extra control stations (AUX, CIC, etc.).

The auto-assignment only places officers in positions where they have a relevant skill. For example, only officers with survey skills are assigned to survey ships, officers with production skills are assigned to salvagers or construction ships, etc.. Which bonus takes priority is based on how you assign class priorities, or you can leave it to Aurora to decide. Officers with no bonuses will not be assigned, although you can still do that manually. The experience section in C# is a lot more detailed so officers will tend to receive bonuses based on the ships they are in. If you command a mining ship, 60% of the time any skill increase will be in mining, with the other options being crew training or reaction. Also, any officer, even if not assigned, has a small chance of a skill increase, so that officer would remain unassigned until a suitable bonus appears.

Moving up should not be an issue. With the new rules, especially admin commands, you will need more high level commanders than before.

Of course, you can still promote, demote and assign commanders manually as in VB6.

[Steve Walmsley]

Can we also throttle certain ranks to only have a certain number of people when auto-promotion is active? E.G restricting the top rank to 1 person at all times?

It would be easy enough for me to add a rule on that basis, although I think too many senior officers is not going to be a problem.

[Tree]

Is it already possible in C# to search for a commander by name or sort them by name? Could you add "name" as a search criterion so we could order them alphabetically like we'll be able by bonus?