Author Topic: C# Aurora Changes Discussion  (Read 441736 times)

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Offline Shuul

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #150 on: October 06, 2016, 08:16:01 AM »
So this is a small buff to carriers, as we will not need large fuel systems to field fighters.
 

Offline TMaekler

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #151 on: October 07, 2016, 07:44:22 AM »
Since I am reading more and more new stuff added to C#-Aurora, I was wondering how importable a 7.1 MDB would be? Do you have plans regarding that, Steve?
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #152 on: October 07, 2016, 08:35:32 AM »
Since I am reading more and more new stuff added to C#-Aurora, I was wondering how importable a 7.1 MDB would be? Do you have plans regarding that, Steve?
Here is how version changes go. X.00 changes are full version changes, with completely different mechanics so DBs are incompatible. 0.X0 are database changes, so DBs are incompatible. 0.0X changes are minor changes, so DBs are compatible.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 

Offline Shuul

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #153 on: October 07, 2016, 08:47:18 AM »
And Steve pointed out that it seems to became 8.0
 

Offline sloanjh (OP)

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #154 on: October 09, 2016, 08:43:32 AM »
On Fleet orders screen:

You explicitly put "CIV" harvesters in the set of possible fleet "move to" locations.  From this I infer that normal commercial ships (cargo/passenger) will NOT be available.  If so, you might want to reconsider that: a player might want to move a fleet to the location of a commercial ship, e.g. as an escort (in which case you might want to allow a commercial ship, or body, or ... to be the "focus" of a fleet formation if you don't already) or to intercept an enemy formation that's attacking it and that isn't visible on sensors (that's one's probably pretty weak - if the commercial ship is getting attacked, it's probably going to get blown away pretty quickly).

Which reminds me of another thing I see people having trouble with all the time: targeting sensor drones and/or minelayers at a moving body like a planet.  You might be able to put some sort of "extra" checkbox in for targeting missiles that differentiates between "attack" and "move to" - maybe it would be two different targeting buttons.

John
 

Offline sloanjh (OP)

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #155 on: October 09, 2016, 08:43:55 AM »
More generally:  I don't think I've asked how your C# experience compares to VB6.  Are you finding it tons more powerful/efficient?  One of my friends (before I started C#, and before C++11) once told me he thought he was an order of magnitude quicker using C# over C++.  I didn't believe him at the time, but once I started using it myself I was a lot more inclined to agree.  From my point of view it's due to:  1)  No memory management issues due to garbage collection (almost solved in C++11 by smart pointers) 2)  Built in container library (.NET) from the start (solved for new projects by STL in C++11) and 3) Intellisense - it's a big win to be notified of a syntax error by having auto-complete stop working and to see the error underlined.

John
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #156 on: October 09, 2016, 09:28:39 AM »
More generally:  I don't think I've asked how your C# experience compares to VB6.  Are you finding it tons more powerful/efficient?  One of my friends (before I started C#, and before C++11) once told me he thought he was an order of magnitude quicker using C# over C++.  I didn't believe him at the time, but once I started using it myself I was a lot more inclined to agree.  From my point of view it's due to:  1)  No memory management issues due to garbage collection (almost solved in C++11 by smart pointers) 2)  Built in container library (.NET) from the start (solved for new projects by STL in C++11) and 3) Intellisense - it's a big win to be notified of a syntax error by having auto-complete stop working and to see the error underlined.

John

I'm very impressed with C# so far. Considerably more flexible than VB6. Garbage collection is very useful but I have found using LINQ with Lambda expressions to be the biggest factor. Once I load everything into collections, I can query in the same way as a database, except I can include functions within that code.

For example, the code below is creating a list of comets to display in the orders window. This one line of code pulls the comets for a specific system, retrieving either all comets or only the unsurveyed ones depending on the state of a checkbox (based on the viewing race), excludes those with an existing population, orders the selection by component and name (which is pulled from a function within the LINQ) and then puts the comets into a collection. This would take a little longer in VB :)

                    List<SystemBody> Comets = Aurora.SystemBodyList.Values.Where(x => x.ParentSystem == CurrentSystem.System && x.BodyClass == AuroraSystemBodyClass.Comet && (x.Surveys.Contains(FleetRace.RaceID) == false || chkExcludeSurveyed.CheckState == CheckState.Unchecked)).Except(PopSB).OrderBy(x => x.ParentStar.Component).ThenBy(x => x.ReturnSystemBodyName(FleetRace)).ToList();

Intellisense is very good too and being able to use Peek Definitions mid-code makes things much easier in the IDE.

BTW I was a C++ programmer for DEC a LONG time ago. I was writing VBX controls for Windows 3.1. C++ was powerful but definitely programming without a safety net :)
« Last Edit: October 09, 2016, 09:33:08 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #157 on: October 09, 2016, 09:38:22 AM »
On Fleet orders screen:

You explicitly put "CIV" harvesters in the set of possible fleet "move to" locations.  From this I infer that normal commercial ships (cargo/passenger) will NOT be available.  If so, you might want to reconsider that: a player might want to move a fleet to the location of a commercial ship, e.g. as an escort (in which case you might want to allow a commercial ship, or body, or ... to be the "focus" of a fleet formation if you don't already) or to intercept an enemy formation that's attacking it and that isn't visible on sensors (that's one's probably pretty weak - if the commercial ship is getting attacked, it's probably going to get blown away pretty quickly).

Which reminds me of another thing I see people having trouble with all the time: targeting sensor drones and/or minelayers at a moving body like a planet.  You might be able to put some sort of "extra" checkbox in for targeting missiles that differentiates between "attack" and "move to" - maybe it would be two different targeting buttons.

John

The harvesters are displayed when you select 'Fleets' for display. There is a separate checkbox in the display options for 'Civilians', which will list all the civilian ships in the system, not just the harvesters.

Yes, I know the targeting planets in VB6 is clumsy. I'll create a better UI for C#
 

Offline snapto

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #158 on: October 10, 2016, 08:16:17 AM »
On the fleet orders window when loading installations, would it be possible to have an indication of how much cargo capacity each installation requires (either per unit, total, or both)? It's looking great btw!
 

Offline TCD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #159 on: October 11, 2016, 10:20:28 AM »
The new orders system does look great, especially tying it in with the fleet organisation. Much easier to use.

One request from me would be for a way to easily see/filter/mark task groups by system. I can never remember which ships are in which system, and spend a lot of time in VB6 clicking on every ship of a particular type to find the ones in a certain system. It would be super helpful if the fleet organisation part of the new orders window either showed system location or let me filter or highlight for that.

I was initially going to ask you to think about adding system in after the task group name (in a different colour or in brackets or something) but that might be too wide?
 

Offline ardem

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #160 on: October 11, 2016, 11:15:26 PM »
Steve is it at all possible to a 'remove highlighted' button, where it removed the highlighted order., with the new C# code and UI.

So many times I set orders and in the middle of the order is  the mistake, so I need to remove all to start again, which is a pain for timed based orders, and redoing all the little parts that can make up some of the larger repeat orders.
« Last Edit: October 11, 2016, 11:18:28 PM by ardem »
 

Offline IanD

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #161 on: October 12, 2016, 02:27:45 AM »
Steve, is it possible to have search sensors switch on separately from fire control sensors? This would be of great benefit in (a) letting you know you are being lit up by a fire control sensor as opposed to just a search sensor (indicating hostile intent) and (b) enables the player to light up a potentially hostile ship to show your displasure without actually firing on it. Hopefully the last could be linked to NPR dipolomacy such that they respond in kind or go away.

Ian
IanD
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #162 on: October 12, 2016, 02:30:39 AM »
Steve, is it possible to have search sensors switch on separately from fire control sensors? This would be of great benefit in (a) letting you know you are being lit up by a fire control sensor as opposed to just a search sensor (indicating hostile intent) and (b) enables the player to light up a potentially hostile ship to show your displasure without actually firing on it. Hopefully the last could be linked to NPR dipolomacy such that they respond in kind or go away.

Just out of curiosity, is this something you can do in reality? I mean detect if the radar that is tracking your craft is a firecontrol or search radar?
 

Online Andrew

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #163 on: October 12, 2016, 04:03:39 AM »
I believe the answer to that is complicated. Depending on the quality of your ESM gear you can detect the characteristics of the radar illuminating you which tells you things like the pulse rate, frequency and signal strength. From these you can determine the type of radar illuminating you and hence tell the likely platform it is based on and what it does, this is based on pre-existing knowledge of what radars are in service.
However even if you are dealing with an unknown type of radar you can tell something about it, Search radars tend to have relatively low pulse rates which helps make signal processing of large area sweeps easier but means there is a degree of positional uncertainty, targeting radars tend to be much more focussed on a small area and have higher pulse rates which helps precisely locate the target which is important for weapons like the typical Aurora missile which is dependent on external data, however if the weapon being fired has it's own guidance system then it could be fired based on the rougher fix of the search radar and then do the final targeting on its own so in that case you would not detect a targeting radar until the weapon activates its seeking head, and of course something like an IR Homing missile never illuminates its target with a targeting radar.

Edit: I am not an expert so some of the above could be wrong
 

Offline AL

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Re: C# Aurora Changes Discussion
« Reply #164 on: October 12, 2016, 04:41:23 AM »
What about the option to turn on/off specific search sensors? Unless I missed something, we only have the option to toggle them all at once right now.