C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[TCD]

That makes sense. I guess my shorter games, with large ships, generally at similar speeds per tech level is the antithesis of what mothballing would be needed for!

[TMaekler]

I would like to see some new type of "area orders". Like for example placing a salvage ship in a system and giving it the order of salvaging automatically any new wreck that "appears" in that system. Or being able to create an order chain like this:

If Fuel Reserve in Fuel Depot XY < 200.000.000l begin transferring Fuel from Depot YZ but don't empty Depot YZ under the limit of 150.000.000l.

So basically improving automation... 

[Garfunkel]

Salvage nearest wreck in Default Orders would be useful indeed.

[Kytuzian]

"Salvage Nearest Wreck" is already a thing.

[baconholic]

"Salvage Nearest Wreck" is already a thing.

It generates a bunch of error when the wreck is in another system, but yes, it "works" for now.

[bean]

You pay 5% of the build cost in maintenance per year (6.25% in the next version), so over 20 (16) years accumulated maintenance costs are equal to initial build cost.
For expensive (for their size) ships, building hangar PDCs may make sense. This makes sense in particular for ships that were considered fast in their prime:

A battlecruiser 3 engine generations out of date may be thoroughly obsolete, but still able to make a meaningful contribution and keep up with the current battle line.
By current standards, its running costs are exorbitant compared to its capability though. Useful to take out of mothball if available and we expected a major battle, but not something we'd like to keep around all the time... without hangar PDCs, we'd have scrapped it long ago and built something else instead.

While totally cost-free mothballing may be a bit much, I like how the Great Old Ones can return to active service when there is a need.

I ran numbers on this, and the payoff appears to be 3-10 years, depending on how expensive your ships are.  More expensive ships per unit size mean faster payoff. 

[Triato]

I see sugestions are being presented here so I´ll dare to do so too.

I have a problem with crew training. When build new ship models I have to train new crews from cero (from scraped ships), I understand the ships are new and crew need to re-train, but their previous experience should still have some value. Maybe crews could be separate entities that persist and have a performance acording to their training in their original ship, if they change ships they get a penalty and if they man a ship that needs more crew, they get a bigger penalty based on the amount of novice personel needed to fully man the ship.

Maybe there can be a simpler solution. Hopefully the problem is important enough to get some atention.

Congratulations for the advance and thanks for a great game.

[RikerPicard]

I see sugestions are being presented here so I´ll dare to do so too.

I have a problem with crew training. When build new ship models I have to train new crews from cero (from scraped ships), I understand the ships are new and crew need to re-train, but their previous experience should still have some value. Maybe crews could be separate entities that persist and have a performance acording to their training in their original ship, if they change ships they get a penalty and if they man a ship that needs more crew, they get a bigger penalty based on the amount of novice personel needed to fully man the ship.

Maybe there can be a simpler solution. Hopefully the problem is important enough to get some atention.

Congratulations for the advance and thanks for a great game.

I love the idea of "crews" being separate entities from the "crew pool". Here's how I can see it working;

-Fighter/FAC/Commercial crew functionality unchanged

-Military vessels >1k tons have a new field under commander, called crew

-This can either show "unassigned crew" or "<officer name> crew"

-If Captain changes ships, crew moves with them taking grade rating and TF training %, no change if moving to ship of same class, moving to different class incurs TF training but not grade rating penalty based on refit cost(moving to next generation of same type less of an adjustment than say, moving from a carrier to a destroyer), in addition to current changes based on more/less crew(Crews will swap, other crew will retain current name if captained, allowing you to swap captains or assign a new one at a penalty)

-If Captain moves to fighter/FAC/commercial ship/staff/team, or dies/retires/is simply unassigned, crew becomes unassigned, grade and TF training are unchanged but suffers penalty for having no qualified commander in charge

-New Captain reduces grade and TF training % slightly

-Scrapping a ship with more than a certain level of crew grade and training % will generate a "leader" of type "crew"(with stats for size, grade, and TF training), which can be assigned to any ship with 0 of each, modifying the ratings based on new crew size and "destroying" the leader. These leaders can also be "assigned" to join junior officer pool, which has the same effect as scrapping currently does

[Borealis4x]

I would like to see spinal railguns or even better more customizable beam weapons that don't rely on tech for size.

They should be more like radars where the bigger you make the caliber, heatsink, and barrel the heavier the weapon becomes with tech making more powerful smaller beam weapons viable.

Or at least give us a way to give them the x2, x4, x.5 modifier, I want my UNSC ships.

[83athom]

I would like to see spinal railguns

Steve has gone on record saying he likes the idea of more spinal type weapons but just hasn't gotten around to it.

or even better more customizable beam weapons that don't rely on tech for size.

They should be more like radars where the bigger you make the caliber, heatsink, and barrel the heavier the weapon becomes with tech making more powerful smaller beam weapons viable.

Or at least give us a way to give them the x2, x4, x.5 modifier,

It is a very difficult things to make changes to weapons in VB (Steve has said this somewhere). However Steve has said it is much easier to add weapons in C#, so he may do this eventually. You should have put this in the suggestion thread as this is a feature request not discussing an already decided change.

I want my UNSC ships.

So do I, but you can make do with current mechanics (I've done it before).

[QuakeIV]

You can make do, but I can see where he is coming from.  It would be a fun feature.  Obviously Steve can just not implement it and we will all be totally fine, but I at least agree that it would be nice.

[ryuga81]

You pay 5% of the build cost in maintenance per year (6. 25% in the next version), so over 20 (16) years accumulated maintenance costs are equal to initial build cost.
For expensive (for their size) ships, building hangar PDCs may make sense.  This makes sense in particular for ships that were considered fast in their prime:

I'd really appreciate a "mothball" command for a TG, that puts it on minimal maintenance (say 1% per year?) and requires some time (3-6 months?) to get it flying again (it would be much like shutting down industries).  Technically I believe it would be very similar to "overhaul" command, so it shouldn't be hard to implement. . .

[Borealis4x]

Is there going to be a "united Earth" theme for peoples names where it is just the regular earth names from the other themes are bundled together? The Terran Federation naming theme is very strange and seems too Western.

[83athom]

Is there going to be a "united Earth" theme for peoples names where it is just the regular earth names from the other themes are bundled together? The Terran Federation naming theme is very strange and seems too Western.

You can always create your own theme if you have the patience and ideas for names.

[sloanjh (OP)]

On new refueling post:

Let's say I've got 4 ships (A, B, C, D) in a fleet, along with tanker T.  T has enough refuel rate to refuel only two of the four while the fleet is moving.  The refuel priority is set to A,B,C,D.  Let's say it takes one week for any one of A-D to run their tanks dry without refueling, and that T has effectively unlimited fuel (i.e. plenty for the timescales we're talking about).

Now I give the fleet an order to move to a location that's two week's travel time away.  What happens after one week (without any micromanagement of refueling priorities)?  I see two possible behaviors:

1)  A, B have full tanks and C and D are empty.
2)  A-D all have (roughly) half-empty tanks.

Obviously #1 is the preferred (and realistic) behavior.  Reading the new rules post, it seems like we'll end up with #2.  Is there a way to avoid this?

Thanks,
John