C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[MarcAFK]

Is there some missing information in the event log combat report compared to old Aurora? It seems that at minimum the defender should know how many missiles were in a salvo, if they were being detected by sensors anyway. It's good to know how many misses there was compared to hits, also their speed, since you already detected how fast they were going.
I rely on the combat log when doing an AAR to ensure I know the details after the fact.

[SerBeardian]

Is there some missing information in the event log combat report compared to old Aurora? It seems that at minimum the defender should know how many missiles were in a salvo, if they were being detected by sensors anyway.  It's good to know how many misses there was compared to hits, also their speed, since you already detected how fast they were going. 
I rely on the combat log when doing an AAR to ensure I know the details after the fact.

Steve already mentioned that's a bug he needs to fix.

[mtm84]

Couple of questions about the new ground combat.  Is there still infantry armor, or did Steve take (never put in?) that out? And how will the new ground system work with planetary unrest or conquered populations?  Will there be a Military Police type infantry component? Or is that kind of thing just not needed with the new way attack and defend works?

[Steve Walmsley]

Couple of questions about the new ground combat.  Is there still infantry armor, or did Steve take (never put in?) that out? And how will the new ground system work with planetary unrest or conquered populations?  Will there be a Military Police type infantry component? Or is that kind of thing just not needed with the new way attack and defend works?

Yes, you can have armour for infantry.

The occupation strength (used for both occupation and unrest) is equal to the square root of the size of each ground unit at the population. So 1000 Size 5 infantry would have 2236 strength, while 50 Size 100 tanks would have 500 strength. So infantry is better at occupying and pacifying than tanks. A new commander Occupation bonus will boost this for each formation as a whole.

The resistance of a population is based on the average of determination, militancy and xenophobia. The required occupation strength is equal to Resistance * Population Amount * Occupation Status Mod.

[Coleslaw]

A new commander Occupation bonus will boost this for each formation as a whole.

This may have already been discussed and put in place, and if so ignore me, but will we be able to set formations to have a preferred commander type? For example, for setting all my policing formations to have a higher priority of getting a commander with a good Occupation Bonus.

[Steve Walmsley]

This may have already been discussed and put in place, and if so ignore me, but will we be able to set formations to have a preferred commander type? For example, for setting all my policing formations to have a higher priority of getting a commander with a good Occupation Bonus.

There is nothing like that at the moment, but I don't see any reason why there couldn't be a flag for each formation that specifies the most important bonus type for automated assignment purposes.

[Hazard]

This could be handled by slightly expanding the special training/equipment mechanics for formations, granting a modest boost in a skill area like normal against a small increase in cost, and setting the preferred commander skill to a different one than normal.

[Shiwanabe]

Those magazine changes look interesting. I'm not sure of all the effects it'll have, but I already know I'm going to be making more than one size of magazine now. 

[Triato]

I like the changes to translation mechanisms.  However,  one of them does not makr to much senae to me from a "realism" /immersion point of view. Rhe one I refer to is that you can not advance in traslation without a willing partner.

Ships could monitor transmitions from colonies and learn the lanfuaje rhat way wirhout being detected.  They however should not be able to do so if only alien ships are present becouse rhey could comunicate via "tight"  beam.

Learning a languaje from an unwilling alien popularions shold take much more time and be more difficult. A penalty system could be used for that.

I am liking the new aurora so much that I feel very picky writing this comment.  Hope it helps,  but it doesn't really matter if it is not implemented.

Thanks Steve

[King-Salomon]

I like the changes to translation mechanisms.  However,  one of them does not makr to much senae to me from a "realism" /immersion point of view. Rhe one I refer to is that you can not advance in traslation without a willing partner.

Ships could monitor transmitions from colonies and learn the lanfuaje rhat way wirhout being detected.  They however should not be able to do so if only alien ships are present becouse rhey could comunicate via "tight"  beam.

Learning a languaje from an unwilling alien popularions shold take much more time and be more difficult. A penalty system could be used for that.

well, I was thinking the same - maybe a special "spying modul" would explain it - which is (hopefully undetected) searching for sound-waves/transmisions in the aether...

hmm.. a new tech with a new modul for special ships.. there I go, making it more complicated that it has to -.-

[Shiwanabe]

Automated Weapon Assignment

C# has a more intelligent auto-assignment for weapons and fire controls. You can set up a ship with a single click and then adjust as necessary. The code assumes that

    Any missile fire control with a resolution of 1 is an anti-missile fire control
    Any missile fire control with a resolution greater than 1 is a 'normal' missile fire control
    Any beam fire control with a tracking speed at least 2x racial speed is a point defence fire control (some leeway here for older ships)
    Other beam fire controls are for offensive weapons
    Weapons within the given category (missile PD, missile offensive, beam PD, beam offensive) are split equally between fire controls of the same category
    More powerful beam weapons are assigned first
    ECCM is assigned as available with the priority order of offensive launcher, PD launcher, offensive beam, PD beam

The assignment code will take account of damage to the ship and adjust accordingly. In most cases, the above will be sufficient (and will be used for NPR designs). For more bespoke and unusual player ships, some tweaking may be necessary.

This looks mostly good, there's just one thing bugging me.

I've recently been running a game with maxed tech and I've only used res 1 sensors. At that tech level you're looking at such long ranges on them and such small signatures on ships due to cloaking that this assumption will fail completely.

I suspect this kicks in a few levels lower, but it's also far above what most people are likely to see with VB Aurora.

Note that missiles are automatically assigned to launchers.

Looking at your last example it shoved the Vortex Torpedo into all the launchers. This means it's not grabbing the biggest stack, so what are the rules this goes through?

 

Communication Attempts

Oh boy. This is definitely going to be a change. No clue how this will play out, but with current diplomacy you'd likely run into problems due to having had a ship detected in one of 'their' systems for this process.

And I do agree with other people's comments on the 'willingness' requirement. If you're intercepting enough communications you'll get there eventually, it'll just take a lot longer.

[Hazard]

I'll echo the others; it should be possible to get an effective translation going without a willing partner. I would reckon you'd need to detect a planetary population's EM signature at a good enough resolution to get a chance at deciphering their language though, which would mean more than just knowing there's a planet spewing EM radiation into the ether, you'd need to get close enough depending on your EM sensor strength to actually start working away at figuring out how their television channels and radio systems work.

[Conscript Gary]

Perhaps this could tie into the ship module replacements for Espionage and Diplomacy teams that were discussed a while ago? Abstracted SIGINT is a common thread behind that thought and the idea of translating a language via eavesdropping.

Also, the new change to the armor display is neat... but I think it might be a good idea to include a hard cap on the scaling before scrolling is reintroduced, for those gargantuan edge cases that people like to make.

[the obelisk]

Perhaps this could tie into the ship module replacements for Espionage and Diplomacy teams that were discussed a while ago? Abstracted SIGINT is a common thread behind that thought and the idea of translating a language via eavesdropping.

Also, the new change to the armor display is neat... but I think it might be a good idea to include a hard cap on the scaling before scrolling is reintroduced, for those gargantuan edge cases that people like to make.

Requiring ships with specialized modules for the purposes of translation seems incredibly tedious, particularly given that first contact is likely to be one of your ships encountering one of theirs in an unpopulated system.  In all likelihood you'd HAVE to track down one of their colonies, or wait for them to track down one of yours, because the alternative is a needle-in-the-haystack game of trying to run your translation ship into theirs.  I'll admit I have some bias on the issue because I don't think flat out replacing Espionage and Diplomacy teams with ship modules is a good idea, but this seems to needlessly complicate NPR interaction without making the experience more enjoyable or engaging.

[IanD]

Steve wrote "Communication Attempts

There are two additional constraints on attempting communication with alien races in C# Aurora.

1) Translation checks will only take place effort can only take place if both sides have a status of "Attempting Communication". In other words, you can't translate their language if they refuse to talk to you." ...... Unless you have occupied a colony?


If you have occupied a colony you may find the equivalent of the Rosetta stone so that translation becomes a research project based on computers and books and other ephemera left lying around. Chance should probably depend on size of colony, e.g. if materials are acquired from educational establishments.

Ian