C# Aurora v0.x Suggestions

[Garfunkel]

PacWar and WitP (the latter is the modernized/expanded/remake version of the former) are seen as highly realistic because they have a very high granularity when it comes to detail, and that granularity attempts to simulate actual naval battles and ship design and so on. So instead of an arbitrary mathematical formula to decide how a battle goes (like Paradox does as their battle algorithm has nothing to do with real battles) there are dozens of calculations on whether a shell X fired from cannon Y from a ship Z can penetrate the armour A on a ship B at a location C. Very few strategy games do that as it's cumbersome and requires massive amount of data, which is why it's mostly Steel Panthers, (old) Close Combats and tank/flight simulators which bother with it.

Of course, Hearts of Iron/Rule the Waves is more realistic than PacWar/WitP when it comes to the chain of command, or actual strategic level leadership, because the player cannot micro-manage their ships and task forces but rather has to issue overall direction.

What sloanjh suggests is actually a pretty decent compromise - it is bit jarring that research costs are always the same from game to game and that I can know down to the day when a particular bit of tech will become available, and I can fine-tune my lab assignments on the fly. I wouldn't want a total crapshoot either though, because having no power to mitigate obstacles and problems is just the game showing me the finger - and don't say "well build more research labs" because while that is a valid approach, it's also a really slow process because of the large disparity between strategic direction (industry, research, ship design/construction) that takes several months or years, and the tactical direction (survey, combat) that takes hours or days.

[JustAnotherDude]

Are the escort functions from VB6 still present in C#? I was thinking about using detached light cruisers along several axis of my main fleet to extend the detection envelope and realized that I wasn't sure if that would as easy in C# as it is in VB6.

[Steve Walmsley]

Are the escort functions from VB6 still present in C#? I was thinking about using detached light cruisers along several axis of my main fleet to extend the detection envelope and realized that I wasn't sure if that would as easy in C# as it is in VB6.

It isn't coded yet, but I will add at some point.

[sloanjh (OP)]

3)  I strongly suspect Steve has a high jigsaw affinity, but he's also a big fan of poker.

So if high Jigsaw affinity means solving complex puzzles, often with incomplete information, then I agree. If it means having complete information I don't think that would necessarily be me.

Interesting.

I think what I mean by high Jigsaw affinity is "likes solving complex problems that have complete information".  So jigsaw, Sudoku, etc.  I'm personally not a big jigsaw puzzle fan, but I'm totally hooked on Sudoku and get enjoyment out of games like Civ where I'm cycling through the cities trying to eke out the last dregs of efficiency.  I suspect Lego might fall into the same category, although there's an artistic component there.  Interestingly enough, it occurs to me that computer programming might fall into this category too, since (at least in a Turing environment) they're deterministic.  Maybe the best way to phrase it is "detail-oriented".  So are you saying you're not a fan of these sorts of things?

I suspect there might be another axis floating around having to do with completeness of information, but I'm not sure how to formulate it.  If your answer is "no, I don't like working through a solution for the sake of working through the solution" then .... that actually lessens the potential incongruity of you liking poker

As for getting penalized or rewarded for things completely outside your control, I think Garfunkel said it really well in his reply:

it is bit jarring that research costs are always the same from game to game and that I can know down to the day when a particular bit of tech will become available, and I can fine-tune my lab assignments on the fly.

So I think the idea of putting some randomness into the results of research results (and by extension other economic activities like ship construction, possibly survey etc) is that having perfectly predictability breaks some people's suspension of disbelief.  I would put it in the same category as rolling random warp networks and star systems - it puts some natural variability/another factor to account for into planning.  The trick is to introduce it in such a way so that it doesn't increase micromanagement burdens on the player when schedules don't quite mesh up (I don't see that happening - I think the tasks are fairly decoupled and the player simply acts when a task is done).  Another bullet that occurred to me after my original post was that it might add more flavor to people's fiction: "Laying down of our new superdreadnaught class was delayed due to a research setback in engine development".

John

[TMaekler]

I think that having fixed time for research is good as it is.

A benefitial system of variable (or unknown) length of research with benefit for gameplay, I could imagine only with a difference in research results. What do I mean? Let's say you research a new tech of laser weapons and a situation arises where it would benefit you greatly that you get it as quickly as possible. You then go down with your demands as to what the final product should have archived; you become willing to let it have some downsides to get the benefit (with a laser for example have it overload and after 5 times of shooting you have to give it a 5 minute break until you can use it again; or whatever negative malus you want to insert here).
Thereby you can use the laser way earlier but have to deal with the side effects.

I don't see that possible easily within the research system of Aurora - and would the gameplay benefit enough to create such a system?

[Jorgen_CAB]

To be frank perfectly deterministic system usually means there is only one optimal choice to make... so most often it will remove choice and not add anything.

"Fog of War" or some randomness actually add options... you now are weighting risks of doing something now or later and you don't know exactly when that will be.

You don't want randomness too feel too random either... you need to have a way to mitigate the randomness but you should never make the random so low that it does not matter either so you will then need a fine balance there.

The major beef I have with the research is that it is decoupled with your actions and that it is highly deterministic. Some randomness where you have setbacks and breakthroughs in research might be interesting from a narrative perspective. The skill of scientists could effect this instead of increasing the research points you get every five days. I think the scientist skill impact the project too much anyway. But... a highly skilled scientist are more likely to get a breakthrough rather than a setback.

There should also be different buildings for applied research from theoretical research, this would produce more choices into how to manage your resources long term rather than short term.

As well as some sort of efficiency "bonus" for labs that work with the same type of projects for a long term.

Scientists should loose skills in areas they are not using while gaining skill in areas they do use... I think all leaders and officers should do this. The higher a skill is the more likely they are to loose some and the lower the chance of increasing it depending on how active they are in utilising it.

As is it is extremely frustrating if one faction simply never get a specific scientist in an important area at the start of a game, such as propulsion or construction for example, so there already are random technology progression in that respect. In my opinion scientists impact the rate of tech gain a bit too much with no real economic impact or relation to size and complexity of a specific empire/faction.

There could easily also be a reduction on efficiency of adding labs to project, the more labs you add the less points you should get to encourage to spread your labs around a bit more. Administrative skill of the scientist could then effect this rather than having a fixed max number of labs they can control. This would make this value more useful as this value rarely do much unless rather late in the game, early on you simply don't have enough labs anyway.

There are may ways you could make research more interesting and require more decisions that will have more long term effect or consequences.

Personally I don't like min/max systems and the current tech system is very min/max friendly with rather small long term planning needed outside a plan for in what order you want to get thing. You always want as many labs on one scientist as possible while putting one lab on the rest to train them... this produce effects that for me is immersion breaking. I obviously don't do that in my games and add rules for how labs (and industry) can be distributed among projects.

[Steve Walmsley]

So if high Jigsaw affinity means solving complex puzzles, often with incomplete information, then I agree. If it means having complete information I don't think that would necessarily be me.

Interesting.

I think what I mean by high Jigsaw affinity is "likes solving complex problems that have complete information".  So jigsaw, Sudoku, etc.  I'm personally not a big jigsaw puzzle fan, but I'm totally hooked on Sudoku and get enjoyment out of games like Civ where I'm cycling through the cities trying to eke out the last dregs of efficiency.  I suspect Lego might fall into the same category, although there's an artistic component there.  Interestingly enough, it occurs to me that computer programming might fall into this category too, since (at least in a Turing environment) they're deterministic.  Maybe the best way to phrase it is "detail-oriented".  So are you saying you're not a fan of these sorts of things?

I suspect there might be another axis floating around having to do with completeness of information, but I'm not sure how to formulate it.  If your answer is "no, I don't like working through a solution for the sake of working through the solution" then .... that actually lessens the potential incongruity of you liking poker

John

Psychoanalysis Online

I don't do Sudoku or Jigsaws or Rubik's Cubes, etc.. In fact, I don't really do any sort of fixed puzzles. I did enjoy Civ up to V, although I haven't played a lot of VI. The best games are where am I defending against unrelenting assault from multiple directions

I've always enjoyed complex wargames, both board and PC games. I prefer turn-based thinking games to click-fests, although I enjoy single-player RPGs such as Skyrim, particularly with the difficult mods such as Requiem and the survival mods like Hunterborn, Frostfall and Realistic Needs. In fact I like survival-based games in particular, such as Subnautica. Maybe that is why I always explore early in Aurora. Safe is boring

Maybe what I actually like is difficult challenges rather than complex puzzles.

[AlStar]

Possible less drastic research change:
Have each race have a random 90% - 110% cost multiplier for each tech line.  Enough to make you think if it might be worth exploring a different weapon system due to lesser RP costs, but not so much that you couldn't go with the more expensive option by throwing more labs at it. 

To borrow from Zincat's idea - maybe there's a 'general studies' tech which could be researched to re-roll your multiplier, taking the better of the two rolls.  These would be priced highly enough that it'd be a major decision if you want to slow down your research activities in the short-term to lower future costs.

[Bremen]

I was reading another discussion (about the possibility of using low tech engines as a source of cheap additional HTK on immobile stations) and I had an idea about a potential new component.

Basically, Duranium/Compressed Carbon/etc "Bulkheads". Internal ship components from the same tech line as armor that did nothing except have a large amount of HTK to absorb damage. Even if their HTK and cost were identical to armor plates of the same tech level I think they might see some minor use as a counter to particle lances/shock damage/potentially mesons. Especially if the nerf to mesons and shock damage got revisted with a counter available. They could also be used on missile ships to try to prevent magazine explosions from being completely catastrophic, potentially replacing the internal armoring option that VB Aurora has for some components. I could also see using them being competitive with armor when penetrating hits are a distinct worry (Such as fighters or FACs where the armor would be spread thin relative to HS).

From a roleplay perspective they'd also allow for the design of ships where combat damage was a much more gradual thing - instead of a ship remaining mostly intact until armor was breached, and then being destroyed quickly, a ship making heavy use of bulkheads would see its combat capabilities gradually degraded by damage. Might make some thematic sense to have them give a bonus against boarding in some way (either providing a "fortification" effect for the defenders, or just overall slowing the boarding combat process for both sides).

[Father Tim]

I was reading another discussion (about the possibility of using low tech engines as a source of cheap additional HTK on immobile stations) and I had an idea about a potential new component.

Basically, Duranium/Compressed Carbon/etc "Bulkheads". Internal ship components from the same tech line as armor that did nothing except have a large amount of HTK to absorb damage. Even if their HTK and cost were identical to armor plates of the same tech level I think they might see some minor use as a counter to particle lances/shock damage/potentially mesons. Especially if the nerf to mesons and shock damage got revisted with a counter available. They could also be used on missile ships to try to prevent magazine explosions from being completely catastrophic, potentially replacing the internal armoring option that VB Aurora has for some components. I could also see using them being competitive with armor when penetrating hits are a distinct worry (Such as fighters or FACs where the armor would be spread thin relative to HS).

From a roleplay perspective they'd also allow for the design of ships where combat damage was a much more gradual thing - instead of a ship remaining mostly intact until armor was breached, and then being destroyed quickly, a ship making heavy use of bulkheads would see its combat capabilities gradually degraded by damage. Might make some thematic sense to have them give a bonus against boarding in some way (either providing a "fortification" effect for the defenders, or just overall slowing the boarding combat process for both sides).

I would rather see Component Armour return in a functional manner than add bulkheads.  I'd prefer to heavily protect one engine and one fuel tank than make my vessel sort-of generally tougher but still almost as likely to be taken out by a single lucky hit.

[Bughunter]

Steves gaming preferences sounds so much like mine it's almost scary. No wonder perhaps that Aurora attracts the kind of people who likes the same things he does 

[space dwarf]

Maybe one idea to add some gameplay to randomised project times would be that the better/more experienced your scientist, the more accurate their estimation of the project time is.

Joe Bloggs straight out of the academy might have a wildly optimistic idea of how long it'll take him to lead a team to invent a real working gamma-ray laser.

Dr Einsteinoid Brainiac who's been leading huge research teams for 50 years and has a +40% research modifier on the other hand might have a much more realistic estimation of project times - and gets them done faster to boot.

A way to enhance this gameplay would be the ability to "second" scientists to projects. This would increase their new "project experience" stat alongside the scientist who's actually running the project, but their skills don't contribute to it and they cant do another project at the same time. That way you have the gameplay tradeoff of "Do I train up the new scientists to be good at project management while using my older scientists to research, or do I make my already-good scientists better at the cost of them not being available during the course of the project?"

just a thought off the top of my head

[Hazard]

Let them add a (very minor) speed up bonus, like 1/10th their base rating, as long as it's a project in their field of specialisation. It'll encourage keeping a stable of well trained scientists on hand rather than dropping everything on that one awesome researcher, only to panic when he dies.

[alex_brunius]

What I don't enjoy are games where I get penalised or rewarded for things that are completely outside my control. It feels like I don't need to be there. I would rather play something where I feel I can influence the outcome.

Do you enjoy when the randomness in Aurora 4x throws you a streak of lucky / unlucky combat events, like unlucky magazine/engine detonations blowing up one of your or the enemy's capital ship or 10/10 of your missiles being evaded despite them having a 30% chance to hit?

I guess what most people are asking for is that in reality research is almost as unpredictable as combat, so it hurts the immersion to have perfect knowledge and pre-planning of research, just like it would hurt your immersion if combat was only a series of 100% predictable blows until the weaker side ran out of hitpoints.


Even if randomness is added we can still influence research by improving the overall speed or changing priories, just like you can influence combat by reducing the chance of magazine detonations or increasing our hit-chance of missiles, but it having perfect predictability subtracts from the experience IMO.



I like the ideas brought up by sloanjh. Basically have a steady progress but random events can cause setbacks/breakthroughs that overall balance out. This seems to strike a good balance between being easy to implement and balance while also maximizing gameplay benefits of increased immersion and UI. It's could be expanded to cover construction of ships and buildings or if you want some influence over it add more depths to leaders you assign ( methodical personality trait leaders produce more predictable results while chaotic leaders can have progress jump both back and forwards extreme ).

[Jorgen_CAB]

I was reading another discussion (about the possibility of using low tech engines as a source of cheap additional HTK on immobile stations) and I had an idea about a potential new component.

Basically, Duranium/Compressed Carbon/etc "Bulkheads". Internal ship components from the same tech line as armor that did nothing except have a large amount of HTK to absorb damage. Even if their HTK and cost were identical to armor plates of the same tech level I think they might see some minor use as a counter to particle lances/shock damage/potentially mesons. Especially if the nerf to mesons and shock damage got revisted with a counter available. They could also be used on missile ships to try to prevent magazine explosions from being completely catastrophic, potentially replacing the internal armoring option that VB Aurora has for some components. I could also see using them being competitive with armor when penetrating hits are a distinct worry (Such as fighters or FACs where the armor would be spread thin relative to HS).

From a roleplay perspective they'd also allow for the design of ships where combat damage was a much more gradual thing - instead of a ship remaining mostly intact until armor was breached, and then being destroyed quickly, a ship making heavy use of bulkheads would see its combat capabilities gradually degraded by damage. Might make some thematic sense to have them give a bonus against boarding in some way (either providing a "fortification" effect for the defenders, or just overall slowing the boarding combat process for both sides).

I would rather see Component Armour return in a functional manner than add bulkheads.  I'd prefer to heavily protect one engine and one fuel tank than make my vessel sort-of generally tougher but still almost as likely to be taken out by a single lucky hit.

Steve should rekindle his ideas from this thread... http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=4329.msg42975#msg42975

This would be great if done to C# Aurora at some point... the weapon part not the Newtonian physics part.