C# Aurora Changes Discussion

[ardem]

Hi Steve,

Love the additions to planets with more details. I know you specified the extra details are for fortification levels, however are we going to see this translate to plus and minuses for unit types attack and defence numbers.

E.G. Light Infantry has higher attack and defence when fighting on a wooded planet oppose the a barren planet, Heavy Vehicles have a higher attack on a desert planet opposed to a wooded planet. etc etc.

This would add a great amount of detail with limited coding, well you might need more for the AI armies, maybe you cheat here when AI lands you add the army types at that time, with a slightly more favourable army based on the terrain.

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I know you going to add Supply mechanics to the Ground Battles, which is great, what are the outcomes for units running low on supplies, I am assuming a no attack mechanic, but on the defensive side will we see surrenders and if so is there a chance to capture heavy mechs from the opposition. Also can we research like in space battles when a mech is lost salvaged?

Thanks for your reply

[Steve Walmsley]

C# progress isn't very fast at the moment due to other commitments and I am now away for another week. Hope to get back to normal speed soon

[Steve Walmsley]

Hi Steve,

Love the additions to planets with more details. I know you specified the extra details are for fortification levels, however are we going to see this translate to plus and minuses for unit types attack and defence numbers.

E.G. Light Infantry has higher attack and defence when fighting on a wooded planet oppose the a barren planet, Heavy Vehicles have a higher attack on a desert planet opposed to a wooded planet. etc etc.

This would add a great amount of detail with limited coding, well you might need more for the AI armies, maybe you cheat here when AI lands you add the army types at that time, with a slightly more favourable army based on the terrain.

-----------------------------------------------

I know you going to add Supply mechanics to the Ground Battles, which is great, what are the outcomes for units running low on supplies, I am assuming a no attack mechanic, but on the defensive side will we see surrenders and if so is there a chance to capture heavy mechs from the opposition. Also can we research like in space battles when a mech is lost salvaged?

Thanks for your reply

To hit penalties affect all units. However, certain unit capabilities such as Mountain Warfare or Jungle Warfare are only available to Infantry units.

I haven't decided on the penalties yet, but will probably prevent attack and greatly reduce rate of fire on defence. Surrender mechanics would be possible, in which case you could gain all the defenders equipment.

[Gyrfalcon]

A question for Steve - would it be hard to have a checkbox in the configuration for 'Simple Ground Combat' that simply follows the old rules and ignore fortification? That'd let people like ChildServices that don't want to deal with ground combat to be able to ignore it as before by plastering the ground units into paste with nukes while leaving something that only glows faintly at night to invade. (As opposed to the new system, where plastering a deeply entrenched army into paste would result in the world having that nuclear glow for the next 10,000 years...)

[Father Tim]

If they're not too much trouble to code, I am always in favour of toggles to turn off sections of the rules for people who don't want to use them, but one of the stated goals of Aurora was to force the player to choose betwen the difficult task of conquering a planet with ground troops, and the easy route of nuking everything to death from orbit, at the cost of having a largely uninhabitable rock.

This was specifically in contrast to Starfire's ability to arrive at a planet day 1, nuke it 'til it glows day 8, and land a billion of your own colonists day 15.

[Tree]

If they're not too much trouble to code, I am always in favour of toggles to turn off sections of the rules for people who don't want to use them, but one of the stated goals of Aurora was to force the player to choose betwen the difficult task of conquering a planet with ground troops, and the easy route of nuking everything to death from orbit, at the cost of having a largely uninhabitable rock.

And we didn't need a new combat system or biomes for that. We already have that choice to make right now.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

In practice, nuking ground units in Aurora VB isnt very expensive in terms of collateral damage, especially since you dont need to totally destroy them.  Just damage them enough for your ground troops, which you can ship in via commercial deathtraps because whynot.

[Person012345]

And we didn't need a new combat system or biomes for that. We already have that choice to make right now.

Except that's directly against the point he was addressing. the entire point of the person he's replying to is that they just want to ignore ground combat. The fact is, if he wants to ignore ground combat he'll have to find another game because one of the big goals of ground combat in aurora is that you can't just ignore it (or if you do there's going to be major repercussions). Which, by his own attestation, is not the case right now. The bioe system is being added because it's good. Ground combat is being reworked because it's needed it for a long time. The thing under discussion is whether he should be able to just completely ignore ground combat. The design intention of the game would be no.

[QuakeIV]

A hopefully reasonable suggestion.  Currently, when designing components, you have an option to type in a company name to incorporate into the auto generated name.  It would be cool if you had a little companies window, where you could create a list of named companies that show up in a drop down in the component design screen.  It would make it way easier to keep track of all of that for me.

[alex_brunius]

A hopefully reasonable suggestion.  Currently, when designing components, you have an option to type in a company name to incorporate into the auto generated name.  It would be cool if you had a little companies window, where you could create a list of named companies that show up in a drop down in the component design screen.  It would make it way easier to keep track of all of that for me.

Why not simply track all company names that have been used for previous projects and display them in the dropdown instead of having to keep track of it manually? Checkbox option to only display names from same research area, or from all research areas.

[QuakeIV]

Eh, could work, I'd like to be able to delete entries from such a list though to deal with typoes and suchnot.

[StephR]

Hi,

A feature that I have long wanted (and think would be really great for role-playing) would be the ability to de-activate certain techs when creating a new game.  For instance, if you wanted a Babylon 5 inspired game you could perhaps make missile techs beyond a certain level inaccessible to either the player of NPRs.

[Person012345]

A hopefully reasonable suggestion.  Currently, when designing components, you have an option to type in a company name to incorporate into the auto generated name.  It would be cool if you had a little companies window, where you could create a list of named companies that show up in a drop down in the component design screen.  It would make it way easier to keep track of all of that for me.

Why not simply track all company names that have been used for previous projects and display them in the dropdown instead of having to keep track of it manually? Checkbox option to only display names from same research area, or from all research areas.

I thought this was happening. Or did I just dream that?

Edit:

At the bottom. I'm sure I saw something about that being a list of companies you've used or something. I don't remember exactly.

[Steve Walmsley]

A question for Steve - would it be hard to have a checkbox in the configuration for 'Simple Ground Combat' that simply follows the old rules and ignore fortification? That'd let people like ChildServices that don't want to deal with ground combat to be able to ignore it as before by plastering the ground units into paste with nukes while leaving something that only glows faintly at night to invade. (As opposed to the new system, where plastering a deeply entrenched army into paste would result in the world having that nuclear glow for the next 10,000 years...)

As this is a complete rewrite the old rules don't exist in the code. You can still ignore ground combat and glass the planet in the new rules.

There will be three potential ways for ships to attack ground units:

1) Direct attack against STO units that have revealed themselves by firing (fortification still applies to the 'to hit' chance). Any hit by a missile or energy weapon will kill the target. Missiles will also cause environmental and collateral damage as they are a wide area effect weapon. Digging out well-fortified STO units with missile attack is going to be very costly in terms of additional damage and probably not worth it if you plan to use the planet afterwards.

2) General missile attack against the surface. Same collateral damage as above. I haven't decided yet exactly how to apply damage to ground units but I will probably choose a formation at random (or formations up to a total size determined by the square root of the warhead strength). I will cycle though the individual units attacked with a steadily decreasing damage strength (to simulate some units being further from the detonation) and use a damage strength vs a combination of fortification and armour to determine if they are destroyed. I may also allow units to 'disperse', which will reduce their effectiveness against other ground units but make them less vulnerable to general missile attack.

3) Orbital fire support with energy weapons. Ships will be tied into a forward fire direction unit on the ground and act as additional bombardment units, with their attack strength based on the weapons used.

In addition to the above, ships will be able to use the current rules for missile strikes on population centres.

[Hazard]

Please allow energy weapons to use the general missile attack rules as well. On the receiving end the difference is minimal.