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Posted by: Droll
« on: December 20, 2020, 02:42:27 PM »

Quote from: Borealis4x on December 20, 2020, 12:42:42 PM
Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.

This is the old changes discussion thread that started from before the release of C# IIRC - you probably want to post this in the C# suggestion sub-forum.
Posted by: Borealis4x
« on: December 20, 2020, 12:42:42 PM »

Perhaps an option to make all mineral deposits infinite with the option to choose individually whether they are infinite on planets, moons, and asteroids/comets.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: June 05, 2020, 06:34:04 PM »

War Exhaustion also needs to exist on a line of non-activity versus activity. Because nobody cares about wars that don't really affect most people and happen somewhere far.
Posted by: Droll
« on: June 01, 2020, 04:15:18 PM »

A war exhaustion mechanic would need to exist alongside a formal war declaration mechanic much like the aforementioned paradox examples.

If an NPR has declared total war on you, then that means that your very existence as a species is being threatened. The loss of crew and ships in a survival scenario such as this is not really going to make your empire less willing fight.

However consider that the enemy has declared war, expressly stating that they wish dismantle listening posts/take over an automated mining colony in a frontier system. Loss of ships and in particular crew in this scenario will have a much more significant level on war weariness as people are going to start questioning whether or not sending their sons to die for a piece of rock is justified or not. This also allows saving crew stuck in lifepods to have a more significant effect on gameplay. Saving crew and delivering them back to the empire would help mitigate such weariness - though not eliminate.
There is also the issue of NPRs and players deciding to push beyond their initial war goals. This could/should have some sort of consequence. This could be in the form of diplomatic repercussions with other NPRs that have established contact or a spike in war exhaustion.

Already you should begin to see the complexity that such a system invites, both gameplay and implementation wise. Unlike paradox games, aurora focuses much more on the tactical and strategic combat aspect of 4x sci-fi, whereas a greater emphasis on interstellar diplomacy exists in something like stellaris.
Posted by: iceball3
« on: April 15, 2020, 04:59:33 AM »

I can only really see war exhaustion directly superseding an empire's decision making autonomy (as a player) if it's something like planetary unrest (but planets already rebel under sufficient unrest in aurora) or loss of crew. I don't see this ending conflicts directly though, at most they should be formed as secondary effects (loss of military academy efficiency due to sending crew to meatgrinder) as there are many wars that you obviously should not be outright surrendering regardless of the war fatigue, unless it's one where all faculties for your empire to control it's assets are voided. See: just about every spoiler race, and alien empires who would obviously force you into peace specifically for discretely parking a fleet of missile carrying ships to alpha strike your home planet.
As is, we already know that PPV isn't representative of lost war value... It's minerals to construct a given ship, it's crew training, the inverse of it's current maintenance clock, it's commanding officers, and the opportunity cost of the slipway/shipyard size/maintenance capacity to build it and keep it going.

As aurora is now, the diplomatic stance you have available is "ready to wage war at any moment", and adding in exhaustion mechanics that make it so you can't fire missiles you have loaded in magazines once an ephemeral diplomatic threshold is passed is honestly not a good idea, in my opinion. That said, we can make the AI find peace much more palatable if they've burned through their officer pool and have to use untrained conscripts on their vessels. Players might be kind to that idea as well. Though, naval academies would likely have to be re-balanced to have diminishing returns, and to partially scale with planetary population and "officers died in combat" fatigue maybe, as the current system feels a bit too feast-or-famine by design... I've never actually run short of officers before running short of minerals, ever.
Posted by: NuclearStudent
« on: April 13, 2020, 11:09:07 PM »

One of the reasons that warscore works in Paradox games is that it operates on known quantities of territory. I don't see that going as well in Aurora.

War exhaustion, however, does sound like a good idea. It should be easier, in general, to know the psychology and war exhaustion of an alien race if you've been in contact for a while.
Posted by: Triato
« on: April 03, 2020, 07:56:46 AM »

Militancy and xenofobia could be part of the formula. That way you can't know if they surrender becouse they are out of ships or becouse they are pacifists. Allied empires should also count.
Posted by: QuakeIV
« on: April 03, 2020, 04:34:46 AM »

I think warscore is a really weak mechanic and isn't suitable to aurora.  Its an attempted abstraction of complicated things happening in the background (morale, or something? who knows), and tends to do a rather poor job of describing why you suddenly surrendered, other than that temporarily losing control of somewhere the 37th time instead of the 36th was apparently the straw that broke the camels back.
Posted by: Hazard
« on: April 02, 2020, 06:54:37 PM »

A warscore mechanic should probably consider how an NPR will evaluate a given conflict. Two major empires going head to head over a handful of mostly empty and worthless systems is unlikely to see a major military deployment and would more likely be a limited/proxy war over those systems, especially if the first engagements are inconclusive and costly. A conflict over a modestly valuable system between a major empire and a smaller empire will see a major difference in how they view the war though. For the major empire it's a nice system to have and something they're willing to take some risks for. To the smaller empire it may well be a matter of the nation's survival and they will dedicate their every effort to victory because otherwise the empire's going to die.


As for how to value ships in a war, you've already got PPV to work with for gun ships, PPV and magazine size for missile ships, and cargo/fuel capacity for non-combat ships. Ground forces can be handled with a blunt weight estimate and colonies with their combined tonnage industrial output (all mines plus production facilities). You can even calculate war weariness into it, calculating the value of your forces and colonies at the start of the war, how much you've added to it, and how much you've lost over the course of the war. How big a deal a conflict is influences how willing your empire is to continue the war.


Of course doing all that wouldn't be a small project by any measure.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: April 02, 2020, 05:54:12 PM »

If there are some war exhaustion mechanic for the NPR it should be some hidden mechanic as it is a "personal" value. The only value that the player should be able to see is the diplomatic score they have with said empire.

There certainly is some merit for the NPR to have a value of how committed they are to a particular conflict. You don't want every conflict to become a total war type of scenario, neither the player nor the NPR will benefit from this as war is a huge drain on resources in Aurora. If there are multiple faction in the game and two of them is fighting for a very long time the others will benefit from this allot.

The way that most 4x games give away statistical numbers is very detrimental to those games in general and very unrealistic on most cases. This especially is in regard to military information... the problem is how accurate the information is. In the real world you might have a rough estimation of an enemy strength, but you can never be 100% sure it is accurate. History have shown many times how enemies have been both over and under estimated by allot in terms of strength and capability.

If you are fighting an alien species which you have never had any economic trading with and barely any diplomatic contact with you also have very little possibility to know almost anything about them, let alone their military strength or willingness to fight.

If you have had good trading opportunities with them in their past you should have a fair estimation of their economic strength but even here it might be a bit tricky as you might net even know all of the planets and system they even have colonies in, how are you then even going to know their true industrial power?

If you are contending with a faction of the same species then things like economy and general military strength could be reasonable to have a good grasp on. I think it depend on how intertwined said factions is and if they have colonies on the same planets and/or systems and how much they know of the enemies military ship designs.

Anyway... information should in general be very sparse in terms of another factions economy, military or psychological state.
Posted by: Froggiest1982
« on: April 02, 2020, 05:25:52 PM »

Considering the truce mechanics being already there, I would use the Truce timeout after peace deals though. This would help to rebuild and avoid small fast-paced wars.

@Steve Walmsley do you think that is doable?
Posted by: Froggiest1982
« on: April 02, 2020, 05:22:33 PM »

Quote from: Gimlie on April 02, 2020, 04:42:12 PM
Quote from: Kaiser link=topic=8497. msg120268#msg120268 date=1585817555
An idea could be adding some "warscore" value once the war start, which is set at value 0 for both the parts (or the alliances) and progress toward positive or negative depending how many and which ship one of the side lose

Paradox generally does a good job of implementing this into their games.  Warscore begins at 0 for each party and every 'victory' pushes the counter up by a value which reflects the significance of that victory.  In Aurora, things like planetary occupation, civilian ship losses, and civilian population deaths could also affect the war score.

I disagree.

You will have to assign points to each ship but based on what? I mean probably the only real number here is the tonnage, however what about guns? Lose a defense platform of 100,000t with few lasers on it's not like losing 10 carries of 10,000t. Also my 10 1,000t FAC could struggle with a well balanced 10,000t cruiser well-armored and fully stocked or the other way round if I have done a good job designing my FACs.

Warscore might work well for AI vs AI so to speak. In a Human vs AI, it's always a mess. First of all too many spoilers: You know exactly how much your opponent has left in terms of resources and troops simply because it goes from 0 to 100% all of the sudden after a victory, meaning they out of guns. Second, until you hit the preset cap the AI refuses to deal with you (and this works both in case they winning or losing) which is a killer. From the player perspective if you can break the 25 points why stop at that? just get 50 and then 75 etc. You can calculate your odds the AI doesn't do that if you put a limitation on their expansion. AI is winning? Concede with a juicy pace deal at the right time and you just bought yourself a bit of time

This is also why Paradox was forced to add claims and other penalty buffers at some point. Do you see where I am going with this? Too complicated for a one-person development team.

Also, the beauty of Aurora is the unknown. You never know exactly what the race you just encountered has. What is their capability, how big is their empire, what tech, etc? As said add a spoiler such as Warscore will make all the intel gathering pointless.
Posted by: Gimlie
« on: April 02, 2020, 05:15:57 PM »

Quote from: amschnei link=topic=8497. msg120301#msg120301 date=1585865189
I’m a huge Paradox fan, and their warscore mechanic generally works for them.  .  .   but they’re a huge developer with lots of manpower and there are still legit complaints about it.   Its not a mechanic that I would recommend for a one-person project. 

Forgive me for maybe acting too presumptuous, but Aurora as a whole is a project which many would consider too big for one person. .  From what I've seen from my few years of watching these forums, lack of manpower doesn't stop Steve from implementing complex mechanics.  That's not to say that this particular feature is good enough to warrant implementation though.
Posted by: amschnei
« on: April 02, 2020, 05:06:29 PM »

I’m a huge Paradox fan, and their warscore mechanic generally works for them. . .  but they’re a huge developer with lots of manpower and there are still legit complaints about it.  Its not a mechanic that I would recommend for a one-person project.
Posted by: Gimlie
« on: April 02, 2020, 04:42:12 PM »

Quote from: Kaiser link=topic=8497. msg120268#msg120268 date=1585817555
An idea could be adding some "warscore" value once the war start, which is set at value 0 for both the parts (or the alliances) and progress toward positive or negative depending how many and which ship one of the side lose

Paradox generally does a good job of implementing this into their games.  Warscore begins at 0 for each party and every 'victory' pushes the counter up by a value which reflects the significance of that victory.  In Aurora, things like planetary occupation, civilian ship losses, and civilian population deaths could also affect the war score.