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Posted by: Serina
« on: June 06, 2025, 08:16:51 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on May 23, 2025, 02:45:17 AM
-Snip-

The progression for refuelling is 20k, 30k, 40k, 60k, 90k, 135k, 200k, etc.

The small craft version still exists, with half the previous refuelling rate.

I do believe then that the main benefit you obtain from having more, smaller tankers is when your fleet is overall very low on fuel. What I mean by that is if you have one large tanker, and ten ships to refuel, then it can only refuel one ship at a time, and so depending on the fuel level of the fleet, you might run out of fuel on the other ships before you finish refueling the fleet, ( I do believe it refuels ship by ship, not the fleet as a whole). Having more numerous smaller tankers however allows you to not only double your refueling rate at the very minimum due to each needing a refueling system, but instead of only refueling one ship at a time, you can now refuel two, three etc, reducing the odds of your fleet running out of fuel while on the move as your tankers will move through your fleets twice as fast.

This generally isn't an issue if you have a tanker that can keep up and it's refueling capacity exceeds the total fuel burn of the fleet, but you can see where in certain cases this might lead to several interrupts for out of fuel. So I would like to request that you consider if another module or Tech can be added/researched that allows for increased simultaneous refueling. Whether this splits the total capacity or in a sense multiplies it is up to you, but it would be a workaround to smaller tankers being superior as you mentioned earlier. If one large Tanker can refuel say 4 ships at once(A good maximum, four ships flying in a plus formation around a tanker seems doable), it is doing the job of 4 smaller tankers. Though making the refueling systems heavier and more "powerful" as you've done would also shift the balance more in favour of larger tankers in general.

As for possible release dates to this long awaited update, are we looking at something late July/August if all goes well?
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: June 05, 2025, 12:48:59 PM »

Those are some excellent changes! I longed for some first contact wars that weren't caused by my own stupidity, and having actual fog of war in regards to spoilers is a vast improvement too.

May I suggest changing the "boarding action" bit to a "ground combat event"? This would include boarding actions but also make it possible to identify Rakhas, who wouldn't be able to get identified under current rules (as IIRC species with 100 xenophobia can't generate population intel? maybe their STO active sensors could generate an intel event, but that's terribly counterintuitive) and make Precursors and Raiders easier to identify as well. Swarm will let you know regardless.

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on June 05, 2025, 09:24:24 AM

Wrecks will usually appear in systems with planets. They may be in orbit and, if so, they are more likely to appear in orbit of planets with better environments.

I like the idea of a 'fallen race'. I could probably generate the race normally, then wipe it out, then pass a random amount of historical time to reduce what remains, including radiation. Substantial addition though, so might not be soon.

Fallen empires, especially ones generated by simulating the destruction of an actual race, do sound complex indeed. I understand postponing that as I would also like to see 2.6.0 before the decade's over ;D Giving wrecks a more direct relationship with ruins feels like a rather natural addition though, albeit with a high enough ruin chance them spawning near low-CC worlds could be close enough. I still think having their tech level correlate with nearby ruin tech level would be neat as hell though.

Have you considered adding a startup setting for random wreck frequency?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 05, 2025, 11:46:44 AM »

Quote from: Louella on June 05, 2025, 11:29:21 AM
Quote
Communication is established
A populated colony of the alien is captured or transferred to the viewing race.
A ship of the alien race surrenders or is captured
A lifepod of that race is rescued.
Sufficient ELINT data is gathered to generate an Intelligence Event

Hmm, will these conditions apply to the "special" aliens, i.e. Precursors, Raiders, Rakhas, Swarm, Invaders ?

Cos at least some of them, the conditions other than the ELINT one are not possible iirc ?

Like, raiders and precursors don't have populations that can be captured, and you can't communicate with them, and they don't have lifepods.

They do apply to spoiler races. At the moment, you know immediately if you have met certain races, which takes away some of the fog of war. The only one where it is impossible is Swarm, because you can't board their ships in v2.6. However, I should have included aliens boarding your ships as a condition, which solves that one too.
Posted by: Louella
« on: June 05, 2025, 11:29:21 AM »

Quote
Communication is established
A populated colony of the alien is captured or transferred to the viewing race.
A ship of the alien race surrenders or is captured
A lifepod of that race is rescued.
Sufficient ELINT data is gathered to generate an Intelligence Event

Hmm, will these conditions apply to the "special" aliens, i.e. Precursors, Raiders, Rakhas, Swarm, Invaders ?

Cos at least some of them, the conditions other than the ELINT one are not possible iirc ?

Like, raiders and precursors don't have populations that can be captured, and you can't communicate with them, and they don't have lifepods.
Posted by: Bremen
« on: June 05, 2025, 10:19:20 AM »

I appreciate the change to only see race portraits once you've observed a member of the race. I know it's purely a cosmetic thing but it appeals to me for flavor reasons.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 05, 2025, 09:24:24 AM »

Quote from: Ghostly on June 05, 2025, 09:03:35 AM
Awesome to see wrecks being addded! My question is, will their placement be truly random, or will they gravitate towards the ruins of old civilizations, where precursors usually dwell? Let's say I have 2 ruins of the same race in my game, each one system apart, will these 3 systems (and maybe the adjacent systems) have a higher chance of spawning a wreck? If that's the case, any chance of making those wrecks tech-appropriate to the race whose ruins they litter? I reckon this could be accomplished by generating dummy Precursor designs with techs matching TL1 to TL5 and using them for wrecks only? This would make those high-tier ruins even more valuable.

Also, this might be better for the Suggestions thread (and I don't know how difficult this would be to implement), but one thing that had just occurred to me is that ruins could get generated in swathes same way Post-Start Multi-System NPRs are going to be, with the game spawning an entire small derelict empire in one go. This would make exploration even more exciting (a wreck in the middle of nowhere? something interesting might be next door!), possibly alleviate the issue of NPR generation-induced pauses spoiling things (you wouldn't know if you're getting an alive NPR or a dead one) and also create opportunities to spawn additional spoilers that could catch the player completely off-guard (especially the one with an affinity for expanding and eating wrecks).

Wrecks will usually appear in systems with planets. They may be in orbit and, if so, they are more likely to appear in orbit of planets with better environments.

I like the idea of a 'fallen race'. I could probably generate the race normally, then wipe it out, then pass a random amount of historical time to reduce what remains, including radiation. Substantial addition though, so might not be soon.
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: June 05, 2025, 09:03:35 AM »

Awesome to see wrecks being addded! My question is, will their placement be truly random, or will they gravitate towards the ruins of old civilizations, where precursors usually dwell? Let's say I have 2 ruins of the same race in my game, each one system apart, will these 3 systems (and maybe the adjacent systems) have a higher chance of spawning a wreck? If that's the case, any chance of making those wrecks tech-appropriate to the race whose ruins they litter? I reckon this could be accomplished by generating dummy Precursor designs with techs matching TL1 to TL5 and using them for wrecks only? This would make those high-tier ruins even more valuable.

Also, this might be better for the Suggestions thread (and I don't know how difficult this would be to implement), but one thing that had just occurred to me is that ruins could get generated in swathes same way Post-Start Multi-System NPRs are going to be, with the game spawning an entire small derelict empire in one go. This would make exploration even more exciting (a wreck in the middle of nowhere? something interesting might be next door!), possibly alleviate the issue of NPR generation-induced pauses spoiling things (you wouldn't know if you're getting an alive NPR or a dead one) and also create opportunities to spawn additional spoilers that could catch the player completely off-guard (especially the one with an affinity for expanding and eating wrecks).
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: June 01, 2025, 07:43:30 PM »

Quote from: gpt3 on June 01, 2025, 07:17:20 PM
Quote from: Ghostly on May 28, 2025, 02:10:52 PM
There's also an option to spawn Precursor ships as wrecks that would reactivate upon salvage attempts or when the awakening comes, however this might actually provide too much information about the coming threat and make things too predictable. However, random derelict wrecks in general are something that's really missing from the game, in my opinion. We can already find ruins of clearly interstellar civilizations, with two or three systems having been colonized by the same race prior to its extinction, but there's not a single shipwreck to be found!

Maybe they've all been mopped up by the Invaders (who are responsible for the downfall of all prior civilizations in the lore, if memory serves me right?) but it really doesn't have to be that way, encountering actual traces of the extinct empires' navies would add so much character to the game, not to mention interesting salvaging opportunities for the player or for the certain ever-ravenous spoiler.
Wouldn't the ancient shipwrecks have already been salvaged by the Raiders? That might have been how they were sustaining their economies after the Fall. You could even posit that the Raiders are the last remaining survivors of the prior age, which would fit their Dark Eldar inspiration.

This could actually be pretty cool. If the player discovers a system with derelict wrecks, they have to race against time to salvage the wreck before the Raiders find it or else commit to defending the system to avoid giving the Raiders a jump boost.

Of course, I see no problem with presuming that the Raiders missed a few here and there to justify the wrecks still being present.
Posted by: gpt3
« on: June 01, 2025, 07:17:20 PM »

Quote from: Ghostly on May 28, 2025, 02:10:52 PM
There's also an option to spawn Precursor ships as wrecks that would reactivate upon salvage attempts or when the awakening comes, however this might actually provide too much information about the coming threat and make things too predictable. However, random derelict wrecks in general are something that's really missing from the game, in my opinion. We can already find ruins of clearly interstellar civilizations, with two or three systems having been colonized by the same race prior to its extinction, but there's not a single shipwreck to be found!

Maybe they've all been mopped up by the Invaders (who are responsible for the downfall of all prior civilizations in the lore, if memory serves me right?) but it really doesn't have to be that way, encountering actual traces of the extinct empires' navies would add so much character to the game, not to mention interesting salvaging opportunities for the player or for the certain ever-ravenous spoiler.
Wouldn't the ancient shipwrecks have already been salvaged by the Raiders? That might have been how they were sustaining their economies after the Fall. You could even posit that the Raiders are the last remaining survivors of the prior age, which would fit their Dark Eldar inspiration.
Posted by: Naismith
« on: May 28, 2025, 05:22:06 PM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on May 28, 2025, 12:01:40 PM
Quote from: superstrijder15 on May 28, 2025, 06:33:35 AM
I have two further requests for standing orders:

1. Add a "Send Message" conditional standing order. If people want to do something more complex than possible in the system, they can get a conditional that causes it and then send a message saying what should happen. eg. I set a message on "cargo full" which says "Salvager needs to unload", so I get reminded to do so.
2. Add a checkbox for executing standing orders at all. I regularly end up overbuilding geosurvey capacity, and then having all geological survey ships complain at me that they lack somewhere to go, and having to break away their conditional orders and rebuild them once the gravsurvay has caught up. A checkbox with "just don't run standing orders" would allow me to deactivate those ships without having to remove the standing orders and rebuild them later.

I've implemented the second suggestions.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173478#msg173478

The first is more involved as it would require additional functionality for standing orders.

If the problem is how the custom message would be entered and stored, then maybe you could create a generic request attention order.
When triggered it could create an event like "<Fleet x> in <system y> is requesting new orders"
Posted by: Droll
« on: May 28, 2025, 04:47:19 PM »

Quote from: Ghostly on May 28, 2025, 02:10:52 PM
I'm not sure how lore-friendly this approach to "Necrons" would be, but who cares? Having Precursors spawn throughout the system would be far more interesting than potentially never having to fight a single ship of theirs if you play carefully and station a large garrison on every ruin.

I assume that the "old" precursors will co-exist with their sleepy cousins with you also running into already awakened precursors. At least that's how I've understood it.

But yeah I do like the idea of there potentially being multiple precursor fleets dotted around systems where they are present. Especially if you add a mechanic where one group being engaged makes the other groups converge towards the combat zone, further making recon and full sensor coverage more important.
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: May 28, 2025, 02:10:52 PM »

Hull categories are a great addition! The hull list can get very difficult to navigate in lategame when you're fielding dozens of hull types.

Speaking of navigating lists, here's a suggestion for your consideration: One can type the first few letters of any name in the Economics, Naval or GU windows, and the game will select the matching population or fleet, which is very useful once you've got too many of them to count. However, this is impossible in windows where every item in the list has a prefix (in the Officer window, anything you can assign an officer to is prefixed with a required rank or admin rating, and in the Ship Combat window, every target is prefixed by its designated hull type) because the game will only search by the prefix, which is largely useless.

If the game could ignore the prefixes in these windows and search through the actual entity names (in case of assigning Ground Force commanders to GUs, I reckon ignoring both the rank and the GU abbreviation prefixes would be optimal), assigning officers to ships, populations and GUs and selecting targets in large naval engagements would be so much easier!

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on May 25, 2025, 05:03:11 AM
Another option I have considered is to have their ships launched from different bodies in the system, except for the orbital bases. In VB6, they used to have bases on multiple bodies with tracking stations and replacement ordnance.

I'm not sure how lore-friendly this approach to "Necrons" would be, but who cares? Having Precursors spawn throughout the system would be far more interesting than potentially never having to fight a single ship of theirs if you play carefully and station a large garrison on every ruin. It would also lead to very interesting multi-directional engagements. Although I think spawning their scout classes as a first wave a couple weeks or months in advance of the real awakening could be a good idea for large ruins, because getting overwhelmed by a massive fleet with no prior warning might be a bit too much.

There's also an option to spawn Precursor ships as wrecks that would reactivate upon salvage attempts or when the awakening comes, however this might actually provide too much information about the coming threat and make things too predictable. However, random derelict wrecks in general are something that's really missing from the game, in my opinion. We can already find ruins of clearly interstellar civilizations, with two or three systems having been colonized by the same race prior to its extinction, but there's not a single shipwreck to be found!

Maybe they've all been mopped up by the Invaders (who are responsible for the downfall of all prior civilizations in the lore, if memory serves me right?) but it really doesn't have to be that way, encountering actual traces of the extinct empires' navies would add so much character to the game, not to mention interesting salvaging opportunities for the player or for the certain ever-ravenous spoiler.
Posted by: Bremen
« on: May 28, 2025, 02:00:08 PM »

Lots of cool changes in the pipeline.

I'm a little curious about hull categories work for custom hull types. For that matter, some sort of way to customize hull types in general would be cool so I don't end up scrolling through a bunch of hull types that have been used in Steve's games, but that's admittedly a minor quality of life issue.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: May 28, 2025, 12:01:40 PM »

Quote from: superstrijder15 on May 28, 2025, 06:33:35 AM
I have two further requests for standing orders:

1. Add a "Send Message" conditional standing order. If people want to do something more complex than possible in the system, they can get a conditional that causes it and then send a message saying what should happen. eg. I set a message on "cargo full" which says "Salvager needs to unload", so I get reminded to do so.
2. Add a checkbox for executing standing orders at all. I regularly end up overbuilding geosurvey capacity, and then having all geological survey ships complain at me that they lack somewhere to go, and having to break away their conditional orders and rebuild them once the gravsurvay has caught up. A checkbox with "just don't run standing orders" would allow me to deactivate those ships without having to remove the standing orders and rebuild them later.

I've implemented the second suggestions.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173478#msg173478

The first is more involved as it would require additional functionality for standing orders.
Posted by: Kaiser
« on: May 28, 2025, 09:41:55 AM »

The new hull and weapons category update is a huge help in middle/late game when you have dozens of classes and guns and your eyes start to rotate because of the mess, thank you Steve!