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Posted by: Napier
« on: June 12, 2025, 11:24:18 PM »

Quote from: Blogaugis on May 31, 2025, 02:27:30 PM
If anything, this basically prompts me to ask for a similar tech for players and regular NPRs - fleet teleportation installation. This installation would allow the player/NPR to basically teleport things between teleport installations, limited by installation size. I think size 1 installation would allow 100-ton ship teleports.
But of course, the precursors are darn robots which can teleport, and the pathetic organics can't! >:( I mean, that would be my justification for why regular NPRs/Players wouldn't be able to use it.

Still, I guess some would like this grim aesthetic to things, but I think it would be better to give some kind of subtle early warning to player about upcoming awakening - like messages reporting odd tectonic activity or other strange seismic movement. Maybe xenoarcheologist teams getting attacked/buried by traps, or simply eroding structures. Leader of excavation team getting bad feelings about it or straight up killed.
I think whole planet getting glassed immediately is overkill, it needs to happen gradually, with subtle things happening at first, and then as you complete digging it gets up.

I was reading this not as teleportation, but as ships coming from underground hangars/bunkers (that may have been how Steve described it, I don't remember). An awakening is triggered as the player people explore and root around on the planet, they start activating ships, open the doors and launch them, so the ships come out in waves as they become fully activated.

But the ideas in your 2nd paragraph are nice if they happened very shortly prior to the reveal.. mysterious losses of elements in xeno/construction teams, or mysterious thermal readings deep in the crust.
Posted by: gpt3
« on: June 01, 2025, 07:53:38 PM »

Quote from: Blogaugis on May 31, 2025, 02:27:30 PM
Seeing that precursors will just spawn out of nowhere - in orbit of the planet, with giant ships no less - after digging it up a bit, I think I'll turn the 'enhanced precursors' setting off.
I'll probably turn off for all of the special NPRs, as that looks extremely annoying. Unless I decide I want some masochism for some reason...

You put expensive equipment on the planet, only for it to be completely obliterated by an enemy appearing in orbit - with no downside for them, like jump shock.

If anything, this basically prompts me to ask for a similar tech for players and regular NPRs - fleet teleportation installation. This installation would allow the player/NPR to basically teleport things between teleport installations, limited by installation size. I think size 1 installation would allow 100-ton ship teleports.
But of course, the precursors are darn robots which can teleport, and the pathetic organics can't! >:( I mean, that would be my justification for why regular NPRs/Players wouldn't be able to use it.
You're probably right from an Aurora-as-video-game perspective: players hate setbacks. Sid Meier's autobiography discusses this: the Civilization team considered implementing a "civil war" game mechanic, but eventually shelved it because most players hated losing their cities. Even Paradox Interactive's grand strategy games, which do feature civil wars and rebellions, tend to make them relatively minor affairs. There's probably some sort of loss-aversion psychology going on here.

On the other hand, I think that random losses are useful from the Aurora-as-storytelling perspective. The only way for the player to experience "The Glorious Liberation of Hiigara" is as the sequel to "The Hiigara Disaster".

I think that a middle ground could be for the Precursors to only launch their ships after winning the ground war (perhaps there could be an escalating series of ground awakening). That way the player can recapture their (mostly) intact colony later.

Or just use Spacemaster to kill the Precursor fleet. Aurora is a single-player game; there's no such thing as cheating.
Posted by: Blogaugis
« on: May 31, 2025, 02:27:30 PM »

Seeing that precursors will just spawn out of nowhere - in orbit of the planet, with giant ships no less - after digging it up a bit, I think I'll turn the 'enhanced precursors' setting off.
I'll probably turn off for all of the special NPRs, as that looks extremely annoying. Unless I decide I want some masochism for some reason...

You put expensive equipment on the planet, only for it to be completely obliterated by an enemy appearing in orbit - with no downside for them, like jump shock.

If anything, this basically prompts me to ask for a similar tech for players and regular NPRs - fleet teleportation installation. This installation would allow the player/NPR to basically teleport things between teleport installations, limited by installation size. I think size 1 installation would allow 100-ton ship teleports.
But of course, the precursors are darn robots which can teleport, and the pathetic organics can't! >:( I mean, that would be my justification for why regular NPRs/Players wouldn't be able to use it.

Still, I guess some would like this grim aesthetic to things, but I think it would be better to give some kind of subtle early warning to player about upcoming awakening - like messages reporting odd tectonic activity or other strange seismic movement. Maybe xenoarcheologist teams getting attacked/buried by traps, or simply eroding structures. Leader of excavation team getting bad feelings about it or straight up killed.
I think whole planet getting glassed immediately is overkill, it needs to happen gradually, with subtle things happening at first, and then as you complete digging it gets up.


I do wonder how would've campaign went if necrons woke up immediately on Mars the moment you started digging it?

EDIT: I guess recovering goodies (installations and fuel) from them is good as a compensation, so there's that at least.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 17, 2025, 07:14:29 PM »

Quote from: Neophyte on March 17, 2025, 05:33:23 PM
Does the AI share the information across all instances of that spoiler?  IE, will any future Necrons in other systems know the details about the player's ships performance gleaned from the battles in Orpheus?

The AI shares information on a racial basis. So all Necrons will know the same information, but different swarm races won't share with each other.
Posted by: Neophyte
« on: March 17, 2025, 05:33:23 PM »

Does the AI share the information across all instances of that spoiler?  IE, will any future Necrons in other systems know the details about the player's ships performance gleaned from the battles in Orpheus?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 17, 2025, 03:22:04 PM »

Quote from: Napier on March 17, 2025, 03:11:36 PM
There is mention of keeping the shields down to withhold that intel from the spoilers. Is that just RP, or are there behavior changes from them if they get that info? i.e. changing missile salvo densities and narrower targeting concentration.

The AI tracks information about your ships, including observed point defence performance and how much damage they took to kill in the past. They will include shield strength in that calculation when determining how many missiles to allocate to a given target.

However, in this case I was keeping shields down to deny them sensor information on the location of my ships. Active shields have a strong signature that can be tracked by EM sensors.
Posted by: Napier
« on: March 17, 2025, 03:11:36 PM »

There is mention of keeping the shields down to withhold that intel from the spoilers. Is that just RP, or are there behavior changes from them if they get that info? i.e. changing missile salvo densities and narrower targeting concentration.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: March 14, 2025, 11:06:21 AM »

Great to see a new Steve campaign, and the new AI seems to make the Necrons a proper threat. I assume that they are similarly more difficult in their non-"advanced" traditional form, maybe even more so since they will be able to maintain their missile stockpiles. Very happy to see the AI learning better ways to deal with fighters and bombers, although I do wonder if they'll be able to handle more traditional bomber strikes from much longer range (40+ m km versus ~10-20 m km).

Hopefully as this campaign goes on we will see combat with a few different NPRs and most of the other spoilers as well.  ;D

Steve, is there a setting to change the size of the spoiler ship classes? Or is it random and you've just had good luck here?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 14, 2025, 04:58:35 AM »

Quote from: Inglonias on March 13, 2025, 08:26:57 PM
I'm curious how long you play a given campaign for, Steve. I find that long-lived Aurora 4X let's plays are few and far between, for better or worse, and that mostly because the nature of the game means that complexity and micromanagement ramps up quickly as the number of systems and colonies grows. I saw the screenshots of the galactic maps you posted in the Changes thread showing 100+ star systems in a single game. I don't know how you do it.

It depends how long I maintain my interest. The longest published campaign for C# was Empire of the Stars, which had 300+ systems, but I had an earlier unpublished WH40k campaign that had 500+ systems, a lot of NPRs and seven active Swarm fleets. I don't find it too difficult to keep it organized, mainly due to expanding the naval admin structure as required. Plus I automate quite a lot, with tankers picking up fuel on a loop and freighters doing the same for minerals. Survey ships are mainly automated anyway. I tend to setup maintenance facilities and supplies/fuel where I need fleets, so they don't need attention apart from an occasional check on supply stockpiles. So its down to major fleet deployments, occasionally re-deploying survey forces, assigning guard forces, managing production, etc.

Posted by: Inglonias
« on: March 13, 2025, 08:26:57 PM »

I'm curious how long you play a given campaign for, Steve. I find that long-lived Aurora 4X let's plays are few and far between, for better or worse, and that mostly because the nature of the game means that complexity and micromanagement ramps up quickly as the number of systems and colonies grows. I saw the screenshots of the galactic maps you posted in the Changes thread showing 100+ star systems in a single game. I don't know how you do it.
Posted by: Beersatron
« on: March 13, 2025, 04:37:16 PM »

I just finished reading The Flight of the Eisenstein so this is great timing!
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: March 13, 2025, 11:09:07 AM »

This is shaping up to be a very interesting campaign! Some very exciting new additions are noticeable, enemy trigger discipline against small targets and single fire control use in particular. And missiles with active sensors and retargeting? Don't believe I've ever seen that in the current version!

Quote
However, the Necrons had destroyed their ordnance stockpile once they knew defeat was inevitable.

Maybe they could stop doing that, now that we're finally getting a use for it beyond scrapping it all? Leaving their entire missile stockpile for us certainly wouldn't do, since it's seemingly limitless, but with an entire planet's worth of ordnance even the Necrons could miss a few dozen missiles here and there...

Quote
Five seconds later, a further four Furies were destroyed, although they were able to return fire from 37,500 km and inflict over fifty strength-1 hits on the Khopesh, including fourteen that penetrated its armour. The third volley from the Khopesh killed four more Furies, before it was buried under an avalanche of lascannon fire, suffering forty-five internal hits. The Necron fleet chose that moment, with the fighters at point-blank range, to launch sixty-one anti-ship torpedoes.

Did the enemy ships conserve their ammunition until they realized the danger presented by a swarm of fighters at point-blank range? If so, this is seriously impressive, but I have to confess I don't really understand this part, as the fighters' weapon capabilities should've been known to the Necrons from all the point defense fire they've observed.

Also, I can't help but ask, given your efforts to ambush the Thokt and the Thanatos group in the end, does the AI still have no concept of lost contacts/object permanence, or did it deem the inner system safe because a few months passed between the two fights? Really hoping for the latter, but very excited for the new update either way!
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: March 12, 2025, 11:23:43 PM »

Whoa, what a crazy start for this campaign!
Posted by: Panopticon
« on: March 12, 2025, 09:00:06 PM »

The AI changes seem to have significantly raised the difficulty, the Necrons out-teched you but even so that was a pretty gripping fight. The new version can't come soon enough for me.

One note though, the Inquisition was formed after the Horus Heresy, during the Great Crusade and Heresy era intelligence was handled by ad hoc groups from virtually all human factions working at cross purposes. Which I recognize might be hard to represent, just the 40k pedant in me.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 12, 2025, 10:29:45 AM »

Quote from: Ghostly on March 12, 2025, 05:35:24 AM
New precursors sound very exciting! Really hope you get to face some carriers too, from them or perhaps from that multi-system NPR. One part that particularly piqued my interest is where:
Quote
the Necrons adjusted their course to move around the planet
Will the AI now attempt to avoid STO defenses, or try to outrange them if it's trying to attack them? Come to think of it, it would be nice to have an intel entry for alien STO units detailing their weapon type, range and ROF, same way we do for ships.

There are some AI tweaks for v2.6, including consideration of alien STO locations and better use of ordnance against small targets.