Post reply

Warning - while you were reading a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Note: this post will not display until it's been approved by a moderator.

Name:
Email:
Subject:
Message icon:

shortcuts: hit alt+s to submit/post or alt+p to preview

Please read the rules before you post!


Topic Summary

Posted by: boolybooly
« on: Today at 08:32:16 AM »

I read some earlier posts about MSP and then had a little mishap of my own which got me thinking. What if bigger engineering departments could reduce MSP maintenance cost? Which would give us something to consider when designing to manage fleet MSP consumption.

The source of this idea is a little story in its own right which I will explain. I am still playing v2.1.1 so forgive me if I am missing out later versions' maintenance mechanics. It happened recently in my current game at a well populated outpost in Proxima Centauri that through 'administrative negligence' the colony's MSP ran out and PPV orbitals with varying MSP storage and build costs accrued deployment at different values per class, which puzzled me until I realised colony MSP ran out followed by the orbitals' onboard MSP, resulting eventually in deployment clock starting then component failures. It became apparent that box launcher based orbitals lasted longer than turret based orbitals due to lower build costs and thus lower maintenance costs and as luck would have it slightly higher onboard MSP stores.

I found this interesting and in digesting this mishap wanted to direct the empire towards an MSP consumption economy drive, wondering if I had missed a way to influence vessel maintenance cost in some way, besides making cheaper PPV vessels and avoiding deployment and concluded I had not. As I understand it engineering volume improves maintenance life and reduces the 5yr MSP requirement significantly but does not change maintenance costs.

The C# wiki rules say maintenance cost is 0.25x build cost per annum regardless, so orbitals can have very small engineering components and it will make no difference to maintenance cost as long as EMR (effective maintenance rate) from maintenance facilities is 100% and they have MSP supplies. If I understand correctly, its only when EMR is less than 100% that maintenance life and 5yr figures come into play in relation to the maintenance failure hazard, as happened at Proxima Centauri causing an alert for component failure and inability to repair due to lack of MSPs, which caught me by surprise! 

e.g. a 1000t ship with build cost 280, can have different sizes of engineering bays giving practical maintenance life of between 7.5 to 1.5 yrs and figures for 5yr use between 150 and 1500 MSP respectively but maintenance cost will always be 70 MSP/pa. What if maintenance cost was a bit lower or higher depending on engineering space, to reflect the better maintenance life and repair facilities that larger engineering departments provide? Just thought it might be worth a mention.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: Yesterday at 12:07:14 PM »

Quote from: Ghostly on Yesterday at 06:04:47 AM
Also, while you got me yapping about weapons, I think Particle Beams (and especially Lances) not fitting into Spinal mounts is a crime. A Spinal Lance is such a widespread sci-fi trope, it honestly feels weird not having access to them. Not to mention how this would fit the Lances' implementation (tremendous penetrative damage, agonizingly long reload) absolutely perfectly.

Added for v2.6:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173777#msg173777
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: Yesterday at 10:46:20 AM »

Quote from: Ghostly on Yesterday at 06:04:47 AM
The industrial-age NPR addition got me thinking again about warfare among races with a large tech disparity. I'm not saying conventional races should stand any chance of defeating a trans-Newtonic, interstellar empire, but as things stand, it might be impossible for any low-tech race to fight back at all due to how ECM penalty works, with any difference of 5 or above resulting in 0 chance to hit.

Conventional races are an extreme example, but I've generated Swarm races in my game that had ECM advantage of 3 or 4 over me, which forced me to turtle back and tech up until I could engage them, despite otherwise having access to tools that could allow me to fight significantly more advanced enemies (beam fighter swarms, massed missile fire, lance ships with incredibly overbuilt engines and shields would all be effective if not for their miniscule hit chance due to the ECM penalty). If the AI wasn't so meek, passive and easily deterred from assaulting jump points, there's no way I would've won that war. On the other hand, I've encountered a fair share of NPRs who were generated on small, subpar worlds, possessed very low technology and offered marginally more resistance than a Precursor ruin (also vastly outmatched in late-game), requiring no tactical finesse to conquer and presenting no danger, resulting in rather unexciting, tedious campaigns.

Honestly it kinda bugs (haha) me how once the tech disparity is large enough, it becomes mathematically impossible for the lesser race to fight back, so I was wondering if you're willing to consider a different approach to the ECM penalty where the hit chance reduction is not additive, but multiplicative, as follows:



I think the 0.25 option would still penalize low-ECCM races enough (and make small penalties a little more meaningful while avoiding a twofold DPS reduction with ECM Penalty 3->4) but also give the underdog a semblance of a fighting chance. All of this pertains to the Missile/Fire Control Jammers, as far as I could see Sensor Jammers operate with a 0.1 additive penalty and while this makes them rather inconsequental, they're not breaking anything either. Using a larger multplicative penalty for them could be interesting as well though.


Yes, I like the principle and I prefer the 0.25 penalty.
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: Yesterday at 06:04:47 AM »

The industrial-age NPR addition got me thinking again about warfare among races with a large tech disparity. I'm not saying conventional races should stand any chance of defeating a trans-Newtonic, interstellar empire, but as things stand, it might be impossible for any low-tech race to fight back at all due to how ECM penalty works, with any difference of 5 or above resulting in 0 chance to hit.

Conventional races are an extreme example, but I've generated Swarm races in my game that had ECM advantage of 3 or 4 over me, which forced me to turtle back and tech up until I could engage them, despite otherwise having access to tools that could allow me to fight significantly more advanced enemies (beam fighter swarms, massed missile fire, lance ships with incredibly overbuilt engines and shields would all be effective if not for their miniscule hit chance due to the ECM penalty). If the AI wasn't so meek, passive and easily deterred from assaulting jump points, there's no way I would've won that war. On the other hand, I've encountered a fair share of NPRs who were generated on small, subpar worlds, possessed very low technology and offered marginally more resistance than a Precursor ruin (also vastly outmatched in late-game), requiring no tactical finesse to conquer and presenting no danger, resulting in rather unexciting, tedious campaigns.

Honestly it kinda bugs (haha) me how once the tech disparity is large enough, it becomes mathematically impossible for the lesser race to fight back, so I was wondering if you're willing to consider a different approach to the ECM penalty where the hit chance reduction is not additive, but multiplicative, as follows:



I think the 0.25 option would still penalize low-ECCM races enough (and make small penalties a little more meaningful while avoiding a twofold DPS reduction with ECM Penalty 3->4) but also give the underdog a semblance of a fighting chance. All of this pertains to the Missile/Fire Control Jammers, as far as I could see Sensor Jammers operate with a 0.1 additive penalty and while this makes them rather inconsequental, they're not breaking anything either. Using a larger multplicative penalty for them could be interesting as well though.

Quote from: Fattymac04 on June 23, 2025, 09:46:03 PM
I think all the weapons should be turreted, however have some of them with some drawbacks.  I know turreted Railguns would be powerful, but maybe make them limited to only twin mounts.  Or buff gauss with the amount of possible shots

I'm also mildly annoyed how only some weapons can be turreted, because it could imply than every Railgun or Particle Beam is mounted in a hardpoint (so how does a retreating ship fire its railguns backwards then?) but I understand the game-necessity for it, as 10cm Railguns are already obscenely overpowered for point defense, reaching parity with Gauss only with Gauss ROF 4-6 depending on how fast your ships go, which is a rather large tech investment. In my headcanon, I get around this by viewing non-turreted weapons as mounted in large, battleship-style turrets that are only agile enough to track targets up to the ship's own speed, while a turretted Gauss or a Laser is mounted in a snappy CIWS-style configuration that can track as fast as its gear percentage and BFC speed allow.

Not sure there could be a solution for turrets that could make all these mental gymanstics unnecessary, but I think Gauss in particular could use a buff to its PD capabilities, perhaps a Size vs Caliber setting which would allow it to deal fractional damage in return for smaller weapon size. We already have fractional damage AMMs, having a half-size gauss dealing 0.5 damage per shot would be rather nice against an enemy with Size 10 (or below) missiles, challenging the 10cm Railgun meta. This would also enable one to make truly tiny low-accuracy, low-damage guns for use on tiny beam fighters (however with small fighters, BFC size always becomes a concern).

Additionally, the whole small Gauss thing could be tied into the planned (or at least that was something I remember discussing here) rework of Ground Support Fighters, in regards to the possible deprecation of Ground Support Pods and the use of existing weapons by fighters for both space fights and Ground Support missions. In this case, an anti-infantry fighter weapon would be needed, and a small, rapid-firing Gauss would be a perfect fit.

In regards to anti-ship capabilities of fractional damage weapons, I think it'd be nice to give them a chance to deal damage corresponding to their weapon strength (0.25 damage = 25% chance to inflict 1 damage, or if deemed too generous, use damage^2) rather than keep them completely ineffectual. The only reason I phased out my own sub-1 strength AMMs was my desire to use them in anti-ship support roles, especially by old ships relegated to garrison duty where they would mostly encounter Raiders who possess neither shields nor missiles. A weapon incapable of penetrating a single layer of armor still being able to inflict damage to it occasionally could easily be explained by metal fatigue, weak projectiles striking the same spot enough times to overwhelm its structural integrity.

Also, while you got me yapping about weapons, I think Particle Beams (and especially Lances) not fitting into Spinal mounts is a crime. A Spinal Lance is such a widespread sci-fi trope, it honestly feels weird not having access to them. Not to mention how this would fit the Lances' implementation (tremendous penetrative damage, agonizingly long reload) absolutely perfectly.
Posted by: Ush213
« on: June 25, 2025, 09:26:14 AM »

Hi Steve

Would there be much involved to have the trade goods movable by player ships as a purely role playing excerise. in the scenerio where you want to disable the civs.

In sorta the same question would it be possible to get the civs to move minerals around? even on a small scale. They could use the reserve limit on planets as there method to know when to stop.
Posted by: Ush213
« on: June 24, 2025, 10:18:49 AM »

Quote from: Louella on June 24, 2025, 09:59:08 AM
Quote from: Ush213 on June 24, 2025, 09:05:03 AM
Would there be any future plans for the game mechanics to allow fleets (with the right amount or a lot of prep) to be somewhat be self sufficient and allow for large scale invasion fleets without it being hard to manage . Things like mobile ship repair/ insystem mining and ammo and mech construction maybe some small scale army restoring (maybe simulating soldier injury recovery) etc. 

Ive been reading alot of horesy heresy lately and im itching to make a bunch of expedition fleets to send out to conqeur the Galaxy haha


You can do a lot of that already, with ships with repair bays and maintenance bays. As well as orbital mining ships.

The only thing missing is a mobile ordnance factory and a mobile MSP factory.

If factory ships did exist, I'd expect them to be huge, bigger than jump stabilisation ships for example. More than 100,000t for each factory modules alone, that sort of thing.

Ya im aware but its not just about adding the modules there would be other factors related to this style of gameplay. It would essentially be akin to a migrate fleet so other inbuilt game mechanics would probably have to be changed or be altered to support it. I cant think of everything now but I know there would defo be loads of stuff. 

The question is more for Steve in that would he like to or be open to stiring the gameplay this way in the future. Considering hes also a big fan of 40k I was hoping he would ha. (Although expedition fleets where technically 30k ha )


Posted by: Louella
« on: June 24, 2025, 09:59:08 AM »

Quote from: Ush213 on June 24, 2025, 09:05:03 AM
Would there be any future plans for the game mechanics to allow fleets (with the right amount or a lot of prep) to be somewhat be self sufficient and allow for large scale invasion fleets without it being hard to manage . Things like mobile ship repair/ insystem mining and ammo and mech construction maybe some small scale army restoring (maybe simulating soldier injury recovery) etc. 

Ive been reading alot of horesy heresy lately and im itching to make a bunch of expedition fleets to send out to conqeur the Galaxy haha


You can do a lot of that already, with ships with repair bays and maintenance bays. As well as orbital mining ships.

The only thing missing is a mobile ordnance factory and a mobile MSP factory.

If factory ships did exist, I'd expect them to be huge, bigger than jump stabilisation ships for example. More than 100,000t for each factory modules alone, that sort of thing.
Posted by: Ush213
« on: June 24, 2025, 09:05:03 AM »

Would there be any future plans for the game mechanics to allow fleets (with the right amount or a lot of prep) to be somewhat be self sufficient and allow for large scale invasion fleets without it being hard to manage . Things like mobile ship repair/ insystem mining and ammo and mech construction maybe some small scale army restoring (maybe simulating soldier injury recovery) etc. 

Ive been reading alot of horesy heresy lately and im itching to make a bunch of expedition fleets to send out to conqeur the Galaxy haha
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 24, 2025, 02:40:11 AM »

Quote from: Fattymac04 on June 23, 2025, 09:46:03 PM
I know it's been mentioned before and I know Steve you have commented on it saying if it did happen it would be the go to choice. 

I think all the weapons should be turreted, however have some of them with some drawbacks.  I know turreted railguns would be powerful, but maybe make them limited to only twin mounts.  Or buff gauss with the amount of possible shots

I think it would be more creative to be able to turret all the weapons.

Another idea was about the rahkas, have a advanced option for them as well.  That option would give them fast attack boarding craft that would add ships to their defense of a planet.  Would make it a fun dynamic.

The missile offence / energy defence situation is reasonable now. If I make railguns 4x more effective against missiles (by allowing them to be used in turrets), then I would have to make missiles 4x more effective to counter that. Which then means every other PD option is toast and everyone has to use railguns, or be wiped out by the new super-powerful missiles. Or I leave missiles alone and no one ever uses them again because they are easily countered by the insanely-effectively railgun PD.

It's not possible to radically change one element of the game without affecting everything around it.
Posted by: Fattymac04
« on: June 23, 2025, 09:46:03 PM »

I know it's been mentioned before and I know Steve you have commented on it saying if it did happen it would be the go to choice. 

I think all the weapons should be turreted, however have some of them with some drawbacks.  I know turreted railguns would be powerful, but maybe make them limited to only twin mounts.  Or buff gauss with the amount of possible shots

I think it would be more creative to be able to turret all the weapons.

Another idea was about the rahkas, have a advanced option for them as well.  That option would give them fast attack boarding craft that would add ships to their defense of a planet.  Would make it a fun dynamic. 
Posted by: skoormit
« on: June 23, 2025, 02:16:05 PM »

Quote from: David_H_Roarings on June 21, 2025, 07:02:04 PM
...
In further as it stands one can build a 'mothball hangar' that would normally have an insane maintenance cost but can considerably cut down on the maintenance cost of other ships sitting in port, using one designed for the ship above we have:
...

In your example, you build a hangar that costs ~4k bp in order to save ~1.5k MSP per year, while requiring an additional 4,123 tons of maintenance capacity.
Assuming you need to build two maintenance facilities (60BP each) to provide the extra capacity, and with MSP costing 0.25 BP each, your annual savings represents a rate of return on your investment of ~9.1% while occupying 100k workers.

You also have an up-front cost of the shipyard needed to build that carrier (~11k bp, depending on your tech level), and the ongoing workforce that yard requires (almost 10m workers).
You are going to have to make (and use) a lot of these carriers and/or wait a very long time to recoup the cost of that yard.

There are simpler ways to get far better returns in the game.
For example, suppose instead of building that shipyard you build financial centers of equivalent cost.
Let's say 90 fincens. Costs 10.8k bp, and 10.8k corbomite.
Uses only 4.5m workers. Less than half what the yard needs.
Returns annual income equal to 27 times your "wealth per million workers" tech level.
Even if you are still at the starting tech level (100 per million workers per year), and have no wealth creation bonus from your governor or sector, that's 2.7kbp per year.
So a bare minimum rate of return of 25%, using half as many workers.
With a couple tech levels and a modest governor bonus, it's not hard to be making your investment back in two years or less.
Posted by: skoormit
« on: June 23, 2025, 01:40:05 PM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on June 21, 2025, 08:39:33 PM
...
Deploying a ship away from port will always* cost the same or more in MSP than sitting it in port for the same period of time, and the cost can only be equal if no maintenance failures occur.
...

In fact, because a ship does not charge the "regular" maintenance rate while it is being overhauled, the long-term maintenance cost can be reduced by cycling a ship through short deployments followed by overhauls.
If no failures occur during a deployment, the net MSP cost of maintaining the ship over the full deployment-plus-overhaul timespan is 20% less than had that ship been sitting idle at a maintenance location.

For a simple example, consider a 4 month deployment (with no maintenance failures) followed by a 1 month overhaul.
There is no maintenance cost during deployment, and then the month of overhaul will cost the equivalent of 4 months of normal maintenance.
At the end of the 5-month cycle, you have paid the equivalent of 4 months of maintenance.

Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 23, 2025, 05:10:50 AM »

Quote from: Warer on June 22, 2025, 02:00:41 PM
A third stat for mineral deposits governing the number of Mines that can efficiently exploit a given bodies mineral deposit for a more "realsticish" feel to longevity of mineral deposits, encouraging spreading out to increase mineral inflows and extending the lifespan of higher accessibility deposits such as those on a factions homeworld, with an associated tech to increase the number of mines that can efficiently exploit a given deposit.

--0--

A "settling in" period for Mines where their productivity starts off low and then goes up to their rated maximum over time to simulate work crews getting familiar with equipment and exploitable veins and high concentration regions being found and infrastructure moved in.

--0--

Over boosting order, allowing for ships to move faster than their rated maximum speed in exchange for a steep increase in fuel cost and triggering extra maintaince checks similar to beam weapons. To avoid "higher speed and range = win" being the case without radically altering how the base movement works.

--0--

Generate pre industrial races as a percentage option instead of a toggle.

--0--

Steve having a really nice day  :)

The issues with suggestion #1 would be the starting population. Unless you could use all the mines at the start of the game, it would cripple your economy and there will be few planets where you would need more mines than that. The size of a body already restricts population, which in turn restricts manned mines.

Suggestion #2 would add a lot of complexity without adding any interesting decisions. Also, I would have to find some way of representing to the player how different groups of mines, arriving at different times on the same body, have different mining output.

Having pre-industrial as a percentage, like minor races, is a good idea. I will add that to the game.

I'm not averse to some form of afterburners, with associated high fuel cost and chance of engine breakdown. I just haven't come up with the right mechanics yet, which would have to be suitable for NPRs too.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: June 22, 2025, 07:41:15 PM »

I agree with Nuclearslurpee that this suggestion is a bit pointless because every military ship would include it, not having it would be stupid. We already have Damage Control as pretty much an obligatory module on each warship, I would rather not have to include a second, similar module.

Plus, it's not odd at all that ships cannot repair armour on their own. No current military vehicle is capable of such a thing. Crews of tanks, planes and ships can jury rig stuff but the armour always requires "a base" to repair.

I think AI is capable of repairing it's ships as long there is no urgent need for that ship.
Posted by: Kaiser
« on: June 22, 2025, 02:33:04 PM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on June 22, 2025, 02:24:12 PM
Quote from: Kaiser on June 22, 2025, 02:20:49 PM
What about a new module called something like "armour repair", that basically slowly (or I do not know, very slowly, also scaling with the tech) repairs the ship's armour in the space whenever it gets damaged improving the survaibility of the ship in battle.

To justify this, I recall some sci-fi movies where thousands of tiny repair drones are stored in the ship and enter in function externally to repair the ship's layers after the battle giving time and chance to reach a shypyard.

How is this any different from shields in practical terms? Since armor is far more space-efficient than shields, I fear the net impact of this module would be to make it an auto-include over shields beyond a certain ship size/cost. Possibly this can be balanced by, e.g., consuming MSP to do the repairs (although that seems a little bit odd since armor is made up of known minerals), but it seems thorny to me.

The shield is the energy layer around the armour, the armour is the phisical layer that "make" the ship, this is how I intend both concepts.
You can damage the shield component or disharge it in battle and then starting hitting the armour.

After that I find odd that a spaceship does not have something that can, I repeat slowly, repair the armour before reaching a base.

The MSP consumption might be a good compromise to counter-balance this.

Also, the AI will benefit of this improving survival chances of its ships.