Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: sloanjh on March 23, 2011, 08:50:24 AM
-
Hi Steve,
The new maintainence info looks good. One suggestion: Add another line and expand out the abbreviations (except maybe AFR). Another suggestion: Put the anual failure rate last, not first.
While I was looking at "1FC" I was thinking "we get so many questions about 'what does CF stand for' on the boards, these acronyms are going to drive new users nuts" (lots of people will ask). Expanding out names might help cut down on this.
Right now, it seems like the biggest misunderstanding for new users is thinking the AFR needs to be below 100%, rather than the estimated time. So anything you can do to de-emphasize that number is probably a good thing.
John
-
This new info looks great! I'm wondering if the abbreviations 1FC and 5FC are a little too obscure, though? "1yr cost" and "5yr cost" aren't much longer but are an awful lot easier to parse at a glance. Even just "1yr: 90MSP 5yr: 1350MSP" would be a big improvement. "FC" is already associated with "Fire Control" in my head, not "Failure Cost".
Also, maybe listing AFR as a number, rather than a percentage, would avoid some confusion? It's easy to think "Failure above 100%? I must have done something wrong." But "Annual failures: 1.25" doesn't seem so bad. If that's too much space, maybe "ACFR", for "Annual component failure rate" or something? Just to point out to us newbie types that it doesn't mean your *ship* will fail, that's just the chances of one part.
-
I agree, it is more helpful to have full descriptions instead of abbrevs.
By the way, I have been playing Aurora for quite some time now -months-, and I just recently logged into the forums. Thank you Steve for such an amazing gaming experience!
-
Hi Steve,
The new maintainence info looks good. One suggestion: Add another line and expand out the abbreviations (except maybe AFR). Another suggestion: Put the anual failure rate last, not first.
While I was looking at "1FC" I was thinking "we get so many questions about 'what does CF stand for' on the boards, these acronyms are going to drive new users nuts" (lots of people will ask). Expanding out names might help cut down on this.
Right now, it seems like the biggest misunderstanding for new users is thinking the AFR needs to be below 100%, rather than the estimated time. So anything you can do to de-emphasize that number is probably a good thing.
John
Yes, I had thought about that :). I was considering adding a list of abbreviations to the summary view in the first tab of the class window, along with a brief explanation. A good point about changing the order. I'll look at that.
Steve
-
I'm liking the new wreck event messages. Now all is needed is a dialogue box for storing the wreck info like there is for ruins. Or use the same box with a filter. 8)
-
seems like the biggest misunderstanding for new users is thinking the AFR needs to be below 100%, rather than the estimated time.
What do you mean it isn't the most important thing? Sub 100 AFR IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE GAME i thought
-
What do you mean it isn't the most important thing? Sub 100 AFR IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE GAME i thought
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic here or not. Assuming you're not, this is the misconception I was talking about - the correct thing to look at is the number of years until maintenance supplies are consumed.
The point is that the annual failure rate is proportional to the size of the ship (a lot more pumps are going to break in a 100Kton aircraft carrier than in a 5Kton destroyer every year). The percent of maintenance supplies consumed however (assuming the same percentage of mass devoted to engineering in both ships) will be inversely proportional to the size of the ship (the carrier has a LOT more spare parts on board). Even though there are lot more failures each year for the carrier, they have no effect on the ship until the maintenance supplies are exhausted. So the AFR is a red herring - the real number to look at is the ratio of 1FC (or 5FC) to total supplies....
John
-
As suggested I have updated the new maintenance information. It now appears as below:
Eridani class Missile Cruiser 15,000 tons 1016 Crew 2718 BP TCS 300 TH 2100 EM 0
7000 km/s Armour 7-54 Shields 0-0 Sensors 16/36/0/0 Damage Control Rating 8 PPV 114
Maint Life 4.82 Years MSP 906 AFR 225% IFR 3.1% 1YR 64 5YR 962 Max Repair 180 MSP
Magazine 600
I have also added a seventh tab to the Class window, entitled Glossary of Terms. It contains a single text box with the information show below:
BP: Build Points. The cost of the class in both minerals and wealth
TCS: Target Cross Section. The size (resolution) of the class for purposes of detection by active sensors
TH: Thermal Signature. The thermal signature of the class at maximum speed. Used for detection by thermal sensors
EM: EM Signature. The thermal signature of the class with maximum shields. Used for detection by EM sensors
Armour: The depth and width of the armour belt
Shields: The strength and recharge time in seconds of any shields
Sensors: The thermal/EM/gravitational/geological sensor strengths
Damage Control Rating: A multiplier to the speed at which damage control is carried out
PPV: Planetary Protection Value. The value of this class in placating colonists concerned about military protection
Maint Life: An estimate of how long the available MSP will last during continual operations without an overhaul
MSP: The storage capacity for maintenance supplies
AFR: Annual Failure Rate. The chance the ship will suffer a component failure over the course of one year
IFR: Incremental Failure Rate. The chance the ship will suffer a component failure during a single 5-day increment
1YR: An estimate of how many MSP will be used to repair component failure during the first year after an overhaul
5YR: An estimate of how many MSP will be used to repair component failure during the first five years after an overhaul
Max Repair: The maximum repair cost of any individual component. It is a good idea to have more MSP than this.
Steve
-
This new info looks great! I'm wondering if the abbreviations 1FC and 5FC are a little too obscure, though? "1yr cost" and "5yr cost" aren't much longer but are an awful lot easier to parse at a glance. Even just "1yr: 90MSP 5yr: 1350MSP" would be a big improvement. "FC" is already associated with "Fire Control" in my head, not "Failure Cost".
Also, maybe listing AFR as a number, rather than a percentage, would avoid some confusion? It's easy to think "Failure above 100%? I must have done something wrong." But "Annual failures: 1.25" doesn't seem so bad. If that's too much space, maybe "ACFR", for "Annual component failure rate" or something? Just to point out to us newbie types that it doesn't mean your *ship* will fail, that's just the chances of one part.
As suggested I have changed 1FC and 5FC to 1YR and 5YR. I wanted to keep all the maintenance-related info on one line which is why I went for the short version. I have added a glossary to the class window though to explain the abbreviations to players.
I am going to stick with the % though as it relates to a chance of failure but I have tried to emphasise in the glossary that it relates to a component failure, not a ship-wide failure.
Steve
-
As suggested I have updated the new maintenance information. It now appears as below:
*SNIP*
Looks great. I like the glossary tab idea....
John
-
In the glossery you might want to add a little to the last line for max repair to let people know that this is how many msp it takes to fix a maintenance failure. Damage control cost double this unless there is a change I am not aware of.
Brian
-
Turret Design
Turrets can now have fractional sizes. However, this means that with the current rules there is no longer any advantage to having twin, triple or quad turrets, as they are just exact multiples of the single turret in terms of size, crew, etc.. Therefore I have also made the following changes:
Large turrets receive a discount in terms of the size of the turret gear required. The discount is 5% for twin, 7.5% for triple and 10% for quad. So for a single turret that required 1.5 HS of gear, a twin turret would require 2.85 HS and a quad would require 5.4 HS. The total crew for the turret receives the same discount.
Additional armour for the turret is based on its total volume, using the current armour technology and exactly the same formula as for a ship the same size as the turret. As with ships, larger turrets will require less material per weapon to provide a given level of armour. Armour increases the HTK of the turret by (Armour Level * Number of Weapons). So adding 2 armour to a quad turret would increase the HTK by 8.
Love it.
I like what you did with the large turret discount - I've found myself only making single-turrets in most of my games; I've been tuning the tracking speed to get as much as possible for 1HS of gear, which means there wasn't any benefit to multi-turrets for me any way.
I don't remember the state of internal armor - my recollection is that it wasn't really fully converted over when you went to armor columns. Are you planning to modify internal armor to work the same way turret armor does?
John
-
I don't remember the state of internal armor - my recollection is that it wasn't really fully converted over when you went to armor columns. Are you planning to modify internal armor to work the same way turret armor does?
Yes, in principle. Everyone will get all internal armour techs as standard but they will just be a measure of armour thickness. I am going to change the internal design code to use the same principle as turrets. It will need some modification for different systems so I am just going to work my way through them.
EDIT: BTW, magazines already use the same principles as turrets.
Steve
-
Pure HTK?
I always use Magazines as Meson sponge.^^
-
Pure HTK?
I always use Magazines as Meson sponge.^^
That reminds me - (assuming it's not already) shouldn't internal systems have 2 different HTK - one for regular and one for mesons (just the base value....).
John
-
That reminds me - (assuming it's not already) shouldn't internal systems have 2 different HTK - one for regular and one for mesons (just the base value....).
John
It seems the biggest reason to use internal armor is to stop mesons, if you remove that is it still useful for anything else? Given how armor scales with size it seems like it is more efficient to just use normal armor.
I guess if you could get the HTK of enough objects high enough you could make it incredibly hard to take out a ship. But I think only turrets can get a HTK high enough to pull that off.
-
It seems the biggest reason to use internal armor is to stop mesons, if you remove that is it still useful for anything else? Given how armor scales with size it seems like it is more efficient to just use normal armor.
I guess if you could get the HTK of enough objects high enough you could make it incredibly hard to take out a ship. But I think only turrets can get a HTK high enough to pull that off.
Magazines, Engines, Power plants and Turrets all can have extra armour added to them. The main area that will be vulnerable will be the sensors which generally only have 1 htk regardless of size. If you kill the sensors/fire control then the ship is helpless anyway.
Brian
-
Magazines, Engines, Power plants and Turrets all can have extra armour added to them. The main area that will be vulnerable will be the sensors which generally only have 1 htk regardless of size. If you kill the sensors/fire control then the ship is helpless anyway.
Brian
To a certain extent also fuel tanks.
As I understand it though, mesons also bypass this internal armor in the same manor as external armor.
-
Mesons can't bypass additional HTK.
My Anti-Meson design, whenever I get that far on the tech tree (haven't played in a few months), I generally have a bunch of those.
Works versus Swarm, and works for Jump Point Assaults, when equipped with homing missiles (doesn't need sensors).
-
With the new Ground Unit research , I wonder if there is any chance of some more ground units ... maybe a Super Heavy Assault Battalion ??
-
I would like to see some benefits from better ship armour, in ground units.
-
Given how armor scales with size it seems like it is more efficient to just use normal armor.
aren't larger components more likely to be hit by internal damage? you can increase survivabilty by focusing on more likely to be hit components (in theory)
-
I think it could work, but only because of how the AI fights not because it is a good idea.
First as Brian pointed out the sensors/fire controls will go down sooner or later.
Second if the ships run into anyone using large beam weapons or strong missiles the extra HTK from internal armor may actually be worse then having the same amount of space dedicated to unarmored components. Currently for magazines you will get more total HTK from unarmored magazines then you will from armored ones. I am guessing the same will hold true for the other components (well maybe not multi-weapon turrets).
-
Currently for magazines you will get more total HTK from unarmored magazines then you will from armored ones.
This is not the case. I posted a long analysis of this somewhere (probably the academy) a month or so ago. Armored magazines make a wonderful missile sponge, especially when you take the possibility of magazine explosions into account.
John
-
Ah yeah sorry about that, I had remembered that thread incorrectly. The HTK was for small unarmored magazines vs larger unarmored magazines.
Hmm looking at one of my ship designs it looks like the DAC scales mostly with HTK I had assumed it was more HS based. So a beam ship using the new quad turrets could make it very hard to hit the fire controls. Well if damage is applied by rolling against the DAC anyways.
-
Ah yeah sorry about that, I had remembered that thread incorrectly. The HTK was for small unarmored magazines vs larger unarmored magazines.
Hmm looking at one of my ship designs it looks like the DAC scales mostly with HTK I had assumed it was more HS based. So a beam ship using the new quad turrets could make it very hard to hit the fire controls. Well if damage is applied by rolling against the DAC anyways.
The counter to this is to have some HPM's along which will only damage the electronics of the target. This would include all sensors, fire control, ecm/eccm, and survey sensors. Currently I don't think that anything else qualifies.
Brian
-
Doh I take that back the DAC is HS based, I forgot the DAC does not include the armor and I think I looked at a triple turret when I was checking the size of the turret but the ship uses a quad turret.
Anyways 60% of DAC can still have internal armor and it is only a 7100 ton ship. Also there is only a 6% chance to hit the fire controls. If you go with a larger ship shooting for a 70-80% chance to hit high HTK components seems possible. If fuel tanks get the same treatment then 65% of my ships DAC can be armored.
If nothing else making meson resistant ships should be fairly easy after everything gets updated. I'm not sure that is a good thing.
-
If nothing else making meson resistant ships should be fairly easy after everything gets updated. I'm not sure that is a good thing.
Um, my recollection from a long time ago (which could be wrong) is that mesons are supposed to ignore all armor, both internal and external. The fact that they don't IIRC is a bug that was either there from the start or got put in during the armor switch. Hence my statement about 2 different HTK - this was intended as "don't forget to fix the bug".
John
-
Um, my recollection from a long time ago (which could be wrong) is that mesons are supposed to ignore all armor, both internal and external. The fact that they don't IIRC is a bug that was either there from the start or got put in during the armor switch. Hence my statement about 2 different HTK - this was intended as "don't forget to fix the bug".
John
That is why I asked if internal armor is useful for anything else other then mesons. If its not just get rid of internal armor.
It seems that you might be able to stack the DAC to make it useful on other weapons but I think you will still get more protection out of using the same amount of HS for external armor.
-
That is why I asked if internal armor is useful for anything else other then mesons. If its not just get rid of internal armor.
It seems that you might be able to stack the DAC to make it useful on other weapons but I think you will still get more protection out of using the same amount of HS for external armor.
The point of armoring individual systems is to help prevent them from being killed by a shot that has just barely penetrated armor. If you look at the example Steve gave, the quad turret went froma htk of 12 to 20. If a 6 point laser got through armor then the chance of killing that turret goes from 1 in 3 to 3 in 13, or a drop of 10% from 33.3% to 23.1%. In addition to this change if a heavier hit that exceeds the htk of the system gets through then the amount of damage that this 1 system absorbs goes from 12 to 20. That big of a jump means that 1 - 2 other systems are not going to be damaged. Overall the question becomes what is the difference between adding a couple of points of armor to the turret vs armoring the ship as a whole. A lot depends on the specifics of the weapons being fired at you. If it is mostly lasers, then having the extra internalls may be more important. If is mesons then those extra internals are critical. All of the rest have a broader damage pattern where the extra internals may mean less than having a couple of extra points of armor for the ship overall.
Brian
-
The point of armoring individual systems is to help prevent them from being killed by a shot that has just barely penetrated armor. If you look at the example Steve gave, the quad turret went froma htk of 12 to 20. If a 6 point laser got through armor then the chance of killing that turret goes from 1 in 3 to 3 in 13, or a drop of 10% from 33.3% to 23.1%. In addition to this change if a heavier hit that exceeds the htk of the system gets through then the amount of damage that this 1 system absorbs goes from 12 to 20. That big of a jump means that 1 - 2 other systems are not going to be damaged. Overall the question becomes what is the difference between adding a couple of points of armor to the turret vs armoring the ship as a whole. A lot depends on the specifics of the weapons being fired at you. If it is mostly lasers, then having the extra internalls may be more important. If is mesons then those extra internals are critical. All of the rest have a broader damage pattern where the extra internals may mean less than having a couple of extra points of armor for the ship overall.
Brian
The other reason is to keep chained secondary explosions from going super-critical (in the nuclear bomb sense).
Let's say you've got 20x magazines on your ship, each of which has 1 HTK, a 20% chance of blowing up, and will do 20pts of damage if it does blow up. The point is that the secondary explosion acts as negative HTK. If the magazine is hit it subtracts 1HTK from the total strength of the penetration, but has a 20% chance of adding 20pts, so on average it will add 3pts to the strength of the penetration (-1 + 0.20*20); it has an effective HTK of -3. If another magazine is hit it too, on average, will add to the strength of the penetration and you end up with a good chance that all 20 magazines will go up in a chain reaction, destroying the ship (think "Hood").
If, on the other hand, the magazines are armored up to 5 HTK, then each one will have an effective HTK of 1 and secondaries are more likely to fizzle out.
John
-
Safe to assume this will be a database + exe patch?
-
Safe to assume this will be a database + exe patch?
Since the version id is changing from 5.42 to 5.50 that is correct.
-
The other reason is to keep chained secondary explosions from going super-critical (in the nuclear bomb sense).
Let's say you've got 20x magazines on your ship, each of which has 1 HTK, a 20% chance of blowing up, and will do 20pts of damage if it does blow up. The point is that the secondary explosion acts as negative HTK. If the magazine is hit it subtracts 1HTK from the total strength of the penetration, but has a 20% chance of adding 20pts, so on average it will add 3pts to the strength of the penetration (-1 + 0.20*20); it has an effective HTK of -3. If another magazine is hit it too, on average, will add to the strength of the penetration and you end up with a good chance that all 20 magazines will go up in a chain reaction, destroying the ship (think "Hood").
If, on the other hand, the magazines are armored up to 5 HTK, then each one will have an effective HTK of 1 and secondaries are more likely to fizzle out.
John
To me this just says keep your magazines and power plants at 1 HS. Anything bigger and you have to trade extra space to get the same effective HTK. Hmm I wonder if this even gets better for larger magazines when you start adding armor.
HS HTK capacity cap/HTK
1 2 14 7 -- same effective HTK?
2 4 27 6.75
3 6 39 6.5
4 8 51 6.375
5 10 62 6.2
5 9 63 7 -- same effective HTK?
6 10 75 7.5
These were taken from a game with compressed carbon armor and base missile techs.
Is this better for the 1 HS magazine or worse? If I understand what you were saying correctly a 5 HS magazine can get the same effective HTK for one less HTK but is that actually a good thing? I really don't know what to make of this.
I'm not trying to say you are wrong or anything, its just when I read it the first thing that popped in my mind is smaller is better and I think I might be missing something as I'm not really sure what to think about the table above.
-
To me this just says keep your magazines and power plants at 1 HS. Anything bigger and you have to trade extra space to get the same effective HTK. Hmm I wonder if this even gets better for larger magazines when you start adding armor.
Everything I've seen says it's best to keep magazines at 1HS with current mechanics. The problem I have is that I don't know the algorithm for calculating magazine explosion size - is it the number of warhead points stored? The magazine size? Something else?
HS HTK capacity cap/HTK
1 2 14 7 -- same effective HTK?
2 4 27 6.75
3 6 39 6.5
4 8 51 6.375
5 10 62 6.2
5 9 63 7 -- same effective HTK?
6 10 75 7.5
These were taken from a game with compressed carbon armor and base missile techs.
Is this better for the 1 HS magazine or worse? If I understand what you were saying correctly a 5 HS magazine can get the same effective HTK for one less HTK but is that actually a good thing? I really don't know what to make of this.
I'm not trying to say you are wrong or anything, its just when I read it the first thing that popped in my mind is smaller is better and I think I might be missing something as I'm not really sure what to think about the table above.
This is a GREAT table. It took me a while to understand it, but your "same effective HTK" label is perfect.
Yes, those two magazines have the same effective HTK, because the HTK/HS are the same. Since each HS should have the same chance of blowing up and do the same damage (assuming it's full and the algorithm cares), then the actual HTK/HS will be the same for both magazines.
The difference is that you need more magazines to get the same number of missiles with the 5/9 design. So you're better off using 63*5 size-1 HTK2 magazines than 70 size-5 HTK 9 magazines (same number of missiles) or 63 size-5 HTK 9 magazines (same number of HS). While the 70 size-5 configuration gives you more HTK, that's because you burned an extra 35 HS on magazines, which you could have used on armor instead (either external, or internal by replacing some size-1 HTK2 magazines with size-1 HTK3 magazines).
[Pause while sitting in design window]
Ummm ok. size-1 HTK3 also has a capacity of 14, with a cap/HTK of 4.666, so no one should ever build the HTK2 version for these stats (another one of those rounding things....). Let's look at two "pretend" possibilities, though, both of which are worse magazines that the "real" one: capacity 13 and capacity 12.
For a pretend size-1, HTK3 Capacity 13 magazine, the cap/HTK would be 4.333, which means better effective HTK per missile. Plus you could fit 65 missile points into 5 of them, which beats the 63 missile points of the size-5 HTK 9 magazine.
For capacity 12, the cap/HTK is 4, but you can only fit 60 into 5 of them. But if you use 2 HTK2 and 3 HTK3, then you have 64 missile points (2*14+3*12), the same number of HS, and 2 with same effective HTK/missile and 3 with better HTK/missile.
So it's better to put more armor on a size-1 magazine than to create bigger magazines with the same HTK.
John
-
And here I've just been building three magazine sizes: 5 HS, 15 HS, and the max, 30 HS, and using those magazines in varying combinations to outfit my ships. I've never considered just building 1HS magazines and putting a zillion of them on the ship.
The more you know!
-
Well, logistically, it's always easier^^
-
Black holes = majestic as they are deadly... Not looking forward to jumping into a system in a new game to find i'm sitting a stones throw away from the event horizon of a black hole :-\ I wonder if The Invaders are immune or subject to the same effects.
-
Considering they still jump into Nebulae and then just sit there.... I wouldn't bet on anything.^^
-
The new colony list is great!
-
New Population List
And there was much rejoicing.
John
-
/dance
-
ditto
-
Indeed thank you very very much ;D
It looks brilliant!
-
I have also added an alternative view of populations. You can now group them function and system instead of just by system. Clicking the Group by Function checkbox will display populations as below. I have not expanded all branches for this screenshot
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/NewPopList2.PNG)
Steve
-
That's really nice. Will the checkboxes have permanence? So if I check Group by Function, and return to the game later or the economics screen after it's closed, it won't default to not checked? Right now if I check Basic Pop in 5.42 and just close the window and reopen it, it defaults to not checked.
-
Yeah lack of permancy of checkboxes is a real pain, everytime I set up orders or another window just how I like it only to close instead of minimize grinds my teeth.
But loving the look of the extra options, but why are all the checkboxes not open are you hiding something from us <wink>
-
I have also added an alternative view of populations. You can now group them function and system instead of just by system. Clicking the Group by Function checkbox will display populations as below. I have not expanded all branches for this screenshot
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/NewPopList2.PNG)
Steve
AWESOME..very useful!
Army r another situation hard to manage..do u have touch it?
-
doesnt help me in my current game - but woohooo
-
That's really nice. Will the checkboxes have permanence? So if I check Group by Function, and return to the game later or the economics screen after it's closed, it won't default to not checked? Right now if I check Basic Pop in 5.42 and just close the window and reopen it, it defaults to not checked.
Yes, the check box has permanency
Also, the nodes in the tree view all retain their state as well. There is a table in the DB that stores the open/closed state of every node for every race.
Steve
-
Great work. Thanks so much for that and the game. The small things sometimes go a lot farther than the big items.
-
is the new treeview supposed to be up to date? because it remains static as population grows and colonies are founded, until I close and reopen the window or check the grouping flag on and off...
-
is the new treeview supposed to be up to date? because it remains static as population grows and colonies are founded, until I close and reopen the window or check the grouping flag on and off...
I believe that is already in the bugs thread. You might add it there though.
-
Several years late, but I have a specific question about couple of changes:
1. Jump Drives now suffer from transit effects and cannot jump again until transit effects wear off
I wasn't aware that JP transit has a "cool down" period, is this "transit effects" == Jump Shock? And does Gate way Jump has the same cooldown period?
2. Manual missile launches at waypoints cannot take until transit effects wear off
Can you clarify this point?
-
1.) They only have a cooldown in that a ship in Sensor Delay or Fire Delay cannot jump. Gate jumps are standard jumps and do suffer from delay.
2.) You can manually launch missiles - it's usually used for dropping minefield patterns or launch geosurvey drones. The exploit was you could do this while suffering jump delay, so you could i.e. drop mines that autonomously lock on enemy targets and launch missiles. The button is accessible from the Ships screen and the Task Group screen, labeled "Msl Launch".
-
1. To my understanding Jump shock (http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Jump_shock) effect all ships transiting through a JP to a certain degree and regardless of the transit method in use. What I am trying to figure out, is how the part about 'Jump Drives being unable to Jump' figures into this.
2. Does that mean that you can't manually launch missiles during that time, or that the sensors on manually launched missiles will also suffer from Jump Shock effects?