Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on April 11, 2012, 03:34:27 AM
-
I am considering making some significant changes to Aurora, based on work I have done for Newtonian Aurora. I'd thought I'd mention them here first to gauge the reaction.
One of the interesting things about testing Newtonian Aurora is the degree to which you have to worry about fuel. While I don't want introduce any Newtonian movement to Aurora I do think spacecraft/missiles should have to worry more about fuel. At the moment it is often a small percentage of hull size - around 1-2% - and I think it should be much higher. Not the 40-50% of some of the designs in NA but perhaps 10-20%. NA compensates for increased fuel requirements by making Sorium in gas giants much more common and decreases the size/cost of fuel harvesters. There are also larger and proportionately less expensive fuel storage systems for ships. If I did this I might add a 'no fuel' option in the same way as 'no maintenance'. Forward bases and tankers would become much more important with this fuel model.
NA also has increased requirements for crew quarters as the current Aurora requirements are very low, often less than 1% of hull size. Again this should be much higher in reality. If I introduce the rules about manning levels mentioned in another thread, it would make sense to have more realistic life support and crew requirements. I would also look at the existing crew requirements for various systems and try to make them more reasonable. Some type of automation technology could be introduced.
The changes mentioned above would result in generally larger ships than now in order to have the same capabilities. Therefore I would increase the shipbuilding rates to compensate. I would also remove the geometric cost multiplier for jump drives so you could build larger jump drives more cheaply. Efficiency would remain the same.
Steve
-
Sounds good
-
For the fuel, i don't know, i guess i always pictured that the space ships would go to some form of reactor design for power and propulsion...at least larger ships. Kinda of like how the US Carriers are nuclear while the Destroyers are gas turbine. And isn't the Cassini satelite nuclear..but not sure thats used for propulsion in any way...prob not. Guess i just envisioned larger ships going that way...some reactor tech were fuel is measured in years. Fighters/missles i agree may use more fuel.
As for more manning, i agree more is needed. Again looking at a Carrier, fully loaded with an air wing it is around 5000-6000 personnel, and i would imagine a space ships will be alot larger then it. Even with automation it would need alot of people to run and maintain.
-Five
-
I like Five's thinking. Maybe 2 types of propulsion. A conventional one, using sorium, very dependant on refuelling, and an advanced one, much more costly and bigger, using another mineral, more scarce, only usable on very big ships but with less need for resupply.
You're gonna hate me for using again the Stargate reference, but... kinda the difference between a F-301 and a Daedalus Battlecruiser. While the F-301 uses conventional propulsion and can run out of fuel easily, the Daedalus BC have a more advanced Naquadah powered propulsion.
-
Nice ideas; Well, obviously, I like NA as well.
For the fuel; Maybe you could have fuel use dependent on speed %, so if you go 10% top speed, you only use 5% fuel.
That would allow ships to do what they can do in Aurora, get somewhere with low fuel use by investment of time.
Alternatively, a look at Star Ruler might be of note, they got a special form of scoop there that grants low amounts of thrust without fuel, (potentially more in nebulae?), but it's a cheap excuse of an engine otherwise.
You could also generally make engines weaker, and add a thruster capability that works like an additional Fuel efficiency modifier, thus making fuel more important only in combat situations or when time is critical.
-
Maybe we could have 'Pressurized fuel tanks' that hold larger amounts of fuel in smaller spaces, but will explode violently similarly to magazines.
-
- Do you plan to bring over the Newtonian engine rules? I mean the freely designable engine size, with larger engines being more efficient, no differentiation between commercial and military engines etc.
- Jumps use fuel/energy? With gates or without.
- 3 types of fuel:
Neutronium-> Fission fuel
Sorium-> Fusion fuel
Energy-> Antimatter fuel (energy can be provided by solar arrays <- put an accelerator facility in solar orbit)
- I'm all for making things more visible - all systems use energy when in use and need power from the reactor which in turn needs fuel to run.
- Less crew requirements & automation but more volume per person. No or very small crew requirement for fuel tanks! Non-combat ships have only a third because no 8 hour shifts.
- Life support: Uses energy and supplies? Tech increases efficiency.
-
Two thoughts:
1) Would you change the size breaks for fighter/GB/Corvettes (bridgeless ships) etc? I was originally going to say you'd need to up the threshold for bridgeless ships, e.g. to 1200 tons, but while typing this I realized that the other way to go would be to introduce fatigue rules: the difference between a fighter and a frigate is that the frigate has ~3x the crew-per-system that a fighter does, and that the frigate has crew quarters. So to get away from the arbitrary 1000-ton discontinuity you'd probably want to set things up so that if the crew, on average, is on duty more than e.g. 40% of the time (which is a bit higher than 3x but a bit lower than 2x) then fatigue levels begin to rise. Similarly, if the crew doesn't have enough "resting space" then the fatigue levels also rise. So for a fighter you just need 1 shift of crew and a place for them to work at their station; for something like a gunboat (i.e. short duration littoral warfare) you'd need 3x crew per station but only 3x (or even 5x) the space (which would induce fatigue levels to start to grow after a few days), and for a frigate (i.e. blue water, arbitrarily long deployment) you'd need 3x crew and 5x (or even 10x) the space.
2) This has the potential for a LOT of micromanagement, both at the design level and at the operational level (if you introduce fatigue levels). In essence you'd be re-introducing readiness states if you go with fatigue rules, and the fatigue rules are what I think make the crew quarters change worth it. Similarly, you already need to pay a lot of attention to fuel in Aurora if you use GB/FAC and/or fighters - I'm a bit concerned that requiring even more planning would lead to the same sorts of problems we saw with maintenance. It certainly shouldn't be the case that a tanker uses 70% of the fuel on itself during a deployment, nor that a carrier can't refuel its fighters from on-board resources (which is almost the case now). Although maybe that means that fighter/FAC combat radii would go WAY down and we'd get as big a tactical shift as when you introduced realistic missile engines.
So I'm torn. I don't see a lot of need to disrupt the current game playability balance just to make crew quarters bigger. OTOH if you put in fatigue that would put a real continuum behind things like the readiness/surprise rules in SF, and the "Below 1000 tons you don't need a bridge" rule in Aurora.
John
-
Just a first impression, by increasing fuel consumption, the smaller ships are going to have really ultra short range trips. Giant battleglobes full of fuel or full of attack ships or both to get to the next system to attack.
-
I find myself jamming in fuel and crew as an afterthought, for sure. My strategy of ship design is to pick what I want on board, approximate the crew and fuel, then add engines until its to fleet speed.
If you require that crew and fuel take extra space, I pose that something different has to happen with certain weaponry-- specifically beam weaponry-- because it takes a LOT of oomph to push a ship to combat range, and requires a LOT of shields, fuel, armor, and the weapons that make getting to range worth while.
Spinal mounts!
hehe
-
I like the idea of making fuel supplies a bit less trivial. Right now, any planet with non-trivial fuel production generally produces enough to supply your whole fleet forever. If gas giants are going to become more meaningful, however, then I suggest that fuel harvesters be made a bit more workable. The default/conditional orders for them never quite work.
I also like the idea of making large jump drives a bit less absurdly huge and expensive.
And, if I can bang this drum just once more, I'm quite fond of the NA energy weapon overhaul. Wink wink.
-
I agree with both Five and John.
Especially about crew fatigue. That opens up a whole new level of detail; shore leave, crew rotation, etc.
-
Forward bases and tankers would become much more important with this fuel model.
The question is, what is a forward base? Just drop fuel on a planet? Shouldn't there be some building involved, like a PDC?
In addition, isn't it better if refueling takes some time? Cargo handling with fuel? Some kind of facility, infrastructure or equipment in naval bases?
-
Would be a nice time to allow the construction of star bases. Maybe orbiting a gas giant, defending the sorium extraction operations and allowing the fleet to refuel and resupply.
Countless possibilities.
-
Yes, I am 100% for Starbases. Perhaps they could be a 3rd build option (PDC/Ship/Starbase)? Built via industry? Could also tie in to the crew fatigue idea, possibly allowing ships to "dock" and have crew leave?
-
Two thoughts:
1) Would you change the size breaks for fighter/GB/Corvettes (bridgeless ships) etc? I was originally going to say you'd need to up the threshold for bridgeless ships, e.g. to 1200 tons, but while typing this I realized that the other way to go would be to introduce fatigue rules: the difference between a fighter and a frigate is that the frigate has ~3x the crew-per-system that a fighter does, and that the frigate has crew quarters. So to get away from the arbitrary 1000-ton discontinuity you'd probably want to set things up so that if the crew, on average, is on duty more than e.g. 40% of the time (which is a bit higher than 3x but a bit lower than 2x) then fatigue levels begin to rise. Similarly, if the crew doesn't have enough "resting space" then the fatigue levels also rise. So for a fighter you just need 1 shift of crew and a place for them to work at their station; for something like a gunboat (i.e. short duration littoral warfare) you'd need 3x crew per station but only 3x (or even 5x) the space (which would induce fatigue levels to start to grow after a few days), and for a frigate (i.e. blue water, arbitrarily long deployment) you'd need 3x crew and 5x (or even 10x) the space.
2) This has the potential for a LOT of micromanagement, both at the design level and at the operational level (if you introduce fatigue levels). In essence you'd be re-introducing readiness states if you go with fatigue rules, and the fatigue rules are what I think make the crew quarters change worth it. Similarly, you already need to pay a lot of attention to fuel in Aurora if you use GB/FAC and/or fighters - I'm a bit concerned that requiring even more planning would lead to the same sorts of problems we saw with maintenance. It certainly shouldn't be the case that a tanker uses 70% of the fuel on itself during a deployment, nor that a carrier can't refuel its fighters from on-board resources (which is almost the case now). Although maybe that means that fighter/FAC combat radii would go WAY down and we'd get as big a tactical shift as when you introduced realistic missile engines.
So I'm torn. I don't see a lot of need to disrupt the current game playability balance just to make crew quarters bigger. OTOH if you put in fatigue that would put a real continuum behind things like the readiness/surprise rules in SF, and the "Below 1000 tons you don't need a bridge" rule in Aurora.
John
I could see this bring a need for much larger crew accommodation on board carriers, as fighter crews would lose energy/fatigue while aboard their craft, and have extended launch times as the crews won't be spending their time in their fighters while docked, so having extra shifts of pilots would be beneficial to fighter launch times.
Also, in NA, it would be nice to see a tractor beam array installation, allowing ships to enter colonies with enough at full speed and use it to slow down. A sort of colony based braking system, if you will.
-
I would suggest crew fatigue be essentially rolled into the maintenance mechanic, such that maintenance clock puts a modifier on crew grade and or task force training. A year of overhaul to reduce four years of active service (a length unheard of in my empire) is an nice shore leave, for instance. While I don't object to the concept, what could amount to an additional clock that regularly needs attention doesn't really add much. We already need to tool shipyards (1-6 months), build ships (a year, or more, sometimes), train them (1-2 years), and then overhaul (4-8 months out of the gate, just to fix issues after training). Ships must be overhauled for approximatly 25% of their active service time (not in port).
Thats already a lot of down time, and since all of my maintenence is done at citizen'd colonies, they don't need any more.
-
I agree on crew fatigue. It would add a lot of realism but also add one more maintenance element to keep track of. I do like the overall concept of making your crew matter though. By making systems function improperly with casualties and making functioning life support systems a requirement. Missiles don't launch without FC, ships don't move without engines, but crew live just fine with no life support modules functioning after a battle?!?
Scaling crew and balancing the crew numbers needed would be nice. An epicly large carrier should require a vast number of crew and a freighter shouldn't need as many as it does. In our modern age ocean freighters operate with crews of 10-15 and a battleship of similar displacement can have hundreds, if not thousands of crew.
-
For the fuel, i don't know, i guess i always pictured that the space ships would go to some form of reactor design for power and propulsion...at least larger ships. Kinda of like how the US Carriers are nuclear while the Destroyers are gas turbine. And isn't the Cassini satelite nuclear..but not sure thats used for propulsion in any way...prob not. Guess i just envisioned larger ships going that way...some reactor tech were fuel is measured in years. Fighters/missles i agree may use more fuel.
Nuclear powered navy ships use that nuclear power to turn a screw which pushes against the water. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so the ship moves forward. Unfortunately in space there is no water to push against so you need propellant. That gets thrown (somehow) out of the back of the ship and the equal and opposite reaction pushes you forward. A chemical rocket and a nuclear thermal rocket both need this propellant - the nuclear engine is just more fuel efficient. The nuclear thermal engine designed in the sixties is about twice as efficient as contemporary chemical rockets. See the Nuclear vs. Chemical section in this Wiki article for the details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket
In other words, nuclear powered spacecraft still need a lot of propellant, even though the mass of the actual reactor fuel is minimal in comparison. Nuclear powered spacecraft could use electrical engines such as VASIMR, which are far more fuel efficient, but the thrust is extremely low.
Steve
-
- Do you plan to bring over the Newtonian engine rules? I mean the freely designable engine size, with larger engines being more efficient, no differentiation between commercial and military engines etc.
Yes, probably if I make the other changes I would do that as well.
Here is the section on NA engine design for those who haven't seen it. An Aurora version would use similar principles but based on speed rather than acceleration. This would remove the current concepts of FAC engines and fighter engines and allow much greater freedom in engine design. You could also have twin engine "fighters".
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4329.msg42917.html#msg42917
Steve
-
Just a first impression, by increasing fuel consumption, the smaller ships are going to have really ultra short range trips. Giant battleglobes full of fuel or full of attack ships or both to get to the next system to attack.
If fuel consumption increases, I would probably change to an NA engine design system where the penalties for high powered drives are much less.
Steve
-
Would be a nice time to allow the construction of star bases. Maybe orbiting a gas giant, defending the sorium extraction operations and allowing the fleet to refuel and resupply.
Countless possibilities.
A star base in terms of a large, combat capable base is just a ship without engines. You can build one as you would build a ship.
Steve
-
A star base in terms of a large, combat capable base is just a ship without engines. You can build one as you would build a ship.
Steve
I think the concern there is the maintenance. Towing a massive spacebase back to earth for maintenance is an awful thing to have to do, and if we're orbiting a gas giant, then there's no option for local maintenance at all.
-
Two thoughts:
1) Would you change the size breaks for fighter/GB/Corvettes (bridgeless ships) etc? I was originally going to say you'd need to up the threshold for bridgeless ships, e.g. to 1200 tons, but while typing this I realized that the other way to go would be to introduce fatigue rules: the difference between a fighter and a frigate is that the frigate has ~3x the crew-per-system that a fighter does, and that the frigate has crew quarters. So to get away from the arbitrary 1000-ton discontinuity you'd probably want to set things up so that if the crew, on average, is on duty more than e.g. 40% of the time (which is a bit higher than 3x but a bit lower than 2x) then fatigue levels begin to rise. Similarly, if the crew doesn't have enough "resting space" then the fatigue levels also rise. So for a fighter you just need 1 shift of crew and a place for them to work at their station; for something like a gunboat (i.e. short duration littoral warfare) you'd need 3x crew per station but only 3x (or even 5x) the space (which would induce fatigue levels to start to grow after a few days), and for a frigate (i.e. blue water, arbitrarily long deployment) you'd need 3x crew and 5x (or even 10x) the space.
I like this idea. You could set this as a parameter during design. You choose the intended operating mode for the ship and the design process assigns appropriate crew quarters and life support. During operations, you may suffer crew grade penalties based on either the length of time since "returning to base" or due to crew losses. Similar in a way to putting ground troops in drop modules for long periods. Could also introduce a penalty even for long-term style ships if they stay out too long due to morale issues. So you could have a regular "frigate style" operating mode for ships that would be out for 6-12 months (after that you start suffering morale/fatigue issues) and then some type of very high quality crew accomodations for survey ships and picket ships where a ship was going to stay out for years.
2) This has the potential for a LOT of micromanagement, both at the design level and at the operational level (if you introduce fatigue levels). In essence you'd be re-introducing readiness states if you go with fatigue rules, and the fatigue rules are what I think make the crew quarters change worth it. Similarly, you already need to pay a lot of attention to fuel in Aurora if you use GB/FAC and/or fighters - I'm a bit concerned that requiring even more planning would lead to the same sorts of problems we saw with maintenance. It certainly shouldn't be the case that a tanker uses 70% of the fuel on itself during a deployment, nor that a carrier can't refuel its fighters from on-board resources (which is almost the case now). Although maybe that means that fighter/FAC combat radii would go WAY down and we'd get as big a tactical shift as when you introduced realistic missile engines.
There would be a little more management required at design time but not that much during play apart from checking the fatigue level when necessary. I might also up the system failure rate if crew "fatigue" is high since they are more likely to make mistakes during normal operations. If I up fuel consumption I would reduce the penalties for higher powered engines. Tankers would carry a lot more fuel than regular ships so I would estimate they might use 10-15%% of their own fuel rather than 70%.
Steve
-
I think the concern there is the maintenance. Towing a massive spacebase back to earth for maintenance is an awful thing to have to do, and if we're orbiting a gas giant, then there's no option for local maintenance at all.
If you put it in orbit of one of the moons, you could create a maintenance base on that moon use the existing maintenance modules. I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.
Steve
-
Yes, the maintenance issue is a bit lopsided. I tried making a 1million ton "orbital base" by laying out my modules and adding a orbital habitat module to build it with earth industry and as a military craft the AFR% and such was astronomical.
-
There would be a little more management required at design time but not that much during play apart from checking the fatigue level when necessary. I might also up the system failure rate if crew "fatigue" is high since they are more likely to make mistakes during normal operations.
Perhaps another look at TF training is in order. Training could increase the TF level to a certain level, the rest of which is fatigue. A fresh crew would be able to hit a maximum of 100%, and a sleepy-mode crew would be running closer to 50%.
-
A star base in terms of a large, combat capable base is just a ship without engines. You can build one as you would build a ship.
Steve
But currently you can only do that turning off overhauls. Also Star Bases should function maybe like an amored and combat capable habitat. People live there, trade is made, ships dock, resupply, refuel... I don't know, more things. I really think that could be a very nice addition to an already awesome game. However, I think you said that there are problems with this kind of "non-planetary population" ideas... so... I don't know, just my 2cent.
-
If you put it in orbit of one of the moons, you could create a maintenance base on that moon use the existing maintenance modules. I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.
Steve
Easy. Don't allow the use of that component with engines.
-
Easy. Don't allow the use of that component with engines.
I'm not a big fan of arbitrary rules :). There needs to be some plausible reason why it doesn't work with engines that also maintains internal consistency within the game.
Steve
-
In terms of actual fuel I either find my self drowned under it, or having a dire sorium crunch. I do like the logistics expansion though, currently I just dump fuel on the homeworld and have all ships refuel there. Maybe Commercial starports should have a propulsion laser on them that propels commercial shipping with less fuel(or none if travelling between two starports), sort of like mass drivers. I don't find much reason to build starports thanks to cargo handling systems. Also compressed fuel storage seems like a high tech way to alleviate any problems that get brought up, though that has to be found. How will fuel impact fighters? would bringing along tanker fighters/facs be essentially required for strikes? Using fighter tankers causes some wierdness currently, capital ships try to refuel from them, and it makes them cumbersome to use.
Crew quarters looks good. The automation option could also be on weapons like auto-loaders vs manual loaders for rate of fire and such. There is currently no penalty for lost crew, and no way to get new crew short of repair yards though, something could be done there.
-
I'd be really careful about radically increasing the %age of space devoted to non-combat systems. Push it too far, and you'll make expeditionary warfare essentially impossible. You'd end up with 2 schools of design, System Defence (ships for local defence only, spend 98% of their lives tied up alongside port, tiny fuel and maint facilities, only ever go into space to fight an observed enemy) and Expeditionary, with the legs to take the fight to an enemy and patrol, but badly under-armed / armoured for their weight, comparative to current designs.
I also suspect that for Expeditionary designs, you'd be forced to take a very specialised division of labour approach to ship / fleet design, with dedicated sensor platforms, PD platforms, missile / beam platforms etc. Except at pretty high tech levels, ships capable of independent action would become nearly impossible to build. Parasitic weight penalties get big, fast
Increasing fuel consumption of missiles significantly would have pretty dire consequences for that aspect of combat too. For a given size of missile, you would have to give up range, warhead, agility or speed (or a combination), so missiles would either become less capable, or much bigger. In either case, PD would become proportionately much more powerful.
>> Starbase
>> There needs to be some plausible reason why it doesn't work with engines that also maintains internal consistency within the game.
Borrow / adapt the SFB "positional stabilisers" concept. You need one to make the maint component work (and possibly other things too, like allowing faster missile launch rates), and it disables engines, because your position is stabilised
Size 1 AMMs wouldn't suffer much, because they barely carry any fuel anyway. Going from 0.005 to 0.05 MSPs of fuel is nearly insignificant, and leaves you with nearly as good an AMM as you have now, against much worse, or much more expensive ASMs. It would certainly make ASM armour, and 2 stage missiles much more attractive though.
As for crew, what I think you're reaching for is a crew comfort score. In a fighter / FAC with a limited deployment time, crew comfort is a low priority, people can hot bunk and eat off their knees for a few days at a time, with no real adverse effects. For extended survey cruises for example, which may mean being in space for years at a time, crew would need more facilities to keep their edge. Overprovision of crew quarters (representing individual rooms, and private space), dedicated leisure areas, dedicated mess and galleys, hydroponics areas for fresh food, not Navy concentrates every day... This is what keeps survey crews sane and functional.
Run it as a "Crew Comfort Timer", similar to expected maint life. If you exceed it, morale / efficiency drops (presumably expressed as a temporary drop in crew grade). As you add more space for crew comfort, the timer rises, allowing longer deployment times with 100% of nominal crew efficiency. If crew areas get trashed by battle damage, you may have to send a ship home for repair even if its combat capable, because the crew are sleeping in corridors and the engine room, and living off unheated rations
-
In other words, nuclear powered spacecraft still need a lot of propellant, even though the mass of the actual reactor fuel is minimal in comparison. Nuclear powered spacecraft could use electrical engines such as VASIMR, which are far more fuel efficient, but the thrust is extremely low.
This though, nuclear thermal rockets might not be all that efficient in propellant mass, but in terms of fuel energy, they're very very good.
Basically, you can refuel your reaction mass from water ice if your engine is built for it. And ice is around in most places.
Some sort of design option (processing plant) could allow a tanker to create propellant mass from any large icy body. A hydrogen option (refuel from any gas giant) might also be possible.
-
I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.
I'm not a big fan of arbitrary rules :). There needs to be some plausible reason why it doesn't work with engines that also maintains internal consistency within the game.
Here are some thoughts I put down before coming to a possible solution. I tend to see the self-maintenance module as a complex system integrated into the whole ship, rails and robotic monitoring/repair. Now I see why Steve haven't done it, it's less simple than it seems.
So, every ship requires maintenance, whether it be a fighter, battleship or death star. Equipment degrades with time and needs replacing or extensive repairs, and this consumes ressources. Currently, it can only be done while in orbit of a colony with maintenance facilities or modules. This in itself is a rather arbitraty mechanic, unless I'm missing something. Maintenance ships with cargo holds and the necessary ressources should be able to work anywhere...
A maintenance ship in orbit around a colony can't maintain itself, since every module is 5000 tons yet can only support 200 tons. A fleet of 25 of those could maintain themselves, since support capacity is pooled. Luckily, maintenance ships are commercial and don't need maintenance at all.
A self maintenance module is different altogether.
It could work in a similar way to jump engines. Suppose the module is of size 5000 tons, and can support a ship of size 10,000 tons. That leaves only 50% of the ship total size to put useful stuff (like cargo holds for maintenance ressources, engines and fuel tanks, crew quarters, armor, weapon systems, sensors, anything else...). This design will either be half as fast as other similar ships, or way under-armed. It might become useful for huge slow ships. The module can even have a minimum size of 100,000 tons, discouraging its use in common warships.
-
Self maintenance module may also require regular delivery of raw materials to provide it's maintenance to itself. Essentially an integrated cargo hold with a minimum amount to function and a smallish maximum quantity. The need to be supplied with materials on a regular basis could work as a deterrent to being abused.
-
Frankly Steve I'd leave both of these areas in Standard Aurora alone for now, they are really trivial compared to areas that would really have a greater impact on play.
Tactical Intelligence:
We touched on some of this a couple of years ago. Currently the tables hold a lot of data under the headings of TI. The area that could use work is how it is displayed to the user. A next step could be the ability to build player directed protocol interfaces for automated responses to events. At the player level this should probably be restricted to tactical responses.
NPR variation
Once player level protocols function the NPR AI could be changed to run from similar protocols. The NPR protocols can be be driven from racial characteristics as a starting point. A possible expansion would be commander characteristics as well.
Electronic Warfare
ECM should degrade tactical intelligence gathering. It should also be attenuated to range.
Add in that missile/ECM interaction should degrade hit probability as well as lock-on range. Actually beams should also have range attenuation as well.
These are just some areas that would have greater impact on the game for the level of effort. Yes, tactical intel and NPR AI changes will increase the CPU cycles needed to process a turn/cycle. I still run Aurora on an old single core P4 machine and am more than willing to accept the level of CPU hit for the overall game play gains.
-
Two thoughts:
I like this idea.
I thought you might - especially when I used the a-word ("arbitrary") about the 1000 ton design break :)
John
-
If you put it in orbit of one of the moons, you could create a maintenance base on that moon use the existing maintenance modules. I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.
Steve
Would that be such a terrible thing? I can't speak for the realism of it, but it seems to me that massive, relatively self-sustaining ships have a decent amount of sci-fi backing. What's wrong with a 2 million ton superdreadnaut having it's own maintenance? It would take a century to build up the spaceyard and half of one to actually build the thing in any case, so it'd be more of a dwarf-fortress-style megaproject than an actual military trump card.
Have I missed something, or is the objection purely philosophical?
-
I think space stations or ships without engines could come under a different category, when coming with maintenance and crew grading.
They are made to stay in space at a particular spot for long time (if not permanently), what we should be looking at is overhauling ships (repair ships)
That are made for the specific purpose with repairing in space, it takes a long time 5x a salvage operation and uses twice the maintenance needs.
These ships modules and cargo holds are large to carry the desired materials to overhaul ships and space stations. This new module would improve the ability to overhaul space defence platforms as well that have no engines.
I like the idea for crew degrade that are away from colony planets, however I think spacestations or large ships should have recreation facilities to counteract this issue. Or you need to be able to swap crews without swapping ships. Static vessels are designed to not be towed around the galaxy, you need to support them yes but with mobile assets else there would be no reason to build a static assets.
Like the idea with engine designs, but fuel changes will just through the balance of aurora out of wack.
-
Idea: A more voluminous form of engineering module, it doesn't take 50 tons but maybe 500 tons. It has the same effect as the smaller one as regards supplies and maintenance life, but due to its larger volume it provides maintenance access space for the other components. This means: Old components can be exchanged for new ones in the field. Replacing components that make up a relatively large part of the bases/ship's maintenance requirements like large sensors or large weapons systems would decrease the ship's maintenance clock accordingly.
Replacing these modules can be done with a maintenance capacity sufficient for their tonnage, ie a 2500 ton active sensor needs maintenance modules with a capacity of at least that. Removing, installing and, overhauling components takes time according to their size and complexity. They also take up cargo or maintenance modules on the maintenance ship.
There could be a "hull clock": the hull can only be repaired by a complete overhaul in a dry dock, with very large or distributed components like armor, tanks, magazines, life support, cargo bridges etc. The life of the hull can be measured in decades, but when it fails there is a hull and armor breach with components destruction, loss of life or maybe even total destruction. Like a weapons hit, this hull failure can damage e.g. the reactor causing it blow up and so on. Weapons hits themselves, even when not breaching defenses, might trigger a hull failure if the clock is high.
This way a base can be maintained by a smaller maint facility or tender than now, with the disadvantage to build and have spares on hand. The incentive for the player to refrain from using this as standard operating procedure for his battle fleets is that
A. engines and other large military components take a lot of time and effort to replace. A normal maint facility and normal overhauling works better and does not need many maint ships following them around.
B. maintenance access space takes up a lot of volume that can be spared on a base, but not on a ship.
It is not an arbitrary mechanic either, space base components need the same maintenance as ships - but because they can devote more volume to it maintenance becomes easier, with the consequence that they can stay in place for longer. Bases could have their own maint and cargo modules with a number of spare components, but they need to be replenished. I don't think many people will put tens of thousands of tons of maint modules cargo spaces on combat ships.
It could work in a similar way to jump engines. Suppose the module is of size 5000 tons, and can support a ship of size 10,000 tons. That leaves only 50% of the ship total size to put useful stuff (like cargo holds for maintenance ressources, engines and fuel tanks, crew quarters, armor, weapon systems, sensors, anything else...). This design will either be half as fast as other similar ships, or way under-armed. It might become useful for huge slow ships. The module can even have a minimum size of 100,000 tons, discouraging its use in common warships.
If you put in 5000 tons of engineering modules on a 10000 ton ship, how long will it be able to maintain itself under current rules? Decades? Maybe all this maintenance discussion is moot...
-
We are however assuming that it's impossible because of "an arbitrary reason" to attach engines to a Star Base. Why shouldn't be possible for a player to build a huge ship with maintenance capabilities? It would be expensive, it would use up a lot of fuel, it would need an incredible amount of engines (and it would be slow), it would have huge construction times but... If I have the resources, the technology and want to do it...
Yes, I'm sure it's kinda overpowered, but when a smart race manage to destroy that huge monster... you will probably think twice before trying to do it again.
The same thing for shipyards. Why they can only be at a population? What physic law forbids me to put a Star Base in the middle of space, with cargo capacity, manpower, maintenance capabilities and a pair of shipyards to build or repair other ships?
Maybe there are some programming limitations, but otherwise I think there's really nothing against this kind of things. And it would bring a lot of possibilities. Civilian lanes trading between our planets and nearby star bases, managing resources for star bases with shipyards, allowing our fleet to be stationed in a nearby star base for the crew to rest some time...
-
Yeah, I really like the idea of being able to make a base in deep space, some sort of emergency area, billions of kilometers out from the system primary, with enough resources and ships and frozen population to rebuild my empire if something destroys the whole thing.
-
Options for Space Stations;
A) Special ship type, requiring a habitat, hangar and cargo space, and having drastically raised crew requirements, maybe 3x. (Arbitrary^^)
It would have lower clock build up or some such.
B) New maintenance rules; I'd like it if insufficient maintenance facilities would still decrease clock progression, maybe not by a linear amount; 50% required maintenance would result in decreasing clock progression by 33%;
Then, a new self-Maintenance module would work on the basis that current ships being maintained are sitting at a planet as well;
So a ship self-Maintaining itself (In this case probably indeed linear, see above) wouldn't move. To have a self-maintaining, moving ship, the maintenance modules would require so much size it's hardly worth it.
But having enough maintenance modules on board to decrease clock ticking to +/- 10% while stationary, the ship could sit around for 20 years without much problem while still having a reasonable amount of space left for other equipment.
C) I like the idea of replacing components on ships with a special module; Requirements would not only require the module, but also sufficient hangar space for a small freighter to dock and cargo space to load the new component to be built in.
All those options could theoretically be combined.
Additionally, if you go with the concept of a "station core", with stuff being attached to it, that'd be a reason for arbitrary rules, stuff outside isn't encompassed by the drive field properly, thus limiting movement.
In combat, there'd be a small chance for one of those external components to be damaged before armor is breached.
Crap, this turned out a wall of text.
-
I like the idea of space stations having a distinct category, similar to PDCs. It feels right. Engines forbidden, custom rules like maybe higher crew requirements, the possibility of self-maintaining themselves...
Sure, they're in space and behave the same as spaceships. But we use bases very differently, having to tug them all the time. Their lack of autonomy makes them very special, at least to us.
-
I like the idea of space stations having a distinct category, similar to PDCs. It feels right. Engines forbidden, custom rules like maybe higher crew requirements, the possibility of self-maintaining themselves...
Sure, they're in space and behave the same as spaceships. But we use bases very differently, having to tug them all the time. Their lack of autonomy makes them very special, at least to us.
I like the idea, too.
Also, I just realized that because of the burst radius of NA nuclear missiles, a single AMM is much more effective, and probably capable of taking out most of a salvo on its own, if it's fast enough.
-
It depends what you want. WWII in space, modern navies in space, or modern aerospace craft or something else. Going on the realism Steve has ploughed into Aurora I would have thought aerospace, something else or modern navies at least.
Crew
I like the idea of increased crew comfort contributing to endurance, but remember that nuclear submarines still hot bunk and they are on patrol for months at a time.
However I think crewing requirements in Aurora are currently over done, ships complements in todays wet navy warships are shrinking. Remember the Tiger class cruisers had fully automatic 3” and 6” gun turrets decades ago. The Canadians used an automatic 3” turret on their escorts in the last century. In comparison a quad laser turret in Aurora has a crew of 144. What are all these people doing?
I think you could increase the space required for crew but vastly reduce the crew required to run a ship, the new RN Daring class (8000 tons) have a complement of just 190 with accommodation for 235. A jump destroyer in Aurora (8500 tons) has a crew of well over 800! On this basis crew complements in Aurora should be cut by a factor of four. Edit Interestingly a WWII Tribal class destroyer also had a complement of 190.
Fuel
I have no great problem with doubling the fuel requirements other than the supply of sorium which is not always abundant. More than that and sorium would be a real prolem in some games if you just do not get lucky.
Maintenance
This can be overegged; again it is worth remembering that the Invincible changed a complete engine in the middle of a war zone during the Falklands war. I have no real problems with it as it is.
Shipyards
While we’re at it shipyards should also be considered.
Today many if not most large sea-going vessels are constructed in a dry dock by assembling prefabricated sections (see the new RN carriers). Few are still launched off a slipway. Thus to rehash some old proposals, when considering space-borne shipyards it is quite conceivable for a 20,000 ton construction slipway (or construction bay, as I prefer) to accommodate the construction of more than one vessel. So that it could construct up to 16,000 tons of vessels, allowing 20% of capacity for adequate spacing of the different construction projects and the additional proviso that no vessel can leave the slipway before all ships have been completed.
Another alternative is to commit smaller yards to help the main yard with the project, thus shortening the time it takes to build a ship.
-
Given that free floating space stations are not possible programming wise, PDCs can and do take the place of forward stations just splendidly. And they don't need maintenance. They only need lots of construction brigades to reassemble them in a sane timeframe. Even with 20 brigades it takes years to build a 5+ part PDC. I have experimented with an orbital station that holds a million people and 20 factories. Don't know what is better.
-
This was my foray into designing a starbase.
Sentinel class Starbase 75,000 tons 5238 Crew 14446 BP TCS 1500 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 20-158 Shields 0-0 Sensors 280/280/0/0 Damage Control Rating 300 PPV 50
Maint Life 16.17 Years MSP 36115 AFR 150% IFR 2.1% 1YR 260 5YR 3899 Max Repair 720 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 10000 tons Troop Capacity: 2 Battalions Magazine 5570 Cargo Handling Multiplier 5
Fuel Capacity 2,460,000 Litres Range N/A
Defender Missile Launcher (50) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC105-R1 (10) Range 105.8m km Resolution 1
Striker SM Mk. 1 (642) Speed: 27,500 km/s End: 63.6m Range: 105m km WH: 8 Size: 4 TH: 165 / 99 / 49
Defender AMM Mk. 1 (3002) Speed: 50,000 km/s End: 3m Range: 9m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 533 / 320 / 160
Planetary Search Sensor MR1008-R100 (1) GPS 72000 Range 1,008.0m km Resolution 100
Anti-Missile Search Sensor MR100-R1 (1) GPS 720 Range 100.8m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH20-280 (1) Sensitivity 280 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 280m km
EM Detection Sensor EM20-280 (1) Sensitivity 280 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 280m km
Strike Group
36x Falcon Fighter Speed: 16400 km/s Size: 5
4x Falcon-C Fighter Speed: 16400 km/s Size: 5
I absolutely love the design, and I love seeing it in orbit of Earth. Obviously meant as more of a system defense base than a full blown starbase featuring maintenance docks, living quarters, etc.
-
This was my foray into designing a starbase.
16 years maintenance life ... this is a starbase already. So there is no real problem maintenance wise, 2000 units per year. The problem is that in order to base whole fleets there, it needs to be of massive size, too large to be build in a naval shipyard. Maybe it's possible to include the modular ship-building idea: Only the modules are built in a shipyard. A 500 000 ton ship or base could be assembled by factories with 10x 50 000 ton modules which were built in a 50 000 ton naval shipyard. Forget overhaul though. Just keep it supplied.
-
Exactly my point. I was able to design a starbase for a defensive purpose, albeit only by utilizing fully 20% of it for engineering spaces. I was unable to build the sort of deep-space base we are envisioning.
-
It might be possible to build a very large military rated base with end game construction technologies and lots of resources. Like a million ton carrier. Sure components will break down in deep space, but with a constant resupply maybe that's not so problematic.
Edit: Having the game before me now, I can't really see any need for a big outer space station whatsoever. Actually it's insane to build such a thing when you could build a massive mobile force for the same costs.
I designed a 650 000 ton PDC with 500 000 tons of hangar space and a hundred million liters of fuel, this makes 256 PDC parts. With 40 factories or brigades, which is large but doable for a deep space building operation, it would take five years to assemble it. Construction tech is 25 BP, which is tech level 6 of 12 I think. No maintenance.
-
For purposes of the fuel discussion, I thought I had better point that in NA the rate of increase in terms of fuel consumption for boosted engines is less than in Aurora. The multiplier is 4x rather than 10x. Remember that in Aurora a GB engine uses 10x fuel, a fighter engine uses 100x fuel and a missile uses 10,000x fuel
In NA, there is no distinction between engine types. Instead, one of the factors in engine design is the amount of boost. This is incremented in 5% steps up to the researched maximum, which could be 300% or more. The Fuel consumption is (4^ Engine Power Modifier) / 4
So if an engine used 100 litres of fuel per hour at normal power, it would use 400 litres at double power and 1600 litres at triple power.
In other words if Aurora moved to a much higher base fuel consumption rate but also used the NA fuel modifier, GB would be less affected by the increase and fighters even less affected. For example, assume base fuel consumption was increased by a factor of 8, which is in the ballpark of what I am considering. Normal engines would require 8x more fuel than now. The equivalent to the current GB engine would use 3.2x as much fuel as now and the equivalent to the current fighter engine would use about 28% more fuel than now.
The effect of this in ship design would be that ships had to use much more fuel storage. Around 10-15% instead of 1-2%. Because of space concerns, FACs would probably stick with a similar percentage to their current amount which would reduce their endurance from about a month to perhaps a week to 10 days (which returns them to their originally intended system defence role) and fighter ranges would drop a little or fighters would be slightly larger.
However, the new engine design in NA means you could have a much greater variety of engine sizes and boost amounts. The boost goes the other way as well with reduced power engines having better fuel efficiency and replacing current commercial engines. Larger engines get fuel efficiency savings.
Steve
-
With the scrapping of the distinction between engines, how would fighters be designated for purposes of if they can be built by fighter factories? Purely any design under 500 tons? Perhaps rename fighter factories to smallcraft factories as I can think of several designs such as scouts, survey team shuttles, weapons satellites, survey probes, etc, that would make sense to be capable of being built in factories rather than needing a full shipyard.
-
I like the prospect, but I honestly think that an increase by around 5x would be sufficient. With a 5x Mp for GB and fighters.
Large swarms of fighters are already one of the most efficient tactics available, no need to buff it relative to regular ships, even if in absolute numbers it's a nerf.
I think it should also be possible to add a size multiplier, where a larger engine is slightly more efficient no matter what other technology is inside, that'll differentiate a dreadnought from a fighter a bit more.
Crap, I forgot thats already in that system. I am deeply sorry.
That'll allow for a neat 2x multiplier in chance of sorium and sorium amounts, as well as harvesting speed by scoops, and cutting requirements of scoops and refineries by that factor.
Hmm, while we're at it; the reason fighter swarms with few small missiles are so effective might be connected with targeting and missile armor. If multiple salvos of one or two missiles are inbound, they'll be targeted a piece, and armor is no alternative.
-
Don't forget - large ships can make use of large and fuel efficient engines. A 2500 ton engine will have 50% reduction in consumption according to Steve's NA rules. So they can get away with four times larger consumption than now.
I don't think more fuel is a big deal, ship capability will go down 10-20% per ton. But any opposition feels the same effect. You do need more tanker tonnage, crude Sorium transports, and more refineries.
In every game I build freighters that carry 200 000 tons, why not some super-tankers too? My pet peeve: Make fuel tanks less crew intensive. My 200 000 ton fuel tank needs 12000 crew. It should be 10 at most. Modern supertankers have 40 crew altogether. An equivalent size cargo hold in Aurora only needs 200 crew, 5 per 5000 tons.
-
If you put it in orbit of one of the moons, you could create a maintenance base on that moon use the existing maintenance modules. I've also considered some type of very large, expensive "self maintenance" module intended for bases. I just haven't found a plausible mechanic to prevent its use by very large warships.
Steve
Why would you want to dis-allow this for big ships? If you make it big enough it would only really be of use in really big ships, coupled with a huge size, massive amounts of crew (One of these monsters would clear your pool of trained crew available in one fell swoop and still fall short, you would need a huge dockyard and a long, long old time to build it. Leave it in as a possibility just make the negatives outweigh the positives. I say this as the first thing I thought of was building a new class of armoured tug to pull such a station around. I recently read (on your recommendation Steve), the Galactic Marines ennealogy, and on book 7 (I think) they used a station with tugs to transport the fleet to the nearest stargate, by book 8 it had its own engines which they used to reach the Galactic core.
You could make the component the engine itself, used for station keeping - this then opens up the possibility of a tech tree so you'd need a better type to hold station in gravimetrically dense areas such as around warp points or in black hole systems.
Either that or you only allow it to work when the station is in place (same as orbital terraformers), and linked to a target planet - so for instance a low tech version on a station that will link to terrestrial planets (like an orbital habitat module is assumed to have all the infrastructure to transport its workers to and from the surface), the component has all the kit required to mine, transport and convert relevant raw materials from its linked target planet for use as consumables, as the tech gets better new self maintenance module designs become available that can extract what it needs from deep space, warp points, even wormholes at the top of the tree.
-
I really like the idea of upping the fuel requirements and also moving to the NA style of engine design. Would you continue to leave the NPRs with basically limitless fuel or now look to revise the AI so they can cope with this?
Better tracking of ships crew sounds like a great idea as well, it's always bugged me to see a ship with it's bridge destroyed and hardly any life support left merrily continuing on its way. If you wanted to get really clever you may want to start worrying about deaths v wounded and the ability of the crew to get back on their feet as much as making repairs to the ship. A bit of quick googling found one piece of research on the area
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a258369.pdf
-
Regardless of the outcome I will be pleased when crew matter. As of right now crew is merely a meaningless number during ship design. It has no use other then a little bit of RP.
-
Re Starbases
A self maintenance component could be large with high crew requirements. A ship with it would not be subject to overhaul clocks, but would constantly drain its supplies as if systems were failing at an arbitrary rate. So it would require constant resupply via ship. I don't really see the problem with such a module being mounted on a ship. It would enable super large ships if people want but logistically it would just make sense to mostly use ships that you can actually use maintenance facilities on. Otherwise you'd be spending a hell of a lot of money and resources on maint supplies.
-
If we get Starbases i would like it if no crewquarters are needed if a Habitat-module is present unless you have more crew then the Habitat can harbor. As for the Maintenance i would go with the Module. If the Station can count as Colony it would be nice if only the Military components + drives fail.
-
actually ancient ruins could have crew effiecncy technology or AI systems taht can reduce crew numbers if u want to expand the whole ancient ruins, xeno side of the game and have it interact with other levels of the aurora and aurora TN game