Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: sloanjh on November 06, 2013, 07:49:22 AM
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Please put discussion of Steve's 6.40 posts here.
John
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Steve, are you going to replace/translate the corporation and shipyard suffixes for foreign language themes? I understand if that's too much work for one guy but would you be willing to toss the list of suffixes out into the open for a public effort instead in that case?
Are the suffixes for companies for research projects going to depend on what component you are designing?
And finally, I think you need to bias the suffix generator more strongly to creating a suffix rather than leaving the space blank for research projects, it appears that half the companies don't have anything more than a few squeezed together names.
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It would be greatly appreciated if you could change the displaying of multiple contacts in same spot, such things as missiles and ships.
Instead of stacking the names ontop each other in nightmarish piles that extend beyond the "ceiling" of the display, could you make it so that only one name of the missile/ship is displayed with a number in ( ) displaying how many contacts are in that spot, regardless if they are in the same fleet or not.
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Steve, are you going to replace/translate the corporation and shipyard suffixes for foreign language themes? I understand if that's too much work for one guy but would you be willing to toss the list of suffixes out into the open for a public effort instead in that case?
Are the suffixes for companies for research projects going to depend on what component you are designing?
And finally, I think you need to bias the suffix generator more strongly to creating a suffix rather than leaving the space blank for research projects, it appears that half the companies don't have anything more than a few squeezed together names.
I hadn't planned to have foreign language suffixes but it wouldn't be hard to have alternative suffices depending on the commander name theme. I would need the translations though.
Company names for research projects are filtered by project type. There are a list of suffixes for any type of project and then lists that are only applicable to propulsion, weapons, electronics and defences.
For research projects, there is a tendency to names without suffixes because that seems more common in reality. Rolls-Royce <engine name>, Pratt & Whitney <engine name>, Grumman <aircraft>, Raytheon <missile>, etc.
Research Project Suffixes
International
Ordnance
Techsystems
Dynamics
Defence
Technology
Defence Technologies
Corporation
Electronics
Electronic Systems
Defence Systems
Space & Security
Engineering
Limited
Engines Limited
Electronics Industries
Defence Industries
Heavy Industries
Design Bureau
Armaments
Aerospace
Aerospace Industries
Research Inc
Manufacturing
Aeronautical
Advanced Defence Systems
Precision Arms
Armaments Company
Systems
Drive Systems
Marine
Thrust
Aeromarine
Incorporated
Aircraft Engine Co
Engineering Company
Aero Engines
Heavy Industries
Turbines
Warning & Control
Orbital Systems
Kinetics
Weapon Systems
Sensor Systems
Megacorp
Biotech
Syndicate
Cybernetics
Foundation
Shipyards (some duplications to make them more likely)
& Co.
Shipyard
Shipbuilding
Naval Shipyard
Dockyard
Shipyard Inc.
Iron Works
Shipbuilding Corp.
Shipyard Corporation
Co. Ltd.
Marine Inc.
Marine Shipyards
International
Industries Inc.
Engineering Services
Systems
Marine Industries Shipyard
Marine Industries
Enterprises
Shipbuilding & Engineering Co.
Naval Shipbuilding
Shipping
Dockyard and Engineering Works
General Shipyard
Navy Yard
Drydock Company
Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering
Steam Turbine Co.
International Shipbuilding
Shipwrights
Electric Boat Co.
Naval Shipyards
Marine Group Inc.
Heavy Industries & Construction
Corp. Shipyard
Corporation
Fabricators
Heavy Industries
Repair & Marine Services Inc.
Shipbuilding Company
A.G.
& Sons Ltd.
Shipbuilding Dept.
Company Inc.
Manufacturing Co.
Steel Co.
Shipyard Limited
Shipyard and Machinery Works
Steel and Shipbuilding
Boat Builders
Barge Co.
Steel Services
Gulf Shipyards Company
Naval Shipbuilding
Shipyard
Shipbuilding
Designs Inc.
Shipyards Ltd.
Graving Dock
Shipyard
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It would be greatly appreciated if you could change the displaying of multiple contacts in same spot, such things as missiles and ships.
Instead of stacking the names ontop each other in nightmarish piles that extend beyond the "ceiling" of the display, could you make it so that only one name of the missile/ship is displayed with a number in ( ) displaying how many contacts are in that spot, regardless if they are in the same fleet or not.
Just check the Hide Active IDs checkbox on the Contacts tab
Steve
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Company names for research projects are filtered by project type. There are a list of suffixes for any type of project and then lists that are only applicable to propulsion, weapons, electronics and defences.
For research projects, there is a tendency to names without suffixes because that seems more common in reality. Rolls-Royce <engine name>, Pratt & Whitney <engine name>, Grumman <aircraft>, Raytheon <missile>, etc.
WoW that's great!
Now I'm really looking forward to 6.40, I always was lousy to come up with plausible names for everything and once you did you change a minor stat back and forth without realizing it resets the name and it's gone...
How about an easy way to re-use company names already used in other components for some consistency as well? For example a button "Suggest company name already active". Extra bonus if this can roll company names you manually entered yourself, or you get to select applicable active used company names from a dropdown list!
It could also be cool to see company names for commercial engines be related to names already used by your shipping lines.
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I should note I'm not by any measure a professional in either Dutch, English or translating between the two. There's probably a load of errors in word choice that would make someone who actually knows what he's doing cringe.
Research Project Suffixes
Internationaal
Geschut (Ordnance translates very poorly, if you translate 'geschut' back into English you get 'cannons' or 'artillery' without the implication of 'and ammunition')
Technologischesystemen
Dynamica
Afweer (This works fine for CIWS systems, but'bescherming' would also work well, especially for shields and armour)
Technologie
Afweertechnologieën ('Beschermingstechnologieën' is an alternate translation that would also work for the same reasons as above)
Corporatie
Electronica
Electronischesystemen ('Electronicasystemen' is probably more accurate)
Afweersystemen
Ruimtebeveiliging (I squeezed Space & Security together here as a single term, so this is more properly 'space/volume security)
Machinebouw (This presumes that the company is focused on constructing machines. If the science of engineering is meant 'bouwkunde', 'bouwkundigen' or 'ingenieursbedrijf' would probably be more appropriate, prefixed with 'machine-' as needed)
B.V. (Unless you mean a public limited company, in which case it's N.V.)
Motoren B.V. (Another interpretation would be 'aandrijvingen B.V.', but that would better fit 'Propulsion')
Electronica Industrie
Defensie Industrie
Zware Industrie
Ontwerpbureau
Bewapening
Ruimte
Ruimte Industrie
Onderzoeksbedrijf ('Inc' does not translate well at all, 'bedrijf' (which means (corporation') is the closest I can get)
Fabricage ('Fabrieken' might fit better, although that literally means 'factories')
Luchtvaarttechniek
Geavanceerde Afweersystemen
Precisie Wapens
Wapenbedrijf (Doesn't translate well, other options are 'wapentuig' and 'wapenuitrusting'.)
Systemen
Aandrijfsystemen
Marine- (this would actually be a prefix in Dutch, other options would be 'scheeps-' ('ship related') or 'zee-' ('sea related'), although 'ruimte-' ('space related') would probably work better than 'zee-')
Voortstuwing (This can also mean 'propulsion'. 'Voortstuwing' is a very uncommon word and would probably work best as a compound word with 'marine', 'scheeps' or 'ruimte'. Another option would be 'aandrijving'.)
Ruimteschip (Literally this means 'spaceship', but I think it works well enough for 'aero marine')
Firma
Vliegtuigmotorenbedrijf
Ingenieursbedrijf
Luchtmotoren (Ruimtemotoren can also work but that would be 'space' engines instead of 'aero' engines.)
Zware Industrie (This one showed in the list before)
Turbines (Straight copy, Dutch doesn't use a different word for it)
Alarmcontrole (Literally 'alert control', although 'waarschuwing & controle' also works and would be the most literal translation. It just sounds silly to me)
Orbitale Systemen
Kinetica
Wapensystemen
Sensorsystemen
Megacorporatie
Biotech ('Levenswetenschappen' might also work, but that's strictly speaking 'lifesciences')
Syndicaat
Cybernetica
Stichting
Shipyards, duplicates kept for ease of list comparison (Dutch companies that state their area of expertise usually include B.V. (roughly equal to 'Private Limited Company' in England) or N.V. (Public Limited Company) in their name)
& Co (It's unlikely to be found in official documentation but it's not unknown as a colloquial way to refer to a person and their friends)
Scheepswerf B.V.
Scheepsbouwers N.V.
Marinescheepswerf ('Marinewerf' is also a possible translation)
Scheepswerf N.V.
Scheepsbouw B.V.
Ijzergieterij N.V.
Scheepsbouw N.V.
Scheepswerf B.V.
B.V.
Zee N.V.
Zeeschipbouwers B.V
Internationaal
Industrieëen
Bouwkundige Diensten
Systemen
Marinewerf B.V.
Marine Industrieën N.V.
Ondernemers (Not a good translation by any measure, 'aannemers' might be better actually.) VOF
Scheepsbouwkundigen
Marinescheepsbouwers
Verscheepers (Not something you are ever likely to see as part of a company name. It's what they do, not what they are called)
Scheepsbouwers en Bouwkundigen
Algemene Werf
Militaire Marine Werf (Literally this means 'military navy yard' but that's because in Dutch 'the navy' is 'de marine.' The prefix 'zee-' tends to replace everything that English associates with 'marine', except for 'soldier trained for sea and sea-to-coast combat operations'. If a given project is associated with the military it's usually associated with the entire military rather than a specific branch.)
Droogdokken (literally 'drydocks') B.V.
Scheepsbouw en Zeebouwkunde
Stoomturbine B.V.
Internationale Scheepsbouwers
Scheepsbouwers B.V
Electrischeboten N.V.
Militarire Werfen
Zeegroep N.V.
Zware Industrie en Constructie B.V
Bedrijfswerven N.V.
Ondernemers
Constructeurs N.V.
Zware Industrie N.V.
Zeereparatiediensten B.V.
(I wouldn't have a clue on how to translate A.G.)
en Zonen VOF
Scheepsbouwdepartement
VOF
Constructeurs B.V.
Staalbedrijf B.V.
Scheepswerf N.V.
Schip en Machinebouw B.V.
Staal en Scheepsbouw N.V.
Botenbouwers N.V.
Akenbouwers B.V.
Golf Scheepswerven N.V.
Marinewerf
Scheepswerf B.V.
Scheepsbouw N.V.
Ontwerpen B.V.
Scheepswerven B.V.
Reparatiesdok
Scheepswerf N.V.
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With all these shipyard and corporation names, is there a chance we can have themes for names like we do now for commander and ship names? Also, the ability to rename corporations in SM mode would be nice.
Keep up the good work.
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Peaceful NPR start: we'll need diplomatic teams, even if, early in the game, we do not have enough characters with the diplomacy skill. Perhaps, allowing teams with fewer than 5 people would fix it.
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Peaceful NPR start: we'll need diplomatic teams, even if, early in the game, we do not have enough characters with the diplomacy skill. Perhaps, allowing teams with fewer than 5 people would fix it.
Or allowing us to form teams with completely unspecialized officers (0% diplomacy bonus).
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Peaceful NPR start: we'll need diplomatic teams, even if, early in the game, we do not have enough characters with the diplomacy skill. Perhaps, allowing teams with fewer than 5 people would fix it.
During the Truce relations are fixed at neutral, so the diplomatic teams won't help until the truce expires.
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During the Truce relations are fixed at neutral, so the diplomatic teams won't help until the truce expires.
I don't know if that changes the problem. Say you have 2 in-system NPRs and a 15 year truce countdown*. What are the odds you will get enough diplomats to fill two teams?
*Or whatever the default new game truce length is.
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It's possible to get around the problem if you have enough diplomats for one, although it is rather tricky. From the officers screen, you can assign people to vacancies in teams, even if they don't have the relevant skills. So what you could do is make a team, and then pull enough officers out (with the unassign button) to get the 5 you need for the other team. If you only have 5, put someone else in for a placeholder. When the second team is running, move officers around until you have them where you want them. It's not pretty, but it should work. An easier solution would be appreciated.
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I don't know if that changes the problem. Say you have 2 in-system NPRs and a 15 year truce countdown*. What are the odds you will get enough diplomats to fill two teams?
*Or whatever the default new game truce length is.
Depends on your number of military academies but you should have a reasonable number of officers with diplomatic skills after fifteen years of recruitment. If not, well where is the fun in peaceful co-existence anyway :)
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UG-infraststructure is awesome! Steve you didnt say anithing about it but wouldnt it make sense to limit it somehow? I mean the size of most asteroids mean s that you cant fit billions of people into one.
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UG-infraststructure is awesome! Steve you didnt say anithing about it but wouldnt it make sense to limit it somehow? I mean the size of most asteroids mean s that you cant fit billions of people into one.
I assume that civilians will not build underground infrastructure so you will have to provide all the material for it yourself. If this is the case we can always put that limit on our self.
I wouldn't mind a slightly more complex population distribution/growth on planets with limitations and more social issues. But perhaps in the future Aurora will get some love in that area. ;)
I must also say I like this new feature, makes hidden underground fleet bases a new interesting concept.
Perhaps a suggestion to reduce the EM/IR signature of populations living in underground structures would make it even more interesting.
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UG-infraststructure is awesome! Steve you didnt say anithing about it but wouldnt it make sense to limit it somehow? I mean the size of most asteroids mean s that you cant fit billions of people into one.
There a some limits already. Firstly, it will take a lot of effort to get this going because you can't transport the infrastructure in - you have to build it in place. Using construction brigades will take a while. Secondly, you can't terraform so the pop will only grow if you build more infrastructure. Thirdly, its colony cost 3.0 so with large pops the service sector and agricultural sectors combined would take up 95% of the population so its not a good idea to let it get very large anyway.
Besides, if you think about it, you could get a huge amount of people into a large interior space. Lets assume that 2x3x4 = 24 cubic meters is enough room for one person. In a sphere 10 kilometers in diameter, you could fit triple the current population of the Earth :)
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You mention the world is treated as cost 3, is that regardless of temperature? Alternately it might make sense to have it ignore low temperatures, but still have increased cost from high temp. But maybe that's getting overly detailed.
Speaking of overly detailed, the first thing I wondered when I saw the new feature is if it would provide resistance to planetary bombardment. Probably not an important feature, but that would also provide the possibility of using it as bomb shelters on otherwise ideal habitable worlds.
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You mention the world is treated as cost 3, is that regardless of temperature? Alternately it might make sense to have it ignore low temperatures, but still have increased cost from high temp. But maybe that's getting overly detailed.
Speaking of overly detailed, the first thing I wondered when I saw the new feature is if it would provide resistance to planetary bombardment. Probably not an important feature, but that would also provide the possibility of using it as bomb shelters on otherwise ideal habitable worlds.
My original idea was that population sheltered by UI would have an upper limit on Col Cost, maybe 4-5, and that you could mix it with normal but it was too complex. The standard 3.0 makes it nice and simple on the basis that a self-contained underground complex wouldn't be significantly affected by surface conditions.
Other benefits might be added, such as resistance to bombardment, lower signatures or increased defence ratings for ground units. For the moment though I just want to make sure the basic idea is working.
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Other benefits might be added, such as resistance to bombardment, lower signatures or increased defence ratings for ground units. For the moment though I just want to make sure the basic idea is working.
Funny, I just went here to write a question about resistance to bombardment and lowered signatures when I read this :D
Nice work and an interesting feature (especially if this can be added later on).
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I think this is a good idea but I think you are opening a bit of a can of worms here. You want a specific thing: a hollow asteroid base, yet you are adding in something that has a lot of other implications. No one isn't going to build underground when they are on a hostile environment world (outside of structures that need to be above ground). If you take Faewald and Forge from my AAR both colonies are underground. In the case of Faewald it is because there is no atmosphere and they are close to the sun, in the case of Forge it is because there is a hellish atmosphere. The same is true of Venus, Luna, Callisto, Ganymede or Io. For any number of reasons basically a standard hostile environment colony will be largely underground. I mean to be blunt the first house a new settler to Canada lived in was a "sod house" which is basically hole in the ground with a sod roof so it isn't a unusual thing in a hostile environment.
I would think this is something better handled as a project with a fixed cost. Hollow out asteroid for x million people, cost y BPs. Otherwise you introduce a new item that conceptually doesn't make any sense since there is no reason that a normal colony with normal infrastructure would not be underground in most cases. As was suggested "bomb shelters" that makes a lot more sense.
I also have to say that one thing I have noticed in at least 6.1 is that asteroids are useless for TN minerals, which is odd as comets are loaded with them. I have found very very few astroids with any amount of TN minerals, I think of 300 asteroids in one system less than 5% had TN minerals.
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It sounds that what you're really debating is the actual definition of underground infrastructure, perhaps what steve is adding to the next version is actually "low gravity" infrastructure, and people would like a third type of "underground infrastructure" which could be added to any type of planet regardless of gravity cost which can be used for protection from planetary bombardment, lowered thermal emissions, and fixed colony cost regardless of other factors.
Something like this might be useful for putting people onto venus without orbital habitats or large scale terraforming, but would make putting population onto already colonisable worlds possibly far to easy. Whereas the proposed underground infrastructure is basically adding to the game something new, allowing previously uncolonisable worlds available. Besides extremely high gravity worlds would basically be completely uninhabitable without some kind of amazing antigravity technology, whereas very low gravity environments are already inhabitable, at least for the short term.
Edit: I've reading about the energy requirements for speeding up a planets rotation, well the moon actually, it seems 10^25 joules would be required merely to speed the moon upto 24 hour rotation. 10^28 jules would actually deorbit it or possibly be enough to actually blow it into chunks which would basically deorbit anyway. The energy needed to speed it's rotation enough for artificial gravity would be far more than the energy needed to merely push it into an orbit which would make the surface more habitable, at least from a temperature standpoint. Perhaps a new terraforming option could be used for very small low gravity bodies, which allows changing the rotation period enough to allow artificial gravity?
I'm not debating the utility of the proposed underground infrastructure, just the science behind them, it would be cheaper to merely put your colonists inside giant centerfuges if the body is too large to actually move.
Edit 2: Some very basic and possibly flawed math leads me to the following conclusion.
In the case of triton with a gravity of .08 being just barely below standard habitability has a mass 29% of the moons, and would require perhaps 8.5% the energy to rotate.
For a body like ceres with .03 gravity and a 61.5th the mass of the moon something like 4 millionth the energy would be required. (unless my knowledge of physics is horribly wrong) leaving something like 2.5^19 jules.
Tsar bomba was estimated to have released 4.2^18 if it hadn't had it's yield halved by the addition of a lead tamper, so conceivably it's within reason that a body that small could actually be given enough spin for artificial gravity.
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It sounds that what you're really debating is the actual definition of underground infrastructure...
Pretty much. If it was called "extreme environment infrastructure" then at least you avoid what to me is the question of "how does this really differ from what I have now called infrastructure." I really can't see why anyone in any sort of hostile environment would not be underground.
But still I would think this should be closer to an orbital habitat in terms of implementation. So it has a cost per so many million people (or whatever number) rather than tracking it the way infrastructure is currently. It is basicaly a specific installation rather than a distributed system.
Also spinning up moons would be energy inefficient not to mention dangerous due to unpredicable side effects, but spinning up an asteroid of modest dimensions isn't that much more complex then spinning up a traditional o'neil colony.
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Edit: I've reading about the energy requirements for speeding up a planets rotation, well the moon actually, it seems 10^25 joules would be required merely to speed the moon upto 24 hour rotation. 10^28 jules would actually deorbit it or possibly be enough to actually blow it into chunks which would basically deorbit anyway. The energy needed to speed it's rotation enough for artificial gravity would be far more than the energy needed to merely push it into an orbit which would make the surface more habitable, at least from a temperature standpoint. Perhaps a new terraforming option could be used for very small low gravity bodies, which allows changing the rotation period enough to allow artificial gravity?
I'm not debating the utility of the proposed underground infrastructure, just the science behind them, it would be cheaper to merely put your colonists inside giant centerfuges if the body is too large to actually move.
Edit 2: Some very basic and possibly flawed math leads me to the following conclusion.
In the case of triton with a gravity of .08 being just barely below standard habitability has a mass 29% of the moons, and would require perhaps 8.5% the energy to rotate.
For a body like ceres with .03 gravity and a 61.5th the mass of the moon something like 4 millionth the energy would be required. (unless my knowledge of physics is horribly wrong) leaving something like 2.5^19 jules.
Tsar bomba was estimated to have released 4.2^18 if it hadn't had it's yield halved by the addition of a lead tamper, so conceivably it's within reason that a body that small could actually be given enough spin for artificial gravity.
Remember that we don't need to duplicate full Earth gravity to make it "habitable". We only need the minimum habitable gravity which IIRC is 10% of Earths (+ whatever minimal gravity the body naturally has that needs to also be overcome)
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It seems that any body with significantly less gravity than .1 has such a low mass that spinning it to artificial gravity speeds would only require a few carefully timed fusion bombs, to say nothing of whatever could be done with transnewtonian propulsion.
However, wouldn't a normal asteroid rotating at that speed basically blow itself apart from centripedal force?
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It seems that any body with significantly less gravity than .1 has such a low mass that spinning it to artificial gravity speeds would only require a few carefully timed fusion bombs, to say nothing of whatever could be done with transnewtonian propulsion.
However, wouldn't a normal asteroid rotating at that speed basically blow itself apart from centripedal force?
After reading Paul's first comment, I immediately started looking at the "gravitational" effect of rotation speeds for different size bodies and the energy requirement of spinning-up a slow-rotating body so it could be called low-grav infrastructure rather than underground infrastructure :) and would only be useful on bodies with enough spin to produce 0.1G of artificial gravity. I can see I wasn't the only one with that thought. It would make faster spinning low mass bodies more attractive for this type of colony. Maybe a ship with very large engines - similar to a tug, could be clamped to the asteroid to slowly increase its spin. Might take months or years :) but could be done simultaneously with building the infrastructure.
If the above is feasible, another option that springs to mind is effectively constructing your own asteroid in deep space so you create a population anywhere. Would take a LOT of raw material though. Or if the "Ship with Really Big Engine" turns out to be feasible, you may even be able to adjust the orbit of small asteroids to put them where you need them.
Steve
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It seems that any body with significantly less gravity than .1 has such a low mass that spinning it to artificial gravity speeds would only require a few carefully timed fusion bombs, to say nothing of whatever could be done with transnewtonian propulsion.
However, wouldn't a normal asteroid rotating at that speed basically blow itself apart from centripedal force?
I believe most asteroids would roll apart pretty quickly.
I don't know about you,but I always just imagined that space ships had "artificial gravity" through some kind of transnewtonian magic floor paneling. If ships can have it, why can't colonies?
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Underground Infrastructure is an interesting idea, and I'm glad to see it added. I would include bombardment resistance as part of the package (possibly with the ability to shelter more people from bombardment than it normally holds.
It seems that any body with significantly less gravity than .1 has such a low mass that spinning it to artificial gravity speeds would only require a few carefully timed fusion bombs, to say nothing of whatever could be done with transnewtonian propulsion.
Energy isn't the only consideration here. Angular momentum must also be conserved, which is a bit of a pain in cases like this. Particularly because the energy fraction is inversely proportional to the relative mass. Also, the bombs are going to break things, which is bad because structural integrity is important.
However, wouldn't a normal asteroid rotating at that speed basically blow itself apart from centripedal force?
Absolutely. Rocks are weak in tension, and I don't think most asteroids are really that strong as rocks go. I don't have the math on this at the moment, but I'd be surprised if you could get much negative G at all.
However, there is a simple way around this. I assume that TN tech has some way of creating artificial gravity. Assume that's what is used here. No need to spin asteroids, and you can put it on high-G worlds as well. Just call it 'extreme environment infrastructure' as suggested above, and give it a flat cap of 3 on the colony cost.
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Most large asteroids are solid blocks of nickel-iron (but not quite of the number you see in films...). They naturally rotate and bringing one the size of a typical o'neil colony up to a point where it is is generating 1 G of gravity would not be particularily difficult. This is not something that would not take more than days, once you got the shape "balanced" so that it didn't wobble too much, assuming you just used mass drivers to throw chunks of the surface off at a tangent.
This is not a big object we are talking about (0.25 km radius, 1-2 km length).
The speed of rotation would not be so great (if my memory serves it is v^2/R so for 10 m/s2, v= 50 m/s which is a fairly low angular velocity for this size) for 1 G. The trouble is that you need something rather uniform (both in shape and density) or else it will wobble and that is a "bad thing" in general. I'm not sure it would make a lot of sense to go to the effort of this...as opposed to hollowing one out as a temporary work space/living quarters. Grav plates simplify the issue.
The whole concept of people living in asteroids is fairly old in Sci-fi literature, but its practicality in Aurora seems rather dubious. Still probably there are people with resources to throw at things which aren't that practical.
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For a body like ceres with .03 gravity and a 61.5th the mass of the moon something like 4 millionth the energy would be required. (unless my knowledge of physics is horribly wrong) leaving something like 2.5^19 jules.
Sadly, your knowledge of physics is horribly wrong. For Ceres, rotating fast enough to have 1G at the equator, and neglecting Ceres's own gravity (because I forgot when I did the math) it would have rotational energy of 9E26 J. To put this into perspective, the gravitational binding energy of Ceres is only 7.4E25 J. That alone settles if spinning up a body of that type is possible.
Most large asteroids are solid blocks of nickel-iron (but not quite of the number you see in films...).
No, they aren't. Iron meteorites only compose about 6% of all meteorites, and IIRC the proportion of nickle-iron asteroids is similar. Also, they aren't solid blocks.
They naturally rotate and bringing one the size of a typical o'neil colony up to a point where it is is generating 1 G of gravity would not be particularily difficult. This is not something that would not take more than days, once you got the shape "balanced" so that it didn't wobble too much, assuming you just used mass drivers to throw chunks of the surface off at a tangent.
Wrong again. The amount of energy and momentum involved is substantial.
This is not a big object we are talking about (0.25 km radius, 1-2 km length).
It masses on the order of 2E9 kg and has a moment of inertia of 6.4E13 kg*m^2. That's pretty big in my book.
The speed of rotation would not be so great (if my memory serves it is v^2/R so for 10 m/s2, v= 50 m/s which is a fairly low angular velocity for this size) for 1 G.
Your memory is correct, but it's not really low. Rotational energy of 1.3E12 J, which is not a small number at all. And the angular momentum is about 1.3E13 kg*m^2*s, which is also very large. If you're launching your projectiles from the outer edge of the cylinder at 3000 m/s, you'll need to fire approximately 1.7E7 kg, with a total energy in the projectiles of 7.7E13J.
The trouble is that you need something rather uniform (both in shape and density) or else it will wobble and that is a "bad thing" in general. I'm not sure it would make a lot of sense to go to the effort of this...as opposed to hollowing one out as a temporary work space/living quarters. Grav plates simplify the issue.
Theoretically, you could make it work so long as you have a definite long axis to the body. However, balance would make it better.
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Your memory is correct, but it's not really low. Rotational energy of 1.3E12 J, which is not a small number at all. And the angular momentum is about 1.3E13 kg*m^2*s, which is also very large. If you're launching your projectiles from the outer edge of the cylinder at 3000 m/s, you'll need to fire approximately 1.7E7 kg, with a total energy in the projectiles of 7.7E13J.
Why would we launch projectiles at 3000 m/s when our ships go 3000 km/s in Aurora? :)
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Why would we launch projectiles at 3000 m/s when our ships go 3000 km/s in Aurora? :)
That's going to drive the energy budget up significantly. I think about three orders of magnitude. Launching all the excavation fragments is probably your best bet.
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I believe most asteroids would roll apart pretty quickly.
I don't know about you,but I always just imagined that space ships had "artificial gravity" through some kind of transnewtonian magic floor paneling. If ships can have it, why can't colonies?
Thats why I suggested actual components for gravity on ships. No gravity for early ships, rotating sections a little later, and some scifi magic generator in late game. The amount of gravity on a ship could be used for lots of things like crew endurance, max crew training, etc. If you lose gravity due to damage...
Also while I know Steve mentioned rotating the actual body in his post on this feature, if you RP it it doesn't have to be that way. Nothing prevents you from excavating a cylinder and spinning a centrifuge in it for gravity. Once you get about a diameter of 170+ meters you can simulate gravity without a rotation rate that will make the normal person sick.
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Sadly, your knowledge of physics is horribly wrong. For Ceres, rotating fast enough to have 1G at the equator, and neglecting Ceres's own gravity (because I forgot when I did the math) it would have rotational energy of 9E26 J. To put this into perspective, the gravitational binding energy of Ceres is only 7.4E25 J. That alone settles if spinning up a body of that type is possible.
No, they aren't. Iron meteorites only compose about 6% of all meteorites, and IIRC the proportion of nickle-iron asteroids is similar. Also, they aren't solid blocks.
Wrong again. The amount of energy and momentum involved is substantial.
It masses on the order of 2E9 kg and has a moment of inertia of 6.4E13 kg*m^2. That's pretty big in my book.
Your memory is correct, but it's not really low. Rotational energy of 1.3E12 J, which is not a small number at all. And the angular momentum is about 1.3E13 kg*m^2*s, which is also very large. If you're launching your projectiles from the outer edge of the cylinder at 3000 m/s, you'll need to fire approximately 1.7E7 kg, with a total energy in the projectiles of 7.7E13J.
Theoretically, you could make it work so long as you have a definite long axis to the body. However, balance would make it better.
I'm not going to argue with wikipedia about composition of asteroids. I don't much care what is typical you aren't going to try and do this on something that will fly appart during the process and that means you will be doing it to a metalic asteroid.
The rest of it is a perception problem. O'neil colonies are of the same size and mass and I've never heard an engineering objection to them.
I have no idea why you care about the angular momentum. That is relevent only when I go to change that rotation, until then it maters not in the least, outside of the inertia I have to overcome to get the process going. If the body can survive the induced gravity gradient without internal stress issues then the angular momentum will only come into play when I try to change the spin which I would say you aren't likely to do. It will also serve to defend the colony against shifts to its rotational axis...any attempt to displace that axis will face strong objection.
1 m3 of water is 1000 kg, the density of most metals is 3+x that. So I need to launch in total 600 m3 of metal from the surface from multiple launch sites over a period of days. That is like 20 m3 from 30 or so sites over a week. That is about one dumptruck worth per day (must be at least 4 m3 in a dump truck?) A few thousand m per second launch velocity is easily achievable. In aroura your mass drivers fire material at 1000 km/s. Mind you doing this creates a hell of a no fly zone...
I would expect that during the hollowing out process you add an internal structure to support the shell to deal with any issues arising from the spin up process. I will say again I don't see the practical value of doing it...as building a space station is likely easier and since you design it you can ensure that you don't get any surprises near the end of the process. O'neil colonies are essentially identical objects and you best use of the asteroid would likely be as raw materials for the O'neil colony.
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Have I mentioned how much I love the scientific detail and accuracy that goes along with discussions in this forum?
Thx for pointing out the flaw in my earlier calculation, I was going off some energy requirement numbers I found for a much larger body then modifying them based on possibly flawed calculation using the idea that double the mass would require a square of the energy.
Anyway, I think we're mostly on agreement that it doesn't really make sense to actually spin a large body to create artificial gravity, after all that's what orbital habitats are for and we already have them in the game.
I would debate that the energy requirement isn't ridiculous considering the kind of energy requirements needed for travel in aurora anyway, but it's obvious that it's not the most efficient way of making such a body habitable.
I want to point out again that I support the proposed underground habitats entirely, I just want this debate to steer somewhere towards the point where they'll make some kind of sense, perhaps we've hijacked this thread enough to require a new one entirely for the subject?
Perhaps artificial gravity makes the most sense, or hell even magnetic boots or whatever would work enough to make a colony work, who cares about osteoporosis when earth is overcrowded and someone's offering you a free ride to an exciting new underground colony where you can spend 16 hours a day using a plasma torch to hollow out living space for people to be stacked like sardines into a plastic lined crate equipped with free wifi, stims, and robot hookers ™.
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I'm not going to argue with wikipedia about composition of asteroids. I don't much care what is typical you aren't going to try and do this on something that will fly appart during the process and that means you will be doing it to a metalic asteroid.
Do you think Steve is likely to implement a test for metallic asteroids in the game? Also, I have serious doubts about making it work for metallic asteroids (see below).
The rest of it is a perception problem. O'neil colonies are of the same size and mass and I've never heard an engineering objection to them.
The two are very different. The designer of an O'Neil colony has much greater control over the final product, particularly the materials involved. I'd have to check my notes from materials class, but the strengths involved are probably a factor of two or three apart, and the colony isn't going to have hidden flaws.
I have no idea why you care about the angular momentum. That is relevent only when I go to change that rotation, until then it maters not in the least, outside of the inertia I have to overcome to get the process going. If the body can survive the induced gravity gradient without internal stress issues then the angular momentum will only come into play when I try to change the spin which I would say you aren't likely to do. It will also serve to defend the colony against shifts to its rotational axis...any attempt to displace that axis will face strong objection.
I care about the angular momentum because it's the controlling factor in spinning up the asteroid. Angular momentum is conserved in exactly the same way linear momentum is, and unlike on Earth, you don't have a big momentum sink to dump into.
1 m3 of water is 1000 kg, the density of most metals is 3+x that. So I need to launch in total 600 m3 of metal from the surface from multiple launch sites over a period of days. That is like 20 m3 from 30 or so sites over a week. That is about one dumptruck worth per day (must be at least 4 m3 in a dump truck?) A few thousand m per second launch velocity is easily achievable. In aroura your mass drivers fire material at 1000 km/s. Mind you doing this creates a hell of a no fly zone...
What about the stresses this is going to impose on the asteroid? It's not a show-stopper, but it's not exactly trivial, either.
I would expect that during the hollowing out process you add an internal structure to support the shell to deal with any issues arising from the spin up process. I will say again I don't see the practical value of doing it...as building a space station is likely easier and since you design it you can ensure that you don't get any surprises near the end of the process. O'neil colonies are essentially identical objects and you best use of the asteroid would likely be as raw materials for the O'neil colony.
This I will agree with.
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Thx for pointing out the flaw in my earlier calculation, I was going off some energy requirement numbers I found for a much larger body then modifying them based on possibly flawed calculation using the idea that double the mass would require a square of the energy.
Well, moment of inertia for a sphere is .4*m*r^2, so assuming constant density, MOI (I) will scale with mass^(5/3). If the angular velocity is the same, that's how energy requirements will scale. If we're trying to maintain a constant centrifugal 'gravity', then the required angular velocity(w) (neglecting local gravity, which will be proportional to the cube root of mass) will scale with 1/radius^.5. Angular momentum is I*w, while angular energy is .5*I*w^2. So angular momentum should be proportional to mass^(7/6) while energy is proportional to mass^2/3.
I would debate that the energy requirement isn't ridiculous considering the kind of energy requirements needed for travel in aurora anyway, but it's obvious that it's not the most efficient way of making such a body habitable.
It's not the energy requirements themselves that are the problem, so much as what they imply for the structure.
Perhaps artificial gravity makes the most sense, or hell even magnetic boots or whatever would work enough to make a colony work, who cares about osteoporosis when earth is overcrowded and someone's offering you a free ride to an exciting new underground colony where you can spend 16 hours a day using a plasma torch to hollow out living space for people to be stacked like sardines into a plastic lined crate equipped with free wifi, stims, and robot hookers ™.
Osteoporosis is not the biggest problem with magnetic boots. Bathing is.
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You're over-thinking it, folks.
Don't spin the rock, build the habbitat in a circle or ring and spin that. Doesn't even need to be all of it, just enough of it that colonists will spend enough time there to remain healthy.
Complaints about UG infrastructure being weird because people assumed that normal infrastructure was by default underground are also backwards; it just means your assumptions were wrong. Which makes a certain level of sense; even prefabricated PDCs, which are underground complexes, need minerals and BP to assemble, while instalations you usually have to transport in segments can just be unloaded, so why would you just be able to dump kilotons of infrastructure on the surface and expect underground habitats? At most they'd be fairly shallow.
I like the idea of UG infrastructure as a specialist hostile enviroment alternative to the normal stuff you can mass produce and ship in from your empire, sometimes ending up with huge surpluses as worlds finish terraforming. It's specialised planet-specific infrastructure that addresses specific challanges and makes use of local conditions for best results; instead of just piling on more and more general-purpose stuff you build localised specialist equipment that is more expensive but also more efficent, effectivly reducing high colony cost values in exchange for other trade-offs.
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You're over-thinking it, folks.
Don't spin the rock, build the habbitat in a circle or ring and spin that. Doesn't even need to be all of it, just enough of it that colonists will spend enough time there to remain healthy.
While this is somewhat easier than spinning an entire asteroid, it's not trivial either. Big wheels are delicate and difficult to build, particularly when you need to get people and stuff in and out without stopping them. The other issue with 'only for health' is that gravity is generally better for operations than zero-G. Bathing is the most obvious example, but even working at a desk is easier, as you don't have to worry about things floating away.
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I ask again, wouldn't it be easier to just put magic transnewtonian floor panels all over the colony? This is sort of what I imagine anyway because when I play pretend, I don't like imagining my military high command on Euphrates colony (.30 gs on the surface) holding court in an environment where you can throw books like ping-pong balls. I think most of us imagine artificial gravity aboard our starships, maybe not.
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I ask again, wouldn't it be easier to just put magic transnewtonian floor panels all over the colony? This is sort of what I imagine anyway because when I play pretend, I don't like imagining my military high command on Euphrates colony (.30 gs on the surface) holding court in an environment where you can throw books like ping-pong balls. I think most of us imagine artificial gravity aboard our starships, maybe not.
I think the artificial gravity idea is definitely the simplest. However if we have artificial gravity instead of an underground colony, we have the issue of other environmental conditions, such as temperature. I suppose the argument could be that the low-grav infrastructure is effectively the same as crew quarters plus hull on a spacecraft but based on the ground. Just like a spacecraft it doesn't worry about the outside conditions. However, that isn't really any different that building orbital habitats, plus there is no reason not to build it elsewhere and ship it.
For RP reasons, I like the idea of the underground infrastructure because it leads to the idea of hollowing out small moons and asteroids. I agree that the existing techno-babble probably doesn't make sense though. I like the suggestion of rotating sections underground as that does leave the essential idea intact while having a reasonable scientific explanation. I'll give it some more thought. I'm also inclined to create some type of shipyard that can be built within an asteroid as a permanent fixture but not towed away (more for the idea of finding old abandoned but intact facilities than building new ones).
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I think that Underground Infrastructure should act like cost 3.0 on all planets (except gas to be clear). This is because if you want to colonise a very hot planet it would make sense to make them underground where they are not exposed to the sun/environment the rock keeping the place cool while for a cold planet the rock would act as an insulator.
Thus setting a col on these worlds (5.0+) would go basic Infrastructure + factories/ construction team > Underground Infrastructure > Tforming if possible rather than just waititng for the planets to get Infrastructure via traders.
The benefit would be counteracted by the cost/extra management and would work really well as a concept for planets like Venus where it takes decades or more to TForm
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In my game I RP several of my colonies as being underground for a variety of reasons: one is located not that far from sirius and anything on the surface would be baked into cinders in minutes, ect. But my largest underground colony is basically the nucleus of my military. I imagine this colony is underground because it provides the following benefits which maybe the "real rules" for underground colonies can incorporate:
- it's easier to support tens of millions of people on what would otherwise be a lightless, airless world
- it is difficult to nuke from space
- it is difficult to SEE from space
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From all the real science that I have read about realistic colonization of our solar system there are some fundamental problems. Gravity is one problem. Many even think that colonization of Mars will be a problem long term unless we can make everyone exercise a lot or there are new medical treatment for this in the future.
In my opinion infrastructure on planets would be both underground and above. I'm pretty certain most places that requires this infrastructure will be built by dome like structures where you have artificial atmospheres that shield from lethal radiation but at the same time can use the very important sunlight. Using pure underground facilities are not practical since you must fabricate healthy sunlight conditions.
If you build a base on any body in our solar system they would have to be mostly underground on the basis of all the lethal radiation. Things which an atmosphere shields from. Radiation would be a much bigger problem than gravity in many ways.
So, building a colony deep inside an asteroid save you a lot of resources from shielding you of that radiation. In our asteroid belt the big bad boy is Jupiter that spew out very harmful radiation which make human travel to the asteroid belt very dangerous. Short trips when Jupiter is not near is not a problem, but more permanent installation would be a problem.
I usually go with the solution that trans-Newtonian technology include artificial gravity in some form. Bases in asteroids would use that, and building them upside down might still be a good idea even with anti-gravity. I also see the reason for why such installations is very expensive and permanent.
That's my two cents worth of information... :)
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Spinning "rings" inside Asteroids and lowgrav moons would be interresting AND it would make sense with the 3.0 costs. You just need a ton of people for the maintenance with all the spinning and enginering.
Sunlight isnt that much of a problem. LEDs are rather good at immitating that one. You would have halls and internal domes with artificial skies for the psychological effects (Small rooms and tunnels make us depressive no matter what the conditions are) either way.
Depending on the distance between star (if even it has the right spectrum) and asteroid you will want to shield yourself from the sunlight if you are to close thanks to the UV output. On the outer Asteroids the sun is to week to give you your healthy dose UV...or enough light to see. In both cases you would opt for some sort artificial light powered either by solar or some sort of generator.
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Honestly even that's too much thought. Given the game abstracts gravity on ships where the game primarily packs on the minute details it's silly to want detail on planetary management where the game is by design far more abstract.
Have regular and advanced infrastructure and call it a day. The method of gravity can be drawn from the same place ship graphics explosions are, your head!
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that was kinda my view on the matter
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Remember though that when talking about artificial gravity on small military ships you have about 1000 times higher budget (both in credits and in energy) per crew compared to your colony of millions of civilians on a moon somewhere.
I always envisioned in my universes that artificial gravity on ships is possible but too expensive (either credits or energy) for large scale civilian mass use.
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too expensive (either credits or energy)
When it comes down to it, those two are actually the same thing.
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When it comes down to it, those two are actually the same thing.
Tell that to my poor crew trying to outrun the spoilers and failing miserably. I does not help how much credits I try to throw at their ships, they just won't go any faster since my limited engine tech can't output more energy :P
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Have regular and advanced infrastructure and call it a day.
Could go with the name Localised or Specialised Infrastructure if it still has to be built on-site. Maybe call the existing General Purpose Infrastructure or something to that end.
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I like it! Whether underground or advanced infrastructure, I think its cool.
I have been of the opinion for a long time that even established 0 cost worlds should require X infrastructure per population. Cities need to be built and so do roads, after all.
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I was reading your description of multi-starts in Sol, Steve and I have a question.
By the wording, it seems you cannot improve the relations past neutral until after the counter runs out. Is this correct, or can you improve them prior?
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I was reading your description of multi-starts in Sol, Steve and I have a question.
By the wording, it seems you cannot improve the relations past neutral until after the counter runs out. Is this correct, or can you improve them prior?
No, the relations are fixed at neutral until the countdown runs out. After that, relations change according to the normal rules.
Steve
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No, the relations are fixed at neutral until the countdown runs out. After that, relations change according to the normal rules.
Steve
It seems to me that you should be able to increase the relations prior to the countdown expiring.
That gives me another thought... If two empires start on Earth, and are forced into neutral status, does that hold outside of the Sol system too?
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Is the count down timer the same for all nations or can the time be set to different intervals for different nations?
-Five
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how about a +/-percentage variable box so when you start a game with neutral for 10 years with 10% variable they could unlock anytime from year 9-11 so they dont all kill you at once or 0% for a nuclear Apocalypse scenario :)
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Steve, on the topic of underground infrastructure: if I understand correctly then a low gravity body with a colony on it will only consider the underground infrastructure (and orbital habitats) when determining the maximum population. Shipping standard infrastructure to it would be a waste of time. Do civilian shipping lines recognize this and/or does the population's demand for infrastructure as trade goods get set to zero?
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Steve, on the topic of underground infrastructure: if I understand correctly then a low gravity body with a colony on it will only consider the underground infrastructure (and orbital habitats) when determining the maximum population. Shipping standard infrastructure to it would be a waste of time. Do civilian shipping lines recognize this and/or does the population's demand for infrastructure as trade goods get set to zero?
There is no civilian demand for normal infrastructure on a low grav world
Steve
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Could the civillian sector on such a world produce underground infrastructure at 1/5th the rate it would normally produce regular infrastructure? It seems a bit questionable why they'd bother with the latter at all.
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Does infrastructure decrease the amount of EM and Thermal emissions of a population? Is it harder to be destroyed?
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A couple thoughts:
A selectable random chance for a 'diplomatic incident' resulting in a war between two truce-NPRs or between a player and a truce-NPR might be interesting. Players can RP this, of course, but not knowing when they come can throw a curveball. Though they're still going to bombard planets into extinction... :)
re: Underground Infrastructure.
I like this sort of thing, I usually house-rule out Terraforming so I do a lot of 'hostile colonization', even normally. ..
so now we have a sort of tiered colonization:
gas giants - OH
rocks - UI
hostile worlds - Infrastructure
Hmmm.
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In regards to the intercept mechanics. Is there any chance that AMM missiles will get the same treatment so they take the shortest routes instead of chasing missiles the normal way. I suppose this would make it somewhat easier for AMM to intercept ASM when the ships is engaging missiles at an angle protecting other ships.
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In regards to the intercept mechanics. Is there any chance that AMM missiles will get the same treatment so they take the shortest routes instead of chasing missiles the normal way. I suppose this would make it somewhat easier for AMM to intercept ASM when the ships is engaging missiles at an angle protecting other ships.
Currently working on missiles vs. ships but will get to missiles vs. missiles at some point as well
Steve
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On NPRs and research costs, I'm pretty sure the AI of every strategy game cheats at least some. There's just no way to write one that can compete with a human at games much more complicated than Chess. So it doesn't bother me.
Though I think another reason NPRs fall behind on research is they don't use scientists for their specialties; it might be worth looking at updating their decision making there.
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On NPRs and research costs, I'm pretty sure the AI of every strategy game cheats at least some. There's just no way to write one that can compete with a human at games much more complicated than Chess. So it doesn't bother me.
Though I think another reason NPRs fall behind on research is they don't use scientists for their specialties; it might be worth looking at updating their decision making there.
I second that. Human's just multitask better than a home computer.
Brian
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I'm really looking forward to the new interception mechanics. I've always played slower conventional starts and at those kinds of speeds even catching up with earth can be a nightmare :P
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Looking forward to better NPRs, the wealth change for them is a good idea I think.
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so now we have a sort of tiered colonization:
gas giants - OH
rocks - UI
hostile worlds - Infrastructure
Hmmm.
Did I miss something? I thought gas giants were uninhabitable, even with orbital habitats. I don't object to the idea, I just thought the game didn't allow it.
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Uh, I never tried. Didn't think about it. I guess the main point of OH now is planetary construction, and/or moveability...
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Unfortunately I don't have access to my game right now, but I construct my fuel harvesters as huge engineless rigs with a single OH so they can be built without a shipyard. I could have sworn that colonists never were delivered to populate the gas giant. If memory serves it was because I couldn't create an colony on a gas giant in the first place. Given that UI and OH overlap in the ways you suggested, maybe this is a niche that could be opened up? Of course then we have the weirdness that comes with dropping off installations or missiles or whatnot at a gas giant colony that does not yet have an OH.
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You can't create colonies on gas giants, if you're lucky there'll be some moons you can colonise in orbit of it.
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Energy Weapon Impacts
I've added a new type of contact for v6.40 called energy weapon impacts. These are very similar to explosion contacts except they occur when an energy weapon scores damage on something (ship, missile, shipyard, population or ground unit).
(mainly so I can see what is going on in my current game when NPRs are firing beam weapons at each other)
Would be nice if these contacts (and missile impacts) light up only if you have say thermal sensors. It makes sense that it's easy to detect nukes going off but not so much that you can always reliably detect laser/kinetic energy signatures from across the system.
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Would be nice if these contacts (and missile impacts) light up only if you have say thermal sensors. It makes sense that it's easy to detect nukes going off but not so much that you can always reliably detect laser/kinetic energy signatures from across the system.
I like that idea! Energy weapon impacts are a very different beast, spectrographically, than a nuclear explosion. You could multiply damage by 10 or even 100 (lasers are hot!) to get the thermal contact strength.
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I like this, perhaps even missile and all other explosions should depend on the availability of powerful enough thermal sensors to detect them. But I think in general we would want most battles to be observable from a fair distance away by reasonably sized sensors. Perhaps a single scout ship might not be able to see employee detonations from a billion kilometers, but it should see a drive or magazine explosion from the other side of a system.
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Perhaps a single scout ship might not be able to see employee detonations from a billion kilometers
Not sure what employee detonations are but they sound like fun. Would certainly be a more spectacular end than just firing someone.
"Sales are down again this week Mr Smith. I'm sorry but we have no choice but to detonate you. Everyone else stand back please!"
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Hah, that's amusing, I believe I was typing AMM but iphone spellcheck did something to it. :p
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Not sure what employee detonations are but they sound like fun. Would certainly be a more spectacular end than just firing someone.
"Sales are down again this week Mr Smith. I'm sorry but we have no choice but to detonate you. Everyone else stand back please!"
sounds like some of the places I've worked
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remove the interrupts off civilian lines not able to load installations, i cant modify this fleets orders, this is a civilan line, the request is to export civilian infrustructure to another colony.
So its pretty well out of my range, theres no way to see how much in the way of cilivian infrustructure is available for export its an annual figure its either to much or the civilian freighter isnt able to load that much in one load but the interrupts get a bit much after a while
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Not sure what employee detonations are but they sound like fun. Would certainly be a more spectacular end than just firing someone.
"Sales are down again this week Mr Smith. I'm sorry but we have no choice but to detonate you. Everyone else stand back please!"
would be an interesting feature so steve any more plans for 6.4 before it comes out
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would be an interesting feature so steve any more plans for 6.4 before it comes out
New event message:
"Captain James Whatsyourface was not in any command for 7.9 years. He has been deemed surplus and was detonated."
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New event message:
"Captain James Whatsyourface was not in any command for 7.9 years. He has been deemed surplus and was detonated."
thats in for 6.3, my interest is in 6.4 and changes to some of the notification system
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Personally I like the idea of being able to see weapons fire/explosions from anywhere in a system I have a ship, even one with poor sensors. I feel it just adds more to the game to see the weapon impacts of a distant battle than... not seeing anything other than wreck markers occasionally pop up.
Besides, energy weapons - even gauss cannons - are still nuclear-scale firepower. That's going to be pretty easy to spot.
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Personally I like the idea of being able to see weapons fire/explosions from anywhere in a system I have a ship, even one with poor sensors. I feel it just adds more to the game to see the weapon impacts of a distant battle than... not seeing anything other than wreck markers occasionally pop up.
I agree that it should not be hard to spot, but I think it would add to the game if you at least need to bring a 1-4 HS thermal sensor to spot them from normal "earth" solar system distances.
When it comes to wrecks it would be pretty cool for them to also not "pop up" but have to be detected through normal active sensors.
Imagine if a wreck is indistinguishable to a powered down undamaged ship? Imagine the tension of having to close to very very near distance to be able to spot minimal thermal signatures added to for example life-support systems to be able to determine this.
Besides, energy weapons - even gauss cannons - are still nuclear-scale firepower. That's going to be pretty easy to spot.
Most of this damage is however transfered to the ship. At least for me I always assumed that a nuke does not actually impact but rather detonate some distance away meaning most of the energy is directed elsewhere (for example towards your sensors).
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I agree that it should not be hard to spot, but I think it would add to the game if you at least need to bring a 1-4 ton thermal sensor to spot them from normal "earth" solar system distances.
When it comes to wrecks it would be pretty cool for them to also not "pop up" but have to be detected through normal active sensors.
I have to disagree. There's discovering neat things, then there's missing neat things because you had no idea they were there.
A battle in a system you just explored, for example. On the one side, you see distant weapon flashes as the battle rages and ships exchange vollies. On the other you just get lag-lag-lag-oh a wreck-lag-lag-lag - and if wrecks aren't auto-detected then you don't even see that.
Wrecks likewise are fairly uncommon, neat things. Making them harder doesn't seem like it would add much. I suppose I could see maybe a small chance for wrecks to show up as just lifeless ships under the same detection rules and such, but that also complicates combat as it becomes harder to tell if a ship you just shot is really dead or not. Maybe if it was an 'intact wreck' with a boosted chance of salvage?
Imagine if a wreck is indistinguishable to a powered down undamaged ship? Imagine the tension of having to close to very very near distance to be able to spot minimal thermal signatures added to for example life-support systems to be able to determine this.
Most of this damage is however transfered to the ship. At least for me I always assumed that a nuke does not actually impact but rather detonate some distance away meaning most of the energy is directed elsewhere (for example towards your sensors).
Much of the energy is still radiated away indurectly from things like swaths of hull being flashes to star-hot plasma and flashes of hard radiation as phenominal energy densities rip atoms apart enmass.
And there's the fact that modern tech is good enough to spot the space shuttle's engines firing from the orbit of Pluto.
If you don't want to handwave things, Aurora sensors are either incredibly, phenominally bad, or transnewtonian ships have some pretty major innate stealth characteristics.
I tend to go with the later, as more believable and in line with the ability to see every planet, moon, asteroid and comet in a system as you jump into it without having to conduct an in-depth survey. I also imagine that wrecked ships have been torn open and these stealth qualities lost.
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remove the interrupts off civilian lines not able to load installations, i cant modify this fleets orders, this is a civilan line, the request is to export civilian infrustructure to another colony.
So its pretty well out of my range, theres no way to see how much in the way of cilivian infrustructure is available for export its an annual figure its either to much or the civilian freighter isnt able to load that much in one load but the interrupts get a bit much after a while
The "Current Import Requirement" and "Available for Export" columns on the trade sheet indicate how much a given population needs of that trade item right now or is sitting available to be shipped out right now. It is not an annual figure, but if you can't export it faster than it gets produced, it will not change.
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In earlier versions, you used to detect Wrecks on active sensors. I changed this to always visible primarily because its more fun rather than more realistic. Having to search an entire system to check for wrecks is no fun. Be able to detect them anywhere reduces micromanagement and makes the game more interesting. I had the same internal debate about distant planets or small moons. You would get pretty bored of "Asteroid Found!" messages.
Plus, at the moment there are no sensor checks in a system unless there are two different races. Adding sensor checks for every system in which there was one race plus wrecks would slow down the game.
The same applies to weapons fire. Seeing the weapon fire from a distant battle adds fun and suspense to the game, even if it would be more realistic to make it difficult to detect at great distances.
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In earlier versions, you used to detect Wrecks on active sensors. I changed this to always visible primarily because its more fun rather than more realistic. Having to search an entire system to check for wrecks is no fun. Be able to detect them anywhere reduces micromanagement and makes the game more interesting. I had the same internal debate about distant planets or small moons. You would get pretty bored of "Asteroid Found!" messages.
Plus, at the moment there are no sensor checks in a system unless there are two different races. Adding sensor checks for every system in which there was one race plus wrecks would slow down the game.
The same applies to weapons fire. Seeing the weapon fire from a distant battle adds fun and suspense to the game, even if it would be more realistic to make it difficult to detect at great distances.
I've got no problem with that. If they're inflicting similar damage to missile detonations, one assumes they're within an order of magnitude of the power level involved, so I have no problem with getting to see them. And it is fun to watch the NPRs duke it out sometimes :)
I'm really excited at all the AI and NPR improvements so far, they should allow for much more challenging games.
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And there's the fact that modern tech is good enough to spot the space shuttle's engines firing from the orbit of Pluto.
A common misconception that is repeated on military sci-fi forums a lot.
Modern technology is this good if you know exactly where to look.
Assuming a poorly outfitted spaceship's scanners are doing an all-sky survey by spherically sweeping the entire visual field, say, once a minute, it's totally possible they'd miss something small and hot.
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NPR Home Systems
I've run into a problem in my own v6.40 test campaign. I've encountered a second NPR home-world system within two jumps of Sol. Unfortunately it's identical to the first NPR home-world system - oops!
I look forward to reading the In Character reaction to that. :3
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I look forward to reading the In Character reaction to that. :3
Well, its a little hard to accept from my own POV so I might start a new test campaign that will make use of the new NPR changes from the start. The Multiple NPRs in Sol has worked well so I am tempted to run the Jovian Federation based on terraformed Galilean moons with NPRs on Earth (3) and terraformed Luna, Mars, Titan and possibly other locations. Maybe a special set up with an NPR on a hollow asteroid, or in orbital habitats around one of Neptune moons. Still considering at the moment but the truce countdown has opened up some really interesting scenarios.
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Oh boy, you are on a roll here steve, NPRs are getting a wholelotta love this update and I'm loving every change that's making them more formidable. I would hate to see you lose your current action packed campaign, but I'm sure that if you do restart you'll get similar results considering it's basically your earth based friends causing trouble in the neighbourhood.
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Well, its a little hard to accept from my own POV so I might start a new test campaign that will make use of the new NPR changes from the start.
Well you could just "not notice" the similarity. I'm assuming that there's two systems with two system IDs that happen to have the same planetary statistics, as opposed to the second race magically appearing in the same system with the same system ID as the original - that might be a little tough to ignore :)
John
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Alternately you could jump your scout out, delete the system, and go through the jump point again. That's what I did in my LP when I got an inconvenient system.
But it's up to you how you want to handle it; I'm just curious to see where the game will go if it continues.
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Alternately you could jump your scout out, delete the system, and go through the jump point again. That's what I did in my LP when I got an inconvenient system.
But it's up to you how you want to handle it; I'm just curious to see where the game will go if it continues.
This isn't a new system. It's one of the starting NPRs home systems so deleting it would corrupt the game. The NPRs generated during the game don't suffer this problem, only those at game start.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6532.msg68093.html#msg68093
I could probably ignore it, although it would definitely be an irritant :) There are other reasons to restart though such as the problems with NPR escort design. Besides, I have a cool new idea for a multiple NPR start in Sol :)
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While youre at it is it possible to get NPRs to do planetary invasion with troops or is that a bit beyond a simple implementation. First step could be having them build different troop types perhaps
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actually another idea here, planetary leaders having specific mineral extraction bonuses.
Perhaps they worked in the mines before becoming a civilian administrator but say a 20% to duranium or 20% to solarium production. This would add more flavour to specific mineral colonies for example allowing u to give a small reasonable additional boost to specific mineral output
As an offset they could have a small negatie effecgt on another mineral for example as they are "specailised" in what they are able to extract
Same could be applied to captains of asteroid mining ships if they are mining a planet they could get a small bonus to output of their fleets in one of the minerals they are extracting
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RE comets, Steve, would it be possible to have a way to tell Aurora "more comets, please!" without setting a minimum per system? Let us increase the average or the propensity for comets instead of setting a hard floor.
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RE comets, Steve, would it be possible to have a way to tell Aurora "more comets, please!" without setting a minimum per system? Let us increase the average or the propensity for comets instead of setting a hard floor.
I've modified comet generation so that 75% of systems will have at least one but those that do have comets will have slightly fewer on average.
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Great. One other thing: could you take a look at civilian mining ops? It'd be nice to see them mine bodies that don't have duranium or sorium, also, maybe they should expand through the jumpgate network to adjacent systems? As it works now, you rarely get any outside of Sol because you will usually colonize the best worlds yourself long before the colony system will have the population necessary to attract civilians.
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actually another idea here, planetary leaders having specific mineral extraction bonuses.
Perhaps they worked in the mines before becoming a civilian administrator but say a 20% to duranium or 20% to solarium production. This would add more flavour to specific mineral colonies for example allowing u to give a small reasonable additional boost to specific mineral output
As an offset they could have a small negatie effecgt on another mineral for example as they are "specailised" in what they are able to extract
Same could be applied to captains of asteroid mining ships if they are mining a planet they could get a small bonus to output of their fleets in one of the minerals they are extracting
Eh, I dunno, seems like it would be a bit too micro-heavy for the benefit. There are 11 minerals, then when you have dozens or hundreds of administrators and commanders...
Great. One other thing: could you take a look at civilian mining ops? It'd be nice to see them mine bodies that don't have duranium or sorium, also, maybe they should expand through the jumpgate network to adjacent systems? As it works now, you rarely get any outside of Sol because you will usually colonize the best worlds yourself long before the colony system will have the population necessary to attract civilians.
If that's added there needs to be an option to turn it off. Some of us don't like jumpgates being thrown up everywhere; not having any way to get NPRs to stop building jumpgate networks to your homeworld short of the induced spontanious disassembly of their ships, E-Mail Rays, and High-Energy Postcards is bad enough as it is.
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If that's added there needs to be an option to turn it off. Some of us don't like jumpgates being thrown up everywhere; not having any way to get NPRs to stop building jumpgate networks to your homeworld short of the induced spontanious disassembly of their ships, E-Mail Rays, and High-Energy Postcards is bad enough as it is.
I didn't mean the civvies would build jumpgates, rather, I meant to suggest that if you've built jumpgates to adjacent systems, they might build civilian mining operations in those connected systems.
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Black Holes Return
Somehow the Black Holes have been removed from the Real Stars database. I can't remember if this was deliberate or accidental :) so I have put them back in.
I think you took them out since there were none in the volume of space you had catalogued with the Real Stars option.
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I think you took them out since there were none in the volume of space you had catalogued with the Real Stars option.
As far as we know! :)
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Would it be difficult to have options to add black holes also to non real stars games?
It would be sweet to be able to run games where you can encounter both kinds of strange astronomical features added!
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Would it be difficult to have options to add black holes also to non real stars games?
It would be sweet to be able to run games where you can encounter both kinds of strange astronomical features added!
They should already be there.
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Will Hyper Drive ever return?
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They should already be there.
Ok! Then I guess they are just rare, though I read somewhere they are only used in real stars games...
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Both nebula and black holes are in random stars games? When did that happen? I've been hoping for that since they were introduced.
I think you took them out since there were none in the volume of space you had catalogued with the Real Stars option.
I think you're thinking of nebulas.
Tho I'd personally like a game start option to enable both; I like them, I don't care if it's unrealistic, but I know there are others who disagree.
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Suggestion: tie the size of exclusion zones to a race's militancy/xenophobia/expansionism as well as political modifier. Static values between games are dull, and increasingly-bolder forays near your worlds would be a good barometer for deteriorating relations.
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All these NPR enhancements are awesome, and I'll be restarting my campaign when the next. Erosion comes out so I can add the USSR, China, Europe/NATO, and possibly African nations, South/central American Union, India, and Pacifica. I imagine by that time my progress will still be so low I can easily recreate everything in the new game.
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So will we see 6. 40 in January?
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I am really glad about the civilian scrapping change steve just put up, but I would say that 10 years is a bit too long for scrapping. 10 years is a long time. How about reducing it to 8 years or something? What do you guys think?
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It'd be interesting if shipping lines would specialize. Say you start with one colony ship line, one freighter line, etc. That way they'd grow in accordance with the actual demand for shipping, instead of growing randomly. You wouldn't end up with a glut of colony ships and a shortage of freighters, for example. And you could direct your subsidies to just what you want to see more of.
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One thing that I find a bit strange is what happens if the ship is on a long cargo route. Steve mentioned it's conditional orders get deleted and so do the current orders. What happens to the cargo?
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It's default orders get deleted, I imagine it finisheds it's current orders before being scrapped.
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It's default orders get deleted, I imagine it finisheds it's current orders before being scrapped.
I re-read it and I missed the bold letters. So it's ok :)
During the 5-day update any ships flagged for scrap and without orders are scrapped at that point. This should result in a lot more of the older ships being scrapped.
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I am really glad about the civilian scrapping change steve just put up, but I would say that 10 years is a bit too long for scrapping. 10 years is a long time. How about reducing it to 8 years or something? What do you guys think?
Personally I think the opposite. Once you get to the higher engine techs, you're likely to spend significantly longer than that between major new shipping tech developments. I'd suggest changing the mechanic to "After 10 years it checks if there's a engine tech available, if so, scrap, if not, mark for re-check next year and keep chugging along. Scrap anyway at the 20-year mark."
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Personally I think the opposite. Once you get to the higher engine techs, you're likely to spend significantly longer than that between major new shipping tech developments. I'd suggest changing the mechanic to "After 10 years it checks if there's a engine tech available, if so, scrap, if not, mark for re-check next year and keep chugging along. Scrap anyway at the 20-year mark."
Not a bad idea.
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I am really glad about the civilian scrapping change steve just put up, but I would say that 10 years is a bit too long for scrapping. 10 years is a long time. How about reducing it to 8 years or something? What do you guys think?
Ten years is fine; if anything I wouldn't mind if it was longer, atleast if it took tech into account. iRL freighters are usually built with a 25-30 year life-expectancy, tho especially earlier on when you've got fairly rapid and dramatic improvments in the tech avalible that can feel like it's a tad too long.
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Glad to see the updates to shipping, although I would like to echo the idea of some mechanism to more accurately match ship types to demand. One way to implement it (not sure how difficult this is) would be to track total earnings for each ship, and divide that by the time in service, and then bias towards building ships with high numbers. I know I often end up with too many colony ships and not enough freighters.
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Glad to see the updates to shipping, although I would like to echo the idea of some mechanism to more accurately match ship types to demand. One way to implement it (not sure how difficult this is) would be to track total earnings for each ship, and divide that by the time in service, and then bias towards building ships with high numbers. I know I often end up with too many colony ships and not enough freighters.
With that you might end up with infinite feedback loop. Say you start with three colony ships and one freighter. As the ships get older chances are the colony ships will be replaced while the freighter will not be. Which leads to a bunch of fast colony ships (as you get engine upgrades) and one slow freighter. Since the colony ships are faster they do more runs which gives them higher earnings while the freighter has lower because it can't keep up. Keep in mind the previous was closer to an extreme just to better show the argument.
Also the problem with your math is that would trend toward newer faster ships being built because if you have a ship that has a total earning of 30,000 but has been in service for 3 years and a ship that has 11,000 total earning with only 1 year service the ship with one year will be built. The problem with that is the 11,000 ship might have more because of faster speeds or maybe a new colony was made next to an old one and so there was plenty of time for the new ship to do a ton of short colonist trips to get the new colony up to 25 million. I would suggest instead of dividing by time in service you might want to divide by (some number) - years in service. That would tend toward replacing older ships with more than one replacement and just have a check when the replacement is built to see if there is a similar class that is faster and/or more range and/or has similar to greater cargo capacity.
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With that you might end up with infinite feedback loop. Say you start with three colony ships and one freighter. As the ships get older chances are the colony ships will be replaced while the freighter will not be. Which leads to a bunch of fast colony ships (as you get engine upgrades) and one slow freighter. Since the colony ships are faster they do more runs which gives them higher earnings while the freighter has lower because it can't keep up. Keep in mind the previous was closer to an extreme just to better show the argument.
Also the problem with your math is that would trend toward newer faster ships being built because if you have a ship that has a total earning of 30,000 but has been in service for 3 years and a ship that has 11,000 total earning with only 1 year service the ship with one year will be built. The problem with that is the 11,000 ship might have more because of faster speeds or maybe a new colony was made next to an old one and so there was plenty of time for the new ship to do a ton of short colonist trips to get the new colony up to 25 million. I would suggest instead of dividing by time in service you might want to divide by (some number) - years in service. That would tend toward replacing older ships with more than one replacement and just have a check when the replacement is built to see if there is a similar class that is faster and/or more range and/or has similar to greater cargo capacity.
I think you're missing both the point and a couple of key ideas about my proposal. The point is that the system for evaluating civilian ship purchases makes decisions untroubled by any hint of economic reality, producing results that are frustrating to the player. I can use three examples to illustrate this. First, take colonizing Mars in a Solar System start. Normally, I've found that the civilians produce more colony ships than they need, while their freighters work constantly. A real businessman would obviously build more freighters, but the game doesn't. This slows down colonization, soaks up money from the shipping lines, and reduces the player's revenue. Second, your scenario, which would have to involve a close colony with little or no colonization cost. In this case, the shipping lines would and should build more colony ships and less freighters. Third, in my most recent game I SMd a starting system with 5 developed planets. Freighters were making a run every few days, while colony ships might get in one payload a month. Obviously, accountants would buy freighters and nothing else.
I can see where you're coming from, but the implementation would be slightly different than you see it. This would be a bias to the ships bought, not a wholesale replacement for the current system, at maybe a 50/50 mix of the two. So there would still be some of everything built, even if it's not terribly profitable (for gameplay, if nothing else). Second, it wouldn't be a case of "pick whatever made the most money over the last year, and buy it". You would probably weight the random selection by the relative income over the period. So if your average freighter made 1100 and your average colony ship 900, the game would pick the freighter 55% of the time. Obviously, this isn't a huge difference, and the model would only really come into play when there is a gross imbalance between the earnings of the two types. That is exactly as intended. Third, the idea of an infinite feedback loop assumes that there is no feedback from the environment the ships are working in. For three fast colony ships to make lots of money, there would need to be somewhere to send the colonists, and to keep sending them over the long term. For them to gain an advantage over freighters, they would need to have a destination that has a low colony cost. Otherwise, they'd sit idle, while waiting for the freighter to carry the infrastructure.
I know there are flaws in my model. It's not perfect, and it might need to be farther modified by the relative build costs of the various types of ships. That said, what I mostly want is a way of tailoring the merchant fleet more closely to individual game conditions. I think this is the best reasonably simple automatic way of doing so, although allowing the player to manually bias the decision would also work.
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Aurora 6.4, Galactic War Crimes edition :)
Probably not a unit I'll use, but it definitely adds some interesting Roleplay and storytelling possibilities. Really loving the changes for 6.4 so far.
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Forced labor battalions... muahahaha! I mean... muahahaha!
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So a construction factory costs 120 BP and requires 50,000 workers, while a forced labor camp costs 40 BP and 10,000 "workers," and these both produce the same amount of build points?
It must be those damn construction unions driving down productivity with their sick leave and their mandated break time and their whining about how we have to stop the machinery every time someone falls into the neutronium extruder.
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Efficient, can I launch missiles against my own colony on mars to make it surrender to me so I can subjugate it, then conscript the entire population into forced labour battalions for cheaper production?
Also I'm wondering what made Steve add this mechanic, I'm sure both the Russian occupied Chinese colony and Chinese occupied Russian colony wouldn't dream of stooping to atrocities like this.
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Generally I find ground forces cumbersome to use in large numbers.
Also I'm wondering what made Steve add this mechanic
nostalgia for Moo3?
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Well Jovians could use some slaves when they conquer Sol, they are inspired by Roman empire after all.
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I like the idea of the forced labour but not sure the mechanics are that helpful. Don't ground force training facilities suffer the same penalties as other industry? Ie whilst the unit costs just 40 BPs won't it still take an awful long time to construct whilst you are sat at 20% efficiency. It seems to me that by the time the first of these are built you should have substantially improved industrial performance in any case given the normal rate of population alignment?
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So a construction factory costs 120 BP and requires 50,000 workers, while a forced labor camp costs 40 BP and 10,000 "workers," and these both produce the same amount of build points?
It must be those damn construction unions driving down productivity with their sick leave and their mandated break time and their whining about how we have to stop the machinery every time someone falls into the neutronium extruder.
TBH I thought construction factories were 25,000 workers but you are right :) I might up it to 20K workers then. Even so, it's not 50,000 workers for a factory but rather 50,000 population. A lot of members of a population are not productive (children, non-working spouses, those who have retired, etc.) and the factory is likely working 8 hours a day, plus all the overheads of a normal business (Payroll, HR, Facilities, Legal etc.). Compare that to 10K active workers (or probably 20K) who get shot if they don't work hard.
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I like the idea of the forced labour but not sure the mechanics are that helpful. Don't ground force training facilities suffer the same penalties as other industry? Ie whilst the unit costs just 40 BPs won't it still take an awful long time to construct whilst you are sat at 20% efficiency. It seems to me that by the time the first of these are built you should have substantially improved industrial performance in any case given the normal rate of population alignment?
Excellent point. I'll rake a look at this when I get home tonight.
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What if instead of training the forced labor units in situ, you could train something like a forced labor cadre on a more established world? Then you load up the officers, guards, and German shepherds into a transport and ship them off to the conquered/occupied/subjugated world. You could target the population in the ground combat window and have them round up volunteers. Or you could just have them rounded up automatically once the cadre is on the same body as an appropriate population.
The thousands of workers don't need to be sent to boot camp, they just need to be handed laser shovels and taught obedience.
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I really like that idea.
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Will FLU strength be counted against Police Strength?
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That wouldnt make much sense. Those are 20K disgruntled slaves, they rather would take up arms most of the time.
Now lets get "Slavetrade" into the game with Civ. Ships doing the transportation. Not realy serious on that but transporting angry people from one Hellhole to anorther should make them magically happy or docile. Thus if i take people from a unhappy population that needs policing it should stay unhappy even if relocated.
Steve you mentioned that you, maybe, add looting Missiles from wrecks. Any plans or eta on that?
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That wouldnt make much sense. Those are 20K disgruntled slaves, they rather would take up arms most of the time.
precisely, they should count against, and not for, police strength.
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I agree with this too.
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Well, is the unit intended to represent both the workers and a sufficient number of guards to keep them in line? If so, then the negative police value wouldn't make sense.
Also, as the base ground combat value is increased through research, the negative police value would remain the same, proportionally, which raises the question of why we're giving cutting edge arms to both our troops and our slaves.
Still, I agree that there should be some mechanical representation of how forced labor is counterproductive to quelling a restive populace. But isn't that covered by the unrest cost for creating them in the first place? Or is that insufficient?
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Well, is the unit intended to represent both the workers and a sufficient number of guards to keep them in line? If so, then the negative police value wouldn't make sense.
I think it still makes sense. While you can argue that the guards can keep the workers in line that is not what the unrest represent.
Unrest represents the rest of the "free" population that has to live nearby and watch their kin suffer from slavery as their anger grows about not being able to do anything about it...
It also represent the mind of the guards that has a very unpleasant work and likely are not so happy with what their masters have them do every day either.
Also, as the base ground combat value is increased through research, the negative police value would remain the same, proportionally, which raises the question of why we're giving cutting edge arms to both our troops and our slaves.
Unless the slaves have the same combat values they are not receiving cutting edge arms, they are receiving hand me downs that regular troops no longer needs :)
Still, I agree that there should be some mechanical representation of how forced labor is counterproductive to quelling a restive populace. But isn't that covered by the unrest cost for creating them in the first place? Or is that insufficient?
I think there should be some permanent extra negative cost in policing too. Otherwise a single regular garrison can handle billions of slave workers just given enough time to reduce unrest gradually if they are built slowly.
Of-course you can just make the forced labor unit more expensive in itself (to increase it's maintenance cost and represent the extra policing), but that kind of defeats the point of being able to raise them quickly....
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What if forced labour units lost morale over time as they are used to build stuff? After all, you're working people to death, they're not all going to make it. That would force players to build more over time -- say the lost morale resulted in replacements being needed every few years -- and thus re-incur the unrest penalties from recruiting them.
I'm not sure how feasible it is that their morale loss is dependent on whether they're working or not, it would suck if they kept dying on you even when you weren't forcing them to build stuff.
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I've added to the description for the FLU:
7) FLU do not count toward occupation strength and do not reduce unrest. Their defence strength (equal to 1/10th of a Garrison Unit) is used in ground combat defence only.
Also added the following to the change log:
As GFTF are military installations that do not require population to operate they will no longer be affected by the Population Status Production Modifier (based on political status) or the Manufacturing Efficiency Modifier (not enough workers). They will still be affected by radiation and by the Economic Production Modifier (negative wealth).
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What if forced labour units lost morale over time as they are used to build stuff? After all, you're working people to death, they're not all going to make it. That would force players to build more over time -- say the lost morale resulted in replacements being needed every few years -- and thus re-incur the unrest penalties from recruiting them.
I'm not sure how feasible it is that their morale loss is dependent on whether they're working or not, it would suck if they kept dying on you even when you weren't forcing them to build stuff.
I considered having them reduce readiness over time (and I still might) but it adds extra complexity and I am not sure there is any game play benefit. I would have to prevent them regaining readiness (or take it from the population), prevent Replacement Battalions from aiding them and also modify their construction output. Besides, they aren't being worked to death. They are forced labour, not expendable slaves. I guess I could have an additional unit type that produced higher output but lost strength over time but that might be going a little far :)
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I noticed that missiles now will follow an intercept course, I
m thinking that to allow someone to say, manually try to out maneuver a missle (not sure when that would happen but maybe some people do) make it so that the targeting system controls how accurately the missile will intercept, maybe with a Missile Intercept Accuracy tech.
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I noticed that missiles now will follow an intercept course, I
m thinking that to allow someone to say, manually try to out maneuver a missle (not sure when that would happen but maybe some people do) make it so that the targeting system controls how accurately the missile will intercept, maybe with a Missile Intercept Accuracy tech.
That's what agility is for.
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Fantastic changes thus far for 6.4- Keep it up, Steve!
Naturally I find myself yearning to open up Aurora while simultaneously wanting to wait for the next update.
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6.4 is the AI upgrade patch, I am so happy we seeing some life put into the AI with new options.
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Steve, you might as well go ahead and call this puppy 7.0. It certainly has enough content! ;D
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I agree, these are pretty major at least from a user experience perspective.
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I'm very excited about so many of these changes!
Thanks, Steve.
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I'm not sure it merits 7.0. Gameplay-wise, it's very close to 6.3, and much, much less of a jump than we saw after 5.6.
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Considering the hell I'm going to pay with my wife for all the time I'll be putting into this next upgrade; I think that 6. 66 should be the actual version number, eh ??
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I'm not sure it merits 7.0. Gameplay-wise, it's very close to 6.3, and much, much less of a jump than we saw after 5.6.
It seems that Steve is doing some significant reworking of NPR AI, capabilities, and diplomacy, among other things. To me those are pretty big bullet points. I guess it doesn't really matter that much but as a programmer I would classify this as a numerical upgrade.
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Call it Aurora 2013 :)
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Mass effect III
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Spreadsheets in Space II: Spreadsheet Harder
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Spreadsheets in Space II: Spreadsheet Harder
I like this one! :)
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Spreadsheets in Space II: Spreadsheet Harder
Just FYI - I will steal this name for my second LP of Aurora ;D
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Does that mean the next version will be Spreadsheet with a vengeance?
followed by Live free or Spreadsheet? and finally A good day to Spreadsheet!
Matt (Taking jokes too far since 1968!)
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Actually the next one will shift gears entirely and be Spreadsheet III: The Clone Wars. It'll be notable for it's graphical interface but shunned for it's divergence from the root gameplay, players will be upset by the fact that instead of epic space battles and empire management, it will be a dating sim focusing on the relationships between the commander of a task force on picket duty and his ship captains.
No one knows what clones have to do with it.
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Actually the next one will shift gears entirely and be Spreadsheet III: The Clone Wars. It'll be notable for it's graphical interface but shunned for it's divergence from the root gameplay, players will be upset by the fact that instead of epic space battles and empire management, it will be a dating sim focusing on the relationships between the commander of a task force on picket duty and his ship captains.
No one knows what clones have to do with it.
I literally lol'd... Getting funny looks at work now :-X.
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Actually the next one will shift gears entirely and be Spreadsheet III: The Clone Wars. It'll be notable for it's graphical interface but shunned for it's divergence from the root gameplay, players will be upset by the fact that instead of epic space battles and empire management, it will be a dating sim focusing on the relationships between the commander of a task force on picket duty and his ship captains.
No one knows what clones have to do with it.
A dating sim, still using Aurora's interface...
Matt
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Looks like a pretty good patch. If Steve can get NPRs to launch ground invasions, I will be in heaven!
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If Steve can get NPRs to launch ground invasions, I will be in heaven!
The most desirable addition!
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NPR Ground Invasions Hell yes!, I would wet my pants. It would give those Garrison formation something to fear, other then children with rocks.
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Would it be possible to get an on/off checkbox for NPR terraforming? I like to play no-terraforming.
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Is it possible to have a record of ships destroyed? Something like with name of the ship, class, info about the weapon which destroyed it, date of destruction and position.
This record should be both for human player and AI (for AI only for known ships destroyed).
Maybe it would be not so useful tool, but it would be nice read some statistic info, during boring part of the game ;)
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While you're suggesting that, perhaps every event related to the combat which destroyed that ship could be logged, or perhaps under the intelligence window for each ship class all combat events related to the class could be logged, with the game preferring to keep track only of the last fatal combat involving that ship class. But this is a suggestion and actually is in the wrong thread.
Back on topic kinda, I've noticed steve that in your current AAR battles seem to be very AMM dominated, is there a reason for this? I was wondering if there are circumstances where NPR's would prefer to build AMMs over ASMs, and if this is working as intended, I have no problem with the way these battles were going since the results speak for themself, I would assume that equally matched forces facing each other but with one equipped with AMMS only and one with ASMs only would probably leave the advantage to the guys with the AMMs, so any development that causes greater use of AMMs by the enemy can only make the game harder and the enemy smarter.
In fact I think my next topic for the tactical command forum will be related to exactly this.
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Excellent news about smaller beam FC's. No more gigantic beam FC's at low tech levels, hooray!
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Excellent news about smaller beam FC's. No more gigantic beam FC's at low tech levels, hooray!
Have to admit, looking forward to 6.4.
I know Steve won't say, but do any of you others that have been around here have a guess as when we might see it?
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Have to admit, looking forward to 6.4.
I know Steve won't say, but do any of you others that have been around here have a guess as when we might see it?
SoonTM
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Long ago the Elder Scrolls predicted the release of 6.4. No man can say when, for those who peer deeply into the mysteries of the ages are driven mad.
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Someday I'll be able to have a primarily carrier and beam fighter based force without it getting laughed at (and blown up by missiles). This is one step further down that road :)
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SoonTM
Someones been spending too much time on the LotRo forums!
Matt
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Someones been spending too much time on the LotRo forums!
Matt
I am not Sapience. Nor am I a reasonable facsimile. :p And I think I asked you the same thing the first time you popped off a SoonTM here.
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No, you're MUCH better at running a forum than he is :)
Matt
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Would it be possible to get an on/off checkbox for NPR terraforming? I like to play no-terraforming.
I agree, I love to play no terraforming so a checkbox would be awesome.
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Blessed Steve has done a wonderful work.