Aurora 4x

VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Vandermeer on January 21, 2014, 06:32:13 AM

Title: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on January 21, 2014, 06:32:13 AM: When recently making absurd large constructions in Aurora, I noticed some limitations in the program where the interface would start to bug out, or you would start getting error messages of different kinds. I open this topic to collect some of those. Maybe some know similar boundaries, or maybe in others game they don't exists in the same way, which I would find interesting.

o Maximum armor
Some time ago I already found the maximum armor limit of 350k boxes. Anything more results in game crashing errors when such a ship is selected in the ship overview window.

o Maximum ship size
Maximum armor also results in maximum ships sizes, so a ship of ~7.75 million tons is the last ship size that can have full 100 armor layers, and ~7.75 billion tons is the the largest ship/station that can ever be built.

o Maximum cargo storages
Lies safely around 1770 standard cargo bays, or ~22 million tons of mineral capacity. If you go over this it will show an error during ship design already. Not sure if it would crash like with the armor when you still went through with it, but better not risk that, right?

o There is also some limit intertwined with the maintenance storage bays that cannot be built anymore on larger ships. I don't know at which size it starts though, only that 35 million tons already disallow building those, while 3 million is still fine, so somewhere between that.

o Maximum cryogenic transports
Is surprisingly accurate at 30 million population. Huh. Like with the armor, it kind of seems artificially set up?
Causes the same error as with the cargo storages.
///Edit(6.8.14): Correction or update - I successfully tested 100m cryogenic storage in 6.43 (more is likely possible too), so either the issue had been fixed, or the error originated only indirectly from cryo, though it would be kind of unlikely to have that lying spot on by 30m.

o Maximum fuel
Now this is interesting. You can not have more than 430 Ultra Large Fuel Storages on your ship, which equals a total fuel capacity of 2,15 billion liters. Sounds much, but with strong engines it might not even get you 30 million kilometers far if installed on sufficiently large ships. This may narrow in the maximum viable ship size even closer, even though they would just be "uselessly short ranged" or "really really slow" if going above.
I have not tested though if you can add different fuel tanks in large quantities to that, so it stays open if you could possibly exceed this limit a bit further.(even if, there is a good chance that you don't end up with much more either before those flip you of too :P)

//Edit: As shown in by Erik Luken in comments below, the exact limit here is actually 2^31 = 2.14748 billion liters. This eliminates any suspicion about artificial limitation. It's just the way programs work. I have to correct that you can only have 429 Ultra Large Fuel Storages + some smaller ones. You cannot exceed this limit by any means, so no stapling of smaller fuel modules.
Interestingly this limit also applies to fleets, though here it doesn't render the ship or fleet unusable. You will simply see a number of error windows depending on how many times the total fleet fuel has broken the limitation. You can click through them and be fine. /Edit//

o Maximum sorium harvesters
As if not being able to have large enough fuel storages wasn't enough, even the ability of replenishing those is compromised. ;) The limit lies with ~15,330 modules, also know as 2,15 billion litres per year. ...Seems familiar? Yep, you can exactly harvest a 'one maximum fuel tank' in exactly one year. Coincidence? Or evil plotting?

o //Edit: Largest possible jump ship
I forgot because this limit is fairly obvious. Since the maximum jump engine efficiency is 25, and the maximum engine size is 1000, you can never build a functioning jump ship that is larger than 1.25 million tons. No problem for military, but narrows in commercials quite a bit. Also, if you like me are into rebuilding famous Scifi ships, you will see that for example a Galaxy-class (4.96 million tons) will not be possible to build with "warp engine", so you would have to search for other solutions. /Edit//
///Edit(12.8.14):As noted in posts below, civilian jump engines are 7.5 times more efficient and can thus support a maximum ship size of to 9.375m tons. This is about enough for a 200 cargo hold ship, or a slow 250 one.

o ///Edit(2.6.15):Maximum Ground Units on Colony
Following recent insights into the field of planetary logistics, it appears generals are of the stupid folk, and cannot for the life of it count beyond 500 or start to count double. The maximum possible amount of ground units on every singular body is apparently exactly 500 battalions. That means to stay safe one should not have more than 23 divisions stationed on a colony, as 24 would bring it up to 504, resulting in a number of click-through error windows and some battalions appearing double in the troop list. Note that it doesn't matter whether the troops are on ground, PDC or even orbiting ships.
The errors will also only appear on the colony's selection, or even just when the +PDC or +Ships tab is selected on the ground unit window of the overburdened colony, as only the active process of listing the troops is limited. So in theory you could still have an infinite troop haven by simply never selecting to show the orbiting or PDC stationed troops.(not wise to do for the main colony though, as it severely impairs colony window load-up)
/edit///

o ///Edit(2.7.15):Maximum Medals per officer
Since there is only space for 9 medals to be shown, having more than that will lead to a couple of identical error windows to appear upon every future officer selection. Since given medals cannot be retracted once given, it is advisable to watch not to overfill with honors and/or give unnecessary junk medals to some who are likely to have real achievements one day.
/edit///

o ///Edit(19.7.15):Soft Maximum Amount of Weapons on Ships
This is a soft maximum because it only results in some inconvenience, but no errors. When exceeding a certain amount of weapon entries, the "Combat Overview" window where you assign all weapons to fire controls won't be able to display them all anymore down in the summary section. The weapons still function, and you simply have to remember the assignment of ammunition of what goes beyond that maybe.
The limit could either be because of A: maximum weapon slots, B: maximum lines that can be displayed, or C: a maximum sign count for the window. I couldn't test out which one it is yet, but here are the stats to when I saw the summary became cut off: After 907 weapons, more couldn't be seen. That made for 986 lines, or (not exactly counted) approximately 61,100 signs.
Since the last one is so close to a power of 2 and the last line is cut off mid-line:
Off-Topic: show
(http://abload.de/img/unbenannt2fk93.jpg)
-----

...it seems save to assume that the real limit lies with 2^16=65536 signs.

Conclusion: Keep weapon names short, so more firepower can be cramped onto one ship.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_razz.gif)
/edit///

There will likely be other limits, but I only found those out of actual need. The question about those is, if they indeed are intentionally set up, then why those program bug like looking error messages. I mean, I would totally be fine with a "enough is enough you little powergamer :-)" popup note. ;D I know it would speak to me, and I had it coming, and then also know not to worry about game integrity.
However, if those limits are unintentional, then I am really marveling about what mechanics in the program background managed to create those symmetries by accident.(well, not "accident", as a mathematical function can only at max produce a "unexpeccident" for the short sighted humans or so)
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Erik L on January 21, 2014, 07:19:07 AM: The 2.15 billion limit is the limit of the variable, a signed 32-bit integer. So no evil plotting there. Actual limit is +2,147,483,647 or -2,147,483,648
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Charlie Beeler on January 21, 2014, 07:28:30 AM: I think Erik is correct. These appear to be variable definition limitations.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on January 21, 2014, 07:38:36 AM: Oh yeah, hah. I did check that with the armor one, but completly overlooked it here. So evidence is fading, strange are only armor and cryogenics now.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Wolfius on February 11, 2014, 07:56:09 AM: Another limit seems to relate to missile range. I don't know what it is exactly, but when trying to build a geosurvey drone missile capable of traveling to a particularly distant binary - 0.13 lightyears - it kept giving me errors. It was 6.21 so I don't recall what they were, but I ended up having to send a ship.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on May 21, 2014, 01:02:49 PM: I updated the first post a bit with the extra knowledge I gained in the last game.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on August 05, 2014, 07:00:33 PM: Update on cryogenic storage for newest version and newest design.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: MarcAFK on August 12, 2014, 05:03:00 AM: Quote from: Vandermeer on January 21, 2014, 06:32:13 AM

o //Edit: Largest possible jump ship
I forgot because this limit is fairly obvious. Since the maximum jump engine efficiency is 25, and the maximum engine size is 1000, you can never build a functioning jump ship that is larger than 1.25 million tons. No problem for military, but narrows in commercials quite a bit. Also, if you like me are into rebuilding famous Scifi ships, you will see that for example a Galaxy-class (4.96 million tons) will not be possible to build with "warp engine", so you would have to search for other solutions. /Edit//

I don't know how everybody else missed this but commercial jump engines support 7.6 times more weight per size. So a commercial jump capable ship can be maximum 9.735 million tons.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on August 12, 2014, 06:33:23 AM: Quote from: MarcAFK on August 12, 2014, 05:03:00 AM
I don't know how everybody else missed this but commercial jump engines support 7.6 times more weight per size. So a commercial jump capable ship can be maximum 9.735 million tons.
Ahh, yes, I wanted to add that two times already, but always forgot. The actual factor is 7.5 btw., it just gets rounded up sometimes.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on June 02, 2015, 07:44:07 AM: Added the newly found limitation on ground units, first reported by ExChairman.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on July 02, 2015, 06:58:34 AM: New limitation on officer medals. Should have been obvious, but only today I was brave enough to test the over-rewarding out in one fresh experimental game.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Prince of Space on July 04, 2015, 08:44:21 AM: Is the ground unit limit per race or per system body? Can NATO and USSR factions on a multi faction Earth each safely have 23 divisions? And what if my obscenely large garrison on an archeological dig site encounters a horde of robots that puts them over the limit?
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on July 04, 2015, 09:13:28 AM: The limit is restricted to only one faction and occurs on each of their colonies individually. That means you could have 23 divisions on earth, and another 23 divisions on moon and mars, or anywhere, but another faction on earth could have 23 divisions there too no problem.

Remember, the whole problem with this (error windows) only ever arises with the selection of a colony that has more than those 500 battalions active on ground. The real problem therefore is that aurora is incapable of listing more than 500 battalions, which means everything that is not part of the listing is safe. With that it is clear that no amount of enemy or npr troops has any say in this, because there is no option to list their details for the player. Also, you can kind of hide an infinite amount of troops by storing them in pdcs or ships in orbit, as you need to select them in dropdown to be listed. As long as you keep your fingers of the dropdown menu, you are free of errors and unlimited in troops even on a single colony.
(I strongly recommend not to do that on your capital though, as having too many troops is the single responsible issue that slows down the colony-window loadup in later game stages. ...I have moved on to store nearly all my troops on the moon by now for example, so they are close enough to get there in case of probable invasion, but wont obstruct the loadup for 99.9999% of the gametime. :) )

Then, it could even be possible to have multiple 23 division assemblies on ground on the same planet, as long as you have different colonies on it to store them in (through genetic mutation races for example). I have not tested this though, and the window might sum them all up, so it wouldn't work.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Prince of Space on July 05, 2015, 10:44:38 AM: Thinking about this, the most likely situation in which I, personally, would put 500 ground units at one population is one in which I am attempting to eliminate a conquered population via conscription into Forced Labor Units. Five hundred FLUs absorbs 5,000,000 population (for the bargain price of 20,000 BP) which isn't unlikely at all for a species' home planet. Looks like I'll have to set up franchises on neighboring moons in such a case.

Is the 500 battalion limit actually a 500 unit limit, so FLUs or Construction Brigades or Marine Companies each count as one? That sounds likely, given the nature of the limit as you described it.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on July 05, 2015, 11:15:54 AM: Yes, it is as you said, every entry counts to the limit.

Also, I too tried to decimate population with forced labor, but if I really want to do it, I only swear on the nuke bible (ehm..., replace Noah flood with radiation, and ark with bunker?). I always carry around ammunition worth a 40k radiation dose on every of my bigger front-line warships, and be sure to use them before the invasion is finished. Still takes many years for them to really die out, even at the -100% per year growth margin, but it actually happens at some point.
Title: Re: "The end of everything" studies
Post by: Vandermeer on July 19, 2015, 12:19:16 PM: Added a recommendation for a top margin on weapons per ship, as there is a display limit in the weapon and fire control summary window, which makes things a bit uncomfortable to handle if exceeded.