Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: NihilRex on June 07, 2014, 11:03:01 AM
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Low Level Fleet Training
All combat vessels will slowly gain fleet training points even if they are not involved in training exercises. A combat vessel is defined as one with PPV > 0. During fleet training exercises the annual rate of points gained is the Crew Training Skill of the Task Force Commander plus the operations bonus of the Operations Staff Officer. So if the task force commander has crew training of 200 and the operations officer has an ops bonus of 30%, annual crew training points would be 260. This is further increased by the grade bonus of the ship being trained. A ship has to gain 500 training points to have 100% fleet training skill.
For low level training, which is assumed to be gained through general experience and perhaps simulators, the annual training rate is 30. This is also modified by crew grade. The low level training is to counter the issue of long-serving ships responding just as slowly as newly constructed ships if neither has had any fleet training. In reality, the long-serving crew should have some advantage in that situation even without formal training. Of course, fleet training still be far more effective in terms of creating crews that quickly respond to orders in combat situations.
Id like to see this implemented slightly differently - I think a -%grade should result in a LOWERING of the ships training level by the same algorithm.
Something like
FTExercises = [(CST*(1+Opsbonus))]*[1+Grade]
Lowlevel = 0+[Grade*3]
This way, smegty captains will slowly erode good captains and admiral's efforts, just like real life. I also think LLT shouldnt happen while in orbit of a colony. Shoreleave and training dont mix very well.
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I considered having more rules about which ships received the low level training, such as only those that expended fuel for example. However, I decided to go with the more simple implementation for two reasons.
1) Whatever rule I come up with could probably be exploited, such as moving all ships a little every turn, and I didn't want players micromanaging that on the basis they would be suffering a disadvantage if they didn't. With this implementation, you don't need to worry about it - it happens gradually over time. You could explain it away with training simulators on the ships.
2) There would be an extra performance hit if I have to monitor and record what every ship does every increment on order to decide which ones receive the training.
With regard to the idea about weak commanders reducing training. Unfortunately that would also lead to micromanagement because players would want to ensure the commanders that could reduce training were not assigned to ships where training made a difference.
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1) I was thinking that LLT would just check the in orbit of box, and not apply if the ship was in orbit of a colony.
2) Yeah, I could see that. How about LLT only applies if TF Training is less than 10x grade? So bogstandard 0%s give nothing, but an 8% auto trains his crew to 80%, and 10%+ will eventually reach 100?
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As someone who never manages his officers (only administrators), to the point that I sometimes forget to assigned the task force commander, while also sending my forces for training (resulting in a lot of wasted time) I'm all for the low level training idea - the simple version made by Steve. There is a place for realism and complexity, but not in this case, at least not for me, as TF training is not important enough to slow down my game, by both higher CPU usage and more micromanagement.
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Since this thread started the discussion on v6.50 changes, I've hijacked it (by changing the subject name) and stickied it. Please discuss Steve's changes here rather than opening new threads - it'll keep the thread spam in Mechanics down.
John
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Speaking of task force training and exploits: Have you considered changing the speed while TF training to 25% of the fastest ship in a group, with the TF training aborting/failing if the target speed is faster than the slowest group member?
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Does this low level training also works for ships in hangars? Ships under overhaul or shoreleave?
The main change to training I would like to see is Carriers requiring some small amount of extra fuel to train their parasite fighters.
TF Training is a good chance to spot errors in design so even if you risk a bit more micromanagement this mechanic would also provide a warning sign if you design a Carrier that is bringing to little fuel to launch a successful strike.
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This will make PDC-based fighters so much more attractive to me, as I will no longer have to have a "training carrier" with no other purpose.
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I think this should bennies to something like a "Combat Compute" or "Tactical Simulator" component tha levels up with tech. Basically it's the ship AI getting smarter even in the crew decides to play XBox all day instead of training.
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Wait in modern warfare playing X-box is training! Without skill on the controller you cant realy fly a drone!
edit: To say something substantial, the new training is a nice thing. I agree with shipright but would go so far and say a tech that would improve overall training and trainingtime would be nice.
Could be placed under the Logistics category and justified with better computers, communications, simulations, heck even best practices learnt over the years etc.
Will it also apply to PDCs?
Also steve will you continue your current campaign with these changes or will there be a new one?
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Also steve will you continue your current campaign with these changes or will there be a new one?
Continuing at the moment. I have a very long update to post but just haven't got around to it yet.
Off to the Cotswolds next week for vacation then back home for 10 days then 12 nights in Vegas for another vacation so not much will happen with Aurora in the next month :)
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Could you please please please sort some of the slow down that happens in the game I realise the limitations are the language you are coding in but im sure there is some streamlining that could be done here and there. I Think the Gameplay is pretty spot on for now and some user experience tweaks could be made.
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A minor adjustment to the mechanics of naming parts in the 'Create Research Project'... Would it be possible to have a check box to lock the 'building company' so you can enter a name and lock it to the part type? For example, so all your active sensors are 'Yoyodyne Scantech' but all your Engines are 'General Atomics' without having to type it in every time you open the window?
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if i set "NPR can create NPR" to zero, it will result in an empty universe since the AI will still explore but find nothing?
is it possible to set another creation chance once a human player enters a system (that does not contain a colony) for the first time (i guess this information is not tracked yet)? this chance could be the difference between human and NPR chance, to result in about the same chance (though the calculation is not correct from a statistical point of view) for creating NPRs, but only when it matters for me.
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if i set "NPR can create NPR" to zero, it will result in an empty universe since the AI will still explore but find nothing?
is it possible to set another creation chance once a human player enters a system (that does not contain a colony) for the first time (i guess this information is not tracked yet)? this chance could be the difference between human and NPR chance, to result in about the same chance (though the calculation is not correct from a statistical point of view) for creating NPRs, but only when it matters for me.
Seconding this request. Was about to suggest the same myself since I share the concern.
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if i set "NPR can create NPR" to zero, it will result in an empty universe since the AI will still explore but find nothing?
is it possible to set another creation chance once a human player enters a system (that does not contain a colony) for the first time (i guess this information is not tracked yet)? this chance could be the difference between human and NPR chance, to result in about the same chance (though the calculation is not correct from a statistical point of view) for creating NPRs, but only when it matters for me.
There are separate human player and NPR creation chances for new system generation. You can set either or both to zero. Once an NPR enters a system and there is no generation of an NPR, you cannot recalculate that once a human player enters. Until a system is generated, it doesn't exist and has no impact on the game. Suddenly creating a new NPR in a system that has been empty for several years could have a significant and unrealistic effect on the game.
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Can the NPR difficulty mirror the human one please?
Ian
Edit How do you get NPRs to use the new tech they research?
Double Edit. Why do NPRs research compressed fuel storage system? They don't even use the stuff!
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Whould it be possible to use a system for fleet training where the resting point for fleet training is like 80% for passive training. Above that you need to actively train the fleet and if it is not actively training it should start to fall back to around 80% depending in the same factors that you use for increasing it.
The reason being that fleet training should not be a permanent value and fleets should need active training or experience to stay in shape.
I believe a similar mechanic would work for ship experience too, which would make the basic training level of crew more important. Perhaps crew need to be replaced once in a while so a certain amount of crew is replaced on ships while they are stationed at a base with 10.000 or more population. Let's say you replace crew quicker the more of the ships Deployment time you have used up. The exact numbers of crew replaced when resting and/or fresh would be up to balancing. Experience on ships should perhaps increase quicker during fleet training and combat to balance the drop when you replace crew on the ships.
Both of these features are something I would really like to have from a realism point of view.
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Can the NPR difficulty mirror the human one please?
Ian
Edit How do you get NPRs to use the new tech they research?
Double Edit. Why do NPRs research compressed fuel storage system? They don't even use the stuff!
Not sure what you mean about difficulty.
There are trigger techs that cause the NPR to redesign one or more of their existing ships or missiles, etc.
Sounds like a bug. I need to exclude NPRs from researching ruin-only tech.
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One thing that would be good would be a turn over of crew both in ships and your pool. As it stands now you get crew points adding up to the point where it is no longer an issue. If you have a non-NT start you really get a lot of crew points as you have years before your fleet reaches a fairly good size. It is like income, non-NT starts should have crew and income generation really reduced (10% of normal or something).
I'd suggest that 10% of your current pool is removed each year at that start of the year. For further "realism" I would also suggest that once a year that 25% of the ships crew is exchanged with 60% of that number going back to the pool and 40% vanishing (retiring). This will mean that ships crew grades won't always stay at maximum once achieved.
example: Current Crewbeing Pool: 10,000 (start of year 1 000 is removed from pool) so it drops to 9 000.
example: Ship has crew of 200. Start of year 50 crew are removed from ship and replaced by 50 skill 0 crew. 20 of the high skilled crew are retired, and 30 are returned to the crewbeing pool.
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I'd suggest that 10% of your current pool is removed each year at that start of the year. For further "realism" I would also suggest that once a year that 25% of the ships crew is exchanged with 60% of that number going back to the pool and 40% vanishing (retiring). This will mean that ships crew grades won't always stay at maximum once achieved.
I love the idea, and it would add alot of realism.
I thought 10% sounded a bit high at first, but after running some calculations and comparing to real military re-enlistment rates it's quite generous due to only effecting undeployed crew basically on the waiting list, while real militaries like the US has similar amounts retiring every year. (approx 64% average re-enlist roughly every 4 year = 10.6% total retirement per year for everyone including those deployed ).
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Not sure what you mean about difficulty.
Sorry I should have said the difficulty modifier (%) on the game details page. My experience in my current game suggests NPR discovered NPRs are either lower tech or equal, not higher. It can make for a long drawn-out NPR conflict.
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Sorry I should have said the difficulty modifier (%) on the game details page. My experience in my current game suggests NPR discovered NPRs are either lower tech or equal, not higher. It can make for a long drawn-out NPR conflict.
All NPR generation is based on the status of player races in the game, not the specific race that discovers the NPR.
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I love the idea, and it would add alot of realism.
I thought 10% sounded a bit high at first, but after running some calculations and comparing to real military re-enlistment rates it's quite generous due to only effecting undeployed crew basically on the waiting list, while real militaries like the US has similar amounts retiring every year. (approx 64% average re-enlist roughly every 4 year = 10. 6% total retirement per year for everyone including those deployed ).
I think this is great idea, although we should be careful not to model it too closely to current (as in Earth) organization. Think of of those poor auxiliaries of the Roman army that had to serve for a minimum of 25 years!
You can also picture a caste-based society where you will be a soldier for life, starting as an apprentice gunners assistant, working his way up to master gunner, and, once age start setting in, getting relegated to guarding the ships cleaning cupboard.
Or a feudal-type society where the CO of the ship bring his own crew from his estate and holdings. The crew will be a mix of military professionals (pilots, marines, gunners) and former civilians (engineers, cooks, medical professionals)
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Back to the NPR growth/game slow down issue, I had another thought.
For the invaders, I recommend setting it so if they do show up, they show up in a randomly determined system already surveyed by the player. There is no use having a rampaging set of invaders if all they are doing is trashing NPR's that the player will never get to see.
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The NPR generation difficult could be like this.
Imagine player generation value is 50% and NPR one is 10%
In this case when a NPR discover a new system the chance of a npr being generated is:
[ (50* how close player is from the system) + (10* how close npr is from the system {well this will be 100%} ) / (how close player is to system + how close npr is to system) ]
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The NPR generation difficult could be like this.
Imagine player generation value is 50% and NPR one is 10%
In this case when a NPR discover a new system the chance of a npr being generated is:
[ (50* how close player is from the system) + (10* how close npr is from the system {well this will be 100%} ) / (how close player is to system + how close npr is to system) ]
The JPs are not pregenerated, so you don't know in advance how far the player is away. You could be right behind the next JP you explore.
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The JPs are not pregenerated, so you don't know in advance how far the player is away. You could be right behind the next JP you explore.
So, until the NPR and Players have a jump link, there are no NPR generated spoilers. Sounds good.
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So, until the NPR and Players have a jump link, there are no NPR generated spoilers. Sounds good.
Once the NPRs start exploring, they can spawn the spoilers.
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Very much liking the planned changes so far. The sorting of the task force stacks will save me a lot of time, because I liked putting them in order, and to date that was only possible by shoving around fleets and/or renaming them.
The changes to how NPR work in their anonymity also seem to be a great revolution that prevents the self-replicating slowdown, and then deals with silent battles in a way I always wished to be possible (accuracy is not important for me for invisible fights). I guess in my next game I will wait for 6.5 to test out how they fare with option 3 - limitless detection.
Now, if only there was some sort of control mechanic for the civils that so many people have asked about. :)
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In relation to the change of boat bays and flight crew quarters... are there any plans to expand on the whole hangar ship mechanics in the game?
I mean, different modules for launch and/or recovery of craft and maintenance and storage of internal craft and a way to separate capacity from maximum size of crafts.
I think this would be a good addition to the current rule set. Sure... you can role-play this aspect if you like, but that is not the same thing.
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In relation to the change of boat bays and flight crew quarters... are there any plans to expand on the whole hangar ship mechanics in the game?
I mean, different modules for launch and/or recovery of craft and maintenance and storage of internal craft and a way to separate capacity from maximum size of crafts.
I think this would be a good addition to the current rule set. Sure... you can role-play this aspect if you like, but that is not the same thing.
Interesting suggestion. I can imagine 3 types of components that could be involved here:
Launch bay - Limits the Maximum size of craft you can launch and recover as well as frequency, designed component.
techs similar to missile launchers specify launch cycle time scaling with ship size
Component mass is X% of maximum ship * amount of ships that can be launched per cycle.
Not required ( for example for ambulance/recovery type craft ) but without it each craft will take 1 hour to launch.
Example: A launch bay for 200 ton fighter with 67% efficiency may be 300 ton per fighter for a total of 900 ton to launch/recover 3 fighters each cycle.
Maintenance hangar - Limits size capacity and frequency of refueling, repairing and rearming of crafts, designed component. Has a maximum size similar to Launch bays and throughput limits on how many ships can be refueled, repaired and rearmed at the same time.
Mechanic change - Refueling now takes time ( scaling with total mass of ship and % of mass that is dedicated to fuel-tanks ).
Storage hangar - Plain hangars that allow storage of combat ready craft up to 100% of it's mass capacity in tons, or disassembled craft up to 200% of it's mass capacity in tons ( for transit only, not possible to operate in combat )
Mechanic change: Storage hangars don't add any mass until they are loaded with crafts. ( Included if fuel also dynamically change mass of ship )
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I like the idea of having a cockpit instead of using tiny crew quarters. However, I think my current fighter design (which just fits in a Small Boat Bay ;D) would only save about 2.5% mass by using it. Are there plans in the works to increase the granularity of small components? Otherwise, the only thing I can squeeze in is one more fighter per carrier :(
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Interesting suggestion. I can imagine 3 types of components that could be involved here:
Launch bay - Limits the Maximum size of craft you can launch and recover as well as frequency, designed component.
techs similar to missile launchers specify launch cycle time scaling with ship size
Component mass is X% of maximum ship * amount of ships that can be launched per cycle.
Not required ( for example for ambulance/recovery type craft ) but without it each craft will take 1 hour to launch.
Example: A launch bay for 200 ton fighter with 67% efficiency may be 300 ton per fighter for a total of 900 ton to launch/recover 3 fighters each cycle.
Maintenance hangar - Limits size capacity and frequency of refueling, repairing and rearming of crafts, designed component. Has a maximum size similar to Launch bays and throughput limits on how many ships can be refueled, repaired and rearmed at the same time.
Mechanic change - Refueling now takes time ( scaling with total mass of ship and % of mass that is dedicated to fuel-tanks ).
Storage hangar - Plain hangars that allow storage of combat ready craft up to 100% of it's mass capacity in tons, or disassembled craft up to 200% of it's mass capacity in tons ( for transit only, not possible to operate in combat )
Mechanic change: Storage hangars don't add any mass until they are loaded with crafts. ( Included if fuel also dynamically change mass of ship )
I like most of this... I would also like to see spare fighter crew have an impact on the frequency of which fighters and other crafts can operate. Although crafts in aurora are pretty large so most will probably be able to accommodate most necessities in forms of entertainment and comfortable relaxing areas for crew stress to be relieved.
In comparison real fighter air-planes for example might have a theoretical return rate of 30-40min while in practice its more like 2-6 hours even during intense air campaigns. I might think that advanced computing and communication devices will make mission depbrief and participation easier in a future like Aurora so perhaps it's a moot point.
I like the idea of having a cockpit instead of using tiny crew quarters. However, I think my current fighter design (which just fits in a Small Boat Bay ;D) would only save about 2.5% mass by using it. Are there plans in the works to increase the granularity of small components? Otherwise, the only thing I can squeeze in is one more fighter per carrier :(
The problem I see is that when the term "fighter" is used people will tend to think of them as jet fighters or a X-Wing from Star Wars or something. Small combat craft in Aurora is no such thing. They are more like a small patrol ship with a large ramp of anti-ship missiles... like this...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg)
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The problem I see is that when the term "fighter" is used people will tend to think of them as jet fighters or a X-Wing from Star Wars or something. Small combat craft in Aurora is no such thing. They are more like a small patrol ship with a large ramp of anti-ship missiles... like this...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg)
But there are many different Sci-Fi universes where the fighters are more like Aurora's fighters. There is a book series I read (don't remember the name off the top of my head) where the fighters are 100ft long, around 50ft wide, and 15ft high (can't remember if the width is correct), and have 1-3 crew each.
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There is a book series I read (don't remember the name off the top of my head) where the fighters are 100ft long, around 50ft wide, and 15ft high (can't remember if the width is correct), and have 1-3 crew each.
F-15 is 63'9" long 42'10" wide and 18'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
Su-27 is 72' long 48'3" wide and 19'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
or for a more modern twist
F-22 is 62'1" long 44'6" wide and 16'8" high, with a crew of 1
hell even the Joke Strike Fighter (F-35) is 50'6" long, 35' wide and 14'2" high, with a crew of 1
not really that different
People really seem to underestimate the size of Jet fighters
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The problem I see is that when the term "fighter" is used people will tend to think of them as jet fighters or a X-Wing from Star Wars or something. Small combat craft in Aurora is no such thing. They are more like a small patrol ship with a large ramp of anti-ship missiles... like this...
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Finnish_Rauma-class_missile_boat_FNS_Naantali_%28PTG_73%29.jpg)
I thought they were between the size mass of the Space Shuttle and 747s
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But there are many different Sci-Fi universes where the fighters are more like Aurora's fighters. There is a book series I read (don't remember the name off the top of my head) where the fighters are 100ft long, around 50ft wide, and 15ft high (can't remember if the width is correct), and have 1-3 crew each.
Yes that is true... a 250t Aurora "fighter" probably has something like those parameters which is a pretty big ship if you ask me, especially of you have allot of them inside the hangar of a mother ship. Most "fighters" in aurora has the need to be in space for a couple of days so they probably has small bunkers for the crew to sleep and I would guess that in real terms they would (should) carry extra crew on longer missions as well.
There size is at lest equivalent to modern missile boats, their fuel are usually for a couple of days and intended deployment time is .1 month so about three days. That is pretty similar to a modern missile boat as well. Of course Aurora "fighters" have less crew requirement since they are fully automated with all (or most) system internal to the ship.
F-15 is 63'9" long 42'10" wide and 18'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
Su-27 is 72' long 48'3" wide and 19'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
or for a more modern twist
F-22 is 62'1" long 44'6" wide and 16'8" high, with a crew of 1
hell even the Joke Strike Fighter (F-35) is 50'6" long, 35' wide and 14'2" high, with a crew of 1
not really that different
People really seem to underestimate the size of Jet fighters
That is not even near a planes actual volume because of the wings and tail such planes seem big when in fact they are very slim and loaded weight in the neighbourhood of 20 ton. While a Missile Boat would weigh about 250t and have a size of say 160*30*15 feet or something with much less slim and flimsy parts... ;)
Planes operates in hours while ships operate in days, that is a completely different set if circumstances. Small scout ships in Aurora could even operate in weeks or months at a time.
So what I initially meant is that the term "fighters" in aurora is more like a modern day missile boat that act and operate in days and not hours. Sure.... really late game fighters might often operate in less time because their speed is so high, but they can still be deployed on longer missions if need be since their size make that possible.
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I thought they were between the size mass of the Space Shuttle and 747s
I suppose you mean the Space Shuttles "Orbiter" which is the part that goes into space and land again. This craft is about 70t in empty weight and has a maximum landing weight at about 100t. So... a fair bit smaller than a fighter in Aurora.
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I don't (currently) have any plans for a major overhaul of hangars. The changes are because I am playing a new campaign at the moment and I decided to equip ships with 'lifeboats'. Small teaser for when I finally get around to posting part 1:
The Kyumei Boto class Lifeboat was the result of High Swordsman Takagi’s desire to improve the survivability of Rigellian crews. With a size of only 120 tons, the Kyumei Boto would be hard for hostile forces to detect while its speed of 8750 km/s would allow a speedy exit from the area of conflict. Even with its small size and high speed, the life boat could still carry up to two hundred crew members within its emergency cryogenic transport module and had a range of more than thirteen billion kilometres. However, it lacked a jump drive so the Kyumei Boto would have to remain within the same system unless a jump gate or a jump-capable vessel was available.
Kyumei Boto class Lifeboat 120 tons 1 Crew 20.5 BP TCS 2.4 TH 21 EM 0
8750 km/s Armour 1-2 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 24% IFR 0.3% 1YR 1 5YR 19 Max Repair 10.5 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 12 months Spare Berths 1
Cryogenic Berths 200
FD-21 Lifeboat Fusion Drive (1) Power 21 Fuel Use 55.92% Signature 21 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres Range 13.4 billion km (17 days at full power)
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Just because its a lifeboat and meant to last for a while I would put a fighter engineering just for the RP, and to get it at 125tons exactly (I have OCD about stuff like that). Also you don't want your cyropods bursting open and spilling out all their contents of frozen beef into space due to maintenance failure, that would be embarrassing.
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Just because its a lifeboat and meant to last for a while I would put a fighter engineering just for the RP, and to get it at 125tons exactly (I have OCD about stuff like that). Also you don't want your cyropods bursting open and spilling out all their contents of frozen beef into space due to maintenance failure, that would be embarrassing.
Smallest I have at the moment is Engineering Section - Small (which is 25 tons). Maybe for future versions.
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....High Swordsman Takagi’s desire to improve the survivability of Rigellian crews...
This is AWESOME!!!
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This is AWESOME!!!
You can blame Beersatron - it was his idea :)
Quiet start for once but foundation is there for a decent campaign.
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Good news about pre-fab PDCs not requiring minerals anymore. While I usually love micromanagement, it does get overwhelming with Aurora every now and then. This change will certainly make it easier to plop PDCs down on remote locations even if you do still need quite a number of Construction Brigades on site.
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^ would it be possible to transfer crew (and officers) off of a ship, onto a lifeboat. To save some of them? I know i've kept extremely fast rescue shuttles, before(500-1000t, 80% engine, the rest fuel and a bit of extra crew space.)
But those are reactionary, and only come out from my carrier, after the ship in question is going down.
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How about an "Abandon ship" button? Use it before self destruct (is there a self destruct? I want to be able to destroy anything at minimum range with my soon-to-be-wreck)
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How about an "Abandon ship" button? Use it before self destruct (is there a self destruct? I want to be able to destroy anything at minimum range with my soon-to-be-wreck)
There already is an abandon ship button on the damage control tab of the Ship window. At the moment it doesn't transfer crew to lifeboats but that is a good idea.
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The NPR changes alone are extremely exciting. I wonder what else you can cook up, because so far it's looking great as always!
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Finally, at long last, no more minerals needed to assembly prefabricated PDC. That alone is worth a major change in version number XD
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Steve can you use a similar range rule for existing NPR ships as the one you are implementing for the fighters?
i.e. if the ship's target or destination is more than 50 percent of their theoretical fuel distance then they can not approach it without routing to a tanker or colony? The fuel doesn't necessarily need to exist on the colony but it could then lead to having NPR fuel dumps as well the existing civilian mining centers. Also, it might slow down the NPR's never-ending-surveying.
Apparently having the words fuel dumps within single quotes was stopping me from posting.
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Steve can you use a similar range rule for existing NPR ships as the one you are implementing for the fighters?
i.e. if the ship's target or destination is more than 50 percent of their theoretical fuel distance then they can not approach it without routing to a tanker or colony? The fuel doesn't necessarily need to exist on the colony but it could then lead to having NPR fuel dumps as well the existing civilian mining centers. Also, it might slow down the NPR's never-ending-surveying.
It's not really the same. Fighters are going point to point within a single system. Tracking destinations across multiple systems is a lot more difficult (and a lot more performance intensive) as I would have to check multiple possible routes with exact distances, especially as those destinations are often moving. It would actually be easier just to track NPR fuel and give them conditional fuel orders. The problem of course is that the human brain is much better than a computer in terms of setting up a logistic network to anticipate future needs.
The fighter rule is just to create more realistic fighter ops - not as a real substitute for tracking fuel. To slow down surveying, I have placed a limit on the number of NPR survey ships (only 3 or 4 I think). I am also looking at limiting different NPRs to exploring only within a certain number of systems of their home world.
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Fighters for NPRs seem like a cool addition, although I would really appreciate some improved fire control options at Task force level, as manually rotating through 50 something targets is not really fun.
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It's not really the same. Fighters are going point to point within a single system. Tracking destinations across multiple systems is a lot more difficult (and a lot more performance intensive) as I would have to check multiple possible routes with exact distances, especially as those destinations are often moving. It would actually be easier just to track NPR fuel and give them conditional fuel orders. The problem of course is that the human brain is much better than a computer in terms of setting up a logistic network to anticipate future needs.
The fighter rule is just to create more realistic fighter ops - not as a real substitute for tracking fuel. To slow down surveying, I have placed a limit on the number of NPR survey ships (only 3 or 4 I think). I am also looking at limiting different NPRs to exploring only within a certain number of systems of their home world.
NPR FAC strikes/ops from a body are pretty similar to Carrier ops I think in that they could also have range limitation within same system.
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Fighters for NPRs seem like a cool addition, although I would really appreciate some improved fire control options at Task force level, as manually rotating through 50 something targets is not really fun.
Do you use the Multiple Targets option in the F8 Combat window?
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It was a while ago, I think I did, I tried pretty much everything as I was desperate. It didn't cycle if I recall, it always selected the first few. Also multiple identical fire controls did have to be set up separately. I posted about it in suggestions at the time, and suggested a unified battle control window with useful autofire.
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Steve can you use a similar range rule for existing NPR ships as the one you are implementing for the fighters?
It's not really the same. Fighters are going point to point within a single system. Tracking destinations across multiple systems is a lot more difficult (and a lot more performance intensive) as I would have to check multiple possible routes with exact distances, especially as those destinations are often moving.
Could we have NPR ships just teleport fuel every construction cycle from a base or tanker in the system they are in instead? That way the NPR would have a network of fuel dumps to attack, but there would be no need to have the ships search for a tanker and fly to it.
PS: Will NPRs create PDC hangers or only carriers?
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NPR's do not, to my knowledge, build PDCs at all so unless that is changing, they will only build carriers. In any case, a very exciting change!
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Could we have NPR ships just teleport fuel every construction cycle from a base or tanker in the system they are in instead? That way the NPR would have a network of fuel dumps to attack, but there would be no need to have the ships search for a tanker and fly to it.
PS: Will NPRs create PDC hangers or only carriers?
NPRs managing fuel is an overhead that doesn't really add to game play. You wouldn't be able to detect fuel dumps because they wouldn't have a population signature (just like yours don't) and it would be an performance overhead for NPRs to manage fuel for all ships and work out where to put fuel dumps (plus the time investment for me to write and test the code). As a player, your choices don't really change very much because NPRs are using fuel. If I spend my (currently limited) time adding features such as NPR carriers instead, they will add much more interest and choices to the game. Because of time constraints, I have to look at what time investment would produce the most fun additions to game play.
Currently NPRs only produce carriers. I might add a CV base at some point to make planetary assaults a little more interesting :)
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So with the NPR carriers, would I be correct in assuming if you manage to board one that still has fighters in it's hangers you would also gain control of the fighters in the hangers.
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So with the NPR carriers, would I be correct in assuming if you manage to board one that still has fighters in it's hangers you would also gain control of the fighters in the hangers.
Yes, that's correct. Good luck though on the fighters still being in the hangars if you are close enough to board one :).
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Will there ever be an update to... fix, pregenerated ship and module designs (assuming that box is checked) sometimes they arent bad, but sometimes it comes up with some pretty terrible ship designs. It comes to mind because I dunno what npr fighters will look like, but fighters can god bad really fast when designed wrong.
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Will there ever be an update to... fix, pregenerated ship and module designs (assuming that box is checked) sometimes they arent bad, but sometimes it comes up with some pretty terrible ship designs. It comes to mind because I dunno what npr fighters will look like, but fighters can god bad really fast when designed wrong.
If you see a specific issue with the design, please let me know. Without knowing what is wrong with the designs, I won't be able to fix the appropriate part of the design code.
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As long as NPRs wont build dozens of Carriers each launching 100 useless 100t mini-fighters shooting one AMM each I am happy, because by the gods we don't need that much micromanagement to try to kill-interrogate-salvage them all :)
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As long as NPRs wont build dozens of Carriers each launching 100 useless 100t mini-fighters shooting one AMM each I am happy, because by the gods we don't need that much micromanagement to try to kill-interrogate-salvage them all :)
Wouldn't default orders help with automation a bit?
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F-15 is 63'9" long 42'10" wide and 18'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
Su-27 is 72' long 48'3" wide and 19'6" high, with a crew of 1-2
or for a more modern twist
F-22 is 62'1" long 44'6" wide and 16'8" high, with a crew of 1
hell even the Joke Strike Fighter (F-35) is 50'6" long, 35' wide and 14'2" high, with a crew of 1
not really that different
People really seem to underestimate the size of Jet fighters
JAS 39 Griffon has a length of about 47 feet, wide 28 feet and a height of 15 feet, 1 crew.
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We don't actually know how large auroran ships are, you should have mentioned the tonnages, as I recall:
A-10 Warthog 23t
F-18 24t
F-15 30t
CH-53 Sea stallion 33t
F-22 Raptor 38t
F-111 45t
YF-12 63 t
Sr- 71 Blackbird 78 t
Space shuttle 110 tons (I'm not counting the external tanks or solid rocket boosters)
B2 Spirit 170t
B1 Lancer 216t
B52 Stratofortress 220t
C5 Galaxy 380t
A380 590t
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We don't actually know how large auroran ships are, you should have mentioned the tonnages, as I recall:
That is a good point. Aurora fighters are generally 250-500 ton, 10 times more mass then the real counterparts.
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Warships are of course more dense and compact than aircraft, especially considering armouring, a higher surface area requires more weight for a certain depth of armour, but perhaps since aurora fighters generally aren't armoured much, they might be designed more like aircraft in order to get the maximum quantity of ordinance into the design.
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That is a good point. Aurora fighters are generally 250-500 ton, 10 times more mass then the real counterparts.
In reality the "mass" value of the ship is misleading. The ships are of some specific size given by their TCS (target cross section) which is then translated into a mass of 50 tonnes per point of TCS for a game convention. The TCS though is a measure of volume (well specifically of cross section) not mass. How heavy an aurora ship is in reality is very hard to say, but they are probably considerably more massive then their 50 tonne per TCS point indicates. Water is 1 tonne the cubic meter and metals are inevitably more dense then that.
It all really depends on what cross section the TCS indicates. But 50 tonnes of water is 50 m3 and that is essentially a 3.7 m on a side cube...nearly 10 m2 target cross section, if you consider it made of solid aluminum it would be only 18.5 m3 and that is a cube 2.6 m on the side or 8 m2 cross section. In reality the TCS will vary with the component in question. One way to look at the large size of comerical ships is to just consider they are mostly empty space where as a warship is mostly "not empty space" but is composed of high density components (reactors, power distribution systems, electronics, cooling systems, armour, ordinance, massive launch systems, optical or particle beamlines with shielding, etc). The warship may mass considerably more than the comerical ship but it will be physically significantly smaller. Even more so for things like FACs where the crew space may be very minimal and the FAC has a very high effective density, so it could be reasonably enough not that large physically.
In Aurora a fighter is size 4-10, what that means in terms of mass is anyones guess. The 50 tonnes is just a number tossed out as a convention you can't use it to compare to a real world object. To do that you need to know the average density of an Aurora vessel. And since people argue that duranium isn't a metal I wish you luck on coming up with a number that would be agreed on. And even worse the TCS is most likely an "effective average target cross section."
I hope this makes sense.
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I always thought GRAVITATIONAL sensors measured mass or gravitational disturbance, not cross section area. But what do I know :) most technobabble is left to your own fantasy/imaginagion anyways so doesnt really matter.
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JAS 39 Griffon has a length of about 47 feet, wide 28 feet and a height of 15 feet, 1 crew.
Wow! I didn't realise the Gripen was so small it's even smaller than even the Rafale (50.1' 35.4' wingspan, 17.5' height), which was my yardstick for small fighters
the only smaller 4th Gen fighter I could find was the Indian Tejas, and of course all the 5th Gen ones are much bigger I think the Chinese J-20 wins there as big bird at 66.8' long 44.2' wide and 14.7' high.
*derail over* (er again)
though to be honest I've always taken the Mass figures in Aurora to be Displacement rather than actual Mass, but that's probably just too much Traveller
Matt
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Through extremely bad estimates it looks like an F22 would displace something like 70-100 tons of water, so I would have to assume that in aurora most fighters I listed down there would have 2-3 times the weight in aurora. A commercial airliner probably would displace even more considering it's not weighed down quite as much as a military jet.
EDIT: also this derail's gone on a bit long into the changelog discussion, I swear I'm done, there should be no need to move to a new thread :P
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I always thought GRAVITATIONAL sensors measured mass or gravitational disturbance, not cross section area. But what do I know :) most technobabble is left to your own fantasy/imaginagion anyways so doesnt really matter.
TCS which determines your sensors ability to resolve the target is "target cross section" as far as I am aware and well nothing says what the heck the sensors are.
That 1 HS = 50 m3 = 50 tonnes is a convention. An airplane or tank or ship in the real world has a density defined by its materials and so its mass varies significantly with its size...compare a warship's mass to an equal sized tanker. In aurora this is not the case so you can't really compare a 250 tonne aurora fighter to a modern jet fighter or the space shuttle. I would not even begin to guess the true size of an aurora ship. The likelyhood is that if the volume is accurate the mass varies considerably from what you get by assuming a density of water.
And my point was not about technobabble but about comparing Aurora to the real world, which in terms of the sizes of ships is on very shaky ground.
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I might be pretty stupid but thrust on ships are measured against its printed mass. So in my opinion the volume of the ships probably don't matter at all and active scanning are rather measuring the disturbance of a ships mass in space not it's physical shape.
TCS is more or less just a factor of it's mass and the wording Target Cross Section are just a leftover from how current radar detect objects. An active scanner detect curvatures in space and not a ships actual volume.
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If TN active sensors work by gravitational disturbance then you would assume that mass effects the amount of disturbance, and hence the footprint that shows up on the sensor, I'll assume that cross section refers to that. Though footprint might make more sensem I like the term cross section more.
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To be honest I don't care that much whichever way it is... but since a ships speed is directly proportional to the engines power and mass I would assume that scanners searches for mass rather than volume. It also seem more realistic that scanners and communication work with infinite speed when measuring or manipulating mass rather than detecting the volume of an object.
You can probably come up with any technobable whichever way you want though... ;)
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The ships speed is proportional to the HS of the ship not the "mass" of the ship. The size of the ship determines it speed. A 100 HS ship with x engine power moves at speed whatever. Mass doesn't come into play until you take 1 HS = 50 tonnes. And will 1 HS = 50 tonnes all the time, unlikely. Since 1 HS of fuel storage isn't going to mass the same as 1 HS of reactor.
BUT my point was not about the technobabble, people here seem to think microwaves can go through metal for crying out loud. Gravity is not faster than light last time I checked as another point. My point was that you can't make any sort of sensible comparison between say the "mass" of an Aurora fighter and a modern jet/spaceshuttle/APC/PT boat or whatever. You are comparing something that is determined by a convention to something that is determined by M = V*D.
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Ok, what I meant was that it is more logical for engine power to be RELATED to a ships mass than its volume or size. Therefore my take on it that the mass of the ship is correct but the volume can vary.
One good example might be the hangar that has a mass of 1050 tonnes and and can store up to 1000 tonnes of craft. I take it that it literally means 1000t of craft but most craft stored need extra space for service and such and so these craft are much more compact in their design to fit into that area and 1050 tonnes of hangar can be pretty huge. But then you get in trouble when you figure out how much armour a ship has because that is also calculated on the ships HS so in any way you twist and turn it can never be right.
My comment on gravity was in relation to how you can sense it. The game mechanic act as if sensors and communications are instant and that was only what I meant by feeling the gravitation of mass in an instant as a future technology versus sending out a pulse to scan a body of volume.
And as I said... you can view it any way you wish... I doubt there is a correct way of viewing it. Engine power might represent an energy field surrounding or warping space around the ship which might have more to do with its size than mass, you can make it mean pretty much anything. ;)
As far as I know and if I remember correctly HS is neither Mass or Volume according to Steve. It is something in between, a way to fit the pieces in to the puzzle so to speak.
Personally I would prefer if all equipment had both a mass and volume trait instead of HS. In this way a ships size versus mass could give ships different traits. Such as smaller ship being able to handle faster speeds better becasue they will not tend to break appart when applying thrusters to turn around or simply accelerate (if that is what they do). There could also be benefits and drawbacks of size versus weight ratio on ships.
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I cannot wait for the new update *hibbel*. Was dreaming so long for enemies to have carriers, and now, out of the blue, it suddenly becomes reality, and all that together with a bunch of other really gameplay improving measures. 6.5 should be 7 maybe. 8)
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Hey, is there any ETA on this? I love the changes, actually, game slowdown caused by NPRs and no enemy fighters were ones of the major flaws for me, now as it is being fixed ill have some good time with it. :)
Thank you Steve for this gem.
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Just curious if 6.5 will be a database change or will it be compatible with current saves?
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I imagine for carriers there would be significant AI changes.
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Just curious if 6.5 will be a database change or will it be compatible with current saves?
This will be a database change, so current saves will not be compatible.
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Hey, is there any ETA on this? I love the changes, actually, game slowdown caused by NPRs and no enemy fighters were ones of the major flaws for me, now as it is being fixed ill have some good time with it. :)
Thank you Steve for this gem.
No date yet. I don't have as much time as I used to (and we just moved house :) ) so it depends on how much free time I can find to devote to Aurora. Also, I am still testing the carrier changes.
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No date yet. I don't have as much time as I used to (and we just moved house :) ) so it depends on how much free time I can find to devote to Aurora. Also, I am still testing the carrier changes.
Just wondering how testing are going, do AI really use carriers as intended?
And, if by any means something has changed, no ETA yet? :) (I just cant describe how itchy it is not to start new campaign before new version :P )
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Just wondering how testing are going, do AI really use carriers as intended?
And, if by any means something has changed, no ETA yet? :) (I just cant describe how itchy it is not to start new campaign before new version :P )
There were some problem initially but I 'think' I have sorted them out. I've been very busy last few weeks (and will be for the next few as well) but I am about ready to post another Rigellian update. After that, I'll take a look at creating a new version. It's actually the NPR sensor changes that are not yet tested properly. I don't like to give ETAs because they are always wrong. Real life has a way of interfering with my best intentions :)
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Here's hoping, I hunger for the new features.
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Hey, can I suggest to make one addition - I almost always use Particle cannons as my main weapon, can we have a spinal mount for it?
If spinal mount for lasers makes focal size larger, maybe we can increase Particale beam range as well in that manner? like we will be able to reach maximum distance with it, as we currently cant.
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Hey, can I suggest to make one addition - I almost always use Particle cannons as my main weapon, can we have a spinal mount for it?
If spinal mount for lasers makes focal size larger, maybe we can increase Particale beam range as well in that manner? like we will be able to reach maximum distance with it, as we currently cant.
I second this with one difference: All beam weapons should have options for Spinal mounts, reduced sizes, and turret.
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As soon as you get Capacitor 3, 10cm Railguns outperform maxed-out Gauss weapons, at more than 1 shot per HS.
If you could turret those, missiles would cease to be a problem and you wouldn't even need AMMs.
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Could the suggestions go into the suggestion thread unless they're actually related to the changes in 6.50?
I guess I'm just cranky waiting for carriers :p
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Gib carriers, naow!!(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_hurra.gif)
Gib tame nprs. Gib alphabetic stacking task groups.
Wantwantwant.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_drunk.gif)
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It sounds like the neutral populations will only be accessible to civilian colony ships. Will players be able to toggle off immigration from a neutral population Source, perhaps to simulate a more insular culture? And if the neutral population falls below the 25 million threshold, will it automatically cease to be a Source colony?
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It would be great if the neutrals obeyed the political and cultural settings, higher xenophobia reducing their desire to be transported closer to alien home systems, and reducing the amount who would want to be transported to any planet with populations of a different species, determinism effecting their spread to places that are troubled, perhaps anywhere that's had battles, or dust/ radiation, or near enemy systems, trading effecting their spread based on colony wealth or raising the spread towards alien worlds, diplomacy effecting spread towards alien systems, or more likely towards multi cultural or multi species worlds, also towards areas that have recently seen war, expansionism causing expansion towards the furthest reaches of space or anywhere with unlimited population aka cost 1 worlds, and finally militancy causing spread towards areas of unrest or warfare, or perhaps otherwise reducing their desire to leave, instead wanting to stay and fight.
I can see a system where when a ship arrives to pick up colonists the final destination is checked against all populations, they get a bonus or reduction calculated which then affects the ratio of colonists drawn from each population the ship then picks up a bunch of all populations and dumps them on the selected planet. The important part is that when they arrive each group is added to that planets population, all acting as one colony, but the racial make up of the colony is still kept track of, in the civilian tab underneath the colonisation status selector it could list the different populations that make up the colony.
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It sounds like the neutral populations will only be accessible to civilian colony ships. Will players be able to toggle off immigration from a neutral population Source, perhaps to simulate a more insular culture? And if the neutral population falls below the 25 million threshold, will it automatically cease to be a Source colony?
Neutral populations will only be available to government-owned colony ships. They won't be accessible to shipping lines. I should have mentioned that in the original post :)
Two reasons:
1) Gives you a reason to build more government-owned colony ships
2) Stops all colonization being from neutral countries (which would be the most efficient otherwise)
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I like the incentive to build colony ships. Maybe I can float Blade Runner blimps through neutral cities, advertising the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.
Hypothetically, if a player has pillaged a neutral population done to 0, will it remain as a vestigal political entity? And are neutral pops subject to the population growth rules just like regular populations?
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If you could turret those, missiles would cease to be a problem and you wouldn't even need AMMs.
It would also stop the game slowing down when you have 200 ships throwing AMMs at each other cos then it would be more viable for the AI to use them instead of spamming AMMs.
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It would also stop the game slowing down when you have 200 ships throwing AMMs at each other cos then it would be more viable for the AI to use them instead of spamming AMMs.
You say that like the AI is smart in this game.
No offense, but it could use some more love. NPRs use less than half weapons available currently (gauss, lasers and missiles I believe).
From the other side, this will make not one, but two weapons useless. Gauss (much weaker version of railguns in terms of firepower) and lasers (worse DPS + much worse AM capablities).
[/offtopic]
It's not supposed to be here, right? I just responded to other post.
About the new version, I like it and eagerly awaiting it. Especially carriers: I hope some of the fighters will carry mesons w\ microwaves, just to make things different.
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Neutral populations will only be available to government-owned colony ships. They won't be accessible to shipping lines. I should have mentioned that in the original post :)
Two reasons:
1) Gives you a reason to build more government-owned colony ships
2) Stops all colonization being from neutral countries (which would be the most efficient otherwise)
Is there any chance of immigration happening automatically on the same planet?
I play Aurora as Single Player most of the time, and I'd love to just set the Rest Of The World as a nation, and let them slowly immigrate into my supertech paradise...
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Is there any chance of immigration happening automatically on the same planet?
I play Aurora as Single Player most of the time, and I'd love to just set the Rest Of The World as a nation, and let them slowly immigrate into my supertech paradise...
No, the colonists can only be used for colonies in other systems. This is to avoid several nations racing each other to transport colonists between two populations on the same planet.
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A couple of questions:
-Will there be a limit to how much you can take from a neutral population? Can I just build a massive colony ship and suck up an entire neutral population without any cost?
-Can neutral nations be attacked? Will they have states of war or ground forces? Any penalty to attacking a neutral nation?
-Can you change a nation's diplomacy with other nations and only draw from friendly neutrals.. EX: A NATO vs Warsaw campaign with NATO, Warsaw and Neutral Aligned nations.
-Will you be able to trade with them? Do they generate infrastructure/Trade Goods?
-Does the neutral faction have it's own commander name theme? If 100% of a population is from a neutral population with a different commander theme, does that carry over to the colonized planet?
-Is there a short form we can use? NF (Neutral Faction)? NR (Neutral Race)? NN (Neutral Nation)?
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Steve: Will you include the pictures New Horizons and dawn shot of their respective targets (Pluto, Charon, Ceres)
Other then that i think the new neutral citizen mechanic is rather exploity. I mean the idea is good overall but it feels wrong. I would be more ok with setting something like immigration incentives that burden your treasury.
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A couple of questions:
-Will there be a limit to how much you can take from a neutral population? Can I just build a massive colony ship and suck up an entire neutral population without any cost?
-Can neutral nations be attacked? Will they have states of war or ground forces? Any penalty to attacking a neutral nation?
-Can you change a nation's diplomacy with other nations and only draw from friendly neutrals.. EX: A NATO vs Warsaw campaign with NATO, Warsaw and Neutral Aligned nations.
-Will you be able to trade with them? Do they generate infrastructure/Trade Goods?
-Does the neutral faction have it's own commander name theme? If 100% of a population is from a neutral population with a different commander theme, does that carry over to the colonized planet?
-Is there a short form we can use? NF (Neutral Faction)? NR (Neutral Race)? NN (Neutral Nation)?
Yes, you can build a massive colony ship, although that isn't functionally different than a lot of small colony ships. I'm running a brief test campaign with a neutral pop of five billion, so that would take a while to use up.
Neutral countries have substantial ground forces but nothing else. You can invade them (or bombard them) theoretically, although they are intended for multi-race starts so the other races might take exception. There is not really any point having them for a single race start.
You could use diplomacy against them but as they have no industry and no naval forces, it doesn't help you beyond a trade relationship.
Yes, you can trade with them as if they were any other foreign population.
No commanders.
No abbreviation yet :)
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/spitballing with Neutrality:
Neutrals could cost wealth to pickup. Your citizens could gradually bleed over into being neutrals if there's not sufficient employment. Extrasolar NPRs could have neutral populations! Neutrals could run their own shipping lines; You could offer them contracts to operate as if they were one of your shipping lines.
perhaps we will at long last solve the question of what makes a man turn Neutral...
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I'll know better once v6.50 is released and everyone has a chance to try it :)
As a public service Your Awesomeness, I suggest an immediate release so that we can all volunteer to look at it and help you 'fine-tune' :).
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I love the greater distances this will cause, ATM fuel colonies in my game were mostly just a way of saving the depletion of Uranus until the far future, but actually requiring harvesting platforms or fuel dumps to sprawl across your empire, well although that's more logistical complexity, it's pretty minor for what it adds to the game. You might lose a fuel dump and find your empire cut in half fir instance. I might suggest that when NPR ground assaults are given some attention they should be able to attack and take colonies you merely have resources dumped onto. Provided they are detected of course. Related to that, maybe the signature of a colony should increase due to resource presence too?
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Pre TN races. YES, THANK YOU! . I'm assuming I can disable and reenable that setting on the fly during a game?
Edit for reasons.
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What happens if you conquer a Neutral Nation?
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Is there any chance to make invaders a bit more mobile ?
i.e. force them to move them through identified JP a bit more often ?
Too often I see them sitting still in one system after spawning ....
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you really dont want invaders too mobile, they'll explore thousands of systems :O
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"through already known JP" is a key so no more exploration but more mobility of combat ships via existing network or observed JG ( like player transit )
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Pre TN races. YES, THANK YOU! . I'm assuming I can disable and reenable that setting on the fly during a game?
Yes, you can.
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Regarding pre-TN races, will they eventually build themselves up to TN status? Or is there a way to force that?
This is useful should you be playing a 2300AD style campaign and want to simulate the discovery of a few low tech races before the Kafer-equivalent shows up
Does that mean they will develop after you discover them? Or am I just reading too much into that?
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Hooray for more than 4 jumps for civvies! That's a great change.
And hooray for pre-TN setting for races as well, a 2300AD style campaign has been on the back of my head for a long time.
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Now all we need is to be able to have civvies carry minerals.
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Now all we need is to be able to have civvies carry minerals.
Space piracy!
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Now all we need is to be able to have civvies carry minerals.
this would would be especially good in later games ...
I hate having to balance minerals personaly
If I could give minimum and maximum levels for each mineral at each colony it would save lots of micromanagement in long term ;)
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this would would be especially good in later games ...
I hate having to balance minerals personaly
If I could give minimum and maximum levels for each mineral at each colony it would save lots of micromanagement in long term ;)
You can already set minimum levels at your colonies so your own freighters don't collect everything.
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I know
but auto rebalancing mineral issues between systems would be great especially wealth is not a problem in mid to late games ;)
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You can already set minimum levels at your colonies so your own freighters don't collect everything.
The problem with that is that when you hit those minimum levels, the orders fail and you have to re-queue them.
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try using "when X amount available" orders, those should never fail.
between using reserve levels settings as a minimum and X amount available commands as a maximum you should be able to achieve your goals.
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If I have a reserve of 100 for some mineral, I get that freighters won't pick it up if there's under 100; but what about factories or shipyards?
If I have 100 duranium, and a reserve of 100 on it, can I build a ship that costs 100 duranium?
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Yes. There's no lump-sum mineral payments in Aurora, only the construction tick net value.
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So the reserve won't stop production?
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I'm 95% sure that the reserve is only for purposes of what your freighters will and will not pick up.
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I'll up that to 100%. DeadlyShoe is correct, you have to watch production yourself but freighters will not raid anything up to the reserve level.
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The reserve level stops freighters and mass drivers from looting the reserve, the reserve itself will be used for production and upkeep.
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Thanks guys, this makes things so much easier. Up till now, I've been doing math; figuring out how fast my freighters gathered minerals and changing their speed to make sure I didn't take too much.
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Thanks guys, this makes things so much easier. Up till now, I've been doing math; figuring out how fast my freighters gathered minerals and changing their speed to make sure I didn't take too much.
This is basically what I do with my tankers to ensure I don't end up totally stripping all the fuel and getting a tanker arrive and cancel it's orders due to no fuel being available.
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Oh sweet jesus i just read the 6.50 changelog ..... and now i have to clean my underwear :)
1000000 times YES for all those changes !! ( especially those that will reduce those damned slowdowns ).
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What just came to my mind:
Steve, are there changes to the Sector Command mechanic? With the new JP system they are going to take a hit too.
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What just came to my mind:
Steve, are there changes to the Sector Command mechanic? With the new JP system they are going to take a hit too.
No, I am planning to leave those as there are. At the moment you don't need many sector commands so they should now function as originally intended.
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Since you've got the long-distance pathfinding code already written, Steve, would you consider giving players access to it? Somehow give us an order like "Go to distant colony" with a pop-up menu to select which colony (or "go to distant star" likewise).
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you can already, i believe it's called 'show all populations' in the orders checkbox? it's a little fussy though, usually you have to remove the final order and readd it. Still less clicking.
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Any idea of spoiler's new weapon? May be it should simply ignore standard shield and can't be intercepted.
Also, I've seen NPR use 100kt shipyards to build 30kt warships. What a waste, can we really see NPRs build some real Juggernaut?
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you can already, i believe it's called 'show all populations' in the orders checkbox? it's a little fussy though, usually you have to remove the final order and readd it. Still less clicking.
Yes that works with the new pathfinding code, so you can go anywhere on the galactic map now.
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you can already, i believe it's called 'show all populations' in the orders checkbox? it's a little fussy though, usually you have to remove the final order and readd it. Still less clicking.
I've found and fixed the bugs that caused the error popup and the destination being set to the system centre. Now works as originally intended (at any distance).
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Some new idea:
In my battle, it seems that AMM and fleet defence turret is a bit OP against ASM. Even with tech advantage, the only way to surely hit enemy ship is to spam and overwhelm the whole defence, especially when they have 200-300 ships in a single task group. Also, my AMM have >100% hit chance against enemy ASM, so I only have to use AMM as defence, and the only real threat is enemy AMM spam, which is very annoying and time consuming.
My idea is that AMM should have lower hit chance against missile, turret should have higher hit chance to protect themselves but lower hit chance to protect other ship, especially when there are hundreds of ships in one group. To counter spam tactic, my idea is to rebuild ECM system, ECM could be much larger and have an effective range to jam X% of all incoming missile which don't have sensor and ECCM support, only the strongest ECM device in fleet is effective. Missile with sensor would continue going but not guided, until their own sensors could pick up target.
Idea of long range ballistic weapon(railgun, cannon or partical beams?): medium range(~20m), sublight speed, finite ammo, low hit chance and track speed, can be picked up by sensor but can't be intercept or jammed.
Also, NPR and spoiler ship and missile design could be improved, especially when they begin using fighters. May you collect some impressive ship ,fighter and missile designs in forum? I wish to see some really challenging spoiler invades, like how shivans did in Freespace2.
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Well it seems I'm going back to seriously overpowered engines again.
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Well it seems I'm going back to seriously overpowered engines again.
Until you run into a fuel crunch ;D
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It'll take twice as long now!
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In addition, I am changing Fuel Harvesters to use the current Fuel Production Rate rather than the Mining Rate
But commander bonuses will still work, rite?
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But commander bonuses will still work, rite?
Yes, still factory production bonus.
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Apologies if this isn't the correct forum for this question, but any guesstimated-unpromised time for when 6.50 will be published? I'm debating starting a new game, and will wait if it's coming sooner than later, fully understanding that this is just Steve's hobby he is kind enough to put on the Internet for the enjoyment of total strangers.
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Judging by the scope of the current campaign, 6.5 will be far down the track, so many more changes will be made that it'll become version 7.
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Thank you! I'll go ahead and fire up a new campaign, then!
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>tfw 2 weeks without work
>tfw i had hope to play 6.50 for at least some of that time
>tfw it wont happen :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(
Its a cold, cruel world :(
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I'm going through Steve's earliest fiction, and getting an urge to suggest adding rules from past versions, or stuff steve said he wanted to add back in 2008 XD.
I'm surprised really how complete the game seemed back then, especially how advanced the diplomatic system was.
Developing NPR AI took a long time though, and they still need work with every update, I wonder how complex it's become.
Edit: I just noticed steve posted parts 5 & 6 of preservation II in the origonal preservation campaign forum. But I guess it doesn't really matter 7 years later :p
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I hope that ECM and ECCM could get some remake and absorb other tech, like jamming missile and active sensor, "cloak" by jamming, long range HPM or EMP attack.
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Steve, I like the new display wrecks option. Is there a similar option for anomalies? Or could there be an option to display them in the same box?
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So I just started a game and ran out of fuel in the Lord's year 2028. I did put some additional fuel storages on the generated freighter designs, but still. :(
6. 5 shall be most welcome. :D
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You mining Sorium and have Fuel Refineries active? Or are you just using more that your producing (not meant to rhyme all the time [dangit])?
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You mining Sorium and have Fuel Refineries active? Or are you just using more that your producing (not meant to rhyme all the time [dangit])?
Aye to both of them. Annual production 4m litres, game starts with 12m in the reserves, building refineries like there's no tomorrow. Build some long range survey ships and that reserve is gone, at least if you just modify the generated ships. . . They're set to be pretty fast and quick on the surveys.
I realized I've been on 6. 21 for some time (for some reason, I thought I had 6. 43 but I must have gotten the files confused), in the old game I expanded more agressively and didn't had any problems with fuel until I had colonies several jumps from Earth and had sorium harvesters sucking Jupiter dry. Still learning tho, haven't played (that) many hours. :)
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Don't use Military Engines for survey ships. Since they are almost always moving at top speed, they tend to guzzle a lot of fuel, so it's more important to have fuel efficiency than power. And since you don't need to carry nearly as much fuel, you can a same size ship almost as fast.
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Don't use Military Engines for survey ships. Since they are almost always moving at top speed, they tend to guzzle a lot of fuel, so it's more important to have fuel efficiency than power. And since you don't need to carry nearly as much fuel, you can a same size ship almost as fast.
Yeah I started to toy around with the ship designs and the pregenerated survey vessels were pretty inefficent it turned out. :)
Anyway, another idea, or maybe it's already possible somehow: move between systems with double click on a jump point, if possible. In the system map view I mean. Easier than scrolling through the system list.
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I have added some extra columns to the SM Comparison window (which lists high level stats for player races).
Shipyard capacity is now split into Naval and Commercial, shipping tonnage is split into Naval, Commercial and Civilian, Fuel Refineries have been split out from factories and I have added a Fuel Stockpile column.
Should probably not be called "Naval Shipping Tonnage", but just "Naval Tonnage". Shipping suggests it's to do with just moving stuff from point A to B.
Might be the same for Commercial too ( since you can have a few other functions then shipping present here like geo survey and terraforming ).
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All of this is really good. Makes me wish we could play some beta version or something. The new interrupts.... and the new detection rules.... Fewer jump points per system... I'd really want them :P
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Steve ,
Are NPR survivors , rescued by a player , all still classified as POW's , regardless of the relationship between the player and the NPR ?. Will there be any means to repatriate friendly survivors rather than keeping and interrogating them ?
DavidR
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Should probably not be called "Naval Shipping Tonnage", but just "Naval Tonnage". Shipping suggests it's to do with just moving stuff from point A to B.
Might be the same for Commercial too ( since you can have a few other functions then shipping present here like geo survey and terraforming ).
Good idea. Changed as suggested.
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Steve ,
Are NPR survivors , rescued by a player , all still classified as POW's , regardless of the relationship between the player and the NPR ?. Will there be any means to repatriate friendly survivors rather than keeping and interrogating them ?
DavidR
I think they probably are classed as POWs. No way to repatriate at the moment - though it could be added.
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I think they probably are classed as POWs. No way to repatriate at the moment - though it could be added.
I can confirm this time any pod rescued that is not of your own empire results in POW taken, regardless of your relations. I discovered this after trying to actually rescue a friendly NPR pod hoping to take the survivors home, to my surprise the chaps volunteered to work on my penal colony instead, perhaps the was a bout of El Nino back home and they didn' want to risk it.
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I've rescued thousands of NPR crew and unloaded them at a colony, I couldn't see anything happening with them so I just added pop to the colony for the survivors.
However I've noticed I have 6421 crew available which seems rather excessive, perhaps maybe they are being rescued?
I have an academy level of 2, which grants 10 officers a year, my training level is set at 5 and I'm on year 12. I appear to be getting 9 crew per 5 days, which would give me something like 7500 crew since the game began. This fits in well with what I have, but it would be nice if rescued friendly or allied crew joined your officers, rescued hostiles becoming POWs. Neutrals joining your population maybe? Or maybe a chance of some joining your crew, or population, or POW depending on relations.
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This fits in well with what I have, but it would be nice if rescued friendly or allied crew joined your officers, rescued hostiles becoming POWs. Neutrals joining your population maybe? Or maybe a chance of some joining your crew, or population, or POW depending on relations.
Adding to pop is probably not worth coding, alien officers or crew joining does sound awesome though.
Now we just need a reason to put scientists on ships aswell + a few bridge officers and we almost got ourself Star Trek ;D
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Any idea when 6.50 will be released? sorry but I miss Aurora :-\
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SoonTM.
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SoonTM.
How right you were.
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Maybe should rename this thread to Change Log for v7.00? ::)
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Maybe should rename this thread to Change Log for v7.00? ::)
Considering Nihilrex hasn't been here for a week........
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Maybe should rename this thread to Change Log for v7.00? ::)
Done. For those who don't remember, Steve will typically start a new read-only change log thread with changes for the next version, and we'll open a new discussion thread in response....
John
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you make it sound like West Side Story
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Considering Nihilrex hasn't been here for a week........
Sorry, I had lost hope... now I am back!
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Can anyone talk me through on how to set up a new game with the player starting in another system besides sol ?
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Can anyone talk me through on how to set up a new game with the player starting in another system besides sol ?
http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Create_a_custom_race
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http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Create_a_custom_race
And many thanks Erik
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in 7.0 Spoilers more aggressive and keeping more together
significantly bigger challenge so far
thank you Steve ;)
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Is it just me or does SOL have more asteroids in v7?
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So, Low Level Fleet Training? Hence we have crew grade(academy requiting standards\training), Fleet Training(training exercise focus on fleet wide operations), and Low Level Fleet Training (general ship operations experience)
Now, does the " Inexperienced Fleets penalties" setting affect the new setting, or only Fleet Training.
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Is it just me or does SOL have more asteroids in v7?
Might be possible it may have just updated alongside IRL asteroid observations.
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Is it just me or does SOL have more asteroids in v7?
I just generated new SOL systems in v7.1 and v6.43, the extra systems list Comets and asteroids by number not name.
Each game contains 478 asteroids and 25 comets. Also Ceres is still listed by name rather than number so that makes 479.
Maybe more were added in a slightly earlier patch?