Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Mor on February 16, 2016, 01:23:33 PM
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We all know the benefit of shipping lines, they are free haulers and wealth generators. That suffer no maintenance failures, rarely attacked and generally aren't a concerns unless they grow too big.
My suggestion is simple. If we bother simulating every civilian ship move, lets add some FUN i.e. Pirates or rather pirate events. System with insufficient protection level will have chance of passing commercial ship getting "lost", and subsequently increasing the system danger level.
This will effect those who expand too fast without securing its backyard, for instance. And will cause loss of commercial ships (which some will gladly see), resulting in Fun events about lost civy ship it can be stated as piracy or more cryptic after all who knows what happens in the dark reaches of space.
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the problem is that pirates make little sense in Aurora, logistically. Starships are too expensive and too difficult to support, and there's nowhere to hide. Or at least that's what I've run into when RPing it. Any piracy from outside a solar system can be stopped by guarding the gates, and there's no way to hide a pirate base within a solar system; there is a finite number of bodies in the solar system and it is not that difficult to check them all.
The most pirate thing i've done is when playing a viking/feudal faction that would assault isolated colonies with hybrid railgun/dropships. It helped that the faction they raided used a small number of hugeass ships.
7.2 might change this up a bit with remote maintenance bases though, since you could theoretically establish a deepspace repair port.
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I strongly disagree. Even with current tech you have space tourism and TN tech should make space FAR FAR more affordable and lucrative venture than ever before. Just because we have to abstract/ignore things that aren't adding to the 4x theme and focusing on the state and few mega corps, it doesn't mean there isn't a wealth of detail in between. Space should be teeming with private installations, resources dumps, emergency services, illegal operations, satellites, rely stations, beacons, endless stream of Mass drive packets,space junk etc.. Near orbit we have space port tugs, tankers and shuttles, taking soldiers/workers for shore leave, technicians/custom-duty-officers on board, etc etc...
Add to that a little corruption and you got a huge hay of stack. And that only your home world, what about frontier system where you have not enough assets, can you really waste time scanning for few mobile squatters under each asteroid or making sure that the records of every huller match its transponder data ...
Also its not actual pirate ships, but an abstracted events which can be anything you want: accidents, corporate sabotage, fanatics, theft, etc
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What if the pirates themselves hid by posing as civilian freighters? Each civilian ship created has a small chance of either turning or being created with the "pirate" flag (pun intended) and every increment it spends outside military sensors but within some arbitrary distance of another freighter has a chance of "capturing" the other freighter's cargo and possibly turning it pirate as well. Active sensors could reveal pirate ships, perhaps for only a limited time after a piracy action, to prevent your PDC's from just lighting them up whenever they returned to a planet, although you could get fancier here if you wanted perhaps making at a pirate scan a specific move/standing order which requires a small resolution active sensor. Basically, space vampires. Hide in plain sight, corner their victims in isolation, and suck em dry.
This would provide incentive to produce vampire hunters patrol vessels, with good range and a decent active sensor but lightly armed because pirates shouldn't be a match for an up to date military vessel, and to actually use them to patrol shipping lanes. Piggybacking on the existing civilian system would hopefully make it easy to implement and be extensible. For instance, pirate bases could present to the player as civilian mining complexes that would increase the piracy chance but only be discoverable by an active/pirate scan. Hell, the pirates themselves could use a hidden-from-the-player(and exempt from taxes!) civilian shipping line that increased its wealth by capturing other ships cargo and thus built new ships according to how successful it was.
Edit: In fact this might tie in to another minor quibble I have with the game, which is the relative futility of recon operations. Right now a recon vessel just uses the same equipment as any other ship just in a configuration suited to its task, and it isn't able to discover all that much about hostile ships. You can get estimated tonnage and speed and from that you can infer distinctions between military and civilian vessels but not much else. Adding a new "nuclear radiation sensor" (Or whatever the good technobabble would be) would kill two stones. Magazines and powerplants would be detectable by this new sensor at distances (much?) shorter than the equivalent active sensor, only one ship could be targeted per sensor, and it would require a length of time for a target to be fully scanned. This would give additional information about hostile forces without being overpowered or obviating the much better intelligence gained from espionage, salvage and capture. Giving pirate ships lower tech missiles or beam weapons could make them easily spotted by this new sensor, but require some kind of investment outside what a player would build normally.
Edit2: Sorry, I'm kinda running with this at the moment, and this last bit will probably elevate this idea firmly into "pie in the sky" territory if it wasn't there already, but this could also have interesting diplomacy implications. Granting letters of marque to shipping lines against another empire with which you have a trade agreement could be tons of fun as well. Relations would be damaged each time they managed to detect a pirate from your empire within their space, regardless of whether or not you were actively encouraging piracy within their borders. Lax security within your own borders could potentially provoke war, which I really like the idea of because right now its trivially easy to remain friends with NPRs and it would add an interesting 'cold' war option.
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the problem is that pirates make little sense in Aurora, logistically. Starships are too expensive and too difficult to support, and there's nowhere to hide. Or at least that's what I've run into when RPing it. Any piracy from outside a solar system can be stopped by guarding the gates, and there's no way to hide a pirate base within a solar system; there is a finite number of bodies in the solar system and it is not that difficult to check them all.
The most pirate thing i've done is when playing a viking/feudal faction that would assault isolated colonies with hybrid railgun/dropships. It helped that the faction they raided used a small number of hugeass ships.
7.2 might change this up a bit with remote maintenance bases though, since you could theoretically establish a deepspace repair port.
I've considered running a pirate faction to cull my shipping lines keep things more interesting, and this has always stopped me. Even supporting a FAC takes over 100,000 workers - that's a lot of pirates!
Hostile civilians that spawn a limited number of pirate dens in out of the way spaces and small ships using tech known to the player would be interesting.
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Well, with the inclusion of Civilian hangars in 7.2 the pirates could have a few Jolly Roger fighters hidden in a cargo ship that could pop out and disable a civilian ship to steal its cargo, they wouldn't need much in the way of maintenance or production for fighters, it would just take them a while to churn out new ones.
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This suggestion isn't about adding pirate ships* but an abstraction of piracy or any other forum misfortune that can befall civilian shipping in vast reaches of space.
The basic concept is similar to how colony unrest work i.e. if you neglect some aspects of your colony management your productivity will suffer, only for space. Specifically, if you fail to provide sufficient security across the empire, your civilian shipping will suffer**. Which I hope would add another challenge for later game, add flavor, and reward your attention to details.
* if you want actual pirate ships, use search. There have been a couple and iirc they were deemed impractical.
** Its the basic concept, if you like it we can expand upon the factor that contribute to it, and its effects.
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There is a mechanic for that though. Well, two mechanics, sorta: the population security requirement (scales with pop) and the system security requirement (civilian shipping avoids a system if it fears it owing to hostile actions there).
It would be really weird for piracy to be an abstract when civilian shipping isn't.
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Yes. Planetary Protection Value (PPV) is a system wide value, determined by the Empire assets in the system. And system Danger Status, which marks active combat zones, presumably its increased when you fight skirmishes and then gradually reduce over time.
As for abstractions, there are many things that affect ships that are abstracted e.g. maintenance failure. When your engines blow up in a spectacular firework show, you can invent whatever story you want, but under the hood its all one big abstraction. Overall you had insufficient MSP and got frakked by the RNG. What the difference between that and getting a message about one of your commercial ships blowing-up\vanishing on your frontier system because you can't spare the ships(insufficient PPV for example)?
Edited.
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Maintenance occurs beneath the notice of the player other than MSP, but civilian ships are not abstracted at all other than their construction. The danger of abstraction is the occurrence of known impossibilities: a system whose access you control absolutely, yet if your ships leave civilians mysteriously start exploding.
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civilian ships are not abstracted at all other than their construction.
Not true. Their fueling is also abstracted. And even if it was true that only their construction was abstracted that would hardly preclude pirates. Construction is the hard part. Given that there are civilian ships and they are constructed independently, its not too far an 'abstraction' to imagine that pirates could also be constructed independently. The 'abstraction argument' is a strawman. The game itself is an abstraction, by definition. None of use are really in space directing ships to and fro. The argument is whether further abstraction would increase or decrease immersion and the quality of the game. The goal of a good simulation is to highlight the interesting bits and abstract the uninteresting. Swabbing the decks is very necessary but uninteresting. We abstract that by adding crew quarters and engineering spaces. Overhauls for commercial ships too micro? We make abstractions so commercial ships can operate without constant oversight.
We're all here because Aurora simulates things to a detail that other space sims take for granted. That's a good thing, but we ought not to lose sight of what a good simulation is.
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Uh, I don't think we need to get into a philosophy argument here. And that is not what strawman means! :O
Civilian ships are physical in the game. They exist on the same layer and under the same rules as all NPC-controlled ships. For a civilian ship to blip out from an invisible, non-physical, abstract pirate ship violates the simulation - and will inevitably result in gamey 'impossible piracy'.
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Civilian ships are physical in the game. They exist on the same layer and under the same rules as all NPC-controlled ships.
For a civilian ship to blip out from an invisible, non-physical, abstract pirate ship violates the simulation - and will inevitably result in gamey 'impossible piracy'.[/quote]
EVERYTHING about civilian shipping is abstracted. They require no resources/infrastructure to develop, construct and maintain (e.g. Your fleets will grind to halt if your systems run dry on Sorium, not so civilian ships they will keep flying and multiplying like nothing happened) They also suffer no accidents, morale problems etc., and are limited to 4 generic designs with colonization and performance in mind...
Because the only reason why civilian ships are physically in the game and not abstracted as trade lines, is to fill your main and vast theater and give you a strategic goal (so you have to protect yours from raiders and user theirs as target practice)
Here, I am looking to expand those goals and adding immersion, by adding common factors like crime, dissent, attrition etc., called here "pirates" because who doesn't like pirates, argh?. I think that:
* Physical: Within the current mechanics and level of abstraction, its very hard to add pirates physically without adding a host of sensor checks (performance), micro management and impossible scenarios, which would make many people grumpy.
* Abstraction, by using events that are based on already established mechanics, you can cover larger host of events, add flavor, with no added micro, and make the relevant decision more meaningful.
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Uh, I don't think we need to get into a philosophy argument here.
I'll stop arguing when you stop disagreeing with me! :)
And that is not what strawman means! :O
Care to elaborate? I did my best to try to explain why I thought the point against abstraction wasn't really pertinent.
Civilian ships are physical in the game. They exist on the same layer and under the same rules as all NPC-controlled ships. For a civilian ship to blip out from an invisible, non-physical, abstract pirate ship violates the simulation - and will inevitably result in gamey 'impossible piracy'.
Again, civilians do not operate "under the same rules as all NPC-controlled ships." They operate under a layer of 'abstraction.' I'd prefer a system like the one I outlined a few posts up to the simple random events that Mor seems to be advocating. However, I really can't see why pirates should be a a flat no go because they might require 'abstract' mechanics and am completely unsympathetic to the argument that they must be more 'abstract' than the current rules governing civilian shipping lines.
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I'd prefer a system like the one I outlined a few posts up to the simple random events that Mor seems to be advocating.
The reason I support Abstraction over Physical manifestation, because with current mechanics you can't fool sensors, falsify transponder data, use "stealth" ships (too OP), represents various factions or anything other than spawn a whack em all micro hell. Physical pirate ships means endless patrols and sensors checks preformace overhead.
As for Abstraction, what I like about DwarfFortress is that most mechanics have an impact on several levels, making choices mater (and generally have nice flavor description on top), that why I like Aurora ship designs and fleet management, in contrast a lot of the Empire management has very limited effect, especially in space.
Unlike your suggestion, my main goal is not (small random chance of) creating pirates. Instead I want to tie in existing mechanics with consequences. For example: Security situation in sector Sigma is deteriorating, commercial ship has been lost, locals blame bordering xeno scum, demanding additional fleet assets.
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the problem is that pirates make little sense in Aurora, logistically. Starships are too expensive and too difficult to support, and there's nowhere to hide. Or at least that's what I've run into when RPing it. Any piracy from outside a solar system can be stopped by guarding the gates, and there's no way to hide a pirate base within a solar system; there is a finite number of bodies in the solar system and it is not that difficult to check them all.
Jump points are the biggest problem right now. They're fixed once discovered, and as such, inter system movement is really easy to anticipate. We have 'cloaks', but they only dampen, not remove signal, meaning that passing through a blockaded jump point stealthily is impossible right now.
One way I've been thinking about is to use binary systems with huge distance between stars. Pirates in this case could use slow, fuel efficient and well cloaked carriers releasing quick raiding ships. Any expedition to their base would be extremely fuel costly and grant them ample forewarning, letting them hide in deep space until the threat passes. Something to try, maybe?
As a whole, if players can't find a way to make it work ingame, it's unlikely NPCs could do it in a logical fashion. Pirates appearing out of nowhere would bug me endlessly in a game that is overall fairly consistent.
On the other hand, if you switch from jump points to a more fluid interstellar travel mean (temporary wormhole, free move hyperspace. . . ), piracy becomes really easy because you can't just seal off the entrances.
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One way I could see this working is similar to shipping lines, where you only start to get certain shipping line type ships as the demand is there by having colonies needing things such as population or goods etc. You could have a mechanic where one a system has reached a point of having a number of colonies with a minimum population amount of each one, this way you could in theory argue that they are hiding out in a less well developed colony in the system and hitting freighters. Instead of them generating income the way a shipping line does they would generate income from destroying ships, as they gain income they purchase more ships to use and in return generate more income.
However I do think that it should never be just a background invisible thing, you could argue that generally there would always be a criminal element in play so totally wiping out a pirate group would be impossible. But the ships should be able to appear as physical ships the same as shipping lines do, only they would be perhaps using false transponders so that unless they pass through an active scan range they do not appear hostile. Once an active scanner hits them you get a hostile blip and can destroy the pirate ship the same as any other hostile enemy. Once destroyed that ship is deleted from the pirate/shipping line group.
This could mean you have to be more vigilant about how to provide security in systems and no longer rely on just any big beast of a PDC to give the needed PPV to keep folks happy, you would have to set up and maintain active sensor nets or patrols to ensure the safety of all in system.
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And even then, in terms of space pirates, given how much it is supposed to cost to manufacture space vessels, you could literally find and obliterate any non-deep-space pirate operation by putting DSTS on most of the key points and chokepoints of a system, as well as having PDC garrisons on any body with significant minerals, population, and industry.
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@Rich.h
Indeed, there would always be a criminal element in play. And post invasion resistance groups for example. Just because we defeated their army, doesn't mean we pacified them.
The reason I bring this up, is because logistics has always been a staple of strategy, for that reason we simulate supplies and civilian fleets. Due to the nature of JPs, natural choke points, there are very strategic opportunities to raid supply lines. The AI regularly sending its fleet to break on your front line defenses, and all your vulnerable supply and civilian ships are never in harms way.
I'd love to have physical ships but most implementations I know of, are extremely annoying whack em all. Usually some sort of militia\barbarian unit based on your current tech, that spawns in the "fog of war", that is either realistically weak and meaningless because the AI can't use it in a meaningful way; or unrealistic strong and disruptive without any way to avoid getting frakked by the RND in the first place (i'd hate to have to pave the galaxy with DSTS).
This is why I prefer the event compromise, its not as pretty but you'll suffer some of the effect of stretching your forces to thin without the added micro, performance overhead and silly AI scenarios.
@iceball3
Aurora simulate only specific strategic assets, but just because there are no commercial shipyard, doesn't mean that they aren't there. If we had TN materials, that make getting in orbit cheaper, not to speak of spaceflight and times, the system would be CRAWLING with civilian spacecraft and installations in FAR greater number than any navy assets we simulate.
And its not like you need a state of the art military battleship with combat pods to sabotage a freighter, especially on recently occupied frontier world. Any modified shuttle could do, or while in port just mask a bomb as space junk and throw it toward a hull for example.
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member=4583]iceball3[/member]
urora simulate only specific strategic assets, but just because there are no commercial shipyard, doesn't mean that hey aren't there. If we had TN materials, that make getting in orbit cheaper, not to speak of spaceflight and times, the system would be CRAWLING with civilian spacecraft and installations in FAR greater number than any navy assets we imulate.
And its not like you need a state of the art military battleship with combat pods to sabotage a freighter, especially on ecently occupied frontier world. Any modified shuttle could do, or while in port just mask a bomb as space junk and hrow t toward a hull for example.
/quote]Which lends to assume your active sensors are fallible even when something would make sense to detect. Which is a cop-out. The only alternative which allows unseen assets without being a cop-out is to render stealth tech ridiculously good, in which case it simply becomes easy to obliterate people by the millions without being spotted by point defense. That would be missiles.
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No more than us abstracting post occupation militia activities as unrest.
Realistically, Active Sensors, which instantly detect object as the tiny as missiles, from across the star system should be detecting thousands upon thousands of objects (all the things I already mentioned, like satellites, civilian infrastructure, daily shuttle/freight traffic getting thousands of workers/colonist, and tons of materials/supplies into/from orbit) But we don't see them because *insert some technobable* e.g. software filter and friendly transponder signals.
And it stands the reason that criminal\corporate\state actors would find ways to circumvent anti-piracy means, as they always do. So you may not like the idea of abstraction, but it implying realistically its not consistent aint going to work. Better yet suggest how to overcome all the issues I mentioned with physical ships.
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No more than us abstracting post occupation militia activities as unrest.
Realistically, Active Sensors, which instantly detect object as the tiny as missiles, from across the star system should be detecting thousands upon thousands of objects (all the things I already mentioned, like satellites, civilian infrastructure, daily shuttle/freight traffic getting thousands of workers/colonist, and tons of materials/supplies into/from orbit) But we don't see them because *insert some technobable* e.g. software filter and friendly transponder signals.
And it stands the reason that criminal\corporate\state actors would find ways to circumvent anti-piracy means, as they always do. So you may not like the idea of abstraction, but it implying realistically its not consistent aint going to work. Better yet suggest how to overcome all the issues I mentioned with physical ships.
And what of the escorts you may have to defend any significant assets? They'll just ignore a sensor contact converging on their position without permission, and won't be permitted to attempt communication or just shoot the darn thing down?
Alternatively, if commercial ships would be allowed to be taken by some rampant pirates, shouldn't they make boarding combat rolls rather than just "ship get"? And in that case, what purpose is there to design any significantly sized commercial ship without loading up a Marine Company on it?
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FYI. My suggestion is strictly speaking about CIVILIAN ships i.e. civilian shipping lines, not state owned ships that use commercial tech. But the confusion is understandable with all the other suggestions.
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FYI. My suggestion is strictly speaking about CIVILIAN ships i.e. civilian shipping lines, not state owned ships that use commercial tech. But the confusion is understandable with all the other suggestions.
But I also mean in terms of what should be considered the default designs. If you can go through the resources of training the marines for this that is, this would essentially negate acts of piracy, that, and the fact that we shouldn't be disallowed from escorting our own shipping lines if piracy is a thing that can actually get to them in spite of the blockades, etc.
Another issue is that in spite of the desire of tech, you'd think a ship that needs boarding-action-speeds would make a very significant thermal signature for it's size, raising all sorts of alarms.
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One way I could see this working is similar to shipping lines, where you only start to get certain shipping line type ships as the demand is there by having colonies needing things such as population or goods etc. You could have a mechanic where one a system has reached a point of having a number of colonies with a minimum population amount of each one, this way you could in theory argue that they are hiding out in a less well developed colony in the system and hitting freighters. Instead of them generating income the way a shipping line does they would generate income from destroying ships, as they gain income they purchase more ships to use and in return generate more income.
However I do think that it should never be just a background invisible thing, you could argue that generally there would always be a criminal element in play so totally wiping out a pirate group would be impossible. But the ships should be able to appear as physical ships the same as shipping lines do, only they would be perhaps using false transponders so that unless they pass through an active scan range they do not appear hostile. Once an active scanner hits them you get a hostile blip and can destroy the pirate ship the same as any other hostile enemy. Once destroyed that ship is deleted from the pirate/shipping line group.
This could mean you have to be more vigilant about how to provide security in systems and no longer rely on just any big beast of a PDC to give the needed PPV to keep folks happy, you would have to set up and maintain active sensor nets or patrols to ensure the safety of all in system.
I like this idea, as it essentially requires you to dedicate ships to patrol, which means your fuel use will go up by far. Also it would create a really nice space for smaller ships probably classed as Corvettes because you would have a large tension between fuel efficiency/speed and firepower/size (size looping back into the first tension point) because you don't want to dedicate a lot of a rather precious resource, fuel, to anti piracy nonsense when it could be used in combat operations but at the same time you can only let the problem get so bad/you need so much firepower to destroy these pirate ships.
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Ever played Hoi3? they did a fine job with occupation\unrest\supply\interdiction\convoy raiding\etc all integrated e.g. Revolt risk limit you expansion rate, threaten your supply lines and can even stall major operations. It is something you can and should deal/make use of (setting up strategic garrisons and mobile force in case of partisans\invasion, and to increase local cooperation). All of that comes with a great easily controlled, at glance UI, and you can even use AI to deal with whack em all. All and all one of the best implementations I know, and still partisans ("Pirates") are one of the least enjoyable parts.. after a while its just mindless auto Ctrl+Click it away.
In our case, I agree that designing and setting up patrols is nice RP wise, but the real question is what you can implement? Because I doubt that patrol novelty will last long once people start getting endless interrupted due to some random pest pirate that will die from any hit, with all your fancy patrols mostly bogging down the game performance with each system you take..