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Aurora / The Survivors of Elsyium, A Pre-Made Game for Role-Play
« Last post by xenoscepter on July 13, 2019, 11:36:28 PM »
IMPORTANT! BACKUP YOUR SAVES! DATABASE CONTAINED IN ATTACHMENT WILL OVERWRITE THEM! THEY WILL BE LOST FOREVER IF YOU DON'T BACK THEM UP! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

 --- So, I read somewhere here on the forums about a game where they fluffed the Trans-Newtonian Minerals as having sort of "appeared" Tiberium-style one day [minus Kane... or is it? ???] and left a wake of wanton destruction in their path. I think this was presented as a way to explain the whole 500 Million Starting Population at SysGen. Inspired by this, and looking for a change of pace, I created the Elysium Empire. What you get is a Max Tech Start, that is you have EVERY technology unlocked from the word go. There is a maximum system limit of 1,000,000 systems, with a 10% chance of an NPR being generated in any of them from the moment you jump in. Jumping Bean Spoilers disabled, all others enabled. You begin with a starting population of 13,400,000,000 people and 25,000 units of Conventional Industry. Yes this is a Conventional start, no you don't have any missile bases, yes you gotta convert stuff. However, some of it is already TN, so there's that. You have lots of stuff queued up, keep it or scrap it, it doesn't matter; if you care about what GUs to put in the pre-queued Barracks PDCs, it is written in the "Additional Notes:" of that PDC. You have the Minerals stockpiled to make what has been queued, feel free to SM Mod them out. Otherwise, go nuts; it's a staged start, not a staged game. :)

NOTE: The fallout will last 90 years, I didn't skip ahead.

 --- Now the scenario goes as such, Earth was, key word being was, doing pretty okay thank you very much when they happened to stumble across *gasp* ALIENS!!! This took the form of a facility which would become know simply as "The Factory". However, after dinking around in side it would turn out that poking alien tech isn't always a good idea. In a cataclysm known only as "The Event", basically Earth becomes asploded, but not really. What actually happens in that massive clouds of deadly Radiation are thrown up into the air alongside tons of Atmospheric Dust on account of the upheaval caused by "The Factory" for reasons. So yeah, Earth was basically asploded. However, "The Factory" contained a metric @$$ ton of information, which is why humanity dinked with it in the first place, and ended up saving humanity from... well... itself to be honest. "The Factory" didn't immediately make the Earth to be asploded, but rather humanity was able to set up a shelter in the form of "Elysium", which after "The Event" became humanity's sole [well, best] refuge from the smegstorm of karma that was unleashed upon the unsuspecting peoples of the Earth. Oh, and some cool new rocks and stuff might have got made in the process... I dunno.

 --- So you, the player, take command of this crisis. It is midnight on the 1st of January, in the 1st Year after "The Event". Huge swaths of Earth's 13 Trillion+ population is dying in the fallout of "The Event" Do you create a new race using the Gene Modification Centers located in Elysium? Do you hunker down and ride out the storm? Do you make a beeline for the stars and leave the rest to perish and Elysium a prize to for whatever heretical xenomonstrosity that whims to claim it? This is the story of the survivors of Elysium, as told... by you.

P.S. For those curious, roughly 3 Trillion die by the 1st of February barring action from the player with the exception of hitting the green "30 Day" button.
All threee options can be seen through without entering a failstate.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by Michael Sandy on April 11, 2017, 03:03:35 AM »
As there is the possibility of "fly the entire force together from node to node" fuel efficiency is kind of a big thing.

Players should have the option of purchasing extra munitions and fuel with their BP, initially stowed on a rock about, I dunno 500 million km back from their jump point.

Another option would be that each side has a jump point security force, that has a completely different command chain, which are legally forbidden from going more than 10 million km inside the jump point.  They would be built on the same tech and 2x cost framework, although they wouldn't have or need survey sensors.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by Michael Sandy on April 11, 2017, 02:17:19 AM »
Hmmm.  How about this, each side builds a scaleable fleet.

First round, Player A has 2x the fleet they picked, and has to delay Player B with 3x the fleet for as long as possible.

Second round, Player B has 2x the fleet, and has to delay Player A which has 3x the fleet.

So each design has to be able to survey and delay an enemy survey, and whoever does the best combined job at that wins.

And for a roleplay reason explaining this, its actually a Naval design contest for the purpose of solving strategic problems related to survey fleets.  They want to know what options to pursue, and how those will fair against other choices other space faring nations might choose.

In a larger contest, with 6 or more contestants, the fleet designs would be fixed at the start, but on entry to the system they would only know if they had the larger fleet role or the smaller fleet role, and not who the opponent was.

Of course, some sneaky judge might decide to put two of the 3x fleets against each other, or two of the 2x fleet against each other. ;)

I think I would still like to see a nodal response scenario, where players can make tradeoffs between the size of the initial fleet and the first two reinforcing waves, as well as tech vs reinforcement size.  But that is complicated enough without a survey based I WIN condition.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by MarcAFK on April 11, 2017, 01:02:37 AM »
Maybe you should setup a scenario with 2 systems needing surveying, and equal fleets for both sides where the goal is basically either be the first side to finish the survey, or alternatively win a decisive victory against the opposing fleet which would leave it unable to continue survey operations.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by Michael Sandy on April 10, 2017, 02:47:32 PM »
Oooh, those are good questions.

Cause if a rush fleet can't complete the survey before the main fleet gets there, what is the advantage of even STARTING surveying with a normal sized survey fleet?

Hmmm.  Actually, there is some advantage.  After more fleets arrive, it becomes harder and harder to survey multiple nodes at once without losing survey vessels.  If you can survey the inner ring of nodes, it gets harder for an enemy fast response fleet to intercept without exposing themselves to defeat in detail.

An initial survey effort can make it harder for the enemy which has a larger fleet at some point from simply barricading an unsurveyed node, if they aren't 100% sure that node has not been surveyed.  It might be worth it for the survey rush fleet to sacrifice a few bare bones survey craft on nodes they have already surveyed, to let the enemy think that they HAVEN'T yet complete the survey on those nodes.  If they can sucker the enemy fleet into blockading nodes they have already surveyed, that is less resources to slow them from completing the rest of the survey.

How about this, a pure rush fleet should be able to complete the first survey before a slow capital response fleet can get there. (say 50% HS commercial engines, or 25% HS regular engines)  Which could give them an advantage if they can then get survey started on the second system without revealing the location of the jump point to the slower fleet.

But if the rush fleet was nearly pure survey fleets, that means it doesn't have reinforcements coming until the new builds can get from the capital to the system, so they have nothing in system to stop the less front loaded forces from quickly surveying the system.

The scoring is sort of like Quidditch, the game ends when the second system is surveyed and probed.  But I suppose if the successful survey force has lost their nodal base, that is at best a draw.  But if the 2nd system has jump points to the outer reaches of both home systems, even that would yield a victory for the survey force, as they could directly threaten the enemy home system while the side with the unsuccessful survey force's fleet is away.

But you are right, the set up is a bit tricky to calculate.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by hyramgraff on April 09, 2017, 07:39:29 AM »
There's one detail about the scenario that I haven't seen mentioned.  How many SP do each of the survey points require?

If the contested system is easy to survey (~100 SP required) then a delayed response would be more likely to arrive after the critical JP has already been found but the survey locations will be close enough that one or two sensor ships would be able to cover all of them.  If the contested system is hard to survey (~1000 SP required) then there's no hope of completing the survey before capital response fleets arrive but you might need a dedicated logistics operation just to get your survey ship to the survey locations on the far side of the outer ring.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by lennson on April 08, 2017, 01:30:06 PM »
I thought about this some more and I don't think the my initial idea of buoys works very well because it is too easy to effectively do 'hit and run', avoiding getting caught.

However what could work would be to set a trap in the form of a combat ship sitting silently near a survey point with only hard to detect low res active sensors on. This prevents the enemy survey crafts from having an opportunity to run away and it doesn't cause logistic issues since excessive ammo or fuel isn't needed.


This could lead to both sides needing to check a survey point for hiding combat ships with their own combat ships before sending a survey ship. Unless they are okay with some of their survey ships getting blown up eventually.

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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by Michael Sandy on April 06, 2017, 09:17:22 PM »
Cheap in terms of BP, but not cheap in terms of magazine space.

In order to get recon probes that have both range and speed, they need to be fairly large to have efficient engines.  Yes, the initial recon probes can go pretty slow, but replacements you want to get on site before the target has moved off.

I expect the game of killing recon drones and buoys could get quite complicated, again, offering the opportunity for defeat in detail, or for suckering large forces off of other vital strategic points.

Writing the standing orders could be a bitch.

Would thermal buoys have enough detection to detect a slow moving fuel efficient survey ship?  Cause if you put it EXACTLY on the survey point, your own buoy could get detected by an active sensor buoy.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by lennson on April 06, 2017, 08:53:00 PM »
I imagine one way to find sneaking survey crafts would be to fire/drop thermal sensor buoys on the grav survey points. They can be really small/cheap since you know that a survey craft will need to be right on top of it to survey the grav point.

While it is true that it may be not practical to make sure there are no enemy ships in a system it shouldn't be that hard to make sure they aren't doing anything useful without giving away their location.
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Aurora / Re: Opposed survey
« Last post by Michael Sandy on April 06, 2017, 07:10:04 PM »
The point being I don't see the enemy accomplishing any meaningful amount of surveying before a proper battle fleet can show up, which can then take care of securing and sweeping the system of threats.

One of the points of this scenario/contest is to find out IF a meaningful amount of surveying can be done before a proper battle fleet can show up, and if so, how, and what are cheap ways of interfering with it.

Among the issues I anticipate is that it might take a substantial division of force to really stop a determined surveyor, and that could lead to defeat in detail.

Finding fighter sized or FAC-sized survey craft at low tech level is a nontrivial expense.  So 'sweeping a system of threats' could involve consuming a LOT of fuel.  Not a consideration vs the AI, but a player vs player campaign is a potential issue. Yes, you know where they WANT to be, the various grav survey points, but at any given time they may not be near any of them.

Having to be strong at one's entry point, one's enemy's entry point, as well as the distant survey points may not be possible, so one has to make compromises which leads to a more dynamic strategic equation.
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