v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Droll]

Very cool changes with constellations. I've always loved the Greek-Constellation naming pattern as it feels the most sci fi-y.

If we're throwing around design ideas here, hangar design would be cool too. Adding a launch rate to fighters and designing carrier space around launch rate / capacity would be interesting. Perhaps an option for an "open flight deck" too which greatly increases launch rate at the expense of damage to the hangar bay also damaging fighters and fighter explosions caused by such damage causing secondary explosions to the ship-- in true open flight defk warship fashion!

This has been suggested before - in addition to what you've said resupply/rearm rate could also be design factor as well.

[nuclearslurpee]

Love the new constellation naming change, will really help with one of the less enjoyable parts of Real Stars games.

I would like to specially request that one of the WISE stars be named WISE 531-8008 and left alone, because I am a very mature adult and certainly never played with calculators in grade school...

[mtm84]

It occurs to me you might be able to write a small program to do the heavy lifting with generating all names needed.  Perhaps the javascript on the site is extensible for this purpose?  Of course that might be a more significant focus of effort then doing a single small batch by hand.  In any case I'm definitely looking forward to the change.

[Erik L]

Regarding Constellation Names,

Can you possibly work up a scheme to generate the names for a non-Known Stars game?

There are no 3D star positions in random games, so no constellations. It would be easier to generate a name theme using all combinations of Greek letters and constellation names, which would provide over 2000 names.

That is more along the lines of what I meant. Something to randomly generate names rather than a static list.

[Marski]

Are colony rebellions enabled yet or is that mechanism still being worked on?

[Froggiest1982]

Are colony rebellions enabled yet or is that mechanism still being worked on?

So far you have to do it manually through independence. I have played a lot with the mechanic recently and I have understood why is soo hard to implement. out of 5 attempts to just declare independence and change the DB so that the new faction would be led by the AI, only 1 succeded and I still don't really know why or well I guess that the reason was for me to leave it as it was. The problem with that is you have a completely worthless opponent. All the others that involved some sort of help like ships or troops have either: broke the game after a few decades or simply thrown multiple errors every sub pulse click making it unplayable.

I think there is some sort of heavy coding involved to actually make this a mechanic. It would require the NPR to be generated as it was brand new but I don't think people will be happy with a bunch of ships or troops appeared out of nowhere. Unless you happy with just a planet where you need to send ground troops unopposed...

[Droll]

Are colony rebellions enabled yet or is that mechanism still being worked on?

So far you have to do it manually through independence. I have played a lot with the mechanic recently and I have understood why is soo hard to implement. out of 5 attempts to just declare independence and change the DB so that the new faction would be led by the AI, only 1 succeded and I still don't really know why or well I guess that the reason was for me to leave it as it was. The problem with that is you have a completely worthless opponent. All the others that involved some sort of help like ships or troops have either: broke the game after a few decades or simply thrown multiple errors every sub pulse click making it unplayable.

I think there is some sort of heavy coding involved to actually make this a mechanic. It would require the NPR to be generated as it was brand new but I don't think people will be happy with a bunch of ships or troops appeared out of nowhere. Unless you happy with just a planet where you need to send ground troops unopposed...

I don't think rebellion has to be a planet declaring independence though. You could have riots and stuff that fire once unrest has been high for a long enough period of time. Installations are destroyed, ground units take casualties, missile stockpiles are rendered useless. Maybe even things in orbit are sabotaged, damaging or destroying ships etc. Unrest could even spread to other planets to the same system and to a lesser extent planets that are in the same sector (based on no. of jumps from the unrest).

To me this sounds like an easier way than implementing some form of secession mechanic.

Declaring independence feels like it should be related to a more novel secession mechanic that is maybe handled on the sector command level (yes I know you could game this by not having sectors). When a sector as a whole has high unrest across multiple worlds/systems it might decide to secede from the empire with planets determining allegiance based on how big and stable they are. If you feel like putting in the work you could also factor in the industrial dependence of a colony to the rest of the empire when factoring this in. This could make it so that instead of individual colonies, entire systems or sections of the empire could secede and become a real pain in the ass as opposed to a lone planet rising up on its own.

I don't know how you'd allocate ships and space installations. It makes sense to make engineless ships switch/stay on the side that their planet has joined. I think its acceptable to spawn somewhat weak but numerous infantry based militias to act as the initial garrison to the new independent worlds depending on population size. You could make the homeworlds of officers as a factor, making officers more likely to attempt to defect their ships to their home sector / planet if its declared independence.

I think for the time being a simple rebellion planet state would be good to at least provide RPers with a prelude to manual independence and to provide players more of an incentive to police their worlds.

[Froggiest1982]

Are colony rebellions enabled yet or is that mechanism still being worked on?

So far you have to do it manually through independence. I have played a lot with the mechanic recently and I have understood why is soo hard to implement. out of 5 attempts to just declare independence and change the DB so that the new faction would be led by the AI, only 1 succeded and I still don't really know why or well I guess that the reason was for me to leave it as it was. The problem with that is you have a completely worthless opponent. All the others that involved some sort of help like ships or troops have either: broke the game after a few decades or simply thrown multiple errors every sub pulse click making it unplayable.

I think there is some sort of heavy coding involved to actually make this a mechanic. It would require the NPR to be generated as it was brand new but I don't think people will be happy with a bunch of ships or troops appeared out of nowhere. Unless you happy with just a planet where you need to send ground troops unopposed...

I don't think rebellion has to be a planet declaring independence though. You could have riots and stuff that fire once unrest has been high for a long enough period of time. Installations are destroyed, ground units take casualties, missile stockpiles are rendered useless. Maybe even things in orbit are sabotaged, damaging or destroying ships etc. Unrest could even spread to other planets to the same system and to a lesser extent planets that are in the same sector (based on no. of jumps from the unrest).

To me this sounds like an easier way of implementing some form of secession mechanic.

I like this.

[db48x]

Regarding Constellation Names,

Can you possibly work up a scheme to generate the names for a non-Known Stars game?

There are no 3D star positions in random games, so no constellations. It would be easier to generate a name theme using all combinations of Greek letters and constellation names, which would provide over 2000 names.

That is more along the lines of what I meant. Something to randomly generate names rather than a static list.

I think that he meant that a player (you or I, for example) could gin up a list of a few thousand names, put them into a text file, and import them as a new name list in a game, without needing him to do anything. It could then presumably be posted as a new system naming theme suggestion (there's a thread somewhere for that purpose).

[Froggiest1982]

I agree that it would be nice to have it ingame, however, this is something that a good RAND function can already due for you

 

Happy to write something down and share.

I like the new constallation System, I finally can Quit my labelling all over the galaxy map.

[Marski]

Are colony rebellions enabled yet or is that mechanism still being worked on?

So far you have to do it manually through independence. I have played a lot with the mechanic recently and I have understood why is soo hard to implement. out of 5 attempts to just declare independence and change the DB so that the new faction would be led by the AI, only 1 succeded and I still don't really know why or well I guess that the reason was for me to leave it as it was. The problem with that is you have a completely worthless opponent. All the others that involved some sort of help like ships or troops have either: broke the game after a few decades or simply thrown multiple errors every sub pulse click making it unplayable.

I think there is some sort of heavy coding involved to actually make this a mechanic. It would require the NPR to be generated as it was brand new but I don't think people will be happy with a bunch of ships or troops appeared out of nowhere. Unless you happy with just a planet where you need to send ground troops unopposed...

I don't think rebellion has to be a planet declaring independence though. You could have riots and stuff that fire once unrest has been high for a long enough period of time. Installations are destroyed, ground units take casualties, missile stockpiles are rendered useless. Maybe even things in orbit are sabotaged, damaging or destroying ships etc. Unrest could even spread to other planets to the same system and to a lesser extent planets that are in the same sector (based on no. of jumps from the unrest).

To me this sounds like an easier way than implementing some form of secession mechanic.

Declaring independence feels like it should be related to a more novel secession mechanic that is maybe handled on the sector command level (yes I know you could game this by not having sectors). When a sector as a whole has high unrest across multiple worlds/systems it might decide to secede from the empire with planets determining allegiance based on how big and stable they are. If you feel like putting in the work you could also factor in the industrial dependence of a colony to the rest of the empire when factoring this in. This could make it so that instead of individual colonies, entire systems or sections of the empire could secede and become a real pain in the ass as opposed to a lone planet rising up on its own.

I don't know how you'd allocate ships and space installations. It makes sense to make engineless ships switch/stay on the side that their planet has joined. I think its acceptable to spawn somewhat weak but numerous infantry based militias to act as the initial garrison to the new independent worlds depending on population size. You could make the homeworlds of officers as a factor, making officers more likely to attempt to defect their ships to their home sector / planet if its declared independence.

I think for the time being a simple rebellion planet state would be good to at least provide RPers with a prelude to manual independence and to provide players more of an incentive to police their worlds.

Keeping population stability at 100% is really easy. Build warships, build troops and that's about it.

[Droll]

Keeping population stability at 100% is really easy. Build warships, build troops and that's about it.

Thats probably something else that will need to be changed. IMO policing is already too powerful on the ground. PPV is less of a problem for me.

It might make sense for every planet above a certain size to start generating a base level of unrest. Events such as work camps/overpopulation should only add to that. There just needs to be more stuff that causes unrest. You could also have it so that planets further away from the capital have a % modifier that increases the amount of unrest they have, which could be reduced if it is part of a sector (more local autonomy?).

Other than that Steve could go mad and implement a full happiness system but I'm kind of thinking of quicker and easier solutions.

[mtm84]

Regarding Constellation Names,

Can you possibly work up a scheme to generate the names for a non-Known Stars game?

There are no 3D star positions in random games, so no constellations. It would be easier to generate a name theme using all combinations of Greek letters and constellation names, which would provide over 2000 names.

That is more along the lines of what I meant. Something to randomly generate names rather than a static list.

I think that he meant that a player (you or I, for example) could gin up a list of a few thousand names, put them into a text file, and import them as a new name list in a game, without needing him to do anything. It could then presumably be posted as a new system naming theme suggestion (there's a thread somewhere for that purpose).

I may be wrong but I seem to recall system themes to always go straight down the list.  perhaps Steve could add an option to randomise that list?  Or has he already done that and I missed it?

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my opinion it would be nearly impossible to make any political and social unrest model in Aurora either realistic or fun unless it was very complex so it can work well with the plethora of role-play the current system can provide for you.

It is certainly my opinion that you are to play the game using role-play so you can add as much unrest from that standpoint as you like or simulate unhappiness and dissent in multiple ways, especially if you are writing some sort of story around your game.

There are no way to just say a planet should have more or less dissent or unrest just because it is far away or have more or less autonomy... there are many reasons for why a planet would have lots of dissent and unrest or not. Most game just add arbitrary very unrealistic modifiers and limits that have no real basis in reality and I hope that will never get introduce into this game, that would be very unfortunate.

In most of my play-through I role-play heavily so I develop planet in a way I think it would realistically have developed based on economy, needs and the political climate. A self governing world obviously would be as self sufficient as possible while still being able to compete with some speciality versus other planets. I usually use trade goods as one example on how I characterise a planets structure to give me some guidance as one example.

So... I would not be that happy to add lots of arbitrary and none dynamic traits to why planets have lots of dissent or not.... I would be satisfied if the player could just turn it up or down using space master... that would fit this game allot better in my opinion.

[Marski]

Keeping population stability at 100% is really easy. Build warships, build troops and that's about it.

Thats probably something else that will need to be changed. IMO policing is already too powerful on the ground. PPV is less of a problem for me.

It might make sense for every planet above a certain size to start generating a base level of unrest. Events such as work camps/overpopulation should only add to that. There just needs to be more stuff that causes unrest. You could also have it so that planets further away from the capital have a % modifier that increases the amount of unrest they have, which could be reduced if it is part of a sector (more local autonomy?).

Other than that Steve could go mad and implement a full happiness system but I'm kind of thinking of quicker and easier solutions.

Population demographics could be a good starting point for setting reasons for unrest. Divide population between different democraphics in the same way a working force is. Naturally democrats don't like authoritarian central government, so a colony composed mostly out of opposite spectrum of your government type would generate unrest on said planet, troops or no troops. Unemployment aka "available workers" also could play a factor in unrest. Unemployment cause unrest which can be mitigated by setting a unemployment support fund which draws from your empire wealth. Of course that's going to be a problem at some point, so maybe options for population growth control could be implemented such as "one/two child policy". Which do have problems of their own of course.