Author Topic: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0  (Read 67297 times)

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Offline Jovus

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #570 on: August 06, 2024, 03:35:55 PM »
I always considered infraatructure to be life support equipment, not necessarily hardened buildings. Things like oxygen pumps, heating, etc.

Reinforced construction is something we already do with conventional materials, and there's plenty of places in the game where conventional materials are implied but not visible. A CC=0 planet doesn't require infrastructure, but the materials for all the houses and such down there must have come from somewhere...

I see this, and I agree with it broadly, but I think the other appropriate course is to just disallow colonization for tectonically overactive planets.
 

Offline Jovus

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #571 on: August 06, 2024, 03:38:12 PM »
Regarding AA shooting at drop pods, I like the idea quite a lot and I would suggest another: GSFs can also shoot drop pods, or if deployed in the other direction, help protect drop pods through air superiority and SEAD work.

This would give more reason to deploy GSFs as well, with the knock-on effect of also increasing the desirability of AA.

NPRs using both AA and GSFs would of course be grand as well. (If they do, I've never seen it.)
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #572 on: August 07, 2024, 06:38:23 AM »
I always considered infraatructure to be life support equipment, not necessarily hardened buildings. Things like oxygen pumps, heating, etc.

Reinforced construction is something we already do with conventional materials, and there's plenty of places in the game where conventional materials are implied but not visible. A CC=0 planet doesn't require infrastructure, but the materials for all the houses and such down there must have come from somewhere...

I see this, and I agree with it broadly, but I think the other appropriate course is to just disallow colonization for tectonically overactive planets.
I would not go that far. After all, nothing is stopping us from creating a colony on CC=50 hellhole and dumping millions of people there without infrastructure. I do agree that volcanism should play some sort of role in colony cost and/or terraforming etc but jsut disabling colonies is the wrong approach, IMHO.
 
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Online alex_brunius

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #573 on: August 07, 2024, 08:56:27 AM »
It feels a bit odd/inconcistent that missile decoys also are automatically equipped with retargeting if the missile is and can stick around to make infinite amounts of attacks with the missile, while ship launched decoys only stick around for a single 5sec increment. Ship launched decoys are much much larger and more expensive so how come they are so much more primitive than the decoys acompanying missiles?

To continue on this, another very strange quirk of Ship Decoys living just a single increment is that they become worse against retargeting missiles the faster the ship that launched them is (which is totally counterintuitive, a very maneuverable ship should make it easier to put decoys in the path of missiles, not harder).

This is because only the incoming missiles that successfully roll to hit the ship are valid for Decoy distraction. So if for example 200 anti ship missiles are incoming with just 15% hit chance then a large number of decoys will be launched (due to alot of Missile Size approaching), but just 30 of the missiles are valid for being distracted by all those Decoys. The Next increment the remaining 170 Missiles will try again but the ship (now likely without more Decoys left) will be defenseless.

https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13090.msg164388#msg164388
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Any missiles that survive CIWS and successfully roll their Chance to Hit will be checked to see if they hit the Ship or one of the Decoy Missiles. The chance to hit the ship is equal to: Size Ship in Tons / (Ship Size in Tons + Total Signature of All Decoys). Multiple warhead missiles will check each warhead independently.
 
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Offline buczbucz

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #574 on: August 09, 2024, 08:53:08 AM »
UI change that would greatly improve decision making process and complement other 2.6 Auto Route changes: https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg170494#msg170494

Fleet -> Movement Orders -> Autoroute by System

For each listed system:
After system name and info add a bracket with information how far (in billion kilometers) given system is from selected fleet.

For example:

 
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Offline Jovus

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #575 on: August 09, 2024, 07:09:31 PM »
Particle Lances are awesome and I really like them. In fact they might be slightly too good.

Particle beams are, IRL (according to the whitepapers regarding 60s-70s satellite design) spinals.

Mil SF (including derivatives such as various anime) have awesome scenes of gigantic spinal particle cannons.

Thus this suggestion: particle lances should take the spinal slot on warships on which they are mounted. This would mean you could only mount one (or two, if you have advanced spinals? I'm not clear these days on how spinal vs advanced spinal works, except giving you a larger aperture for lasers) and it would take 'the spinal slot' from other candidates. It would also require you to research spinal mounts before actually being able to mount a particle lance.

(Maybe advanced spinals still give you 1 damage/range tech above normal? I haven't thought that far in advance; this is based on Rule of Cool for me.)
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #576 on: August 09, 2024, 11:14:41 PM »
Particle Lances are awesome and I really like them. In fact they might be slightly too good.

I'd say they're very strong, they should be given the cost to obtain them, but they also have very clear weaknesses that are easy to exploit, which means they still require work and smart doctrine/tactics to use effectively (weak NPR tactical AI notwithstanding), so IMO they are in about the right place.

Quote
Particle beams are, IRL (according to the whitepapers regarding 60s-70s satellite design) spinals.

Mil SF (including derivatives such as various anime) have awesome scenes of gigantic spinal particle cannons.

Thus this suggestion: particle lances should take the spinal slot on warships on which they are mounted. This would mean you could only mount one (or two, if you have advanced spinals? I'm not clear these days on how spinal vs advanced spinal works, except giving you a larger aperture for lasers) and it would take 'the spinal slot' from other candidates. It would also require you to research spinal mounts before actually being able to mount a particle lance.

(Maybe advanced spinals still give you 1 damage/range tech above normal? I haven't thought that far in advance; this is based on Rule of Cool for me.)

The problem with spinal weapons in general is that they don't really scale well mechanically. Currently, If you have (say) 30 cm laser tech and Advanced Spinals, your biggest spinal weapon is a 45 cm laser which requires, IIRC, about 700 tons. That's a proper spinal weapon on a 5,000-10,000 ton ship, but not much more than a slightly bigger gun on a 50,000-ton dreadnought.

The natural solution seems to be scaling spinal weapons to be larger, but this poses a problem because the alpha strike from such weapons is difficult at best to balance in a way that preserves interesting gameplay and choices. For example, suppose a spinal weapon could be 3x the normal caliber, so with 30 cm laser tech a spinal laser could be 90 cm (1,400 tons, IIRC). This is not really such a great improvement in size, but more pressingly a 90 cm spinal laser has over 200 base damage compared to 24 for a 30 cm laser (not to mention >2x as large of a range modifier, so that damage holds up at a much longer range). That's a really big alpha hit that can probably wipe out many ships in one shot, especially those without shields, which means you wind up with a meta where spinal lasers are THE beam weapon - even making spinal weapons larger and less efficient than their corresponding normal weapons of the same caliber doesn't solve this, unless it makes spinals basically useless. This is the root of the problem: if you add a weapon that is as powerful as these massive weapons we see in science fiction settings, it creates tremendous difficulties to balance and the result is almost certainly an unstable equilibrium at best.

(It's worth noting that the current situation hails from the VB6 days when, for a long time, most players were designing smaller ships on which a Spinal Laser actually lived up to its billing. Changes in the C# versions as well as the player base learning better strategies over time has led to larger ships becoming more common if not the normal approach for many players. In this sense, spinal weapons are a bit of a historical artifact.)

IMO, massive dreadnought-scale spinal weapons fall under the same umbrella as tiny space superiority fighters - very common in science fiction, but not really a good fit for Aurora's mechanics. That being said, I do enjoy the niche they currently have, as charging with a wing of spinal-armed FACs/LACs is a very fun doctrine.
 

Offline nakorkren

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #577 on: August 10, 2024, 12:27:27 AM »
I agree that particle lances are pretty well balanced at the moment. They are GREAT against unshielded opponents, and both particle beams and lances get stronger (with increasing tech level) without increasing in HS, which is unique to that weapon type and pretty cool. However, if the target has almost any shielding, they're such crappy DPS that they're not very strong.

As an example, at my current tech level my particle lances do 18 damage which will cut through most ships' armor and do internal damage, but they only fire ever 55 seconds, meaning a single max-size theta shield (1250 tons and 158 points of shielding) will have recharged 13 damage by then, whereas a 10cm railgun does 44 damage in that same timespan for 1/4 the weapon size.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2024, 12:32:17 AM by nakorkren »
 
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Offline nakorkren

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #578 on: August 10, 2024, 05:04:39 PM »
QoL improvement idea: In the Fleet Movement Orders tab, would it be possible to list (probably filter in/out) "lost" contracts as targets of move orders? That way when we lose track of a ship/fleet, we can move to the last known location without needing to set up a waypoint.
 

Online alex_brunius

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #579 on: August 11, 2024, 07:03:38 AM »
The problem with spinal weapons in general is that they don't really scale well mechanically. Currently, If you have (say) 30 cm laser tech and Advanced Spinals, your biggest spinal weapon is a 45 cm laser which requires, IIRC, about 700 tons. That's a proper spinal weapon on a 5,000-10,000 ton ship, but not much more than a slightly bigger gun on a 50,000-ton dreadnought.

(It's worth noting that the current situation hails from the VB6 days when, for a long time, most players were designing smaller ships on which a Spinal Laser actually lived up to its billing. Changes in the C# versions as well as the player base learning better strategies over time has led to larger ships becoming more common if not the normal approach for many players. In this sense, spinal weapons are a bit of a historical artifact.)

IMO, massive dreadnought-scale spinal weapons fall under the same umbrella as tiny space superiority fighters - very common in science fiction, but not really a good fit for Aurora's mechanics. That being said, I do enjoy the niche they currently have, as charging with a wing of spinal-armed FACs/LACs is a very fun doctrine.

My suggestion to preserve balance, limit alpha strikes while still catering to cool big Sci-Fi Spinal weapons is a new techline for spinal weapons.

"Spinal recharge boost tech"
It is another modifier/dropdown that basically makes a spinal weapons x-times bigger while making them recharge x-times faster. Higher techs unlocks higher max values of x.

Lets play around with some values:
For example a regular 45cm Spinal Laser will have 55 seconds reload, 750 ton.
If we allowed an say x2.5 recharge boost this would give us a weapon needing x2.5 times more power, firing every 25 seconds and taking up 1875 tons. Now that is a weapon more fitting for a capital ship.

It could be applied to Particle Lances too.
 

Offline nakorkren

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #580 on: August 11, 2024, 04:20:22 PM »
Add a "Recall Squadrons" button that issues a "Land on Assigned Mothership/Squadron" order to fleets in the same system which are squadrons of that mothership.
 
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Offline nikarus2370

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #581 on: August 12, 2024, 02:40:02 PM »
Please forgive me if this is already in the game and I am just not finding it, but.

For ships including prototype components, it would be nice if there was a spot in the Class Design window that told the player how much RP it would take to get all the gear together and produce the ship.
 
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Offline Jovus

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #582 on: August 12, 2024, 09:06:58 PM »
Speaking of prototyping, it would be nice if, when using the 'show next tech' tickbox for component design, the options that you don't yet have were flagged or highlighted in some obvious way in the window. This would help tremendously in the case of designing a component that combines multiple tech lines so that you don't accidentally include tech levels you don't want (e.g. designing a BFC with a better tracking speed but not a better range, or a power plant with a better base plant tech but without higher boost than you already have).
 

Offline buczbucz

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #583 on: August 13, 2024, 07:35:59 AM »
1. System View Window -> All System View -> Sort By

Add an option to sort by total mineral accessibility.

2. Mineral Survey Window

Add a column with total mineral accessibility.
Add an option to sort by total mineral accessibility.

Currently the 'best' option to quickly get info about total mineral accessibility of a body is to create a colony there and check Economics -> Mining (or add all accessibility numbers in your head), which is suboptimal. Moreover you can only manually compare that value between colonies.
 
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Offline nikarus2370

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Re: Suggestions Thread for v2.4.0
« Reply #584 on: August 13, 2024, 09:50:18 AM »
Suggestion, ctrl clicking and shift clicking added to some interfaces.


Explanation. If managing say files in windows, or an excel sheet, or any of dozens of other interfaces where a person might want to select a group of things quickly, most softwares use a system where, clicking somethign at the top of the list, and shift+clicking something towards the bottom, highlights the group, and then you can drag adn drop, or delete, or whatever.
Similarly CTRL+Clicking several items in a list will allow you to select those ones, and move them all at once as well.

I feel that this would be a handy addition in a few management windows. Specifically the Fleet Management interface, where moving large numbers of units around between fleets can be a bit tedious, as well as assigning missiles to launchers, assigning weapons to FCs if you need to juggle for whatever reason