v2.6.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[nuclearslurpee]

Thanks for the standing order propagation options. That will be a massive help.

I have a question about the enhanced precursors though - Since there is a delay between the emergence of ground forces and space forces - What happens if all ground forces are eliminated before the space assets wake up? Do they immediately activate, or will combat on the surface immediately trigger the space assets as well?

Since the justification for the delay is for the precursors to secure the surface before launching their space assets, it would be a bit weird if they didn't react to losing the ground engagement and just waited with their space ships. It would also be cool if your forces could potentially discover the dormant spaceships in such cases.

I was wondering if someone would ask that

As it stands, if you destroy the ground forces, you capture the colony and no more ships appear. I haven't decided yet whether to leave it that way.

It's a tricky question. On one hand, as it currently stands it could be pretty easy to cheese the "Advanced" Precursors if you get a couple divisions of troops on the ground and never give them a chance to launch any ships. On the other hand, as noted it would feel silly if defeating their ground troops didn't impact their ship launches at all.

What about a different mechanic that calls back to the old VB6 robot soldier events while excavating the ruins? Excavating a ruin site which might have Precursors has a chance to reactivate the guardians, either a ground combat formation or an ancient ship (or several?) that had been offline for millennia. That way, the lore doesn't imply that defeating the ground forces will impede ship deployment, but you still get that gradual danger that requires a long-term commitment of forces to obtain all the nice, valuable loot.

I considered the original VB6 robot army mechanic to be problematic, since the resulting combat tended to destroy a lot of the loot from excavations and led to some rather cheesy strategies to prevent this, but as an optional mechanic I think it can work well as long as the player knows what they are consenting to when they click that check box.    The other possibility might be to make an exception (a dangerous suggestion, I know) and have Precursor ground forces do zero collateral damage, which is maybe less realistic but more rewarding for the players.

[paolot]

Feeling like with all new changes and time elapsed between this and latest update that Steve should start thinking at a 3.0 version rename instead of 2.6 

Already thought!    

...
I really think this is Aurora 3.0.   

[paolot]

Thanks for the standing order propagation options. That will be a massive help.

I have a question about the enhanced precursors though - Since there is a delay between the emergence of ground forces and space forces - What happens if all ground forces are eliminated before the space assets wake up? Do they immediately activate, or will combat on the surface immediately trigger the space assets as well?

Since the justification for the delay is for the precursors to secure the surface before launching their space assets, it would be a bit weird if they didn't react to losing the ground engagement and just waited with their space ships. It would also be cool if your forces could potentially discover the dormant spaceships in such cases.

I was wondering if someone would ask that

As it stands, if you destroy the ground forces, you capture the colony and no more ships appear. I haven't decided yet whether to leave it that way.

It's a tricky question. On one hand, as it currently stands it could be pretty easy to cheese the "Advanced" Precursors if you get a couple divisions of troops on the ground and never give them a chance to launch any ships. On the other hand, as noted it would feel silly if defeating their ground troops didn't impact their ship launches at all.

What about a different mechanic that calls back to the old VB6 robot soldier events while excavating the ruins? Excavating a ruin site which might have Precursors has a chance to reactivate the guardians, either a ground combat formation or an ancient ship (or several?) that had been offline for millennia. That way, the lore doesn't imply that defeating the ground forces will impede ship deployment, but you still get that gradual danger that requires a long-term commitment of forces to obtain all the nice, valuable loot.

I considered the original VB6 robot army mechanic to be problematic, since the resulting combat tended to destroy a lot of the loot from excavations and led to some rather cheesy strategies to prevent this, but as an optional mechanic I think it can work well as long as the player knows what they are consenting to when they click that check box.    The other possibility might be to make an exception (a dangerous suggestion, I know) and have Precursor ground forces do zero collateral damage, which is maybe less realistic but more rewarding for the players.

Before the conquest of a Precursors planet, it sounds strange to me if there weren't any ships defending the system.
After the planet capture, triggering the rebirth of an ancient ship could depend on several factors, from the initial strength of the colony, to a simple dice roll. As Nuclearslurpee says, ground combat should have consequences on the discovery and on the condition of the Precursors ships, condition that could allow or not their restart, as well as their ability to fly and fight. And it is plausible that the longer the combat the worse the ships condition, down to their wreckage.
We hope, Steve, that programming effort isn't so difficult that you can decide to include this option in the game.

[Elminster]

I guess "LG: Refuel from Tanker" also includes looking for Harvesting Stations with hubs and defined as "Tanker"?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Thanks for the standing order propagation options. That will be a massive help.

I have a question about the enhanced precursors though - Since there is a delay between the emergence of ground forces and space forces - What happens if all ground forces are eliminated before the space assets wake up? Do they immediately activate, or will combat on the surface immediately trigger the space assets as well?

Since the justification for the delay is for the precursors to secure the surface before launching their space assets, it would be a bit weird if they didn't react to losing the ground engagement and just waited with their space ships. It would also be cool if your forces could potentially discover the dormant spaceships in such cases.

I was wondering if someone would ask that

As it stands, if you destroy the ground forces, you capture the colony and no more ships appear. I haven't decided yet whether to leave it that way.

It's a tricky question. On one hand, as it currently stands it could be pretty easy to cheese the "Advanced" Precursors if you get a couple divisions of troops on the ground and never give them a chance to launch any ships. On the other hand, as noted it would feel silly if defeating their ground troops didn't impact their ship launches at all.

What about a different mechanic that calls back to the old VB6 robot soldier events while excavating the ruins? Excavating a ruin site which might have Precursors has a chance to reactivate the guardians, either a ground combat formation or an ancient ship (or several?) that had been offline for millennia. That way, the lore doesn't imply that defeating the ground forces will impede ship deployment, but you still get that gradual danger that requires a long-term commitment of forces to obtain all the nice, valuable loot.

I considered the original VB6 robot army mechanic to be problematic, since the resulting combat tended to destroy a lot of the loot from excavations and led to some rather cheesy strategies to prevent this, but as an optional mechanic I think it can work well as long as the player knows what they are consenting to when they click that check box.    The other possibility might be to make an exception (a dangerous suggestion, I know) and have Precursor ground forces do zero collateral damage, which is maybe less realistic but more rewarding for the players.

Another option I have considered is to have their ships launched from different bodies in the system, except for the orbital bases. In VB6, they used to have bases on multiple bodies with tracking stations and replacement ordnance.

[Andrew]

I guess "LG: Refuel from Tanker" also includes looking for Harvesting Stations with hubs and defined as "Tanker"?

There are no refuellign hubs they are gone

[Elminster]

I wasn't precise enough. 

I usually use Space Stations as fuel harvesters, which are not exactly "tankers", although they are defined as "tankers" with 0 reserve. They will (obviously) not move fuel to colonies and return.
The new order will look for stationary tankers, so I wondered if my stations with refueling systems will still work as intended.

[Andrew]

I would expect so it is a stationary tanker

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I wasn't precise enough. 

I usually use Space Stations as fuel harvesters, which are not exactly "tankers", although they are defined as "tankers" with 0 reserve. They will (obviously) not move fuel to colonies and return.
The new order will look for stationary tankers, so I wondered if my stations with refueling systems will still work as intended.

As I mentioned a few posts earlier, space stations are just ships with no engines. They are not treated any differently. For the purposes of movement orders and standing orders, a tanker is any class with the tanker flag set.

[Garfunkel]

You don't want to have them just unload anywhere though.

That sounds like an important player decision and thus something that should not be automated. I know that there are players who get their enjoyment out of cleverly automating their empire to run so that they don't need to do anything but that shouldn't be the general goal of every feature.

[Louella]

You don't want to have them just unload anywhere though.

That sounds like an important player decision and thus something that should not be automated. I know that there are players who get their enjoyment out of cleverly automating their empire to run so that they don't need to do anything but that shouldn't be the general goal of every feature.

Hmm. True enough, but... the "Cargohold full" status should probably still be a thing, so that a fleet could be told to drop its standing salvage order, to stop it from wasting resources, which is a potential new player trap.

With a "Cargohold Full" condition, players who are excited by order templates and things, could probably do something fancy.

Right now, for salvage ships, you have to keep an eye on them every time they salvage a wreck, to see how much cargo room they have left. This is a bit of unneeded supervision, there's not much benefit to keeping a close eye on your salvagers, but some penalties if you don't (i.e. wasted resources)

Especially since now ship components will take up the correct amount of space. Managing a salvage fleet's cargospace becomes a lot more important.

[Froggiest1982]

Would the admin command assigned to the ship still exist if the commander is killed? If so, since an automatic replacement may be triggered for a non-existent ship, how is that handled?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Would the admin command assigned to the ship still exist if the commander is killed? If so, since an automatic replacement may be triggered for a non-existent ship, how is that handled?

If the flag bridge is damaged, the admin command is still assigned to the ship but has no benefit. If the ship is destroyed, the admin command is automatically moved to the population of its parent command.

[Jorgen_CAB]

While you are working a bit on the automation... one thing that comes to mind is how you automate transfer of mines and factories etc to colonies.

One issue that I have is that you can't tell the ship to wait at a planet until a certain amount of facilities are available and if they try to load something and there is nothing there the order is broken. This means I will always have to time cargo ships in a way that there is at least one facility there. When you set up automation of say building mines at one location and transferring them to colonies you would like to just set it up once and then have it run until you change it. Currently it can be a bit time consuming as you have to manual make sure you never get to zero facilities.

It would be nice if I could say... keep 100 factories and only load once you are above that... if there are only 100 or less then wait, once there is 101 the ship load as many as it can (even if it goes below 100), the next ship/fleet again wait until there are at least 101 factories.

[Droll]

Will the new hull category toggle remember the last status between game restarts? Or will I have to toggle it on every time I open the class window?