4.3 Suggestions

[Brian Neumann]

If you want to put in the flare stars, I would either make it very rare, or have terraformers make a difference in the planetary radiation.  If the terraformer instalation had a new mode where instead of changing the atmosphere they reduced the level of radiation in the atmosphere then there would be a counter to the star having a flare.  Maybe have the terraformer remove 2x the percentage of radiation that it would add atmosphere to a planet.  

Example if the terraforming rate is .004 atm/year then have the radiation cleanup rate be .008% of the current radiation level.  It would take a lot of terraformers to quickly remove all the radiation, and it is unlikely that a colony would have that many available.  They would probably also be shut down until there is a flare so the 6 month warmup period would apply.

Brian

[Paul M]

not being an astrophysicist I'm not fully sure of all the details about flare stars but the atmosphere will tend to screen out most low energy gamma rays (x-rays) due to absorbtion processes.  There is no way for x-ray radiation to activate anything either (there are photo-nuclear reactions but they require very high energy gamma rays) so a solar flare would not make the planet more radioactive but would during the flare period make the background radiation level higher plus scramble most electronics due to the trapped particles in the magnetopshere of the planet (major EMP type weapon).

But frankly a solar flare that increased solar radiation by a factor of greater than x2 would be lethal.  It isn't just x-rays that are emitted (we just detect those) but also protons, and other solar wind particles plus more regular (IR-visible-UV) light levels.  If the flare lasted any appreciable amount of time you can assume a substantial rise in global temperature (melting of ice caps), substantial damage due to increased UV levels to things that use eyes.  Evolutionary adaptions would be required for any animals and plants (animals likely would tend to burrow underground or be amphibeous).  Plants would have to be right hardy.

These flares would be accompanied by serious climatic variation and possible damage to the planetary atmosphere (chemical reactions with the constituent gases catalysed by the UV would be my first guess) such as building lots of ozone or the destruction of certain molecules.  The fact that say the event is shorter than a day will cause a serious weather zone to form as tons of water vapour would be driven into the atmosphere.

Unless this was a newly starting event I would think the planet would have lots of evidence on it for flare activity.  I'm not sure there is a real game play advantage to adding this to the game when it is all said and done.

[sloanjh (OP)]

When I was adding all the real star system, I noted that quite a few are Flare Stars. These are stars that suddenly increase their luminosity by anything from double to 100x or more. it happens within a few minutes and lasts for anything from a few minutes to a few hours. The effect apparently resembles a solar flare but on a far greater scale. I am considering having such an effect in the game but I haven't decided how to replicate it in terms of gameplay. The limited information I can find states that the flares produce vast quantities of x-rays which would be lethal to humans. As that it is a good reason to avoid such systems entirely I thought about a more restrained version. Perhaps adding an amount of radiation to any planets within the system, based on the size of the flare and the distance from the star. Flares would be fairly rare so they would be a risk rather than a certainty and within a known stars game you would know which stars might flare. What does the panel think?

Random observations:

This will probably make it even harder to find a good colony site.

I'm not sure, but I'd be surprised if any one flare would increase the long-term radiation level of the planet.  In other words, the current radiation rating for a planet is produced by the decay of long-lived isotopes, and I suspect the flare is unlikely to produce anything energetic enough to convert stable isotopes into unstable ones.  The upshot of this is that it's probably not realistic to model this through the current mechanism.

On the other hand, let's say a flare lasted a day, and put out 356x times the amount of radiation produced by a 1pt warhead.  It seems reasonable to have an instantaneous drop of population equivalent to 1 year's worth of 1pt radiation.

If you really want to go down this road, then you could also model planets' magnetospheres (radiation shielding) and steady-state solar and cosmic radiation.  Presumably a hot white dwarf puts out more dangerous radiation than a cool red dwarf, plus each planet should have some level of naturally occuring radioactives in its crust.  The magnetosphere could cut some percentage of the solar radiation (but not planetary).  In this model, (planetary + shielding*solar) would be a floor to the amount of radiation present on the planet, and a nuclear war would temporarily increase the level of "planetary".  A flare would then give a big pulse to "solar" in the 5-day increment in which it occured.  One nice side-effect of this is that you might also be able to model radiation poisoning of ships' crews (with armor or shields possible cutting radiation levels, and/or armor cells becoming "hot" due to missile strikes).

On the gripping hand, it seems like the change in planetary game-play would simply be to make the population growth rate variable for certain planets, i.e. the change in game play might not be worth the effort.  OTOH, it would be a real drag to have an unshielded ship in a system during a flare and have 1/2 the crew die off.  If you put the ship possibility in, I would also add a "hide" order that would allow a ship to go to the dark side of a planetary body for shielding.

John

[welchbloke]

When I was adding all the real star system, I noted that quite a few are Flare Stars. These are stars that suddenly increase their luminosity by anything from double to 100x or more. it happens within a few minutes and lasts for anything from a few minutes to a few hours. The effect apparently resembles a solar flare but on a far greater scale. I am considering having such an effect in the game but I haven't decided how to replicate it in terms of gameplay. The limited information I can find states that the flares produce vast quantities of x-rays which would be lethal to humans. As that it is a good reason to avoid such systems entirely I thought about a more restrained version. Perhaps adding an amount of radiation to any planets within the system, based on the size of the flare and the distance from the star. Flares would be fairly rare so they would be a risk rather than a certainty and within a known stars game you would know which stars might flare. What does the panel think?

Random observations:

This will probably make it even harder to find a good colony site.

I'm not sure, but I'd be surprised if any one flare would increase the long-term radiation level of the planet.  In other words, the current radiation rating for a planet is produced by the decay of long-lived isotopes, and I suspect the flare is unlikely to produce anything energetic enough to convert stable isotopes into unstable ones.  The upshot of this is that it's probably not realistic to model this through the current mechanism.

On the other hand, let's say a flare lasted a day, and put out 356x times the amount of radiation produced by a 1pt warhead.  It seems reasonable to have an instantaneous drop of population equivalent to 1 year's worth of 1pt radiation.

If you really want to go down this road, then you could also model planets' magnetospheres (radiation shielding) and steady-state solar and cosmic radiation.  Presumably a hot white dwarf puts out more dangerous radiation than a cool red dwarf, plus each planet should have some level of naturally occuring radioactives in its crust.  The magnetosphere could cut some percentage of the solar radiation (but not planetary).  In this model, (planetary + shielding*solar) would be a floor to the amount of radiation present on the planet, and a nuclear war would temporarily increase the level of "planetary".  A flare would then give a big pulse to "solar" in the 5-day increment in which it occured.  One nice side-effect of this is that you might also be able to model radiation poisoning of ships' crews (with armor or shields possible cutting radiation levels, and/or armor cells becoming "hot" due to missile strikes).

On the gripping hand, it seems like the change in planetary game-play would simply be to make the population growth rate variable for certain planets, i.e. the change in game play might not be worth the effort.  OTOH, it would be a real drag to have an unshielded ship in a system during a flare and have 1/2 the crew die off.  If you put the ship possibility in, I would also add a "hide" order that would allow a ship to go to the dark side of a planetary body for shielding.

John

I'm with John on this I think that there is a huge amount of extra work required that may lead to little extra game enjoyment.  One option might be to treat a flare like a an EM weapon and just apply an x strength EM shot againt viable ships.  It then comes down to was the ship shielded/hidden behind a planet etc.  I'm not keen on this idea.

[sloanjh (OP)]

I'm with John on this I think that there is a huge amount of extra work required that may lead to little extra game enjoyment.  One option might be to treat a flare like a an EM weapon and just apply an x strength EM shot againt viable ships.  It then comes down to was the ship shielded/hidden behind a planet etc.  I'm not keen on this idea.

I didn't actually mean to vote against it - I think the extra consistency in treating radiation would be neat.  I've just got a feeling that in practice it wouldn't change much in terms of the flavor of the game, other than to introduce a random (potential) ship-killer event.  OTOH, since Aurora is a vehicle for Steve's fiction, then it might be interesting to have a ship get caught in a flare and have to make a run for the nearest planet....

Hmmm - after thinking some more about "random ship-killer events", there is one way in which these have the potential to significantly change play.  At present, if you send a ship through a WP and it doesn't come back, then it's almost certainly enemy action.  If there were a chance that some natural event destroyed the ship, then that would make life a lot more uncertain - similar to the black-hole WP in SF.  Unfortunately, the player would know what happened IRL, and so would have to role-play the uncertainty (similar to the fleets picketing black holes in the Diary).

John

[waresky]

Steve a very curiosity: it's possible put on "Solar System" map a sort of "fog-of-war" system?
U need to EXPLORE with a ship for leave this "fog"
u think r possible?
And obviously research a some of "sensor" to pass through "fog" for "only see" a planets..hope u understand what am mean.

A sort of FOG but obviously planets are "visible"..hmm..or an "?" in place at planet ..some sort of "probabilty planetary contact".-
For simulated an "real uncertain" situations,and are more real on game than a ALL visible Solar system..

[Steve Walmsley]

Steve a very curiosity: it's possible put on "Solar System" map a sort of "fog-of-war" system?
U need to EXPLORE with a ship for leave this "fog"
u think r possible?
And obviously research a some of "sensor" to pass through "fog" for "only see" a planets..hope u understand what am mean.

A sort of FOG but obviously planets are "visible"..hmm..or an "?" in place at planet ..some sort of "probabilty planetary contact".-
For simulated an "real uncertain" situations,and are more real on game than a ALL visible Solar system..

I have thought about a optional rule where you would have to detect planets, moons, asteroids, etc.. There are a few problems though. The first is that there are a LOT of system bodies in the game so the event log could become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of "System Body Discovered' events. You would soon get tired of looking at the systems every time a few of these messages popped up. The second problem is that it would mess surveying up as you might find yourself having to go back and survey systems several times after new planets were discovered. A third problem is that I would have to keep track of which race had found which system body, which would mean a lot of record-keeping, and I would have to look this up every time I did anything in the game that involved a system body, which would have an impact on performance. So I guess the bottom line is that while this would initially seem cool, in practice it would probably get tiresome fairly quickly.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

Thanks for the comments on Flare Stars. After further thought I think am I going to leave them alone. As it has been pointed out, it would be quite a lot of work and probably wouldn't affect the game that much. I'll give some thought to some of the alternate cosmic threats mentioned in the disaster thread

Steve

[Steve Walmsley]

I have been playing around with Asteroid Mining Modules to try and make them more attractive. They are currently size 250 and cost 250 BP and I don't think that makes them very useful, especially as once a ship is built around them their cost goes up. Furthermore, asteroid miners only work with asteroids and they tend to be much slower than the freighters that can move automated mines around. The Fuel Harvesters work well so I decided to follow the same general principles for the mining module in terms of size and cost. The Fuel Harvester is size 100 and an automated mine is the same size as a refinery so the Asteroid Mining Module is now size 100 too. The fuel harvester is half the cost of a refinery at 60 BP, so I have made the mining module half the cost of an automated mine at 120 BP. The effective cost per module will be higher than that once you build a ship around it and they are less capable than automated mines anyway as they are restricted in their potential mining sites. I think these changes will make them far more viable as a potential use of (always limited) shipyard space.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

Steve,

RE: Asteroid Mining Modules

I think that will work nicely.

[Charlie Beeler]

I'm going to revisit a couple of suggetions I've made in the past related to turrets and gauss cannons.

Turrets
Tracking speeds are way behind similair tech level missiles as well as max (x4) tracking speed of same level beam fire control.  

My suggestion is to change turret tracking speed to match to (x4) max tracking speed of the same level beam fire control.  Also adjust the cost to match base cost for the same level (x1) beam fire control.

Gauss Cannon
Currently to sizes are .5 to 6 hull spaces.  (50 - 300 tons)  When we were first talking about a weapon subsystem for fighters that could also function as a point defense subsystem I invisioned something sized like an M61 Vulcan (200 - 300 lbs) not mk45 5" deck gun (21+ tons).  Actually just something that is proportionally smaller that 10cm rail gun as the M61 is to the mk45.  

My suggestion is to change the current sizes to .1 - 1 hull space.  This would make the GC's proportionally smaller than main beam armorments and combat viable for fighters as secondary subsystems.  Yes it will as make quad GC turrets more mass viable for ship design.  They would be more inline with the concepts of the current CIWS systems.  

Summary
I've made these changes in my database and they do work.  

Yes it makes gun fighters more effective.  Frankly it makes them viable.  Unless a ship is using really thin armor gun only fighters are a minimal threat.  I've found gun fighters to be most effective at fighter/gunboat supression and layered missile defense.  

The combination makes GC PD turrets viable on most combat ships without being overwhelming to missile combat, they can still be swamped.  Unless your running really tight combat formations they are only really effect for final defense.

[waresky]

Fighters on Aurora are more same an "light corvette" than a "real" WingCommander Fighters,or Battlestar Galactica.
In StarsWars the Torpedoes Boat are the maximum threath who an "fighter" Class can give an Warship..

So the point are: Or Fighters r armed with Boxed Heavy missiles..or a Fighter become an very useless,overbudget (Carrier design,shipyard,spares,missiles,systems and so on) cost and far to become a VERY good Human vs others Decisive WeaponsSystem.
I think a effective on battleFront are Torpedoes Fighter or Heavy Missiles armed Fighters.Fast,2 Class-8 or 10 BoxMissiles and END of history.

for complication on antimissile Screen design,system and management of 200..nor 2000 fighters..am never will become crazy to manage a A-missile fighters combat system.

[Kurt]

I have been playing around with Asteroid Mining Modules to try and make them more attractive. They are currently size 250 and cost 250 BP and I don't think that makes them very useful, especially as once a ship is built around them their cost goes up. Furthermore, asteroid miners only work with asteroids and they tend to be much slower than the freighters that can move automated mines around. The Fuel Harvesters work well so I decided to follow the same general principles for the mining module in terms of size and cost. The Fuel Harvester is size 100 and an automated mine is the same size as a refinery so the Asteroid Mining Module is now size 100 too. The fuel harvester is half the cost of a refinery at 60 BP, so I have made the mining module half the cost of an automated mine at 120 BP. The effective cost per module will be higher than that once you build a ship around it and they are less capable than automated mines anyway as they are restricted in their potential mining sites. I think these changes will make them far more viable as a potential use of (always limited) shipyard space.

Steve

I have been experimenting with asteroid mining modules lately.  To be honest, the reason I didn't use them in the past was because the ships they were mounted on had to be monitored and sent back for overhauls periodically, which was a pain that I avoided by using automated mines instead.  Now that commercial ships no longer accumulate time on their clocks I have changed my mind on these and will likely start using them.  The changes above mean they will be even more useful.

Kurt

[waresky]

Steve,the phrase "begin project" on Industrial screen r a very addictive and enjoing appeal.

Percentage are very useful and seems "realistic"
Awesome work.

Hope one day or another we can "show" the planetary surface same as MARS (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VgbOrdteh5w/S ... 2-full.jpg),for struggle,for dream,and for a "real sensations"..
Or a planetary explorations same as UR-Quan Master old game:)) simple but addictive ehhehe

[welchbloke]

I'm going to revisit a couple of suggetions I've made in the past related to turrets and gauss cannons.

Turrets
Tracking speeds are way behind similair tech level missiles as well as max (x4) tracking speed of same level beam fire control.  

My suggestion is to change turret tracking speed to match to (x4) max tracking speed of the same level beam fire control.  Also adjust the cost to match base cost for the same level (x1) beam fire control.

Gauss Cannon
Currently to sizes are .5 to 6 hull spaces.  (50 - 300 tons)  When we were first talking about a weapon subsystem for fighters that could also function as a point defense subsystem I invisioned something sized like an M61 Vulcan (200 - 300 lbs) not mk45 5" deck gun (21+ tons).  Actually just something that is proportionally smaller that 10cm rail gun as the M61 is to the mk45.  

My suggestion is to change the current sizes to .1 - 1 hull space.  This would make the GC's proportionally smaller than main beam armorments and combat viable for fighters as secondary subsystems.  Yes it will as make quad GC turrets more mass viable for ship design.  They would be more inline with the concepts of the current CIWS systems.  

I have to admit that I handn't really thought about these points until Charlie mentioned them; however, they do make sense to me.  In particular, due to the mass penalties, close in weapons systems are limited to specialist ships or large combatents.  If we use modern naval designs as a model then the Aurora CIWS are overmassed in comparison.  I haven't used fighters enough to really have a handle on what the GC changes would mean but they seem reasonable.  I think a change in tracking speeds would not change the game dynamic too much. I have my body armour on and I'm ready to take flak for my views