Newtonian Aurora

[Yonder]

Are you thinking of ejectable "power cores" which are big generators with basic engines that can be released if damaged?

No particular plan, although I know that sort of thing may be useful to the people trying to do more and more modular stuff. I was mostly interested in the idea that Carrier's could recharge their fighters, going the other way is more of a brain storm than anything.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, if Fighters will be used at all. Let's not get into that discussion again. 

[Elouda]

Well, its equally applicable to other kinds of parasites, and its definately an interesting idea that would add more depth to parasite/fighter operations, both from vessels as well as planetary bases. So I'm all for it.

[bean]

On a related tangent, will ships have to decelerate when approaching planets? Certainly atmospheric breaking and gravitational breaking can do a lot, but if it's late game and a ship with no fuel tries to land at 0.23 C, I get the feeling there should be problems.

That absolutely will not work.  A rule of thumb for such things is that you can't get breaking more then about escape velocity.  That gives a nice rounding error, but will not work with relativistic velocities.

All that said, gravitational flybys, braking, and slingshotting are an essential part of traditional space travel. It would be interesting to include it, though simplification would be required. Avoiding actually doing a lot of math, you could make a ship leave orbit with a certain percentage of its arrival velocity depending on the mass of the ship, the mass of the body, the arrival velocity, and perhaps pilot skill.

In such a system, a fighter swinging by Jupiter could come to a stop or get 1000% speed, while the death star might only gain or lose 1-2% of velocity swinging past an asteroid.

Mass has no effect on such a thing, at least at the scales in question.  Yes, you will probably gain less velocity if your ship is 50% of the mass of the swung-by object.  However, swing-bys, like aerobreaking, are ineffective when you are traveling much above the object's escape velocity.  Considering that NA starts with normal speeds well above that point, I see no reason to add a system.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Speaking of the sort of things fighters will replenish for, it looks like in the current weapon and energy system you'll have a lot of freedom in battery and generator sizes. Would it be possible to design fighters with tiny generators and large batteries?

That way they could fly out, fire several shots, and then return to the carrier ship and recharge?

Yes, that will be possible.

Will carrier generators see Parasite batteries, and charge them if there is excess power? (Or even if there is not, if the priorities are set to favor parasites).

What about the other way? Can a fighter which is not being used transfer its power to the carrier? Perhaps while doing this the maintenance clock proceeds as normal?

Ships recharge their own batteries first. After that, any spare power from parasites goes into the mothership's batteries and any spare power from the mothership goes into parasite batteries. I guess you could design a parasite ship that is almost all power plant and use it to boost the battery recharge rate of the mothership.

Steve

[Yonder]

Ships recharge their own batteries first. After that, any spare power from parasites goes into the mothership's batteries and any spare power from the mothership goes into parasite batteries. I guess you could design a parasite ship that is almost all power plant and use it to boost the battery recharge rate of the mothership.

Could it work the other way as well, with charges from the batteries of parasites powering batteries of their carriers?

As an example idea, you could have a super large generator on a ship (because those are more efficient), with no room for anything other than some hangars. All of the weapons of the fleet are on other ships. The ships fire, until their parasites are empty, which then fly to the charge ship to charge (passing fully charged parasites which dock at the weapon ships) they then charge at the generator ship, return to the weapon ship, etc etc.

I'm not saying that this is in any way an effective strategy, certainly the micromanagement would be a nightmare, but it may be fun to have the ability to do wacky things like that.

[Mel Vixen]

Actually as "defense-base" this could work. Which makes me wonder how lasers do work in newtonian Aurora. I mean i could imagine a Deathstar-sized Homopolar Generaor (i call them HpG from now on) with a single friging laser attached as planetary defense. I guess it would be impossible to build a single "light"-based laser big enough to vaporize a 500 meter ship on pointblank range but if we get to x-rays ... . The active sensors could be powered by a very small powercore. Hehe reminds me a bit to the xindi-weapon.

Same goes for planetary AMM shields. Instead of just a multistaged "mine" you could use a medicore HpG some Missile-stockpiles and fast mechanized launchers. Just size the HpG so that it runs out of juice at the same time as AMM-base would run out of ammo. If you add a small docking bay (say 2k tons) a small ordonance carrier from the planet could reload the ammo and HpGs.

To bad we dont have a Ai to man those things. i pity the guys who are on guard-duty.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I've decided to remove the power requirement for active sensors. At the moment sensors are tracked by fleet rather than by ship and not loaded into memory unless they are needed. The power requirement would have meant checking all active sensors each increment prior to the movement/detection phase to find which were on but not damaged. Therefore I decided the extra gameplay of the power requirement wasn't worth the performance hit and the extra coding. The power grid will just apply to shields and weapons.

Steve

[UnLimiTeD]

Can't you just have a requirement on ship building, as in, let a sensor function as a negative generator?

On second thought, thats crap. But you could increase the sensors size.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Can't you just have a requirement on ship building, as in, let a sensor function as a negative generator?

On second thought, thats crap. But you could increase the sensors size.

When I removed the power requirement, I also reduced the active sensor strength per ton, which in effect means you will need a larger sensor for the same capability as before.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Due to the slower pace of Newtonian Aurora (for those who find Standard Aurora too fast-paced , I have reduced wealth production, construction and mining by about 50%. Shipbuilding and research is reduced by about 60%. Fuel production remains the same as Standard Aurora while the size and cost of the Sorium Harvester module have both been halved, which means you can now produce twice as much fuel for the same ship mass/cost.

In Newtonian Aurora, the chance of a gas giant containing Sorium in the atmosphere will be 50%, compared to 20% for Standard Aurora

Fuel is going to be a vital commodity, which is why despite everything else being slower, fuel production will be the same, fuel harvesting will be twice as fast and Sorium availability in gas giants will be higher. Establishing a fuel harvesting industry to going to be key.

Steve

[Mormota]

Do you have anything planned for diplomacy?

[Yonder]

I'm guessing that this effect would have a negative affect on gameplay, however for completeness sake I want to point out that while passive sensors should diminish in ability based on the second power of the distance, active sensors should actually diminish with the fourth power of the distance.

That is because they emit a signal which degrades with the second power of the distance, and then that signal hits a contact and reflects back, and that reflection also degrades with the second power of the distance, so the total degradation is the fourth power of the distance.

If this change was made in the game the result would be that it would begin to become nearly impossible to scan an enemy with active sensors without him seeing your active sensor signature (right now it's unlikely in most cases, but a moderate tech advantage can give you that scenario for typical ships with small EM sensors).

As an example, if you increased your sensor strength by a factor of 16, you could only see twice as far as you could before, however your enemies can see you 4 times farther out.

I would still model Fire Controls as diminishing with the square of the distance however. Those aren't area sensors, they are only monitoring a single target, so that fixed beam on the way to the target wouldn't lose strength over distance. Once the signal does hit the target, however, the reflection would begin to disperse normally.

[Antsan]

That is because they emit a signal which degrades with the second power of the distance, and then that signal hits a contact and reflects back, and that reflection also degrades with the second power of the distance, so the total degradation is the fourth power of the distance.

Are you sure? I think this would be more the square of twice the distance.

[Elouda]

Think of it as two spheres; one emitted from the source, with power decreasing as a square of distance (inverse-square law). Any 'signal' that hits a target then reflects off that in a second 'sphere' (roughly) which is what we try to detect, and also has power decreasing as a square of distance.