C# Aurora Changes List v1.00

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Tactical Map Popup Menu

When you right-click on the tactical map, any fleets, population or jump points within a few pixels of where you click will appear in a list. If you select a population, the Economics window will load with the population selected. If you select a fleet, the Naval Organization window will load with the fleet selected. If you select the jump point, which appears as the name of any destination system, the tactical map will change to that system.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Naming Options for Ships

In C# you can choose a naming theme for all the ships of a certain class, just as you can in VB6. C# also adds some new options.

You can choose for each class whether you want the names from the theme to be selected in order or selected randomly.

Each class has Prefix and Suffix name options. I'll steal Father Tim's example from the suggestion he made: Wind-class destroyers could be auto-named Arctic Wind, Bitter Wind, Cold Wind, Desert Wind, or Dragon-class carriers could be auto-named Red Dragon, Night Dragon, Gold Dragon, Shadow Dragon, etc.. So if you create a Colours naming theme for example, you can apply it to many different classes but with a different prefix or suffix.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Final Defensive Fire Changes

In VB6 Aurora, a fire control can only fire at a single target in any increment. For C# Aurora, an exception is made for fire controls firing in automatic final defensive fire mode.

A fire control in this mode will continue to fire on incoming salvos as long as it has unfired weapons remaining. Each individual weapon or turret will only be able to engage a single salvo. This means point defence ships no longer need a large number of fire control systems, although there is still a design choice in terms of redundancy.

In VB6 Aurora, missiles moved in descending order of speed. I've updated that for C# Aurora to descending order of speed then by descending order of salvo size, so the largest salvos of the same type of missile will move first (and be engaged first by final defensive fire).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Save Button

C# Aurora doesn't continually update to disk in the same way as VB6 Aurora, which is one of the reasons why it is much faster. Instead, there is a Save Button.

When you click Save, the database prior to the save is copied to a new file called AuroraDBSaveBackup.db and then the AuroraDB file is updated with the current game. The previous AuroraDBSaveBackup.db is copied to a file called AuroraDBPreviousSaveBackup.db, so you have automatic backups of your last two saves. To restore a previous save, you need to delete AuroraDB.db rename the backup file to AuroraDB.db.

If you close without saving then your game will revert to the last save. Saving takes about thirty seconds.

This has been part of C# Aurora from the start, but it was brought to my attention in another thread that I hadn't 'officially' mentioned this

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Surrender

An AI fleet may surrender to the enemy in certain circumstances. Generally, the fleet will have to be unarmed, badly damaged or not capable of fulfilling its mission and also be under attack from energy weapons.

In that situation, the fleet may try to evade, it may surrender or it may attempt to ram. The chances of each will depend on the Determination and Xenophobia of the crews. Certain spoiler races will not surrender.

When a ship surrenders the Overhaul Factor is set to 0.01, the same as a ship captured by boarding.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Auto Refit Tasks

A new shipyard task has been added for C# Aurora, the Auto-Refit.

This is exactly the same as a Refit Task except for one difference. When the task is finished, the shipyard will automatically start a new refit task using the same target class. For example, if you auto-refit Class A to Class B, when the task is finished the shipyard will check for another Class A in the same location to refit. If one is found, the shipyard will automatically create the task.

You can refit fighters in shipyards in C#, so this new task will remove a lot of micromanagement that would otherwise be necessary.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Alien Ground Unit Intelligence

As you fight alien ground forces, you will gain intelligence on the alien ground unit classes. This intelligence is displayed on the Diplomacy and Intelligence window alongside intelligence on alien ships, classes, sensors and populations.

For each different type of ground unit class you engage, you may gain intelligence if you have your own ground forces on the same ship or system body. New intelligence is gained under the following circumstances.

• If the alien unit fires on you, you will gain intelligence on its weapons
• If you score twenty hits on that type of unit, you will identify its base type (infantry, light vehicle, etc.)
• If you penetrate the armour of that type of unit twenty times, you will learn its armour strength
• if you destroy twenty of that type, you will learn its hit point

I might change the 20x multiplier based on play testing.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Ground Combat Events

Ground combat in C# is very detailed with many things happening in each combat round. There are a number of new events at varying levels of detail to serve as combat reports. Note that a formation (such as an Imperial Guard Regiment) consists of several formation elements, each containing one or more units of a single ground unit class.

• Element vs GUC: This is the most granular and reports the results of attacks from one formation element against one type of hostile ground unit class, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills. If a formation element engages in combat against five types of enemies, that element will have five Element vs GUC reports
• Ship vs GUC. This is similar to the above and reports the results of attacks from a single ship against one type of hostile ground unit class, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills. If a ship attacks five types of enemies, that ship will have five Ship vs GUC reports
• GUC vs GUC Summary: A summary of the results of attacks from one type friendly ground unit class against one type of hostile ground unit class, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills. For example, if there are five friendly types of ground unit class, each of which attack five types of hostile ground unit class, there will be twenty-five reports of this type. This is useful if you want to see how well certain types match-up - are your AT Guns able to knock out hostile tanks for example.
• Attack vs GUC Summary:  A summary of the results of attacks from all friendly ground forces against one type of hostile ground unit class, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills. For example, if six types of hostile types of ground unit class have been attacked by ground forces there will be six reports of this type.
• Orbital vs GUC Summary:  A summary of the results of attacks from all friendly ships against one type of hostile ground unit class, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills. For example, if six types of hostile types of ground unit class have been attacked by ships there will be six reports of this type.
• Formation Attack Summary: A list of the type and number of hostile units destroyed by a specific friendly formation
• Ground Attack Summary: A list of the type and number of hostile units destroyed by all friendly surface and orbit forces
• Element Loss Summary: Reports the results of enemy attacks against a single friendly formation element, providing number of shots, hits, armour penetrations and kills.[
• Formation Loss Summary: A list of the type and number of friendly units lost in a specific formation
• Ground Defence Summary: A list of the type and number of friendly units in all formations destroyed by all hostile forces
• Breakthrough Achieved: Reports that a specific formation achieved a breakthrough

There may be other events as a result of more play-testing. The above may be too granular for some players so you can filter out the events you don't want to see, or you can see very granular detail for role-playing and AAR purposes.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Change to Maintenance Facility Cost

Because of the changes to maintenance in C#, maintenance facilities have become much more important for two reasons:

1) You can no longer use the same maintenance facilities to support multiple ships, so you need far more maintenance facilities in general. For example, if you build a 20,000 ton ship, you also need 20,000 tons of extra maintenance facility capacity to support it.
2) The only source of maintenance supply points is from maintenance facilities as you can no longer build them with construction factories.

Because of the above, the cost of maintenance facilities has been reduced to 60 BP. They remain the same in other aspects, such as transport size, manning requirements, target size, etc.

Note: In general I am very happy with the maintenance changes. They allow you to setup distant bases capable of handling larger ships much more easily and, together with the new shipyard worker requirements and the need for more financial centres, they are putting much more pressure on the number of available workers.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Create New Lagrange Points

Ships designed for jump point stabilisation (creating jump gates in VB6) can also stabilise new Lagrange points.

Any planet with a mass of at least 150 will already have a stable Lagrange point that allows any numbers of ships to jump to other stable Lagrange points. Planets less than 150 mass also have Lagrange points but they are not stable and therefore not visible on the map. A ship with a stabilisation module can stabilise these Lagrange points so that all ships can use them. It is much easier to stabilise high mass planets, so gas giants are commonly used for this purpose, but it is possible even for larger terrestrial worlds given sufficient time. It is not possible to stabilise the Lagrange point of a planet with less than 0.25 mass.

The time in months required to stabilise a Lagrange point for a given planet is equal to: 60 / SQRT (Planet Mass). The production bonus of the ship commander will reduce this time.

For the solar system:
Jupiter has a mass of 317 so it already has a stable Lagrange point.
Saturn has a mass of 95 and would require six months.
Uranus has a mass of 14 and would require 1.3 years.
Neptune has a mass of 17 and would require 1.2 years.
Earth has a mass of 1 and would require 5 years.
Venus has a mass of 0.82 and would require 5.5 years.

Mars has a mass of 0.11 and Mercury has a mass of 0.055 so they are too small.

A new 'Stabilise Lagrange Point' order is available for planets where stabilisation is possible. The stabilisation ship remains at the associated planet while the task is carried out. Apart from the location and different required time, this is very similar to a jump point stabilisation task.

The time required for any given planet can be found on the System View in the very last column (you will need to scroll right).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Minerals for Maintenance Supplies

One of the major practical game play changes I have found through play-testing C# Aurora is the ease with which new naval bases can be created (because of the new maintenance system).

However, that brings a new issue. As you can no longer build MSP using construction factories in C#, you need to make full use of the MSP production of maintenance facilities or you start to run out of MSP (which is happening to me now because I am not doing that). The reason I am struggling to build MSP at the new bases is that MSP require eight different minerals. 1 MSP costs 0.25 BP and requires the following minerals (in tons): Duranium 0.05, Neutronium 0.025, Tritanium 0.025, Boronide 0.025, Mercassium 0.025, Uridium 0.025, Corundium 0.025, Gallicite 0.05. There is a lot of micromanagement required in either mining those minerals locally or moving them manually (and I keep forgetting which eight minerals ).

Therefore, for game play reasons and my own sanity I've decided to reduce the number of minerals required. I summed all ship components subject to maintenance for all military ships in my current game (including AI) to determine the most common minerals. Duranium and Gallicite were about the same, Uridium was about half of those and everything else was much lower, around one sixth or less of Duranium. Therefore I am going to change MSP minerals to Duranium 0.1, Uridium 0.05, Gallicite 0.1. That is much easier to remember and more reflective of reality. While that does increase overall Duranium consumption a little, I have also changed some buildings to use less Duranium, which I will post about separately.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Planetary Installations

There are a few additions and changes for planetary installations, including changes to mineral requirements. Here is a table of the current situation.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Salvage in Orbit

When a wreck is salvaged in VB6, the recovered minerals and components so to freighters in the same fleet as the salvage ship.

In C#, the same is true. However, if the wreck is in orbit of a population from the same race as the salvage ship, there are no freighters available and either a ship in the salvage fleet or the population has cargo shuttles, the recovered minerals and components are added to the population stockpile.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Interrupts for Active Weapons

In VB6, the game interrupts if you have weapons set to fire and no valid targets. It also interrupts when recharging is complete for weapons set to fire, even if nothing is in range.

For C#, the game checks to see if the target exists and is in range for each individual fire control. If not, there is no interrupt. Instead, you get a single event message per ship stating that ship is trying to fire on a target that is out of range or doesn't exist but the increment otherwise happens normally. This means you can set all your weapons up and assign targets while well out of range. Increments will proceed normally until you are within range, at which point the weapons will start firing.

Once in range, the recharge interrupts will happen (so if your weapons have a 40 second cycle time you can just hit 2 minutes and time will advance 40 seconds).

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Launch Ready Ordnance

You can use the Launch Ready Ordnance order at any movement destination, including a waypoint. Any ordnance assigned to a missile launcher that is assigned to a fire control will be launched at that point. The fire control does not need to be set to 'fire'. The missile will be launched without an assigned target.

This is useful for deploying buoys or mines or just launching missiles without a known target.