Author Topic: C# Suggestions  (Read 266080 times)

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Offline KriegsMeister

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2610 on: June 25, 2022, 10:05:56 AM »
Could we get non-Gregorian Calender options, ideally in the form of a fully editable time system. The game already calculates all time as just chunks of seconds so allowing us to decide what those chunks are. Would be great for Non-sol/earth or alien species games, or maybe a future earth government just decided on a more sensible Calender of 30 day months and a 5 day holiday between December 30th and January 1st, or if someone wanted an ancient Greek or Egyptian start.

I could see merit in keeping minutes, hours, and days as fixed to not have to change the time step buttons, but giving us the ability to rename and edit the months and year would be great.

 
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Offline skoormit

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2611 on: June 25, 2022, 01:47:40 PM »
For a civilian shipping delivery that starts and ends in the same system, the shipping line pays tax equal to half the single-hop amount.
This is too much.
The typical distance between large populations in a single system is much less than half the typical distance per hop between large populations in separate systems.
It's probably closer to one tenth.
As a result, the number of easy colony locations in your starting system has an outsized impact on your wealth development.
Systems like Sol, which have multiple low-cost, easily terraformable colony prospects, generate so much early wealth via civilian shipping that the player's strategic decisions for the entire game are only very rarely impacted by wealth concerns. The player gets rich fast by developing those home system colonies, and then never has to worry about wealth again.
If you start in a system without easy colony prospects, you don't enjoy this early source of easy wealth, and as a result you actually do have to manage your spending wisely, and devote non-trivial research and production to increasing your tax income.

I suggest dropping the intra-system civ tax to either 10% or 20% of the single-hop rate.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2612 on: June 25, 2022, 02:31:10 PM »
For a civilian shipping delivery that starts and ends in the same system, the shipping line pays tax equal to half the single-hop amount.
This is too much.
The typical distance between large populations in a single system is much less than half the typical distance per hop between large populations in separate systems.
It's probably closer to one tenth.
As a result, the number of easy colony locations in your starting system has an outsized impact on your wealth development.
Systems like Sol, which have multiple low-cost, easily terraformable colony prospects, generate so much early wealth via civilian shipping that the player's strategic decisions for the entire game are only very rarely impacted by wealth concerns. The player gets rich fast by developing those home system colonies, and then never has to worry about wealth again.
If you start in a system without easy colony prospects, you don't enjoy this early source of easy wealth, and as a result you actually do have to manage your spending wisely, and devote non-trivial research and production to increasing your tax income.

I suggest dropping the intra-system civ tax to either 10% or 20% of the single-hop rate.

I don't see this as a problem.

The way things work presently, CSL taxes provide a useful incentive to develop single systems instead of expanding to as many systems as possible with only 1-2 major colonies and automated/asteroid mining operations in each one. Without such an incentive, rapid expansion is clearly the best decision as much as your empire can support it. Turtling up in a single system means leaving a lot of galactic exploration up to the NPRs and leaving yourself open to discovery by an advanced race before you are ready to expand, so there should be some real benefits. This is especially true if you start in Sol, which is programmed by Steve to have fewer minerals than other similar systems as a way to push the player away from Sol sooner rather than later.

Personally, I support having mechanics which avoid creating a single optimal strategy and instead create interesting decisions, even if those mechanics might not be perfectly "realistic". I do also consider having to adapt a different strategy for different starting conditions a key part of Aurora's gameplay, so I don't consider that having a system with worse colonization prospects forces the player to devote points towards income increase a problem at all. To me this is like saying that if a race starts in a system with JPs 10b km apart they have to put more fuel into their ships than a race starting in a system with JPs 500m km apart - this is true, and it's arguably even unfair, but it's part of the Aurora DNA to have to adapt to such circumstances.
 

Offline skoormit

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2613 on: June 25, 2022, 04:17:42 PM »
To me this is like saying that if a race starts in a system with JPs 10b km apart they have to put more fuel into their ships than a race starting in a system with JPs 500m km apart - this is true, and it's arguably even unfair, but it's part of the Aurora DNA to have to adapt to such circumstances.

The difference is that having JPs close together in your home system does not completely obviate all fuel constraints for the rest of the game. It's a big advantage, no doubt, but you will still have to make interesting decisions about fuel production, consumption, and ship design throughout the game.

With the current tax rate on intra-system civ deliveries, if you start your game with multiple CC 2.0 colonies in your home system, you will probably almost never have to think about wealth in this game.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2614 on: June 29, 2022, 03:32:38 AM »
Two things...

1. Please make it possible to edit total empire Wealth using SM. Could place that button on the "Wealth/Trade" screen. When you play multi-faction gamed Wealth can be used as method of payment for many things.

2. Please add a dynamic Waypoint connected to a fleet. That is a Waypoint you put on the map that moves in relation to a specific fleet. This would be very useful for having a patrolling escort around a fleet as it moves along. There could be two types. One that orient itself depending on what course the fleet have and another that just is in relation to the fleet as it is placed no matter what direction it moves at.
 

Offline GrandNord

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2615 on: June 29, 2022, 05:27:54 AM »
For the 2 you can already do that with fleet formation.  You can attach a fleet to another one in system and choose its distance and angle compared to the target fleet, as well as some conditions in which the fleet will go in the specified formation (a threat in the system for example). 
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2616 on: June 29, 2022, 06:50:20 AM »
For the 2 you can already do that with fleet formation.  You can attach a fleet to another one in system and choose its distance and angle compared to the target fleet, as well as some conditions in which the fleet will go in the specified formation (a threat in the system for example).

I know you can do that with fleet formations... it is not really the same thing though... I want to be able to patrol between points and still follow a fleet. It will also be easier to make controlled patrol orders around a fleet that way. With automatic docking and undocking as part of a patrol pattern etc.. You could automate rotational patrol by several different recon crafts in a way you currently can't do.
 

Offline hostergaard

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2617 on: June 29, 2022, 07:48:56 AM »
Construct all components for ship option

Quality of life feature: Add an option under the industry, either in the components selection or preferably as its own separate  list that allows you to simply construct all components for a given ship class. This so you don't have to constantly go trough and figure out what components is needed and individually build them.

 
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Offline Steve Zax

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2618 on: July 01, 2022, 06:22:33 AM »
Quote from: hostergaard link=topic=10640. msg160499#msg160499 date=1656506936
Construct all components for ship option

Quality of life feature: Add an option under the industry, either in the components selection or preferably as its own separate  list that allows you to simply construct all components for a given ship class.  This so you don't have to constantly go trough and figure out what components is needed and individually build them.
i USED to do that for EVRY ship of EVERY class, then EVERY ship of warship classes, then the FIRST run of every warship class. . . .
i rarely do it now.  just too many other things i need to do with the industry instead of letting the shipyard do it.  I know its "quicker," I'm pretty sure its not cheaper on resources, maybe its cheaper on wealth, but I doubt it, but BOY HOWDY is it more on micromanagement ( especially if you want each component to be ready on time , and not early).
 

Offline Scandinavian

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2619 on: July 01, 2022, 12:59:36 PM »
It's only faster in terms of keellaying-to-deployment. Not in terms of vessels per year per unit of TN capital investment.

It's potentially very useful if you are waiting on a specific new component before laying a bunch of keels for a new class, that you need really urgently. E.g. pre-building the engines for a class that you can't lay keels for because the fire control designs are not ready yet, or pre-building components while you tool up the yards. But in terms of sustained production, you are better off expanding yard capacity than factory capacity.

There is some tradeoff in that factories typically have higher utilization than yards (you can use factories for other things when not in a shipbuilding program), so if you tend to build your ships in spurts with long idle periods for your yards, it can be worth it to take the higher up-front cost of capital to end up with lower levelized cost through higher utilization. But building that kind of models is a thing I insist on getting paid for, so I usually don't break out the spreadsheets and instead just eyeball it.

Which, actually now that I think about it...

... why not let shipyards perform overhauls? That would let us use unused yard slips to free up maintenance facilities, and would certainly be a thing you would do in the real world during a shipbuilding downturn.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2022, 01:01:52 PM by Scandinavian »
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2620 on: July 01, 2022, 01:06:22 PM »
It's only faster in terms of keellaying-to-deployment. Not in terms of vessels per year per unit of TN capital investment.

It's potentially very useful if you are waiting on a specific new component before laying a bunch of keels for a new class, that you need really urgently. E.g. pre-building the engines for a class that you can't lay keels for because the fire control designs are not ready yet, or pre-building components while you tool up the yards. But in terms of sustained production, you are better off expanding yard capacity than factory capacity.

There is some tradeoff in that factories typically have higher utilization than yards (you can use factories for other things when not in a shipbuilding program), so if you tend to build your ships in spurts with long idle periods for your yards, it can be worth it to take the higher up-front cost of capital to end up with lower levelized cost through higher utilization. But building that kind of models is a thing I insist on getting paid for, so I usually don't break out the spreadsheets and instead just eyeball it.

This is generally correct, in times of no great need the most efficient use of planetary industry will be to build up shipbuilding industry rather than using it to rush-order ships. IMO, the major use case for building components is as wartime industry when you need every one of tomorrow's hulls in space yesterday - although against NPRs this is admittedly a rare occurrence. Otherwise I occasionally use component build to rush one or two ships that I have an urgent need for, e.g., a diplo ship if I have none available to make good relations with a NPR I don't want to fight (yet).

Quote
Which, actually now that I think about it...

... why not let shipyards perform overhauls? That would let us use unused yard slips to free up maintenance facilities, and would certainly be a thing you would do in the real world during a shipbuilding downturn.

I don't think maintenance facilities are "taken up" for overhauls, so you're not freeing up any capacity, thus there isn't a mechanical reason to implement this.
 

Offline Scandinavian

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2621 on: July 01, 2022, 01:21:17 PM »
Maintenance facilities are taken up by maintaining the ship during overhaul - if you have an idle slip, two 6,000 ton patrol boats, and 15,000 tons of maintenance facilities, then both your non-overhauling patrol boats will start to accrue maintenance clock when you bring in your third patrol boat for overhaul.

It didn't use to work that way in VB6, because maintenance facilities had unlimited capacity subject to a size cap. But in C# maintenance facilities provide tonnage capacity, not berth size.
 
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Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2622 on: July 01, 2022, 01:32:06 PM »
Maintenance facilities are taken up by maintaining the ship during overhaul - if you have an idle slip, two 6,000 ton patrol boats, and 15,000 tons of maintenance facilities, then both your non-overhauling patrol boats will start to accrue maintenance clock when you bring in your third patrol boat for overhaul.

It didn't use to work that way in VB6, because maintenance facilities had unlimited capacity subject to a size cap. But in C# maintenance facilities provide tonnage capacity, not berth size.

Okay, I can see where there might be some reason. Honestly, I always try to keep my maintenance facilities numerous enough to support my entire fleet so I can keep them at base when not doing navy business, plus I rotate deployments frequently so the number of ships at home base is fairly constant, so this is never a problem for me. Do other folks frequently outbuild their maintenance capacity?
 

Offline KriegsMeister

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2623 on: July 01, 2022, 02:43:48 PM »
It would be nice to be able to utilize component stockpiles for repairs rather than just construction and refits. Possibly with a reduction of MSP costs and a significant time reduction. Depending on components it may  not be materially advantageous such as gallicite for engines, but would quite useful for times of war having forward bases stocked up for rapid repairs to get ships back in the fight.
 
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Offline Scandinavian

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Re: C# Suggestions
« Reply #2624 on: July 01, 2022, 06:19:05 PM »
Honestly, I always try to keep my maintenance facilities numerous enough to support my entire fleet so I can keep them at base when not doing navy business, plus I rotate deployments frequently so the number of ships at home base is fairly constant, so this is never a problem for me. Do other folks frequently outbuild their maintenance capacity?
I frequently end up overbuilding my shipyard capacity during my fleet renewal programs, after which they fall into idleness because I don't have the minerals to fully utilize them. If (to take an implementation that would not add to micro) idle naval slipways would add some percentage of their tonnage to maintenance capacity, I could build fewer maintenance facilities. (The same thing happens with commercial yards, but I always imagine them churning out ships for the civilian liners, so that is less of an imposition on suspension of disbelief.)