Some Miscellaneous Suggestions

[xenoscepter (OP)]

A few things I thought of; just gonna list 'em here for perusal at one's leisure.

  -  A Jump Cooldown w/ Shock Mechanic Tweak: Have Jump Shock be tied to max Jump Tonnage as a function of Increments per 5HS, with 5 seconds minimum. Then multiply it by the number of ships jumped; 1.25x per ship for Squadron, 1.5x for Standard with the rates doubled for Commercial Drives. When under the effects of Jump Shock, ships cannot perform another jump, but a ship not suffering from jump shock CAN jump ships that are. Jump Shock would NOT be cumulative when this happens, simply being reset to either the new value or the old value, whichever is longer.

  -  Transit Drive: A type of Jump Drive that runs on fuel, allows instant transit between points within a system. I had the idea that it would use special fuel, and have it's own special fuel tanks to hold them with the base capacity being 1 Unit of Jump Fuel per HS. Each jump would require one unit of this "Jump Fuel" and larger Fuel Tanks would give more Jump Fuel per HS, but at the trade-off of being more expensive. Each Transit Drive could have at least one unit of Jump Fuel capacity built in, although larger drives might have more and REALLY small (like, Fighter-scale) would have none. These drives could also transit Jump Points, both stabilized and non-stabilized, but would only transit the ship mounting them in addition to giving higher amounts of Jump Shock than if an actual Jump Drive was used. If implemented with the above changes to Jump Drives, it would give double the amount if Military, but Triple if the Transit Drive was Commercial. Like regular Jump Drives, these would be tied to engine type.

Off-Topic: show

 --- Designing a Transit Drive would involve the following:

  1. Choosing a Jump Drive Efficiency, tied to the existing Tech, but with a 2x modifier applied.

  2. Choosing a Jump Drive Size.

  3. Choosing a Jump Fuel Capacity, new tech with the values "0" and "1" available from the start. Adds 1HS per unit of capacity. (Optional)

  -  "Pulse" Sensor: A variant of the Active Sensor that is smaller and more powerful than a regular version. Has a cooldown between uses and is significantly more visible than a regular Active Sensor of equal strength. Fluff wise the unit uses capacitors to "charge up" power and then releases it all at once to detect targets. Some ideas for implementation include:

Off-Topic: show

  1. A separate module that allows mounted sensors to be pulsed, with an order to go with it. This would make all mounted Active Sensors "pulse".

  2. Having them be their own sensor "type" selected from the same drop down as Missile FCS and tied to the "Turn Active Sensors On", but with a "ping" between them to represent the cooldown.

  3. Same as #2, but tied to it's own order like #1. This would allow only the "Pulse" Sensors to be fired, while allowing the active ones to remain on or off.

 --- Coding #1 would likely involve a new part type added along with new flags to check for it and possibly even new techs as well. Coding #2 might prove the easiest as it uses most of the existing framework, but just needs to be tied to the increments for the "ping". Coding #3 would require a new order set, much like #1, and could potentially generate a faux-missile centered on the ship doing the "pulse" that would generate the relative Active Sensor effect as well as the related EM spikes.

  -  Commercial Engine Change: Currently, to qualify as Commercial an engine must take up at least 1,250 Tons(25HS) and possess a Power Modifier of 50% or less. Under this suggestion the minimum size of engine would be tied to the power modifier. For every 10% less than 50, the HS requirement for an engine to be considered Commercial would be 5HS less. So, under this proposal we would have:

Off-Topic: show

  1,250 Tons(25HS) = 50% or less for Commercial Rating.

  1,000 Tons(20HS) = 40% or less for Commercial Rating.

    750 Tons(15HS) = 30% or less for Commercial Rating.

    500 Tons(10HS) = 20% or less for Commercial Rating.

    250 Tons(5HS) = 10% or less for Commercial Rating.

[Droll]

A few things I thought of; just gonna list 'em here for perusal at one's leisure.

  -  A Jump Cooldown w/ Shock Mechanic Tweak: Have Jump Shock be tied to max Jump Tonnage as a function of Increments per 5HS, with 5 seconds minimum. Then multiply it by the number of ships jumped; 1.25x per ship for Squadron, 1.5x for Standard with the rates doubled for Commercial Drives. When under the effects of Jump Shock, ships cannot perform another jump, but a ship not suffering from jump shock CAN jump ships that are. Jump Shock would NOT be cumulative when this happens, simply being reset to either the new value or the old value, whichever is longer.

  -  Transit Drive: A type of Jump Drive that runs on fuel, allows instant transit between points within a system. I had the idea that it would use special fuel, and have it's own special fuel tanks to hold them with the base capacity being 1 Unit of Jump Fuel per HS. Each jump would require one unit of this "Jump Fuel" and larger Fuel Tanks would give more Jump Fuel per HS, but at the trade-off of being more expensive. Each Transit Drive could have at least one unit of Jump Fuel capacity built in, although larger drives might have more and REALLY small (like, Fighter-scale) would have none. These drives could also transit Jump Points, both stabilized and non-stabilized, but would only transit the ship mounting them in addition to giving higher amounts of Jump Shock than if an actual Jump Drive was used. If implemented with the above changes to Jump Drives, it would give double the amount if Military, but Triple if the Transit Drive was Commercial. Like regular Jump Drives, these would be tied to engine type.

Off-Topic: show

 --- Designing a Transit Drive would involve the following:

  1. Choosing a Jump Drive Efficiency, tied to the existing Tech, but with a 2x modifier applied.

  2. Choosing a Jump Drive Size.

  3. Choosing a Jump Fuel Capacity, new tech with the values "0" and "1" available from the start. Adds 1HS per unit of capacity. (Optional)

  -  "Pulse" Sensor: A variant of the Active Sensor that is smaller and more powerful than a regular version. Has a cooldown between uses and is significantly more visible than a regular Active Sensor of equal strength. Fluff wise the unit uses capacitors to "charge up" power and then releases it all at once to detect targets. Some ideas for implementation include:

Off-Topic: show

  1. A separate module that allows mounted sensors to be pulsed, with an order to go with it. This would make all mounted Active Sensors "pulse".

  2. Having them be their own sensor "type" selected from the same drop down as Missile FCS and tied to the "Turn Active Sensors On", but with a "ping" between them to represent the cooldown.

  3. Same as #2, but tied to it's own order like #1. This would allow only the "Pulse" Sensors to be fired, while allowing the active ones to remain on or off.

 --- Coding #1 would likely involve a new part type added along with new flags to check for it and possibly even new techs as well. Coding #2 might prove the easiest as it uses most of the existing framework, but just needs to be tied to the increments for the "ping". Coding #3 would require a new order set, much like #1, and could potentially generate a faux-missile centered on the ship doing the "pulse" that would generate the relative Active Sensor effect as well as the related EM spikes.

  -  Commercial Engine Change: Currently, to qualify as Commercial an engine must take up at least 1,250 Tons(25HS) and possess a Power Modifier of 50% or less. Under this suggestion the minimum size of engine would be tied to the power modifier. For every 10% less than 50, the HS requirement for an engine to be considered Commercial would be 5HS less. So, under this proposal we would have:

Off-Topic: show

  1,250 Tons(25HS) = 50% or less for Commercial Rating.

  1,000 Tons(20HS) = 40% or less for Commercial Rating.

    750 Tons(15HS) = 30% or less for Commercial Rating.

    500 Tons(10HS) = 20% or less for Commercial Rating.

    250 Tons(5HS) = 10% or less for Commercial Rating.

 - I am absolutely for Jump Shock preventing jumps, I've got no comment to make about the rest.

 - For the transit drive I would argue that some sort of interdiction mechanic should also be present, otherwise retreat becomes to easy and not costly at all. Interestingly, an interdiction mechanic
   would probably favor faster beam fleets.

 - I feel like the pulse sensor would help to drive uridium costs of search focused active sensors down. There would be little point of having large active sensors to detect ships, since you would
   just use a cheaper pulse sensor variant instead. Instead, the active sensors would only exist to provide locks for weapons. Also flair wise, active sensors are supposed to work by emitting
   "pings" anyways, so some renaming might be needed if this were to be added.

   Also you could potentially make pulse sensors more complex to design/code by making it so that capacitor tech can be used to affect the cost and cooldown periods of pings, however then you
   need to determine the effects that resolution, sensor size/range and sensitivity have on the power required to emit a pulse.

   Maybe having a pulse speed would also be nice (could set it to light-speed), which would mean that detection would not be instantaneous - the further away the detection, the longer it takes for
   the ping to return, hence your detection is more "outdated" for lack of a better term.

 - The commercial engine changes are really good and I'm totally behind this, especially since it allows one to make really cheap commercial passive scouts for system patrols.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

These are some good ideas, I don't know how likely they are or even if I would want all of them but that has nothing to do with whether they are good or not, and they are.

The commercial engine idea is something I would really like. It would be cool to be able to make swarms of small commercial ships, efficiency be damned!

The pulse sensor I love. A lot of suggestions I see are basically just a standard thing but modified to be a bit more like what the person making it wants it to be. This though, I can already see a ton of emergent game play that could come out of this. Even better would be if the AI could use it even semi-competently, picking up intermittent EM blips that aren't there when you get close enough to investigate would add a ton of tension. Same goes for the player, anxiously waiting as the increments pass for the your capacitors to build enough charge for the next pulse... Have they altered course? Are they charging me down already and I can't see it? Can't risk it, better launch a few self guiding torpedoes and bug out!

The transit drive is a neat concept. As described it is brokenly overpowered, but the idea of an intra-system jump drive is interesting. I don't think it is worth introducing a new fuel for it. There are just to many other systems that would need a new analog created to support it. Refineries, fleet orders, conditional orders, what minerals would you need to make it and so on. I would say just make it use fuel but have it be stupidly fuel hungry to use. Like, if you want to use it twice without refueling, your ship had better be 90% fuel tanks. Also tying the fuel cost to the ships total mass or to the distance of the jump would also be good. Basically there should never be the possibility of using it on a viable combat ship. Don't get me wrong, I like cheese but allowing this thing on a 100kiloton beam battleship would be like shooting fondue into your eyeballs.

Still a neat concept though. Even with all those restrictions I can still think of a few ways to use it that would add something to the game. Finally exploring, expanding too, exploiting and, if necessary, exterminating around those B component stars that are unobtainably far away for a start.

For the sake of completeness, I have no opinion or other thoughts on the jump mechanic tweaks.

[nuclearslurpee]

  -  A Jump Cooldown w/ Shock Mechanic Tweak: Have Jump Shock be tied to max Jump Tonnage as a function of Increments per 5HS, with 5 seconds minimum. Then multiply it by the number of ships jumped; 1.25x per ship for Squadron, 1.5x for Standard with the rates doubled for Commercial Drives. When under the effects of Jump Shock, ships cannot perform another jump, but a ship not suffering from jump shock CAN jump ships that are. Jump Shock would NOT be cumulative when this happens, simply being reset to either the new value or the old value, whichever is longer.

I strongly dislike this proposal. Tying jump shock to ship size is a huge nerf to larger ships which definitely is not needed in terms of game balance, to me this feels like imposing a specific vision of verisimilitude at the expense of RP flexibility, with no good justification in terms of game mechanics. The multiplication effect doesn't make sense as jump shock should affect all the ships in a squadron/fleet already, why do we need to double down on that? The multipliers offer no interesting counterplay and seem wholly arbitrary. Overall these changes seem almost entirely punitive which strikes me as poor design for a game mechanic.

I don't think jump shock needs a huge rework, just a change to make it actually work and not be trivialized by 100% crew training as it is now. Preventing consecutive jumps already happens at least for standard jumps as my survey ship captains can attest.

  -  Transit Drive:

I'm strongly opposed to adding a technology which lets a ship or fleet completely avoid an engagement by pressing a button. A fleet with a transit drive effectively cannot be intercepted, even with the jump shock effect it is trivial to "jump" outside of the enemy's pursuit range leaving them out of position, which can really only be countered by having an equally-capable defense fleet at each strategic position in a system. Requiring the defender to have a numerical advantage to win a battle is terrible game design, and forcing a defender to otherwise play a static defense strategy instead of mobile warfare is frankly boring.

  -  "Pulse" Sensor:

I don't see a real purpose for it but I'm not against it and if people think it would be cool it should be added, I don't think it would break the game at any rate.

  -  Commercial Engine Change: Currently, to qualify as Commercial an engine must take up at least 1,250 Tons(25HS) and possess a Power Modifier of 50% or less. Under this suggestion the minimum size of engine would be tied to the power modifier. For every 10% less than 50, the HS requirement for an engine to be considered Commercial would be 5HS less. So, under this proposal we would have:

Off-Topic: show

  1,250 Tons(25HS) = 50% or less for Commercial Rating.

  1,000 Tons(20HS) = 40% or less for Commercial Rating.

    750 Tons(15HS) = 30% or less for Commercial Rating.

    500 Tons(10HS) = 20% or less for Commercial Rating.

    250 Tons(5HS) = 10% or less for Commercial Rating.

I'm not opposed to it, I do think this doesn't keep with the flavor of commercial engines as it is right now but it definitely would give the player additional options without breaking any existing balance or mechanics and I am in favor of that.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

Off-Topic: show

@nuclearslurpee

 - I'd honestly be very ok with just having Jump Shock disable the Jump Drive for it's duration.

--- I think perhaps I've misrepresented the Squadron penalties though... when I say 1.25x per ship, this is how I'd work it out:

Say I want to squadron jump one 5HS ship, it'd be 5 seconds, or one increment of Jump Shock.

Say I want to do 5; well that'd x1.25... actually this is presented all wrong... I'm gonna rewrite it.

 --- It seems I've very poorly explained the Jump Shock Mechanics that I proposed. I sincerely apologize. This is how it SHOULD read:

"Jump Shock is calculated first by taking the ship's Hull Size and dividing it by 5. Remainders are discarded. This is the basic Jump Shock for moving one ship of that size. If the ship in question is the only ship jumping, then no further calculations are needed. If the ship is jumping MORE ships than itself, then an additional 25% is added per ship. So a 25HS ship by itself will have 25 seconds, or 5 increments, of jump shock. Meanwhile a squadron of four 25HS ships would incur a 50 second, or 10 increment, jump shock. For a standard transit, this would jump to 100 seconds, or 20 increments. If those four 25HS were Commercial, it would go all the way up to 200 seconds, or 40 increments."

 --- It's still very harsh, but the least I could do was explain properly. That much I failed to do, and I again apologize... I have NO idea how I got the original from the above, but madness is as madness does I suppose.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

  -  Transit Drive:

I'm strongly opposed to adding a technology which lets a ship or fleet completely avoid an engagement by pressing a button. A fleet with a transit drive effectively cannot be intercepted, even with the jump shock effect it is trivial to "jump" outside of the enemy's pursuit range leaving them out of position, which can really only be countered by having an equally-capable defense fleet at each strategic position in a system. Requiring the defender to have a numerical advantage to win a battle is terrible game design, and forcing a defender to otherwise play a static defense strategy instead of mobile warfare is frankly boring.

Yeah, this is the problem. It's not even a military vs. commercial thing as I could accept something like this on a survey/sensor ship. The problem is when it can be fitted to a ship that also has weapons on it. I think it could be made expensive enough that you would never build more than a handful. Even just fitting them to all your standard survey ships should be well and truly prohibitive. I do still think that it is an idea worth exploring though. There are definitely use cases that would add to the game without taking away anything meaningful.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

  -  Transit Drive:

I'm strongly opposed to adding a technology which lets a ship or fleet completely avoid an engagement by pressing a button. A fleet with a transit drive effectively cannot be intercepted, even with the jump shock effect it is trivial to "jump" outside of the enemy's pursuit range leaving them out of position, which can really only be countered by having an equally-capable defense fleet at each strategic position in a system. Requiring the defender to have a numerical advantage to win a battle is terrible game design, and forcing a defender to otherwise play a static defense strategy instead of mobile warfare is frankly boring.

Yeah, this is the problem. It's not even a military vs. commercial thing as I could accept something like this on a survey/sensor ship. The problem is when it can be fitted to a ship that also has weapons on it. I think it could be made expensive enough that you would never build more than a handful. Even just fitting them to all your standard survey ships should be well and truly prohibitive. I do still think that it is an idea worth exploring though. There are definitely use cases that would add to the game without taking away anything meaningful.

 --- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.

[RougeNPS]

Please add misc buildings like you did misc components Steve...it would be amazing for roleplay.

[nuclearslurpee]

--- It seems I've very poorly explained the Jump Shock Mechanics that I proposed. I sincerely apologize. This is how it SHOULD read:

"Jump Shock is calculated first by taking the ship's Hull Size and dividing it by 5. Remainders are discarded. This is the basic Jump Shock for moving one ship of that size. If the ship in question is the only ship jumping, then no further calculations are needed. If the ship is jumping MORE ships than itself, then an additional 25% is added per ship. So a 25HS ship by itself will have 25 seconds, or 5 increments, of jump shock. Meanwhile a squadron of four 25HS ships would incur a 50 second, or 10 increment, jump shock. For a standard transit, this would jump to 100 seconds, or 20 increments. If those four 25HS were Commercial, it would go all the way up to 200 seconds, or 40 increments."

 --- It's still very harsh, but the least I could do was explain properly. That much I failed to do, and I again apologize... I have NO idea how I got the original from the above, but madness is as madness does I suppose.

I appreciate the clearer explanation. However, it doesn't really change any of the issues I have with it:

• Scaling jump shock with ship size is a very harsh nerf to larger ships, which is very much not needed in the current state of the game as larger ships already have significant strategic drawbacks (shipyards, maintenance, research, etc.) even if they are a bit more efficient tactically.
• Jump shock is already supposed to affect all ships in a squadron or fleet, so it already scales with squadron/fleet size at exactly 1:1 net effect (if it doesn't that is a bug and needs to be reported and patched). There isn't any need to add an extra multiplier - especially because this modifier basically punishes people for using higher techs in the Jump Squadron Size tech line (which by the way already has a drawback because jump drives with a larger squadron size are larger and more expensive). Why should players be punished for using higher techs? They should not, as long as they are able to pay the costs of using that tech in the first place - i.e., researching the jump drives and building ships that can carry them.
• There's no real counterplay to these mechanics. The only way to avoid mitigate the 1.25x modifier, for example, is to use smaller jump squadrons, and since the jump shock effect is principally a tactical drawback to make jump point assaults an actual challenge, and using fewer non-jump ships per squadron is also a tactical drawback, the result is not an interesting gameplay decision. In the end one way will be strictly superior either due to pure numbers gaming or due to strategic costs. Most of the good gameplay decisions in Aurora come from balancing tactical and strategic factors, not from making the player pick their poison.

The overall point is, a game mechanic which consists solely of punishing the player for the sake of verisimilitude is a bad game mechanic. That isn't saying that punishing the player is bad - mineral crunches or being outmatched in a battle are punishing, but also logical consequences of other game mechanics and player actions. Making large ships suffer more jump shock just because it seems more realistic doesn't fit this bill - it might make sense if it was needed for game balance, but at least as things stand right now that is not the case.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

--- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.

So I got quite far into writing a post full of (hopefully) constructive criticism but I am suddenly unsure if I correctly understood the premise of the transit drive. I just noticed something quite significant that requires clarification. Like completely changes the nature of what it is that we are talking about.

In your OP you said that the Transit Drive "allows instant transit between points within a system". Were you referring to jump points specifically? As in, this drive would allow a ship to use an existing jump point but instead of emerging in a different system, it emerges from a different jump point in the same system? You didn't specify jump points so I, and possibly others, interpreted it to mean arbitrary points. As in, this drive lets you move instantly, from anywhere, to anywhere else, in the same system.

Intent unclear. Foot nearly put in own mouth. Please advise.

[xenoscepter (OP)]

--- The fuel thing is definitely the lynchpin to this suggestion. As given 1HS per fuel unit IS VERY, VERY broken. The idea was that ships might carry... 1~3... 5 units of fuel, tops? The whole idea was that this was to be a very limited resource. The concept that fuel storage got more expensive as it got more efficient was meant to reinforce that this was very powerful. The idea of a Transit Drive with 0 fuel built in was so that small ships could have a self jump drive for much less tonnage than a full on jump drive. The numbers would need to be tweaked... a lot, but the idea is that realistically speaking, a ship is not going over 3 Transit Jumps without being either absurdly expensive or cutting into mission tonnage, while a ships is NOT going over about 5 Transit Jumps without being absurdly expensive AND cutting significantly into mission tonnage.

So I got quite far into writing a post full of (hopefully) constructive criticism but I am suddenly unsure if I correctly understood the premise of the transit drive. I just noticed something quite significant that requires clarification. Like completely changes the nature of what it is that we are talking about.

In your OP you said that the Transit Drive "allows instant transit between points within a system". Were you referring to jump points specifically? As in, this drive would allow a ship to use an existing jump point but instead of emerging in a different system, it emerges from a different jump point in the same system? You didn't specify jump points so I, and possibly others, interpreted it to mean arbitrary points. As in, this drive lets you move instantly, from anywhere, to anywhere else, in the same system.

Intent unclear. Foot nearly put in own mouth. Please advise.

 - Lol I'm really bad at explaining these things , the idea was that the Transit Drive would let you go from one part of a system to any other part of a system for one unit of "fuel". You wouldn't need Jump Points to do it, you could just jump to anywhere in the system. The thing is, and I ALSO forgot to include this because I'm a friggin' moron, is that in Aurora you can only have one Jump Drive, and the Transit Drive would count as such. That's also why I mentioned it having higher Jump Shock overall when used to transit an actual Jump Point. If you transited a Jump Point with a Transit Drive, then no, you couldn't jump out just anywhere, but you could do that afterwards by expending a unit of "fuel". Each transit requires that fuel, so to go there and back would require two units of fuel. The entire thing is only balanced if it is prohibitive / impossible to mount enough fuel, be that special fuel or just the normal stuff that we already have, to Transit Jump no more than a handful of times. At it cannot transit a group either, so EVERY ship that wants to Transit would need one. This would also mean that, conversely, unless every ship in the fleet has a Transit Drive than NONE of them can.

 - With regards to fuel, having a special unit would require an entirely new production / logistical chain, but for a very powerful (overpowered even) ability. Having it consume normal fuel, but in extreme quantities will suddenly make it useful only for niche designs. I like both ideas, but to be honest I'm kind of liking having it use regular fuel in extreme amounts as it gives Underway Replenishment tech a little bit of extra utility and gives some extra flavor to tankers.

I appreciate the clearer explanation. However, it doesn't really change any of the issues I have with it:

• Scaling jump shock with ship size is a very harsh nerf to larger ships, which is very much not needed in the current state of the game as larger ships already have significant strategic drawbacks (shipyards, maintenance, research, etc.) even if they are a bit more efficient tactically.
• Jump shock is already supposed to affect all ships in a squadron or fleet, so it already scales with squadron/fleet size at exactly 1:1 net effect (if it doesn't that is a bug and needs to be reported and patched). There isn't any need to add an extra multiplier - especially because this modifier basically punishes people for using higher techs in the Jump Squadron Size tech line (which by the way already has a drawback because jump drives with a larger squadron size are larger and more expensive). Why should players be punished for using higher techs? They should not, as long as they are able to pay the costs of using that tech in the first place - i.e., researching the jump drives and building ships that can carry them.
• There's no real counterplay to these mechanics. The only way to avoid mitigate the 1.25x modifier, for example, is to use smaller jump squadrons, and since the jump shock effect is principally a tactical drawback to make jump point assaults an actual challenge, and using fewer non-jump ships per squadron is also a tactical drawback, the result is not an interesting gameplay decision. In the end one way will be strictly superior either due to pure numbers gaming or due to strategic costs. Most of the good gameplay decisions in Aurora come from balancing tactical and strategic factors, not from making the player pick their poison.

The overall point is, a game mechanic which consists solely of punishing the player for the sake of verisimilitude is a bad game mechanic. That isn't saying that punishing the player is bad - mineral crunches or being outmatched in a battle are punishing, but also logical consequences of other game mechanics and player actions. Making large ships suffer more jump shock just because it seems more realistic doesn't fit this bill - it might make sense if it was needed for game balance, but at least as things stand right now that is not the case.

 --- I honestly agree with all of that... in hindsight it would be a terrible change. That said I STILL maintain that I'd really, really like to see Jump Shock prevent a ship from Jumping while under the effects of it. The intention of that suggested change was to make add more distinction between big ships and small ships with regard to Jump Point assaults. There were a lot of things wrapped up in that statement, but given that the changes would not achieve said goals anyway I'll leave them out.

[ISN]

Am I misreading this or would the transit drive make long-range missiles completely unviable as a strategy against any fleet employing them? Just wait until the enemy has emptied their magazines and then jump away while the missiles are en route. Granted a clever player could get around this -- fire only a few salvos to provoke the enemy into wasting their scarce jumps -- but I doubt the AI could do this very well, and players hardly need more advantages over the AI. I appreciate the attempt to explore radically different game mechanics (and I'm certainly in favor of rebalancing missiles!), but I think this mechanic would integrate terribly with the rest of the game.

[nuclearslurpee]

--- I honestly agree with all of that... in hindsight it would be a terrible change. That said I STILL maintain that I'd really, really like to see Jump Shock prevent a ship from Jumping while under the effects of it.

This is supposed to be implemented...I see this effect on my survey ships all the time as they jump into a new system and must wait some time before being able to jump out. I've never tried to see what happens with a squadron jump (usually when I do these I have other things on my mind...) but if it does not also prevent immediate re-jumping it should be submitted as a bug.

However the NPRs are allowed to jump with no cooldown as a compensation for their poor AI, so we do need to separate out player race (if you can jump immediately after jumping, it is a bug and should be reported) and NPR (not a bug, only an unfortunate compromise) behaviors.

The huge problem with jump shock right now is that based on player reports it seems that ships with 100% trained crews can more or less ignore its effects entirely, which rather defeats the point of the whole mechanic and makes fleet training excessively powerful - and unlike some exploits this one cannot really be avoided as ships gain training% over time even if not under a TRN admin command.

[Density]

--- I honestly agree with all of that... in hindsight it would be a terrible change. That said I STILL maintain that I'd really, really like to see Jump Shock prevent a ship from Jumping while under the effects of it.

This is supposed to be implemented...I see this effect on my survey ships all the time as they jump into a new system and must wait some time before being able to jump out. I've never tried to see what happens with a squadron jump (usually when I do these I have other things on my mind...) but if it does not also prevent immediate re-jumping it should be submitted as a bug.

However the NPRs are allowed to jump with no cooldown as a compensation for their poor AI, so we do need to separate out player race (if you can jump immediately after jumping, it is a bug and should be reported) and NPR (not a bug, only an unfortunate compromise) behaviors.

The huge problem with jump shock right now is that based on player reports it seems that ships with 100% trained crews can more or less ignore its effects entirely, which rather defeats the point of the whole mechanic and makes fleet training excessively powerful - and unlike some exploits this one cannot really be avoided as ships gain training% over time even if not under a TRN admin command.

I've squadron jumped my survey ships plenty of times, and the ones in service long enough to have max training and grade still have a delay in jumping back. So I'm confident that jump shock does disable jump engines along with active sensors and fire controls.

So really, what's being talked about is flagging ships affected by jump shock so that they either can't be squadron jumped (regardless of the ship doing it), or can't be jumped at all.

As for the current durations being a problem, there are ways of changing that just by Steve fiddling with the math (extending the base times, reducing the effect of crew grade/training, etc) without inventing new criteria (like displacement, # of ships, and so on).

[serger]

Jump Shock preventing ships from jumping at all - it's, I think, very needed mechanics: it's killing several potential game-breaking infinite loop scenaries with AI ships jumping back and forth every tick and, in addition, it's negating trivial tactics of baiting AI at JP, that AI cannot use or withstand, and the less such small exploits the better.
I'd propose not only a necessary cooldown, but also a necessary several-minutes warming up time to make this effect more resilient.

As for inter-system transit drives and pulse sensors - I think it will add too much difficulties for the AI; my stable opinion that we need no such burden on Steve's free time for any small additional time-to-time opportunities.

The last proposition - I doubt if I understand correctly the intention of this suggestion. I think commercial components mechanics is intended for RP-plausibly mitigation of micro burden. In this sense I think current mechanics isn't very good, because it's non-plausible arbitral breaking points (50% efficiency and 25HS), but it's simple and familiar roughness of mechanics, why to make it more complicated and less familiar for players?
My strong opinion is that the best change to commercial engines mechanics will be to just make them separate tech line (the same as for all other mil/com techs), ideally with ramscoop capability (i.e. no sorium needded) to mitigate AI complexities (so player's navy, commercials and NRPs will play by less different rules).