Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[Jay2Jay]

Is there any way to change resource generation rates? I would like to make it so resources are more abundant but less accessible.  More abundant in the sense that resources spawn more often and also in greater quantities.  Balanced by significantly lower accessibility ratings.

I prefer long-term games with large amounts of buildup.  The default settings make me feel almost like a plague of locust lol.

[davidr]

Is there any sort of repository where it sets out in simple language what each type of warship requires to be fully functional in combat?

e.g. for a missile ship you require the following :-
       for a Beam weapon ship you require ......

I am hopeless at designing anything but missile vessels and even then they are puny and very slow ( as an aside how do people get design vessels with speeds in the many thousands - my anti-missile frigate with MP Drive is 9575 tons and runs at 2339km/s) The missile ships are the only ones I can realistically buid but is there anywhere showing what components are required for a Beam ship or laser ship. I know people put their designs on the forum but I struggle to comprehend the values shown ( the penalty I suppose of being very old ).

DavidR. 

[Rince Wind]

How much tonnage do you use for engines? And are your engines boosted? (I don't usually boost them on standard military craft, but some do)
If you want decent speed you need to devote a sizable percentage to engines. It is usually worth it to develop multiple sizes so save fuel on the bigger vessels.

Copying your vessel here or in the design forum is probably the best way to get advice.

[Bremen]

Is there any way to change resource generation rates? I would like to make it so resources are more abundant but less accessible.  More abundant in the sense that resources spawn more often and also in greater quantities.  Balanced by significantly lower accessibility ratings.

I prefer long-term games with large amounts of buildup.  The default settings make me feel almost like a plague of locust lol.

I don't think you can do this, at least not without database access, but something I do to give a similar feel is have a (self enforced) limit on how many mines any colony can have; I use 100 automated or 200 manned. That makes it so I need to spread out more but the deposits usually last longer.

[Agraelgrimm]

How much tonnage do you use for engines? And are your engines boosted? (I don't usually boost them on standard military craft, but some do)
If you want decent speed you need to devote a sizable percentage to engines. It is usually worth it to develop multiple sizes so save fuel on the bigger vessels.

Copying your vessel here or in the design forum is probably the best way to get advice.

Put your design in the design place and we will dissect it. But, if you are having problems with fuel usage then you probably don't want overdriven vessels, unless they are used in intermittent fashion. Those would be escorts you would put inside the big ships or small ships that require speed, like beam focused ships, etc. 
Otherwise, you either have good AA or you are pretty much dead and that extra speed won't help you much, unless you know what kind of enemy you are fighting. Then you can do whatever, but if another race appears you are toasted.

[nuclearslurpee]

e.g. for a missile ship you require the following :-
       for a Beam weapon ship you require ......

It helps to conceptualize a ship in terms of its role. I like to think of "Three Ps (and everything else)", which breaks down as: Payload, Propulsion, and Protection.

• Payload means whatever your ships is meant to deliver to the area of operations - most commonly weapons, but can include jump drives, sensors, or a carrier strike group for example. I find from experience that about 25% of ship mass can fit into this category pretty reliably - counting things like fire controls, magazines, and reactors.
• Propulsion includes engine and fuel load. Much has been written on this subject, but a reasonable rule of thumb is to assign 30% to 40% of total ship size as engines, plus some more for fuel to reach whatever range you desire (if you're clueless here, 20 to 30 billion km is a reasonable benchmark, doctrines vary considerably but this is a good middle ground). I would avoid using too much boost until you are more comfortable with ship design in general, as despite what some people claim it is not the be-all, end-all solution to Aurora space warfare. Generally a +25% boost can be accommodated without too much difficulty, but +50% or more will seriously strain your fuel logistics if you don't know what you're doing (e.g., higher boost for carrier-based fighters with short ranges works fine).
• Protection means whatever keeps your ships alive long enough to deliver their payload - armor, shields, and possibly some forms of point defense depending on your fleet doctrine (for example, I usually like to put 1-2 Gauss turrets on every ship for distributed missile defense). This can vary considerably, but 5% to 10% is probably not a bad starting place, perhaps even 15% if you rely heavily on shields.
• Everything else means things like smaller sensors, crew quarters, engineering spaces, bridge modules, etc. that is required or useful for a ship but is not a primary focus. Good values for warships if you're clueless include: 12 months deployment time, 1.5 to 2 years maintenance life accomplished by adding Engineering Spaces plus 1-2 maintenance storage bays for weapon repairs during battle, and an AUX on larger vessels, perhaps greater than 10,000 tons. I also usually like to have size-1 active, EM, and thermal sensors on all warships as i like having a well-rounded and flexible fleet. Again, everyone does things very differently, these are just rough benchmarks for learning the game.

In general, missile ships require less propulsion and protection, since they should be destroying foes at long ranges, but need to dedicate more space to payload whether for magazines or to generate a sufficiently large salvo size to overwhelm enemy point defense. Beam ships on the other hand need more armor/shields and speed because they must close with the enemy and/or dictate the range, and in a beam vs beam brawl will take a lot of hits if they cannot outrange the opponent.

[Kurt]

Okay, I'm writing this mostly to vent, but there is a question in here somewhere.  And, while I am venting, I'm also aware that this is almost certainly my fault. 

I've been running an Aurora campaign to re-familiarize myself with the latest version of Aurora after my long dalliance with my Starfire campaign.  I wanted to keep it simple, so I started a single-player campaign with the Earth Commonwealth, with all of the spoilers activated.  I can't remember if I set it to generate an NPR but I think not, I wanted something fairly simple to start with.  The Commonwealth started with a good amount of resources and a very large population with lots of industry.  Technology was set low to start as I wanted to get some experience with the tech progression.  The quick backstory is that the Commonwealth is a loose association of Earth nations and very anti-military after a nuclear war took out most of Russia, China, and India. Based on that I decided that the Commonwealth would maintain only a small fleet and a moderate sized ground-based military until it met a threat.   

The Commonwealth took a very careful approach to exploration and expansion.  It explored out to two jumps out from Sol and then stopped to exploit those systems before exploring further.  This gave me time to get used to the way Aurora works now.  Finally, after 45 years game-time exploiting the systems around Sol, the Commonwealth decided to begin exploring beyond the two-jump limit.  In the second system to be explored beyond the two-jump limit, a Commonwealth geo-survey ship was destroyed by alien ground fire. 

Now, as a somewhat experienced Aurora player I know that this likely happened because of the time-advance mechanics.  In other words, the explorer ship had passive sensors that probably would have alerted it to the presence of STO units on the surface of the planet it was approaching, but because I was hitting the five-day advance button, the ship jumped from its last survey target to the new survey target, effectively without crossing the intervening distance. 

Excited about finally meeting a threat, I decided to go with it, and mobilized my military.  Now the Commonwealth's military is pretty pathetic.  They have an interceptor squadron consisting of 4-6 1,000 ton interceptors stationed in every exploited system.  The interceptors are about as fast as they can be with the Commonwealth's tech, and mount box launchers with medium range missiles.  The Commonwealth also has two 20,000 ton motherships for transporting them.  Each mothership can carry six interceptors and has light defenses and light offensive weapons.  Finally, the Commonwealth, which is has always been concerned with the possibility of missile bombardment, understandable given its history, also fields six FFE's equipped for anti-missile combat. 

The Commonwealth dispatched a squadron consisting of a mothership carrying five interceptors and two FFE's, accompanied by a jump ship that would stay in the outer system.  When they jumped into the target system, I ordered them to activate their shields and sensors.  I then gave them orders to "Follow" their target, the third planet, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers.  I figured this was enough distance to keep them out of range of the ground weapons but might be close enough to detect what was there. 

As the squadron approached the planet, I lowered the time advances so that I could monitor their advance and figure out when they detected the ground units.  Sure enough, at just over 15 million kilometers they detected a divisional sized ground force.  The display indicated that they were just over an hour from their target, if I remember correctly.  Having been patient long enough, I hit the three-hour time advance, thinking that would bring them to their intended 1.5 million kilometer target distance from the planet.  Except it didn't.  The task group moved to zero range from the target and the STO's opened fire on the mothership, instantly destroying it and its interceptors. 

This left me very frustrated, for several reasons.  First, the "Follow" command obviously didn't work as I thought it did.  Second, my impatience caused me to incautiously use the time advance buttons, yet again.  And, thirdly, I yet again failed to save the damned game before doing something stupid.  If I had just saved it at any point before entering the system, I could restore the save and everything would have been fine.  But no, I regularly forget to save until I'm done with a session.  So, now the Commonwealth has a disaster on their hands.  I closed the game and quit for the day. 

Now that I've had the rest of the evening to get over being frustrated with myself, I can see several ways to incorporate this meta event into the backstory of the campaign, so although I wish it hadn't happened, I can use it.  But this brings up the questions I'd like to ask from those more experienced in Aurora. 

First, does the "Follow" fleet command not work on planets or other bodies?  I will experiment moving forward, but I'm curious. 

Secondly, will using the sub-pulses help with the detection issues?  For example, if I had set the sub-pulse at two minutes when the survey ships first entered the system, would that have likely resulted in the survey ship detecting the STO's before being fired on?  And, does setting the sub-pulses on such a short interval place significant burdens on Aurora, slowing the game?

Thanks in advance.

[Panopticon]

I do not have any answers for your second question, but I have been discovering that the follow command is pretty unreliable for reasons that are not entirely clear. I have yet to figure out a workaround. Fortunately my main game is a multiplayer one and I am the GM so i can just ignore it when the follow command isn't working right.

[Steve Walmsley]

Ground units can only be detected by res-1 active sensors and STO units can only be detected independently of other ground forces (and targeted separately) after they open fire.

Follow works for everything, but Min Distance only works for fleets and contacts as it is part of the interception code, rather than the normal movement code. I need to add that for other destination types.

Using shorter sub-pulses will slow the game down in a fairly linear way. Aurora will also prevent more than 500 sub-pulses. However, the next version has another performance leap so this should be much easier in future.

[Bremen]

Using shorter sub-pulses will slow the game down in a fairly linear way. Aurora will also prevent more than 500 sub-pulses. However, the next version has another performance leap so this should be much easier in future.

Now I'm even more reluctant to start a new game in this version instead of waiting for the next (and yeah, I'm aware of the last timeline you gave for how far off the next version is).

[nuclearslurpee]

First, does the "Follow" fleet command not work on planets or other bodies?  I will experiment moving forward, but I'm curious. 

Steve answered this one. I will note that in my experience, a simple move order with minmum distance works fine. Planets only move on the construction increment (5 days by default) so follow is rarely needed in practice (in the rare cases where you need it, I think you can jury-rig some cycled move orders with time delays to emulate the effect, as a workaround).

Secondly, will using the sub-pulses help with the detection issues?  For example, if I had set the sub-pulse at two minutes when the survey ships first entered the system, would that have likely resulted in the survey ship detecting the STO's before being fired on?  And, does setting the sub-pulses on such a short interval place significant burdens on Aurora, slowing the game?

Thanks in advance.

For the survey ship: yes to both. It would help with the detection issues (although passive sensors will not detect ground forces, so you need an active sensor turned on in any case), but it will also slow down Aurora a lot. For 5-day major increments, the default sub-pulse is 2 hours or 120 minutes, so reducing to 2 minutes will mean about 60x as many sub-pulses which is quite a lot. In practice, it is probably better to revise your survey ship designs or doctrine to find safer ways to scout a system for threats before surveying (e.g., drones, rock checkers, or just manual scouting by the player). Or find a really good book to read if you are nostalgic for the VB6 days. 

For approaching the planet with your attack force, it is no help. Once you've detected the contact, approaching closer will not cause an interruption since the sensor contact isn't changing. Obviously, once the enemy fires the clock will stop but that is too late for what you want here. Therefore, it is always best to select a major increment smaller than the total travel time needed to get into range and make a few extra clicks if needed, since the clock always stops after each manual increment so you are not relying on an interruption that may not exist or work as hoped.

[StarshipCactus]

Okay, I'm writing this mostly to vent, but there is a question in here somewhere.  And, while I am venting, I'm also aware that this is almost certainly my fault. 

Yeah, I had to get into the habit of saving regularly. It's happened a few times that I accidentally misclicked 5-day by habit when I wanted 5 seconds and had to revert. Generally I will revert if the outcome makes no sense in universe. After all, the crew of the ship have to live through each second one second at a time, why would they all decide to not look at the sensors until they get to orbit? (The aliens on the ground also all decided to not look at their sensors until the increment rolled around, how convenient.) I suppose you could say the ship had a technical malfunction with the sensors but for some reason still decided to proceed towards the planet, although that won't explain all the STO's waiting for the ship to be in orbit rather than shooting as soon as the ship got came into range.

[Steve Walmsley]

First, does the "Follow" fleet command not work on planets or other bodies?  I will experiment moving forward, but I'm curious. 

Steve answered this one. I will note that in my experience, a simple move order with minmum distance works fine. Planets only move on the construction increment (5 days by default) so follow is rarely needed in practice (in the rare cases where you need it, I think you can jury-rig some cycled move orders with time delays to emulate the effect, as a workaround).

Yes, my answer wasn't as clear as it should have been. Min Distance works fine for 'Move To' for all destinations. For 'Follow' orders, Min Distance only works for fleets and contacts. This is because they could be moving each increment so I need to calculate an intercept point that includes the min distance, while other destinations are fixed or only move during construction phases. I still should add the code but I think its absence was due to my play style where I always use Move To for planets (sometimes with Min Distance).

I usually equip my own survey ships with a few box launchers for probes, and fire them at any potentially habitable planet before approaching.

[Kurt]

Ground units can only be detected by res-1 active sensors and STO units can only be detected independently of other ground forces (and targeted separately) after they open fire.

Follow works for everything, but Min Distance only works for fleets and contacts as it is part of the interception code, rather than the normal movement code. I need to add that for other destination types.

Using shorter sub-pulses will slow the game down in a fairly linear way. Aurora will also prevent more than 500 sub-pulses. However, the next version has another performance leap so this should be much easier in future.

So, passives won't detect ground units, got it.  I see a design change coming. 

As I understand what you're saying above, follow will work for every destination type, but if the destination is anything but a fleet it is actually a "move to" command.  Got it.  Waypoints will work.

This brings me to a related question.  In the older version of Aurora you could measure distance on the system map by right clicking (I think) on the map and dragging to the target, and Aurora would draw a line and give you a distance.  I can't seem to make this work.  Is there still a way to do this in the game?

Kurt

[Kurt]

First, does the "Follow" fleet command not work on planets or other bodies?  I will experiment moving forward, but I'm curious. 

Steve answered this one. I will note that in my experience, a simple move order with minmum distance works fine. Planets only move on the construction increment (5 days by default) so follow is rarely needed in practice (in the rare cases where you need it, I think you can jury-rig some cycled move orders with time delays to emulate the effect, as a workaround).

Yes, my answer wasn't as clear as it should have been. Min Distance works fine for 'Move To' for all destinations. For 'Follow' orders, Min Distance only works for fleets and contacts. This is because they could be moving each increment so I need to calculate an intercept point that includes the min distance, while other destinations are fixed or only move during construction phases. I still should add the code but I think its absence was due to my play style where I always use Move To for planets (sometimes with Min Distance).

I usually equip my own survey ships with a few box launchers for probes, and fire them at any potentially habitable planet before approaching.

Probes, huh?  That sounds interesting.  Redesigns are coming!