Suggestions Thread for v2.0

[ranger044]

Nowhere did nuclear say that the carronades are a good primary choice weapon. He literally used over half of his post explaining how they're cheaper to research as a backup/emergency weapon. He directly said that they are simply not the best choice for beam primary designs. Their main advantage is that they are powerful at short range, like his example as a point defence weapon or alpha strike (ie fighter swarm at short range), while being cheap to research.

Also, they don't need to be the best or the most viable. Aurora is a game designed to drive story telling. Theyre great as a RP friendly weapon if nothing else. Not every option is the best option.

I swear the hostility in the forum is getting out of hand

Edit: And for the record, there's probably less than ten people that know the ins and outs of Aurora better than @nuclearslurpee

[Garfunkel]

I'm strongly against balancing all weapons to the point where it doesn't really matter which one you use and all are equally good. That's fine for competitive PvP games but doesn't fit single player games, and definitely doesn't fit the character of Aurora. This like trying to make Gauss work as a primary weapon.

Plasma is fine as it is. It works for ambushes and as cheap backup if you're not doing lot of EW research. If you don't need it for those niches, then don't research it. We already have lasers, rails, and particle beams (+ lance) to use as primary weapon, each with their own pros and cons. I don't understand this obsession of adding plasma carronades as a fourth one. 

[papent]

I'm strongly against balancing all weapons to the point where it doesn't really matter which one you use and all are equally good. That's fine for competitive PvP games but doesn't fit single player games, and definitely doesn't fit the character of Aurora. This like trying to make Gauss work as a primary weapon.

A ship solely equipped with Gauss turrets will likely have an excellent to acceptable chance at accomplishing it's primary mission in pretty much all standard combat conditions. A ship equipped with plasma has a middling to low chance of accomplishing any mission objective in the best of combat conditions. A baseline squadron jump (50k) with starter drives neutralize the emergency plasma weapons role (60k range) unless the opposition has terrible luck.

Plenty has been said about thinking outside "The ship weapon box" for using Plasma by many of our fellows.
Blacklight and the others who have written before, makes a reasonable argument that inside the "The ship weapon box" Plasma is objectively terrible at any role outside of luck based encounters or RP Encounters niche. It's heavy, can't be turreted, slow to fire, and terrible damage falloff. It has the flaws of every other Energy weapon type.

is it unreasonable to ask for an in-game mechanic to have a purpose? Should the consensus that mostly seems to be "don't research it or research it for ground forces weapon tech/STO batteries" be appropriate response to this request?
Nobody is forcing anybody to have to use Plasma however They do current exist and people would like to try something different. More options are typical better than few, no?

Can we all have fun and enjoy the game/tool/story generator in many different ways?

I swear the hostility in the forum is getting out of hand

Edit: And for the record, there's probably less than ten people that know the ins and outs of Aurora better than @nuclearslurpee

I interpreted no hostility from any writer here, I do see friction from differences of opinions and that usually leads to better outcomes from exchanges of thoughts and compromise.

Nobody is infallible and everyone is entitled to their own assessment.   

[nuclearslurpee]

Have you seen how drastically their damage drops off,

Yes.

to use them you HAVE to be faster than the enemy, you HAVE to be able to survive the entire distance closing from whatever your max range is to under about 20000km,

Yes, there are requirements that have to be met to get the most out of the weapon. A lot of these conditions, for what it's worth, also apply to railguns, and nobody has called for a buff to railguns around here in quite some time.

and then when you do deploy your "alpha strike" youre still failing to out DPS nearly any other weapon in the game.

Well, yes, that's how an alpha strike works. If you had a weapon which could deal a huge alpha strike and maintain very high DPS, it would be patently absurd, a word which in Aurora means "Steve here is an idea for the next new spoiler race."

DPS is not the be-all, end-all of Aurora beam combat. A strong alpha strike, when successful, will cripple or kill a large part of the enemy force before they can bring their DPS to full effect, particularly if you hit the right ships of their fleet composition. Naturally, such a strong tactic should have rather challenging requirements to execute successfully.

also if you think Carronade range is good youre insane.

Remind me to have a chat with my therapist about doctor/patient confidentiality... 

We need to be careful what we compare against a given carronade design. A 30cm carronade requires 7k RP to develop (7.5k in a conventional start) and costs 4.9*C per weapon where C is the capacitor tech used. First of all, note that the direct comparison is a 30cm Infrared laser, with the same cost but requiring 59k RP to develop (60k in a conventional start). Already, we see that there is a significant strategic advantage to carronades in that you can deploy your massive alpha-striking weapon in a fraction of the research time, or while saving 52k RP at the start of the game to dump into propulsion, missile, shielding, etc. techs in your initial setup. The downside, of course, is that lasers can also improve the range modifier while plasma cannot, but this does requires further research investment which not every player or campaign wants to do. If I'm already going heavy into missiles + Gauss PD, I may not want to spend a lot of time and research points getting good lasers when I can get passable plasma as a secondary weapon for much, much cheaper.

Now turning to the more general comparison with lasers: If we want that 12cm laser which we claim is so superior, then in the interest of fairness we also need to reach the same 240,000 km range. This requires a range modifier of 60,000 km, which is a tech requiring a total of 59k RP (60k in a conventional start) to unlock, plus the 2k RP for 12cm lasers. Again, there is a major strategic benefit to carronades if (and only if) we do not want to invest so many RPs into lasers. Now, yes, there is damage falloff to consider, which means we can probably consider the 12cm laser equal or "better" than the plasma at a lower range modifier (perhaps 40,000 km?), but this still comes at an increased price in RP. We might also achieve a better balance with 15cm or 20cm lasers (20k total RP for equal or better range, in each case), but as these larger calibers require more HS to mount we are closing the DPS gap while the 30cm carronade maintains its high alpha strike capability.

The summary here is: everything in Aurora has a corresponding cost for its benefits. Carronades have the benefit of being tremendously cheap to research, but tremendously limited such that they are almost never a suitable choice as a main anti-ship weapon - but in a secondary role, they can suffice and their cheapness makes them suitable to support a fleet which uses a different main weapon type, as you can dedicate more of your valuable RPs into developing that main weapon. You could, of course, use lasers, but the RP requirement for strong lasers will mean your main weapon type is correspondingly less effective. Alternatively, we have the option to research much larger carronades and spend those RP we would otherwise save - I won't analyze this in detail as the options start to broaden considerably, but I will note that for about 60k RP total, we can have the 50cm carronade which is a truly frightening alpha strike (64 damage!) if you can land it from close enough range.

Also i dont know how youd justify them being used as point defence.

At no point did I suggest such a thing. What I did suggest is that, in an extreme example, you could use plasma as an anti-ship beam weapon and 10cm railguns as a dirt-cheap beam PD option as opposed to the more expensive Gauss tree, which would give you weapons for serviceable, if clearly second-line or escort-quality, beam warships to support, e.g., a missile-based or carrier-based fleet.

I really fail to understand how you can even pretend Plasma is an effective niche weapon, and honestly it makes me suspect that you dont actually understand how their range scales or something.

There is a handy plot for this, albeit it uses very specific cases which may not be the best cross-comparisons - but it suffices to illustrate the mechanics.

And god forbid you need to close the range over distance.

Again this is how railgun warfare works and no one is complaining about railgun balance - except me, because I think the reduced-shot railguns are too strong, but that is neither here nor there.

Please, if you disagree give me a detailed answer as to how Plasma is a viable weapon in any circumstance and dont just quote the same "its good for ground units and thats about it" stuff at me,

Fortunately for me this was an easy requirement to meet as I did not even say this in my first response.

Also, they don't need to be the best or the most viable. Aurora is a game designed to drive story telling. Theyre great as a RP friendly weapon if nothing else. Not every option is the best option.

I'm strongly against balancing all weapons to the point where it doesn't really matter which one you use and all are equally good. That's fine for competitive PvP games but doesn't fit single player games, and definitely doesn't fit the character of Aurora. This like trying to make Gauss work as a primary weapon.

This is the correct broader point. "Balance" in Aurora is not about every choice being equally good in every situation, but about creating interesting decisions which strike balance between tactical and strategic factors. The current design of plasma weapons promotes this design goal quite effectively.

I swear the hostility in the forum is getting out of hand

This seems to come usually from new posters/members who are used to the standards of discussion in other, more lawless parts of the Internet. Most folks who stick around here do eventually adapt to the standards of discussion we like to maintain. In this case, OP has only three posts here so I assume there is a bit of an adjustment period going on, but it is not such a big deal I think.

Edit: And for the record, there's probably less than ten people that know the ins and outs of Aurora better than @nuclearslurpee

You said it, not me... 

A baseline squadron jump (50k) with starter drives neutralize the emergency plasma weapons role (60k range) unless the opposition has terrible luck.

Like many things in Aurora this can be worked around, for example by using fast FACs or few-kiloton attack craft which can close the distance and strike at point-blank before the enemy fleet can recover from transit. There are options here.

Blacklight and the others who have written before, makes a reasonable argument that inside the "The ship weapon box" Plasma is objectively terrible at any role outside of luck based encounters or RP Encounters niche. It's heavy, can't be turreted, slow to fire, and terrible damage falloff. It has the flaws of every other Energy weapon type.

I mean, bluntly, this is largely accurate: in a purely tactical view, plasma is almost always the worst beam weapon as long as no one has invited Mesons to the party - provided that we are ignoring the research and build costs of the different weapons being compared. In practice, given that these costs are actually very low, carronades have many strategic benefits that make them a viable choice in a wide range of cases. I think it is okay if the cheapest weapon to develop and deploy also has the most flaws, that seems pretty fair to me honestly.

One case I like to use plasma for is as a secondary beam weapon for carrier escorts. I can put a couple of decent-caliber carronades on my DEs or CLEs, which allows me to use them to destroy vulnerable targets when I don't want to waste missile ordnance, and using the Gauss turrets which are the primary payload of the DE/CLE class would consume significantly more MSP to do the job (due to the 2% failure rate on weapon firing outside of final fire situations). It is a relatively minor benefit, I admit, but saving ordnance and MSP makes the fleet logistics for a long campaign that much less demanding.

I interpreted no hostility from any writer here, I do see friction from differences of opinions and that usually leads to better outcomes from exchanges of thoughts and compromise.

Nobody is infallible and everyone is entitled to their own assessment.   

I think usually, the tone tends to seem hostile once the discussion veers away from plain facts and measured opinions, and starts to involve questions about the character or intellect of other posters. For example, asserting that another poster is "insane", "pretending", or "[doesn't] actually understand" the game mechanics at hand tend to come across as hostility to many readers. I think it is an easy mistake to make, particularly for newcomers, but it is also easily correctable.

[papent]

I mean, bluntly, this is largely accurate: in a purely tactical view, plasma is almost always the worst beam weapon as long as no one has invited Mesons to the party - provided that we are ignoring the research and build costs of the different weapons being compared. In practice, given that these costs are actually very low, carronades have many strategic benefits that make them a viable choice in a wide range of cases. I think it is okay if the cheapest weapon to develop and deploy also has the most flaws, that seems pretty fair to me honestly.

One case I like to use plasma for is as a secondary beam weapon for carrier escorts. I can put a couple of decent-caliber carronades on my DEs or CLEs, which allows me to use them to destroy vulnerable targets when I don't want to waste missile ordnance, and using the Gauss turrets which are the primary payload of the DE/CLE class would consume significantly more MSP to do the job (due to the 2% failure rate on weapon firing outside of final fire situations). It is a relatively minor benefit, I admit, but saving ordnance and MSP makes the fleet logistics for a long campaign that much less demanding.

How big of a destroyer escort if you're using one of the heaviest weapons for secondary batteries? We're not planning the same fleets but that's the beauty of Aurora many ways to play and enjoy yet...

we're still having this conversation about limiting somebody else because it makes subject sense to some to have an objectively known to be worst use of tonnage in combat range of opposing forces.

Railguns recently had a buff, particle as well. There's still two underperforming energy weapons -
meson (I only use as a Small fast craft killer ) which was one of the best weapons of VB6.

Plasma may we suggest a few ideas to make this actually useful in a standard tactical use case besides being a rocket-powered deathtrap for crews. You're a prolific author of ideas on this forum, think of it as a thought exercise. Maybe damage falloff, maybe rate of fire, damage pattern, weight or something else?

Energy weapons are strategically more flexible than missile weapons, I don't think having a weapon which serves best as a planetary assault/defense/secondary is the best use of an entire designable ship weapon just from a game mechanic prospective. Imo which counts for nothing.

Btw I Intentional limit my fleets to not exceed sizes of equivalent NPR hulls. So most of my fleets are small ships.

[Garfunkel]

I'm strongly against balancing all weapons to the point where it doesn't really matter which one you use and all are equally good. That's fine for competitive PvP games but doesn't fit single player games, and definitely doesn't fit the character of Aurora. This like trying to make Gauss work as a primary weapon.

A ship solely equipped with Gauss turrets will likely have an excellent to acceptable chance at accomplishing it's primary mission in pretty much all standard combat conditions. A ship equipped with plasma has a middling to low chance of accomplishing any mission objective in the best of combat conditions. A baseline squadron jump (50k) with starter drives neutralize the emergency plasma weapons role (60k range) unless the opposition has terrible luck.

Except it would have all the same problems as a ship with plasma carronades - it must be faster than the opponent and protected strongly enough to survive crossing the enemy's field of fire since their beam weapons will outrange your gauss even easier than they outrange plasma.

JP defence/ambush situations are not rare and as has been said by others, the point we're trying to make isn't that plasma is great but that if your fleet focuses on missiles, for example, or carries/fighters, which both require a lot of research to develop, then choosing the RP-cheap plasma carronades as your secondary weapon is not a bad idea and it can do the job.

Anyway, I can split these posts off into their own thread if folks want to continue discussing the pros and cons of plasma carronades as otherwise it'll clutter up the Suggestion thread too much.

[Agraelgrimm]

Seems i got here in the middle of a heated argument... Rare thing to see here in Aurora.
But anyway, i am having little time to look at everything, so i just have a small question here, if no one minds answering me:
Has someone suggested a easy way to replace Ground Forces and if not, is it already on the table for the next update? Cause in the state of the game right now, that seems to me to be the more pressing matter.

Also, since i am already here, a simple suggestion here would be to have the *option* of having ships using missile ammunition while they are on patrol and training missions, as they already have the chances to experience equipment failure, having them using ammo would be a nice RP touch and extra requirement into having the patrol and training benefits.

*Edit:*

Also, it would be nice if Orbital Miners could have the minerals deposited into their cargo holds instead of the asteroid/system body. It would improve logistics and RP, as we can send a fleet of Orbital Miners and have them come back and forth when their cargo holds are full. So actually having tiny cargo holds on them starts making sense. Especially since a mining operation is a complex thing. It involves a lot of logistics, equipment and etc, so its a bit weird that they would just leave the minerals dumped on the asteroid instead of using small drop ships to bring it back.

[nuclearslurpee]

How big of a destroyer escort if you're using one of the heaviest weapons for secondary batteries? We're not planning the same fleets but that's the beauty of Aurora many ways to play and enjoy yet...

I do like my big ships... I think the last campaign I did this my DE/CLEs were 18k tons with 2x carronades, but you can just as well use a <10k ton DE with a single carronade. In my mind, it is not very different from putting a spinal laser on such ships for a similar purpose. I generally believe that it is good to mount secondary capabilities on most ship classes above a few kilotons - my offensive ships or fleet carriers will include a couple of Gauss turrets so they contribute to PD and are not so easily hamstrung by losing escorts, by the same token.

By the way, 18k and 9k are upper limits for NPR CLEs and DEs respectively, so while these are big ships for some players I think they are reasonable sizes. My WH40K settings on the other hand...

we're still having this conversation about limiting somebody else because it makes subject sense to some to have an objectively known to be worst use of tonnage in combat range of opposing forces.

From the flip side: if we remove these limitations by making plasma tactically competitive - and, necessarily, rebalancing this by removing some or all of what makes plasma strategically attractive, otherwise we're just breaking the game - we may be in the process removing an interesting decision point from the game.

Plasma may we suggest a few ideas to make this actually useful in a standard tactical use case besides being a rocket-powered deathtrap for crews. You're a prolific author of ideas on this forum, think of it as a thought exercise. Maybe damage falloff, maybe rate of fire, damage pattern, weight or something else?

I would not change most of these things as I think they work consistently with the rest of the game mechanics, damage falloff for instance works exactly as it does for other beam weapons. However, I think having some option to reduce the size would be very interesting - actually, I would take away the reduced-size lasers and give that capability to plasma along with buffing the tech somewhat, which would lean more into the alpha-strike and secondary beam weapon roles while making plasma bombers viable beyond the 15/20cm tech level, which personally I think is a really cool fighter concept I would like to use.

However - this is important - if we buff plasma we must separate ground unit racial attack from shipborne weapons techs. Frankly I think being able to cheese ground unit attack with plasma weaponry unbalances the ground combat and eliminates a lot of the tactical interest by making PWL+CAP so incredibly optimal versus any other composition that it is not even funny. The VB6 approach of having dedicated GU attack/defense techs was I think the correct one - at least, having a dedicated GU attack tech also allows tweaking balance vs the armor tech which in turn would allow rebalancing higher-tier armor against shields, another topic of discussion on this forum. Also, this would provide GU researchers something to do in the late game after UHV are developed, as right now most of the GU techs are in that 4k to 6k range and can be developed pretty quickly once you have a couple of strong GC researchers. This all is a bit outside the narrow topic of plasma carronades, but because of the interaction with ground combat it has to be addressed simultaneously.

Railguns recently had a buff, particle as well. There's still two underperforming energy weapons -
meson (I only use as a Small fast craft killer ) which was one of the best weapons of VB6.

Mesons actually have a useful niche as they ignore shields entirely. I have also done analysis (not published on this forum) showing that a moderate buff to the attenuation techs can make mesons quite viable as a main anti-ship weapon in general, although I am unsure if such a buff is needed since the anti-shield role is already quite a good niche - albeit not very important against NPRs which only rarely use shields effectively.

Anyway, I can split these posts off into their own thread if folks want to continue discussing the pros and cons of plasma carronades as otherwise it'll clutter up the Suggestion thread too much.

Sounds like that might be necessary, if nothing else the topic of plasma carronades always is perilously close to the question of ground combat balance, which nearly always leads to a heated discussion of its own.

Also, it would be nice if Orbital Miners could have the minerals deposited into their cargo holds instead of the asteroid/system body. It would improve logistics and RP, as we can send a fleet of Orbital Miners and have them come back and forth when their cargo holds are full. So actually having tiny cargo holds on them starts making sense. Especially since a mining operation is a complex thing. It involves a lot of logistics, equipment and etc, so its a bit weird that they would just leave the minerals dumped on the asteroid instead of using small drop ships to bring it back.

I actually have sometimes used a design with a cargo hold and shuttle enabling OM/OMPs to carry a mass driver from site to site. Not that sending out a freighter to move the Driver around is too much trouble for how infrequently it is done, but it is an interesting tweak and works well in 2.0+ with the changes to commander assignment so that such designs will correctly request a Mining-skill commander rather than Logistics-skill.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I agree that ground weapon strength and armour tech probably should be their own tech line in ground tech area.

Though, the difference in cost is not super great as weapon strength is only tied to one of the primary weapon techs... so increasing range increasing tech will not impact ground weapon strength for example. If you invest RP in such technology it is your choice, just like any other technology that does not increase ground weapon strength.

Plasma weapons only give a slight cheaper ground weapon strength... even other weapon tech have varied impact on the cost.

In general I find most weapons to give interesting choices from a strategic sense... there should not be a balanced primary weapon balance... there is no need for this. If you wan't to invest the RP and build cost to use lasers you can do that... but it will cost other things you could have done instead. This is a strategic decision worth making.

[papent]

Ground Force Suggestion - New ground forces tech lines.

• Ground Unit Weapon Strength - increase empire weapon strength
• Ground Unit Armor Strength - increase empire armor strength
• Ground Unit Countermeasures - (To-hit modifier) decrease ground unit classes chance to be hit, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Toughness - (Hit Points) increase ground unit classes hit points, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all units types
• Ground Unit Entrenchment - (Fortification) increase ground unit max fortification level, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Armament Munitions Improvement - (Supply Use) decrease ground unit weapons supply use, possible a tech line per weapon class or a standard % decrease for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Penetration Improvement - (Penetration) increase ground unit weapons penetration, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Rate of Fire Improvement - (Shots) increase ground unit weapons shots, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Capability Training- decrease cost modifier for additional ground unit capabilities

To adds some granularity to ground combat units and more tech lines in a small research category is always great imho.

Regarding Plasma Carronades:
I don't recall this discussion of plausible strategic benefits over actual tactical applications about Railgun changes. Just sole consideration of the argument in merits that reduced sized railguns were a good idea for Role play, story generation and game play despite arguments that some players would overoptimize their ships and that for some reason  should be a primary argument in a single user game with a SM mode. 

It's virtually throwing a red herring to derail this conversation to constantly refer to ground balance every single time people are talking about ship weapons. It's not relevant to the subject at hand and let's consider this Space war in isolation from Ground war while we all can assume Steve is bright enough to delve into anything he considers an issue. 

So Let's suggest methods to make it an effective ship weapon in some form or another and work back from there instead of shrugging while shouting Es así.

Nuclearslurpee
Made a great suggestion of decreasing the size of Plasma Carronades.
Which gives me a great idea further down that line of reasoning.

I suggest that:

• A 25% baseline tonnage reduction.
• An Explosion Chance 25% & Max Explosion Size equal to Capacitor Recharge Rate.
• An option box similar to Gauss's Size Vs Accuracy, Labeled Size and Capacitor Recharge Efficiency. increasing or decreasing the size of the Weapon system also gives an effective boost to the capacitor recharge rate i.e 200% larger Plasma Carronade & 200% more recharge rate (your tech level is Recharge rate 3 and for this weapon it's Recharge Rate 6) With a total of 9 Size options 100%, 4 larger size options (125%, 150%, 175%, 200%), and 4 smaller size options (75%, 50%, 25%, 17.5%).

It's a tweak that increase options & a meaningful decision, do boost the size of the system to increase Efficiency but risk a massive explosion or go smaller for strikecraft and "secondary batteries".
What any opinion on such a suggestion or an alternate proposal?

Closing Statement:

This is a Suggestion Thread not a Dissuasion Thread, yes?

[Blacklight]

This is gonna be a long ass reply, ill try be chill etc and cover everything but itll likely end up being a ramble. 
I have lurked in the forum for 2 years fyi and am active on both the discord and the reddit, well not that active but i am around, so while im not as worldly as some of you, im not the most fresh faced noob. 

So first off, the whole reason ive brought up carronades is that i want to use them, knowing that they arent very good, i like how the sound and the kind of damage etc they deal, it clicks in my head and i want to use them cause theyre cool.   My issue is theyre literally so bad that taking them isnt putting myself at a disadvantage, its straight up not even trying to win.   It forces a very specific fleet build where you have to be faster, tougher and out tonnage literally any other fleet you fight, which isnt very fun in restricting role play options, and also falls flat when spoilers *exist* and if you play on anything higher than base difficulty its not out of the question that the ai will still be faster than you. 
This is why ive come here, i want to use a weapon but i literally cant.   its like nuking my own planet, just guaranteed to not be a fun experience and force me to play a very set way and then still lose. 

That out of the way, my next step was i just want 1 change.   Remove the dramatic damage drop off and make it linear like every other weapon in the game.   So a 30cm carronade would do 24 damage at 0 range and 1 damage at 240000km, but also do 12 at 120000km.   This is already balanced as there is still a 60 second reload time to consider at C2 at least, and it takes twice the hull space as just about any other weapon at that tech level.   This wouldnt even make it a good weapon, it would just make it an alright one.   Which i think is fine, as long as its actually vaguely competitive with the other weapon types. 

So with all those out of the way and hopefully a clearer picture of what im trying to achieve, im gonna dive into replies and rebuttals. 

Agreed with alot of Papents comments. 

Carronades are not good or effective as backup weapons.   Not only are they incredibly space inefficient, which basically instantly disqualifies them from being a secondary weapon, they also suck so hard you might as well not even carry them for how much theyll actually help you.   Even on a carrier fleet which has them because it also utilises Carronade bombers, chances are theyll die without a shot fired because if your carriers are tanky enough to get within 40kkm of an enemy fleet then you must be doing something insane. 
Also sorry if i come off as hostile, its meant to be more incredulous and more based on fundamental disagreements i believe. 
And no they are not good as an RP friendly weapon, if you mean roleplay.   Unless you mean great for RP in the same way "Miscellaneous Components" are, you know, those things that do literally nothing but look pretty. 

I'm strongly against balancing all weapons to the point where it doesn't really matter which one you use and all are equally good.   That's fine for competitive PvP games but doesn't fit single player games, and definitely doesn't fit the character of Aurora.   This like trying to make Gauss work as a primary weapon.   

I disagree with this.   Aurora is a game where its entire research tree is all about gradual upgrades, theres nothing revolutionary, theres no new discoveries beyond maybe the very basics of a conventional start.   There is no room for weapons that are useless.   All it means is that literally no one touches them with a 10 foot pole unless theyre new or insane. 
Weapons dont all need to be 100% 1:1, but they do need to be at least some what effective, which is something the carronade completely fails at. 
Again, Railguns and lasers are easily the best weapons in the game and im not arguing for us to make Plasma compete with them in that category, i just want it so that a carronade fleet vs a rail or laser fleet isnt a complete and instantaneous loss.   If someone wants to run a duel sometime id bet 150 AUD that they couldnt make a Plasma only fleet that could beat a Rail or Laser only fleet at the same cost and research cost. 

Plasma doesnt need to be great, good or excellent, it just has to be good enough, and currently, It is not. 

Also gauss is good for PD, and honestly, If i saw a plasma fleet versing a gauss fleet, my money would be on the gauss.   Much higher DPS, arguably better range at low tech, much much much faster firing, smaller.   The list goes on.   Gauss is good for pd and thats its niche, it can operate outside it but it has that 1 thing to fall back on that everyone needs.   What does plasma have that everyone needs to make up for its complete ineptitude at doing literally anything else.   "it can maybe jump point ambush an enemy if they dont squadron jump, and it can maybe kill something if the ai is dumb enough to close to point blank, its not cheese i swear! oh and it can maybe act as a decent STO, provided the enemy doesnt just bombard you from max range or kill them all before they even make orbit.  "

Yes, there are requirements that have to be met to get the most out of the weapon.   A lot of these conditions, for what it's worth, also apply to railguns, and nobody has called for a buff to railguns around here in quite some time. 

The difference here is that railguns are, get this, actually good.   Much longer range, much more consistent DPS over range, faster firing, can be used as DPS, are good at long and short range.   a 4 shot railgun at max range does AT LEAST 4 damage.   The same cannot be said for a carronade at the same range.   And the railgun is doing that every 10-20 seconds or whatever, vs a carronade doing it once every 60+ seconds. 
Comparing these two weapon systems is a complete non starter mate, theyre worlds different and railguns are way more effective for that broad range of applications theyre good for.   And again, im not saying Plasma needs to be able to do everything railguns can, i just wish that in a straight gun fight, it stood a chance.   So i could actually justify using them in a fleet instead of them literally being a comedy choice. 

Also your RP cost comparisons werent great, there is no need for lasers to somehow also reach 240000km of a 30cm carronade and then using that to compare the RP costs is silly.   I cant be assed making 20 quotes and fiddling with that as im not the most forum formatting savy, but i generally disagree with your assessment. 
I think youll find and equal RP cost laser to just about any carronade etc will be vastly more effective. 

Also didnt reduced shot railguns get nerfed in the recent update? or am i misremembering.   

And yes aurora is a story generator more than an actual game, that doesnt mean carronades should suck so bad that i dont think ive ever seen anyone but a noob use them.   Again, im not asking for them to out compete lasers and railguns etc, i just want them at least able to stand behind them.   Currently theyre coming like 11th place in 10, i wish theyd come 4th place in 10, figuratively, compared to railguns and lasers and what not.   Figuratively being the key word.   

And the side benefits of carronades, while useful, dont really weigh on this conversation.   And if you think they do then they should be separated into a separate tech.   Theyre minimal at best anyway.  Ground combat doesnt exist if you cant make orbit.

And again, take any perceived rudeness on my part as exasperation.   to me the problem and solution seem like night and day, so its hard to understand how you disagree with me, try as i might.   and why im here trying to convince you of my point. 

I would not change most of these things as I think they work consistently with the rest of the game mechanics, damage falloff for instance works exactly as it does for other beam weapons.   

What do you mean damage fall off works exactly the same as it does for other beam weapons.   Plasma does a quarter of the damage at a quarter of the range, whereas literally every other beam weapon does 3 quarters of its damage at a quarter of the range.   I dont understand how this is really in anyway comparable, i could be misinterpreting tho perhaps. 
Miscommunication is likely why i sound like a lunatic asking if youve even looked at range stats, i suspect theres some key point me, or one of us at least, is missing in this case. 


In any case i agree with lots of Papents last posts comments, surely im not the only one that sees plasma is completely incapable of not only competing with the meta weapons like railguns and lasers, but actually also completely incapable of being a credible weapon.   Building a plasma fleet if basing the future of your interstellar empire on a dice throw and some cheese hoping that you can game then AI into blind jumping a jump point.   Thats not fun.   Thats not roleplay.   Thats cheesing the AI cause its the only way to make your weapon choice work. 

Anyway, I can split these posts off into their own thread if folks want to continue discussing the pros and cons of plasma carronades as otherwise it'll clutter up the Suggestion thread too much. 

If we want to continue to carry on then this may be a good idea. 

And god i need to login to my forum account on my phone.   I had to stew on all this all day after reading your responses when i woke up.   Positively agonising i tell you :P
And again, as rude as i may come off despite how i try, there are never hard feelings at the end of the day, just heated impassioned discussion. 

[nuclearslurpee]

Ground Force Suggestion - New ground forces tech lines.

• Ground Unit Weapon Strength - increase empire weapon strength
• Ground Unit Armor Strength - increase empire armor strength
• [...]

I would probably just keep it to these two lines, for a couple of reasons: (1) it is easier to balance since it is just relocating some existing "techs" into a more sensible place, and (2) with too many techs the GC category can become oversized relative to its importance in the game mechanics. This plus the build rate tech gives 3 techs which can scale into the late game, which is on par with the typical research load to maintain a single major ship system type.

We could probably add more (2-3 more lines I think would be fine) but I'm not sure which new tech lines would be the least likely to throw the ground combat balance out the window by accident. Some kind of ECM/ECCM analogue would be great whenever Steve figures out the planned rework for ship-based EW, but in the current state it would be too much of an I-win button I think, given how polarizing the ship-based modules already are.

Regarding Plasma Carronades:

For a size reduction tech line, I would suggest a line that looks like:

• Size 0.75x, recharge time 2x, tech cost 1,500 RP
• Size 0.6x, recharge time 5x, tech cost 5,000 RP
• Size 0.4x, recharge time 20x, tech cost 15,000 RP
• Size 0.3x, recharge time 100x, tech cost 45,000 RP
• (Optional) Size 0.15x, recharge time N/A, tech cost 135,000 RP

The astute observer will note that the size and recharge multipliers are the same as the reduced-size missile launcher options, and the suggested RP costs are the same as for Gauss weapon ROF. I chose this progression as simply doubling the tech cost at each point made it a bit too accessible early on. The given progression is still better than what we currently have for reduced-size lasers (which IMO we should just remove from the game I think as no one uses it and it is not a well-balanced pair of techs) for the RP investment, which fits into the general purpose of the plasma line. The last, optional tech level would require recharging in a hangar bay or at a maintenance facility, just like box launchers for missiles - and as such you don't need a capacitor for the weapon.

My goal here is that at each tech point, a carronade of caliber with comparable RP cost can be reduced and loaded into a fighter to enable the fun, but probably suboptimal, "plasma bomber" class to be used at most stages of the game where fighters are viable. If the recharge time works the same as it currently does for the laser tech, the capacitor requirement will be minimal which will help balance the ~200 ton size compared to 150 tons for the 10cm railgun fighters. My major balance concern is that this enables putting a large number of carronades onto a ship and building up a massive alpha strike, but given the costs I've imposed, the hideous vulnerability of such a ship if it fails to destroy the entire enemy fleet in the first volley of fire, and the general challenge in using plasma as a main offensive weapon, I think it will not prove to be too great of an exploit.

I would not readily go into the larger sizes, because that crosses over with the spinal lasers and I think it is better to keep the roles of each weapon type distinct from one another as much as possible.

This is a Suggestion Thread not a Dissuasion Thread, yes?

I think it is valuable for folks who do not agree with a suggestion to say so and explain why. If nothing else, it helps Steve by providing more food for thought and giving a rounder perspective on what community members might like to see in the game. The resulting discussion can also often lead to improving a suggestion and/or generating a stronger basis behind a suggestion.

That being said, any lengthy or heated discussions should be continued in a dedicated thread. Personally, I think all salient points from both sides have been raised, and as no one is eager to change their minds on the subject it is perhaps best left for Steve to decide on in his own time as always. 

[words]

Keeping to the above, I won't touch most of these unless and until the discussion branches off, primarily so that this post doesn't have to be moved around if so as I think the reduced-size carronade tech line above is a worthwhile suggestion on its own.

That said, there are a few mechanics points to clarify:

That out of the way, my next step was i just want 1 change.   Remove the dramatic damage drop off and make it linear like every other weapon in the game.

What do you mean damage fall off works exactly the same as it does for other beam weapons.

The damage falloff works identically to every other weapon in the game. Beam weapon damage falloff is either (a) nonexistent (PBs and 1-damage weapons), or (b) scales with (range_modifier / range_to_target) capped of course at 100%. The catch is that plasma has a built-in range modifier of 10,000 km which never improves with tech, by design. No beam weapon in the game has linear damage falloff. See plot for reference on this mechanic.

Also didnt reduced shot railguns get nerfed in the recent update? or am i misremembering.   

It was discussed but I haven't seen it in a patch note and it is not in the game as of v2.1.1. IIRC, the change Steve settled on in that thread was to reduce the capacitor power by the same fraction as the number of shots to prevent cheesing the ROF on large-caliber railguns, but I may be incorrect and again it has not yet made it into the game AFAIK.

[Ghrathryn]

Some potential suggestions for fleets, if they're viable.

• Have a Standing Order to allow transports your transports to respond to Civilian Orders (Supply/Demand Facilities)
• Allow fleets to interact with other fleets without merging (tankers can refuel, tugs can tractor ships/stations, etc as their own fleet)
• Clarifiy the Unload Colonists/Passengers standing orders for the potential target (lowest pop colony, etc)
• Add a variant of the Move to System Requiring Grav Survey for systems that aren't fully Geo surveyed.  Preferably have both prioritise systems that are already partially completed over untouched ones
• Have a setting that allows Standing Orders to interrupt manually set orders without wiping the list and allow ships to continue with manual orders after clearing a standing order (generally the conditionals are the interrupters)
• Add a Civilian Supply/Demand for the minerals and allow both Shipping Companies and player built civilian ships to respond.  You can potentially add colonists to that if you want to have a colony grow a certain amount before switching to stable after reaching the point you can switch off colonist transfers, which might be a useful way of prioritising colonies for growth

Breaking off from that to the plasma carronades discussion.  My personal suggestion is that there should be a 10cm and 12cm versions, with the 10cm starting at 6-9 dmg and scaling from there, keeping the short range bar a few scattered upgrades.  The reason being it's plasma, super high temperature gas that's on the edge of fission/fusion that's being shoved into a magnetic bottle and tossed at other ships.  It's probably harder to contain that, especially away from the firing ship, than keep a beam of light from an overpowered torch/flashlight focused or maintain the momentum of a bunch of solid slugs.

What could happen is it's made into the 'anti armour' weapon.  Close range, but even on the lowest size, it'll melt a wide 2-3 deep hole through armour.  It's not as useful vs shields, and possibly there's a defence tech to counter some of the damage (probably shield to have it mirror mesons), but the concept is that while you're running a risk having to rush in much closer than normal, if you manage it, you can rapidly cripple or kill other ships as even a few volleys can burn large holes in hulls and the components under them.

[papent]

Jump drive ideas

Squadron jump distance for outbound jumps i.e with 100k  jump tech your ship departs from the system 100k from the jump point and arrive 100k from arriving jump point.

Lagrange point transitions incur jump shock.

Ships may transition between Lagrange and jump points.

Some suggestions to the jump mechanics, please let me know what you think.

Some potential suggestions for fleets, if they're viable.

• Have a Standing Order to allow transports your transports to respond to Civilian Orders (Supply/Demand Facilities)
• Allow fleets to interact with other fleets without merging (tankers can refuel, tugs can tractor ships/stations, etc as their own fleet)
• Clarifiy the Unload Colonists/Passengers standing orders for the potential target (lowest pop colony, etc)
• Add a variant of the Move to System Requiring Grav Survey for systems that aren't fully Geo surveyed.  Preferably have both prioritise systems that are already partially completed over untouched ones
• Have a setting that allows Standing Orders to interrupt manually set orders without wiping the list and allow ships to continue with manual orders after clearing a standing order (generally the conditionals are the interrupters)
• Add a Civilian Supply/Demand for the minerals and allow both Shipping Companies and player built civilian ships to respond.  You can potentially add colonists to that if you want to have a colony grow a certain amount before switching to stable after reaching the point you can switch off colonist transfers, which might be a useful way of prioritising colonies for growth

• I would absolutely love this options
• In the next update some of what you purposed has been added, check out the changelog and see if that is what you were thinking about
• Like adding more variants of the unload standing order? may you clarify this.
• That's interesting/may be useful and possible a mirror one to go Geo Survey fully Grav surveyed systems?
• Idk if that is feasible with how the order system is built. Perhaps it could do the conditional order and return to the location is was prior but you might run into a loop for something like refuel at 50% as the ship was already at the end of it's operating range. this one is a technical toughy on initial glance.
• this is one i've previously suggested and would love to have available. Simple movement of minerals and colonist movement.
  I would even go farther allow movement of ship components, Missiles, and Ground Unit by Series (Only from formations that are listed as replacements and placed in a formation on the receiving colony named {Colonyname_Replacement_Pool} to allow for easier replenishment of Ground Unit Formations

Ground Force Suggestion - New ground forces tech lines.

• Ground Unit Weapon Strength - increase empire weapon strength
• Ground Unit Armor Strength - increase empire armor strength
• Ground Unit Countermeasures - (To-hit modifier) decrease ground unit classes chance to be hit, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Toughness - (Hit Points) increase ground unit classes hit points, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all units types
• Ground Unit Entrenchment - (Fortification) increase ground unit max fortification level, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all unit types
• Ground Unit Armament Munitions Improvement - (Supply Use) decrease ground unit weapons supply use, possible a tech line per weapon class or a standard % decrease for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Penetration Improvement - (Penetration) increase ground unit weapons penetration, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Armament Rate of Fire Improvement - (Shots) increase ground unit weapons shots, possible a tech line per unit class or a standard % increase for all types
• Ground Unit Capability Training- decrease cost modifier for additional ground unit capabilities

I would probably just keep it to these two lines, for a couple of reasons: (1) it is easier to balance since it is just relocating some existing "techs" into a more sensible place, and (2) with too many techs the GC category can become oversized relative to its importance in the game mechanics. This plus the build rate tech gives 3 techs which can scale into the late game, which is on par with the typical research load to maintain a single major ship system type.

We could probably add more (2-3 more lines I think would be fine) but I'm not sure which new tech lines would be the least likely to throw the ground combat balance out the window by accident. Some kind of ECM/ECCM analogue would be great whenever Steve figures out the planned rework for ship-based EW, but in the current state it would be too much of an I-win button I think, given how polarizing the ship-based modules already are.

More choice is better, yes? Perhaps i'm building a Starship Trooper analogy force and only need to focus on PIW & LAV and improving only those tech lines.
Balance in a game with DM options is not exactly the highest of priorities imo. if a user intentional takes away their own fun, that's a cause for self reflection.
ECM/ECCM isn't exactly what i was thinking with countermeasures it could be simple low-tech techniques or whatever the Plot of your campaign requires it to be, I only mention mechanics and how they operate.

Breaking off from that to the plasma carronades discussion.  My personal suggestion is that there should be a 10cm and 12cm versions, with the 10cm starting at 6-9 dmg and scaling from there, keeping the short range bar a few scattered upgrades.  The reason being it's plasma, super high temperature gas that's on the edge of fission/fusion that's being shoved into a magnetic bottle and tossed at other ships.  It's probably harder to contain that, especially away from the firing ship, than keep a beam of light from an overpowered torch/flashlight focused or maintain the momentum of a bunch of solid slugs.

What could happen is it's made into the 'anti armour' weapon.  Close range, but even on the lowest size, it'll melt a wide 2-3 deep hole through armour.  It's not as useful vs shields, and possibly there's a defence tech to counter some of the damage (probably shield to have it mirror mesons), but the concept is that while you're running a risk having to rush in much closer than normal, if you manage it, you can rapidly cripple or kill other ships as even a few volleys can burn large holes in hulls and the components under them.

That's an interesting take on the concept. If I may further suggest your line of reasoning:

• 2 weapon sizes to choose from
• only tech improvement line is for raw damage. Increases damage, power needed, and resource cost But does not increase tonnage.
• Weapon Gradient 2 or 4

It's a simple tweak and may be worth exploring in detail.

Regarding Plasma Carronades:

For a size reduction tech line, I would suggest a line that looks like:

• Size 0.75x, recharge time 2x, tech cost 1,500 RP
• Size 0.6x, recharge time 5x, tech cost 5,000 RP
• Size 0.4x, recharge time 20x, tech cost 15,000 RP
• Size 0.3x, recharge time 100x, tech cost 45,000 RP
• (Optional) Size 0.15x, recharge time N/A, tech cost 135,000 RP

The astute observer will note that the size and recharge multipliers are the same as the reduced-size missile launcher options, and the suggested RP costs are the same as for Gauss weapon ROF. I chose this progression as simply doubling the tech cost at each point made it a bit too accessible early on. The given progression is still better than what we currently have for reduced-size lasers (which IMO we should just remove from the game I think as no one uses it and it is not a well-balanced pair of techs) for the RP investment, which fits into the general purpose of the plasma line. The last, optional tech level would require recharging in a hangar bay or at a maintenance facility, just like box launchers for missiles - and as such you don't need a capacitor for the weapon.

My goal here is that at each tech point, a carronade of caliber with comparable RP cost can be reduced and loaded into a fighter to enable the fun, but probably suboptimal, "plasma bomber" class to be used at most stages of the game where fighters are viable. If the recharge time works the same as it currently does for the laser tech, the capacitor requirement will be minimal which will help balance the ~200 ton size compared to 150 tons for the 10cm railgun fighters. My major balance concern is that this enables putting a large number of carronades onto a ship and building up a massive alpha strike, but given the costs I've imposed, the hideous vulnerability of such a ship if it fails to destroy the entire enemy fleet in the first volley of fire, and the general challenge in using plasma as a main offensive weapon, I think it will not prove to be too great of an exploit.

I would not readily go into the larger sizes, because that crosses over with the spinal lasers and I think it is better to keep the roles of each weapon type distinct from one another as much as possible.

It's a idea, I think reduced weapon sizes is good, that mechanic is utilized on very many weapon systems already, however there are few uses of enlarged weapon systems and that mechanic could be used more, and Most importantly choice is always good

Overall I think our understanding of Aurora is fundamental different, To me It's a Story Generator like Starfire, D&D, Dwarf Fortress, Or Rule the Waves.

[nuclearslurpee]

Add a variant of the Move to System Requiring Grav Survey for systems that aren't fully Geo surveyed.  Preferably have both prioritise systems that are already partially completed over untouched ones

We already have a Move to System Requiring Geosurvey order, although a priority option for partially-completed surveys could be useful.

Have a setting that allows Standing Orders to interrupt manually set orders without wiping the list and allow ships to continue with manual orders after clearing a standing order (generally the conditionals are the interrupters)

This would be very useful in some cases, such as not interrupting a survey in progress when deployment time ticks over.

More choice is better, yes?

From a game design perspective, not always. It is also important that choices which are presented are meaningful and not merely present, otherwise you get a lot of meaningless options that make no practical difference which you choose. Aurora is after all a game, not just a roleplay engine, it does follow a particular design philosophy and needs to work well according to those principles.

Balance in a game with DM options is not exactly the highest of priorities imo.

I'd disagree on this. It is true that "competitive" balance, as in the context of PvP games, is unnecessary for and in fact detrimental to Aurora. However, there is a concept of game balance which is critical for Aurora, which I often refer to as promoting "interesting decisions". This is balance not in the sense that system A is on even footing with system B, but in that the player feels that choosing system A over system B will lead to an appreciably different gameplay experience, and vice versa, with neither experience being strictly preferable to the other.

A key part of balance in this sense is that a feature should not be added unless it demonstrably promotes interesting decision-making. Adding a lot of tech lines just to give researchers more things to do does not necessarily accomplish this, so we have to evaluate which tech lines would accomplish this and to what degree. Decision-making balance is important because when interesting decisions are present in the game, they become focal points for roleplay as well - roleplay motivations and choices have tangible in-game impacts, which is highly rewarding for the player.

This doesn't really directly connect with my thoughts on the proposed GU tech lines, but I think it is an important point, as many people will say "Aurora isn't balanced!!!1!" as justification for their suggestions when this is not really a true statement.

Overall I think our understanding of Aurora is fundamental different, To me It's a Story Generator like Starfire, D&D, Dwarf Fortress, Or Rule the Waves.

I don't really think it is that fundamentally different. Every one of those examples has mechanics, rules, and some measure of balance which is not competitive in nature but rather tries to ensure that a range of choices is interesting and worth playing no matter which path the player(s) pursues. I don't play Aurora in even a remotely competitive way most of the time, so I couldn't give fewer damns about "competitive" balance in the way that many players who build "optimized" ships with overboost engines, 20 armor layers, and spinal lasers apparently do - but I do strongly appreciate the various tradeoffs between different choices, systems, and strategies that makes roleplaying different empires in different ways feel consequential from one game to another.