C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[SevenOfCarina]

A spaceport can provide the benefits of a :
Refuelling station (no workers)
Ordnance transfer station (no workers)
Cargo transfer station (no workers)
That is, if the chart on page 12 of the changes list is correct about those facilities having no population.
However consider than in C# its workers that generate wealth, not total population, your shipyard is generating 100 wealth per annum with that million population, making it worth 3.3 Financial centers.
A spaceport does the work of 4,000 BP of facilities but only costs 3,000 bp. Quite a bargain if you can afford the workers.

That works only if the colony cost is zero. A spaceport on a planet with a colony cost of 2.00, which is where most near-habitable planets that are good terraforming candidates sit, will have an effective cost of 3,750 BP (3,000 BP for the spaceport itself, and assuming a total colony population of ten million, giving 1.87 colonists per worker, approximately 750 BP for the infrastructure needed to support one million workers).

This is 150 BP more than the 3,600 BP needed for the other three installations combined, with the added disadvantages that the spaceport is significantly less portable since you'll need to cart around a couple of million colonists and their infrastructure with it, and unlike the refuelling station, cargo transfer station, and ordnance station, a spaceport can only be in one place at once. Apart from the fact that you need one million workers for it that could be doing other things, of course. A spaceport will not be the most preferred option for most military uses, leaving it with only one unique function - the ability to build space stations.

But that's where the problem lies. I can see a lot of situations where I'll end up building space stations at small colonies of ten million people or less, in systems where it's not viable to transport a station built elsewhere using a tug either because the intervening jump links haven't been stabilised or because it would take longer than building one on-site. Forward military bases in recently conquered enemy systems, orbital mining stations or harvesters in resource-rich locations, terraforming platforms - all of these might sometimes need to built on-site, and it really hurts when 20% of your workforce of five million is engaged in crewing a spaceport.

Then again, though, this is probably not going to be a very common opinion, since I suppose most everyone else will just prefer to use ships with the needed modules instead. The only reason I'm asking is that I prefer to RP needing to build large space stations on-site, so I'll concede on this request.

[Jovus]

Proposal.

That might be solved, after release, with another building type that I'll call Space Elevator for purposes of this post. A Space Elevator would do nothing other than let you use ground industry to build space stations. Make the population and BP costs such that if you want three of the four functionalities of a Space Port you're better off with a Space Port, but if you only want one or two you're better off building the individual specialized buildings (Refueling Station, Ordnance Transfer Station, Cargo Shuttle Station, and Space Elevator). Base that balance point around whatever colony cost makes sense. Decide whether or not it makes sense for a Space Elevator to be movable with freighters. (I vote not.)

That way it still makes sense to build Space Ports where you plan create real colonial capitals, but if you're just building a stripped-down FOB or colonial defense, you could consider the specialized buildings.

[Garfunkel]

The only reason I'm asking is that I prefer to RP needing to build large space stations on-site, so I'll concede on this request.

I am intrigued and would like to hear more. Do you mind making a thread where you explain this in detail in one of the other sub-forums?

[MarcAFK]

A spaceport can provide the benefits of a :
Refuelling station (no workers)
Ordnance transfer station (no workers)
Cargo transfer station (no workers)
That is, if the chart on page 12 of the changes list is correct about those facilities having no population.
However consider than in C# its workers that generate wealth, not total population, your shipyard is generating 100 wealth per annum with that million population, making it worth 3.3 Financial centers.
A spaceport does the work of 4,000 BP of facilities but only costs 3,000 bp. Quite a bargain if you can afford the workers.

That works only if the colony cost is zero. A spaceport on a planet with a colony cost of 2.00, which is where most near-habitable planets that are good terraforming candidates sit, will have an effective cost of 3,750 BP (3,000 BP for the spaceport itself, and assuming a total colony population of ten million, giving 1.87 colonists per worker, approximately 750 BP for the infrastructure needed to support one million workers).

This is 150 BP more than the 3,600 BP needed for the other three installations combined, with the added disadvantages that the spaceport is significantly less portable since you'll need to cart around a couple of million colonists and their infrastructure with it, and unlike the refuelling station, cargo transfer station, and ordnance station, a spaceport can only be in one place at once. Apart from the fact that you need one million workers for it that could be doing other things, of course. A spaceport will not be the most preferred option for most military uses, leaving it with only one unique function - the ability to build space stations.

But that's where the problem lies. I can see a lot of situations where I'll end up building space stations at small colonies of ten million people or less, in systems where it's not viable to transport a station built elsewhere using a tug either because the intervening jump links haven't been stabilised or because it would take longer than building one on-site. Forward military bases in recently conquered enemy systems, orbital mining stations or harvesters in resource-rich locations, terraforming platforms - all of these might sometimes need to built on-site, and it really hurts when 20% of your workforce of five million is engaged in crewing a spaceport.

Then again, though, this is probably not going to be a very common opinion, since I suppose most everyone else will just prefer to use ships with the needed modules instead. The only reason I'm asking is that I prefer to RP needing to build large space stations on-site, so I'll concede on this request.

That a disadvantage of low colony cost rather than a disadvantage of the spaceport itself. If a shortage of workers is your primary concern then you really should be using the facilities which mysteriously require no workers. 600 BP more than the shipyard but 150 BP less than the infrastructure required. Though infrastructure is basically free once you start colonizing as its produced in stupid quantities by any inhabited system, transporting it is the major problem, which ironically having a spaceport will help with.  The other major issue is the ability to construct space stations, I think it makes sense that a colony should be rather large and well developed before it can consider making space stations, in a similar way that significant development is needed for terraforming, research, ship building, or large scale construction itself.
Spaceports have advantages and disadvantages to the alternative, but I think they're balanced in cost, although perhaps a somewhat smaller worker requirement might make sense considering the equivalent facilities don't need any workers at all and not counting shipyards the other large facilities only require 250k. 

[Hazard]

I'd be entirely okay with the Refueling/Ordnance Transfer/Cargo Shuttle facilities taking 500 000 population each and declaring that if you want those capabilities without a civilian population you better build and place a station/ship that can do it.

[Steve Walmsley]

The individual stations are intended to represent facilities out on the frontier, or a military installation, so I didn't want to include population requirements. The spaceport is the sign of a more developed colony and has the same pop requirement as a single research facility. BTW being able to build space stations is VERY useful.

[Gnoman]

The recent discussion on diplomacy brings a question to mind.


Let us take the following scenario - I construct a mine and deploy it in a system belonging to NPR 1.  That mine activates and damages/destroys a ship belonging to NPR 2.  Do I take the diplomatic hit because they somehow know it is mine, or does NPR 2 blame NPR 1 because it happened in their system?

[Chris Foster]

The recent discussion on diplomacy brings a question to mind. 


Let us take the following scenario - I construct a mine and deploy it in a system belonging to NPR 1.   That mine activates and damages/destroys a ship belonging to NPR 2.   Do I take the diplomatic hit because they somehow know it is mine, or does NPR 2 blame NPR 1 because it happened in their system?

But also, do mines work only against targets that are hostile? Will mines deploy on allied or neutral targets?

[Vivalas]

Looking at changes list to kill the time now, I think a solution to the spaceport issue mentioned above (although I generally dont think it's an issue because Im more a fan of roleplay than aggressive minmax and think spaceports are cool anyways) is to maybe make everything the spaceport does work at a  50% to 100% faster rate than the racial baseline for the tech (ordanace transfer / refuel / cargo transfer rate etc)

[Father Tim]

The recent discussion on diplomacy brings a question to mind.


Let us take the following scenario - I construct a mine and deploy it in a system belonging to NPR 1.  That mine activates and damages/destroys a ship belonging to NPR 2.  Do I take the diplomatic hit because they somehow know it is mine, or does NPR 2 blame NPR 1 because it happened in their system?

You take the hit.  For now, NPRs auto-magically know the origin species of any damage they take.

[Father Tim]

But also, do mines work only against targets that are hostile? Will mines deploy on allied or neutral targets?

Mines will attack anyone that isn't you -- including your own commercial shipping -- unless you're careful.  And sometimes even if you are.  The VB Aurora "only attack units belonging to factions with which we have HOSTILE relations" code is still a bit buggy, but hopefully the C# Aurora rewrite will solve those problems.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Looking at changes list to kill the time now, I think a solution to the spaceport issue mentioned above (although I generally dont think it's an issue because Im more a fan of roleplay than aggressive minmax and think spaceports are cool anyways) is to maybe make everything the spaceport does work at a  50% to 100% faster rate than the racial baseline for the tech (ordanace transfer / refuel / cargo transfer rate etc)

I think it make sense for the full space station to be more efficient than the individual stations meant to service small colonies or as military outposts. A large civilian station with a million workers should be able to accommodate allot more traffic.

[JuergenSchT]

Shipping lines do not have subsidies.  They do choose different numbers of engines.

I've not had any issues in the test games.  You would have to start at quite a high tech level before the shipping line could afford a small colony ship.

Thanks for answering.
I do prefer to run campaigns into the very high tech levels, which is what motivated my questions.  I noticed some new shipping lines not building anything at all, so I started running tests.
Around Plasma Core engine tech, they would only build small freighters, and small colony ships and spaceliners (those two being more expensive than freighters) would only be built if they had four or five engines.  For Beam Core tech, the affordability threshold for small freighters was six engines, for colony ships and spaceliners it was four engines.  I haven't gotten to Photonic Drives yet, but some quick maths suggest that only small freighters with five or four engines would be affordable for new shipping lines.

[Steve Walmsley]

Shipping lines do not have subsidies.  They do choose different numbers of engines.

I've not had any issues in the test games.  You would have to start at quite a high tech level before the shipping line could afford a small colony ship.

Thanks for answering.
I do prefer to run campaigns into the very high tech levels, which is what motivated my questions.  I noticed some new shipping lines not building anything at all, so I started running tests.
Around Plasma Core engine tech, they would only build small freighters, and small colony ships and spaceliners (those two being more expensive than freighters) would only be built if they had four or five engines.  For Beam Core tech, the affordability threshold for small freighters was six engines, for colony ships and spaceliners it was four engines.  I haven't gotten to Photonic Drives yet, but some quick maths suggest that only small freighters with five or four engines would be affordable for new shipping lines.

Shipping Lines will buy whatever is affordable when they decide to buy. If nothing is available at the current wealth balance, they will buy nothing and wait for that balance to increase as their existing ships generate more wealth.

[Droll]

I just wanted to ask, I've always wanted to be able to put railguns on turrets - will C# aurora extend or otherwise change the types of weapons that can be put on turrets?