C# Suggestions

[QuakeIV]

Regarding box launchers vs 'regular' launchers, what if 'regular' missile launchers were allowed to build up a salvo of missiles by jettisoning them into space and then allowing the missiles to sit and wait until the full salvo is ready to go?

It may or may not wind up being overpowered, but I would note that it would result in a tradeoff where you would potentially want to build ships that are relatively bad at short ranged combat (if suddenly finding themselves at close range then they cant launch a big salvo quickly) but which are highly specialized into long range combat.

This might also justify a degree of differentiation between box launchers and reloading launchers, if it were said that the reloading launchers are capable of releasing missiles without requiring them to ignite their engines, whereas box launchers due to their generally light weight and simplified construction aren't equipped to be able to do that (the missile needs to leave under its own power).

e: 'regular' in quotes because i think box launchers are currently a lot more common

[Zap0]

Regarding box launchers vs 'regular' launchers, what if 'regular' missile launchers were allowed to build up a salvo of missiles by jettisoning them into space and then allowing the missiles to sit and wait until the full salvo is ready to go?

It may or may not wind up being overpowered, but I would note that it would result in a tradeoff where you would potentially want to build ships that are relatively bad at short ranged combat (if suddenly finding themselves at close range then they cant launch a big salvo quickly) but which are highly specialized into long range combat.

This might also justify a degree of differentiation between box launchers and reloading launchers, if it were said that the reloading launchers are capable of releasing missiles without requiring them to ignite their engines, whereas box launchers due to their generally light weight and simplified construction aren't equipped to be able to do that (the missile needs to leave under its own power).

e: 'regular' in quotes because i think box launchers are currently a lot more common

I might be wrong, but I think I remember some ancient AAR where this was a thing. I think that yes, it would very much be overpowered, and take away much of the distinction between regular and box launchers. At that point you might just give a field for how many missiles out of your magazines you want to launch at an enemy, bypassing the annoying setting and targeting of waypoints entirely.

[Jorgen_CAB]

There are two big issues why box launchers are so powerful.

One large reason are freedom to build a ship how ever you like with no real constraints on actual space on the ship. A box launcher are relatively small but most of it's actual size have to be rather near the surface of the ship. A full size launcher would have the majority if it's size much deeper into the hull of the ship, the same goes for the magazines, this is space that box launched variants could not use.
There is a major difference in design of a ship that is practically the size of a few missiles or a ship that are hundred of time bigger than the missiles they fire. The bigger ship would not have the external space to fit as much missiles as the smaller one who are essentially built around those few missiles. It is like the difference between a spinal weapon and a standard weapon.

The other major reason is fire-controls... there are no limitation to what a fire-control can manage and how they can track and give order corrections to missiles.

When you combine these two things and how salvoes and beam point defenses work there is not really much contest between box launched salvoes and full size launchers. Full size launchers are mainly effective at small crafts and ships with little to no or less effective PD and rarely have access to AMM defenses.

In my opinion box-launchers should have a limit based in the missiles size in relation to the ship size and how much space it can take of the total ships mass (space). Just as an example... say a size 6 missile could take up 50% of a 500t hull... but a size 6 would only be able to take up 33% of a 1000t hull or maybe 9.5% of the space on a 8000t hull. In my opinion most components should have limits like this to some extent. I think that ship building would become a bit more balanced that way.

[QuakeIV]

Realistically you could just build a ship with more surface area

[kilo]

Realistically you could just build a ship with more surface area

And by doing this you will shoot yourself in the foot. You would need significantly more armor and huge parts of the hard points on your vessel would be in locations without line of fire.

[nuclearslurpee]

Realistically you could just build a ship with more surface area

And by doing this you will shoot yourself in the foot. You would need significantly more armor and huge parts of the hard points on your vessel would be in locations without line of fire.

The latter of these isn't really a problem for missile launchers. "Vertical" may be relative in deep space, but the concept of a VLS works just fine all the same.

[QuakeIV]

Should probably be able to pay for more armor if I so desire

[Jorgen_CAB]

Realistically you could just build a ship with more surface area

The problem is that from a "realistic" or "practical" perspective it would likely pose very large problems with hull integrity, armour, usage of crew space, engineering, and fitting the engine to allow for the ship to move efficiently. No complex vehicle is that easy to design and I don't believe they actually are in Aurora either.

I'm just saying that ships likely are built in certain shapes for a reason... this is the problem when we get free reign to fit whatever we want with no regards to what is practically actually possible from an engineering perspective.

It makes sense that components can't just be placed anywhere on a ship and box launchers are a pretty good examples of this. Imagine that the ship is a sphere which is the basic shape of the ships and go from there. Not saying that ships in Aurora are spheres... but I presume they have a relatively large interior space for a reason, armour and hull integrity probably being the biggest reasons for this and probably also for making the engines as effective as possible as in Aurora the volume of the ship is the most important factor.

There is no problem with role-play these limits... I do that all the time. But it would give somewhat more balance to ship design in general.

[QuakeIV]

Realistically you could just build a ship with more surface area

The problem is that from a "realistic" or "practical" perspective it would likely pose very large problems with hull integrity, armour, usage of crew space, engineering, and fitting the engine to allow for the ship to move efficiently. No complex vehicle is that easy to design and I don't believe they actually are in Aurora either.

I'm just saying that ships likely are built in certain shapes for a reason... this is the problem when we get free reign to fit whatever we want with no regards to what is practically actually possible from an engineering perspective.

It makes sense that components can't just be placed anywhere on a ship and box launchers are a pretty good examples of this. Imagine that the ship is a sphere which is the basic shape of the ships and go from there. Not saying that ships in Aurora are spheres... but I presume they have a relatively large interior space for a reason, armour and hull integrity probably being the biggest reasons for this and probably also for making the engines as effective as possible as in Aurora the volume of the ship is the most important factor.

There is no problem with role-play these limits... I do that all the time. But it would give somewhat more balance to ship design in general.

I'd rather that be based on real reasons rather than 'it feels unrealistic'.  Even if a sphere of box launchers seems ridiculous to you, its probably possible.  Generally speaking new stuff looks ridiculous to older ways of war.

[Erik L]

Should probably be able to pay for more armor if I so desire

Just add more layers?

[QuakeIV]

Should probably be able to pay for more armor if I so desire

Just add more layers?

I think Jorgen was referring to the idea of limited surface area for the ships to try to constrain box launchers, so I was saying I'd be willing to accept paying for more armor in exchange for more surface area.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Should probably be able to pay for more armor if I so desire

Just add more layers?

I think Jorgen was referring to the idea of limited surface area for the ships to try to constrain box launchers, so I was saying I'd be willing to accept paying for more armor in exchange for more surface area.

Sure... if there was some sort of system for this... the problem that I have is that people almost always think like gamers and don't understand how complex things actually are in "reality" even within a games lore there are internal consistent rules you need to follow that are in some way consistent with our reality in some sense.

This is also why I think that we sometimes think that we can do this when in "reality" it would likely be impossible or the drawback would be so huge that doing so would be stupid.

A ship with too much surface area would probably be so unstable or weak that no one in their right mind would build it. The reason why you can fit more box launcher on a smaller platform is because the ship is built around the launcher system as they take up the internal part of the ship, just like a spinal weapon would. When a ship gets larger this is no longer possible so a much smaller area to fit the launchers would be possible. making the hull as thin as that of a 500t craft would make the ship so weak it might not even be able to turn without breaking or even turn their engines on (depending on the the technology work), also probably could not fit either engineering or most other components in there either in a reasonable way.

What I mean is that we often just hand-wave these limitations that most probably would exists, and the only way we can do this is role-play.

I have no problem using role-play to impose these risks, AI ships are never designed to do any of this so there is no real problem. I don't know what's in Steves mind... but from past discussions on similar matters he seem to think that people should just build reasonable ships but they don't have too. You can play however you like and use whatever restriction feels best for you. If it make little sense from an engineering perspective to fit a 20kt ship with 50% size 4 box launchers then that is how it is in your lore, there are mechanical and engineering reasons for not doing it.

I invoke MANY engineering reason for how different system can interact on different types of ship hulls, in my opinion this give allot more character to the game than just abusing game mechanic as they are. I also think this is how the game is intended to be played... using your own lore to what is possible or not.

My reasoning though was that I think the game would in general be beneficial of making it slightly more balanced so these extreme cases are less one sided as they are mainly the only way to go if you do what is most efficient from a game mechanics perspective. Not everyone can or want to role-play self limitations. Box launched strikes should still be a strong tactic, just not as strong (or the only way) and a bit more expensive.

[Steve Walmsley]

Okay here is the pettiest and most minuscule of requests ever made.....can we get the stars recolored to reflect their true color, i.e yellow, red, orange, blue, white based off their type?  It is the smallest of things but I think it would be a cool low impact way to differentiate the systems visually.

They do have the correct colours

A 'yellow' star isn't actually yellow. If you look in DIM_StellarType you can see that each star has a specific colour based on its spectral type. The colour is also affected by atmosphere.

[Steve Walmsley]

Ha, wasn't the reason for changing from gates to stabilizers so that people would stop asking for a way to destroy them?

Yes

[Droll]

Ha, wasn't the reason for changing from gates to stabilizers so that people would stop asking for a way to destroy them?

Yes

Well that didn't work lol