v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Erik L]

In regards to the civilian contracts, you say that if a freighter is lost to enemy action, that the supply and, or the demand will be added back to the colony.  What happens if the freighter is simply scrapped due to a newer version?

You know, it never occured to me that civvies would scrap a ship carrying a payload of any kind. If they do (and I don't know if they do), that's kind of a wider issue.

"Hey, when are those colonists scheduled to arrive at Mars?"
"Let me check the records... hm."

They will be arriving ballistically in 3 weeks.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

In regards to the civilian contracts, you say that if a freighter is lost to enemy action, that the supply and, or the demand will be added back to the colony.  What happens if the freighter is simply scrapped due to a newer version?

Only empty ships without orders are scrapped.

[Bughunter]

Trade with aliens could be made into another source of alien artifacts now that we have them.

[Froggiest1982]

Trade with aliens could be made into another source of alien artifacts now that we have them.

I agree this is why I think I will keep using my mod for alien artifacts. But the fact that now they work is good news though.

There is an unanswered question more related to the DB. Is the function RARE working?

Thanks

[StarshipCactus]

The changes to Collateral Damage are the best thing ever. Thanks Steve

[Froggiest1982]

In regards to scrapping installations, would this apply to Forced Labor camps?

If so, is there any way to add the recovery of the population? Even partial recovery?

I know it could be hard because you need to add restrictions due to the population used originally (but I would tie this to the main race pop scrapping it eventually) and the planet Population Cap (but you could zero out if the cap is reached I guess).

[Person012345]

not sure if this was asked already but might be cool if one day the genetic tech line would allow us to restore commanders from dead mechanically.

[linkxsc]

On the most recent item added to the changes list on topic of "if you lose a contact type, say thermal, of a ship you are moving to. The game will check if there's another contact type for the same ship, say EM. And follow that."


I'm on my phone and at work so I can't check if there is 1 ingame, and off the top of my head... I can't remember if there is or not.
In the intel menu for contacts, is there a "last known position/speed/vector" in there?

[nuclearslurpee]

Not in the intel menu, which I think just shows the last known system for each contact, but in the tactical map you can go to the Contacts tab and show lost contacts from a specified duration ago, e.g. "Lost Contacts 1 month" will show last known positions for contacts lost within the last month.

[chrislocke2000]

Being able to set escorts that can follow ships through jump points would be great and I assume much needed for protecting freighters without a mass of micro management

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Being able to set escorts that can follow ships through jump points would be great and I assume much needed for protecting freighters without a mass of micro management

I've been including the warship(s) in the freighter fleet, but I agree that escorts following through a jump point would be a good idea.

[Droll]

I usually just use subfleeting, placing the escorts into a subfleet, however this does not work very well if you have an escort fleet that has it's own subfleet(s) (like for example a ship that carries fighters).

[Polestar]

In a separate post, http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12591.msg152859#msg152859, Steve has said (in spoilers) something *extremely* important about Raiders that was not documented in any post in the 1.14 thread.

The core of this post is in spoilers.
Raiders start the game with Precursor-level technology. This makes them extraordinarily dangerous, perhaps even unmatchable, for conventional and early-TN empires (unless these have extra-large fleets, preferably designed by a player with abundant starting tech points). This undocumented design decision greatly reduces the sort of starting empires likely to have a successful game, and players will only discover this by losing games to raiders and even invaders that move too fast and kill too quickly to be beaten off. Turtling on your home world (potentially system, if you have a big enough fleet to dissuade attack), possibly for many decades, might be the only option if you are fool enough to check the "Raiders" game start option.

Imagine starting the game with pre-TN tech and checking this box. Imagine starting with game default starting pop and matching installations and ships. Imagine reducing tech gain to 10-25% of normal, as is becoming popular. Imagine not wanting to start the game with a huge fleet, or just figuring you can do some light mining or colonization in Alpha Centauri with level 2-3-4 techs. With raiders that move at something like 6 or perhaps even 10k+ km/s, field great ECM, invade with precursor-level troops, and *can appear in any insufficiently well-defended system at any time*, you might just be sunk.

And imagine what life is going to be like for the NPRs if the "don't appear in NPR-claimed systems" box is not carefully checked! NPRs already have serious problems with resource-acquisition and developing new colonies, which too often cripple them as the game progresses. Therefore, even as the early game might become more difficult for the player, the late game might become a story of curb-stomping one-planet, resource-less, fleet-less NPRs, the Raiders enforcing an effective blockade. Or even - depending on exactly how loot-rich, well-developed Raiders define "insufficiently well-defended colony" - of merely discovering empty homeworlds from which entire NPR races have been carried off as slaves.


I hope this post acts as either
a) a wake-up call for players that will hopefully save many hours of game set-up time, or
b) a call for a more flexible [starting strength] for Raiders that permits weaker starting empires to have challenging, but successful games.

[Drakale]

I do share some concern that new players will be curb stomped by this new addition due to how the tech difference can mean a single 10k ship that need no MSP can technically kill every single thing an unprepared/unspoiled player have. A simple solution would be to simply leave the option deactivated by default which I suspect will be the case.

I would love for NPR/spoilers to also be constrained by logistics/MSP someday however to avoid the kind of situation where a single ship might entirely cripple an entire empire.

[ISN]

I very much like the idea of Raiders and I hope they can be made workable, but I agree that from what we've seen of them so far there are significant issues:


One issue, as pointed out above, is that they are currently extremely strong (at least in the early game -- we know their technology advances over time but not how quickly). Extremely challenging spoilers are nothing new to Aurora, so this in and of itself would not be too bad (although the fact that they can show up anywhere with no warning will have a huge impact on gameplay). But the second issue I see with Raiders is that they cannot be permanently destroyed. There is no long-term goal to work towards, no light at the end of the tunnel, only a long slog as you try to overtake their initial technological advantage while struggling to survive and expand. I think this would be fine if it were only a matter of some small-scale piracy that you have to live with and can't permanently stop; it's really the combination of their difficulty level with the lack of an end goal that I expect will make them uniquely frustrating to play with.

I think the Raiders would be better if they were either strong but with some way of stopping them, or relatively weak (i.e. on roughly the same technological level as the player) while remaining a persistent threat throughout the whole game -- but not both strong and persistent. The first niche is more or less filled by the Invaders already; the second I feel would make a great addition to the game once properly balanced.


Of course I've greatly enjoyed Aurora without Raiders for years and I expect to continue to do so even if I end up turning them off most of the time.   But I feel that Raiders have a lot of potential if they can be balanced properly.