v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[JacenHan]

Small question on 1 second sub-pulses: Will it be possible for the game to interrupt, say due to firing a weapon, on one of the 1 second sub-pulses?

Sounds like no to me:

A 5 second increment will only be interrupted at the end of the increment, not after one of the sub-pulses.

[TheBawkHawk]

Doy. I need to work on my reading skills, apparently. Good to know!

[nuclearslurpee]

I'd have to run numbers but it sounds like this could also be a useful change in some edge cases involving missile interception? I remember in some early games trying to defend against a certain NPR's missiles with AMMs that were slower than the incoming ASMs, which frequently led the AMMs to be passed by the ASMs without being able to intercept them. Would 1-second pulses reduce the odds of this happening or would there be no real effect?

[skoormit]

For v2.0, increments of 5 seconds will run with 1-second sub-pulses.

Out here just rewriting the laws of physics.

[Garfunkel]

I'd have to run numbers but it sounds like this could also be a useful change in some edge cases involving missile interception? I remember in some early games trying to defend against a certain NPR's missiles with AMMs that were slower than the incoming ASMs, which frequently led the AMMs to be passed by the ASMs without being able to intercept them. Would 1-second pulses reduce the odds of this happening or would there be no real effect?

I believe so - at least there will now be a chance of interception as long as the faster missiles do not by pass the slower missiles entirely in one second. If they are that much faster, then the slower missiles probably have 0% chance to hit anyway.

This will really help with tactically complex fights, that's for sure. Beam slugfests will not really be impacted but weaving in and out of range will be lot smoother!

[TMaekler]

But I thought there were certain penalties. It has been awhile since I've played as I'm waiting for 2.0, but if I recall there were significant penalties to populations that were forced to work on planets with hostile environments. They may live in the orbital habs, but they still need to go down to the surface to work in those factories. This was the draw and incentive to using more expensive automated factories. They don't require worker boots on the ground so the harmful effects of the environment are not associated with the population when using automated industry.

There are not programmed-in penalties to OrbHabs in C#. However, what happens in practice is that the population contained by the OrbHabs will (prior to 2.0) function as an extension of the population on the planet surface even if there is not any. Notably, this means they will slowly build infrastructure and experience population growth, and as the population grows is spills out from the OrbHabs to the planet surface where it is affected by the colony cost. This doesn't make OrbHabs unusable but it does degrade their effectiveness and demand a lot of annoying micromanagement to keep the spillover population from growing too large and crippling the colony at a planet like Venus for example. This effect results purely from the population mechanics and the fact that OrbHabs are basically just implemented as special infrastructure prior to 2.0, so I do not think any malus was intended as part of the game design.

With the 2.0 change to Arks this will no longer happen and orbital populations will be fully efficient, making them a viable option for CC>=5.0 or so worlds. Automated mines and other facilities will still have important uses, particularly in the mid to late game when population is a bigger bottleneck than industrial capacity.

You basically express, what I am a bit worried about - just build enough arks, put them on a high cc colony and be good with it. I don't know if the production costs will be exorbitant if you do so - but better think about this before. It's a nice feature, i.e. I am not against it - but it should come at an adequate amount of costs.

[Garfunkel]

You still have to tug them where you want them or alternatively train a lot of CON formations and move them around constructing OH/Arks out of local minerals. That's going to cost fuel and time and effort. I don't doubt that some players will do that to mine high CC planets with good minerals through cheaper manned mines than auto-mines but they will have to pay the cost for that, it's just a different cost!

[nuclearslurpee]

You basically express, what I am a bit worried about - just build enough arks, put them on a high cc colony and be good with it. I don't know if the production costs will be exorbitant if you do so - but better think about this before. It's a nice feature, i.e. I am not against it - but it should come at an adequate amount of costs.

Earlier we did a quick cost analysis, and Arks are only more efficient than infrastructure for a colony cost of 5-6 or more, and there is some flexibility within that range. Since CC5 is the point where infrastructure-based colonization reaches hard caps on manufacturing population this is pretty reasonable.

The bigger concern is that this might make automines less useful, but I doubt this will be the case in practice. In the early game, you will need to research, build, and deploy (i.e., use tugs - more research, building, etc.!) Arks so there will be a window in which automines remain necessary unless you rush Ark tech in advance. In the mid to late game, population is a bigger bottleneck than production so automines remain an important way to expand your mining capacity beyond what your populations can support. Overall I think the various costs and benefits will be fairly well-balanced, at least in the Aurora sense of "balance" as I am sure someone can calculate the theoretically optimized path and that's very nice for them if so.

[Drakale]

Is it possible that the new 1 second subpulse may make area defense more usable? Shorter ranged weapons tend to not shoot due to missiles flying through in a single increment. I would like to screen my important ships with expendable point defense frigates in forward position.

[nuclearslurpee]

Is it possible that the new 1 second subpulse may make area defense more usable? Shorter ranged weapons tend to not shoot due to missiles flying through in a single increment. I would like to screen my important ships with expendable point defense frigates in forward position.

No, because weapons fire still happens at the 5-second increment, the 1-second sub-pulse is used only to smooth out the movement of fleets during those 5 seconds. If you want to use forward area defense ships, the best tactic remains to use small ships that don't show up on enemy sensors and to equip them with weapons with 5-second ROF and as long of range as you can get - 12cm lasers on FACs are probably ideal for this purpose.

[Drakale]

Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't that mean it would not really help fighters keep up with ships due to it moving outside range before the fire increment? I expected the ship to try firing its weapon not on cooldown within the subpulse.

[nuclearslurpee]

No, because fleets will move 1/5 as far in a single sub-pulse. An example might help:

Consider a fighter squadron at 10,000 km/s attempting to close with an enemy cruiser at 5,000 km/s. The fighters are armed with 10cm railguns @ 30,000 km range. Suppose the fighters are approaching from the stern of the cruiser and are 35,000 km away, just out of range:

Fig. 1: Situation at the start of a 5-second increment

Code: [Select]

    FTR -----> 35,000 km    CA -->
If the fighters and cruiser continue along these trajectories, the fighters will close to 10,000 km range and be able to fire their railguns. If the cruiser has a lower Reaction score than the fighters, that is what will happen.

However, if the cruiser has a higher reaction score, it can evade the fighters. This is because the fighters will try to anticipate the cruiser's movements and move to where it will be, rather than where it is at the start of the increment, thus the fighters will move forwards by 50,000 km in a 5-second pulse, temporarily placing themselves 15,000 km in front of the cruiser.

Fig. 2: Situation partway through a 5-second increment, after the FTR moves but before the CA moves

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        CA    15,000 km -----> FTR
Due to its superior Reaction score, the cruiser is now able to evade the fighters if it has anticipated this, by moving in the opposite direction (I believe a Follow order with a sufficient minimum distance would do this automatically):

Fig. 3: Situation at the end of a 5-second increment, after the FTR and CA have moved in succession

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    CA <--        40,000 km    -----> FTR
The cruiser thus remains outside of the fighter maximum weapons range and likely can fire on the fighters with its longer-ranged weapons. This state of affairs would continue indefinitely (or until the FTR are destroyed) unless and until one party to the combat changes their orders, such as the FTR being given a minimum distance criterion or a reduction in speed.

If the minimum sub-pulse is only one second, then this behavior can still happen but the difference in range is only 1/5. The fighters might overshoot the cruiser but by at most 15,000 km which is well within their weapons range.

Now, we can have discussion over whether this 5-second minimum reaction time is "realistic" or not (I think it ultimately is up to the player as every RP setting differs), but in pure gameplay terms it is mostly just an annoyance for the player which requires odd workarounds (closing to point-blank by giving a minimum distance criterion is unintuitive to say the least). With the 1-second subpulse the abstraction of "real-time" combat is maintained even with the necessary concession of discrete time increments to allow computation.

You can see similar behavior in other situations, e.g., in a stern chase while trying to maintain the right sniping range for your own beam weapons to outrange the enemy. In my 1.12 AAR I recount several battles of this sort and maintaining range is always the most challenging aspect. This change to subpulses in 2.0 would make that part of the battle significantly smoother and less annoying.

[TMaekler]

You basically express, what I am a bit worried about - just build enough arks, put them on a high cc colony and be good with it. I don't know if the production costs will be exorbitant if you do so - but better think about this before. It's a nice feature, i.e. I am not against it - but it should come at an adequate amount of costs.

Earlier we did a quick cost analysis, and Arks are only more efficient than infrastructure for a colony cost of 5-6 or more, and there is some flexibility within that range. Since CC5 is the point where infrastructure-based colonization reaches hard caps on manufacturing population this is pretty reasonable.

Ah, good to know, thanks. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. 

[Drakale]

Thanks for the explanation nuclearslurpee I think I get it. So the update will make the relative movement of crafts finer but no change to firing logic.

[Stryker]

With the new squadron feature, is there any chance you might implement the automatic squadron names like in vb?