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Topic Summary

Posted by: papent
« on: Today at 02:55:04 PM »

Quote from: Ush213 on Yesterday at 03:32:27 PM
Just on officers. Is it possible to get a few more stations for them, or maybe increase the number of positions in the current modules.
I tend to really like having detailed historys on my officers so i like to see them rising through the ranks.
more slots for positions would allow this. I usally end up just adding all the modules to my ships now just to make the positions available. I also make sure to have academies on every colony as i like to see officers from different homeworlds.
 
Purly for roleplaying but sure isnt that the aim of the game ha. 

Perhaps it could be based on tonnage. For example a 500 ton fighter has 1 pilot but a 1000T FAC has Caption a Gunner and Helmans and so on.

I dont know how the existing modules are programed so what i say above is only for a conversation purposes really. If it was easiler to do something else im all for it. 

I've Suggested something similar over the years.
Link:
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10640.msg158509#msg158509
https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13020.msg163378#msg163378

Basically it boils down to the following:
Quote
A minor suggestion and an expansion of the Misc component Idea

Miscellaneous Ship Officer Stations
You design the components on the Create Research Projects window by:
Choosing a size (from 1 HS to 10)
giving the component a name
Choosing an Officer Type ( Naval, Ground, Admin, Scientist)
Choosing an Officer Skill That will be the Primary selection Criteria
For Naval/Ground/Admin only: Rank Required

  • Cost is equal to size in HS and the mineral requirements are split between 20% Duranium and 80% Corbomite.
  • The HTK is equal to the square root of the size.
  • The officer improves the skill required by the ship station up to 1% or 1 per year per HTK of the component.


two example Officer Stations

Code: [Select]
Internal Security Control
Cost 100   Size 100 tons   Crew 15   HTK 1
Officer: Ground Force Officer
Rank: Major
Skill: Ground Combat Defence
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Duranium  20    Corbomite  80   

Code: [Select]
Civil Logistic Liaison
Cost 200   Size 200 tons   Crew 30   HTK 2
Officer: Civilian Administrator
Rank: Admin Rating 1
Skill: Logistics
Base Chance to hit 100%
Materials Required: Duranium  40    Corbomite  160   
Posted by: Ush213
« on: Yesterday at 03:32:27 PM »

Just on officers. Is it possible to get a few more stations for them, or maybe increase the number of positions in the current modules.
I tend to really like having detailed historys on my officers so i like to see them rising through the ranks.
more slots for positions would allow this. I usally end up just adding all the modules to my ships now just to make the positions available. I also make sure to have academies on every colony as i like to see officers from different homeworlds.
 
Purly for roleplaying but sure isnt that the aim of the game ha. 

Perhaps it could be based on tonnage. For example a 500 ton fighter has 1 pilot but a 1000T FAC has Caption a Gunner and Helmans and so on.

I dont know how the existing modules are programed so what i say above is only for a conversation purposes really. If it was easiler to do something else im all for it. 
Posted by: Steve Zax
« on: Yesterday at 02:17:04 PM »

Wait, there's TWO "Steve"s in this end of the thread! Whom are you damning?

And even if we can change "starting age" does that mean commanders still get old at "the same age" or at "the same time from graduation"?
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: Yesterday at 07:03:43 AM »

Quote from: Droll on Yesterday at 05:38:52 AM
Quote from: Steve Walmsley on Yesterday at 04:26:34 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on Yesterday at 12:00:21 AM
Quote from: Steve Zax on June 30, 2025, 11:02:24 PM
And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?

Right after Steve changes the officer starting age to a number beginning with '3'.

In other  words, heat death of the universe.  :(

https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173845#msg173845

:)

Damn you Steve, the universe is dead now  :'(

More free time to play Aurora!!   ;D
Posted by: Droll
« on: Yesterday at 05:38:52 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on Yesterday at 04:26:34 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on Yesterday at 12:00:21 AM
Quote from: Steve Zax on June 30, 2025, 11:02:24 PM
And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?

Right after Steve changes the officer starting age to a number beginning with '3'.

In other words, heat death of the universe.  :(

https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173845#msg173845

:)

Damn you Steve, the universe is dead now  :'(
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: Yesterday at 04:26:34 AM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on Yesterday at 12:00:21 AM
Quote from: Steve Zax on June 30, 2025, 11:02:24 PM
And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?

Right after Steve changes the officer starting age to a number beginning with '3'.

In other words, heat death of the universe.  :(

https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13463.msg173845#msg173845

:)
Posted by: Pallington
« on: Yesterday at 02:41:37 AM »

Quote from: skoormit on June 23, 2025, 02:16:05 PM
Quote from: David_H_Roarings on June 21, 2025, 07:02:04 PM
...
In further as it stands one can build a 'mothball hangar' that would normally have an insane maintenance cost but can considerably cut down on the maintenance cost of other ships sitting in port, using one designed for the ship above we have:
...

In your example, you build a hangar that costs ~4k bp in order to save ~1.5k MSP per year, while requiring an additional 4,123 tons of maintenance capacity.
Assuming you need to build two maintenance facilities (60BP each) to provide the extra capacity, and with MSP costing 0.25 BP each, your annual savings represents a rate of return on your investment of ~9.1% while occupying 100k workers.

You also have an up-front cost of the shipyard needed to build that carrier (~11k bp, depending on your tech level), and the ongoing workforce that yard requires (almost 10m workers).
You are going to have to make (and use) a lot of these carriers and/or wait a very long time to recoup the cost of that yard.

There are simpler ways to get far better returns in the game.
For example, suppose instead of building that shipyard you build financial centers of equivalent cost.
Let's say 90 fincens. Costs 10.8k bp, and 10.8k corbomite.
Uses only 4.5m workers. Less than half what the yard needs.
Returns annual income equal to 27 times your "wealth per million workers" tech level.
Even if you are still at the starting tech level (100 per million workers per year), and have no wealth creation bonus from your governor or sector, that's 2.7kbp per year.
So a bare minimum rate of return of 25%, using half as many workers.
With a couple tech levels and a modest governor bonus, it's not hard to be making your investment back in two years or less.

I think there's an argument for endgame gallicite starvation scenarios (esp with high-speed doctrines) for the cheapest "PDC" that is just a ton of hangar bays, just to convert some gallicite usage into not-gallicite usage, wealth costs be damned.

Also, ships in hangars still count towards maintenance tonnage?

EDIT: They don't, you were talking about the extra size of the "yard."

I think at early to mid game this is definitely NOT worth it, but again once you start hitting end-game techs if you haven't managed to spool up gallicite mining for whatever reason this can help mitigate gallicite consumption a little (you typically have near infinite duranium unless your ships are all giant armor bricks and even then neutronium bottlenecks first?). My ship of only a bit bigger size is 40k BP for 45kt, so a hangar that can store it is 6k BP and i'd save 9k MSP per year or about 900 gallicite per year in MSP cost, if i'm calculating this correctly.

My mining productivity is lagging a bit (50/yr) so that's 18 mines at 1x productivity, which, if automated, costs 4320 BP. For the sake of argument let's say it averages out at 1x between accessibility, gov bonus, and transportation latency/throughput.

Paying an extra 50% to conserve the same amount of minerals with much less micro (and I can go even cheaper on the PDC if necessary) isn't the worst deal. (Even if my numbers are off, gah. closer to 8k MSP and 800 gallicite which is 16 mines)
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: Yesterday at 12:00:21 AM »

Quote from: Steve Zax on June 30, 2025, 11:02:24 PM
And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?

Right after Steve changes the officer starting age to a number beginning with '3'.

In other words, heat death of the universe.  :(
Posted by: Steve Zax
« on: June 30, 2025, 11:02:24 PM »

And while we are speaking of officers getting older; when will we get the chance to research age increasing technology?
Posted by: Warer
« on: June 30, 2025, 05:00:26 PM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on June 30, 2025, 04:08:17 AM
Quote from: SevenOfCarina on June 29, 2025, 05:44:54 PM
I apologise if this has been brought up before, but would it be feasible to implement a system where commanders also have a chance of losing efficiency bonuses once they reach a certain time in service?

I tend to treat my civilian administrators as abstractions of an entire government apparatus, and hence I assume the efficiency bonuses are tied not to a particular leader but rather to the entire colonial administration of thousands of civil servants. I find this better from a RP perspective because this leads to certain colonies being better than others at certain functions (which I RP as resulting from local expertise, incentives, and infrastructure), hence my colonies feel more real and unique. And it sometimes forces me to make sub-optimal decisions - like building up a new naval base not at the local warp point nexus, but one system over at a colony which is actually good at shipbuilding.

The problem, of course, is that immortal (story character) leaders tend to universally end up with sky-high bonuses of everything. I've been solving this by periodically randomising leader bonuses, but this gets tedious as the game progresses and I would really like an alternative. Essentially, past a certain time in service (say 20 years), I'd like to have commanders start rolling for a small reduction in their bonuses in addition to the usual rolls for an increase. Does this seem reasonable?

There is an East-West split in that assumption, Eastern cultures (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) place a high value on the elder members of society, deferring to their wisdom, moral authority, etc. In the West, older people are seen as less capable, out of touch, etc.

Partly that is because as you get older, your perspective changes (based on a lot more experience of life) and you value different things (time vs money for example). Younger people generally don't have the same frame of reference (less life experience) so they can't understand that different perspective. In the East, that is understood and the elders are consulted for their hard-earned wisdom. In the West, they just assume older people are 'out of touch'.

So, apart from actual age-related diseases that impair mental faculties, which is covered by the medical conditions in Aurora, I don't subscribe to the Western 'older people are less capable' paradigm. I am certainly far more capable and wise than I was at half my current age, because I have twice the life experience and I have learned from twice as many mistakes :)

I realise that in your above suggestion, you reference 'story characters' that can't get ill, but being extremely capable is the whole point of story characters.
A small decline in a bonus/es could also represent corruption setting in rather than failing health, something that could be remedied by assigning someone else to that post though that would probably just add micro the game?

And I'll just add that people genuinely can get out of touch ~because~ with age does come wisdom, and surely very wise wouldn't do something as silly as make a mistake on something they're very sure about no? Confidence is a slow and insidious killer and all that.  But that's off topic so apologies for bringing it up.

Personally I think having some ebb and flow in character capablities could be neat, maybe tied into some kind of Leadership techs that effect a cap on Bonuses and their growth?
Posted by: papent
« on: June 30, 2025, 02:51:24 PM »

  • System Governor as another Admin level between sector and planet.
  • Return of Tour lengths for automated assignments. So captains can have a couple ships underneath them before assuming a flag rank or Junior Officers can experience support/fighter and other roles before getting a major command
  • Ground Force Admin Commands as beyond the Division level, it's impractical to create HQ units and the user may want to spread the Corps or Army Group between multiple bodies in the same system.
  • Ability to retrain officers from Fleet/Army/Admin/Science to another type of officer, Mostly for Roleplay or to quickly increase officer numbers in one category. i.e. your overmanned on Administrators but have a pressing need for ground force commanders or your ground forces are small and you need to find a propulsion MacGyver among your grunts.
  • Ability to designate a Fleet/Ground positions ± 1/2 rank for assignment would be a welcomed addition.
  • Reintroduction of Staff Officers for admin commands. maybe just 2 positions but you choose the boni they will provide.
  • Reintroduction of Missile Series system
Posted by: Ghostly
« on: June 30, 2025, 06:04:30 AM »

Quote from: Steve Walmsley on June 30, 2025, 04:08:17 AM
So, apart from actual age-related diseases that impair mental faculties, which is covered by the medical conditions in Aurora, I don't subscribe to the Western 'older people are less capable' paradigm.

Well, there's no correlation between commander skills and health as of now. I think a system of declining leader bonuses could work if tied to their health somehow, perhaps with increasing chance of happening the worse their medical condition is. A select few commanders would age gracefully and retire in perfect health with their skills intact, while others would slowly wither away and probably get replaced before their time was due. This would particularly affect homeworld governors whose bonuses might carry an empire's entire industry until one day they're gone with no one to replace them. A slow decline would be less abrupt and painful to deal with than suddenly losing your 50% SHIP 40% CON 40% POP not-quite-God-Emperor-of-Terra overnight.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: June 30, 2025, 04:08:17 AM »

Quote from: SevenOfCarina on June 29, 2025, 05:44:54 PM
I apologise if this has been brought up before, but would it be feasible to implement a system where commanders also have a chance of losing efficiency bonuses once they reach a certain time in service?

I tend to treat my civilian administrators as abstractions of an entire government apparatus, and hence I assume the efficiency bonuses are tied not to a particular leader but rather to the entire colonial administration of thousands of civil servants. I find this better from a RP perspective because this leads to certain colonies being better than others at certain functions (which I RP as resulting from local expertise, incentives, and infrastructure), hence my colonies feel more real and unique. And it sometimes forces me to make sub-optimal decisions - like building up a new naval base not at the local warp point nexus, but one system over at a colony which is actually good at shipbuilding.

The problem, of course, is that immortal (story character) leaders tend to universally end up with sky-high bonuses of everything. I've been solving this by periodically randomising leader bonuses, but this gets tedious as the game progresses and I would really like an alternative. Essentially, past a certain time in service (say 20 years), I'd like to have commanders start rolling for a small reduction in their bonuses in addition to the usual rolls for an increase. Does this seem reasonable?

There is an East-West split in that assumption, Eastern cultures (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.) place a high value on the elder members of society, deferring to their wisdom, moral authority, etc. In the West, older people are seen as less capable, out of touch, etc.

Partly that is because as you get older, your perspective changes (based on a lot more experience of life) and you value different things (time vs money for example). Younger people generally don't have the same frame of reference (less life experience) so they can't understand that different perspective. In the East, that is understood and the elders are consulted for their hard-earned wisdom. In the West, they just assume older people are 'out of touch'.

So, apart from actual age-related diseases that impair mental faculties, which is covered by the medical conditions in Aurora, I don't subscribe to the Western 'older people are less capable' paradigm. I am certainly far more capable and wise than I was at half my current age, because I have twice the life experience and I have learned from twice as many mistakes :)

I realise that in your above suggestion, you reference 'story characters' that can't get ill, but being extremely capable is the whole point of story characters.
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: June 29, 2025, 05:44:54 PM »

I apologise if this has been brought up before, but would it be feasible to implement a system where commanders also have a chance of losing efficiency bonuses once they reach a certain time in service?

I tend to treat my civilian administrators as abstractions of an entire government apparatus, and hence I assume the efficiency bonuses are tied not to a particular leader but rather to the entire colonial administration of thousands of civil servants. I find this better from a RP perspective because this leads to certain colonies being better than others at certain functions (which I RP as resulting from local expertise, incentives, and infrastructure), hence my colonies feel more real and unique. And it sometimes forces me to make sub-optimal decisions - like building up a new naval base not at the local warp point nexus, but one system over at a colony which is actually good at shipbuilding.

The problem, of course, is that immortal (story character) leaders tend to universally end up with sky-high bonuses of everything. I've been solving this by periodically randomising leader bonuses, but this gets tedious as the game progresses and I would really like an alternative. Essentially, past a certain time in service (say 20 years), I'd like to have commanders start rolling for a small reduction in their bonuses in addition to the usual rolls for an increase. Does this seem reasonable?
Posted by: SevenOfCarina
« on: June 29, 2025, 01:57:17 AM »

Quote from: skoormit on June 28, 2025, 09:41:56 AM
If you think financial centers aren't any good, we clearly follow very different approaches to economic growth.
For any given play style that minimizes the use of financial centers, my observation above is moot.

For my play style, which pursues very aggressive economic growth, financial centers are the best investment available in the game (with the arguable exception of terraforming).

I don't think I've ever heard anyone express the opinion that "you're much better off just relying on taxing civilian shipping."
That seems to imply that players make a choice between increasing civ tax income or building financial centers.
But pursuing either one does not reduce the opportunity to pursue the other.


EDIT:
And in fact I have ~1500 financial centers in my current game, with a total population of ~2.5b.
Why? Because I need the income. I always want to build more stuff, and building financial centers increases my income faster than anything else, which then allows me to build more stuff.

Huh, interesting. I used to invest in financial centres, but the issue is that they consume workforce that could instead be mining/manufacturing/researching and those require facilities, unlike wealth generation. I generally get better results by spending that workforce on research complexes so that I can keep my wealth production tech one or two steps ahead of the baseline.

Extra wealth production (past what's necessary to keep industry at 100% utilisation) isn't IMO that useful unless you have a bunch of civilians around to buy minerals from. I used to devote 10%-ish of my workforce to financial centres (so 1,250 for a population of 2.5B) and 20%-ish for research, but I get much better results by ditching the former and increasing the latter to 30%, which provides more than enough margin to keep the wealth production tech a full two levels ahead (aka a 1.4x ish multiplier over the standard tech progression, which is a similar multiplier to what you'd get with a 10% financial centre fraction).

Edit: Granted, this doesn't apply if you're playing with max tech.