Change for v6.00

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

LPs Included in Multi-system Pathfinding

At the moment NPRs use Lagrange Points (LPs). This is straightforward as NPR orders are non-persistent so I don't have to worry about plotting LP orders for multiple systems at once . Civilians don't use them because they tend to create long-term orders and then stick to them unless threatened. However, for v5.70 I am adding LP calculation to the code that works out multi-system paths for player and civilian ships, as well as in-system civilian pathfinding. This means that civilians should start making intelligent use of LPs. Any other multi-system paths based on default orders or conditional orders should also start using LPs as well.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Accurate Fuel Use for Tugs

In v5.60 and earlier, Tugs use fuel based purely on their own speed. In future, tugs will take into consideration the mass of the ship they are towing. Normally, the amount of engine power used for fuel consumption is determined by:

Engine Power Used = Current Speed / Max Speed

For tugs, this will change to:

Engine Power Used = ((Ship Size + Towed Size) / Ship Size) x (Current Speed / Max Speed)

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Updates to Older Posts

The following Morale-related updates apply to older posts in this thread that I have edited. This post is just to highlight the changes for anyone who read those posts before I edited them.

Morale Effect on Surveying
The rate at which a ship generates geological or gravitational survey points is modified by morale

No Life Support
If a ship has no life support remaining, either due to battle damage or maintenance failures, emergency systems will keep the crew alive for a while but within a few days whatever jury-rigged systems the crew manage to create will begin to fail and crew members will start to die. The percentage will vary but on average about 50% of the remaining crew will die during each 5-day update. Any survivors that have been picked up by the ship will also start dying. Instead of the overcrowding modifier, morale is divided by 10.

Undermanning
Morale can also be affected by undermanning. If a ship's crew falls below half its normal complement, morale will be affected. The formula is Morale = Current Morale x ((Current Crew * 2) /  Normal Crew)
This could be made more complex by looking at the crew required to run the remaining undamaged systems but I think that adds complexity without a corresponding improvement in gameplay.

As you can imagine, an undermanned ship without life support is not going to be responding to orders very quickly

Ship can use a new Add Replacement Crew order to bring their crew up to its full complement. This order can be issued at colonies with at least one million population and takes the replacement crew from the racial pool.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Task Force Training Speed

Due to the fuel changes in v6.00, the speed of ships on task force training is reduced to 1/4 maximum speed. Otherwise, the cost of training in terms of fuel becomes too high and I didn't want to reduce the time requirement.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Updates to Fuel Consumption

I have edited the engine, missile engine and missile design posts to include a change to the fuel consumption formula for power modifiers and to the base fuel consumption of missile engines. A more detailed explanation of the change and the rationale behind it is in this post:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,5359.0.html

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Fractional Shields

In v6.00, fractional shields no longer affect combat.

Example #1: A ship with 0.2 shield points is hit by 3 points of damage. The ship takes 3 damage and the 0.2 shield points remain.
Example #2: A ship with 3.4 shield points is hit by 5 points of damage. The ship takes 2 damage and the shields are reduced to 0.4.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Minor Updates

1) Class Design now shows an error for insufficient power for energy weapons

2) The species selected by default in places such as Race window and System window is the species of the racial capital, rather than the most populous species.

3) When using "Combine with other Task Group" or "Move Ships between Task Groups" section on the Fleet window (F12), the Assigned Population is set for the transferred ships.

4) When using the Release Tractor order, or Detach Ship Type order, Assigned Population will be set for the detached ships.

5) Added a new 50% Size, 50% Tracking Speed option for Beam Fire Controls

6) Bases with fuel capacity are now supplied with fuel when they are built (assuming fuel is available)

7) Terraforming is now a Biology tech.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Automated Removal of Crew Quarters

This is a v6.10 change but I am going to keep the change log here for the v6.00 bug fix releases

When you remove components from Ship designs, any excess crew quarters will be removed automatically. If you don't want excess crew quarters removed, for carriers for example, there is a checkbox in the top right of the Class window called "Keep Excess Q". You set this in the same as way as flagging the ship as a Collier or Tanker. Excess Crew Quarters will be retained in the class design, allowing you you create Flight Crew Quarters for example.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

No Morale Message for Unaffected Ships

This is a v6.20 change.

Morale messages will now only be shown for ships that are likely to be affected by low morale. This includes armed ships and survey ships. As a reminder, morale modifies crew training and fleet training scores, so the factors affected by low morale are:

Weapon accuracy
Survey speed
Maintenance failures
Transit delays for weapons/sensors
Speed of response to orders during combat

So freighters, colony ships, fuel harvesters, terrafomers, jump gate construction ships and all the other 'commercial' type classes, are very unlikely to be affected by low morale. Aurora has its own internal classification for designs based on what they contain, so if you decide to put a weapon on a terraformer for example, Aurora will class that as a warship for the purposes of determining whether to show morale messages.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Minor v6.20 Changes

The "Salvo Name cannot find its target. It will home on the previous target location" message should now only show once per increment, not once per sub-pulse.

Default status of the Show Obsolete checkbox on the View Tech window changed to unchecked.

The button for the Planetary Market (a window in an older version) on the F3 System Map now links to the new Production Overview window. Also, there were two buttons for the Intelligence/Diplomacy window so I have changed one of those to show the Race Details (F2) window instead.

Civilian ships on trade runs will look for the shortest route in the same system, rather than going to the oldest colony.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Fighter Combat Bonus

In v6.20, Naval Officers gain a new bonus called the Fighter Combat Bonus. This is a modifier to weapon accuracy for fighters firing energy-based weapons (gauss cannon, railguns, lasers, mesons, etc.). The starting amount for a commander will vary from nothing up to 50%, although anything around 30% or higher will be rare. Unlike most bonuses, this one will top out at around 100%. It doesn't affect missiles fired from fighters.

This bonus simulates that exceptional pilots can maneuver small craft to increase the chance of a hit with energy-based weapons.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Recreational Module

In v6.20, a new ship module is available. The Recreational Module is 100,000 tons, costs 2000 MC and requires 1000 crew. It is a commercial module. If a ship or base is in the same location as a Recreational Module, that counts as being in orbit of a planet with 10,000+ population for the purposes of crew morale.

This means you can create recreational ships (although I am sure the navy personnel would invent alternative descriptions) that can tour bases or anchorages to provide some way for crews who have been away from home for a long time to let off steam.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Shield Fuel Use

Because of the much higher fuel requirements for engines in v6.00, the fuel requirements of shields are now negligible in comparison. Therefore the rate of which fuel is consumed by shields has been increased by a factor of 24. What was daily use, is now hourly use.

Steve