C# Aurora v0.x Questions

[Hazard]

Except the merchant navy is a thing that's actively simulated and you can't stuff naval officers onto civilian company ships. I think.

OTOH? You absolutely should be seeing the officers who are assigned to fleet auxiliary vessels like colliers, tankers and non-combat stations as your active reserve, and you are going to be seeing a lot more officers needed for various jobs. A survey ship that's not equipped with a science officer is basically substandard already, and you generally just want to make sure there's at least 2 officers on any ship of 1000 tons or more.

[Kristover]

But if you're intentionally going for a significantly small military fielding empire then this isn't the case, and a small number of military academies would be more than sufficient for ship crew purposes in such a scenario but not sufficient enough to manage the rest of the civilian aspects of the empire.

I always assumed that the pool of unused administrators, officers, etc. trained by my military academies represented a society-wide recruitment potential from the civilian sector, rather than a pool of active duty but unassigned personnel. Many of the skills of a warship captain would translate reasonably well from the captain of a commercial spaceliner or survey vessel, and there is no good reason a scientist cannot be doing R&D for a private company if she isn't running a government lab. So presumably all those idle military officers waiting to be deployed are enjoying productive civilian careers that are just not simulated, because Aurora abstracts away the details of the civilian economy.

That is cool, I never really considered it as a recruitment pool.  I always imagined that those officers were actively in non-combatant billets somewhere in the service.  In the real life Army (I was in for 23 years), there were command and primary staff assignments which were the 'main' jobs, but officers were also in a ton of non-main jobs - public affairs, contracting and services, force development, instructors at schools, recruiting and retention jobs.  I know in my career, half of it was spent in jobs like that.  When I looked at my list of officers in the pool, that was I always assumed those guys were doing.

[TMaekler]

Has the population density modifier any effect on crew calculations or size of crew quarters?

[Steve Walmsley]

Has the population density modifier any effect on crew calculations or size of crew quarters?

No, it affects colonies and orbital habitats. Interesting point though.

[TheRowan]

Has the population density modifier any effect on crew calculations or size of crew quarters?

No, it affects colonies and orbital habitats. Interesting point though.

That could be an interesting minor addition... it would mean that if you captured a ship from a race that likes higher densities, you'd need to refit the accomodation to use it effectively, which seems like it should be the case.

[Father Tim]

With the new Population Capacity features, will the limit for the "Source/Destination for Colonists" flag be changed from 25 million to some fraction of the colony's max?

I assume the "Pop growth --> 0%" factor upon reaching the limit will prevent civilians from dumping colonists on, for example, Ceres once it has 22 million.  If I have four dozen colonies throughout the asteroid belt, none of which will ever support more than 25 million, will civilians only fill them from Earth/Mars/Luna?  Will no one ever move from one rock to another without direct Imperial intervention?

What if I send four '1 million pop' orbital habitats to Ceres.  Now its max pop is 26 million.  Will it suddenly flood the rest of the belt with that last 1 million Cereans? Being so close to the pop limit will dramatically slow pop growth, so will I get a weird, surge-and-swell effect where population rushes from the Inners to Ceres, taking Ceres over 25 million, then rushes off Ceres to the smaller rocks, dropping Ceres below 25 million, then another wave from the Inners, etc.

[Garfunkel]

That's a really good point! I hope we don't get that sort of swelling/surge thing. It would be cool if emigration was a little more nuanced so that bodies with plenty of space don't really have much emigration, whereas bodies that are full or close to it have plenty.

[Steve Walmsley]

With the new Population Capacity features, will the limit for the "Source/Destination for Colonists" flag be changed from 25 million to some fraction of the colony's max?

I assume the "Pop growth --> 0%" factor upon reaching the limit will prevent civilians from dumping colonists on, for example, Ceres once it has 22 million.  If I have four dozen colonies throughout the asteroid belt, none of which will ever support more than 25 million, will civilians only fill them from Earth/Mars/Luna?  Will no one ever move from one rock to another without direct Imperial intervention?

What if I send four '1 million pop' orbital habitats to Ceres.  Now its max pop is 26 million.  Will it suddenly flood the rest of the belt with that last 1 million Cereans? Being so close to the pop limit will dramatically slow pop growth, so will I get a weird, surge-and-swell effect where population rushes from the Inners to Ceres, taking Ceres over 25 million, then rushes off Ceres to the smaller rocks, dropping Ceres below 25 million, then another wave from the Inners, etc.

This is a good point.

The destination/source/stable flag is what shipping lines use when deciding potential destinations. That will be set to destination for each new colony unless you manually change it. Even if a population is flagged as a potential destination, colonists will not be sent unless there is space.

The VB6 criteria for a colony to be an automatic destination (i.e. you can't change to stable or source) is a population of 25m or less. For C#, it is now a population of 25m or less where the current total population on the body (all races) is less than half of the maximum capacity.

[Scandinavian]

With the new Population Capacity features, will the limit for the "Source/Destination for Colonists" flag be changed from 25 million to some fraction of the colony's max?

I assume the "Pop growth --> 0%" factor upon reaching the limit will prevent civilians from dumping colonists on, for example, Ceres once it has 22 million.  If I have four dozen colonies throughout the asteroid belt, none of which will ever support more than 25 million, will civilians only fill them from Earth/Mars/Luna?  Will no one ever move from one rock to another without direct Imperial intervention?

What if I send four '1 million pop' orbital habitats to Ceres.  Now its max pop is 26 million.  Will it suddenly flood the rest of the belt with that last 1 million Cereans? Being so close to the pop limit will dramatically slow pop growth, so will I get a weird, surge-and-swell effect where population rushes from the Inners to Ceres, taking Ceres over 25 million, then rushes off Ceres to the smaller rocks, dropping Ceres below 25 million, then another wave from the Inners, etc.

This is a good point.

The destination/source/stable flag is what shipping lines use when deciding potential destinations. That will be set to destination for each new colony unless you manually change it. Even if a population is flagged as a potential destination, colonists will not be sent unless there is space.

The VB6 criteria for a colony to be an automatic destination (i.e. you can't change to stable or source) is a population of 25m or less. For C#, it is now a population of 25m or less where the current total population on the body (all races) is less than half of the maximum capacity.

Wouldn't it be better to make a rule that pop can only be taken from worlds which have more unemployment to worlds with less?

So during each construction cycle, for each populated world, you would compute a score of ([unemployed pop] + [population in transit] - [population awaiting pickup])/[total pop], with unfilled jobs counting as negative unemployment (capped by available space remaining, to avoid accidental overcrowding). Then every time a colony ship was looking for a cargo, it would select the highest scoring colony to pick up from and the lowest scoring colony to drop off at. The additional overhead shouldn't be outrageous, and it would simulate population moving about in search of new opportunities. It would also encourage actually developing colonies, instead of just dumping population and watch it generate wealth.

[Father Tim]

It would also encourage actually developing colonies, instead of just dumping population and watch it generate wealth.

With wealth generation changing from 'total population' to 'employed population' for C# Aurora, I doubt that will be a thing anymore.

[Zincat]

It would also encourage actually developing colonies, instead of just dumping population and watch it generate wealth.

With wealth generation changing from 'total population' to 'employed population' for C# Aurora, I doubt that will be a thing anymore.

Agreed but, what about trade goods? Does a population without any facility, basically just a population farm, still generate trade goods for the civilian sector?

[Hazard]

This is a good point.

The destination/source/stable flag is what shipping lines use when deciding potential destinations. That will be set to destination for each new colony unless you manually change it. Even if a population is flagged as a potential destination, colonists will not be sent unless there is space.

The VB6 criteria for a colony to be an automatic destination (i.e. you can't change to stable or source) is a population of 25m or less. For C#, it is now a population of 25m or less where the current total population on the body (all races) is less than half of the maximum capacity.

It'd be much more convenient to just have a new colony automatically get designated as a destination and let you change it to stable/source/source above 5% maximum population manually without it getting pinned back to 'destination' the moment it drops below an nonadjustable value. Just in case you want to empty a colony utterly for whatever reason.

For that matter, if it's possible in the system, give a colony a couple of 'source from this many colonists' and a 'destination up to this many colonists' lists, with the lists for a colony generating (millions of pop) values at colony founding and arrival/departure of orbital habitation stations but in the back end corresponding with certain percentage values of the body's maximum population that the lists refer to internally but use the exact amount of population calculation values only for display purposes so nothing breaks.

Agreed but, what about trade goods? Does a population without any facility, basically just a population farm, still generate trade goods for the civilian sector?

They should. Which is good and useful, but putting them to work is even better for generating wealth.

[Borealis4x]

I was reading the changes thread and from what I gathered we will no longer manually be able to set which rank of officer can command any given class of ship and will instead be restricted by a criteria dictated by which command modules we have installed.

This is worrying as I model officers all the way down to ensigns as I like using fighters (which would be piloted by ensigns) and this would mean most of my ships would be commanded by mere lieutenants.

I hope this isn't the case. I was hoping that we'd simply be able to set a minimum rank and a maximum rank to dictate who commands what (no more Admiral fighter-pilots please).

[Steve Walmsley]

I was reading the changes thread and from what I gathered we will no longer manually be able to set which rank of officer can command any given class of ship and will instead be restricted by a criteria dictated by which command modules we have installed.

This is worrying as I model officers all the way down to ensigns as I like using fighters (which would be piloted by ensigns) and this would mean most of my ships would be commanded by mere lieutenants.

I hope this isn't the case. I was hoping that we'd simply be able to set a minimum rank and a maximum rank to dictate who commands what (no more Admiral fighter-pilots please).

Classes do have specific rank requirements, because there needs to be space for the lower-ranked officers on the same ship. There is a checkbox to give a ship a rank one higher than normal. I could add a +2 as well if required.

[Borealis4x]

I was reading the changes thread and from what I gathered we will no longer manually be able to set which rank of officer can command any given class of ship and will instead be restricted by a criteria dictated by which command modules we have installed.

This is worrying as I model officers all the way down to ensigns as I like using fighters (which would be piloted by ensigns) and this would mean most of my ships would be commanded by mere lieutenants.

I hope this isn't the case. I was hoping that we'd simply be able to set a minimum rank and a maximum rank to dictate who commands what (no more Admiral fighter-pilots please).

Classes do have specific rank requirements, because there needs to be space for the lower-ranked officers on the same ship. There is a checkbox to give a ship a rank one higher than normal. I could add a +2 as well if required.

Does that mean you can no longer manually dictate whether a ship is commanded by a certain rank?

Since the game seems designed to only model senior officers (OF-5 and above) will craft of a small enough size (like fighters) need an officer character even though normally they'd be too small to be commanded by such a senior officer?