v2.6.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Ghostly]

I considered exactly that - with some
accompanying technobabble about how shields aren't designed to stop physical objects. Then I realised that railgun rounds are effectively physical, so that leads to 'shields are designed to cope with large physical objects'. At that point someone will want to know 'how large', and then we end up in debate about how big you need a railgun round to be to defeat shields

Maybe I can do both - some form of large shield-damaging weapon and ramming rules that negate shields to some degree, but I need to think about it for a while.

It could also have to do with the speed of the object as well. Shields might operate based on kinetic energy and disperse the kinetic energy from missiles and railguns while a ship itself doesn't travel fast enough to engage the dispersion of the kinetic energy (or maybe they do but with the mass of the ship it isn't torn apart. It could also be a ratio of kinetic energy to mass with anything being able to do damage without the shield engaging would have to be such a large mass that it is basically a ship already.

The slow blade penetrates the shield, except the slow blade is still traveling at thousands of kilometers per second...
I would argue strongly against spending time rewriting the lore around how shields work, especially with missiles in the new patch becoming able to out-mass most fighters, just because of this ramming conundrum. Writing shields out of the ramming equation would make NPR ramming unreasonably dangerous against a shield-heavy player anyway. Taking 200 damage should you ever slip up and taking 200 armor/component damage should you ever slip up are entirely different things.
I propose making ramming unavailable to the player, at least until a viable system of restrictions and consequences can be designed. It definitely shouldn't be available to undamaged player ships, and I have been thinking about how planetary unrest could be influenced by losses in battle, especially such catastrophic ones as ramming (a fleet is wiped out in a crushing defeat, all nearby systems and Earth where it was built and crewed experience riots!), but such a system would be very complex to think through and implement. Not to mention that making ramming unavailable to the player would cement our place as the sole power of justice and reason in the galaxy full of vile, suicidal xenos

[MinuteMan]

If or when you want to make ramming available to players.

You could make it rely on crew training, morale, officer traits, etc.
And probably provide a toggle "Allow ramming" (or similar) on the combat overview of a ship, when the rules would determine that a ship is willing to ram.

A Fleet can than have a command "Ram target fleet".
Ships that have ramming disabled would split of (or the other way around)

The ramming ships (fleet) would randomly choose targets in the target fleet.
Or if you want to make it more complex, provide ramming strategies on the combat overview.
Ram closest, ram biggest, smallest, fastest, slowest, etc.

Just a thought. :-)

Version 2.6 is shaping up nicely.
Any other changes or improvements you have in mind for this version?

[nuclearslurpee]

Perhaps ramming should do shock damage in addition to (or instead of, if needed for balance reasons) normal damage. Then it doesn't matter how heavily shielded the ship is, significant internal damage is still going to happen and a dedicated ramming vessel cannot be built to be survivable, preventing this cheese strategy.

[Froggiest1982]

While it could be an interesting addition, I am against player-controlled ships executing ramming orders without specific instructions to do so.

If I may suggest, a mechanism that has worked well in other titles is to have "special orders"—in this case, ramming—appear as an option only if predetermined circumstances are met. This is similar to how refuelling orders are only available if the tanker checkbox is enabled. The difference here is that this option could be hidden or perhaps shown only if the SM setting is on. I believe this was the implied mechanism already, anyway.

If I were to speculate on what these conditions could be, the commander would definitely need to be brave or aggressive, avoiding traits that are cautious or cowardly. I agree that the training level should be above a certain threshold to prevent panic and mutiny. Additionally, the ship should have suffered some damage at least.

On the other hand, drawing inspiration from the original Battlestar Galactica series and real WWII scenarios, I wouldn't mind the idea of some fighters being used as kamikaze. This could include a mechanism that allows the fighter to explode and cause damage, perhaps through a "Kamikaze Module" that can be added to the fighter and researched to increase damage up to a threshold that prevents it from being OP. This could be somewhat similar to how mesons work, bypassing all ship armour and shields—or perhaps just shields—with the difference being that the fighter's armour and the targeted ship's armour could play a role in the damage calculation.

[Naismith]

It would mean storing a bit of extra data for each ship, but if you don't want to change how ramming interacts with shields you could make a rule that ships will only ram if they've lost x% of their (internal?) hit points in y time. This would mean a ship won't ram until it's defences have already been breached, and you can't make a dedicated ramming ship and leave it damaged. Maybe make it count over the current and last production increment so you don't need to track when each bit of damage happened but can just update the numbers every five days or so.

[Barkhorn]

It seems to me if the big fear with player-controlled ramming is players building dedicated ramming ships, the key is to just make it suicidal.  That way, while the player -can- make dedicated ramming ships, it's just no good.  With this in mind, my idea is to make ramming cause a ton of shock damage to internal components.  A real ship will have most of it's tonnage in internal components, so it will be less likely to die from it.  Whereas a big ball of armor with engines has hardly any internal components, so shock damage will quickly kill it.  So at best, your ram ship will kill one enemy ship, and that will be it.  Yes, your ram ships will be cheap, but the giant shipyards needed to make dozens of ram ships won't be.

I'd also make shields work against ramming based on the amount of armor the ram has.  I'm thinking of it kinda like how microwaves work irl.  Small things often don't get heated at all; fruit flies for instance survive in a microwave totally unharmed, whereas larger insects die.  Well what if ship-scale shields work somewhat similarly?  Railgun shells and big balls of armor are dense enough that the shield interacts with them.  But normal ships are actually mostly hollow, so just like the fruit flies being smaller than the wavelength of the microwave and surviving, normal ships are unaffected by "hitting" shields.  So there's no fear about ram ships mounting 1000-strength shields.

[Garfunkel]

There's no need to ensure that there are no exploits with ramming. If a player wants to build dedicated ramming ships then that's on them. Steve just has to make sure that the mechanics are such that ramming is not an obviously superior tactic as that's the point where lot of players would struggle. Kinda like how the DPS at first for single shot rail guns was so crazy good that it basically forced everyone to use them, not doing so being so inefficient.

But I don't mind ramming staying an AI option only.

[StarshipCactus]

While it could be an interesting addition, I am against player-controlled ships executing ramming orders without specific instructions to do so.

If I may suggest, a mechanism that has worked well in other titles is to have "special orders"—in this case, ramming—appear as an option only if predetermined circumstances are met. This is similar to how refuelling orders are only available if the tanker checkbox is enabled. The difference here is that this option could be hidden or perhaps shown only if the SM setting is on. I believe this was the implied mechanism already, anyway.

If I were to speculate on what these conditions could be, the commander would definitely need to be brave or aggressive, avoiding traits that are cautious or cowardly. I agree that the training level should be above a certain threshold to prevent panic and mutiny. Additionally, the ship should have suffered some damage at least.

On the other hand, drawing inspiration from the original Battlestar Galactica series and real WWII scenarios, I wouldn't mind the idea of some fighters being used as kamikaze. This could include a mechanism that allows the fighter to explode and cause damage, perhaps through a "Kamikaze Module" that can be added to the fighter and researched to increase damage up to a threshold that prevents it from being OP. This could be somewhat similar to how mesons work, bypassing all ship armour and shields—or perhaps just shields—with the difference being that the fighter's armour and the targeted ship's armour could play a role in the damage calculation.

I am also not really a fan of control being taken away and prefer the idea of the option becoming available after certain conditions are met (Or an SM button to force it to be available in addition.)
You could have one of the conditions be tied to the number of crew who have died in the system or overall against this enemy compared to the number of enemy ships destroyed or damaged. If the crew and CO believes there is no choice and are very well trained and disciplined, they'll have the option show up. Probably combine that with requirements for the ship to be damaged and other things. This ramming thing is an interesting idea for sure.

[Kaiser]

A good game is the one where both sides have the same options available, so I am for both AI and human player to have the ram option, We just need to make sure there are the right balances so we do not exploit this.

[xenoscepter]

A thought occurred to me. And a question.

Shields in Aurora are designed to keep things OUT.

How would shields in Aurora react to being forced to keep things IN?

So by extension, perhaps on possible way to balance player ramming, is to make shields significantly LESS effective at preventing ramming damage caused by the player ramming into something?

A nice lore/fluffy reason would be, "Shields systems in Aurora work by projecting a shield around the ship, and while they work great at keeping things OUT, the projects aren't designed to keep things IN. Thus, a player ramming will find their shields much less useful in protecting them from the kind of damage such ramming would incur."

[Ultimoos]

How is boarding affected by shields?
If shield is supposed to just stop things than it is no different from armor. If the shield is supposed to disintegrate anything that touches it than it would not take damage from impacts, but be depleted based on for example a mass of object that contacted it. But all weapons we shout at shields deal damage equal to that weapons power. Missiles deal damage equal to it's warhead strength instead of being deleted out of existence.
But with ramming we have to massive objects colliding with each other. Is shield a 100% rigid dome around a ship? If so, all kinetic energy would be transferred in to rammed ship. Shield is just extension of armor. However if shield is flexible and can bend under pressure, than that shield could absorb a fraction or all energy from impact.

[paolot]

Steve, please, in the formula for the "percentage chance of ‘processing’ a given officer", the Number of Naval Headquarters does it include the levels of each of them, or not?
I mean, a level 3 NH, does it count as 3 or as 1?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve, please, in the formula for the "percentage chance of ‘processing’ a given officer", the Number of Naval Headquarters does it include the levels of each of them, or not?
I mean, a level 3 NH, does it count as 3 or as 1?

Good question - I hadn't thought of it in those terms. Currently it is set up as the physical number of naval headquarters, rather than the level for command purposes. Perhaps I should be using the level instead. I'll think it about it overnight.

[Garfunkel]

I think that if a race/power/empire is conquered by the player, then all prisoners of that race/power/empire should be automatically released and added as population to a suitable colony where their species already exist. If no such colony exists, then assume player is committing genocide and the prisoners are disposed of.

That way I can RP a nice overlord race and not have to execute POWs, just wait until war is won.

[alex_brunius]

Steve, please, in the formula for the "percentage chance of ‘processing’ a given officer", the Number of Naval Headquarters does it include the levels of each of them, or not?
I mean, a level 3 NH, does it count as 3 or as 1?

Good question - I hadn't thought of it in those terms. Currently it is set up as the physical number of naval headquarters, rather than the level for command purposes. Perhaps I should be using the level instead. I'll think it about it overnight.

I think it make more sense to use the actual number of NHQ, since the logical reason for the levels is to model their range/reach which is a more exponential number in turns of systems covered by each additional jump while the needs of processing PoWs can be assumed to scale more linearly with empire size growth.