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[umiman]

A question about Aurora: How do you add armour to ships?

In the ship design window, it's on the upper left hand side.

[Areyar]

Hey Sean,

In regards to your plans, code working mock-ups of first.
One mechanic at a time, it will help you see if it works, help you think and motivate at the same time.
For instance create a small program which just lets you test the tech tree advancements by incrementing a turn with techpoints incrementing and increasing over time as you expect them to in your complete game.
Also please consider putting as much as possible information/settings in accessable raws (or better yet XML!)


Also as to the techmechanics, you are using general research areas that generate hidden practical applications. I loved the way Moo (and ascendancy too IIRC) used several options that could result from an advance and only allowed you to develop one (or all for Mentat etal.)
This lead to differentiating tech specialisations in empires, also it makes the techtree into a minigame.

If I understand correctly then your techs are preset and will advance if enough research has been done in the required areas and maybe several other prereqs, such as having duranium mineral or resource for a duranium refinement tech?
Or does it also allow ignoring for instance the main armour direction and focussing on shielding instead?
Maybe a bad example as Armour would be in a Materials Tech tree and Shielding in a Energy or Exotic Physics Tech tree.
Okay. say shielding and hyperdrive tech are both exotic physics, can you then choose to ignore shielding applications and focus on engines?
(I just realized: you can if you just unlock the option to research/develop the theoretical tech. Call the main research "X-theory" and the specific applied tech "Y-tech Development"

--
Are you going to create a Majesty in space? I'd love to see economy and stuff working by themselves without much interference from me besides setting up some infrastructure and defences, only yelling for help if pirates interrupt a traderoute or when I raise taxes to pay for the battleships in orbit. 

-
If you are going through with this, you should start a new thread for it... and eventually your own forums.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

For some reason reading about this game makes me want to play Space Empires 5, though really, I rather play a game that doesn't exist and has a contiguous universe without these silly boxed in systems need for jump points.  Like Sins of a Solar Empire was originally going to be before they decided to make it into a generic RTS with space graphics and an unusual yet dumbed down from most games base building mechanic.

It's kind of funny no one complains about that game anywhere near as much as Spore.  I mean, I don't remember ever seeing anyone complain about how it could have been.  Maybe I just imagined the early information on it.

[Shades]

If it helps I didn't like sins of a solar empire either, just isn't very fun.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I couldn't so much as run SoaSE on my laptop, so consider that a complaint. Seriously, you just don't complain about space 4X RTS games. They are good just because they exist. The genre is almost dead even without people complaining about "what could have been".

Areyar: Yes, code mockups were the plan. Ease of accessing existing info wasn't (I hate being spoiled by game resources, and since the plan is to surprise the player with research options, the base files will likely be encoded), but modding capabilities will be in if the game exists.
As to the research example - there won't be a single "Forcefield MkIII" or "Thruster MkCXIV" in any of the common sections. There will be technology that allows a shield generator and an engine. You're unlikely to discover different technologies on the same path, since hyperdimensional thrusters and warp shields wouldn't be in the same branch, "Exotic physics" is too broad to be an applied branch. One will require advances in Extradimensional Mechanics and Antimatter, the other would need Fields Theory, Force Fields, and Spatial Distortion, in addition to any material prerequisites. If, however, you do get different techs on one branch, for example Linear Displacement (which would appear out of Spatial Distortion progress) - LDDS and LDSS, standing for Drive and Shield systems, would both have their requirements in this branch, and if all the other prerequisites were already met, you'd progress at the same speed towards both. You could facilitate faster development of the LD branch by diverting research power from other branches, but you can't improve the research speed of any specific project in those circumstances.

Edit: now that I think of it, it's also an imperfect example, since LDDS and LDSS would both utilize the same tech. However, they are different enough and specific enough to warrant their own branch (one displaces the entire ship forward, the other displaces tiny chunks of space outward with staggering precision), since you couldn't just make a shield generator and an engine out of the same LD unit.

[Micro102]

For some reason reading about this game makes me want to play Space Empires 5, though really, I rather play a game that doesn't exist and has a contiguous universe without these silly boxed in systems need for jump points.  Like Sins of a Solar Empire was originally going to be before they decided to make it into a generic RTS with space graphics and an unusual yet dumbed down from most games base building mechanic.

It's kind of funny no one complains about that game anywhere near as much as Spore.  I mean, I don't remember ever seeing anyone complain about how it could have been.  Maybe I just imagined the early information on it.

But it wouldn't make sense if you didn't need jump gates. It would take hundreds of years traveling to another system without some way to travel faster then light. And if the universe and systems were closer together the combined mass would replicate the big bang 

[nichaey]

Build it, build some tugs, and tow that sucker to the enemy.

Are tractor beams commercial? because if they are this give me an epic Idea for a tug based military where your fleet speed is based on how many "engines " you build for it.

Imagine this,       a bunch of single engine missileboats with a bunch of box  launchers being towed into the heat of battle by some tugs. If any missiles are detected then the tugs would stop towing and run at 10000+ km/s

[Osmosis Jones]

Bwaahahahahha. I Jump into an unexplored system, and what do I find but the precursors duking it out with the star swarm. I don't know who to cheer for

[Aldaris]

I have yet to run into the star swarm, what are they like?

[Osmosis Jones]

An absolute arseload of meson armed, 800t gunboats, and a much, much larger queen ship. Right now, the precursors have slaughtered every single fighter, but in doing so have ran out of all missiles except the AMMs, so I get to watch countless updates of "the anti missile missile hits the [queen] for 1 damage" and "1 damage is absorbed by armour" over and over again.

[umiman]

I have yet to run into the star swarm, what are they like?

A pain in the arse.

I noticed they also have size 6000t ships that like to hitchhike on comets in the system, though those don't move around.

[Areyar]

Yeah, IIRC tractors are commercial.
Not sure if multiple tugs can tow a single ship though.
Pretty sure one tug can lock unto a single ship/shipyard, not a fleet, as in your dream.



Sean.
I thought ab out it a bit. How about refinement of older technologies?
Fuel efficiency, power rating etal for ion engines would be mostly meaningless for plasma conversion thrusters.
A player would have to weigh improving current tech with developing new tech with higher base ratings.

[Sean Mirrsen]

You would continuously improve the base consituent components of the ion engines, but you would design each engine yourself. For example, you have the base Ion Thruster which is just the ion acceleration chamber and has very little thrust. These would mostly be used for manuevering or small craft. Then you could add stuff onto it - electromagnetic gimbals from turret development to facilitate manuevering, or accelerator rings to make the ions relativistically heavier to produce greater thrust with the same fuel. You could save each design separately for use on anything else, so you'd always have to factor in different things when you switch technologies. There could be other uses too. For example, solid fuel boosters, highly dangerous and normally useless on ships, could be used for emergency deceleration and lifepod launchers instead of any advanced tech you have due to their high power and microscopic energy requirement. You'd have to design the pods yourself too.

[Micro102]

When you open up aurora, what is that disaster drop down? And why are they posted twice?

[Areyar]

When you open up aurora, what is that disaster drop down? And why are they posted twice?

What are you talking about?
There is only one disaster dropdown and it is in the campaign setup window, it has 3 options, No disaster, cooldown and heatup.
It is there to facilitate scenarios where there is a global disaster triggering an exodus vfrom the homeworld.