The existing Engineer Regiment is now the Construction Brigade. Apart from the name change, everything is the same as before.
There is now a new Combat Engineer battalion, which has the same combat strength and cost as a Marine Battalion. Instead of the marine bonus for fighting on ships, it has double strength when attacking or defending a PDC.
Today's Sol update includes an additional fifty moons, split between the following planets (new total in parantheses):
Jupiter: 7 (22)
Saturn: 15 (29)
Uranus: 16 (28)
Neptune: 5 (14)
Pluto: 2 (3)
Quaoar: 1 (1)
Orcus: 1 (1)
Haumea: 2 (2)
Eris: 1 (1)
I have replaced the random Sol comets with 25 real comets. The furthest point of their orbit from the Sun is correct for all the real comets but the current distance in that orbit will be randomised for each game. There are now 619 distinct system bodies in Sol, including planets, moons, asteroids and comets. All of these are real-life objects.
Trojan asteroids can now appear in systems other than Sol in the L4 and L5 points of gas giants and super-jovians. The chance of Trojans being generated and the number generated is based on the cube root of the associated planet's mass.
I've corrected the problem in system generation that can sometimes lead to missing numbers in the roman numerals assigned to planets. For example, in v5.60 you might see Sirius I, Sirius II and Sirius IV as the first three planets in a system. In v5.70, all the planet numbers should be consecutive.
I've changed the ordering of system bodies in the F9 window. Because of the proliferation of asteroids in systems, displaying them in a meaningful way in relation to planets is problematic. Therefore, all asteroids in a system will now appear in one group after all planets and moons. The asteroids will be in order of distance from the star. Comets will appear in one group after asteroids.
It does sound like making Invader incursions more of a rare event would be a good idea. Therefore I have decreased the chance of a wormhole appearing and I have halved the chance of an incursion. I've also placed significant restrictions on the number of Invader survey ships. They will still explore a little but far less than at the moment. More along the lines of a normal NPR.
The chance of completing a survey team check during one year will be simply based on a combination of planet size and team skill. The formula is (1000 / BodyRadius^(1/3)) * (TeamSkill / 100)
So a team with a skill of 100 surveying the Earth would have a 53.9% chance of completing the task each year
A team with a skill of 120 surveying the Moon would have a 99.8% chance of completeing the task each year
A team with a skill of 150 surveying an asteroid with a 50km radius would have a 407.2% chance of completing the task each year.
During each 5-day increment, the chance will be equal to: Yearly Chance * (Increment Length in Seconds / Seconds in a Year). So in a 5-day increment of 450,000 seconds, a 100% annual chance would be a 1.45% increment chance.
Whatever happens as a result of the successful check, including no new minerals, the survey is completed. The chance of the survey team making multiple discoveries over a long period is now replaced with a chance of multiple discoveries during the single check.
EDIT: I've also changed the experience mechanic for geo survey teams. They now have a chance of XP at any point while they are working rather than after a task is complete. This because of the widely varying length of the task for different size bodies.
Yes, it is getting that way. What started off as mainly a solar system update I intended to handle over Easter is becoming a little largerI'll be making some changes to crew quarters and adding something along the lines of morale or fatigue when ships are deployed longer than their accomodations warrant. I haven't pinned down the mechanics yet. I'll also be looking to add mechanics for undermanning and for a ship being abandoned if all the crew are killed (as suggested in the thread about "better wrecks").
Finally, I wouldn't mind adding civilian fuel harvesters, so civilians would establish harvesting outposts at likely gas giants and you can buy fuel from the civilian sector, or tax them for selling it. Maybe even tie that into the civilian harvesters supplying the fuel for the civilian freighters and colony ships.
Plus some stuff I am sure will occur to me while handling the above, plus some testing.
It will depend on how much free time I have over the next few weeks, which includes moving house in about a month (although perhaps I could ask my wife to handle that without me). So you probably have time for a v5.60 game that will last a few weeks. My estimates are historically not very accurate though which is why I tried to avoid making them
Steve
I've completely changed engine design for v5.70. This shares a lot in common with the Newtonian Aurora engine design, although without the real world physics. Different engine platforms no longer exist, so you will no longer research "FAC" and "fighter" engine types. Engines are classed as "Commercial" for maintenance purposes unless they trigger a "Military" flag - more on that later.
Engine Size: You can now select the size of engine from 1 HS to 50 HS. Larger engines are more fuel efficient so fuel consumption is reduced by 1% for every HS of engine. For example, a 10 HS engine reduces fuel consumption by 10% and a 25 HS engine reduces it by 25%. There is no longer any restriction on the number of engines so you can have twin engined fighters if you wish.
As fuel consumption is now higher than in the past, I have made a number of changes to systems related to fuel.
Gas giants have a 50% chance of Sorium compared to 20% in the past. The minimum accessibility for gas giant Sorium is 0.3.
Fuel Harvesters have been reduced in size and cost by 50%. Their crew requirement has been reduced by 80%
Three new Fuel Storage Systems have been added. They are shown below with the current 1 HS system for comparison. Fuel Storage systems no longer require any crew.
Fuel Storage (1HS): 50,000 litres, 10 BP
Fuel Storage - Large (5 HS), 250,000 litres, 30 BP
Fuel Storage - Very Large (20 HS): 1,000,000 litres, 70 BP
Fuel Storage - Ultra Large (100 HS): 5,000,000 litres, 200 BP
Steve