Aurora v2.8.0 Patch Notes - Unreleased

Patch Notes
23

Communications Update

For Race A to attempt communication with Race B, at least one of the following must be true

  1. Both sides have a status of “Attempting Communication” and both sides are able to detect each other in the same system. See Diplomacy for details.

  2. Race A has prisoners of Race B.

Each construction phase, if either of the above is true, a check is made to determine the ‘Contact Rating’.

  • If you have a mutual contact involving a diplomacy ship, with a commander who has a communication bonus, the Contact Rating is 1 + Bonus. So 30% Bonus results in a 1.3 Contact Rating.
  • If you have a mutual contact involving a diplomacy ship, but the commander does not have a communication bonus, the Contact Rating is 1.
  • If you have a mutual contact without a diplomacy ship, the Contact Rating is 0.5.
  • If there is no mutual contact, the Contact Rating is 0.
  • If there are any processed prisoners and the contact rating is less than 1, the Contact Rating is increased by processed prisoners / 200, to a maximum of 1.

A Communication Attempt Roll (CAR) is made from 1-100. This is modified by the average translation skill of the two races involved and the Communications Modifier (CM). The CM starts at 0 when an alien race is first detected.

If the CAR is 100 or greater, full communication is established. Otherwise, a varying amount is add to, or subtracted from, the Communications Modifier, depending on the results of the CAR. This updated CM will be used for future communication attempts. The results are as follows:

Comm Roll CM Addition
91 - 99 10 x Contact Rating
81 - 90 5 x Contact Rating
71 - 80 3 x Contact Rating
51 - 70 2 x Contact Rating
26 - 50 1 x Contact Rating
1 - 25 -1 x Contact Rating
-24 to 0 -2 x Contact Rating
-49 to -25 -3 x Contact Rating
<= -50 -500

The result of the communication attempt is reported to the player based on the update to the Communication Modifier

CM Change Event Text
>= 10 Significant progress
>= 5 Moderate progress
>= 3 Minor progress
>= 2 Limited progress
>= 1 Minimal progress
>= 0 Glacial progress
>= -1 No progress. The contact team is struggling to make a breakthrough.
>= -2 No progress. The contact team has begun to consider that communication may prove impossible.
>= -3 No progress. The contact team is advising that communication may prove impossible.
< -3 Communication impossible. The contact team believe the race is too alien for communication to ever be established.

In v2.7.1, prisoners would not be processed unless communications had been established.

In v2.8, populations will process prisoners without comms being established, if less than 200 have already been processed.

Note: The basic principles of communication remain unchanged from v1.00. v2.8 introduces the use of prisoners to establish communication and more informative reporting of progress.

10 Likes