This game as the title said is a 4x game as in (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate), the game is as graphic as a VB program (which it is), the game is complicated too, really really complicated, this is not a game for casual players, the installation in itself is sometimes a challenge, well then let's start shall we? Tighten your butt cheeks and get ready for a wild ride.
In a default game, you play as the 'Terran Federation' in 2025, where they discovered transnewtonian resources, which as it names says it breaks the laws of Newton, giving you access to a wider technological tree.
If you successfully install the game and get it working without any error, you get this
Now you don't need to understand anything here just slide your cursor on 'New' and click and then you are slapped by a most beautiful display, 'the game creation menu' Note: This Image is outdated by a few version so there might be some missing options.
It may look like intimidating but when you get around it, its pretty easy to get a handle on. After creating your game, you are then met by the simplistic menu...
Now what you will need the most is the 'Empires' tab where you will micro-manage all of this
Here is the screen where you most likely saw the most images from when you type 'Aurora 4x' in Google, the 'System Maps'
The game is played in increments, where time is advanced from between 5 seconds to 30 days. So it is a mix between real-time and turn based gameplay. You can see it right there in the image.
Then there is the 'Galactic Map', where are all the systems you discovered, here it's a late-game map
Or here you can find your military officers, scientists, and civilian bureaucrats
Here you can manage your economy, planets, ground troops, shipyards Note: This Image is outdated by a few version so there might be some missing options.
This tab here is where you design your ships/orbital habitat/battle stations/PDF/Huge planet-terraforming ships
And this one is where you assign FC(Fire Control) to a weapon, and where you order your ships to fire on a target. On a side-note, the space battles are heavily inspired by Honor Harrington series, for those who did read it will get a sense of familiarity with it.
Here are the most important tabs which you will use the most(yes they are more of them), I hope I didn't discourage you from playing since when you get to it, it's really fun.
And I will stop here before you get lightheaded already, here are the most useful links if you want to get started :
The forums: Aurora 4x Games - Index
The Wiki(which you would be using a lot): AuroraWiki
The thread that inspired me for creating this one here: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
The game's current version is 7.1, the next which would be 7.2 and will not be on VBasic anymore but this time on C# which is more stable, which means longer games without crashing, the game will be capable of being modded. For more information, look here.
EDIT: I added everything to a spoiler code since its pretty long
I could but it would take time that I don't have though, perhaps in a week or two, I will have nearly a month free with nothing to do so I can start there, I'm currently writing a quick tutorial or searching for any tutorial that is not as complicated as the one in the forums, I will post it here.
((Finally, I did find an easier 'tutorial' of the game in the net, I will post gradually to not overwhelm the thread and avoid double posting))
Game Name is the name you want to give this game and is what displays in the dropdown in the Game Details dialog.
SpaceMaster Password
The "SpaceMaster" in a game of Aurora has access to many world-building functions within the game itself, and has access to detailed information for each race. With SpaceMaster mode activated, you can add minerals to colonies, create whole new ships from nothing, alter the population of a colony, etc. It is basically "DungeonMaster" mode. You can set a password for it here, but that's mostly for multiplayer games between players who want a third-party as "referee".
Basic Parameters
Starting Year is the year the game starts in, and has no effect whatsoever on gameplay, other than for roleplaying purposes. Default game is starting in 2025.
Maximum number of systems is the number of star systems generated at game start. We are playing a 1000-system game, though we're unlikely to see more than a fraction of that. Larger universes result in larger playtimes as the game goes on.
Local System Gen. Chance (%) and Local System Gen. Spread control the layout of the generated map. It is greyed out in the above screenshot because the 'Real-Star Systems' option is checked. Basically, the higher the Gen. Chance and the smaller the Gen. Spread, the more tightly interconnected the resulting starmap is. With a low Gen. Chance and a large Gen. Spread, the generated map will have long chains of highly strung out system.
Difficulty modifier controls the starting population for any Non-Player Races generated during the game or at game start. The larger the population, the more starting goodies it gets, and the more difficult it might be to take on that race. Note that the population is actually selected based on a bell-curve centered on your race's population at the time of generation. This means new races scale to your own progress.
Non-player Race Generation Chance is the percentage chance that, upon new system generation (which occurs whenever one of your ships OR an NPR ship enters a new system for the first time), if an eligible planet is present, an NPR will be generated. A chance of 30% means that IF an eligible planet is created during system generation, there is a 30% chance that an NPR will be generated and placed on it. This means the actual generation chance is somewhat lower, since not all generated systems have eligible planets. Too many NPRs slows down the game and can create bugs.
Construction Cycle is the length of a 'tick' in this game. The default is 400000 seconds, but most players advocate playing with a construction cycle of 100000, which is a little more than one day. Basically every check in the game is made once per cycle, except for ship combat-related checks (movement, etc). but it will suffice to say that construction, mining production, fuel production and similar tasks take place. The amount of production is scaled based on the actual amount of time in the construction cycle, which can vary slightly since not every increment will end at the exact boundary of a cycle.
Minimum comets per system is what it says on the tin.
Starting Empire Parameters for Earth-based Start
These are all flavor options that only apply if "Generate Sol System and create starting Empire on Earth" is selected in the Starting Race section. Selecting the other option creates a game with a blank race, intending you to use SpaceMaster mode to set up the race's initial conditions.
Empire Name, Species Name, and Homeworld Name are all pure flavor entries, and can be anything.
Government Type allows a descriptive name for your form of government, which has only minor in-game effects. It sets a few roleplaying centered values for your empire, and also alters the starting values for your first population (ratio of population to shipyards and research facilities).
Main Empire Theme and Commander Theme are basically name-sets built in to the game. Ship classes and star system names come from the Main Empire Theme, while the names of in-game characters come from the Comander Theme.
Trans-Newtonian Empire vs. Conventional Empire is a major setting for the game. Trans-Newtonian empires already have access to Trans-Newtonian technology, and have a better starting position when compared to their population than Conventional Empires, which have to research Trans-Newtonian technology and start without any tech (tech in the game is considered to be technologies enabled or rendered practicable by Trans-Newtonian elements, for the most part). Conventional Empires also start with conventional industry and ground forces, which are much less efficient than their Trans-Newtonian equivalents. Both starting factions are starting as Conventional, since they have both only recently discovered Trans-Newtonian science (and it makes for a more relatable narrative to start in more familiar territory and introduce weird new poo poo incrementally).
Species Tolerance
These values set the physical parameters of your chosen species. Worlds inside the tolerance bands for all values can be colonized easily. Worlds outside the tolerance bands for oxygen pressure, temperature, or max atmosphere can be colonized more difficultly, and worlds outside the gravity tolerance cannot be inhabited by colonists at all. This can be fixed by terraforming the planet
Starting Population
The population of your homeworld can be set here, and depending on the combination of Trans-Newtonian vs. Conventional and Government Type, will alter the starting shipyards and starting Research Facilities. However, these calculated vales can be set to any number if so desired.
Wealth Creation Rate and Industrial Percentage control the efficiency of your financial and manufacturing sector at game start and can be used as a handicap.
No Missile Bases for Conventional Start allows the player race to start without a number of pre-made ICBM Launch Complexes. The default is to start with them, to reflect a society approximately as developed as Earth. The number of starting bases depends on the initial population of the homeworld. Our game keeps the bases, and they are all fully stocked.
Starting System
Sol Jump Points specifies the number of Jump Points out of the initial system and thus its defensibility and access to neighboring star systems. 6 is the recommended number for most games, since some people can get stuck because of dead-end systems.
System body and Jump point survey completed allow the player to start with full geological knowledge of the bodies in the starting system, as well as knowledge of the location of all jump points.
Starting Tech
The game allows the player to jump start his technological base by assigning a number of tech points. The suggested number of alloted points is based on Government Type and Trans-Newtonian Empire vs. Conventional Empire. The suggested number of starting tech points for a Conventional start is 0, which is what is used in our game. All our tech has to come from scracth. This will put us at a disadvantage against the AI, who tends to start with more tech. Players tend to be smarter with their tech direction though, and manage to surpass the AI around mid-tech levels.
Assign starting tech points automatically allows the user to automatically use the starting tech points to research tech, instead of manually specifying them once the game starts using SpaceMaster mode.
Create ship systems and ship designs uses the AI ship design routines to come up with some pre-designed ships and systems for the player, to jump start the game a bit, and is only enabled if the former box is checked (and therefore there exists tech to base designs on).
Starting Race was covered in the Starting Parameters for Earth-based Start section.
Non-NPR Computer Oppnonents
These are special empires that may show up in the game if enabled to give the player extra challenge. I've redacted the image to avoid spoilers. The text can be found below:
Precursors: Ancient robot controlled ships, usually found guarding alien ruins. Dangerous.
Extra-Galactic Invaders: Destroyed the original Precursor civilization during their last incursion. Extremely Dangerous.
Star Swarm. An alien species of living ships that reproduce in space. Individually weak but troublesome in numbers.
Computer-controlled Empires (NPRs)
The first two options allow the creation of non-player races at game start. These races are created at a comparable population and therefore industrial and tech level to the player (depending on the Difficulty Modifier). The third option lets the player specify whether the races generated when a new system is created will be NPRs or visible to the spacemaster and therefore modifiable by the player.
Optional Simplifications
These are options that attempt to reduce some of the micromanagement available in the game. I find that removing micromanagement from a game practically predicated on it to be kind of silly. Additionally, leaving these options off allows me to show off the game features they get rid of, which are kind of interesting.
No overhauls needed means ships never break down and maintenance can be ignored. I find managing ship condition to be an integral part of managing a space navy, so we are keeping this option turned off.
Jump Gates on all Jump Points would remove a key element of fleet positioning strategy that will become more clear later, so we keep this option turned off.
Commanders
These are "realism" options for dealing with our spave and ground force officers.
Realistic Command Promotions means the game decides when an officer is promoted, based on various formulae that will be revealed later. We keep this on.
Commander Political Bonuses adds a "political" value to an officer's stats that factors into their promotion formula, reflecting officers who get promoted based on more than just their skills. It's a harmless option that adds roleplay/narrative value.
Inexperienced Fleets
Inexperienced Fleet Penalty requires that task forces and ships spend time training after they are commissioned to increase the crew grade. Crew grade determines various behavior efficiencies for ships, which will be discussed later.
Real Star Systems uses a gigantic database of real stars to generate the galactic map. This includes star names, spectral types, and the orbital distances of the constituent stellar bodies. Planets and other bodies are randomly generated based on the spectral type. Links to other systems are loosely based on real world star positions.
Orbital Motion
Because no game of this sort would be complete without an absurd attention to detail, it is possible to make planets, moons, and asteroids move in their orbits in the system map. We leave this on for planets and moons to create a minor strategic element in some systems, and leave it off for asteroids to keep turn times down.
Yes, there is a convenient tutorial there, and I don't quite have the time to write one.
I never really got into that LP. I mean its kind of cool yeah, but its now a bad collaborative storytelling attempt and less of an LP. and I got bored of the endless pages of people sending letters back and forth and starting rebellions that don't fit in the gameplay, sometimes there is an entire page of silly useless letters. I don't want to discourage you from reading it but it became boring fast for me ^^
Now if you want to get a more gameplay-related LP there is this one : Ad Astra! ... an Aurora Forum Game, run by blue emu
Or if you want to keep the storytelling part without it being silly, there is numerous AAR in the official forum here NATO vs Soviet Union Campaign
Its one of Steve's own fiction, the longest one and which give a real feeling of cold war. (Steve is the one who developed Aurora, for those that didn't know)
*Ahem*
Anyway believe it or not but Aurora is less complicated than DF, once you get a handle of it its quite easy to go from there, well don't expect to start creating super awesome ships after one or two games but well you'll never know if you don't try right?
This game as the title said is a 4x game as in (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate), the game is as graphic as a VB program (which it is), the game is complicated too, really really complicated, this is not a game for casual players, the installation in itself is sometimes a challenge, well then let's start shall we? Tighten your butt cheeks and get ready for a wild ride.
In a default game, you play as the 'Terran Federation' in 2025, where they discovered transnewtonian materials, which as it names says it breaks the laws of Newton, giving you access to a wider technological tree.
If you successfully install the game and get it working without any error, you get this
Now you don't need to understand anything here just slide your cursor on 'New' and click and then you are slapped by a most beautiful display, 'the game creation menu'
It may look like intimidating but when you get around it, its pretty easy to get a handle on. After creating your game, you are then met by the simplistic menu...
Now what you will need the most is the 'Empires' tab where you will micro-manage all of this
Here is the screen where you most likely saw the most images from when you type 'Aurora 4x' in Google, the 'System Maps'
The game is played in increments, where time is advanced from between 5 seconds to 30 days. So it is a mix between real-time and turn based gameplay. You can see it right there in the image.
Then there is the 'Galactic Map', where are all the systems you discovered, here it's a late-game map
Or here you can find your military officers, scientists, and civilian bureaucrats
Here you can manage your economy, planets, ground troops, shipyards
This tab here is where you design your ships/orbital habitat/battle stations/PDF/Huge planet-terraforming ships
And this one is where you assign FC(Fire Control) to a weapon, and where you order your ships to fire on a target.
On a side-note, the space battles are heavily inspired by Honor Harrington series, fo those who did read it will get a sense of familiarity from it.
Here are the most important tabs which you will use the most(yes they are more of them), I hope I didn't discourage you from playing since when you get to it, it's really fun.
And I will stop here before you get lightheaded already, here are the most useful links if you want to get started :
The forums: Aurora 4x Games - Index
The Wiki(which you would be using a lot): AuroraWiki
The thread that inspired me for creating this one here: Aurora - The Dwarf Fortress of 4X Games
The game's current version is 7.1 , the next which would be 7.2 and will not be on VBasic anymore but this time on C# which is more stable, which means longer games without crashing, the game will be capable of being modded. For more information, look here.
EDIT: I added everything under a spoiler code since its pretty long
Huh? You start actually with only 500 million people(default option) so that its balanced with game's mechanics, if you have 7 billion people in Aurora, you can run an empire spanning on more than a dozen systems with each system having multiple colonies, of course, that's without counting the resources but 7 billion people generate a fuck ton amount of money.
Generally, people explain it with an apocalypse like a nuclear war that sort of thing, of course, its just roleplay but that's what the game's charm comes from, there is no official canon apart from the (spoiler) races but that's not important
On a side-note, I will be posting the second part of the tutorial soon!
I played it ages ago on my laptop and enjoyed even if I never understood the military side of things and never got to build a really big empire (I think four settled systems was my max) because at that point the game slowed down noticeable (at least that is how remember it) with all those civilian ships flying around. But it really is a great game that allows for some really cool stuff.
I played it ages ago on my laptop and enjoyed even if I never understood the military side of things and never got to build a really big empire (I think four settled systems was my max) because at that point the game slowed down noticeable (at least that is how remember it) with all those civilian ships flying around. But it really is a great game that allows for some really cool stuff.
Yes it is, I agree, now its in 7.1v a much much better version where a game can last at least 200 years and if you do it good 400 years, try to not give too much money to the civilian companies or they start making ships like rabbits in heat, my longest game lasted 150 years, I colonized 7 systems, my most defended and commercial center of my empire was Sol with more than 6 colonies there, found 2 friendly NPR, they were exterminated since I was roleplaying a xenophobic empire, already cleaned the
Swarm and the Precursors
from all of my system, 2 other hostile NPR one was exterminated and the other was being pushed back to its homesystem, all good when the
Invaders entered the party with a 'Surprise Motherfucker'
, they already completly purged two of my systems and I was quicly designing new ships to counter them when my game finally crashed
(I did have an earlier save, its because some unknown NPR that I didn't discover yet bugged, it was at war with the remaining hostile NPR, couldn't solve the bug, unfortunately)
Here is the second part of the tutorial.
=======================================
This is the Sol system. The Oort cloud is clearly visible outside the orbit of Pluto. Actually, when you choose "Select" from the Game Details Dialog, what shows up is this. To get this system map to show up, drop down on "Empires" and choose "System Maps." Most windows in the game can be opened this way, but most people, I'd imagine, prefer to use the navigation bar at the top of the System Map or the keyboard shortcuts (listed in the submenus of the main game menu).
Zooming in some, we just fit in Jupiter's orbit, the asteroid belt, and the inner solar system.
Zooming and panning the map are handled by the controls in the upper left of the System Map.
You will then see Earth and its moon, Luna, as well as an icon for the Missile Bases Task Group, that is if you choose to have them.
This is, at heart, the most exciting the System Map gets until missiles start flying. The ugly tab container on the left side of the System Map contains various view filtering tools. I explain them later , since for the most part they're self-explanatory.
This "colony" summary contains a wealth of information about you empire's demographics and capabilities, which will be addressed bit-by-bit.
The "Colony Summary" screen, accessed from the first button on the System Map, is typical of Aurora UI sensibilities. Dense, with multiple control paradigms throughout, and containing buttons that are the only way to access certain screens.
The Empire dropdown contains all races accessible to the player or SpaceMaster. Races may be password protected. Dropdowns like this are present on many dialogs, and are how I switch back and forth between obeying your commands for the UN, and plotting your downfall as the Eurasian Federation.
The Populated Systems treeview allows quick access to any colony belonging to the selected Empire. A system body may have multiple populations (say, of different species), which, for all intents and purposes, are separate colonies. Buttons at the bottom allow the user to hide colonies that only house Civilian Mining Complexes, and to group colonies by function (colonies containing only automated mining facilities, for example, would be categorized as "Automated Mining Colonies").
The Time Control at the top of the screen is a duplicate of the one on the System Map. Time in Aurora was already explained
The buttons on the bottom of the screen are a somewhat random collection. Capital transfers the Empire's capital to the selected colony, Rename Body does just that, but only for the selected empire, Sectors opens the sector configuration dialog (which we'll discuss much later). Transfer transfers the colony wholesale to another Empire. Refresh All refreshes the screen in those odd (but not rare) instances when it hasn't refreshed itself. Geo Status opens the Geological Survey Report (also accessible from the System Map ButtonBar), Design opens the Create Research Project dialog (same). The next two buttons are the only way to access their respective screens: Turrets opens the Turret Design dialog (to be discussed later) and Missiles opens the Missile Design dialog (same). Finally, Abandon abandons the colony and all facilities on it, and Close ... you guessed it: closes the screen.
The Planetary and Sector Governor boxes show the civilian administrators currently assigned to this colony (and the sector that contains it), as well as any stats they have that may apply. We'll go through leaders in a further update.
The remainder of the control is a gridview that contains detailed information about the currently selected "colony", Earth. It is important to note that it only contains information about your empire's assets and capabilities, and makes no mention of any possible other faction's facilities, population, or capabilities. To view those, the player could select the EF from the Empire dropdown and then click the Earth colony, or, as far as you're concerned, place an espionage team (teams and espionage will be covered later).
The default population of any empire is 500 million people, this is not the case, increasing 1.47% annually according to the latest census information. Consisting of some of the richest economies in the world despite the energy crisis, the UN's discretionary spending budget approaches 50 billion euro.
The 2.5 billion are divided roughly into an agriculture/environmental sector (state-subsidized farmers and global energy/conservation concerns) (125 million people), the service industry (1.875 billion), and the manufacturing sector (500 million).
Political status describes the affiliation of the currently selected population, whether it is a native part of your Empire (Imperial Population, like us), or a subjugated species, or somewhere in between. Political status can improve over time for conquered populations.
Species describes the species of the currently selected population.
Planetary suitability gives a measure of how difficult it is to make that colony suitable for habitation by your species. In our case, the cost is 0, since Humans are well adapted to Earth's biosphere.
Administration level required is related to the population of a colony, and describes the minimum administration rating a civilian administrator must have to govern this colony.
Annual wealth creation is a measure of how much "wealth" this colony creates. Wealth is an abstract resource used for various purposes in the game including ship building, ship maintenance, research, and more. Wealth and trade will be covered later.
Population lists the actual population of the colony, and then breaks it down into several categories. Agriculture and Environmental - A percentage of the population of a colony are devoted to feeding the colony. This percentage is based on the colony cost (and thus the "habitability" of the colony). Additional agriculture/environmental workers are required to run any terraformers that might be present at the colony, or if the colony requires extra infrastructure to keep the populace alive (for non-ideal habitats).
Service Industries - A percentage of the population is assumed to be in the service industry. This percentage is dependent on the overall population of the colony.
Manufacturing - The remaining portion of the population is thus made available to work on manufacturing jobs. The manufacturing sector is rather broad and will be broken down below.
Your empire's colony contains no infrastructure geared at dangerous environments.
Colonies with conditions outside the tolerance levels for a species require infrastructure to keep the population alive. This block lists the infrastructure required per million pop, which is related to the colony cost (and thus related to how "extreme" the environment is compared to the baseline for the species). It also lists the current infrastructure (obviously none in our case), as well as the population that could be supported by the current amount (no maximum in our case, since our world is ideal for Humans).
Of the half billion in the manufacturing sector, 2.11 million can be considered to work for state-affiliated or contracted aerospace firms, a quarter million in maintenance and upkeep of our current space assets, a quarter billion in the construction / production sector, and 25 million in state-sponsored research and development (spread across 25 different research institutions). The remainder work in the private sector. Here the base population is 2.5 billion (different from the default 500M but it serve as an example.)
The various production facilities have different staffing requirements. Shipyard workers should be thought of as more than just the actual workers at the shipyards, and rather the people employed through the whole supply chain, from delivering minerals to constructing sub-assemblies. Each shipyard requires 100,000 personnel, and then each shipyard slipway (at which one ship can be constructed) requires a further 1 million personnel. Shipyards will be covered later.
Maintenance workers are those employed in the upkeep of ships at port. They can be thought of as the technicians, welders, and office workers who are involved in the ship maintenance industry. Each maintenance facility adds 200 tons to the maximum ship size the colony can service, and each requires 50,000 personnel. Again, this is an abstraction, and each "facility" should be thought of as a distributed network of related businesses and facilities.
Construction workers will usually make up the bulk of the manufacturing sector. Each point of conventional industry requires 50,000 workers, and is best thought of as a business contracted by the government for some construction or manufacturing purpose. Production and manufacturing will be covered in a later update.
Scientists represent researchers and other technicians and their support workers. Each research facility (again, an abstract concept (noticing a pattern yet?) representing something more akin to a research institution than a single monolithic edifice) requires 1 million workers.
Available workers are those not involved in one of the aforementioned tasks. Instead of being envisioned as unemployed, they should be considered workers involved in non-governmental manufacturing (luxury goods, consumer products, etc) in the private sector.
Your citizen feel mostly secure. If you do not meet the request protection level, there will be unrest, this can be considered as your citizen fearing aliens now that you are a space capable species or just the fact that your massive ships and soldiers give reassurance to your colonists in a harsh environement
Requested and Actual Protection Level describe the security needs of the population. Hostile populations on the doorstep increase the requested level, and placing military assets, whether ground forces or ships, increases the actual protection level. Not having enough protection makes the population unhappy.
Tectonics is a purely flavor element, indicating how active the colony world's interior is.
Geological Team Survey Completed lets the player know whether a geological team has completed a survey of Trans-Newtonian elements on the body. This mechanic will be covered in a further update.
Military academies train naval and ground force officers, civilian administrators, and researchers. Confusing, sure, and there is talk of potentially splitting this up into a military academy and a civilian university, but for now all "leaders" come from the same building. Building more academies at a colony increases the rate at which leaders are produced. Each academy produces 5 "leaders" and 1000 crew per year.
Deep space tracking stations are passive sensors that can detect ships emitting radiation. The strength of the overall station is dependent on both technology and the number of tracking station facilities on the colony.
Maintenance facilities are described above.
Shipyards / slipways are described above.
Conventional industry is a special kind of industry that Conventional Empires start with. It can be converted to construction factories, fuel refineries, and mines, once the right techs have been unlocked. Because it can be converted into all these things, it also counts for mining production and fuel production, though at much lower efficiencies than the dedicated facilities.
Research labs are used to research new technology. Research will be covered later.
Ground force training facilities train ground forces by the battalion, and will be covered again later.
Fuel available is the amount of refined sorium available at the colony. Fuel is in-game only used to fuel ships. Fuel is produced from mined sorium by sorium refineries and by conventional industry (though at a reduced rate compared to the refineries).
Maintenance supplied available are shipboard spares used to repair failures on space ships. Maintenance and overhauls will be covered later.
Thermal and EM signature of colony are the amount of energy being given off by the colony, related to the population and facilities present on the colony. This signature can be detected by passive and active sensors.
Economic Production Modifier will be less than 100% when an Empire is operating at a deficit (i.e. its wealth generation is less than its wealth expenditure). This modifier is applied to the efficiency of all installations that utilize resources (which is most of them).
Manufacturing Efficiency will be less than 100% is not enough workers are available for the manufacturing sector. Planetary radiation (from, say, nuclear bombardment) also decreases this value.
Political Status Production/Wealth/Trade Modifier will be less than 100% for some Political Statuses (subjugated races don't work at full efficiency).
Political Stability Modifier will be less than 100% if a colony is suffering from unrest (due to overcrowding or an insufficient protection level).
What do you mean by running sluggishly? Do your turns take longer? Do you play with a 5-day cycle or 30 days one? or is it an error you are getting?
If the turns are too long, when you create your game there are the orbital motions of asteroids and planets, you should deactivate the motion of the asteroids and if the game is still slow, deactivate the planets as well but be warned that this will remove a major strategic part of the game, it makes logistics and battles way more fun. Also try to avoid giving too much money to the civilian companies, if you give them too much they start making ships like rabbits in heat which slow your game as well. If sometimes your game slow-down to a 5s cycle without reason, this is because the pre-generated NPC from the game start encountered another NPC race and they are fighting, nothing to do here but hope that the battle is quick, to avoid this is just don't take the pre-generated NPC, go look at the first part of the tutorial to find where it is.
ICBMs are the most useless weapons you will ever have and when your empire enters the trans-newtonian age, its a nightmare to improve them so never take that option ever again, the missiles are too slow to follow not even the planets even less for enemy ships, but if you insist on improving them, that's complicated since you will need a lot of technologies that are in in the trans-newtonian age, (fire controls, missile launchers, missile engines, active sensors), after that you will need to create a new PDC design, and refit each ICBM with the new design in the industry tab, don't forget to start producing new missiles, that's important too.
EDIT: Initially its the same as creating a new PDC, so really no one bothers themselves with ICBMs
What do you mean by running sluggishly? Do your turns take longer? Do you play with a 5-day cycle or 30 days one? or is it an error you are getting?
If the turns are too long when you create your game there are the orbital motions of asteroids and planets, you should deactivate the motion of the asteroids and if the game is still slow, deactivate the planets as well but be warned that this will remove a major strategic part of the game, it makes logistics and battles way more fun. Also try to avoid giving too much money to the civilian companies, if you give them too much they start making ships like rabbits in heat which slow your game as well. If sometimes your game slow-down to a 5s cycle without reason, this is because the pre-generated NPC from the game start encountered another NPC race and they are fighting, nothing to do here but hope that the battle is quick, to avoid this is just don't take the pre-generated NPC, go look at the first part of the tutorial to find where it is.
ICBMs are the most useless weapons you will ever have and when your empire enters the trans-newtonian age, its a nightmare to improve them so never take that option ever again, the missiles are too slow to follow not even the planets even less for enemy ships, but if you insist on improving them, that's complicated since you will need a lot of technologies that are in in the trans-newtonian age, (fire controls, missile launchers, missile engines, active sensors), after that you will need to create a new PDC design, and refit each ICBM with the new design in the industry tab, don't forget to start producing new missiles, that's important too.
I mean its taking a long, long time between cycles, I usually go with 30 day cycles. I had asteroids turned off, but I'll turn off planet and moon motion as well.
So they are basically mechanically useless, and just for roleplay purposes on a conventional start? Well might as well turn them off then.
I mean its taking a long, long time between cycles, I usually go with 30 day cycles. I had asteroids turned off, but I'll turn off planet and moon motion as well.
So they are basically mechanically useless, and just for roleplay purposes on a conventional start? Well might as well turn them off then.
Just for roleplay purposes, there is no need for them unless you are feeling like it. Forgot to say this but reduce the number of systems there is in your game by a couple of hundreds, since you won't even see a third of it, it tends to slow your game too and disable detection in certain key systems it's useful when playing with several player Empires. it's in the Sensor tab of the system map window
Just for roleplay purposes, there is no need for them unless you are feeling like it. Forgot to say this but reduce the number of systems there is in your game by a couple of hundreds, since you won't even see a third of it, it tends to slow your game too and disable detection in certain key systems it's useful when playing with several player Empires. it's in the Sensor tab of the system map window
Oh, good idea. That should help it run better for sure.
Anyway, I'm just messing around with the ship design systems, and trying to learn what all needs what, and where everything is.
So far I've discovered that its impossible to build pre-TN fighters, as you have to have an active/missile control sensor that you can't get while still a conventional empire.
Not sure where to design the missiles themselves at, as it doesn't seem to be in the same window with designing engines, sensors, and whatnot.
Oh, good idea. That should help it run better for sure.
Anyway, I'm just messing around with the ship design systems, and trying to learn what all needs what, and where everything is.
So far I've discovered that its impossible to build pre-TN fighters, as you have to have an active/missile control sensor that you can't get while still a conventional empire.
Not sure where to design the missiles themselves at, as it doesn't seem to be in the same window with designing engines, sensors, and whatnot.
An advice for new players, don't bother trying to create 'Fighters' for your first games, since it pretty hard early on to respect the 500t limit, get all necessary technologies (fighter fuel tank, small engineering spaces etc...) so you better stick with standard military ship ranging from 5k ton to 15k t depending on what ship you want to make, don't forget that military ships need to be fast to escape enemy missiles. I will talk about this later when I will get to the design tab.
This is the industry overview tab. Note that this is the same window as the colony summary, just a different tab. A large portion of Aurora's functionality is available through this screen and its various tabs. This update will cover the Industry, Mining/Maintenance, and Research tabs, since they are of paramount importance to a burgeoning empire.
Your empire per default has 1000 conventional industry capacity available. Conventional industry is a special type available only to Conventional-start empires. It can be used for construction, mining, and fuel refining, although the TN facilities for these purposes are far more efficient. Conventional industry can be converted into TN Construction Factories, Fuel Refineries, Ordnance Factories, Fighter Factories, and Mines once the appropriate tech has been researched.
The Construction Options dropdown allows different classes of construction targets to be displayed. Each construction project also has an associated cost in construction capacity, wealth and TNEs. The cost in wealth is equal to the cost in construction capacity. This will be a recurring theme for all production in the game. The specifics of the TNEs will be discussed below.
Your options:
Installations
While the game treats these as monolithic edifices that employ workers, I find it better to imagine them as distributed industries.
Financial Centres produce raw production capacity. Each centre requires 50,000 population to operate.
Infrastructure is required to support populations in non-ideal environments and can be thought of as habitats, power systems, and life support for colony-based living. Cost/unit: 2 production capacity, 2 Duranium
Maintenance Facilities prevent ships in orbit from suffering maintenance failures, and also keeps their overhaul clocks from ticking up. These concepts will be discussed later. These facilities should be thought of as all the necessary infrastructure for the upkeep of space ships.
Military academies produce leaders (naval and ground force officers, researchers and civilian administrators). Each academy produces 5 leaders and 1000 crewmen per year.
Missiles
Missiles are produced using ordnance factories, you don't have any per default. Missile designs must be reasearched before they are available for production.
The only current missile design is the Conventional ICBM, which is a special built-in missile type for Conventional Empires.
Fighters
Fighters are small craft using a special engine. They are built using Fighter Factories, you don't have any per default. Fighters can be built as soon as they are designed, but constructing one locks in the design and no further changes can be made to it, this happens to the ships as well.
Ship Components
Ship components can be pre-fabricated using industrial capacity, which will speed up ship-building times since the components do not need to be assembled at the shipyard itself. Currently only two ship components are available to be pre-fabricated: the ICBM Launch Control, a fire control computer used to launch ICBMs, and the Luxury Passenger Accomodation, a small module that can carry 250 passengers.
Note: Luxury Passenger Accomodation are usually used by civial companies and is for pure roleplay purposes.
Build PDC / Orbital Habitat
PDCs are Planetary Defense Centres, ground bases that can perform a variety of military tasks. Essentially any module that can be fitted to a space ship can be fitted to a PDC, and since they are non-mobile and don't need to be space-rated, PDCs are often significantly cheaper than comparable space ships. PDCs built using this option are installed upon completion on the colony that builds them. Conventional Empires has access to building the "Missile Complex"-class PDC, which contains an ICBM launcher, an ICBM fire control, and space for the storage of 10 ICBMs. Orbital Habitats are essentially ships without engines. They can serve as habitats for workers on colonies that cannot be inhabited (asteroids, worlds with out-of-tolerance gravity, etc). We will cover Orbital Habitats in more depth later.
Prefab PDC
This Construction Option allows the construction of the same kinds of PDCs as "Build PDC". The difference is that a prefabricated PDC is left unassembled, so it can be loaded into a cargo ship and moved elsewhere.
Assemble PDC
This Construction Option requires the presence of a complete set of pre-fabbed PDC components, and either a construction factory or an Engineer Brigade. The PDC will then be assembled.
Note: This is often used by experieced players to assemble a hidden PDC in a unhabitable planet near an enemy system.
Refit PDC
This Construction Option allows PDCs to be updated (say, with new missile launchers or better fire controls). The cost to do so depends on the differences between the original PDC class and the class it is being refitted to.
Maintenance Supplies
Industrial capacity is used to create maintenance supplies, which ships carry and use to fix maintenance failures and combat damage.
This pane shows the Construction capacity available at this colony: 5000. This value essentially means this empire has available to it 5000 construction points per year. It could build one 5000-cost project in one year, or 10 500-cost projects in one year, or one 500-cost projects in 1/10 of a year. Mousing over the value will reveal the production rates for construction, fighters, and ordnance used to calculate it. We have 0 TN Construction Factories, 0 Engineering Brigades, and 5000 Conventional Industry, which yields 5000 total industry.
The industrial allocation gridview shows this colony's current production projects.
Project is the actual project being constructed or produced. Most items are listed under the "Construction Factories" heading, while missile production is listed under "Ordnance Factories" and fighter production is listed under "Fighter Factories."
Amount Remaining is the number of items left in the ordered production run. Here, they are all at their starting values.
% of Capacity is the important item to take away here. You can assign some portion of your total industrial capacity to each project. Items pay also be queued by assigning them values that would take the sum over 100%. In our example, we have allocated 45% of production to completing 10 new Financial Centres, 15% to producing 1000 maintenance supplies, and 65% to producing 100 infrastructure. However, since the 45 + 15 + 65 = 125, the bottommost project is put into a queued mode. It will begin production when enough production capacity has freed up from completing other projects.
Production Rate is the absolute amount of production capacity being used for this project. It is just the % of capacity times the total capacity.
Cost per item is the production cost of each item in the project. Each Financial Centre costs 240 production points.
Estimated completion date is when the game projects, given no interruptions, the production run will be completed. It can be calculated by Time-to-complete (in years) = (Amount remaining * Cost per item) / Production rate. For our financial centers, we have TTC = (10 * 240) / 2250 = 2400 / 2250 = 1.06 years, and we see that the run is projected to end just over one year from today.
Pause/Queue is a status indicator. Production runs can be paused (which does not free up the assigned production capacity) or moved down to the queue, which does.
Unused Construction/Ordnance Capacity/Fighter Capacity makes it easy to see at a glance how much free production capacity is available.
This pane contains the actual conrols for adding, modifying, and cancelling production projects.
Number of items is the number of items (installations, fighters, missiles, etc) to produce in the run.
Percentage is the percentage of the appropriate type of production capacity to use for the project. Using a value that would make the total over 100% results in the project being placed into the queued mode (if creating a new project) or an error (if modifying an existing project).
New Fighters is used to specify the Task Force that newly produced fighters should be placed in on completion. We'll cover this later.
New creates a new project, Modify modifies an existing selected project, Cancel gets rid of an existing selected project (any fully completed items are retained, any fractional items are lost), Pause pauses an existing selected project, and SM Add, when in SpaceMaster mode, allows for directly adding a specified number of installations, missiles, PDCs, etc to the colony.
The arrows on the right of the pane allow moving projects up and down in the list. Moving an item below all other active projects will place it in queued mode. If enough unused capacity remains, a project can be moved from the queue up into the active projects.
This pane details the sorium refining status of this colony. This Empire's 5000 conventional industry allows it to produce 5 million litres of refined sorium fuel per year at this colony. Refineries are more efficient at producing sorium than conventional industry. As processing hasn't started yet, the reserves on Earth are at 0 litres. The Start and Stop buttons allow refined sorium production to be turned on and off for this colony, which may be necessary if there is a worker shortage.
Note : 'RP' You can take this as the strategic reserve for your empire's ship, after the civilian and commercial sector takes its share.
State of the Empire, 1st January 2025: Mining
Duranium. Most common ore and used to build factories, mines and ship structures.
Neutronium. Very dense material used for shipyards, advanced armors and kinetic weapons such as railguns or orbital bombardment systems.
Corbomite. Used for advanced shields, stealth systems and electronic warfare systems.
Tritanium. The primary material used in many missile technologies and in the construction of ordnance factories.
Boronide. The primary material used in the construction of power systems and capacitors and also for the creation of Terraforming facilities.
Sorium. Used for construction of jump drives and jump gates. Also refined by fuel refineries to produce fuel.
Uridium. Used in sensors and fire control systems.
Corundium. The primary material used in almost all energy weapons as well as mining installations.
Mercassium. Used for Research Facilities, life support systems and tractor beams.
Vendarite. Used in the construction of fighters, fighter factories and fighter bases.
Gallicite. Used in the construction of engines, including missile and fighter engines.
The mining report on the Mining/Maintenance tab gives details about the mineral wealth of a colony. We will be covering the Maintenance portion (the lower half) in a later update.
Ground-based Mines determines the overall mining capability of the colony. Each point of conventional industry counts as 1/10 of a ground-based mine, so our effective number of ground-based mines is 500. Annual production (Accessibility 1.0) multiplies the effective ground-based mines by our current mining rate (which can be improved through technology). Our current rate is 10, so our total production is 5000 tons / year for each mineral, assuming they have accessibility 1.0. Minerals with lower accessibilities have their annual production scaled by their accessibility. (A 0.5 accessibility mineral would produce half as much in a year as a 1.0 accessiblity mineral). Mass Driver Destinaton specifies the location in system where any present mass-drivers will launch their mineral packets. This mechanism can be used to concentrate minerals from various system bodies at one central location. A mass driver must be present on the receiving world or circumstances become quite dire.
Note : You will literally bomb your planets if you aren't careful to make sure there is a Mass Driver at the destination.
The minerals gridview is fairly straightforward. Our stockpile is currently empty because we haven't processed any turns.
Mineral lists the mineral in question.
Quantity is the amount of the mineral (in tonnes) available on the body. Note that this is shared across all colonies that might be on the body, so these minerals are all Earth has. If two diffrent empires coexist on a colony, they will tap on the same ressources.
Acces. is the accessiblity of the mineral, which determines its annual yield. As deposits are mined out, their accessibilities decrease, though there is a lower limit.
Annual production is the amount of this mineral mined per year.
Years to depletion is an estimate of the length of time the current quantity of mineral will last given current production. Note that this only takes into account mining from the currently selected population. Other populations mining on the same body will reduce this time.
Stockpile is the current amount of this mineral stockpiled at this population.
Recent SP +/- is the change in the stockpile over the last time increment. This is one of the things that happens during every construction cycle.
Mass Driver +/- is the amount of minerals fired off or caught by the mass driver on this colony.
Stockpile plus production is the projected amount of mineral the colony would have at the end of one year, ignoring consumption.
Projected Usage is the estimated consumption of the mineral, considering all currently running production projects, ship building tasks, mainteance usage, and a year of supply production.
Reserve Level allows a minimum amount of mineral to be stockpiled. In one of the more baffling UI decisions, this is set by double clicking the appropriate mineral row in the gridview.
I'd play this game if you outbid my current company's hourly wage, but as I only have a graduate degree I'm not sure I qualify. Do I have to go to technical school for this?
I admit this game takes a little bit of effort but nothing as difficult as a company, it's more simple than that even simpler than DF. It really isn't appealing to the eye but what got me into the game were the AAR, I always liked those detailed stories but they always went a way I didn't like, so I started playing the game, had fun being utterly destroyed by NPC as I didn't even know how to fire my ships. The fun part is they can't because I didn't even load them with missiles:lol after getting the handle of the game, I always imagine a backstory for my empire and interactions between NPC races or my officers etc... But it's absolutely not for a casual gamer indeed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I gave this game a try but I simply could not get into it. the true attraction of a game like this, at least to me is the whole idea of role-playing a space empire, my space empire and the utterly bare-bones nature of the graphics precludes this because I simply cant feel it, and that is just unbearable when it comes to a game that requires massive investment.
I gave this game a try but I simply could not get into it. the true attraction of a game like this, at least to me is the whole idea of role-playing a space empire, my space empire and the utterly bare-bones nature of the graphics precludes this because I simply cant feel it, and that is just unbearable when it comes to a game that requires massive investment.
I gave this game a go a while back and quite enjoyed it, but after I felt I'd finished up my third or fourth game, I got distracted by other stuff, and I feel like getting back into it now would require relearning everything, when I don't really have time for that. That said, if someone here does a LP or AAR, I'd happily read it.
Now you don't need to understand anything here just slide your cursor on 'New' and click and then you are slapped by a most beautiful display, 'the game creation menu'
