Requesting ease of fleet micro and exploration tips.

[Serim (OP)]

Hello, I've been playing (or at least attempting to play) Aurora for a couple months now and I've hit a few walls that are really irritating me to the point of not exploring the universe.    I suppose I'll put them into a list and hope some tips and tricks are given out that can benefit new players in enjoying the game more. 

1) How do I survey a system with jump ships, have them return for fuel (instead of drifting off toward an objective ignoring the below 30% refuel command) and have said ships return to the system to continue surveying without having to punch in 20 orders? I guess in short how to I auto explore?

2) Is there an easier way to command large fleets, such as fighters, without having to individually tell each one to auto fire their weapons?

3) Am I able to use the fleet command structure to directly issue orders without having to create many task groups?

4) Are ships able to continue with previous orders after being issued the refuel override? (pretty much like question 1 but for things like cargo ships dedicated to one system.  )

5) Why is it that when I order a ship to overhaul it just sits there for an eternity, do i need to assign a shipyard or something? (issue with fighters and larger ships.  )

6) If I run out of all fuel stores should I just quit?

Hopefully these will be answered and I'll have thought of more questions, sorry if these are repeats from previous posts but I find my searching skills to be inadequate and couldn't find the requested info.
*I just noticed the tutorial for searching on the site so time to give that another go

[Erik L]

The tutorial is a bit out of date. But there is also the wiki (aurorawiki.pentarch.org).

1. Set up orders for surveying. Very similar to setting conditional orders. It's in the same area. Select "Survey next 5 locations" or "Survey next 3 bodies" depending on what type of survey you want. I personally set survey fleets to refuel at 50%.

2. Explore the F8 screen (and the related wiki page).

3. Not quite sure what you mean here. If you have TF1, which has TG1.1 TG1.2 and TG1.3, can you order TF1 to do something and TG1.1-1.3 perform the orders? I don't believe so.

4. Only if they have set standard orders. You can indefinitely cycle orders like:
     1. Fly to Mars
     2. Pick up minerals
     3. Fly to Earth
     4. Unload minerals
     5. (here I add) Refuel
     This way they won't run out of fuel. Unless the planet does.

5. Do you order the ship to perform the overhaul at a planet with shipyards? Overhauls take a long time, which increases depending on the time since the last overhaul.

6. You could SM yourself some stocks in. You could build a fuel harvester and park it around a gas giant with sorium.

[Serim (OP)]

Thank you for the speedy reply Erik.    I've been poking around the program and things have gotten a bit easier already, though I must pose further questions.     That F8 screen just about made my day! :3

In relation to Q1, am I able to command my survey ships to return to the unexplored system automatically after the conditional refueling in a different system?

For #3 I've discovered that you can commit mass orders to fleets using something called subordinate formations.    Basically what I did was created "Survey Command" and then had each of my 3 survey ships in their own task group.     On the special orders / organization tab of the task groups you can select a superior formation, I did so for all 3 ships being under the command group, which was empty.     In the orders tab of the same window there is a copy orders to subordinate formation section which allows you to copy even the conditionals to all subordinate formations.     This method I imagine being full of clutter; however, it beats giving the same commands 3 times so far.   

For #4 I can only assume that refueling takes little to no time since you have it included in each command cycle, thanks for the heads up.   

On 5 I do perform the overhauls at a planet with shipyards, maybe I'll put a scrap ship on overhaul and just see what happens after I progress a little further.   

6 But that would be cheating  ;p

*Oh, and do fighters have to be overhauled? I noticed all the names of active fighters changed after I modified their blueprint.

[alex_brunius]

*Oh, and do fighters have to be overhauled? I noticed all the names of active fighters changed after I modified their blueprint.

Currently there is a bug where the design of fighters and PDC is not locked after you start building them. This means you can change all your fighters in service by changing their design!
It is fixed for 6.40.

[Erik L]

Thank you for the speedy reply Erik.    I've been poking around the program and things have gotten a bit easier already, though I must pose further questions.     That F8 screen just about made my day! :3

In relation to Q1, am I able to command my survey ships to return to the unexplored system automatically after the conditional refueling in a different system?

The triggering of conditional orders wipes all of the current order stack. Mainly because the program cannot insert orders at the beginning of the stack, only the end. So once your ships finish refueling, just order them back to the system they were in and the standard orders of surveying will come into play again.

For #3 I've discovered that you can commit mass orders to fleets using something called subordinate formations.    Basically what I did was created "Survey Command" and then had each of my 3 survey ships in their own task group.     On the special orders / organization tab of the task groups you can select a superior formation, I did so for all 3 ships being under the command group, which was empty.     In the orders tab of the same window there is a copy orders to subordinate formation section which allows you to copy even the conditionals to all subordinate formations.     This method I imagine being full of clutter; however, it beats giving the same commands 3 times so far.  

For #4 I can only assume that refueling takes little to no time since you have it included in each command cycle, thanks for the heads up.  

About 5 seconds.

On 5 I do perform the overhauls at a planet with shipyards, maybe I'll put a scrap ship on overhaul and just see what happens after I progress a little further.  

6 But that would be cheating  ;p

*Oh, and do fighters have to be overhauled? I noticed all the names of active fighters changed after I modified their blueprint.

[Hawkeye]

On 5 I do perform the overhauls at a planet with shipyards, maybe I'll put a scrap ship on overhaul and just see what happens after I progress a little further.   

Make sure you have enough maintenance facilities for the size of the ship you want to overhaul.

[joeclark77]

On 5 I do perform the overhauls at a planet with shipyards, maybe I'll put a scrap ship on overhaul and just see what happens after I progress a little further. 

I think overhauling depends on maintenance facilities (and minerals), not shipyards. 

Only "military" designs have the need for maintenance, so if you are ordering a freighter to overhaul then it's not going to do anything. 

If you order a military ship to overhaul, it will go and sit at the planet.  You'll get no message until the overhaul is complete (although in the mean time you'll get a message about the crew having had sufficient shore leave).  However, if you look at the TG in the Task Group window, at the top where it lists the ships in the task group some of them will have "overhaul" next to their names.  While they're in that state, their maintenance clocks move backwards toward zero.  If you try to order them to move, they will not go anywhere, unless you "abandon overhaul" (and that's not instant).

A wise course of action is to have at least two military fleets, so at least one is free to respond to threats while the other is in overhaul, because maintenance can take them out of action for several months.