Hey there folks!
Just found Aurora a few days ago and having a blast so far, but have a few questions that I havent managed to solve yet. Im playing largely unspoiled, i've not watched videos or taken a proper look at this forum or the wiki, largely for fear of learning more than I want to. Im playing v5. 5. 4, not sure why I didnt end up with the latest version, but this is what i'm running on for now, i'll update for my second game.
Im currently about 65 years in. I've mapped and gated all the systems I could find for three jumps out from Sol and am currently in an industrial build-up phase, getting mines distributed and terraforming a couple of likely looking worlds. I have met with two alien vessels during this time; the first a civilian scout of some sort who popped up on thermal, I activated my transponder, said 'Hi' and bailed out of the system while assigning a diplomatic team back on Earth. Relations with this race are at about 5,000. The other contact went less pleasantly, a geo-scanner found himself being active pinged by a particularly fast vessel which then appeared to nuke him with missiles. I likewise bailed on that system and set up diplomatic channels, but after about a year of poor attempts at contact the team concluded that these aliens were just 'too alien'.
So now, the questions:
1. The first empire I made contact with are sharing gravitational and geological data according to the diplomatic screen. How do I actually access this? I do not seem to have any knowledge I havent gathered myself. Is this because I dont actually know where these aliens are? My contact was with a scout, I have not located any of their systems. If I find them will all that data suddenly fill itself in?
2. "Too alien" to ever make contact. Did I mess up this First Contact? Perhaps the Diplomatic Team wasnt skilled enough, and the year they spent fumbling communications turned these guys against me? If there are enemies out there that are always hostile, and this looks like that, then just say so, no need to go into detail as I'm sure they'll be back to introduce themselves.
3. Sectors. How do I go about declaring a new sector? So far I'm able to keep adding systems to the Earth sector, but I want to create a new one around a habitable system a few jumps out.
4. Galaxy Map. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but new systems appear stacked on top of each other and I generally cant use this window at all. Its getting to the point where I cant remember which systems are connected to which, and it can take me 5-10 minutes to plot a course from Sol to X while I figure out where it is. Not much helped by having half a dozen 'Gliese' or whatever. Is there anyway I can rearrange how these are spaced?
5. Ship Design. This is a really deep feature and I'm loving it, but a few bits where I flail helplessly.
Missiles: I design these from the button on the industry tab, otherwise this then behaves just like any other component I might design through the 'new tech' button in the ship design interface? So I design a launcher from the ship interface and mount it on the ship, I design the missile in industry. . . how do I then tell my munitions factories to actually make the ammo?
Likewise fighters and fighter factories, I design a fighter class and then theres some way to tell those factories to build some? Still dabbling here, thus far I've just not used fighters or missiles.
Fire Control. After much swearing, trial and error (mostly the latter) I managed to figure out how to design an FC to work with my lasers, tracking-based for point defense, range for main batteries and so on. My question is how do I get two FC on the same ship to behave the way I want? So I have a fire control set for range and a few long ranged lasers, then another fire control set for tracking, and a cluster of turrets. Looking at the design specs all the weapons are slaved to the tracking FC, how do I specify which boards control which weapons? Is this something I should be doing for every military ship that launches? So far I just build them and park them at strategic locations, but none have ever encountered a hostile so I dont know if anyone would actually fire should the need arise.
Hope I've been clear with what I'm asking here, I've been trying to avoid tutorials and such, but if there are spoiler-free wiki pages with useful mechanics or some-such then please do link me.