some questions i haven't found answers to

[jtgasv (OP)]

so having been dabling for a few weeks im finally playing a game that's lasting longer than a couple days before getting demolished but from my last game had a few questions/issues.

1.  how many research labs do people tend to build up?  i thought I was doing fairly well rushing to 50 earlier on but when I ended up stumbling on a couple npr's they were so far past me tech wise there was no chance of fighting them.
2.  similarly.   how early do you start a military force and how much of your research goes into military technology? my small fleet of 1x24kt 6x12kt and 10x6kt did well at fighting a couple ships I assumed were precursors but upon encountering an npr their military made mine look like that you'd find for a minor race in other games.
3.  if im mostly using spaceports, is there any reason to use shuttle/ordanance transfer stations, etc. ?

and last part for now. 
Having excavated ruins i ended up with a bunch of stuff and had some issues.   some of this may be bug related and ill search for that next.
4.  when disassembling to get research from components I started getting spammed with "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" with various error numbers.   sometimes 5-10x in a row depending on how many I was disassembling.
if I can repeat this again ill post in the appropriate channel but seemed to happen with weapon and electronic warfare systems.
also had an issue where tech points I gained from disassembling actually reset a tech I was close to completing back to 0% progress.

5.  and related to shuttle/ordanance stations.   . . .    how do you get rid of installations you arent using to free up manufacturing worker population.  ie.   recycling excessive terraformers, ground force complexes, genetic modification centers, or other ones im not using.  . . . ?

[amram]

Your going to get a wide range of answers, because aurora is just one of those games with no right way to play - even getting pasted by the first npr you encounter isn't a loss really - empires fall, its just that in aurora it can be yours too.

I can weigh in on the first two at least. 

1) I always have more and more labs in construction.  I only stop making labs because I have a resource shortage, a population shortage, or an income shortage.  I have a low tech rate game(10%), where I had a absolutely obscene pile of mercassium on venus and mercury, so I've built a ridiculous number of mines, automines, and labs(620 labs on earth) and I occasionally bump that further as population allows.  When I finally felt brave enough to leave sol, since I'd done a conventional start, I found that I was quite far ahead of the first npr I encountered.

2) Military buildup, at least enough to defend myself, starts as soon as I start leaving my home system.  Before that the chance of an encounter is very small, so I push techs, and keep some small craft designs ready so I crash build a missile based defence if I need it.  Usually around Ion I start launching offensives, though in the game I mention above, that started with Nuclear Pulse engines, since I had a few resource shortages to resolve, so I had to expand quickly and find them, and expanding means encounters in the near future.

3) I don't use them either, so I'll defer to those who do for reasons why you want to. 
4) is possibly a bug report. 
5) is I think something you cannot do directly, I don't recall aurora ever letting you do that.  That said, you could create a colony somewhere you don't car about, say, a random asteroid, ship them there, and abandon the colony.  You don't get anything back, but they are effectively "decomissioned"

[xenoscepter]

If you are using Spaceports there is no reason to use a Refuelling Station, Ordinance Transfer Station, OR any of the Hub versions.

However, if you have a Spaceport AND one or more Maintenance Facilities at the same world, then Cargo Shuttle Stations will increase the MSP transfer rate. This allows you to resupply ships faster.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Some of my thought on these questions...

1. You continue to build labs as many as you can afford to run them. You have to constantly juggle, cost, maintenance and population to run them versus everything else that you need. I would tend to use about 20-40% of Earths industry on labs continuously until I run into population constraints.

2. This is all about role play versus game play in my opinion. As Aurora are mainly a role-play platform I tend to go with that. If I for example play a unified earth game where there are no hostile species and we know nothing about hostile species that is how I approach the game, we have no reason to believe that we will ever meet anything hostile out there. In my case that means we start exploring space as fast as we can, the only military we have is what is needed to keep population happy at the colonies.

When and if we meet anything that is hostile we have to react to that as it happen... in my opinion this is the most fun way to approach Aurora 4x. It also give you a greater challenge to overcome during your game.

Either you play the game as a gamer or you play it as the people that inhabits that imaginary world, the choice is yours... there is no right or wrong.

3. Already answered by others...

4. Seems like a bug...

5. You can use SM to delete "shut them off" and then add them back "re enable them" when you need them. That is the simplest way to do allot of things in this game in terms of role-play. SM is a powerful tool so use that to do what you need to be done.

[dag0net]

4: Believe Steve has posted that he's fixed those bugs for next version.

Fixed 'Object reference' bug when gaining tech points to complete a non-active research project.
In v.1.11, command and control systems are treated as a single tech line for disassembly, so CIC might give points for AUX. In v1.12, all C&C systems are treated individually.

5: Either a)Pick them up and dump them on a storage colony on a useless(unpopulated anyway) world
or b) turn on SM mode and delete them from 'Economy>Civilian Economy tab

1: Never have enough Research Labs, tho I suppose on average I have 15-25% of construction set to RL. RL are population & wealth hogs tho
So I prefer to setup colonies (say on Luna) that do nothing other than import research labs & civilian sectors(financial centers) from places with minerals/construction facilities. Automated Mining colonies (on planets, not lg) that only export are ok for this too tho if colcost/terraform potential isn't too bad an option, tho keeping rl's in Sol reduces transport overheads & risk to terraformers.

This might be a bad idea in games with invaders, when dispersal of assets is dangerous even within the same system, haven't had them flagged since c# launched tho.




As to #2:

Agree with Jorgen, would add that Earthers are concerned with Earth & some STO's can stave off annihilation of the HW, almost useless if you're running close to the bone on minerals and have to maintain complete control of Sol assets ofc.
If you get a mineral heavy venus/mars then early defence of Sol is easy.

Umm, which makes me think... The big numbers (millions of minerals on a planet) are not meaningless, but the important thing is the accessibility, it takes decades to mine the meager even at 1. This is obvious, but I (and I suspect many ppl) am still (somewhat irrationally) drawn to the big reserves.
That construction rate for rl's depends on stuff tho ofc, i mean, as with everything else, more construction facilities means less % for same construction rate, but if your mines aren't keeping up..
Current game has 15% of Sol's employed pop as scientists.

so having been dabling for a few weeks im finally playing a game that's lasting longer than a couple days before getting demolished but from my last game had a few questions/issues.

1.  how many research labs do people tend to build up?  i thought I was doing fairly well rushing to 50 earlier on but when I ended up stumbling on a couple npr's they were so far past me tech wise there was no chance of fighting them.
2.  similarly.   how early do you start a military force and how much of your research goes into military technology? my small fleet of 1x24kt 6x12kt and 10x6kt did well at fighting a couple ships I assumed were precursors but upon encountering an npr their military made mine look like that you'd find for a minor race in other games.
3.  if im mostly using spaceports, is there any reason to use shuttle/ordanance transfer stations, etc. ?

and last part for now. 
Having excavated ruins i ended up with a bunch of stuff and had some issues.   some of this may be bug related and ill search for that next.
4.  when disassembling to get research from components I started getting spammed with "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" with various error numbers.   sometimes 5-10x in a row depending on how many I was disassembling.
if I can repeat this again ill post in the appropriate channel but seemed to happen with weapon and electronic warfare systems.
also had an issue where tech points I gained from disassembling actually reset a tech I was close to completing back to 0% progress.

5.  and related to shuttle/ordanance stations.   . . .    how do you get rid of installations you arent using to free up manufacturing worker population.  ie.   recycling excessive terraformers, ground force complexes, genetic modification centers, or other ones im not using.  . . . ?

[Froggiest1982]

5. I use to keep a moon with all stuff parked on like a warehouse and designated as military colony (otherwise civilian might flight there as I keep also some infrastructure). Fuel refineries and maintanance switched off sometimes etc.

However, recently I use more stations so refineries and terraform are out of the picture almost immediately.

Ground units I generally build on site moving only the mineralsand that helps too.

The downside is you to bear the heavy lifting, but as I play very slow games I don't ming to get busy from time to time.

[Garfunkel]

You cannot predict what size spoilers/NPR fleets will be so there is no exact blueprint for your fleet nor a tonnage size or ship numbers. A 6kt ship can be vastly more powerful than a 20kt ship but a low-tech fleet can still outnumber and outmass a high-tech fleet. NPR fleet sizes depend on how advanced and big you are, and whether the NPR was created at game creation or at system generation. Plus there's a significant random element.

Using STO to defend your colonies in Sol and making sure you have at least some ships defending the jump points is a good start and a beneficial fallback in case you find yourself on the strategic defensive - they will buy you time to build more and better ships. For an example of a campaign where humanity was really pushed to the brink of extinction, I recommend reading Kurt's Corporate Federation story here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10033.0