I have been thinking long and hard about where I want to go with Aurora and the uses to which I might put the game once v4.0 is out and any bugs are fixed. Obviously I will continue to add functionality and I have a LONG list of player suggestions and my own ideas which will appear over the coming months. However, I am thinking in more general terms. It would be great if I could find a way to generate some income from the game so I could devote more time to it but I want the software to be freely available so I am not considering charging for it, mainly because I have always enjoyed the community aspect of both SA and Aurora and partly because I would feel obligated to provide a certain level of support if Aurora was commercial and that would take away some of the fun.
One option I have considered was to create a good quality manual as briefly discussed in another thread. In that case I would charge for the manual but the software would remain free and players could use the software without having to buy a manual. It would be an option for those who wanted a less steep learning curve. However, I know myself well enough to realise that adding functionality is a lot more fun than writing manuals so it would take a long time and the market for such a manual would be fairly small. Aurora is not exactly a mass-market game. The best option in terms of a manual is probably as suggested by Erik that players get together and create a tutorial or wiki page that is freely available.
In the end I have decided to pursue another course. The reason for Aurora was to allow me (and others) to write fiction. Although I have written up a number of test campaigns and I will continue to do so, what I really want to do is create a stand alone book that would be readable by someone who didn't even play the game. I considered a novel but after some self-analysis I realised that what I like to do is write detailed fictional histories. Sort of a fictional non-fiction book if that makes sense. It would be along the lines of The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett rather than something like Red Storm Rising (although the latter was a great book, I'm not Tom Clancy
). In this case I would play the campaign, write it up myself as I went along then go back and revisit everything so it made a more coherent whole. The book would include maps, chapters on the politics of the nations involved, "historical" events, ship design and weapon design for those who did play the game, and it would have a definite story line and conclusion, unlike the open-ended Rigellian Diary or current Commonwealth campaign. There could be more than one book in the series but each book would stand-alone in terms of the "historical" period it covered. I have no idea what I might charge for this book or even if I would self-publish or try and get published by someone else but I have reached the decision that I am going to (try to) write it.
To accomplish this goal, at some point after v4.1 I will be setting up a huge Aurora game featuring all the nations that might get involved if something like TN physics was a reality. In this case, I will probably have to play 30+ nations and the smaller ones would be NPRs or at least player races with heavy automation involved. The book would be a detailed history of humanity's expansion in space with all the associated politics, conflict and alien encounters. With this in mind, just setting up the starting parameters for each nation is going to be a challenge. Rather than have an EU "race", a South American "race" or America plus allies, I will play the individual countries such as France, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Canada, etc. but bear in mind the existing political affiliations, so the EU nations might share technology for example.
With that in mind if there are any economists on the list, I would be very interested to hear their opinions on the best figures to use to simulate the comparative national economies. GDP seems better than GNP but I am undecided between a straightforward GDP based on dollar exchange rates or the purchasing power parity (PPP) version. The latter seems to me to be much more realistic in terms of representing a nation's economic potential but I haven't studied economics since sixth-form college 25 years ago so I could be completely wrong. Any advice in this area would be greatly appreciated.
I would also appreciate any comments or suggestions on the type of content that would appeal to people who might read such a book.
Steve