Game pacing / milestones

[Somnus (OP)]

I was wondering what you all have found to be a good pace, or what milestones you like to reach by certain times. For instance, where is a good place to be after 5 or 10 years, etc?

[telegraph]

1. Build stuff on Earth.
2. Burn through Earth's resources to the dangerously low levels.
3. Since you now have a reason for spaceflight - design first ship and explore solar system.
3a. while at it - colonize luna.
4. Build stuff in Sol.
4a. while at it - colonize everything colonizable and start terraforming everything not-terraformed.
5. Burn through Sol resources to dangerously low levels.
5a. While at it - specialize your colonies, as you will soon run out of workers on Earth.
6. Since you now have a reason for interstellar flight - research a first jump-capable ship and survey surrounding systems.
6a. Find some spoilers and some aliens. Lose some ships.
7. Colonize and exploit nearby systems. Fight the spoilers and try to make alliance with other races.
8. Burn through available resources to dangerously low levels.
9. Backstab allied alien empire for resources.

So in five years you should be on step 2. in ten years - on step 3-3a.

[Aloriel]

Disagree with Telegraph here.

Don't burn through Earth's resources to dangerously low levels, THEN start exploring. Explore WHILE using Earth's resources. If you wait until you are almost out of something before you explore, you may not be able to build something you need!

Same with all other references to resources at dangerously low levels.

An example to prove my point:
I had a game where the Sol system did not have a critical mineral, except in trace quantities (<10000), and except on Earth of course (and Earth was low from the start). I want to say it was something as important as Duranium, but not actually Duranium. As a result, construction of various facilities (specifically MINES!) ground to a halt until I found another source two jumps away. I was also unable to build ships that required the mineral. For a brief time, I had only the ships I had on hand. For a MUCH longer time, I had to wait for mining of the mineral to get to a sustainable level where production wasn't halted every few months because the last shipment had run out.

Never let yourself get to extremely low levels without exploring, or you might face worse than I did. If I hadn't been exploring, I might have gotten actually stuck.

It's actually lucky I found that planet. It was extremely rich in the mineral, and its immediate neighbor also had a fairly rich supply. Too bad the extremely rich one was uninhabitable...

[Paul M]

Depending on your starting conditions what you can expect to have in hand in any period of time is going to change.

What you need to do in my view is establish the following long term goals:

1.  Some colonies in Sol.  This is good for getting your internal economy moving.  It gives you practice at the things that you need to do later.
2.  Explore your home system and the near neighbors.  This requires developing exploration vessels and the technology for them.
3.  Pick a system and start colonizing it.  This requires the construction of a government freighter fleet, terraformers, gate construction ships, etc.
4.  Get a fuel harvester system up and running.  Because you will have a fuel crisis.
5.  Get your construction infrastructure in development:  space yards, ground unit training facilities, research labs and academy
6.  Get a Navy that can do something started.
7.  Keep an eye on minerals and get the civillian investment going.
8.  Decide on a long term technology strategy both in the technologies you will go for but also how you will allocate your research labs to the development.

These are not in any order as there are too many variable situations you can encounter.  But the mineral issue has to be taken seriously.  Especially for a conventional start you need a tremendous amount of minerals. 

Short term goals are specific to your situation at the moment.  Also keep in mind a short term goal can take years in game time to do.  An example from my AAR was colonizing Callisto to exploit its corrundium, that is still on going so probably will be 3-5 years.  Dealing with gallicite crisis another short term 3-5 year long issue.  Not much happens quickly in Aurora. 

The most important aspect of short term goal planning is to avoid as much as possible creating a second crisis while attempting to solve the first.

Also given the completely different starting situations the game generates there is no "place to be in 5 to 10 years"  as it depends on what you find.  "Exploration luck" as it was called in Starfire.