New Players > The Academy
Aurora 6.21 Basic Walkthrough
TheDeadlyShoe:
Hello, I am writing this walkthrough to give new players a basic overview of the game. If you follow the steps provided below, you should learn the basics of game setup, colonization, research, technology/ship design, spacemastering, and getting your fleet pulverized by aliens. This walkthrough is valid for version 6.21 of the game, and you may need to futz details if you are using it for an earlier or later version. You can tell what version you are using by looking at the top right of the game information screen when you start Aurora.
If you need to install Aurora still, this post contains the base game while this post contains the patch and race images upgrade. Make sure to read the relevant post(s) entirely before installing the game. If you are running Windows 7, you will likely need to install this program to get full functionality from the game. You can uninstall the program immediately after installing it.
Welcome to Aurora! It's a big universe out there, and unfortunately for your sanity it's all contained in spreadsheets. This game can be daunting, but it can also be tremendously rewarding. Ancient ruins and hideously powerful enemies await among the stars, and internal political intrigue is limited only by your imagination. But first things first.
Creating your first game
When you start up Aurora you will be greeted by a "Game Details" screen. This shows information and options for the currently selected game. For the moment, it shows information about a game named "Space 1899." Space 1899 is a game being run by Steve Walmsley, the creator of Aurora. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, but it's not what we're after today. We want our own universe, for our own adventures. :)
Press "New" at the bottom left.
This opens up a game creation screen, where we can do some basic setup. At the top left there is a Game Name field. This defaults to "New Game Name", which is rather bland to say the least. Change it to anything you wish - if you can't decide, you could just name it "Terran Federation." For now, we're going to leave most of these setting at default. But there are a couple we want to change. First is in the bottom left, in the "Starting Tech" box. Uncheck "Assign starting tech points automatically." This will start us with no technology already researched, giving us a bit of Tabula Rasa that is far easier to write a walkthrough for. :)
The second thing we're going to do is turn off starting NPRs. NPRs are "Non-Player Races", controlled entirely by the computer. A 'Starting NPR' begins at the same time as the player, and will often to get into adventures of its own. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it introduces some unpredictability to the game. For now, this is undesirable. In the "Computer-controlled Empires" box in the middle right, uncheck "Create one or more computer-controlled opponents" and change "Number of computer-controll opponents at game start" from 1 to zero. This may seem redundant, but without orbital nuclear weapons it's the only way to be sure. Leave the final box checked.
Now hit "Create Game" at the bottom right. After a short pause, a box should pop up informing you that "Race Generation is Complete." Click okay. It will now do some more processing while it doesn't set up computer empires. (Don't ask.) Eventually it will tell you that "Game Setup is complete. Clicking okay at this point will bring you back to the Game Details screen. Your new game should be selected. If not, select it from the drop box at the top left. When your game is selected, click Select at the bottom right.
Congratulations! You've set up a game. In most games you would now be puzzling over menus. Since this is Aurora, first you must puzzle over locating the menus.
TheDeadlyShoe:
Welcome to Sol
What you see now is the basic menu bar. It affords access to most of the screens in Aurora, and is the only way to access certain functions. However, most of it's function is duplicated by the System Map, which you should open now by going to "Empires" and selecting the second entry "System Maps." This can also be accessed from most Aurora screens by pressing F3.
Aaaand here we are. You likely are now staring at a blue field with a bunch of confusing blue and green mishmash in the middle. This is the Solar System, zoomed waaaay out. We can fix that. First click "Min Zoom" under "Zoom Map" near the top left to insure we are all at the same base point. Then click the top magnifying glass icon 7 times, until the zoom number just to the right reads "174m km." Reset to Min Zoom and do it again if you mess up your count.
This affords a view of the inner system. You can probably see Jupiter, the Asteroid Belt, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and assorted Comets and Trojans. Right now, they are all labeled. To reduce the clutter a bit, we're going to turn off names for asteroids. On the left is an array of 9 tabs under a drop down box that says "Sol". The currently selected one should be Display. One of the lists is "Names" - uncheck Asteroids. Now you can see again! Isn't it wonderful?
Every blue dot on this screen is what's known in Aurora as a "Body". Every asteroid, moon, comet, planet and Kuiper Belt Object is a Body. Bodies orbit either another Body or a Star and ships can park at Bodies. Every colony (or 'population') in Aurora is associated with a body. Only one body concerns us at present: Earth.
At the top of the System Map screen you will see an array of icons. Each is associated with an important screen of some kind. Click the icon at the far top left that looks like several skyscrapers. This will bring up the "Population and Production" screen. Almost every economic task is accomplished in one of the tabs of this screen.
Population and Production
You should see at the top the selected Empire - the Terran Federation. Below that you see a list of its Populated Systems, and the colonies associated with those systems. Right now we just have one item list: Earth - Human (Capital) 500m. It's a Human colony of 500 million on the body Earth, that happens to be the racial capital. To the right you can see summary information for the selected colony, such as its population breakdown and industrial facilities.
Your starting empire is pretty well equipped with futuristic industry, as you can see from the list on the right. It even has 80 fully automated mines, which don't require human workers. But looking at the top there is only 1 military academy. This is worrisome, as all your officers, crew, scientists, and civilian administrators are educated in military academies. We need more if we want the Federation to be fully staffed. To do this we need to construct a new Military Academy... simple enough.
Near the top of the Population and Production window you will see an array of tabs. Select "Industry."
This tab shows you the current status of your construction projects. It's divided into 3 sections - Construction, Ordnance, and Fighter Factories. Fighter factories build fighters, which are defined as most craft 500 tons and under; Ordnance is the production of missiles in Ordnance Factories; and Construction is for everything else but ships. We want to build a Military Academy, which is a type of Installation built by Construction Factories. You should see Military Academy in the list on the left. Selecting it displays the cost in minerals at the bottom left. You can easily afford a single academy out of your existing stockpiles, let alone your future mining! So let's do this. Press Create just to the right. Military Academy should now show up in your list of construction projects, with an estimated completion date of 26th July 2025. It's the 1st of January 2025 now, so it will be some time before the academy is finished. Note that Aurora uses 12 months of 30 days apiece, giving it a 360 day year.
In the mean time, let's get this space age into space where it belongs. :)
TheDeadlyShoe:
Playing God, Part 1
Click on the "Mining/Maintenance" tab. Here you can see your stockpiles of the 11 Trans-Newtonian minerals and the rate at which you are mining them at this particular body. This minerals are all used for various purposes. Two are special: Duranium and Sorium. Duranium is the basic construction material, and is used for nearly everything. Sorium can be processed into Fuel, which is burned by the engines that propel ships and missiles. As you can see, there are limited stocks of these minerals available at your homeworld. Some sources may be depleted in only a handful of years. It's of great importance that we begin exploring the solar system for more stockpiles of these minerals!
For that we need to build a survey ship. Unfortunately, we don't have any ship designs yet, nor components to mount on it. Our first task is to research and design the necessary parts of a basic survey ship. Go to the "Research" tab in the Population and Production screen.
This screen lists active and potential research projects. Research is conducted by special officers called Scientists, who have a specialty field, a research bonus, and a maximum # of labs they can control. The research _bonus_ is quadrupled if they are researching within their specialty field. For example, a Power/Propulsion scientist with a normal bonus of 15% would produce 60% bonus RP if she was researching a Power/Propulsion project. Research labs are a type of Installation that produces a base amount of Research Points every year that depends on your technology.
You can also see a box at the bottom right labeled "Starting RP." This is a pre-defined number which gives you a rough idea of how much 'free' RP you should allocate yourself at the start of a game. We can't actually use it, though. For that we need to be in Spacemaster Mode.
Lords of Creation
Spacemaster mode (or "SM Mode" for short) allows you alter many aspects of your game experience. You can give yourself free stuff, take it away, alter planets, create and delete star systems, teleport ships, manipulate your officers, and many other tasks. This is not cheating, unless you want it to be. Aurora is a free form game that really depends on the player to give it shape. Spacemaster gives you the tools to do so. The name comes from the "Dungeon Master" of traditional role-playing games. The DM was responsible for shaping the adventure and had both the power and responsibility to alter things for the sake of the game experience. SMs don't have quite that much power, but they come close!
It's important to create a story with your game, even if it's only in your head. You could mess up and accidentally let an alien battleship into Earth orbit, where it starts bombarding. Instead of just saying "Oops" and killing it, you could imagine that a virus shut down your sensors and defenses allowing it to get close. Then Jeff Goldblum flies up in a shuttle and counter-hacks the alien battleship, reactivating your defenses and allowing you to fire back. There's lot of occasions where things that happen in the game don't fit your notion of how the story is going to go, either for better or worse. So you create a new alien nation, or a group of rebel space pirates, or a ragtag fleet of converted warship-freighters to defend an isolated colony.
In this case we need to turn on Spacemaster mode to give ourselves some starting technology, so this game gets off the ground. :0
Close the Population and Production screen, then close the System Map. You should be back at the starting menu. You'll see a dropdown labeled SpaceMaster - select "Spacemaster On". It will ask you for the SM Password. There isn't one int his game, so just hit enter orpress okay. Now in the starting menu it should say "Terran Federation (SM)" after the date. Press f3 to open the system map again, then click green beaker icon at the top left. This brings you directly to the Research tab in Population and Production.
Full power, Scotty!
You'll notice some new buttons now that SM mode is enabled. "Instant" researches the selected technology instantly, while "Instant RST" researches all proposed race-specific designs instantly. "Delete" un-researches a particular technology.
The first thing we want to do is to create an engine. First, go to the research dropdown and select "Power and Propulsion". You'll be presented with alist of potential technologies. Select "Pebble Bed Reactor Technology" and click Instant. This unlocks Nuclear Pulse Engine Technology, which now appears in the list. Research that technology as well.
Once you have these two technologies, find and click the "Design" button on the bottom of the Population and Production window. This opens the Create Research Project window, which lets us design race-specific technologies that are used as ship components. At the top right, there is a dropdown labeled Research Project Type. Select Engines from the list.
Engines have many properties that you can see at the bottom. For now, the important ones are Engine Power (thrust provided) and Fuel Consumption per Engine Power Hour (fuel efficiency). We want a highly efficient engine, since our survey ship will be traveling all over the solar system and could potentially burn a lot of fuel. There's a couple ways to accomplish this: we can increase the size of the engine as bigger engines are more efficient, and we can reduce the power multiplier of the engine which increases efficiency at the expense of thrust. We're going to do both. Change "Engine Size" to 25 HS, and "Engine Power" all the way down to x0.50. This changes our fuel consumption per EPH from 0.95 litres to 0.133 litres - a massive improvement!
Note that the engine has changed from a "Military Engine" to a "Commercial Engine", since we've met the requirements. Commercial engines can be used in commercial designs, which don't require maintenance or any of the other headaches generally associated with military vessels. Most non-military tasks can be accomplished with commercial vessels, with a few exceptions.
Let's also change the name. "100 EP Commercial Nuclear Pulse Engine" is descriptive, but hardly fun. Let's call it the "Prototype Atomic Rocket."
Click Create, then close the Create Research Project screen. You should be back at the Research tab of Population and Production, and you should see Prototype Atomic Rocket in the Power and Propulsion list. Use Instant to research it. You've now created your first race-specific technology. :D
With this, we can create our survey ship.
TheDeadlyShoe:
Ship Design, part 1: Geo-Survey Ship
Close the Population and Production window and go back out to the System Map. The seventh icon from the left looks like a space fighter on a stick. This is the Class Design screen, and can also be accessed by pressing f5. Right now all the fields are blank. Click "New" at the bottom left. This will create an empty chassis named the "Tribal-class Cruiser". The name Tribal comes from the Terran Federation's default naming theme. But it hardly seems appropriate for a survey ship.. Click Rename at the bottom left, and change it to Magellan. Now it's the Magellan-class Cruiser. Cruiser doesn't seem appropriate either, though. Select "Geological Survey Vessel" from the "Hull" dropdown at the top of the screen. Hull type has no effect on gameplay, and is just as cosmetic as the name. But it sure helps for keeping track of what ships do, and it looks cool!
Now to actually put some components on it. Go to the "Design View" tab. You will see a number of systems sorted by category. The second listed category is Engines, and the only thing in it should be our Prototype Atomic Rocket. Double click to add one to the design. Now you can see 1x Prototype Atomic Rocket in the component list on the right. The ships stats have been updated accordingly.
That gives us thrust. Next we want to add "Geological Survey Sensors", listed under Passive Sensors. Without at least one Geo-Survey Sensor we can't actually survey. The more sensors we have the faster we can scan large planets, but the vast majority of the Solar System's bodies are tiny dustballs. One sensor would probably be fine, but let's use two for speed's sake.
Now we need to think about the range & deployment time of our vessel. Deployment Time is a combination of life-support endurance and recreational areas for supporting the crew. Once a ship exceeds its Deployment Time without going on shore leave, it's morale starts decreasing. Morale penalizes several important tasks, most notably in our case survey speed. We don't really want to worry about that, so by God we're doing the Star Trek standard: five years. Enter 60 in "Deployment Time" in the top left. This will automatically add (or remove) Crew Quarters components such that your ship supports missions of the specified length. Even more important is probably Fuel Capacity. Right now our ship can hold 50,000 litres of Sorium fuel, giving it 157 days of maximum thrust and 34.8 billion kilometers of range. That's more range than most ships need, but not enough to support an extended survey mission. Add 5 "Fuel Storage" components from the Basic Systems list. In addition to the default Fuel Storage component, that gives us 6 total for 300,000 litres of fuel. The range of the Magellan is now 162.9 billion kilometers, or 942 days at fuel thrust. This is less than the 5 year deployment time of the vessel, but that's okay. The Magellan won't spend all of it's time moving around, and it's a lot easier to refuel than it is to conduct extended shore leave.
The vital stats of the Magellan should look like this.
--- Code: ---Magellan class Geological Survey Vessel 2,500 tons 42 Crew 354.5 BP TCS 50 TH 100 EM 0
2000 km/s Armour 1-16 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/2 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 89 Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 60 months Spare Berths 0
Prototype Atomic Rocket (1) Power 100 Fuel Use 13.26% Signature 100 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 162.9 billion km (942 days at full power)
Geological Survey Sensors (2) 2 Survey Points Per Hour
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
--- End code ---
If not, try adjusting the design until it does. If you can't get it to work, select "Delete" from the bottom left and start over with a new design.
Note that the Magellan is a Commercial Vessel. This means it doesn't require regular maintenance and overhaul, which makes it significantly easier to manage. Our single Atomic Rocket gives it enough thrust to sustain 2000 km/s speed, more than enough for our purposes right now.
I'd like you to note two important statistics: the "Build Point" cost in the main stats and the "Build Time" in the bottom left. Every Trans-Newtonian mineral used in a design costs 1 Build Point and 1 Wealth to construct at a shipyard. Build Time represents how long a shipyard of the appropriate size will take to construct your design.
The next step isn't strictly necessary to constructing the vessel, but will add to your gameplay experience. Go to the "DAC / Rank / Info" tab. There is a drop down labeled "Name Type". This lets you associate a list of pre-defined names with a ship class. In our case we'll pick Explorers, since that seems appropriate for the Magellan.
In any case, congratulations! You have your first working space vessel. Now we need to actually build it. :)
Close the Class Design screen.
TheDeadlyShoe:
Commanding Heights: Starship Construction
Go back to Population and Production. Ships are built in Shipyards, appropriately enough. Go to Manage Shipyards.
Shipyards are rated by their maximum construction tonnage and come in two flavors, Naval and Commercial. They also have a number of "Slipways" which let them build multiple ships at the same time. Commercial shipyards get a 10x size bonus for the same cost, but may only build Commercial ships. Naval shipyards can build either military or commercial ships. Your starting 4 shipyards are random in size and type, so instead we will create a new shipyard using SM mode. (Normally you need to construct them in the Industry screen.) Click "SM SY Mod" on the right side of the screen, then click Add. This creates a new Naval Shipyard named "New Shipyard" with a number following. That's hardly exciting so let's click "Auto Rename." I'll refer to this as the "Named" shipyard from here on out.
Our survey ship is Commercial, but it's only 2500 tons. So instead we'll stick with a Naval shipyard. Select your named shipyard and return to the SM SY Mod panel. Change Capacity from "1000" to "2500" and click Update. The shipyard should change to 2500 tons capacity in the shipyards list. Click SM SY Mod again to close the menu.
Next we need to retool the shipyard to be able to build our ship. A shipyard has to have the appropriate equipment and supply chain to construct a ship and all of its components, and this is represented in Aurora by the Retooling cost. This can get very expensive in time and resources if you change your tooling often, but fortunately for us a shipyards first retooling is always free and instant. Go to Shipyard Complex Activity / "Task Type" and select "Retool for Selected Class". The GEV Magellan will be automatically selected, so click Set Activity. The shipyard should now list "GEV Magellan" as its Assigned Class.
Go down to Create Task / Task Type, and make sure Construction is selected. You'll see that the ship has been automatically named the Amerigo Vespucci because of the name-type we selected earlier. Click "Add Task". Available Slipways should change to 0.
Go to the Shipyard Tasks tab of Population and Production. You'll see our one construction task listed, "Build GEV Magellan." It won't be finished until July of 2026! This is a sad state of affairs. We don't really want to wait that long, nor should we really. it's expected you start the game with a limited array of ships, and you get a starting ships allocation similar to your starting RP. To access this we'll need to go back out to the main menu bar.
Select "Fast OB Creation" from the Spacemaster dropdown. This should open the "Create Racial Order of Battle" screen, which lets us quickly and easily add new ships to our race. The Magellan should already be selected, so just click Add. Your Ships allocation should decrease by the build cost of the Magellan. Click Close.
Sidebar: Important notes about shipyards
You've probably noticed that increasing shipyard tonnage and adding slipways is listed in the Shipyard Complex Activities. This is how your shipyards improve their industrial capacity. It is important to note though that shipyards don't gain much benefit from construction ships smaller than their maximum tonnage, so don't expand your shipyards gratuitously unless you have resources to spare. Also, it rapidly becomes more expensive and takes increasing lengths of time to modify a shipyard as its number of slipways increase. Use 1-slip shipyards for ships you won't build many of, and reserve multiple-slipway yards for major classes you are building a number of. Additionally you cannot start new ship construction at a shipyard that is retooling to another class, so plan your shipyard retooling carefully to avoid unusable construction slips.
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