Aurora 4x

VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 05, 2017, 03:01:07 PM

Title: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 05, 2017, 03:01:07 PM
My personal house rules for increased challenge in Aurora :^)

Game Setup
Difficulty: 300%.
Sol system start
Human gravity variance should be set to 0.7g
Disaster: Cooling 2%.
Spoilers On
Swarm On
Invaders Off (you can turn them on later)

Note: Disasters only seem to apply to a Solar System created at game setup.

Terraforming
You may not use Terraforming Modules.
You may not Terraform Earth.
Terraforming Facilities must be built on-site and may not be moved.
VERY HARD: Terraforming Facilities may not be built. You can use TFs found through xenoarchaeology to terraform worlds on which they are found, but may not move them.

Colonies
Conquered alien homeworlds should have their political status frozen after rising one level.
You may not loot the infrastructure from alien homeworlds, but use it in place.  (At 300% difficulty, the amount of alien equipment otherwise trivializes the game.)
VERY HARD: You may not colonize in the Solar System.

Ship & Systems Design
VERY HARD: All missiles must have at least 1 point of Armor or ECM. Yes, including AMMs.
VERY HARD: You may not use the Sorium Harvester module.

Combat Rules
You are strongly encouraged to avoid the use of beam ships that barely outrange & outspeed the enemy to cut down infinity enemy beam ships. 
VERY HARD: You may not use the Final Fire PD mode on Beam Fire Controls. (You may use Final Fire Self Only.)
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: Bremen on March 05, 2017, 10:29:38 PM
I've never gotten far enough to really use it (I seem to almost never run into NPRs for some reason), but I've always liked the challenge mode where every time you meet an NPR, you conquer them and then increase the game's difficulty by 100%.
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: Detros on March 06, 2017, 12:36:54 PM
My personal house rules for increased challenge in Aurora :^)

Game Setup
And how many NPRs at start do you usually use?
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 06, 2017, 05:10:28 PM
Zero to 2. I usually run 60%/30% NPR generation chance; with aggressive scouting indicated owing to the Disaster, I usually discover multiple NPRs in the course of looking for habitable worlds and resources.

I've never gotten far enough to really use it (I seem to almost never run into NPRs for some reason), but I've always liked the challenge mode where every time you meet an NPR, you conquer them and then increase the game's difficulty by 100%.

The only trouble with this is that you absorb all of an NPRs resources if you conquer them, so added difficulty is just increasing your industrial growth curve... (assuming you survive, of course.)
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: Zincat on March 07, 2017, 02:34:26 AM
I will give you another suggestion. Which is what I want to do once C# aurora comes out.

REALLY VERY HARD: no missiles. At all. No AMM either. Think of some flavor, cultural reason for which you race really does not want to use them.

Should make things really interesting :)
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: TheDeadlyShoe on March 11, 2017, 02:22:45 PM
I have tried that a couple times!  It is interesting, and certainly puts you at a disadvantage; it also slows the game though :(
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: Akhillis on March 11, 2017, 08:27:45 PM
I have a house rule of only adding Oxygen and Nitrogen. Makes getting planets in the right temperature band much more important.
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: GodEmperor on March 31, 2017, 10:37:44 AM
My personal house rules for increased challenge in Aurora :^)

Game Setup
Difficulty: 300%.
Sol system start
Human gravity variance should be set to 0.7g
Disaster: Cooling 2%.
Spoilers On
Swarm On
Invaders Off (you can turn them on later)

Note: Disasters only seem to apply to a Solar System created at game setup.

Terraforming
You may not use Terraforming Modules.
You may not Terraform Earth.
Terraforming Facilities must be built on-site and may not be moved.
VERY HARD: Terraforming Facilities may not be built. You can use TFs found through xenoarchaeology to terraform worlds on which they are found, but may not move them.

Colonies
Conquered alien homeworlds should have their political status frozen after rising one level.
You may not loot the infrastructure from alien homeworlds, but use it in place.  (At 300% difficulty, the amount of alien equipment otherwise trivializes the game.)
VERY HARD: You may not colonize in the Solar System.

Ship & Systems Design
VERY HARD: All missiles must have at least 1 point of Armor or ECM. Yes, including AMMs.
VERY HARD: You may not use the Sorium Harvester module.

Combat Rules
You are strongly encouraged to avoid the use of beam ships that barely outrange & outspeed the enemy to cut down infinity enemy beam ships. 
VERY HARD: You may not use the Final Fire PD mode on Beam Fire Controls. (You may use Final Fire Self Only.)

I like it....
Have to try that one.
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: TCD on March 31, 2017, 01:29:09 PM
Cross posting from a different discussion, but surely the hardest mode of all is "Star Trek mode"?

- all ships must have jump engines
- all ships must have shields
- no long range missiles
- no hostile actions until they start shooting

Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: GodEmperor on March 31, 2017, 01:32:48 PM
Cross posting from a different discussion, but surely the hardest mode of all is "Star Trek mode"?

- all ships must have jump engines
- all ships must have shields
- no long range missiles
- no hostile actions until they start shooting
It should be even more.

>No CIWS
>no AMM
>recreational quarters on every ship
>hangar bay's with shuttles
>no turrets
>Beam is your primary weapons, missiles are secondary
>geo/grav sensors on every ship
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: Detros on March 31, 2017, 01:54:08 PM
- no hostile actions until they start shooting
When you are using only beams, this is basically automatically in, too.
At least you can try counting how many times the time jumps forward just for 20s even after you hit 1m button so you know their reload speed and how many groups of missile volleys are incoming.
Title: Re: Aurora Hard Mode
Post by: TCD on March 31, 2017, 03:42:33 PM
It should be even more.

>No CIWS
>no AMM
>recreational quarters on every ship
>hangar bay's with shuttles
>no turrets
>Beam is your primary weapons, missiles are secondary
>geo/grav sensors on every ship

I think you could hand wave in turrets as phaser banks are clearly targeted independently from ship direction, but otherwise yes. Perhaps if you started with a 30kt military ship yard and SMd high jump drive efficiency it could be viable.