Huge fan of the game since learning of it over on the Dwarf Fortress forums, and upon reading about Aurora II I decided to make an account and offer some of my comments and suggestions to the game, which I greatly look forward to, although I'm still loving Aurora 1.
3) Real-time rather than stepped time. Time will be more like Harpoon or Europa Universalis where you can pause it, or accelerate it. This is isn't as different as it sounds because it will be similar to permament automated turns with the sub-pulses equal to the acceleraton rate and no defined increments. I intend to load everything into memory so the program will avoid any database access as time passes. This will improve performance considerably. You should also be able to watch ships move across the map if I can get the graphics working as I intend.
First off, I really, really like this idea. Not only will it remove the whole constantly clicking on '30 days' or however time I want to pass, but I also think the transition to real time would be a very smart move. I like the idea of being able to see my ships move back and forth in real time, or in slow motion / fast motion.
One idea that thing brings to mind that you could possibly implement is a limited form of Multiplayer. Since its not stepped time anymore, I would guess that it would be easier to have 2-4+ players in the same game with different empires at once, depending on how the game was hosted. Although a single-player version would certainly allow acceleration and pausing whenever they chose, multiplayer would have a more stable speed, perhaps chosen at start, or chosen by majority vote during gameplay. In this way, it would be akin to a slow-paced real time strategy game.
However, to make combat more realistic for this multiplayer mode, combat would need to be extremely automated. Perhaps it would be possible to 'program' combat maneuvers into each individual ship, task group, or fleet that they automatically carry out upon certain situations in combat, much like the conditional orders that are in the game now. Players could program these maneuvers during peace time, which would simulate fleet training. Ships or fleets without said training or programming would be less effective, but no where near useless, as there could be a 'default' set of combat behaviors they could follow.
Another part of this gameplay is to allow this real-time combat to be able to select a ship/group/fleet from the system map and give them a simple order, such as “Move here at x% speed”, “Attack this target”, etc. Again, this would be similar to a real time strategy.
For single player, such automation wouldn't be required, although having it would still be interesting. It would allow newer players to get into combat easier, but allow more experienced players to personalize their fleets' tactics to their liking. I'm still very new to combat in Aurora I myself, as I often take ages to leave the Sol system and often restart my game before I find any aliens.
As for your other ideas, such as the resolutions, no-jump points, centering around the system map, and area-of-effect missiles, I really like all of these ideas but I don't really have any suggestions to make. The resolution change and centering around the system map are two ideas I particularly like, as my laptop cuts off a small portion of the screens (Even with the current option to shrink the windows), and this would allow people with any size monitor to enjoy the game to its fullest. I think these two ideas alone will bring in a ton more players to the game. The bazillion windows so far are a bit of a juggle and hard to manage at first, and even once you remember where everything is and needs to go, its still a juggle. I find myself closing and opening windows more often than not, although I still enjoy the game immensely.
Again, thanks for making such an amazing game, and I hope your inspiration to continue working on Aurora II comes sooner rather than later. In the mean time, I'll continue with my plan of making an army of genetically superior Viking Marines named the Aesir through experimental genetic modification and dominate our enemies through ship boarding and hails of gauss cannon fire. . >
