Creating the Most Realistic Earth Start

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Hello,
So I'm new here so I may be getting ahead of myself, but I wanted to shoot and ask for some ideas on how to make the most realistic Earth start. 

So, instead of the population being 500m (that's far to low) I made the population 6000m and the start date 2050 as 6 billion will be the number of working age people projected for 2050.   However, this creates a bit of a problem. 

See, I think the most realistic start would be for the player to start out as not a united Earth government but rather as the United Nations Space Authority which is a multi-national effort to explore and colonize space.   Of course, nations are reluctant to give up resources for things that don't only benefit them just like the real UN, so you don't have access to even a fraction of that sweet, sweet, Earth population, research centers, or space-ports.   Yet. 

I understand the game allows you to create different factions that come from the same planet.   Would it be possible to model this extra-governmental organization which despite being the sole human authority in space is limited in its resources? Can you then diplomatically "assimilate" Earth into a unified government to get Earth's full benefits?

[Sheb]

In the latest version, you can create an "unafilliated population", which is basically people in other countries. You can't assimilate them directly, but you can use them as colonists to people other planets.

Apart from that, you'd need to do it manually, by creating several Empire and SMing transfer of population and infrastructures yourself.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Another thing, I was watching the quill18 LP and all his asteroids and comets were named while mine are not despite taking the "generate real bodies"option.   Were they lost in an update?

Forgot to update to latest patch.  duh. 

[MarcAFK]

Note that your starting factories, labs, etc are based on your starting population, so starting with more than the default 500 million gives you a massive jump start making the game easier, however I'f you're new to aurora it's more overwhelming to have such a fast start, you'll be building and researching fast but fairly blindly due to minimal experience.
You Could start with 500 million directly under your control and then add a few billion as a neutral population.
What I usually do, and many other players also do for this UN style game is add various other NPR populations representing Russia, China, EU USA, etc. But it leads to a slower game though.

[Garfunkel]

I've twice tried to create as "realistic" as possible Sol start, once with United Nations and the second time with multiple factions. It's a waste of time trying to research things and then to fit them in Aurora. Best approach is to take 1-4 countries or factions, give them sufficient starting population, conventional industry and research labs to kinda mirror their position vis-a-vis each other in reality, and then work from there. Leave rest as a neutral "UN" faction or whatever for future migration to extra-Solar colonies purpose. Point is that you should enjoy the game you are playing, not toil frustratingly in trying to fiddle all details to mirror reality as much as possible.

[Erik L]

Escape Reality, Play a Game.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

The "its a game, it shouldn't be realistic" stance is not one I would expect people on this particular forum to take.

[MarcAFK]

Some of us have gotten bogged down in details by trying to take things a little too seriously, I should just play the game already.... Thiugh kind of blew up another laptop again. Lol. I think KSP just makes GPU's melt.

[Garfunkel]

The "its a game, it shouldn't be realistic" stance is not one I would expect people on this particular forum to take.

You completely misunderstood me. My point was, and is, that you should not get bogged down like MarcAFK said by trying to get a new game start to model Earth as of 2016 as closely as possible. You'll just end up frustrated. Aurora is not complex enough to model reality that closely.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

Not 2016 Earth, I was thinking of a 2025 Earth where you have things like a pan-Asian group and a US+South American group (cause Imperator Trump and for some reason I can only get demographics 2025 for USA and South America instead of just USA). So not hundreds of different nations but more like 4 or 5.

[Garfunkel]

Aah okay, that is definitely doable. Check this:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?board=16.0
and this:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?board=222.0

to see how Steve pulled starts like that off. Note that the first, the Trans-Newtonian Campaign, is very old and used quite a different version of Aurora.