What are your conventional start tech and industry priorities?

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

And how much is shaped by what scientists you get?

For example, I experimented with setting my shipyard to expand, and making 2 more slipways, so that when I get geo sensors and Nuclear Thermal engines I can build 3 survey ships at once.  However, I am not satisfied with that, because I survey the whole solar system in 2-3 waves of survey ships, and then have nothing for them to do until I develop jump theory and grav sensors.

So I am thinking of just going with one slipway, but continually expanding it, and then at about 10k tons, retool it with a placeholder design, all geo sensors or something else expensive, and use it to build almost any smaller design.  That way, I can even use it to ship infrastructure to the moon or mars, if it turns out either is a good colonization candidate, so I can get my colony started early.  Possibly with luxury liners if I lack a logistics scientist to get cryo quickly.

As until all conventional industry is replaced with TN industry, there is nothing that gets more economic bang for one's buck, my purpose in early surveying is to determine what techs I will most need.

If the only good mining sites are comets, I will go for asteroid mining module and tractors.  If Mars or Luna or the Jovian moons are good sites, Terraforming bumps up the priority list, (as well as tractors).

If Venus or Mercury have lots of minerals, automated mines come into play more.

If the whole solar system is missing some critical mineral, I have to go for jump theory early.

Now this doesn't take into account the civilians.  I would like to know what infrastructure you need to get the civilians started on mining, because I would love to just pick a wealth creation administrator and expand my production, and build as few mines myself as possible, until I have to switch over to automated mines.

Oh, and my industry priority before TN is build as many military academies as possible, so that I can get the good scientists and administrators.

[Garfunkel]

I usually build 500 Infra to be ready to jump start the civilian economy and then, if I have the time, a single academy. I put 90% of conventional industry into converting to TN-standard and use the remaining 10% to construct mass drivers and spaceport and so on. Tech-wise, I try to do the basics in all categories. I don't rush engines - some of the charm of conventional start is surveying and expanding using Nuclear Thermal and Nuclear Pulse engines.

[Michael Sandy (OP)]

Anything within the asteroid belt can be efficiently surveyed with conventional engines.  But be sure to pull them back before they go beyond Saturn's orbit, or they will be pathetically putt-putting about while the next generation of ships is 20 times as fast, taking a year or so to get home to be refitted.

I am a bit torn between going with size 50 commercial conventional engines and later refitting them to Nuclear Thermal, or going cheap, a gunboat sized survey ship that doesn't mind spending fuel, and simply scrapping it to recover the grav sensor when I am ready to go to NT designs.

Inner System Survey class Survey Craft    1,000 tons     22 Crew     149 BP      TCS 20  TH 1  EM 0
50 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
Maint Life 8.35 Years     MSP 93    AFR 8%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 2    5YR 36    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

Explorer Engine 1.4 EP Conventional Engine (1)    Power 1.4    Fuel Use 93%    Signature 1.4    Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 9.7 billion km   (2240 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Not real thrilled with it.  My early commercial design is actually going to be faster, for not much more cost.
Sagan class Survey Ship    3,600 tons     45 Crew     186 BP      TCS 72  TH 5  EM 0
69 km/s     Armour 1-20     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/1     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 0
MSP 32    Max Repair 100 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 36 months    Spare Berths 0   

Explorer Engine Commercial 5 EP Commercial Conventional Engine (1)    Power 5    Fuel Use 8.84%    Signature 5    Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres    Range 28.1 billion km   (4713 days at full power)

Geological Survey Sensors (1)   1 Survey Points Per Hour

This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes.

And the second ship isn't going to run out of fuel anytime soon.  To get a military engined ship that is faster, you need to build it a lot bigger, and therefore it will cost more.

[Garfunkel]

You're doing it "wrong", in that you're trying to min-max things. There is nothing wrong with min-maxing stuff and I myself do it every now and then - BUT!

BUT! if you're trying to enjoy a conventional start, then please please please please forget min-maxing. You're handicapping yourself with conventional start vis-a-vis NPRs already, what's the point of handicapping yourself even more? Roleplay the smeg out of that conventional start! You've already played Aurora to "victory", whatever your personal "win conditions" are.

Chill out, think of argumentative political parties on your Earth, take your time, go down the "wrong" path of research, write out how that affected your version of humanity, go down a different path in research, write down how that affected humanity, and so on and so forth.

If you enjoy min-maxing, go nuts! I'm not telling you how to play the game. But sooner or later you realize that the AI is bare bones and you need to RP to get good fun in the game. Don't frakk yourself over early on because you think Aurora is just like any other game. It isn't. Aurora is a sand box. Make your own fun.

[lennson]

Trying to min-max things can have interesting results if you are playing against your self though.

Depending on your starting population (the following seems to mostly be the case for lower than normal starting population) I find it can be really helpful to rush out a survey craft and a freighter to get infrastructure to start a colony. The civs seem to be happy to take it from there provided you have the techs ready (cryo and cargo handling).

The idea is to get the civs started on building civ mining, which appears to start once there is a non-homeworld colony. With a wealth boosting admin the civs can greatly speed development up by effectively giving you "free" mines (normally a conventional start has overflowing money till construction and research are built up anyway) allowing more focus on construction without running out of minerals.

I had this inadvertently happen once where I wanted to play two sides against each other and the one that happened to have an admin develop a huge wealth bonus (I think it was 60%) became very far ahead simply due to the flow of resources from civ mines.