Slightly overwhelmed

[fergeh (OP)]

I've just started getting into Aurora and obviously there is a lot to learn! I feel like I've got a good grasp of how to do the basic things like tech design and ship construction but I'm unsure how to apply them.  What general goals/objectives should I be looking to do in the early game? Set up colonies? Explore? I'm a little lost if I'm honest

[Thiosk]

Yeah it takes some time.  Find some of hte other new user threads and have a read.

My number 1 priorities: terraform and colonize mars
establish a mining network to bring goods and materials to earth.

Try to build asteroid miners and freighters.

Once you can do that, you can either keep playing, or start over with a better basis for understanding the game.
I played about 3 throwaway games before I took one to greater than 50 years.

[Jacob/Lee]

^ This. Earth runs out of minerals quickly. You won't stay afloat very long with the stuff on Earth.

So yeah, first priority is colonizing another world and setting up semi-permanent mining colonies (which don't even need to be colonies, just automated mines with a mass driver on them) on mineral-rich bodies, like comets. Asteroid miners are only good for asteroids, don't rely on them. You need freighters to ship the mines, drivers, infrastructure etc. to other worlds, so they are important.

As long as you keep to Sol you should be fine, you need to be very unlucky to have a hostile NPR stumble upon Earth without a certain spoiler on.

[scoopdjm]

Personally it's like this: 1.) Industrialize sol and begin jump point exploration (something you'll get into soon) 2.) expand my control to empirical levels and have epic rp wars 3.) be nearly destroyed and restart the process OR attempt to find cool stuff and find my way to the center of the galaxy

[Din182]

If you want to be able to have a large industrial capacity mid-game, you'll want to devote some (I usually do 20%) to making more factories and mines.

Never remove the last mass driver from any population center unless you are sure there are no other mass drivers in the system.

Research is important, I like to try to keep it going at full tilt. Don't try to be a generalist. Choose 1 or 2 weapons you want to use.

Make sure you have fire controls on ships that have weapons. Don't put active sensors on them. Use sensor ships specially designed for it.

Make sure that ships have enough fuel, engines, maintenance supplies, power plants for energy weapons hangar space for fighters, and magazines for missiles. If you use missiles, make sure to tell your ships to actually take them from your stockpile.

[Girlinhat]

In started out, I realized a few things for a quickstart.  1: make a game with a small number of systems.  I think I set mine at 5 and still got like 15 systems.  This is good because space is tight and cozy, and you'll be butting up against the NPRs sooner.  2: Set the NPR difficulty down a bit, 50-75 allows you to manhandle them and figure out things like fire control and missile range and "how much is lethal".  3: Make grav survey ships with a lot of fuel and a passive thermal and a jump drive.  This lets you explore systems quickly and spot enemy colonies fairly reliably when exploring.  Just a gravship is nice, but adding sensors lets them find colonies as they go along, very nice.  Make several of them and start exploring every system you can find.

I've also come to realize that the majority of systems are junk, with low resources and no survivability.  These will end up just roadways between your cost 0 and cost 2 colonies.  Don't feel like you need to exploit every single body, most are junk.

[Yonder]

Thiosk has good points, and I thought I'd expand on them to give the reasons for why they are important.

My number 1 priorities: terraform and colonize mars

This gets two main things started. First it increases your population, since more people are born on empty worlds. This is important so that you have more workers (though you usually aren't short on those) and so that you have more tax income. It also gets your shipping industry started and making money. This is important because it makes you money, and it means that they will start to buy more ships, which means that they will be able to help subsequent colonies grow much faster, which is vital. You will probably never have a problem where you don't have enough total workers in your population, but you will often have that problem on newer colonies. The faster they get out of that state the better.

establish a mining network to bring goods and materials to earth.

This is probably pretty self-explanatory in why it is important.

Try to build asteroid miners and freighters.

This is important because of the flexibility that it gives you. You are going to need to frequently reshuffle your industry as you mine out various asteroids and other bodies. Asteroid miners are a great way to quickly move your mines from place to place. They are also the cheapest way to create mines from a Corrundium standpoint, and Corrundium shortages are very common in the early game. Note that Asteroid Miners can only mine Asteroids and Comets, not Moons and Planets. Freighters are important, 1. to move your stationary mines around, and then for everything else that needs to be moved around. For a long time in this game Earth will be your manufacturing hub, like Europe was 400 years ago. Everything you build there will need to be shipped elsewhere, especially early on when the civilians aren't up to making all of the infrastructure shipments.

Later you'll have planetary observatories to transfer, possibly PDCs, terraforming stations. Once Mars is terraformed if there aren't a lot of minerals there to warrant using the population to work in the mines I'll move most of my Research Labs there.

Once you can do that, you can either keep playing, or start over with a better basis for understanding the game.
I played about 3 throwaway games before I took one to greater than 50 years.

Same here.

[Girlinhat]

Learn mass drivers too.  An asteroid miner megaship with a few (dozen) asteroid miners and 5 cargo can take a mass driver to a rock, and harvest resources to be sent back.

[Jacob/Lee]

Asteroid miners are pretty hefty, too. Don't remember the exact number, but if you put too many on, well, good luck getting over 1km/s since speed is based on displacement volume. Make sure that thing is in safe territory, too, that thing is basically holding up a giant "KILL ME" sign if it gets in the range of ANY sensors.

[metalax]

It may be better to not bother with engines on the mining platform and just use a tug to move it around when needed, particularly as it is going to be spending the vast majority of it's time stationary.

Learn mass drivers too.  An asteroid miner megaship with a few (dozen) asteroid miners and 5 cargo can take a mass driver to a rock, and harvest resources to be sent back.

I'd actually reccomend against putting the cargo bays on your mining ship. Both because civilians will build it thinking it is a freighter and because for the vast majority of the time those cargo holds would be sitting empty taking up space that could be used for more mining modules. Just use a freighter to shift the mass driver when it is time to move to a new rock. Alternatively put the cargo bays on your tug, that way it can act as a freighter when there is nothing for it to tug around.

[fergeh (OP)]

Wow, what a fantastic community! Thanks a lot guys I'm sure I'm not going to have too much trouble getting into it with all this help

[fergeh (OP)]

Got another small issue.  I have no real concept of the scale in this game.  For example I've just made my first mining ship and it's happily going away at this asteroid and I'm producing 72 (tons?) per year of 3 of the resources.  What I don't know is how much 72 units is! Have I struck it rich or was this not even worth the fuel to get out there?

[Garfunkel]

72 tons a year is nothing. Well, it's a start. When asteroid mining, try to find asteroids with many of the 11 TN minerals on them and hopefully with 1 accessibility or so. Note that the accessibility drops rapidly on asteroids and comets when you mine them, as you are basically strip mining the whole thing away.

My AM fleet currently carries 141 AM-modules with it and can thus reach easily over 1,000 tons a year per mineral.

[fergeh (OP)]

Ah well I have one measly miner with one module on it.  I'm having much more success with automines, and it's looking like it will stay that way until I can make bigger ships

[Yonder]

It may be better to not bother with engines on the mining platform and just use a tug to move it around when needed, particularly as it is going to be spending the vast majority of it's time stationary.

I always put engines on mine, because I generally have fleets of 30 or more, and the prospect of tugging them all from place to place is intimidating. They don't go fast though, sometimes not even more than 1,500 km/s.

I'd actually reccomend against putting the cargo bays on your mining ship. Both because civilians will build it thinking it is a freighter and because for the vast majority of the time those cargo holds would be sitting empty taking up space that could be used for more mining modules. Just use a freighter to shift the mass driver when it is time to move to a new rock.

I definitely agree.

When asteroid mining, try to find asteroids with many of the 11 TN minerals on them and hopefully with 1 accessibility or so.

I do this for moons and planets, since they have larger deposits and are longer term investments. But for asteroid mining I am much more lenient with the mineral spread it has. I basically just take the mineral that I need the most (generally Corrundium or Mercassium in the early game, but sometimes Duranium) and find the best asteroid for that mineral, even if its other minerals aren't that great. If I need more than one mineral than I split the fleet up to go to two different asteroids.