Author Topic: Tutorial Subjects  (Read 3857 times)

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Offline Erik L (OP)

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Tutorial Subjects
« on: June 29, 2008, 01:35:04 PM »
Are there any subjects not covered here already that people would like to see tutorials for?
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline IanD

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« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2008, 03:17:57 AM »
Eric, your tutorials are an excellent start, but I find it?s the small details that often puzzle me, a few examples below.

Shipyards
For a new shipyard the first retooling is for free.

I can build any class of ship the yard has been tooled up for?

I can refit a class without re-tooling if the BP does not differ by more than 20% (according to old fiction)

I can repair a ship in any yard, not just one tooled up to produce it ? does slip capacity matter?

Does a refit give you the benefits of a minor overhaul? To my mind a refit should repair any damaged system, replenish spares and reset the clock (at least that?s what happened when my father used to refit RN carriers ? e.g. re-build of Victorious), while making any modifications.

What limits ship building ? what if I exceed my budget, build capacity ? I think the answer is it all goes slower?

Can shipyards multitask e.g. add capacity and a slip and build/refit ships?

Research
A colony has recovered one lab, has 1million scientists but produces no research points? How do I delete a research topic once selected to begin research on? If I complete a research topic on one world does it automatically delete it from the active research and queues of other worlds researching the same topic?

Nebula
Does a task Group automatically slow down in a nebula to a velocity that will not damage it ? I didn?t think so. I saw talk of armour levels ? does this equate to armour boxes? Are 7 armour boxes enough to protect my survey ships in a class 7 nebula? I had ships zipping around at 1600k/sec when the nebula?s max velocity was 357k/sec with no apparent ill effects.

Terraforming
It would be useful to have a box in the Race screen detailing the minimum pressure a race can live with. Otherwise I am going to try and modify atmospheric pressure to close to 1. After all the maximum pressure is given, but how often do you find a planet with a dense atmosphere in my limited experience ? never? While planets with thin atmospheres abound.

Ship Design, basic requirements.
In recent fiction Steve usually has his first generation warships fitted with ion drives, box launchers etc, while I am struggling to get one of them within the first 15 years.
E.g. Power Plants
Should I design a power plant to deliver the maximum power a weapon requires? E.g. a 15cm Visible light laser requires 12-4, should the power plant have an output of 12 or 4? I have not found the answer in the old fiction, but again could be my myopia!
Sensors
How big is big enough for your first ships, I might want to see 100million k but could I fit much else into the ship?
Engines
What?s a good proportion of tonnage for a first basic warship to devote to engines?


Sorry if the above is a little basic for the old hands, but while I can get by reading the old fiction the changes in version tend to confuse things. I dread my first encounter with aliens, as my warships are probably not up to much (and I keep finding these ruins.....).

Regards and thanks for the help so far its much appreciated.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by IanD »
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Offline James Patten

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« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2008, 06:40:02 AM »
I can answer some of these based on experience in my game (version 3):

Quote from: "IanD"
ShipyardsI can refit a class without re-tooling if the BP does not differ by more than 20% (according to old fiction)

I don't know what the difference is, but I have a shipyard tooled up to build a colony ship, it also builds a freighter which is the same size and has the same speed.  However the yard that is tooled to build the same freighter cannot build the colony ship.

Quote from: "IanD"
Research
A colony has recovered one lab, has 1million scientists but produces no research points? How do I delete a research topic once selected to begin research on? If I complete a research topic on one world does it automatically delete it from the active research and queues of other worlds researching the same topic?

I don't know that you can delete a research topic from active research once you start.  I do know that the moment you complete research in Planet A, that research items goes off the list of Planet B.

Quote from: "IanD"
Nebula
Does a task Group automatically slow down in a nebula to a velocity that will not damage it ? I didn?t think so. I saw talk of armour levels ? does this equate to armour boxes?

The task group DOES automatically slow down in a nebula to max safe velocity.  I have many fast ships which have one or two armor levels, and when they go through a nebula they slow down to almost nothing (comparitively speaking).

I would like to know if activated shields have any effect on speed.

Quote from: "IanD"
Terraforming
It would be useful to have a box in the Race screen detailing the minimum pressure a race can live with....how often do you find a planet with a dense atmosphere in my limited experience ? never? While planets with thin atmospheres abound.

I find many planets with dense atmospheres (think Venus).  Although I've never tried it, I'm thinking that the minimum pressure value for Oxygen would be your minimum atmospheric pressure.

Quote from: "IanD"
Ship Design, basic requirements.
In recent fiction Steve usually has his first generation warships fitted with ion drives, box launchers etc, while I am struggling to get one of them within the first 15 years.

I think it largely depends on how lucky you are with initial research.  Usually it seems my games start with Nuclear Pulse engines.  As an example of "luck of the draw", in my current game I had full capability to construct small ships, so I used it to build survey ships that way.

Quote from: "IanD"
E.g. Power Plants
Should I design a power plant to deliver the maximum power a weapon requires? E.g. a 15cm Visible light laser requires 12-4, should the power plant have an output of 12 or 4? I have not found the answer in the old fiction, but again could be my myopia!

When you design a ship (the F5 screen), there's two calculated fields in the same column as the speed field which tell you required power and available power.  I can't recall their titles.

To the right of that column is another detailing required life support, so you can see if you need a small crew quarters or regular quarters.

Quote from: "IanD"
Sensors
How big is big enough for your first ships, I might want to see 100million k but could I fit much else into the ship?
Engines
What?s a good proportion of tonnage for a first basic warship to devote to engines?


Unfortunately I can't answer these.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by James Patten »
 

Offline sloanjh

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« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2008, 07:28:39 AM »
Quote from: "James Patten"
Quote from: "IanD"
Research
A colony has recovered one lab, has 1million scientists but produces no research points? How do I delete a research topic once selected to begin research on? If I complete a research topic on one world does it automatically delete it from the active research and queues of other worlds researching the same topic?

I don't know that you can delete a research topic from active research once you start.  I do know that the moment you complete research in Planet A, that research items goes off the list of Planet B.

A subtlety: research is not cumulative between planets.  In other words, if I've got a research project that requires 5k points, and do 1k of research on planet A, then start the same project on planet B, it still requires 5k points on planet B (not 4k).  I guess that research journals aren't available on the hyper-net :-)

John
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by sloanjh »
 

Offline IanD

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« Reply #4 on: July 03, 2008, 08:32:26 AM »
Quote
I find many planets with dense atmospheres (think Venus). Although I've never tried it, I'm thinking that the minimum pressure value for Oxygen would be your minimum atmospheric pressure.

Yes, but I have not found them good candidates for terraforming, unlike planets with ruined settlements on which all seem to have thin atmospheres.
Starting with the below from Britannica
Quote
At heights above 1,500 to 3,000 metres (5,000 to 10,000 feet), the pressure is low enough to produce mountain sickness and severe physiological difficulties


1 Atmosphere = 29.921 inHg
Taking pressure at 2438 metres as a likely limit (although in reality unless bred to it should be lower) = 22.2 inHg
My back-of ?the-envelope calculation is;
At 2438m pressure is 0.74 Atmospheres
Thus an atmosphere consisting of 0.148 Atmosphere O2 (20%) and 0.59 Atmosphere other gases (principally N2) should sustain life ? just! But what does Aurora say? Which is the why of my request to show minimum pressure for race for us mathematically challenged life science grads.

Regards
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by IanD »
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Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #5 on: July 03, 2008, 10:26:14 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
Shipyards
For a new shipyard the first retooling is for free.

I can build any class of ship the yard has been tooled up for?

I can refit a class without re-tooling if the BP does not differ by more than 20% (according to old fiction)
A yard can only be tooled up for one ship class at once. You can build that ship class or any other ship class for which the refit cost from the tooled class would be 20% or less in BP. Note its not the build cost that matters, but the refit cost. That's why you often get the situation that a yard tooled for an expensive colony ship can often build a much cheaper freighter but not the reverse. Adding cargo holds instead of cryogenic transport modules is cheap and so the refit cost is low. The reverse is much more expensive so a yard tooled for the cargo ship won't be able to build colony ships.

Quote
I can repair a ship in any yard, not just one tooled up to produce it ? does slip capacity matter?
I've checked the code and it looks like that in v3.0 any yard can carry out a repair. I've changed this for v3.1 so that only yards with sufficient capacity can handle repairs, although tooling up will still not be necessary.

Quote
Does a refit give you the benefits of a minor overhaul? To my mind a refit should repair any damaged system, replenish spares and reset the clock (at least that?s what happened when my father used to refit RN carriers ? e.g. re-build of Victorious), while making any modifications.
A refit doesn't give you the benefits of a minor overhaul, although you can carry out both simultanerously. The reason is that refits can potentially be much cheaper than minor ovehauls and could therefore be used as a cheap overhaul. Minor overhauls are gone in v3.1 anyway.

Quote
What limits ship building ? what if I exceed my budget, build capacity ? I think the answer is it all goes slower?
You can't physically build ships that are larger than build capacity for a specific shipyard. Each shipyard can build the class it is tooled for (or any class that has less than a 20% refit cost) and it can build one of those ships in each slipway. Each ship to be constructed also needs the Required Materials listed on the Manage Shipyards tab plus wealth equal to its build cost. Wealth and minerals are used up during construction on a pro-rata basis. So if you have built 30% of a ship, you will have used 30% of the wealth and minerals required.

Quote
Can shipyards multitask e.g. add capacity and a slip and build/refit ships?
Yes. Building/refitting ships is seperate to upgrading the capacity or adding extra slipways and can be done simultaneously.

Quote
Research
A colony has recovered one lab, has 1million scientists but produces no research points?
Research labs will always produce research points so there is some other factor at work here. Check the various production modifiers on the lower right on the summary tab. Its possible you have run out of money or the unrest level is too high.

Quote
How do I delete a research topic once selected to begin research on? If I complete a research topic on one world does it automatically delete it from the active research and queues of other worlds researching the same topic?
You can't actually delete topics, although you can change them. If you complete a research project on one world it should delete from the research queues of others but it won't stop them working on it if it is the current topic. I need to take a general look at this area to see if knowledge can be transferred in the same way as it can by ships that have scanned alien vessels.

Quote
Nebula
Does a task Group automatically slow down in a nebula to a velocity that will not damage it ? I didn?t think so. I saw talk of armour levels ? does this equate to armour boxes? Are 7 armour boxes enough to protect my survey ships in a class 7 nebula? I had ships zipping around at 1600k/sec when the nebula?s max velocity was 357k/sec with no apparent ill effects.
Ships do automatically slow down. The speed shown on the map for v3.0 is their assigned speed rather than their actual speed. For v3.1, if a fleet is being slowed down the actual speed will be shown and all times to complete orders will be shown based on the actual speed.

Quote
Terraforming
It would be useful to have a box in the Race screen detailing the minimum pressure a race can live with. Otherwise I am going to try and modify atmospheric pressure to close to 1. After all the maximum pressure is given, but how often do you find a planet with a dense atmosphere in my limited experience ? never? While planets with thin atmospheres abound.
There quite a lot of planets with very dense atmosphere, especially the venusian type worlds and high grav terrestrial worlds. Besides, maximum pressure is based on the racial homeworld so a race with a low-pressure atmosphere on their homeworld may well find a lot of worlds that would be acceptable to humans where the pressure is too high for them. There is no minimum pressure as such, just unbreathable atmosphere. A race can live on an airless world if there is enough infrastructure. For ideal habitable worlds, each race needs a minimum pressure of breathable gas and that cannot be more than 30% of the total atmospheric pressure.

Quote
Ship Design, basic requirements.
In recent fiction Steve usually has his first generation warships fitted with ion drives, box launchers etc, while I am struggling to get one of them within the first 15 years.
That's because I often manually assign 100-200k in starting research points.

Quote
E.g. Power Plants
Should I design a power plant to deliver the maximum power a weapon requires? E.g. a 15cm Visible light laser requires 12-4, should the power plant have an output of 12 or 4? I have not found the answer in the old fiction, but again could be my myopia!
You need power equal to the amount used every 5 seconds, which is the 4 above. The easiest way to check is to look at the Power Systems section of the Class Design window (near the top in the middle). There are several fields and the bottom one is Power Required. That tells you how much power you need from your reactors.

Quote
Sensors
How big is big enough for your first ships, I might want to see 100million k but could I fit much else into the ship?
That depends entirely on what you are planning to do with your ship. For a freighter, you might decide to forget sensors entirely as every ship has an inherent strength-1 thermal sensor. For a warship, good sensors and fire control systems are essential but have to be balanced with weapons and defences. For a scout ship, you will probably devote more space to sensors than anything else. Aurora has a very open-ended ship design process so how much space for sensors is really up to your ship design preferences, You will probably find as a game progresses and you run into alien races, your sensor requirements will evolve based on factors such as observed alien weapon ranges and the size of alien ships.

Quote
Engines
What?s a good proportion of tonnage for a first basic warship to devote to engines?
It's entirely up to you. Speed is important in Aurora for warships so they can control the combat range and to a certain extent for gravitational survey ships as they spend a lot of time moving between survey locations. Its far less important for terraformers, fuel harvesters, construction ships, etc. as they spend a lot of time in one place. For colony ships or freighters you need to weigh up the comparison between cargo space and speed. If you could double the cargo space and have 60% of the speed, that would be better in terms of overall transport capacity, although the time spent loading needs to be considered as well. Again this will evolve based on alien contact. If you get into a fight with aliens that have better engine tech, you might decide to devote more hull space to engines to try and compete or you might give up on trying to keep up with them and instead go for slow ships that have long range weapons.

Quote
Sorry if the above is a little basic for the old hands, but while I can get by reading the old fiction the changes in version tend to confuse things. I dread my first encounter with aliens, as my warships are probably not up to much (and I keep finding these ruins.....).

Because of the breadth of options in ship design, there is not really a right way to design a ship (which is a good thing). It depends on the mission and the circumstances

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »
 

Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #6 on: July 03, 2008, 10:29:18 AM »
Quote
Quote from: "IanD"
Nebula
Does a task Group automatically slow down in a nebula to a velocity that will not damage it ? I didn?t think so. I saw talk of armour levels ? does this equate to armour boxes?
The task group DOES automatically slow down in a nebula to max safe velocity.  I have many fast ships which have one or two armor levels, and when they go through a nebula they slow down to almost nothing (comparitively speaking).

I would like to know if activated shields have any effect on speed.

Shields (and missiles) won't function in a nebula. Here is the full thread on nebula effects:

http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?t=965

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »
 

Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2008, 10:35:01 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
Starting with the below from Britannica
Quote
At heights above 1,500 to 3,000 metres (5,000 to 10,000 feet), the pressure is low enough to produce mountain sickness and severe physiological difficulties

1 Atmosphere = 29.921 inHg
Taking pressure at 2438 metres as a likely limit (although in reality unless bred to it should be lower) = 22.2 inHg
My back-of ?the-envelope calculation is;
At 2438m pressure is 0.74 Atmospheres
Thus an atmosphere consisting of 0.148 Atmosphere O2 (20%) and 0.59 Atmosphere other gases (principally N2) should sustain life ? just! But what does Aurora say? Which is the why of my request to show minimum pressure for race for us mathematically challenged life science grads.

Aurora says Yes!

Well for humans with average tolerances anyway. Its entirely possible that such an atmosphere will be unbreathable by other races and would be poisonous to a methane breathing race. Aurora is fairly generous in terms of tolerances and humans could probably manage a world with 0.5 atm. Of course, "humans" vary from game to game depending on how the tolerances are generated or set.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »
 

Offline IanD

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« Reply #8 on: July 04, 2008, 02:30:52 AM »
Quote
Research labs will always produce research points so there is some other factor at work here. Check the various production modifiers on the lower right on the summary tab. Its possible you have run out of money or the unrest level is too high.


I think I have run out of money, I seem to be spending 50-100 more than I earn, started building financial centres to compensate. Would lack of cash also slow shipbuilding? Confess I didn't look at the income tab until it dawned on me I was broke! :)

Regards
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by IanD »
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Offline IanD

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« Reply #9 on: July 04, 2008, 03:59:25 AM »
Quote
You can't physically build ships that are larger than build capacity for a specific shipyard. Each shipyard can build the class it is tooled for (or any class that has less than a 20% refit cost) and it can build one of those ships in each slipway. Each ship to be constructed also needs the Required Materials listed on the Manage Shipyards tab plus wealth equal to its build cost. Wealth and minerals are used up during construction on a pro-rata basis. So if you have built 30% of a ship, you will have used 30% of the wealth and minerals required


I was referring to the race build capacity; I think its so many hull spaces per year, and what happens if my budget is exceeded? Can I just shoot the accountants? :)

Regards
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by IanD »
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Offline Erik L (OP)

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« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2008, 10:46:55 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
Quote
Research labs will always produce research points so there is some other factor at work here. Check the various production modifiers on the lower right on the summary tab. Its possible you have run out of money or the unrest level is too high.

I think I have run out of money, I seem to be spending 50-100 more than I earn, started building financial centres to compensate. Would lack of cash also slow shipbuilding? Confess I didn't look at the income tab until it dawned on me I was broke! :)

Regards


On the Summary tab of the Economics screen, there is in the lower right corner, five or six values that normally read 100%. If any one of those is under 100%, your production, mining, research all get reduced by that amount. And I believe multiple areas under 100% cause much bigger slowdowns.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline Erik L (OP)

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« Reply #11 on: July 04, 2008, 10:48:04 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
Quote
You can't physically build ships that are larger than build capacity for a specific shipyard. Each shipyard can build the class it is tooled for (or any class that has less than a 20% refit cost) and it can build one of those ships in each slipway. Each ship to be constructed also needs the Required Materials listed on the Manage Shipyards tab plus wealth equal to its build cost. Wealth and minerals are used up during construction on a pro-rata basis. So if you have built 30% of a ship, you will have used 30% of the wealth and minerals required

I was referring to the race build capacity; I think its so many hull spaces per year, and what happens if my budget is exceeded? Can I just shoot the accountants? :)

Regards

The build capacity is how fast the ships are built.

Start with the lawyers, then the accountants.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #12 on: July 05, 2008, 10:05:03 AM »
Quote from: "IanD"
I was referring to the race build capacity; I think its so many hull spaces per year, and what happens if my budget is exceeded? Can I just shoot the accountants? :)

The racial shipbuilding rate is how fast the ships are built. So if you have a shipbuilding rate of 400 per year and a ship that costs 600, it will take 18 months to build. However, in v3.1 the shipbuilding rate that will vary from the base rate depending on the size of ship. Larger ships will get a bonus to their rate of construction. The reasons are explained in the following thread:

http://aurora.pentarch.org/viewtopic.php?t=1142

If you spend more money than you are generating, eventually your balance will drop below zero. At that point, your productivity will start to fall based on the amount you are overdrawn compared to your annual income. This means less money is spent as well so the problem will start to correct itself. Eventually, you will reach a point where you are about a year's income overdrawn where you won't be able to build anything.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »
 

Offline sloanjh

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« Reply #13 on: July 05, 2008, 11:13:32 AM »
Quote from: "SteveAlt"
If you spend more money than you are generating, eventually your balance will drop below zero. At that point, your productivity will start to fall based on the amount you are overdrawn compared to your annual income. This means less money is spent as well so the problem will start to correct itself. Eventually, you will reach a point where you are about a year's income overdrawn where you won't be able to build anything.


I've always wondered - does productivity affect wealth generation too?  If it does, then presumably one could get into a situation where it's effectively impossible to climb back out of the hole by cutting spending.

John
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by sloanjh »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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« Reply #14 on: July 05, 2008, 12:02:50 PM »
Quote from: "sloanjh"
I've always wondered - does productivity affect wealth generation too?  If it does, then presumably one could get into a situation where it's effectively impossible to climb back out of the hole by cutting spending.

No, wealth generation is unaffected.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »