The House of the House Rules - AKA how to ruin your own life and enjoy it

[Froggiest1982 (OP)]

As per subject, here is a list oh house rules I am enjoying and I look forward to see others and or comments on mine.

1 - No free infrastructures. I am editing the DB recently and let colonies to produce free infrastructures only above 500m population. Sometimes it is paired to no civilians for the nice extra pain. Another thing that works well with this modification is the 10% terraforming speed, otherwise terraforming will always be cheaper and faster than use infrastructures. (it still is though)

2 - Capped mines based on body size. Self explainatory. I use a small formula and tge maximum amount of mines you can get on larger bodies it' never more than 250 anyway.

3 - Realistic pop Growth. My races have between 0.1 and 0.3 growth rate, so no more double population after 4 or 5 years on new colonies. Works well with the infrastructures rule.

4 - 5% Survey speed. This is almost a default for many players I think. For me it does really give you the feel of exploration in space at the "right" pace. In the end I've heard that the universe is...big! You can cap the number of grav/geo sensors allowed per ship for the always extra nice pain.

Another thing would be the research speed, but I am still torn between several setups so I won't mention any of them.

[Zincat]

My own rules are the following:

1) No stacking excessive amount of terraformers on a single planet. I don't have a hard rule here, basically I make it so it always take some years to terraform. The numbers do change according to how far my tech is. I am allowed to terraform multiple worlds at once, but I try not to go crazy with it.

2) No civilian mining complexes or civilian fuel harvesting. No sane real world nation would leave such critical, extremely limited and life ensuring materials in the hands of civilians. I sometimes keep civs around for transportation.

3) No automines except for comets (kinda necessary for the start). Automines are simply too convenient, period. So it's either infrastructure+ mines, or orbital habitats, or mining ships (not much of this). This is why I don't like the idea of limiting population growth, I kinda need the population XD

4) No mass drivers. Good old cargo ships doing rounds.

5) 10% exploration speed, 25% research speed. Not hard numbers, it's just what I currently use, still experimenting.

6) Lately I've been doing a half-tn start. Start conventional, SM research TN, SM edit the planet so I have basic tn-era facilities (mines, factories, refineries). And that's it, no other techs or starting spaceyards or extra facilities. I basically don't want to deal with the starting conversion. No starting fleet of any kind either.

7) No reduced size missiles or box launcher on normal ships, as the AI cannot deal with it. Box launchers are only allowed on fighters or FACs, and the boxed missiles MUST be short ranged. Basically, I can use them but I need to actually get close with the bombers/FACs. I also don't get crazy with them, cause that would also defeat the spirit of this house rule which is to not abuse the AI.
My fleets are mostly beam warships and carriers. Missile capital ships are reserved for stragglers/damaged ships, lone ships, civilians, bombarding or other special uses. I also use them if I discover a particular enemy has little point defense.


I personally don't like your no-free-infrastructure change, as I need all the infrastructure I can get due to my mining needs XD

[serger]

Research speed at 25%, yeah.

Also:

# No preemptive warfare buildup without some signs of menace

# Some part of CMC minerals always go to commercial sector even if I need those minerals

# No Financial Centers without powerful industry at the site

# Box launchers cannot be mounted on any heavy ship as her main armament

# No officer promotion without 3-4 years of service normally (it's tons of micro really, because I have to use "no autopromotion" checkboxes and promote everyone manually)

# No commander exchange en route

# No high post for 20-years old newbie. 3-4 years of minor colony governor experience to be trasfered at major colony governor post, etc.

# Any research to start with 1 lab, and I can double labs number for any reseach no less then 1 year after start or previous buildup.  No more-then-one-lab research for small-RP projects at all.

# No use of any craft less then several mounth after it's first exemplar is built; no active operations for ships before at least 50% crew training; no combat use of captured ships before several mounths of research and training

# Never use any risky tactical trick twice againt the same AI opponent; pretend they'll be ready and catch you the next time.

# No infrastructure-free major colony if any environment condition is on the edge of the racial requirements; no massive colonization less then several mounths after ice-melting or smth like this

# No nearly-endless trips even for commercial ships; use proper Intended Deployment Time for them; no sitting at orbit (harvesting, mining, terraforming, etc.) or at JP for years without colony or recreational module

# No forever-isolated garrisons (i.e. without colonies or naval bases at site); use orbital recreational module or set replacement trips with troop transports

[nuclearslurpee]

4 - 5% Survey speed. This is almost a default for many players I think. For me it does really give you the feel of exploration in space at the "right" pace. In the end I've heard that the universe is...big! You can cap the number of grav/geo sensors allowed per ship for the always extra nice pain.

I've found that survey speed is a bit tricky to get right, because so much of survey efficiency ends up being tied to how fast your survey ships can move between locations. Asteroid fields for example are almost only a function of travel time while surveying a terrestrial or gas giant planet gets to where you can park a survey ship for half a year per planet which is IMO more frustrating that realistic. For grav surveys it is more consistent and 5% or 10% works fine.

Another thing would be the research speed, but I am still torn between several setups so I won't mention any of them.

Personally, I find the research speed fine, but the problem in my view tends to be that you don't really need a lot of scientists. Once you have one good researcher in every specialty (granted, "good" can take a while to get, but not every specialty is critical) you're good for a long time and by the time you face retirements a bunch of new prospects are available.

From 1.13 on I have been experimenting with a house rule that the admin skill of scientists is divided by 5 (house rule only, I don't believe this can be enforced by DB changes). With this even the best scientists are commanding only a few labs (6 to 8 usually), meaning there are jobs for several scientists at once - and each project takes longer to finish even though the overall RP output is at the nice default 100% rate that I find best for gameplay. You can still rush propulsion techs but not quickly and you still need a balanced scientific portfolio.

So far I like this and have found it a relatively micro-free and simple way to limit scientific progress without feeling constrained or slow.

2) No civilian mining complexes or civilian fuel harvesting. No sane real world nation would leave such critical, extremely limited and life ensuring materials in the hands of civilians.

sobs in capitalism

3) No automines except for comets (kinda necessary for the start). Automines are simply too convenient, period. So it's either infrastructure+ mines, or orbital habitats, or mining ships (not much of this). This is why I don't like the idea of limiting population growth, I kinda need the population XD

Personally I love the balance between automines, manual mines, and orbital miners. It forces a lot of tough decisions to be made, since every automine built could have been two manual mines but sometimes you need to put mines down yesterday with population shipped out tomorrow.

As for me, personally I don't maintain a lot of house rules, rather letting RP dictate how I play which tends to introduce plenty of inefficiencies. I do vacillate between 100% and 10% survey speed depending on the kind of game I want to play, and as mentioned I'm liking the scientist house rule I've been trying. Recently I have been getting into design studies, more or less, using a lot of box launchers reminiscent of modern-day VLS-armed ships. These obviously push the already meager limits of the NPR AI, so I think in v2.0 I will have to start experimenting with player race-only campaigns and seeing how that goes. It will probably make games take a longer time but I am not in a big rush anyways.

[idefelipe]

I though I had "hard homerules" and now I realized that I am just a child playing to be an adult in comparison with yours 

Thanks for sharing, I will try to implement some of yours in my next game. There are really nice ideas!!

EDITED: I curse you all! Now I can't play my current game knowing these homerules that you have posted and I am "forced" to start all over again. Time to choose from the list you have put up. As I'm not afraid of excessive micromanagement (I place each officer at his/her destination by hand, for example) and I like to enjoy a slow-paced game, I'm sure I'll take quite a few of the rules you've posted.

By the way, a couple of rules I usually use:

# Survey ships must always have a science department and a deployment time of 60 months (5 years). Of course they must have enough MSP to be able to stay that long.

# During 5 year survey missions, I block the promotion of the captain and science officer (and any other officers that may be on board) and they can only be promoted when they are in Overhaul period.


# Military vessels that would be considered a category above Patrol Craft (3000t and above) must carry an auxiliary bridge and an executive officer. I justify this by stating that in such a large crew, the minimum is to put a cadet fresh out of the academy as second-in-command.

# I try to recreate a more realistic chain of command and naval organisation (to the best of my knowledge). That is, I don't drop Naval Adms. just below the high command, I always put several levels of intermediate command. This requires a lot of micromanagement, but besides giving it depth, the stacked bonuses are mind-blowing.

For example:

High Admiralty Command
Exploration Command - Admiral
Exploration Command - CoS (Chief of Staff)
SRV [Name of Ship] Liaison Office
- The ship itself.

[Zincat]

From 1.13 on I have been experimenting with a house rule that the admin skill of scientists is divided by 5 (house rule only, I don't believe this can be enforced by DB changes). With this even the best scientists are commanding only a few labs (6 to 8 usually), meaning there are jobs for several scientists at once - and each project takes longer to finish even though the overall RP output is at the nice default 100% rate that I find best for gameplay. You can still rush propulsion techs but not quickly and you still need a balanced scientific portfolio.

Oh I do that to a certain extent as well. I did not mention it since it's not a house rule per-se, but on top of the research reduction, I make sure to always have at least 2-3 research projects going. It's more realistic like this.

sobs in capitalism

To be completely fair, there's literally nothing in the world even remotely as valuable as TN materials are in Aurora. The closest thing would MAYBE be something like uranium, or some other radioactives maybe, but TN materials are orders of magnitude more important. After all they are limited, they don't renew at ALL, and have NO  possible substitute ever. Without them you are stuck on earth while waiting for the heat death of the Universe 
So I'd say my evaluation of no sane nation leaving it to the civs is quite on point. It would be the equivalent of selling ICBM missiles on ebay.

These obviously push the already meager limits of the NPR AI, so I think in v2.0 I will have to start experimenting with player race-only campaigns and seeing how that goes. It will probably make games take a longer time but I am not in a big rush anyways.

Yes, the AI cannot deal at all with massed boxed launchers, which is the main reason I don't use them except than in limited fashion.
I will also admit that it's also a matter of personal RP preferences for me. In a very-far-future tech scenario, I just personally cannot see missiles be viable as imo they should be trivial to intercept with any amount of point defense. But that's just my personal point of view, and of course Steve can code his game as he wants.
After all, I also think that in a far future scenario all military ships would 100% be unmanned drones due to higher performance and no need to accomodate humans onboard, but Aurora still uses human crews

[serger]

To be completely fair, there's literally nothing in the world even remotely as valuable as TN materials are in Aurora. The closest thing would MAYBE be something like uranium, or some other radioactives maybe, but TN materials are orders of magnitude more important. After all they are limited, they don't renew at ALL, and have NO  possible substitute ever. Without them you are stuck on earth while waiting for the heat death of the Universe 

Well, we know there is no substitute ever for them; they have no more evidence about it, then we (real ones) know it about iron and rare earth metals ores, hydrocarbons and phosphates: all those are non-renewable (in quantities) and we know no way to build or support civilization without those. Yet nearly all extraction industry of those remains commercial.

[RougeNPS]

Well we can make civilization without REEs and Hydrocarbons. Just not civilization as we know it. Ferrous materials and Phosphates are a different story however...

Also we can get renewable iron in quantity from dying stars. If we ever figure out Matter transmutation the rest are easy.

Edit for my House Rules:

1: Proper OOBs and Chains of Command because micromanagement.
2: Most colonies have orbital elements too because i hate myself but love realism.
3: The Sun can be made into a Dyson sphere given enough time.

The third one might sound a little strange but Dyson Spheres are other celestial level engineering projects arent represented in Aurora so this rule represents the idea that the ultimate goal is to prove that its possible.

[The0didactus]

In my current campaign, I'm disallowing terraforming


. . . oh also I destroyed earth and restarted from a single colony with 2 mines and 2 factories

[serger]

Well we can make civilization without REEs and Hydrocarbons. Just not civilization as we know it. Ferrous materials and Phosphates are a different story however...

Also we can get renewable iron in quantity from dying stars. If we ever figure out Matter transmutation the rest are easy.

Any element exept of hydrogen went from exploding novas, yet we have no clue how to do it inside civilizational limits of time and territory.
And without REEs and Hydrocarbons there can be some civilization, yet no modern level one - no more then early XIX century level. It's possible that some hiden way to do it exists, yet what we cannot know - we cannot know indeed, the same way as any Aurora population we can imagine cannot know if there is a way to build spacefaring civilization without TNs.

[Kristover]

My House Rules:

#1:  Research at 15%.  I find this gives me a good pace forward - it speeds up greatly once you start researching the RP techs and doesn't put me in a position where I have to cap research lab usage.

#2:  Scientists can only research their specialty.  Can only change a Scientist specialty at game start.

#3:  Survey Speed 5%.  I prefer a slower paced exploration game.  I usually build long range/high endurance explorers for jump point exploration.  I then build shorter range/endurance survey craft accompanied by tenders for celestial body survey.

#4:  Reduce gravity tolerance to 0.4.  It reduces the number of colonizable candidates in Sol System at game start.

#5.  No military build up or military vessel design over 5,000 tons until another race encountered.

#6.  No Box Launchers on anything over 1,000 tons.

#7.  No Mass Drivers on Habitable/Colonized Planets.

#8.  Reduce Terraforming Speed to 10%.

#9:  No JP Stabilization until the next system down the Chain is fully explored. 

[serger]

#4:  Reduce gravity tolerance to 0.4.  It reduces the number of colonizable candidates in Sol System at game start.

Yeah, that's what I do the same: to enable Martian major colony, yet not Lunar one.
Also I tend to reduce Atm Density tolerance from x4 to x2 and set Translation at nearly-minimal value.

[RougeNPS]

Well we can make civilization without REEs and Hydrocarbons. Just not civilization as we know it. Ferrous materials and Phosphates are a different story however...

Also we can get renewable iron in quantity from dying stars. If we ever figure out Matter transmutation the rest are easy.

Any element exept of hydrogen went from exploding novas, yet we have no clue how to do it inside civilizational limits of time and territory.
And without REEs and Hydrocarbons there can be some civilization, yet no modern level one - no more then early XIX century level. It's possible that some hiden way to do it exists, yet what we cannot know - we cannot know indeed, the same way as any Aurora population we can imagine cannot know if there is a way to build spacefaring civilization without TNs.

As i said, it would be civilization. Just not as a we know it.

[Platys51]

House rules of my latest game:

1, No space weapons. Ground troops only.
2, No diplomacy or neutrality.
3, Swarm must grow. New lesser hive (20m orbital habitat) should be built every year past 40.
4, Colonise all planets below col cost 5 in my sphere of influence, no matter the minerals.

[ranger044]

1. Research down to 50%.
2. Terraforming and Survey down to 25%.
3. ALWAYS start as a conventional.
4. Terraforming only allowed from towed stations after 10 facilities - no constructing enough planet side terraformers to cover the world.
5. No energy weapons allowed until I fight one. I can only research the basic level after encountering, higher after killing/capturing.
6. There must always be a standing military on all worlds of 250m or more - not just a basic policing force but a properly supplied force built into the greater hierarchy.
7. Start with 500m pop, 5 labs, 1600 CI, and one civilian shipyard named the ISS Cargo Dock.
8. 0 starting NPRs, but manually do percentage rolls based on the same factors as normal with increasing percent success based on jumps away form Sol.