Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: madpraxis on April 29, 2012, 06:08:52 PM
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Also known as obsessive compulsive and/or anal retentive joys. So I'm sitting there cracking out with a random big book full of history (because I remember SOME of this stuff, but not most) from the downstairs bookcase when I went a pondering.....'Hrm' I say to myself 'I can't be the only one that has these sudden urges to organize my empire in a somewhat coherent manner in a desire to fulfill my anal reten..er...make it look neat, ya..that's it'.
So, how I am doing it this game.
Real stars off, rolled up a nebula system. Made up a few sentence back story to fulfill my baser urges 'What if aliens stole away some Romans back in around 400 AD somewhere abouts. And then lived with them on their planet until 'they' came along, where upon they ran into the nebula to hide, taking their little buddies with them. But then they all died...call it a latent bioweapon of 'them' that finally got them...leaving the poor descendants of the Romans all alone on this planet amongst the ruins of their friends'.
Ok, back story in to satisfy my baser urges. Now....hrm...how to name things..Quick! To the downstairs bookcase of history! Where upon we dig up information about the later roman empire. Now, I love this stuff...but...I want a quick and dirty map...not hundreds of pages of text that I need to read through, albeit I enjoy it. Hrm...WIKI. Gotcha wiki.
To the naming! Roman themed, but I OVERWRITE YOU DEFAULT NAMES! BWA HA HA. Well, we see that Tuscia et Umbria was the province containing Roma (city, not the province). But that just won't do. Our home system is now Italia (Yes, not a province, but a region. This will be the one exception to the rule that will be layed down). So, now, other then the home system each system will be named after a 400 AD province. Which also gives me province capitals and major cities to use as planet names! Hurra! Not only that but if by some wonder I don't wander off and start a new game, I also now have sector names, thanks to the region names! Now, this may require some picky choices (like...Corsica...one major city..and thats it, so no good for a system with two inhabitable planets). So as an example in the home system of Italia, in the Italia sector, we have the homeworld: Roma, and the two inhabitable (soon) planets: Florentia (First one worked on, so its bigger) and Arretium. And yes, around this time Roma wasn't really the 'capital' but dammnit, its the thought that matters. The 2 sectors it has jump points too are Liguria, with its 1 inhabitable body (soon) Mediolanum, and Venetia with its two inhabitable (soon) bodies, Aquileia and Patavium. Both systems part of the Italia sector.
So now the system, sector, and inhabitable planets are done with idea wise. Onto the mining bodies. Well, this one is easier. I mean, its a hole in the ground. It's only purpose is to provide material wealth for the holy roman empire. As such, such measly locations do not deserve to be blessed with true names. Instead I go back in time to school...and the NATO phonetic alphabet. Because, hey, we still USE the latin aka roman alphabet, descended from the greek alphabet. With extra letters. So ok, mines get named in order of founding and by system name. So, in Italia we have Italia Alfa, Italia Bravo, Italia Charlie, and so on. This just makes it easier for us to differentiate now between important events on important planets (read: inhabitable ones) and things we sort of care about (Ya, I'm talking about you Italia Tango).
Right, mining operations out of the way. But wait we cry! What about GAS GIANTS with SORIUM! We shall not forget our friendly giants in the sky...wait...friendly...sky...Gods...thats it. Gas giants get named after Greco-Roman gods! Capital idea, after all, are they not responsible for giving us the fuel we need to conquer the world!...er...galaxy! Plus, seriously, the giggles you can get from the comment of 'I went and refueled at Bacchus today' are just totally worth it.
So, locations out of the way...what about alien intelligences we encounter? Easy Peasy I say. After all, there is over a thousand years of history to pick and choose enemies and client states from. We will start early, with the last king of rome, just because his name is SUPERBUS. So the first 'friendly' aliens we 'help' shall be called the Rutulians...in honour of the last kings last military campaign before that snotty upstart Lucius Junius Brutus booted our dear friend Superbus out the door, presumably minus important bits, like his head (Though I digress here, who the hell knows what happened...roman history is so packed with made up crap its rather pointless to try and figure it out).
So, that is what and how I go about the naming of my current game. Last couple of games back many moons ago it was countries from Magnamund (Thanks Magnamund Companion!).
So...discuss...Explain your urges, your desires. Your wants and your needs...at least naming wise in Aurora that is...
And as an aside, just for fun I ran the spellchecker...hehe..some of the things it came up with where hilarious. Also, as an aside for people who know history, yes, I did lump Italia Annonaria and Italia Suburbicaria into just plain old Italia. I may change that around later and split them up properly depending on how long I actually keep at this current game.
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Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.
My last game was named according to rooms of my house. Primary system was Living Room. Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport. Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on. All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question. Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.
I deleted that game. While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.
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....You sir, are now full of win after that. WIN I say. If you where female I would ask to be the one to host your larvae so my genetics could be part of it, you know, after they hatch and eat my carcass...oh wait, sorry...I have to remember that all females are NOT horrific demon spawned hell hornets like my ex, my bad.
But still, WIN. If I had the money, I'd send you a twinkie with a little gold star on the wrapping as a trophy. ;D
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Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.
My last game was named according to rooms of my house. Primary system was Living Room. Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport. Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on. All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question. Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.
I deleted that game. While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.
I should turn on karma just because of this post...
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Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.
My last game was named according to rooms of my house. Primary system was Living Room. Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport. Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on. All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question. Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.
I deleted that game. While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.
Deleted is probably best, but the fiction from that campaign would be an incredibly funny read!
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LMAO!!
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That little story was mildly amusing until it got very disturbing. And, truthfully, very amusing. xeryon now has the dubious honor of being one of the few folks on the Internet who's made me choke on my morning drink.
I've never got an empire large enough to have a dire need for names, and I'm a big nerd anyway, so I'm happy to use Real Stars and use Wikipedia to steal other people's names (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_systems_in_fiction). It's not terribly creative and you run the risk of a given star having only cruddy names (or none!), but it works for me.
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I downloaded a compendium of names for the WOT series but making a WOT theme is a daunting task for me time-wise. The area were the WOT theme breaks down a bit is system names. For a scripted sequence of system names you would run out of of them very quickly as the number of region/country names is rather limited. It would require me to manually rename non-relevant systems to generic names. I suppose I could just use major city names for systems but as a huge fan of the WOT series it would aggravate my OCD to have cities within a country be named as an entire system when the parent country has it's own system named after it elsewhere.
I wonder if it would be possible for Steve to create an entirely generic theme as a base for people that want to individually name everything? Systems generate on sequential Roman numerals. Staff and admins are all named Robert Paulson. It would make it easier to figure out who you need to correct the naming for. I suppose that would be easy enough to do myself...
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Bugger it, just name them all Bob...all of them...the academy graduates, the ships, the sectors, the planets...everything...Bob.
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It's Bobs all the way down.
Xeryon: That is the best naming scheme I have ever heard, I think I might have to adopt it for one of my own games.
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Emperpor: " Administrator Bob. For all your hard work and loyalty, I hereby assign you to the Toilet System. Your ship, the Rusty Sink is waiting for you and departs immediately"
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Emperpor: " Administrator Bob. For all your hard work and loyalty, I hereby assign you to the Toilet System on the planet Rusty Sink. Your ship, the Fluffy Anus is waiting for you and departs immediately"
Fixed
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ROFLMAO!!!! ;D
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If I play the Terran Federation, I use real country names for systems in a somewhat Europe-centric, arbitrary way. Unless there is a specific reason to name them for something special - like in one game Sol only had 3 JPs, two being short dead ends. So the last one that actually led out the wider galaxy was renamed Gate and the only colonizable planet was named Gateway.
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...I would kill for a system like that...seriously...my games for some reason (on the default settings) ALWAYS seem to tend towards 4-6 JP's a system...none of them dead ends...most of them leading to systems with yet again 4-6 JP's and no dead ends...I see some of the maps of other's games and it usually makes me sad that I can't do things like that due to insane amounts of jump points...
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I name basically everything and everyone on a warhammer 40k theme, because I am addicted to warhammer 40k "literature."
BLOOD FOR THE BLO.... er... ahem.
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...I would kill for a system like that...seriously...my games for some reason (on the default settings) ALWAYS seem to tend towards 4-6 JP's a system...none of them dead ends...most of them leading to systems with yet again 4-6 JP's and no dead ends...I see some of the maps of other's games and it usually makes me sad that I can't do things like that due to insane amounts of jump points...
My last few have been one extreme and another. Current game starting system has two JP. One leads to three additional systems in a cul-de-sac and the other JP leads to a bodiless system with 8 JPs in it. I've scanned 10 or so systems and uncovered over 50 JPs. I thought about naming the systems after the old HS Cheer squad.
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Bugger it, just name them all Bob...all of them...the academy graduates, the ships, the sectors, the planets...everything...Bob.
Bob. Come here. Right Bob, I want you to go to the planet Bob. The one in the Bob system. Y'know, in the Bob sector. You'll find it. Anyway, I need you to go there and tell Bob that he is being relieved of his administrative duties because he is urgently required on the planet Bob, Bob system, Bob sector. Tell him he must leave Bob and return to Bob immediately. He is to command the new flagship, called Bob. He will be commanding a task force consisting of the frigates, Bob, Bob, Bob and Bob, the Cruisers Bob and Bob, and of course his ship, the new capital ship, Bob. If he does not arrive at Bob within one week, command of the Bob will instead be given to Bob.
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@Xeryon - You can manipulate that with the 'galaxy size' setting. Also, if you want a 'gateway' system, you can go into SM mode and manipulate the jump points (or delete systems entirely) until you get a result you desire. Be wary, as always, of NPRs discovering JPs into your existing systems.
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I'm going to be waiting for 5.7 to start any new games, but prehaps I will go for a Railgun/Index theme (it's an anime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toaru_Kagaku_no_Railgun_episodes)). Would probably end up having a missile or beam armed ship called the Railgun class, which might end up being confusing in the heat of battle.
Edit: Thinking about it more, with ship names like ACSS Railgun and ACSS Judgelight among others, I'm starting to like the idea. The Accelerator and Dedicatus classes maybe...
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@Xeryon - You can manipulate that with the 'galaxy size' setting. Also, if you want a 'gateway' system, you can go into SM mode and manipulate the jump points (or delete systems entirely) until you get a result you desire. Be wary, as always, of NPRs discovering JPs into your existing systems.
I know I can adjust the settings for this. My comment was in reference to my amusement at the variety that was randomly generated initially.
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I name basically everything and everyone on a warhammer 40k theme, because I am addicted to warhammer 40k "literature."
BLOOD FOR THE BLO.... er... ahem.
When I finally get around for my test campaign for v5.70, I suspect there may be a flavour of 40k involved :). I forgot to mention it but v5.70 includes a new Warhammer 40k commander name theme. Below is a quick example of some names it generated. I've also added two new ship naming themes, one for WH40K Empire and one for WH40K Chaos, with over a hundred names in each one.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/WH40K.png)
Steve
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5.7 can't come soon enough.
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Well, bloody hell stevey-o...thats just plain out awesome. Though it does make me feel kind of old to remember the days when nobody other then some serious tabletop gaming nerds had any idea what warhammer was, let alone 40k...And I agree, 5.7 will be nice :D
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Well, bloody hell stevey-o...thats just plain out awesome. Though it does make me feel kind of old to remember the days when nobody other then some serious tabletop gaming nerds had any idea what warhammer was, let alone 40k...And I agree, 5.7 will be nice :D
Ah yes the good old days of desperately trying to butter up the one guy in school who was a) Actually any good with a paintbrush and b) had a real interest in 40k to paint up my own sad little collection.
Can't wait for 5.7 either! Will be very interesting to see what comes out of the bureau of ship design and AARs.
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I tend to use a mix of leaving it as the real stars name, or concepts such as "Victory", "Triumph", "New Beginning", etc. Sometimes I name stuff after famous commanders, etc. For instance, in my current game, my first colony is named after the scientist that finished the jump drive project, and my "Hero Class" ships are named after commanders that died in the line of duty.
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When I finally get around for my test campaign for v5.70, I suspect there may be a flavour of 40k involved :). I forgot to mention it but v5.70 includes a new Warhammer 40k commander name theme. Below is a quick example of some names it generated. I've also added two new ship naming themes, one for WH40K Empire and one for WH40K Chaos, with over a hundred names in each one.
Steve
That's great Steve, but I may get a bit concerned if any of my commanders are named Horus Lupercal :)
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That's great Steve, but I may get a bit concerned if any of my commanders are named Horus Lupercal :)
Well it's possible in this theme, so good luck with that :)
Steve
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I too have a WH40K flavouring although the full imperium list I use is filled out with Manticore, Nelsons navy and so on, its been in use for every 4x I've played over the years.
If your adding a 40k flavour I will attach an an excel sheet (saved as csv so you'll need to adjust the columns) with the design names I import every iteration, which aren't all canon, but do have the flavour (has Imperium, Traitor, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necron, Tyranid, Tau and Ork). I say "design names" as I make a design and call the first ship of that class to be built that name. Maybe you can glean some stuff from it to flesh out the theme. :)
The ranks are taken from the Lexicanum so are pretty acurate.
Ground troops get named depending on type as well, Marines become Legion I, Legion II etc and are generally three Battalions consisting three Marine units (1st Company, 2nd Company etc) and an assault unit named a "Tactical Dreadnaught Support", the fourth battalion are heavy Heavy Assault Battalions named Heavy Support Squadrons, Ive included that on the csv too. I did go through a phase of naming the Heavy Assault Battalions as Titans, and assault Battalions as Scout Titans but that can turn out to be a lot of Titans in a long game. Garrison troops become Arbitrators under a Brigade Headquarters renamed Adeptus Arbites Provost. Imperial guard are left as is, usually just prefixing their name with the Division (Like 1st Terran, 7th Armd etc).
EDIT: Updated the Imperium.csv as I'd copied over the design/shipnames from the wrong place
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Hum. I wonder what the tonnage of those Battlefleet Gothic ships was. Probably something ridiculous.
*edit* Some browsing of the WH40k Lexicanum puts the Lunar class at 28 Megatonnes with a crew of 95,000. Heh. I think the official stats somewhat overball it, given how ships are portrayed in the rest of the fiction. I mean, they're supposed to be huge, and carry whole divisions of troops, and so on. But you'd need an entire chapter of space marines, minimum, to conduct a boarding action on a ship that size. A Strike Cruiser is only supposed to base about a company (?) of space marines. et. al.
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Hum. I wonder what the tonnage of those Battlefleet Gothic ships was. Probably something ridiculous.
*edit* Some browsing of the WH40k Lexicanum puts the Lunar class at 28 Megatonnes with a crew of 95,000. Heh. I think the official stats somewhat overball it, given how ships are portrayed in the rest of the fiction. I mean, they're supposed to be huge, and carry whole divisions of troops, and so on. But you'd need an entire chapter of space marines, minimum, to conduct a boarding action on a ship that size. A Strike Cruiser is only supposed to base about a company (?) of space marines. et. al.
That actually doesn't sound that far off given that ships in 40k are all supposed to be several km long and are fairly packed with crew. The Enterprise (US CVN, not Star Trek) is about 95k tons, 350 meters long by 80 wide at its max, and carries 6000 people on board. Scale that up to being 10 times as wide, long, and deep, and it becomes roughly the size of WH40k cruiser but with an expected capacity of 6 million crew and a weight of 95 million tons. Presumably in the far future there is only war and lighter building materials.
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Haha! 6 million crew. Now that's whack, though its in accordance with the dimensions and volume as you say.
To get the rated crew of 95000 (instead of the rated tonnage or dimensions), you'd need 16 times the volume and tonnage, or 4x bigger than Enterprise in every dimension. So 1400 meters long and 240 wide and 1520kt.
If you go off HMS Victory instead - being as BFG is obviously inspired by Napeolonic-era warships - you'd need 110 times the volume and tonnage. So you get about 700 meters length and 170 meters wide for 95000 crew. And 400kt. Hmmm-mmm.
Of course neither the USS Enterprise or HMS victory are expected to make years-long voyages unsupported. No matter how badly the crew is treated, they still need air and years of food. Plus spare for any troops that might be carried. So you can probably inflate the tonnage and volume further, within reason.
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4 times as large in each dimension would give you 4^3, or 64 times as much volume (and presumably crew). You only need about 2.5 times in each dimension.
Mike
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Derp. :-[
I did cubes instead of squares when i was using the completely wrong base numbers. Of course i forget when i redid it. ;p