Yet another new player questions thread...

[nessin (OP)]

I've been keeping track of Aurora for a long time, just never took the time/had the patience to really sit down and play it properly.    But now I'm actually giving it a solid go and had a few questions I was hoping someone could help clear up for me:

1) How many Geo/Grav Survey ships do you use?  I started out my first couple games building a ton before realizing I just didn't need that many and have since reduced it to just one or two of each.    Mainly just curious to see if that is the general path or if I'm missing something and should have more than a couple going out?

2) Getting resources (minerals) from system to system requires manually transporting them or a civilian contract right?  Nothing like Mass Driver package thrown through a Jump gate?

3) What's the most efficient path forward for creating colonies (non-mining, or at least not specifically for mining)?  I understand what's needed, but I'm just curious how others do it.    Build everything somewhere else and transport the facilities there?  Better to mine resources on the planet or send mineral packages and build locally with construction facilities?  Transport civilians yourself or let the civilian companies do it?  At the moment I'm just trying a whole bunch of things and colonies take so long to get rolling I just haphazard my way through it. 

Edit:
4) Forgot about one other question, I've seen basic survey ships that have active sensors on it, why would you do that?  If you have no weapons, and they don't have any support function (such as targeting for a fleet), then what is the point?

[Thiosk]

1)
I usually put weak sensors on a ship-- at least to tell me if its in hostile territory.  As for number, I keep anywhere from 3 to 4 surveyors running at any given time, but I'm a turtler.  I am surrounded by precursors on three sides presently, so I'm turtling to the point where my military can handle it.

2) Mass drivers centralize production.  Then, I have a freighter pick up minerals when X is available and cart them to earth, cycling orders.  I don't like loooong deliveries.  So as my resource chain extends, I'll have shorter trips to distribution centers supplied by slow, old freighters, and faster freighters making the long distance trips between earth and the distribution centers.

3)
What I've started to do with colonies is begin with orbital terraforming.  Its too bulky, and population intensive, to move terraformers to a site.  I put 20 terraformers on mars, moved them to alpha centauri, and have since mothballed them (switched off in civilian industrial tab).  I made about 80 terraforming ships, and those now fly around and do their thing. I was adjacent to a good mineral rich system, however.  I've got more terraformed worlds now than population to put on them or military to keep them happy.

I've found that if you deliver a load of infrastructure to a planet, the civilian fleet will move population there automatically.

Industrially, my colonies are far to small to support earth-style industry.  I have purpose built colonies.  Mercury is a population farm, and houses ordinance and fighter factories.  Necessary minerals are mined there, and suplemented from Earth.  Mars is a research world, as is Histia, a planet orbiting alpha centauri.  Its neighbor, Penumbra, is a factory world.  Factories and maitenence only.  Several jumps out, in Anak Zeta, Artemis is being developed with the goal of mirroring earth-- factories and shipyards.  The other four colonies are presently Pop farms and will be developed as I see fit.  To build a factory world, I start by sending ~150-250 factories from earth, then order 1000 of them to be produced on site; I typically stop and start production on the factories as necessary, but 1000 factories is a pretty good number for reasonable production.  Research components, mines, ordinance factories, and refineries are all shipped from manufacturing worlds: I don't want to set up the logistics to move minerals to too many planets.

[Brian Neumann]

1.)  I usually use 5 grav survey ships in a group.  As you can set it to survey the next 3 survey locations this gives a total of 15 survey locations.  Normal order is to transit an jump point and divide.  If I have checked the box to have all sub group keep the parent formations default orders then each will automatically fill in the 3 survey locations.  The computer keeps track of which locations already have a ship headed for them and spreads things out.  Secondary default order is to return to entry jump point.  This gets the whole system grav surveyed and ships back in one location from 1 initial order.  Geo survey ships I usually go with 2-3.  One of them will have a default order to survey the next planet or moon.  The other ones to survey the next 5 survey locations.  Second default is the same as for grav survey ships.  If a system look like it will be very important of mineral rich I may send a couple more geo surveyors to speed things up.

2.)Correct, no mass driver shots through the gate.  I usually will designate 1 location near the jump point for all mass drivers in system to shoot to.  Then I just have 1 location for civilian contracts or my own freighters to go to.

3.)  For colonies in a system where you already have a good planet (home system) civilians moving population and infrastructure usually works great.  Outside of same system setups I will use a mix of my own ships and civilian contracts.

4.)Active sensors on survey ships let you id any race you come in contact with, and may give your ships a chance to get away if they are faster.  It is a long shot to escape, but formally iding a race lets you start trying to communicate which can be important.

Brian

[Narmio]

On the question of moving minerals between systems, I typically have a "mineral courier", a freighter that does a long circular trek through each system I'm mining in and picks up minerals from the mass driver targets along the way.  As long as it can do one full trip before my mining colonies produce 25,000t of minerals it'll keep cycling happily forever.

[LtWarhound]

Active sensors on my survey ships?  Yep.  On my commercial ships, too, a very small sensor.  Why not?   Cost is minimal.  And its paid off in intel, having them going active and getting a look at the attackers before they died.

[blue emu]

Another noob question:

It's still early in my game, about four years into it.  I've run into a Hostile alien race (or maybe the old dudes) that I won't be able to take on for decades, they out-tech me too badly.  I'm thinking of mining a bunch of jump-points, to defend my system and my new colonies.

Do mines only attack Hostiles, or do mines "have no friends"?

Any advice on using mines?

[welchbloke]

Another noob question:

It's still early in my game, about four years into it.  I've run into a Hostile alien race (or maybe the old dudes) that I won't be able to take on for decades, they out-tech me too badly.  I'm thinking of mining a bunch of jump-points, to defend my system and my new colonies.

Do mines only attack Hostiles, or do mines "have no friends"?

Any advice on using mines?

IIRC mines attack only hostiles.  You'll need a shell of mines around the jump point; otherwise, they'll either all fire at the same target or, if they are all on the jump point, they'll not fire as the enemy jump engine has brought the ships through beyond the range of the mine's sensors.