Aurora 4x

Astra Imperia => Playtesting => Topic started by: Vandermeer on December 02, 2015, 04:49:52 PM

Title: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on December 02, 2015, 04:49:52 PM
I would probably playtest this a lot, because all I read about it around these forums seems totally awesome! However, it is like you people speak in a cryptic language, like I can not decipher a single strand of consistent topic pattern. "Wouldn't it be great to add singularities, but then don't forget to make laser cannons 15 tons heavier, and hey, how does the gross national product calculate when we include mark 2 missiles to MIRVS given battles calculate automatically, and the core world is dry (1-5%)?"
It has all the keywords to jump me, but for an outside reader, there is no structure or starting point to it.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_verlegen.gif)

What is this, where can I get it, and why do some people speak about it like it's a book, when otherwise coding terms are discussed? There is not a single screenshot to be found; it's all just myth I tell you!! A myth about a perfect 4x game, where everybody just continues to randomly add a comment about a functionality they would wish it to have. This is how this works, yes?
Man, in my last game, when my most talented engineering officer perished from sickness amidst battle on a production interval, he took the whole shield bonus of my frontline capital ship with him, making it so the enemies' low tech broadsides could suddenly overcome resistance and inflict damage. On page 156 it says that officers can not be transported instantly, and need a couple days to arrive on new positions with assumed invisible mini-shuttles, but I was still able to get a reserve there instantly by relocating directly from another ship instead from HQ. Should be fixed in next version maybe!
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Sematary on December 02, 2015, 06:14:41 PM
It's a game being developed by our wonderful for him hos it's a game being developed by our wonderful forum host Erik,  and you can currently buying them drive through RPG for think it's a dollar. They'll if you spring and get two dollars you can also get an RPG games set in the same setting. Those of us who played the game and know what we're talking about in the same way that when the rest of us talk about Aurora we use words and phrases that are not known to people who don't.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on December 02, 2015, 07:03:20 PM
The origins of Astra Imperia actually predate Aurora by a couple of years. Steve was still doing Starfire Assistant. While I enjoyed Starfire, it and all of the other games in the genre proceeded at an incredible tech speed. Modern day to Post-ST:TNG in 5 years. That always broke my immersion. So I started working on a set of rules I called Astra Imperia. It culled things from Starfire, Star Fleet Battles, Renegade Legion, and others that I forget.

The initial version was published in 2006. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy with it, so I immediately started on v2. That has languished in development hell since. It does borrow slightly from Aurora in that weapons are componentized and very customizable. Other suggestions that have been posted to this forum have made it into the game (with permission of the original idea holder) However, it retains its origins with 30 day month/turns, 30 second tactical turns, and elements like that. As Boggo and I am sure Sematary have found out, game setup is a bit on the intense side.

And as Sematary has said, it is available at dtrpg.com for $1 US, or $1.50 US gets you the wargame and rpg in a bundle.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Sematary on December 02, 2015, 07:24:49 PM
It is intense, but worth it. System generation takes a long time especially since gas giants can have realistic numbers of moons and if they are above a certain size they follow a slightly truncated planet gen set up but once it's set up you never have to touch it again and Erik is working on a system generation program that already helps a ton. The only other thing is ship design but that gets a lot easier the more you do it.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on December 02, 2015, 09:04:44 PM
to break it down;

It's all Eriks fault

though to be fair, my setup issues are pretty much my own fault for pushing the boundaries of what's sane by jamming 10 empires with populations ranging from 200-1000 million people onto Earth.

oh,  and it's a pen and paper game like Starfire, only much much crunchier

and 1-5% is Arid (actually its 1-25% is Arid,  26-50% is dry  ;D )
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on December 03, 2015, 01:47:32 PM
Those of us who played the game and know what we're talking about in the same way that when the rest of us talk about Aurora we use words and phrases that are not known to people who don't.
I of course know that very well, and the joke targeted exactly this irony of having Aurora players baffled by technicality. ;) (..after re-reading - maybe came not as obvious as intended)

One thing stays real though: Where Aurora has installation forum, and a blinking button for 'download here' on top of it all, there is no starting point on this game, and not even picture proof that it exists at all, so that brought me to this "maybe it doesn't".
I belong to the ever growing generations of people who grew up with computers so much, that they toss any manual that comes with devices or programs directly into garbage and rather figure things out by intuition and trying directly.(yay for scientific method) Yet I find me saying that it would have been nice to know a starting point for once, even though I have always ignored these topics on every other occasion since.
I wouldn't have needed some expansive "how to get started" guide, but some "download here" link and a picture maybe would have done the trick. There is simply no entry for the uninitiated, except for those who are energetic enough to later extend their research beyond the forum and start searching on google too, where you would actually find it.(though I wasn't even sure if it really was the same thing before)

It is intense, but worth it.
The more there is to learn, the more there is to have fun about later on. :) I miss times before a lot of my previously favorite franchises started to dumb their complexity down.

@Erik: Thank you, I will look into this definitely once I have more time.(I presume shortly after christmas) I will enroll to the testing legion, and then maybe provide threads with some picture decoration here and there already.o,,o

oh,  and it's a pen and paper game like Starfire, only much much crunchier

and 1-5% is Arid (actually its 1-25% is Arid,  26-50% is dry  ;D )
Never played Starfire though, so I didn't even get the references in Aurora before.

The dry could have been the older version generator that I downloaded for test, yes, definitely not my fault ever.  ;D
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Sematary on December 03, 2015, 01:55:35 PM
I of course know that very well, and the joke targeted exactly this irony of having Aurora players baffled by technicality. ;) (..after re-reading - maybe came not as obvious as intended)
I was pretty sure that was what you were getting at but played the straight man.

Quote from: Vandermeer
One thing stays real though: Where Aurora has installation forum, and a blinking button for 'download here' on top of it all, there is no starting point on this game, and not even picture proof that it exists at all, so that brought me to this "maybe it doesn't".
I wouldn't have needed some expansive "how to get started" guide, but some "download here" link and a picture maybe would have done the trick. There is simply no entry for the uninitiated, except for those who are energetic enough to later extend their research beyond the forum and start searching on google too, where you would actually find it.(though I wasn't even sure if it really was the same thing before)
Yeah, I don't think there is a direct link on the forum to the game, and maybe there should be.
Quote from: Vandermeer
The more there is to learn, the more there is to have fun about later on. :) I miss times before a lot of my previously favorite franchises started to dumb their complexity down.
I agree with you there, and this game is a great example of it. I just don't want to be accused of making people spend money on the game who then quit because of how steep the learning curve is.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on December 03, 2015, 02:32:41 PM
I'd grade the learning curve of Astra Imperia between Aurora and mainstream games. All of the rules are right there in your hand. Or PDF. ;)

The drawback (and this is the same with most table top 4x games) is all of the book keeping. I use Excel and Word mostly. Even though I am in the midst of writing a program similar to SFA for Astra Imperia.

Links -
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131614/Astra-Imperia-2 Astra Imperia 2
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131615/Astra-Imperia-Via-Astrum-Playtest-BUNDLE AI/VA bundle
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131428/Via-Astrum-Playtest Via Astrum
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on December 03, 2015, 03:00:02 PM
The dry could have been the older version generator that I downloaded for test, yes, definitely not my fault ever.  ;D

Well I do believe Erik recently changed that...

see, I said it was all his fault!
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on December 10, 2015, 06:53:55 AM

The more there is to learn, the more there is to have fun about later on. :) I miss times before a lot of my previously favorite franchises started to dumb their complexity down.


Well I think I've been doing my part to prevent that happening,  I've been throwing complications at Erik pretty thick and fast for quite a while now  ;DD

Just be thankful the majority of the minutia of new rules discussion have been mostly in pm's!
Title: Still at a loss
Post by: Vandermeer on April 03, 2016, 07:53:51 AM
It has been a while, but I finally found some time now to go to above links and purchase what was there. Seriously, I was this short believing that I still misunderstood this all, and it was yet a book after all. I suspected this before, but after the talk here I genuinely thought I would get the game on the page of dtrpg, yet there was none to be found again, as I received rulebook pdfs. From the quick look I took, it will be an interesting read, but it is still not a game.
I came here and searched and read one more time, and found again basically no support that made sure it was a game and not a book/tabletop rules, as most threads could be read in such way that people just tried to apply the rules there on either paper or excel.
If it was not this one, this one thread where someone posted a cutout of an error message, claiming it came from 'build nr.1536', I would have given up, believing it was indeed just tabletop.
...And that is after even this clarification thread that I had started.

Even now, basically reaffirmed that there must be a game somewhere, I can still not figure out where these supposed builds are hiding. Forum search: Nothing. Google search, first general, then focused on pentarch: Nothing either.
A note of the "Astra Imperia Lite" announcement says it could be found under docs in the download section. Where is this mysterious fabled land?
It is like one has to solve 3 ancient riddles to be deemed worthy of the complexity of this game and arrive at the end of the path where the treasure lies. If genuine curiosity and some time of research didn't carry me there, then there is basically no chance to ever have this picked up by someone with a passing interest only.(not that they would stand a chance anyway) It kind of reminds me to this now:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/KaMiZoTo_Creator/there-is-no-game (http://www.kongregate.com/games/KaMiZoTo_Creator/there-is-no-game)

...So, where can I find these builds after all? ;)
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 03, 2016, 11:27:01 AM
It is just table top. There is a computer program similar to the original SFA in development, but I'm not as single-mindedly dedicated as Steve :)

Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 03, 2016, 04:44:06 PM
yeah sorry I thought we'd been clearer,   Astra is a pen and paper tabletop game,  NOT a computer game,  Erik is working on an assistant program that will help with bookkeeping for the game, but still won't be a game in it's own right.

however, it's still all Eriks fault
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on April 04, 2016, 09:25:41 AM
yeah sorry I thought we'd been clearer,   Astra is a pen and paper tabletop game,  NOT a computer game,  Erik is working on an assistant program that will help with bookkeeping for the game, but still won't be a game in it's own right.

however, it's still all Eriks fault
Indeed, as my real first name is also Erik. (http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_smile.gif)

It is just table top. There is a computer program similar to the original SFA in development, but I'm not as single-mindedly dedicated as Steve :)
Though that is still surprising after all, I am not mad. Yesterday evening I read through basically all Astra Imperia 2, and then the first third of Via Astrum. The only somewhat similar Pen and Paper game that I owned of this type so far was Star Frontier, but that was never good enough.

Was there ever an endeavor to do this in "multiplayer" here?
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 04, 2016, 11:16:09 AM
At least you spell your name correctly ;)

There have been a couple of attempts to run a community game here, but seem to last as long as the Aurora ones :)
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on April 04, 2016, 02:35:51 PM
At least you spell your name correctly ;)
Oh no, mine is actually written with a C, but the extra explanation would have ruined the joke chance and hindered the writing inertia. :)

For community games, even though I probably maybe just joined one in futile hopes, they die out so quick because on their dependence on the weakest least responsive link.
My theory is that if you could create a game that runs on itself, and only takes influential, but not motoring input from participants, it would be able to run forever fine.(or at least until an eventual host loses interest himself) A game where people just voted on what was happening would maybe work. That can go in many forms.
God-Voters, who decide everything like if there should be an alien incursion or not, or a certain leader should die or not.
Faction Voters who get restricted to making decisions from inside gameplay perspective of a certain faction, like setting industry, science, military deployment; but still kind of in overseer mode.(can be all in the same faction)
Or RP Voters, who just incorporate certain characters of a faction, and have influence based on that.(could be the most problematic as then maybe a state-leader or frontline Admiral could become inactive again eventually. Can be fixed with NPC "councils" and officer staff though) I find this most interesting, because players get power depending on how far their characters have "infiltrated" the game infrastructure, which generates emotional entanglement, but there will still also be an ambient NPC-legion power that could do it by itself.
The important thing about all these is that stuff happens anyways, and the best the participants can do is bend the tide, so the game may face downtimes of less participation, or even changing faces of players without ever breaking up.(....unless the lazy host does o,,o)

I think in Astra Imperia's case, it is especially difficult to do this though, as the game mostly thrives with multi-faction, which implies at least two players cooperating for a game. But maybe even that could be run by a gamemaster in 'kind of' neutral mode. I am lacking practical experience to judge this though. The bookkeeping could be just too much burden maybe.

...Someone should make a 4x game that runs literally by a computer by itself by logging what had happened over some days time, and only rarely stopping at critical moments. Then people can come together to splice in their input and some orders in some way. 4x and multiplayer don't seem to work in general, but with such a setup there could maybe be cooperation.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 04, 2016, 04:30:38 PM
At least you spell your name correctly ;)

There have been a couple of attempts to run a community game here, but seem to last as long as the Aurora ones :)

I got sick :P
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 04, 2016, 04:38:17 PM
Oh no, mine is actually written with a C, but the extra explanation would have ruined the joke chance and hindered the writing inertia. :)

For community games, even though I probably maybe just joined one in futile hopes, they die out so quick because on their dependence on the weakest least responsive link.
My theory is that if you could create a game that runs on itself, and only takes influential, but not motoring input from participants, it would be able to run forever fine.(or at least until an eventual host loses interest himself) A game where people just voted on what was happening would maybe work. That can go in many forms.
God-Voters, who decide everything like if there should be an alien incursion or not, or a certain leader should die or not.
Faction Voters who get restricted to making decisions from inside gameplay perspective of a certain faction, like setting industry, science, military deployment; but still kind of in overseer mode.(can be all in the same faction)
Or RP Voters, who just incorporate certain characters of a faction, and have influence based on that.(could be the most problematic as then maybe a state-leader or frontline Admiral could become inactive again eventually. Can be fixed with NPC "councils" and officer staff though) I find this most interesting, because players get power depending on how far their characters have "infiltrated" the game infrastructure, which generates emotional entanglement, but there will still also be an ambient NPC-legion power that could do it by itself.
The important thing about all these is that stuff happens anyways, and the best the participants can do is bend the tide, so the game may face downtimes of less participation, or even changing faces of players without ever breaking up.(....unless the lazy host does o,,o)

I think in Astra Imperia's case, it is especially difficult to do this though, as the game mostly thrives with multi-faction, which implies at least two players cooperating for a game. But maybe even that could be run by a gamemaster in 'kind of' neutral mode. I am lacking practical experience to judge this though. The bookkeeping could be just too much burden maybe.

...Someone should make a 4x game that runs literally by a computer by itself by logging what had happened over some days time, and only rarely stopping at critical moments. Then people can come together to splice in their input and some orders in some way. 4x and multiplayer don't seem to work in general, but with such a setup there could maybe be cooperation.

I think the bookkeeping would definitely be an issue,  until Erik finishes AI Aide,  I know what Starfire Assistant did for the survivability of Starfire games, so I imagine this would be the same,  Sematary's community game seems to have done the best with lasting,  but I think we ended up with at least one non-responsive player (and Erik tends to get even more heavily bombarded with rules questions and ideas during one of those games...)

Astra is pretty heavy on the bookkeeping in general,  I've been working on my initial setup for my Unification game for must be close to three years now (though it actually started in Starfire and migrated to AI,  and then I keep asking questions which evolve into rule rewrites and new rules sections, so I have a moving target as well!  hell so far I've 90% finished the first of my 10 factions,  and fully generated the Sol system only out as far as Saturn (I haven't worked out minerals, atmosphere, gravity etc, further out than there yet)
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 04, 2016, 07:58:25 PM
Biggest issue is besides being a one-man show on the AI Aide coding, I do programming for my "real" job. Combine that with 2 pen & paper game nights, and a dedicated online game night, it leaves only half a week to do so. And too much tends to burn me out on it. I'll let it sit 6-8 months then come back and hack away fairly strong for a couple/three months.

Additionally, I suffer from feature creep. I'll see something elsewhere I like and think that it'd be nice to have in AI/VA.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 04, 2016, 09:34:18 PM
you just need more coffee

(about as helpful as I get)

this topic needs to be wrapped in a mystery
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on April 05, 2016, 11:02:01 AM
you just need more coffee
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/82/26/a5/8226a5c71e310861575ee0bf585912cc.jpg)


I will retreat to probe if Astra Imperia can be setup in a way that makes plug-in multiplayer possible, and if I think I have something, I will post.
May take a while and not work at all. Need some practice with generation and such before I can learn how to streamline it.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 05, 2016, 01:22:05 PM
I will retreat to probe if Astra Imperia can be setup in a way that makes plug-in multiplayer possible, and if I think I have something, I will post.
May take a while and not work at all. Need some practice with generation and such before I can learn how to streamline it.

I'm not sure how much experience you have with Starfire or F&E or the like. Astra Imperia is a multiplayer game at its core. Setups can either be 1) each player does their own grunt work, 2) 1 home system is generated (and duplicates "generated" for all players), or 3) a SM does all the work.

Variations on the MP aspects could be done also; each player heads a government agency, fleet, corporation, etc. Teams of players in place of a single player in normal generation.

Hmmm... this probably needs to end up in the book someplace...
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on April 05, 2016, 01:36:21 PM
Of course, but I meant, well, essentially the SM multiplayer, but in this "plug-in" way, where I need to figure out a way to make it run consistently even when players are inactive, come or go. For this I need to test how fast I can run it without strain on me first, and where chances for input lie.(possibly mostly only in house-ruled government systems or other new mechanics)
Maybe I can lay out some things in excel with a time variable, so I get results to every date I wish, - between industry changes that is-.
Well, it could all be nonsense, as long as I have not literally tried, I should probably stop proclaiming wishful plans.


No idea of Starfire or anything like that. My pen and paper experience is mostly as GM in character based games, with only one exception of a medieval economy game. All the more reason to have a bit of testing by myself.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 05, 2016, 03:36:54 PM
Each strategic turn is 30 days. So you process 1 turn, 30 days have elapsed. When you have no interactions between players, running 10 or 12 turns in a row is easy enough. It's when you run a ship through that system that is occupied by the Great Space Larva Empire that you need to backtrack and figure out when your ship went through, what they had to detect, etc.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Vandermeer on April 05, 2016, 03:50:14 PM
In first contact situations, or with surprising new base or colony finds, this might be okay. Otherwise random engagements are actually what needs to be stopped. A good automation policy needs to be in place, like the players voted/ordered "stay out of trouble", which might work, or it gets chased down. Also settings like "if encounter this design, use this tactic with x missiles, such and such maneuver etc." would work. Combat is then done automatically.
It might be less engaging not being in charge of this in detail, but on the other hand random skirmishes are worthless occupations anyway. We all look for those big and decisive fleet battles, and those can get special treatment.
Anyway, more "governing", policy setting, than "ordering" in direct ways. A simulation more than a game.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Erik L on April 05, 2016, 04:36:47 PM
In theory, when you are at the point you could reasonably expect combat, that's when you go to the tactical scale. And break out the hex map and counters and dragoon a friend into playing the other side.

Though if I recall, @alanwebber ran some solo tactical fights (Check the AAR subforum) that he'd played out on some tabletop software.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 05, 2016, 05:19:53 PM
Sematary's use of Standing orders was a good idea as well (even if it led to certain other players shooting at one of my Diplomatic missions because he forgot to tell the SM to make an exception to the Standing order for the Diplomatic mission he knew was coming...  or at least that's what he told me...)
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: Sematary on April 05, 2016, 07:36:37 PM
I got sick :P
I am still around for when/if you want to continue with your game.
Title: Re: This forum is enigmatic
Post by: boggo2300 on April 05, 2016, 08:31:39 PM
probably not until September the way things are looking