Enjoying this game, but I have some questions

[Sirus (OP)]

New player, reporting for duty!

I just installed Aurora yesterday, after reading through the forums to pick up some tips and to learn how to install correctly. I followed the tutorials while playing along, which has helped my experience greatly. However, there are a few things that confuse me, somethings that I haven't found in the wiki, tutorials, or even searching the forums. Here goes:

1) How exactly do you colonize? I have a colony ship designed, and a commercial shipyard on Earth is busy assembling a few, but I'm not sure what to do once the ships are completed.

2) I've got a bunch of resource-rich asteroids in Sol, as well as large deposits on Mercury and Venus. Of course, these don't exactly make nice places for colonists to move to, so I want to set up some automated mining facilities and mass drivers. How do I get these tasks done? I assume I need some freighters...

I think that's it for now, except to say thanks for the awesome game!

[welchbloke]

New player, reporting for duty!

I just installed Aurora yesterday, after reading through the forums to pick up some tips and to learn how to install correctly. I followed the tutorials while playing along, which has helped my experience greatly. However, there are a few things that confuse me, somethings that I haven't found in the wiki, tutorials, or even searching the forums. Here goes:

1) How exactly do you colonize? I have a colony ship designed, and a commercial shipyard on Earth is busy assembling a few, but I'm not sure what to do once the ships are completed.

You need a good colonisation site.  the colonisation factor is shown on the F9 screen, the lower the number better.  Firstly, you need to create a colony on the site by either, on the System Map (F3) right clicking on the location and selecting create colony or using System Summary (F9) screen left click on the appropriate system body and then pressing the create colony button at the bottom of the screen.  All this does is create a location that your fleets can interact with to drop off colonists, minerals etc. Once you have a colony using the Task Group (F12) screen you can give orders to your colony ships to collect colonists from your home world and disembark them on the new site.  NB anything other than Colony Cost 0.0 sites will need you to put some infrastructure down to allow them to survive.  Otherwise they will start to die off.  Infrastructure is built using the INdustry Tab of the Population and Production (F2) screen.

2) I've got a bunch of resource-rich asteroids in Sol, as well as large deposits on Mercury and Venus. Of course, these don't exactly make nice places for colonists to move to, so I want to set up some automated mining facilities and mass drivers. How do I get these tasks done? I assume I need some freighters...

Same as above there needs to be a colony on at the required location (you don't need colonists, just the colony location), then you select the freighter Task Group and instruct them to load automated mines and then unload at the location of your choice.  Different installations (mines, research facilities etc) require different numbers of cargo holds for carraige; these are listed on the Wiki site.  NB that loading and unloading take time and, unless you want to operate at glacial speed, it is advisable to design your ships with cargo handling facilities.

[Beersatron]

Are you still in Sol? You may want to wait until you explore a few more systems and maybe find a half-decent world to colonize. Anything under Colony Cost of 2.0 is decent enough as long as you drop enough infrastructure.

But, to test and get used to the process you could build a Freighter with 25000 Cargo, then have Earth build a pile of Infrastructure. Give the Freighter repeating orders to move infrastructure to Mars. Once it has done a few runs you then have the Colony ship do some Colonist runs. Just make sure not to place more colonists than the infrastructure can handle. You can also try to terraform Mars, but at early stage that will take a long-long time.

In time a Civilian Shipping Line will form and should build its own Freighters and Colony ships, in effect they take over the colonization - up to a point.

Of course, you should have an economically viable reason for starting a colony, such as a way station along a long warp chain, or good mineral deposits or as a fleet base. That means that over time you need a plan to move facilities there, which either means your own expanded Freighter fleet, or setting up civilian contracts to move your facilities for you.

As for the mineral deposits you have atm, make sure you have a surplus of Mass Drivers on the Earth at all times, then move ONE to an asteroid along with a repeat order of automated mines, move about 50 to start and see what kind of mineral flow you are getting from it. t is crucial you leave some Mass Drivers on Earth, Aurora will NOT tell you if you move the last one. If there are no Mass Drivers on Earth to catch the mineral packet then you will end up ruining the planet

You can set the Mass Driver destination on the minerals screen of the Economy window (F2?)

[welchbloke]

As for the mineral deposits you have atm, make sure you have a surplus of Mass Drivers on the Earth at all times, then move ONE to an asteroid along with a repeat order of automated mines, move about 50 to start and see what kind of mineral flow you are getting from it. t is crucial you leave some Mass Drivers on Earth, Aurora will NOT tell you if you move the last one. If there are no Mass Drivers on Earth to catch the mineral packet then you will end up ruining the planet :twisted:

[Hyfrydle]

I have a quick question regarding mass drivers. What number do people use on the mining locations and also how many should be on the receiving planet? Is it dependant on the mineral quantities mined?

Hope you don't mind me using your thread to ask this question also check out my newbie AAR for more help.

http://auroranewbieaar.blogspot.com/201 ... -post.html

[Charlie Beeler]

That is relative to your needs.  Each mass driver can handle 5000 tons of ore per year.  You need to evaluate how much is being mined per year and adjust MD quantity as needed.  It's one of those attention to detail things that some of us really like and others loath.  Your mileage may vary  

[Hyfrydle]

That is relative to your needs.  Each mass driver can handle 5000 tons of ore per year.  You need to evaluate how much is being mined per year and adjust MD quantity as needed.  It's one of those attention to detail things that some of us really like and others loath.  Your mileage may vary  

[Sirus (OP)]

Many thanks for the helpful responses!  :shock:

Ran into some new problems though. I created a "jump scout", which would jump through a warp point with a geosurvey ship and a gravsurvey ship in tow. Before I could get much done though, I was attacked! In Alpha Centauri! Just one system away! My geosurvey ship was blown out of the sky (all hands lost), and after trying and failing to communicate, I sent my two surviving ships back home.

So now I have a couple of new questions:

1) How much infrastructure do I need before my Martians start building their own stuff, like mines and shipyards? I don't really want to tow everything there by hand  :twisted:

[Kurt]

Many thanks for the helpful responses!  :shock:

Ran into some new problems though. I created a "jump scout", which would jump through a warp point with a geosurvey ship and a gravsurvey ship in tow. Before I could get much done though, I was attacked! In Alpha Centauri! Just one system away! My geosurvey ship was blown out of the sky (all hands lost), and after trying and failing to communicate, I sent my two surviving ships back home.

So now I have a couple of new questions:

1) How much infrastructure do I need before my Martians start building their own stuff, like mines and shipyards? I don't really want to tow everything there by hand  :twisted:

1.  Infrastructure only allows your population to survive on a planet with a colony cost greater than 0.0, to actually produce things you have to ship in some construction factories.  To build stuff with the construction factories your colony will also need the requisite resources, either from their own mines or shipped in from your home planet.  It is quite hard to set up a fully functioning, independent colony.  

2.  Bombardment is easy.  By far the best and easiest way is to use standard ship-killing missiles.  They work against PDC's, population, and ground units, although if you don't want to kill off the population and just want to eliminate the defenders then missiles cause too much collateral damage.  If you want to cause a lot of radiation to kill the population but leave most of the facilities intact, you can research enhanced radiation warhead technology, and then design and build missiles with that tech (think neutron bombs).  If you want to eliminate defending PDC's but not cause radation damage, then meson weapons are good as they will strike through the PDC's armor and not cause too much in the way of collateral damage.  They also work through atmosphere just like missiles, whereas most beam weapons will not penetrate an earth-standard pressure atmosphere.  

Kurt

[welchbloke]

+SNIP+

Ran into some new problems though. I created a "jump scout", which would jump through a warp point with a geosurvey ship and a gravsurvey ship in tow. Before I could get much done though, I was attacked! In Alpha Centauri! Just one system away! My geosurvey ship was blown out of the sky (all hands lost), and after trying and failing to communicate, I sent my two surviving ships back home.

+SNIP+

2) What kinds of tech do I need to bombard a planet?  

Did you detect a large thermal signature associated with a population?  Any idea how many ships attacked you?  Don't forget, you will need to fight through the ships to get to the planet.

[Sirus (OP)]

Did you detect a large thermal signature associated with a population?  Any idea how many ships attacked you?  Don't forget, you will need to fight through the ships to get to the planet.

I've detected a thermal signature coming from at least one planet, as well as ground forces on the same planet, which fired 4 missiles at me. My new frigates were able to gun down the missiles without difficulty.

I've made some horribly newbish mistakes though. Not only did I not install some fire control on my orbital bombardment ships (I designed some radiation bombs to drop), but I forgot to load the frakking MISSILES!  

Now they're detecting some thermal signatures, but I can't see where they are because my Alpha Centauri map is screwed up. I just get overflow errors whenever I try to do anything. Is there a way to reset the map? I'm flying blind here.

[sloanjh]

because my Alpha Centauri map is screwed up. I just get overflow errors whenever I try to do anything. Is there a way to reset the map? I'm flying blind here.

There's a good chance you're zoomed too far in - try clicking the zoom-out button a few times....

John

[Sirus (OP)]

because my Alpha Centauri map is screwed up. I just get overflow errors whenever I try to do anything. Is there a way to reset the map? I'm flying blind here.

There's a good chance you're zoomed too far in - try clicking the zoom-out button a few times....

John

Actually the opposite problem; zoomed out too far. Clicking the zoom in button just spams overflow errors at me with no noticible improvements.

Doesn't matter now, since I started a new game. Have gotten lucky, and have explored two extra-solar systems and placed colonies on some mostly-habitible worlds. No other life yet, but fingers crossed!  

EDIT: Forgot a question. I seem to have used up my pre-set class names by clicking the Auto-Rename button until "No New Name Found" pops up. Can I "restart" the list so I can take advantage of all the names I skipped?

[MattyD]

Right,

Rather than start a thread to ask some basic questions, I thought I might jump in here on use this one. So without further ado, some questions...

1.

Geology Teams. I just can't get them to work - unless they discover no new minerals on earth - grr.

             5.14 - I do a geological survey of an asteroid early on with a ship, and then I create the team upon that asteroid. 4 years later nothing has happened. I know the wiki says that smaller bodies take longer to survey but I feel that something should have happened. I've tried dropping the team on asteroids that have some minerals resources on them and those that have none, without success.

2.

 Is there a way to transfer military officers to civilian authority leaders? Plonking automatic mines and mass drivers on a number of bodies in the solar system burns the list up quickly. I know that I can build more Military Academies to increase recruitment but there are times when you need a quicker solution.

3.

Too big a subject for the forums, but combat/military ship design - while there are elements that look familiar from GDW's Star Cruiser it comes across like a foreign language - I'll hold off asking specific questions until I've played a lot more - never fired a shot in anger so far, but I have had a ship destroyed by ramming.

.....

I'm going to write another NewbieARR, similar to the one already linked on these forums at http://auroranewbieaar.blogspot.com/2010/04/test-post.html. Like that author I'll create a post here to hash out my problems.

Thanks,

Matt

[welchbloke]

Right,

Rather than start a thread to ask some basic questions, I thought I might jump in here on use this one. So without further ado, some questions...

1.

Geology Teams. I just can't get them to work - unless they discover no new minerals on earth - grr.

             5.14 - I do a geological survey of an asteroid early on with a ship, and then I create the team upon that asteroid. 4 years later nothing has happened. I know the wiki says that smaller bodies take longer to survey but I feel that something should have happened. I've tried dropping the team on asteroids that have some minerals resources on them and those that have none, without success.

have a look at the colony summary page.  Does it say yes or no for the Geo survey?  If yes you have been unlucky, if no then they are still hard at work.  Also what is the skill level of the team?

2.

 Is there a way to transfer military officers to civilian authority leaders? Plonking automatic mines and mass drivers on a number of bodies in the solar system burns the list up quickly. I know that I can build more Military Academies to increase recruitment but there are times when you need a quicker solution.

At present no, it was muted a while back that that military officers could be retired to become civilian administrators but this has not been implemented (yet).

3.

Too big a subject for the forums, but combat/military ship design - while there are elements that look familiar from GDW's Star Cruiser it comes across like a foreign language - I'll hold off asking specific questions until I've played a lot more - never fired a shot in anger so far, but I have had a ship destroyed by ramming.

The Wiki and FAQ have some useful pointers.