Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Chat => Topic started by: Alfapiomega on July 10, 2013, 03:18:02 PM
-
Hello everyone!
I realize this is my first post but I would like to set forth my small plan to "promote" Aurora a bit. You see I have learned about it only two weeks ago and since then I never met anyone who would know about it. It is really weird that such a great game with such incredible potential doesn't get more coverage. I. e. on Youtube it has only two unfinished tutorials.
Now I have a let's play channel of my own that focuses on strategy games, currently with approximately 2300 subscribers (like here: www. youtube. com/alfapiomega) and I want to create a let's play that will give this game more known. I turn to you, the more experienced, for help with that. As I am still learning the game so it will be some time till I get to actual publishable play level but in the meantime I wanted to ask you guys several questions and I would be glad if someone would help me by answering them :)
Question no. 1: So to start of I was trying to play the game from trans-newtonian stage and it works perfectly. However every single time I put the game to the following setting: industrial era, only 300 million people, two starting races, starting date 2050 and no tech points to start with, the game runs for about in-game 2 hours and then gets locked with infinite amount of errors 3201. Now where exactly lies the problem? Is there any way to fix it?
Question no. 2: For the actual LP I would love to start with the setting of above + all the three alien types + 2 or 3 starting races in 1000 or more systems. Anyone got experience with such settings?
-
Question no. 1: So to start of I was trying to play the game from trans-newtonian stage and it works perfectly. However every single time I put the game to the following setting: industrial era, only 300 million people, two starting races, starting date 2050 and no tech points to start with, the game runs for about in-game 2 hours and then gets locked with infinite amount of errors 3201. Now where exactly lies the problem? Is there any way to fix it?
Did you allow the game to generate missile silos? Disable that for a non-TN start.
-
Did you allow the game to generate missile silos? Disable that for a non-TN start.
I don't remember there to be such an option. Is it part of the "generate techs and ship classes"?
-
It would be in that region of the new game screen. Bottom centerish.
-
It would be in that region of the new game screen. Bottom centerish.
Found it! Thank you, now I tested it and works perfectly! Better get ready to do everything on my own *rolls up sleeves* Also I don't know how I could have missed that one *facepalm*
Now can you look at the second question? Would you give any advice regarding the starting setup to make the LP more appealing? Mind you I haven't even gotten past the first system, I just got to colonization of Mars and Moon so I am in the true sense of the word newbie.
-
If you have all three spoilers active, and the invaders find a civilization pre-TN, or even early TN, you could pretty much write that civ off. I usually play with precursors on and the other two off. And I usually always start TN rather than pre-TN.
If you start pre-TN and set it so there are other NPR, they will start TN. So the player race(s) will be at a disadvantage that way.
-
If you have all three spoilers active, and the invaders find a civilization pre-TN, or even early TN, you could pretty much write that civ off. I usually play with precursors on and the other two off. And I usually always start TN rather than pre-TN.
If you start pre-TN and set it so there are other NPR, they will start TN. So the player race(s) will be at a disadvantage that way.
I figured that would be the way. How good is the AI in the game? I tend to challenge myself in the games I play (and sometimes record) to ridiculous levels so this seems to be something I would like to do. Disadvantaged is not so bad if the AI isn't a master-race.
-
AI is one of the weak points. It is easy to out-maneuver/out-think the AI. The only advantage the AI has is not paying maintenance costs.
-
AI is one of the weak points. It is easy to out-maneuver/out-think the AI. The only advantage the AI has is not paying maintenance costs.
That means any additional advantage I give the AI is welcome. I like my setup more and more.
Now please let me just ask you this - what is the ideal amount of sectors / enemy empires for a large scale game? I mean is it 1000 sectors with 40 empires or 1500 with 80? I have a new computer (3,7 x 4 GHZ with 8GB RAM) so I hope it will be able to lower the "long turn times" I was warned about.
-
Also question no. 3: When do I lose? When I lose Earth? When I lose all the colonies? Or when every single colony and ship is destroyed?
-
You probably don't want to start with more than 3-5 NPRs. The total number of NPRs are not fixed in any one game - there is a chance of a new NPR being generated whenever you explore a new system and the same goes for when an NPR explores a new system. Hence you can end up with a rapid expansion of the number of NPRs and this will drastically slow your game down through constant interupts. You can tweak the rate of growth somewhat in NPRs by changing the NPR generation chance in the game set up menu. Given the random generation process some people can go years and years without ever meeting an NPR whilst others will find them all on their back door.
On the number of systems I wouldn't go for more than say 250 but again the actual cap does not really kick in as everytime you explore a system you get a chance of finding more jump points.
-
You probably don't want to start with more than 3-5 NPRs. The total number of NPRs are not fixed in any one game - there is a chance of a new NPR being generated whenever you explore a new system and the same goes for when an NPR explores a new system. Hence you can end up with a rapid expansion of the number of NPRs and this will drastically slow your game down through constant interupts. You can tweak the rate of growth somewhat in NPRs by changing the NPR generation chance in the game set up menu. Given the random generation process some people can go years and years without ever meeting an NPR whilst others will find them all on their back door.
On the number of systems I wouldn't go for more than say 250 but again the actual cap does not really kick in as everytime you explore a system you get a chance of finding more jump points.
Thank you for the reply, I appreciate it. So in effect there is no need for a system cap at all? So you would ammend my setup by raising the starting amount of NPR and lowering the system cap. I see, not a bad thing to think about. Especially because the NPR's can battle the invaders as well, correct?
I also have a question no. 4 - I tried the wiki but I can't seem to find answer to this. What are the benefits / penalties for other than "player's race" starting organizations? I can't remmember what they were exactly but there are things like oligarchy, democracy, hive etc. but without any clear explanation. You choose this when you setup your own race.
-
Different governments start with various numbers of installations, shipyards, research points. I think it also affects how much is your civilization militaristic, xenophobic and so on.
-
Different governments start with various numbers of installations, shipyards, research points. I think it also affects how much is your civilization militaristic, xenophobic and so on.
Is there a list and description of these effects somewhere? Like a wiki page I haven't seen?
-
I don't think there is a complete list. You can see how it affect your starting research labs and shipyards in Create New Game window. If you change your government it will immediately change the values in Starting Population part of the window.
There is a forum topic: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1948.0.html , but there isn't much info there.
-
I don't think there is a complete list. You can see how it affect your starting research labs and shipyards in Create New Game window. If you change your government it will immediately change the values in Starting Population part of the window.
There is a forum topic: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,1948.0.html , but there isn't much info there.
I see, that is too bad. I think the wiki could use more care as it doesn't give enough answers to more detailed questions :) But for a one-man show it's more than good.
-
Well the community here is very helpfull so most players rely on this forum. Usually you will get your answer very fast as there are some very experienced player and Steve checks on this forum quite often as well.
-
I noticed, that is perfect. Maybe some of you will help me throughout the LP giving me advice :)
Also this game is still being developed, correct? I usually sum up the things about the game when I start so I want to give some background info as well.
-
Ok, question no.5: I played yesterday for several hours slowly testing certain aspects of the game and implementing your advice. But then I encountered another interesting thing - overhauls/crew assigment time. I checked the wiki and the FAQ already but I don't seem to find out coherent answer that would give me enough information so that I could feel that I properly understand everything.
What I know is:
- there is the maintenance clock at the fuel panel
- the ship gets older and older and needs to be checked from time to time
- when in overhaul each month of maintenance rewinds the clock by 3 months.
- the estimated mission time is the time until which the morale of the ship remains at 100%, then it slowly starts to fall
Now what I need to know is how the maintenance is calculated? The wiki/FAQ gives the information that the maintenance is carried by dockyard. Is that the shipyard? I guess not - despite having 2 slipway 5000 ton shipyard the overhaul did no go through. So I suppose it it the maintenance facilities? I need enough of them while each one gives about 200 ton maintenance? Is the amount of maintenance dedicated to overhaul „blocked“ so that the rest of the ships on orbit can start getting system fails?
And regarding the crew - the estimated time of mission is ok, I understand that. Also I understand that the morale goes down the more time the ship spends spacebound over the estimated mission time. But is it enough to just send the ship to a colony (Earth) and then immediately can go back to space again (crew rotates the moment the ship comes to a colony)? And also is there some automated system (like refueling) that could check this for me and send the ship back home when the time comes? Aurora doesn't consider this a huge problem (does not stop automated turns) so it must be really hard to keep an eye on everything in later stages of the game (especially when I can't find any more info about the last crew rotation - only the overhaul time). One thing that might fix this would be set the mission time and overhaul time equal so that the ship always goes out to space with 0 time on it's back. How do you deal with this?
Last but not least – morale of the ship does what? Is there a chance of mutiny or it just lowers the performance of the ship so at 0% it is effectively lost?
-
Ok, question no.5: I played yesterday for several hours slowly testing certain aspects of the game and implementing your advice. But then I encountered another interesting thing - overhauls/crew assigment time. I checked the wiki and the FAQ already but I don't seem to find out coherent answer that would give me enough information so that I could feel that I properly understand everything.
What I know is:
- there is the maintenance clock at the fuel panel
- the ship gets older and older and needs to be checked from time to time
- when in overhaul each month of maintenance rewinds the clock by 3 months.
- the estimated mission time is the time until which the morale of the ship remains at 100%, then it slowly starts to fall
Now what I need to know is how the maintenance is calculated? The wiki/FAQ gives the information that the maintenance is carried by dockyard. Is that the shipyard? I guess not - despite having 2 slipway 5000 ton shipyard the overhaul did no go through. So I suppose it it the maintenance facilities? I need enough of them while each one gives about 200 ton maintenance? Is the amount of maintenance dedicated to overhaul „blocked“ so that the rest of the ships on orbit can start getting system fails?
It is maintenance facilities. You need enough of them to match ship tonnage, but they are not used up or blocked.
And regarding the crew - the estimated time of mission is ok, I understand that. Also I understand that the morale goes down the more time the ship spends spacebound over the estimated mission time. But is it enough to just send the ship to a colony (Earth) and then immediately can go back to space again (crew rotates the moment the ship comes to a colony)? And also is there some automated system (like refueling) that could check this for me and send the ship back home when the time comes? Aurora doesn't consider this a huge problem (does not stop automated turns) so it must be really hard to keep an eye on everything in later stages of the game (especially when I can't find any more info about the last crew rotation - only the overhaul time). One thing that might fix this would be set the mission time and overhaul time equal so that the ship always goes out to space with 0 time on it's back. How do you deal with this?
Last but not least – morale of the ship does what? Is there a chance of mutiny or it just lowers the performance of the ship so at 0% it is effectively lost?
It has to stay at a suitable colony for a certain period of time - once the crew is recovered you will be notified in events.
For my frontline warships and survey ships, I typically match maintenance duration and mission time. For ships operating more locally, you can afford to have a shorter mission time than maintenance life because it is only a matter of days/weeks to recover crew, but overhauls can sometimes take months.
-
So I suffered a catastrophic system failure of one of my ship that resulted in destruction of it and it left behind a couple of life pods. I have a ship nearby but I can't figure out how to collect those? Also what is the wreckage good / bad for?
Also the ship morale - I didn't get an answer to that. What are the effects of it?
And last but not least thanks to all of you who answered, I am pleased to say I am making huge steps forward in my understanding of the game :) Soon there will be something you guys might too enjoy (an LP :) )
-
So I suffered a catastrophic system failure of one of my ship that resulted in destruction of it and it left behind a couple of life pods. I have a ship nearby but I can't figure out how to collect those? Also what is the wreckage good / bad for?
Also the ship morale - I didn't get an answer to that. What are the effects of it?
And last but not least thanks to all of you who answered, I am pleased to say I am making huge steps forward in my understanding of the game :) Soon there will be something you guys might too enjoy (an LP :) )
On the Task Groups (F12) window, if you tick the Lifepods checkbox, the lifepods will appear as a destination and you can give orders to pick them up. If you pick up life pods from another Empire you can interrogate the prisoners and perhaps learn something about that Empire
Wrecks can be salvaged for minerals and parts. If you salvage wrecks from another race you may learn information about their technology and you can incorporate any intact systems into your own ships.
If ship morale begins to fall, your crew gets increasingly bad at doing anything that relies on crew grade or fleet training.
Steve
-
On the Task Groups (F12) window, if you tick the Lifepods checkbox, the lifepods will appear as a destination and you can give orders to pick them up. If you pick up life pods from another Empire you can interrogate the prisoners and perhaps learn something about that Empire
Wrecks can be salvaged for minerals and parts. If you salvage wrecks from another race you may learn information about their technology and you can incorporate any intact systems into your own ships.
If ship morale begins to fall, your crew gets increasingly bad at doing anything that relies on crew grade or fleet training.
Steve
Thank you Steve! I saved the unlucky crew and they are back on Earth :)
Just a quick question - the salvaging of the wreck requires a certain technology, right? I can't figure out how to do it and the only idea I had was that I am not having sufficient technology (I am on pre-transnewtonia start).
-
On the Task Groups (F12) window, if you tick the Lifepods checkbox, the lifepods will appear as a destination and you can give orders to pick them up. If you pick up life pods from another Empire you can interrogate the prisoners and perhaps learn something about that Empire
Wrecks can be salvaged for minerals and parts. If you salvage wrecks from another race you may learn information about their technology and you can incorporate any intact systems into your own ships.
If ship morale begins to fall, your crew gets increasingly bad at doing anything that relies on crew grade or fleet training.
Steve
Also Steve, can you answer a question for me? As I love the game more and more and definitely want to make the LP that I announced I did some more research to get the information straight and there is rumors that a new version of the game will be out soon (6.30 version I believe). Is there any ETA? I in no way want to push you or anything, just wondering if I should wait for the new version or start now. As the LP usually takes months to finish it is a bad idea to start, get years in and then find out the viewers have a new version while I am playing the obsolete one ;) Thank is advance!
-
Just a quick question - the salvaging of the wreck requires a certain technology, right? I can't figure out how to do it and the only idea I had was that I am not having sufficient technology (I am on pre-transnewtonia start).
To salvage a wreck, you need ship equipped with salvage module (I am not sure which techtree it is and I don't have aurora on this computer to check it). You also need some cargo holds to store salvaged minerals and components.
You can have salvage ship with salvage module and cargo hold, or you can have salvage ship without a cargo hold and your standard freighter in same group.
-
To salvage a wreck, you need ship equipped with salvage module (I am not sure which techtree it is and I don't have aurora on this computer to check it). You also need some cargo holds to store salvaged minerals and components.
You can have salvage ship with salvage module and cargo hold, or you can have salvage ship without a cargo hold and your standard freighter in same group.
That is what I though, thanks for clearing that up for me :)
-
Also Steve, can you answer a question for me? As I love the game more and more and definitely want to make the LP that I announced I did some more research to get the information straight and there is rumors that a new version of the game will be out soon (6.30 version I believe). Is there any ETA? I in no way want to push you or anything, just wondering if I should wait for the new version or start now. As the LP usually takes months to finish it is a bad idea to start, get years in and then find out the viewers have a new version while I am playing the obsolete one ;) Thank is advance!
Probably a few weeks. I would like to test the changes in the new campaign before releasing it. However, my estimates in the past have been out by several months :)
-
Probably a few weeks. I would like to test the changes in the new campaign before releasing it. However, my estimates in the past have been out by several months :)
Just months? ;)
-
Probably a few weeks. I would like to test the changes in the new campaign before releasing it. However, my estimates in the past have been out by several months :)
That wasn't as helpful as I thought :D
BTW are the changes really that major? All I saw were certain interface updates and a few other changes. Anything more that is worth waiting for?
-
Well I would say that changes to missile engines are quite important. Also spoiler missiles should be better, that could be quite important for you as you want to have as much challenge as possible (spoiler missiles are really bad in this version).
-
Well I would say that changes to missile engines are quite important. Also spoiler missiles should be better, that could be quite important for you as you want to have as much challenge as possible (spoiler missiles are really bad in this version).
Thanks man!
I had about 4 hours to play yesterday and I did. Several things I came to resulted in new questions :) Thanks ahead if you answer them (or anyone else)! And yes, I realize these are all theoretical questions that have no „right“ answer but I am looking for general ideas that I could ponder about :)
a) Economy - do you guys have certain tips on how to keep it running smoothly? Despite increasing the amount of mines/researching mining technology and building mining ships I end up (all the time) with messages about mineral shortages. I seem to be able to keep up with my production only so so. I probably have really bad starting system (most larger mineral deposits have only accesibility of 0.1 - 0.4) and Earth had very low starting amounts (I ran out of Corrundium and Mercassium in the first seven years). But still is there any strategy you follow? Please note I am only increasing my factories by 5% as was suggested by tutorial and I still have to pause the construction at least twice a year. I might be simply overexpanding thought.
b) How do you design you survey ships? I know this might be better suited for Ship Design thread but I am looking for general tips. My idea and design was this – conventional engines equiped interplanetary ship -> advanced engines upgrade that allowed them to scout broader spectrum of places and comets -> now upgrading to jump engines equiped long-range scout gravships/survey ships that will be send out to all corners of the universe searching for life and new places to colonize. Do you guys do this or do you have separate grav point ships / survey ships?
c) I tried but I couldn’t find anywhere if there is a limit for population on Earth? Is there a maximum number?
d) regarding colonization – when I enter the „potential colony“ screen it only lists Earth (colonized), Luna and Mars (both with cost 2). Is that really only two places where I can have colonies? I noticed that i.e. Titan has 16 which makes it insanely expansive endeavor but it should still be doable, right? Or is this a no go due to different temperatures/gravity?
-
A.
I usually expand fast when i have the minerals to do it. In your case you should focus on transporting automines on planets with the minerals you need + some mass drivers to shoot the stuff back to Earth.
B.
Well my geosurvey ships are usually civilian designs with the same engines that my freighters. That gives them very long range iirc around 600-1000(I'm not sure) days in average with a little amount of fuel. My gravitational survey ships on the other hand are military designs (gravitational sensors always classify the ship as military, i don't know why.) They have usually one large military engine for fuel efficiency and a jump engine. Note that my geosurvey ships don't have jump engines of their own, so i group them together with the grav's or when i have the time and resources i design an armed survey cruiser to accompany (and defend) them.
C.
No limit as far as i know.
D.
With the proper equipment you can have populated colonies almost anywhere. Titan is tough but doable. But you should focus on 1-3 type worlds. It pays off better.
-
A.
I usually expand fast when i have the minerals to do it. In your case you should focus on transporting automines on planets with the minerals you need + some mass drivers to shoot the stuff back to Earth.
B.
Well my geosurvey ships are usually civilian designs with the same engines that my freighters. That gives them very long range iirc around 600-1000(I'm not sure) days in average with a little amount of fuel. My gravitational survey ships on the other hand are military designs (gravitational sensors always classify the ship as military, i don't know why.) They have usually one large military engine for fuel efficiency and a jump engine. Note that my geosurvey ships don't have jump engines of their own, so i group them together with the grav's or when i have the time and resources i design an armed survey cruiser to accompany (and defend) them.
C.
No limit as far as i know.
D.
With the proper equipment you can have populated colonies almost anywhere. Titan is tough but doable. But you should focus on 1-3 type worlds. It pays off better.
ad A) Yup, I did that. I have three places that are giving me minerals (one massive mining operation on Mars and two comets being worked on for the most needed minerals). However it barely provides enough.
ad B) Interesting. Well due to not having a civilian shipyard at the beggining I designed my geosurvey ships as military designs. Therefore I am not preparing them for a total refit to geosurvey/gravitational survey ships with long range fuel tanks, supplies and additional engines so that they are at least moderately fast. After that I plan to just send them out with their new Jump engines and let them on autopilot for some time. I have three of them and if I send them each to a different system, they will take years before basic tasks are done. I still ponder if that is a good idea but what else should I do with them?
ad C) Good to know but a bit scary.
ad D) so the list shows only 1 - 3 types? The others you need to manually decide and work on?
New - E) If I establish a colony in a different star system, everything I mine there has to stay there, correct? The only way to haul those resources to Earth would be via a dedicated freighter that would run a line through jump point. Is this assumption correct? Just checking.
-
D. List shows potential colonies with cost up to "Maximum Colony Cost" (usually 5, but you can change that in lower right corner).
E. Yes.
-
B.
I send my survey ships out in pairs. It increases their efficiency and decreases the time needed to survey the whole system.
For instance my survey corps in my games usually look like this:
1st Geo Group
2x Geosurvey ships
1x Survey Cruiser
2nd Geo Group
The same
1st Grav Group
2x Grav ships
2nd Grav Group
...and so on. In the beginning of the game four geosurvey ships and four gravitational survey ships are enough.
E. Yes, mined minerals remain on the planet until you ship them away.
-
B.
I send my survey ships out in pairs. It increases their efficiency and decreases the time needed to survey the whole system.
For instance my survey corps in my games usually look like this:
1st Geo Group
2x Geosurvey ships
1x Survey Cruiser
2nd Geo Group
The same
1st Grav Group
2x Grav ships
2nd Grav Group
Um... why?
-
Um... why?
As i said, with two or more survey ships it takes less time to survey a system.
-
B) Interesting. Well due to not having a civilian shipyard at the beggining I designed my geosurvey ships as military designs. Therefore I am not preparing them for a total refit to geosurvey/gravitational survey ships with long range fuel tanks, supplies and additional engines so that they are at least moderately fast. After that I plan to just send them out with their new Jump engines and let them on autopilot for some time. I have three of them and if I send them each to a different system, they will take years before basic tasks are done. I still ponder if that is a good idea but what else should I do with them?
Naval shipyards can build civilian ships, so having no civilian yards at the beginning is not a big hindrance. You are going to want to build civilian yards, though, as they are cheaper to get to the large capacities you'll need for freighters, colonizers, etc.
-
Regarding survey ops.
I usually run my survey task groups in groups of 5 ships, usually all jump capable.
-
Thanks man!
I had about 4 hours to play yesterday and I did. Several things I came to resulted in new questions :) Thanks ahead if you answer them (or anyone else)! And yes, I realize these are all theoretical questions that have no „right“ answer but I am looking for general ideas that I could ponder about :)
a) Economy - do you guys have certain tips on how to keep it running smoothly? Despite increasing the amount of mines/researching mining technology and building mining ships I end up (all the time) with messages about mineral shortages. I seem to be able to keep up with my production only so so. I probably have really bad starting system (most larger mineral deposits have only accessibility of 0.1 - 0.4) and Earth had very low starting amounts (I ran out of Corrundium and Mercassium in the first seven years). But still is there any strategy you follow? Please note I am only increasing my factories by 5% as was suggested by tutorial and I still have to pause the construction at least twice a year. I might be simply overexpanding thought.
b) How do you design you survey ships? I know this might be better suited for Ship Design thread but I am looking for general tips. My idea and design was this – conventional engines equiped interplanetary ship -> advanced engines upgrade that allowed them to scout broader spectrum of places and comets -> now upgrading to jump engines equiped long-range scout gravships/survey ships that will be send out to all corners of the universe searching for life and new places to colonize. Do you guys do this or do you have separate grav point ships / survey ships?
c) I tried but I couldn’t find anywhere if there is a limit for population on Earth? Is there a maximum number?
d) regarding colonization – when I enter the „potential colony“ screen it only lists Earth (colonized), Luna and Mars (both with cost 2). Is that really only two places where I can have colonies? I noticed that i.e. Titan has 16 which makes it insanely expansive endeavor but it should still be doable, right? Or is this a no go due to different temperatures/gravity?
Well others already answered your questions, so I will be brief.
b) I usually build armed survey cruisers with commercial engines, mainly for RP reasons (they are of course more expensive than basic survey ships that have only geo/grav sensor, jump engine and maybe some thermal sensor). As I want to achieve something similar to The Hun class survey cruiser from Starfire. :D
c) There is no population limit but annual population growth is lower when there are many colonist.
d) In Sol, zero colony cost worlds are Luna, Mars, Galilean moons and Mercury. Maybe Venus too but to remove the atmosphere would take a lot of time. Titan cannot be terraformed to zero colony world.
-
Thank you all for answers! I appreciate it, getting better every single day playing this game.
I restarted Aurora and already everything is working better. I played a lot with the civilian / military designs, I have better idea about the minerals and their production etc. Experience makes wise decisions as it seems! :)
I will soon have my first ship designs ready so that I can post them in the shipdesign forum. In the meantime though a question - sometimes building a new ship may be cheaper than refitting the old one, correct? How can I easily figure this out without having to actually move my ship back home and doing this?
The model I am facing now:
Lilian class geosurvey ship
set for 24 month missions
has 1 geosurvey sensor
has 1 Hasswell Mk I. commercial conventional engine (25 HS)
has 2 fuel tanks
Lilian refit I class geosurvey ship would have:
set for 24 month missions
has 1 geosurvey sensor
has 1 active sensor
has 1 Barracuda Mk I. nuclear engine (25 HS) / might be two depending on the performance x size
has 4 fuel tanks
Has 1 gravitational sensor (= is no longer civilian ship)
has 1 jump engine (to be designed).
+ necessary engineering spaces (probably like 10 or more of them, depending on %)
Is it viable to start from scratch or refit?
-
Thank you all for answers! I appreciate it, getting better every single day playing this game.
I restarted Aurora and already everything is working better. I played a lot with the civilian / military designs, I have better idea about the minerals and their production etc. Experience makes wise decisions as it seems! :)
I will soon have my first ship designs ready so that I can post them in the shipdesign forum. In the meantime though a question - sometimes building a new ship may be cheaper than refitting the old one, correct? How can I easily figure this out without having to actually move my ship back home and doing this?
The model I am facing now:
Lilian class geosurvey ship
set for 24 month missions
has 1 geosurvey sensor
has 1 Hasswell Mk I. commercial conventional engine (25 HS)
has 2 fuel tanks
Lilian refit I class geosurvey ship would have:
set for 24 month missions
has 1 geosurvey sensor
has 1 active sensor
has 1 Barracuda Mk I. nuclear engine (25 HS) / might be two depending on the performance x size
has 4 fuel tanks
Has 1 gravitational sensor (= is no longer civilian ship)
has 1 jump engine (to be designed).
+ necessary engineering spaces (probably like 10 or more of them, depending on %)
Is it viable to start from scratch or refit?
There is "Refit cost From. . . " in Class design window, DAC/Rank/Info tab. Just select your old design and it will show you refit cost. If it's close to (or more than) build cost of your ship, you'd better go build your ship from scratch.
And looks like it's better for you to build "Lilian refit I" ship from scratch.
-
Lilian refit I class geosurvey ship would have:
set for 24 month missions
has 1 geosurvey sensor
has 1 active sensor
has 1 Barracuda Mk I. nuclear engine (25 HS) / might be two depending on the performance x size
has 4 fuel tanks
Has 1 gravitational sensor (= is no longer civilian ship)
has 1 jump engine (to be designed).
+ necessary engineering spaces (probably like 10 or more of them, depending on %)
Is it viable to start from scratch or refit?
I would personally use passive sensors, you just need to know that there is alien ship in system. Passive sensor is good enough for that. With passives only, chance that you will be detected is lower.
It would seem that new version will be much bigger, so it is better to construct new ships and scrap the old ones.
-
Just a quick question - to move around the survey team I need to have a ship with cryogenic storage or does any ship capable of transporting people/cargo do?
-
Just a quick question - to move around the survey team I need to have a ship with cryogenic storage or does any ship capable of transporting people/cargo do?
You can use any ship to carry teams around bodies.
You can even do it without ship, by disassembling and reassembling team in another place.
-
Just a quick question - to move around the survey team I need to have a ship with cryogenic storage or does any ship capable of transporting people/cargo do?
I usually use small ship, basically only commercial engines and fuel tanks. It can wait for the team until it completes the survey as it is commercial design and does not have failure rate.
-
A YouTube LP would be great, this would be the first ever as far as I know.
-
On the question about exolorer ships.
I often deploy small carrier designs, perhaps about 3000t hangars. I then have 500t shuttles to do surveys each with either a grav- or geosurvey sensor. The carrier have about 24 month deployment while the shuttles are 18 months. Each mission get shuttles based on the knowledge of the system they intend to survey.
-
A YouTube LP would be great, this would be the first ever as far as I know.
Thanks for the support. The LP will be 100%. I just don't know if I should start it now or wait for the next version. So far everyone told me to wait but I might be waiting for months as it seems...
-
Yeah, you might as well get started. As far as I know there's no word whatsoever when it might be released.
-
Might as well get started, if 6.30 comes out in the middle of your LP, I don't think it'll be a major problem to continue with the current version.
-
Indeed.
-
So I took you advice and so it begins!
Video 1 (Setup):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnYfJ6m68jU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnYfJ6m68jU)
Video 2 (explaining the screens, minerals and more):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFEGqRSOOVU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFEGqRSOOVU)
Video 3 (Shipyard operations and research):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfRahHyS-eY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfRahHyS-eY)
Video 4 (actual start of the game):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvyxNfd3i8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvyxNfd3i8)
I took it more in the tutorial kind of way as those that are on Youtube are unfinished and a lot of people will see this game for the first time.
As I am still far from being really good I would like to ask those of you who will follow this LP to give me as much advice as you can. I intend to finish this LP and every comment will help me achieve that! Also every like and comment will make the LP show more to the people of Youtube :)
AURORA, HO!
-
such a nice clean uncluttered desktop... ;)
-
such a nice clean uncluttered desktop... ;)
You should see my previous computers.
But really, there is a perfect order to the way I have layed out my shortcuts :)
-
After talking with some of my subscribers and reading the comments I decided to take it a bit further and I added a bunch of new explanations during the videos. I am slowly shifting it from "sort of tutorial and an lp" to "tutorial and then an lp".
So if you find at any moments that I am saying or claiming something wrong, please let me know! :)
-
So if you find at any moments that I am saying or claiming something wrong, please let me know! :)
Didn't spot something wrong really so far, but some strange choices:
1.) You don't have to expand the first shipyard beyond 1000 ton right away if you don't want to.
A basic minimal survey craft needs only 250 ton payload for it's geo/grav sensor, which means it ends up around 800-1000ton after adding engines and fuel.
The first level of Armor is also very neat here reducing weight by around 100 ton (10%) for just 500 RP (since you always need 1 level armor and the basic newtonian version is really heavy).
2.) You seem to advance time several years sometimes without looking at Ctrl+F3 (Event Updates), to play optimally you really want to check it after every (5/30 days) time advance so you don't miss applying new better leaders, new research or construction and so on. The "Set to Default" Colours button is neat to quickly see what changes has happened.
3.) At the start a leader with mining bonus as governor of Earth is a great thing if your short on minerals (like for example your problems with neutronium), especially before discovering TN tech when all other traits are pretty much worthless due to not being able to build any installations or ships worth much anyways.
4.) I always try to build (or at least partially finish) my 2nd Military academy while researching TN tech, this is extremely useful since it will double the amount of new scientists and civilian administrators you get.
Most of these are a matter of personal taste and playstyle ofcourse.
Great LP otherwise, I will try to direct any new players to it. :)
-
Really good so far and I certainly agree with making it a combined tutorial and LP.
One thing that I usually do is to turn on the events log on the system view. That way I don't have to go to the eventlog all the time and I see the events at a glance and can interact with them directly on the system view.
-
Didn't spot something wrong really so far, but some strange choices:
1.) You don't have to expand the first shipyard beyond 1000 ton right away if you don't want to.
A basic minimal survey craft needs only 250 ton payload for it's geo/grav sensor, which means it ends up around 800-1000ton after adding engines and fuel.
The first level of Armor is also very neat here reducing weight by around 100 ton (10%) for just 500 RP (since you always need 1 level armor and the basic newtonian version is really heavy).
2.) You seem to advance time several years sometimes without looking at Ctrl+F3 (Event Updates), to play optimally you really want to check it after every (5/30 days) time advance so you don't miss applying new better leaders, new research or construction and so on. The "Set to Default" Colours button is neat to quickly see what changes has happened.
3.) At the start a leader with mining bonus as governor of Earth is a great thing if your short on minerals (like for example your problems with neutronium), especially before discovering TN tech when all other traits are pretty much worthless due to not being able to build any installations or ships worth much anyways.
4.) I always try to build (or at least partially finish) my 2nd Military academy while researching TN tech, this is extremely useful since it will double the amount of new scientists and civilian administrators you get.
Most of these are a matter of personal taste and playstyle ofcourse.
Great LP otherwise, I will try to direct any new players to it. :)
Thanks for the reply, man! Great feedback! Let me try to clear things for you in hopes of hearing more from you :) I realize I didn't lay out some big strategy ahead in the beginning but that was because I didn't want to overwhelm the new players. I will first tell them about the mechanics so that they can follow why am I doing this and that when I tell them what I am planning.
ad 1) The reason why I am going with the shipyard upgrade is because the first survey ships I build do have conventional engines. So to make them at least little viable I need to give them 2 x 25HS conventional commercial engines. And even then they run on something around 49 km/s which is not enough to catch everything on the map (comets, some moons etc.). The usual design I believe is something about 2990 tons. I will show it in the next part where I design the vessel (I just hope I remember it right). Once I get up to nuclear engines I can use only one and I still get many times the output - the size goes down.
You are right though. Waiting with the survey till the engines get better might be a way in which I would avoid the hassle of upgrading the shipyard. But I like to know what are my options as soon as possible (messages "The deposits of XXX on Earth were completely depleted" still scare the hell out of me)..
ad 2) I do that too, no worries! Later, once I actually have got past the TN technology, I have it turned while the time advances to see what is going on (I usually go down to 1 day/8 hours increments too) . But from experience there is NOTHING going on at the beginning five years with the exception of some new personal, however I was never that lucky to be able to switch the leading scientist on the TN (not even when I don't have any with the needed specialization). That is why I checked it only at certain points. But the set colors thing is actually awesome, I never noticed that one. Thanks! What colors do you usually use for what?
ad 3) Did I miss a large mining bonus on someone? I think that the current governor was the only one with mining bonus...?
ad 4) I avoid it till I am several years in the game (after getting the construction factories ready) as it costs quite a lot and I tend to hit the ground on my resources really fast most of the time (it will cost a ton to convert the current CI to mines and CF). Halting everything in favor of the academy never seemed like a good trade to me. But you are right about it, I usually build it asap. But I will mention this possibility in the next video if I remember. What is your usual order of building btw? If you describe it more I can tell the players about it as an alternative strategy in the next video(s) :)
I said it - I am still a newbie, that is why the feedback is so important :) Especially as this is supposed to be a tutorial LP :) Thank you for it and please more! I know I might sound like I am defending myself but instead I am trying to explain what I am doing. Because then you might point out why it is stupid and I can learn ;)
-
Really good so far and I certainly agree with making it a combined tutorial and LP.
One thing that I usually do is to turn on the events log on the system view. That way I don't have to go to the eventlog all the time and I see the events at a glance and can interact with them directly on the system view.
Yup, I do that too :) Alex already mentioned it and my reply was: "I do that too, no worries! Later, once I actually have got past the TN technology, I have it turned while the time advances to see what is going on (I usually go down to 1 day/8 hours increments too) . But from experience there is NOTHING going on at the beginning five years with the exception of some new personal, however I was never that lucky to be able to switch the leading scientist on the TN (not even when I don't have any with the needed specialization). That is why I checked it only at certain points."
Thanks for the feedback and more please if anything occurs to you! :)
-
A quick question from one of my players (that I can't answer and can't find on the wiki):
"Does size matter for Tugs? Like, tractor beam tugboat thingies? How does mass play in to that? Want to start designing some tugs to haul around terraformers and fuel harvesters, but don't want? to accidentally build something too small. =/"
-
Size doesn't, total engine power does.
For example, build a 10kton tug with two 2500t engines, and it will pull the terraformer/whatever as fast as a 20kton tug with two 2500t engines (actually a bit faster, because it's 10kton less total weight).
Basically, a tug tugging another ship moves at the same speed a ship with the combined tonnage and the same engine power would. Taking a 10kton tug to tug a 90kton tuggee would mean 1/10th of the speed.
At least, that's how I remember it.
-
Size doesn't, total engine power does.
For example, build a 10kton tug with two 2500t engines, and it will pull the terraformer/whatever as fast as a 20kton tug with two 2500t engines (actually a bit faster, because it's 10kton less total weight).
Basically, a tug tugging another ship moves at the same speed a ship with the combined tonnage and the same engine power would. Taking a 10kton tug to tug a 90kton tuggee would mean 1/10th of the speed.
At least, that's how I remember it.
Thank you! :)
-
Here are three more parts I recorded yesterday early morning before I went to work.
Video 5 (First look on the ship design screen):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NeD4dks4Hg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NeD4dks4Hg)
Video 6 (Designing our engines):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7OSYKyUdI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7OSYKyUdI)
Video 7 (GE Lilian class):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOv-ITh7QwA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOv-ITh7QwA)
I added as much extra help in the notes as is humanly possible and I am glad that the game can start to progress. With all this explained it will now be much faster and easier to explain other things.
As before please give feedback if you can and feel free to lay some more information here that should be mentioned in the next videos :)
-
In video 6 you said the following (0:30-0:35): "the rating is the size of the respective part".
But the rating is not the size, the size is size (and it's measured in HS, 50 ton each)! The rating is how much of the "rating type" the module has (e. g. fuel storage has 50000 (rating) units of fuel (rating type)).
Also, commercial ships still have MSP, they just don't need to use them (most of the time).
-
In video 6 you said the following (0:30-0:35): "the rating is the size of the respective part".
But the rating is not the size, the size is size (and it's measured in HS, 50 ton each)! The rating is how much of the "rating type" the module has (e. g. fuel storage has 50000 (rating) units of fuel (rating type)).
Also, commercial ships still have MSP, they just don't need to use them (most of the time).
Ah, thank you! :) I didn't notice that. I tried to hold too many things in my head at once and this is what comes out of it :D
-
Watched your latest episodes and some answers to some of your questions and a tip.
You didn't need to delete that design you created as a refit for the Lillian class. You just missed a button called "New Armour" at the middle bottom of the screen. This put the newest form of armour you have to the design.
The reason you could not build the new Lillian ship in the same yard was because the ship had a smaller mass. I don't know the exact formula but it is 20% of the build cost but that is ONLY if the ship has an equal mass. The more the mass deviates the less likely it is that two ships can be built in the same shipyard. In your case the new Lillian class was about 10% smaller so that is probably too much difference in size (and cost). If you changed the armour but added some armour rows you could probably have built it in the same yard, but that would then be a little pointless to make the new class I presume. ;)
Another tip is to add some navy personnel to your Fleet Headquarter HQ (TF). They will have a survey specialist and will make surveys in Sol system be done faster.
As far as I know the numbers in the system view for surveing are SP (Survey points). Each Geosensor on the ship give you one point per hour modified with the survey trait of the ship commander and then further by the TF cabinet personnel.
Keep up the good work with your let's play, it's fun to watch... :)
-
One more thing... don't forget to create a few geosurvey teams and go search those planets. Start with the ones that you found ore on and then go and do a survey on Luna too, you can still find something on there with some luck.
-
Watched your latest episodes and some answers to some of your questions and a tip.
You didn't need to delete that design you created as a refit for the Lillian class. You just missed a button called "New Armour" at the middle bottom of the screen. This put the newest form of armour you have to the design.
The reason you could not build the new Lillian ship in the same yard was because the ship had a smaller mass. I don't know the exact formula but it is 20% of the build cost but that is ONLY if the ship has an equal mass. The more the mass deviates the less likely it is that two ships can be built in the same shipyard. In your case the new Lillian class was about 10% smaller so that is probably too much difference in size (and cost). If you changed the armour but added some armour rows you could probably have built it in the same yard, but that would then be a little pointless to make the new class I presume. ;)
Another tip is to add some navy personnel to your Fleet Headquarter HQ (TF). They will have a survey specialist and will make surveys in Sol system be done faster.
As far as I know the numbers in the system view for surveing are SP (Survey points). Each Geosensor on the ship give you one point per hour modified with the survey trait of the ship commander and then further by the TF cabinet personnel.
Keep up the good work with your let's play, it's fun to watch... :)
Thanks man, that is really helpful. I will be sure to note that in the video once I can :)
The new armor button was btw already mentioned by one of my subs. I had no idea it existed :D And I knew about the SP needed but as I had one geosurvey sensor I talked about 1 hour :) But it is worth mentioning in the next video! :)
What do you mean about the HQ TF? Not sure what that is (probably a feature I have not seen yet).
-
One more thing... don't forget to create a few geosurvey teams and go search those planets. Start with the ones that you found ore on and then go and do a survey on Luna too, you can still find something on there with some luck.
Oh and yes, I thought about that. I am thinking of doing a dedicated (small) craft for these flights as I might do more of them. Does it need anything specific for the job? I think it doesn't, correct? I did form the survey team in my last game but it never left Earth.
So is the way it goes: create survey team, put a ship on orbit, move to a different orbit, move the team down, let them survey, move the team up... and so on? Or is there more to it?
-
Oh and yes, I thought about that. I am thinking of doing a dedicated (small) craft for these flights as I might do more of them. Does it need anything specific for the job? I think it doesn't, correct? I did form the survey team in my last game but it never left Earth.
So is the way it goes: create survey team, put a ship on orbit, move to a different orbit, move the team down, let them survey, move the team up... and so on? Or is there more to it?
You need to move the team to and from the ship too.
-
You need to move the team to and from the ship too.
Ok, I noted that in my post (move the team down/onto the ship). Do I need some special equipment or can any ship do that through the team screen? :)
-
Ok, I noted that in my post (move the team down/onto the ship). Do I need some special equipment or can any ship do that through the team screen? :)
Any ship will work. And no specialized design is needed.
-
Any ship will work. And no specialized design is needed.
Thank you. That is what I thought :)
-
TF is "task force"
You fill in the TF in the commanders interface with all other leaders. You assign naval commanders to your TF and bonuses apply to ships in the same solar system as where the TF is located. You can have them on planets or ships with a flag bridge.
-
TF is "task force"
You fill in the TF in the commanders interface with all other leaders. You assign naval commanders to your TF and bonuses apply to ships in the same solar system as where the TF is located. You can have them on planets or ships with a flag bridge.
Wow, thanks for the tip! I will check that one out!
-
Four more episodes are up (will be up) today:
part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltnjoU6rFas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltnjoU6rFas)
part 9: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1wn3JkfWBc)[/url]
part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kv95hyzxkA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kv95hyzxkA)
part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPrt9ej1SMA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPrt9ej1SMA) (will be published today at 19:00 CET time (+1).
-
Yesterday I recorded a few more parts and I turn to you for more answers :)
I did assign my commanders to the Fleet HQ TF but I have no idea how the bonuses work. Is it the same as with System Governor (everybody gets 1/4 of the overall bonus) or do people get only the bonus of the assigned part (i.e. fighter operations guy gives only fighter operations bonus)?
And also - who/which skill should/is useful in public affairs? Is it the Xenology guy?
-
As I explained above it is important to note that TF HQ will only pass down their bonuses to ships in the same system. They do pass down all their bonuses. 1/4 of the TF leader is passed down to the TF except for Fleet Training which uses his full value. All other members use one skill based on their position.
Fleet Training: This decreases the time that fleets will need to train to get to 100% fleet training level. This is the level of "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" the fleet gets if below 100%.
Operations Officer (Operations Bonus): This reduce the "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" of a fleet and increase the Fleet Training rate some.
Communications Officer (Communications Bonus): This also reduce the "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" as you can pass on orders more efficiently.
Intelligence Office (Intelligence Bonus): Used to discern enemy capabilities, interpret sensor data, and identify enemy classes & ships. Basically, everything found on the Ctrl F5 'Intelligence & Foreign Relations' window that isn't 'Political Relations'. Also used to interrogate captured enemy personnel.
Public Affairs Officer (Diplomacy Bonus): Increase the PPV (Planetary Protection Value) of any fleets in the system. Simply convince the people that guns are bigger and better than they really are. Sort of PR experts...
Survey Office (Survey bonus): Coordinates, collects and coordinate survey efforts in the system. Simple add their bonus to any surveys conducted.
Fighter Operations Officer (Fighter operation Bonus): Decrease the time of all the ships in the TF time to reload box launched missiles in hangars and perhaps also at maintenance facilities. I'm not completely sure about the last but I think it does.
Logistics Offices (Logistics Bonus): Reduce loading and unloading of cargo/troops and anything that takes time.
You can have as many TF as you like as long as you have officers to fill the role.
One other important thing to note is that if you have officers of the same rank or higher in the same TF (as the TF leader) on a ship that commander will not be as efficient as otherwise since there is a conflict of interests.
-
As I explained above it is important to note that TF HQ will only pass down their bonuses to ships in the same system. They do pass down all their bonuses. 1/4 of the TF leader is passed down to the TF except for Fleet Training which uses his full value. All other members use one skill based on their position.
Fleet Training: This decreases the time that fleets will need to train to get to 100% fleet training level. This is the level of "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" the fleet gets if below 100%.
Operations Officer (Operations Bonus): This reduce the "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" of a fleet and increase the Fleet Training rate some.
Communications Officer (Communications Bonus): This also reduce the "Inexperienced Fleet Penalties" as you can pass on orders more efficiently.
Intelligence Office (Intelligence Bonus): Used to discern enemy capabilities, interpret sensor data, and identify enemy classes & ships. Basically, everything found on the Ctrl F5 'Intelligence & Foreign Relations' window that isn't 'Political Relations'. Also used to interrogate captured enemy personnel.
Public Affairs Officer (Diplomacy Bonus): Increase the PPV (Planetary Protection Value) of any fleets in the system. Simply convince the people that guns are bigger and better than they really are. Sort of PR experts...
Survey Office (Survey bonus): Coordinates, collects and coordinate survey efforts in the system. Simple add their bonus to any surveys conducted.
Fighter Operations Officer (Fighter operation Bonus): Decrease the time of all the ships in the TF time to reload box launched missiles in hangars and perhaps also at maintenance facilities. I'm not completely sure about the last but I think it does.
Logistics Offices (Logistics Bonus): Reduce loading and unloading of cargo/troops and anything that takes time.
You can have as many TF as you like as long as you have officers to fill the role.
One other important thing to note is that if you have officers of the same rank or higher in the same TF (as the TF leader) on a ship that commander will not be as efficient as otherwise since there is a conflict of interests.
Thank you for the thorough explanation! :)
But still please specify the skills needed - what skill does the PA Officer uses? I couldn't find any specific (maybe I don't have one). Or is it the diplomacy skill? And the operations officer uses logistics or which skill?
-
The way I play the game (mainly for RP reasons) in the early game I divide Sol system into two TF. One for civilian ships and one for military ships. I then use the Naval Organisation tab of my "Task Group screen" to organize my ships into squadrons and real task-groups.
Later, once my empire start to expand and create real colonies with large amount of people in other systems I assign a colonial TF with a rear admiral in charge. This TF is tasked with both civilian and military operations in the new system.
Mobile TF will usually be called fleets and these are located in major systems commanded by a Fleet Admiral. Most usually at Earth or in other sector headquarters in a large empire. Nothing you need to concern yourself with at the moment though... ;)
Once I encounter hostile aliens I usually build large self sufficient cruisers that also have adequate hangar space and a flag bridge. These ships will usually take the role of surveying new systems using small 500t survey shuttles in addition to providing heavy combat and recon abilities if the system is patrolled by hostile enemies.
For role-playing purposes I also rename my commander ranks in the start to be Commanders/Captain/Rear Admiral/Fleet Admiral and adding ranks as my navy and officer pool grow.
I also like to use level 5 crew training (found on the race screen). This means that ship crew start at a much higher experience level but you get much less crew from your academies. I personally like quality over quantity, but having a lower level is equally fine... if you like to waste crew (such as using beam armed fighters) or you intend to train them for long periods.
-
Thank you for the thorough explanation! :)
But still please specify the skills needed - what skill does the PA Officer uses? I couldn't find any specific (maybe I don't have one). Or is it the diplomacy skill? And the operations officer uses logistics or which skill?
I did that in parentheses after each officer position... ;)
-
I did that in parentheses after each officer position... ;)
Ah, my mistake! I didn't notice those were skills and not areas in which the bonus was :D
-
Some more tip after watching the latest episode...
In the Teams/Academy tab of the "Economy screen" there is a box called "Unassigned Only". If you tick that box you will only see unassigned personnel in the list of available personnel. That way you don't have to keep track on whether somebody is available or not.
On the Commander screen you can also use the search feature on the right to search for personnel with a certain skill when you need them. Very useful for assigning personnel to more specific posts.
You can also view the "Task Force" screen and get a good overview of the different bonuses you get from them and where they are located. They can also be moved to ships with a flag-bridge in the same location if you have any.
Task-force personnel will also be filled in automatically once you give a leader to it so normally you don't need to assign personnel to every position yourself. You only need to assign the first position.
You might want to fiddle around with the "Naval Organisation" tab of the "Task-group" screen. Perhaps of camera first to understand how it works. This is a great way to organize your ships into a coherent structure, very good for a nice RP feeling. From here you can create Task-Groups, split them into squadrons/recon elements and add/remove ships quite easily and then create those groups with a few clicks when you need them. The reason why I mention this is because there is no really good tutorial for how this tab works and it is really a helpful tool when you know how to use it properly.
One other tip... watch your fuel production and the fuel you consume each year. With a small empire start fuel can become a serious problem once you start building bigger ships and send ships with military engines on missions. I don't think there is a problem there right now, but this can quickly change. I think your yearly production of fuel is only a couple of hundred thousand right now. That is usually enough to fill one tank on a proper military ship of an average size such as a Destroyer.
-
Some more tip after watching the latest episode...
In the Teams/Academy tab of the "Economy screen" there is a box called "Unassigned Only". If you tick that box you will only see unassigned personnel in the list of available personnel. That way you don't have to keep track on whether somebody is available or not.
On the Commander screen you can also use the search feature on the right to search for personnel with a certain skill when you need them. Very useful for assigning personnel to more specific posts.
You can also view the "Task Force" screen and get a good overview of the different bonuses you get from them and where they are located. They can also be moved to ships with a flag-bridge in the same location if you have any.
Task-force personnel will also be filled in automatically once you give a leader to it so normally you don't need to assign personnel to every position yourself. You only need to assign the first position.
You might want to fiddle around with the "Naval Organisation" tab of the "Task-group" screen. Perhaps of camera first to understand how it works. This is a great way to organize your ships into a coherent structure, very good for a nice RP feeling. From here you can create Task-Groups, split them into squadrons/recon elements and add/remove ships quite easily and then create those groups with a few clicks when you need them. The reason why I mention this is because there is no really good tutorial for how this tab works and it is really a helpful tool when you know how to use it properly.
One other tip... watch your fuel production and the fuel you consume each year. With a small empire start fuel can become a serious problem once you start building bigger ships and send ships with military engines on missions. I don't think there is a problem there right now, but this can quickly change. I think your yearly production of fuel is only a couple of hundred thousand right now. That is usually enough to fill one tank on a proper military ship of an average size such as a Destroyer.
Thank you! Those notes are invaluable to me!
I wish I knew about the unassigned only :D That would make it much easier!
And I noticed during the recording that the AI automatically reassigned the people so I figure that might work :)
Naval organisation I will check!
Regarding the fuel production - you were one part too early :) The one I uploaded today morning (part of a larger session) is the one where I convert the CI to fuel refineries and gain production of about 1 000 000 litres of fuel per year. However I know this is not enough and will work on it. However as you are obviously more skilled, what would you do in my case? I have the intention of putting 5 - 10% (depending on the priorities) of production to construction factories and I thought of putting another 5% to fuel refineries thus all the time increasing the production. Is that wise?
Second question to this is how do you easily calculate the required fuel amounts for your fleet? Or is there a tool for that?
-
I will try and give some of my advice and experience from playing conventional starts, which I do most of the times.
There is no tool for figuring out your fuel situation other than looking at your ships and try to do an estimation of how much you will use based on the type of missions you will send your ships on. On the "Fuel Report" screen you get a nice overview of your ships maximum/current fuel status and their fuel efficiency. From here you can at least make a good judgement on how much fuel you are currently consuming. You can also look at your yearly fuel production and then watch your fuel reserves decrease or increase over the course of a year, this will obviously tell you if you use more than you make and then take action accordingly.
In regards to construction facilities this is highly tied with three different resources which are Minerals, Wealth and population. You must make sure you have all of them and balance them with everything else. When you look at minerals you need to look at Duranium since almost everything (except financial centres) will require 50% Duranium. So the mining of Duranium will usually set the maximum level of factories that you will use. You need to deduct the Duranium you intend to use for ship building, yard expansion and ship maintenance and what's left over can be used for factory construction. If you have a total of lets say 2000t of Duranium produced each year and you estimate about 300t per year for other things not produced in your factories you have 1700t Duranium left over, that is a maximum of 3400 build points worth of factories.
But in your case you will have to balance not only that but also wealth and population, you don't really have an abundance of either I would say. When it comes to population you will eventually hit that roof once you start building laboratories, naval yards, maintenance facilities etc...
My primary concern in the beginning of a conventional start game is to get my civilian economy going by building a colony on either Luna or Mars. In my current game I had a great Luna with large quantities of both Duranium and Corundium and decent accessibility so I choose Luna for my first colony.
You need nuclear thermal engines and at least one colony with some infrastructure on it before any civilian shipping starts building ships. You also need to research cryogenic transport so your civilian shipping lines can start shipping colonists to your newly established colonies. I usually rely on my civilians to build up my colonies, civilian shipping supply colonies with infrastructure and colonists without my worries. I don't like to waste Duranium resources on building infrastructure other than about 100 infrastructure to kick-start a colony.
I usually only like to use my own freighter for hauling minerals so I only build two small cargo ships in the early game for the purpose of helping out and deliver infrastructure to new colonies or hauling minerals where I have no mass-drivers. I suppose you know about civilian contracts and how you can tell your civilian ships to ship stuff between your planets.
One other important thing that you need is to build at least one troop transport ship and some military structure or small ship after you built your first colony. Quite soon that colony will start require military presence. For military I usually go with a corvette type ship armed with some sort of beam weapon. I like to go with lasers because they will give you a good multi-purpose role with a low amount of research. I worry about missile technology for later. The first ships are mainly more like a coast guard than real military ships and laser armed ships are pretty cheap, both to build and maintain.
When it comes to laboratories I give a very high priority to them once I have built one Academy, one Sector Command and one Commercial Shipyard. After this I will priorities at least 20 laboratories with about 25-50% of my industrial capacity. After this I lower the build rate of laboratories to about 10% of my industrial base and leave it at that throughout the game, more or less (if resources permit it). 20 laboratories make sure I can give at least 2 labs to every field and have four additional to concentrate research in more important areas as the current situation warrant. If I'm really pressed I will remove one lab from a low priority research field (but never lower than one) and concentrate even further in some field.
Here is list of research I do in a prioritized order for a conventional start...
Geological Survey Sensors (Sensor tech)
Pressurised Water Reactor (Propulsion tech)
Nuclear Thermal Engine (Propulsion tech)
Duranium Armour (Defensive tech)
Cargo Handling Systems (Logistics tech)
Sector Command (Logistics tech, can be skipped if you are really pressed for research points!)
Cryogenic Transport (Logistics tech)
Garrison Battalion (Logistics tech)
Troop Transport Bay (Logistics tech)
Active Grav Sensor Strength 10 (Sensor tech)
Infra-red Laser (Energy tech)
10cm Laser Focal Size (Energy tech)
Capacitor Recharge Rate 2 (Propulsion tech)
Fire Control Speed rating 1250km/s (Sensor tech)
Beam Fire Control Range 10000km (Sensor tech)
-
In regard to your comment of geosurvey teams...
Their skill do not have an impact on what they find, only how long it will generally take to find anything on a planet or body.
You can also add lost members of a team on the "Leader" screen by selecting the team and adding a new member to it. You don't have to dissolve the team and create it again.
-
I will try and give some of my advice and experience from playing conventional starts, which I do most of the times.
There is no tool for figuring out your fuel situation other than looking at your ships and try to do an estimation of how much you will use based on the type of missions you will send your ships on. On the "Fuel Report" screen you get a nice overview of your ships maximum/current fuel status and their fuel efficiency. From here you can at least make a good judgement on how much fuel you are currently consuming. You can also look at your yearly fuel production and then watch your fuel reserves decrease or increase over the course of a year, this will obviously tell you if you use more than you make and then take action accordingly.
In regards to construction facilities this is highly tied with three different resources which are Minerals, Wealth and population. You must make sure you have all of them and balance them with everything else. When you look at minerals you need to look at Duranium since almost everything (except financial centres) will require 50% Duranium. So the mining of Duranium will usually set the maximum level of factories that you will use. You need to deduct the Duranium you intend to use for ship building, yard expansion and ship maintenance and what's left over can be used for factory construction. If you have a total of lets say 2000t of Duranium produced each year and you estimate about 300t per year for other things not produced in your factories you have 1700t Duranium left over, that is a maximum of 3400 build points worth of factories.
But in your case you will have to balance not only that but also wealth and population, you don't really have an abundance of either I would say. When it comes to population you will eventually hit that roof once you start building laboratories, naval yards, maintenance facilities etc...
My primary concern in the beginning of a conventional start game is to get my civilian economy going by building a colony on either Luna or Mars. In my current game I had a great Luna with large quantities of both Duranium and Corundium and decent accessibility so I choose Luna for my first colony.
You need nuclear thermal engines and at least one colony with some infrastructure on it before any civilian shipping starts building ships. You also need to research cryogenic transport so your civilian shipping lines can start shipping colonists to your newly established colonies. I usually rely on my civilians to build up my colonies, civilian shipping supply colonies with infrastructure and colonists without my worries. I don't like to waste Duranium resources on building infrastructure other than about 100 infrastructure to kick-start a colony.
I usually only like to use my own freighter for hauling minerals so I only build two small cargo ships in the early game for the purpose of helping out and deliver infrastructure to new colonies or hauling minerals where I have no mass-drivers. I suppose you know about civilian contracts and how you can tell your civilian ships to ship stuff between your planets.
One other important thing that you need is to build at least one troop transport ship and some military structure or small ship after you built your first colony. Quite soon that colony will start require military presence. For military I usually go with a corvette type ship armed with some sort of beam weapon. I like to go with lasers because they will give you a good multi-purpose role with a low amount of research. I worry about missile technology for later. The first ships are mainly more like a coast guard than real military ships and laser armed ships are pretty cheap, both to build and maintain.
When it comes to laboratories I give a very high priority to them once I have built one Academy, one Sector Command and one Commercial Shipyard. After this I will priorities at least 20 laboratories with about 25-50% of my industrial capacity. After this I lower the build rate of laboratories to about 10% of my industrial base and leave it at that throughout the game, more or less (if resources permit it). 20 laboratories make sure I can give at least 2 labs to every field and have four additional to concentrate research in more important areas as the current situation warrant. If I'm really pressed I will remove one lab from a low priority research field (but never lower than one) and concentrate even further in some field.
Here is list of research I do in a prioritized order for a conventional start...
Geological Survey Sensors (Sensor tech)
Pressurised Water Reactor (Propulsion tech)
Nuclear Thermal Engine (Propulsion tech)
Duranium Armour (Defensive tech)
Cargo Handling Systems (Logistics tech)
Sector Command (Logistics tech, can be skipped if you are really pressed for research points!)
Cryogenic Transport (Logistics tech)
Garrison Battalion (Logistics tech)
Troop Transport Bay (Logistics tech)
Active Grav Sensor Strength 10 (Sensor tech)
Infra-red Laser (Energy tech)
10cm Laser Focal Size (Energy tech)
Capacitor Recharge Rate 2 (Propulsion tech)
Fire Control Speed rating 1250km/s (Sensor tech)
Beam Fire Control Range 10000km (Sensor tech)
(http://static2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/You+my+friend+are+a+gentleman+and+scholar.+I+salute+_cb5aac2a63538518d8bb5f87107ae179.jpg)
Fuel - I see. I never had trouble dealing with fuel before, I always kept it on a steady rise and good to know I did it the right way (the game has many hidden extra tools that you discover via experience or advice). A good thing I do is try to do a hub system where the main bulk is always on Earth with some emergency small refineries on the colonies. And I build from the in out. Never failed me though it makes it a bit more logistically intensive.
Yes, I agree. As I did the players the choice and as there is almost nothing on Luna (though the ground survey found a large deposit of Neutronium) I went for Mars first (now considering Luna a second target together with sending Humans to Jupiter’s moon).
I am aware of the way colony works (I am always a bit forward as I rarely post everything in a day. At this point there is infrastructure being hauled to Mars, I have Iceman colony ship being designed (researched the cryogenic bay) and all is going well. Once the ship is build manned mines and humans will start to be shipped to Mars. So that part is OK :)
The troops transport thing is new for me however though I know I need to get some protection sooner rather than later. But I had no idea battalions provided Defence rating for colonies? That is why in one of the last episodes (I think three more episodes ahead from part 16) I talked about getting some missile PDCs.
With the laser ships I am ok too though I gave my viewers some leniency of what they would like me to build.
The current stage I am in I already have 8 research labs and working hard to get more. 10% is given to factories while I plan to tone it down to 5% and give the 5% to refineries. Labs have 40% while 25%/25% are for mines (automated for Comas sola and one other I have marked in the video, manned for Mars). 20 labs sounds like a doable goal for me although I have no (!!!) larger deposits of Mercassium anywhere in the system :(
The research:
Geological Survey Sensors (Sensor tech) - done
Pressurised Water Reactor (Propulsion tech) - done
Nuclear Thermal Engine (Propulsion tech) - done
Duranium Armour (Defensive tech) - done
Cargo Handling Systems (Logistics tech) – not done and not planning to although I will think about it
Sector Command (Logistics tech, can be skipped if you are really pressed for research points!) - not done and not planning to although I will think about it
Cryogenic Transport (Logistics tech) - done
Garrison Battalion (Logistics tech) – not done but I plan to do that one asap
Troop Transport Bay (Logistics tech) – not done but if battalions give defence I will mark it a priority with the Garrison Battalion
Active Grav Sensor Strength 10 (Sensor tech) – planning to
Infra-red Laser (Energy tech) – planning to
10cm Laser Focal Size (Energy tech) – planning to
Capacitor Recharge Rate 2 (Propulsion tech) - planning to
Fire Control Speed rating 1250km/s (Sensor tech) – planning to
Beam Fire Control Range 10000km (Sensor tech) – planning to
So regarding the research I am where you are. I also already got the thermal reduction done and I intent on doing all the basic engine techs soon to give me some more possibility of design to play with.
I even got a first civilian ship build though I haven’t asked it to do anything, I intend to do it after I explain everything to the new players. Any tips I should not miss?
BTW as you do conventional starts, do you have any templates for the starting beam ships? And I wanted to build fighters (never did that before) but every time I try to the ship is just marked as a vessel. What am I missing?
-
Regarding Sector Commands and Improved Command and Control.
Even if you only have one system, it is generally a good idea to research this and build the sector command. This allows you to assign a sector governor who provides a bit of his bonus (25% I think) to all colonies in that sector.
-
In regard to your comment of geosurvey teams...
Their skill do not have an impact on what they find, only how long it will generally take to find anything on a planet or body.
You can also add lost members of a team on the "Leader" screen by selecting the team and adding a new member to it. You don't have to dissolve the team and create it again.
I checked the wiki and that is in contratiction to what it says... Quote: "The higher the team's skill, the more likely it is that they will find extra minerals and the less likely it is that they will give up after each find."
-
Regarding Sector Commands and Improved Command and Control.
Even if you only have one system, it is generally a good idea to research this and build the sector command. This allows you to assign a sector governor who provides a bit of his bonus (25% I think) to all colonies in that sector.
I know. I just calculated the cost/effect and I intend to do that one after the mineral situation is stabilized - at that point it will give the bonus to more than one place and that will make it worth. When do you usually build it?
-
I know. I just calculated the cost/effect and I intend to do that one after the mineral situation is stabilized - at that point it will give the bonus to more than one place and that will make it worth. When do you usually build it?
Since one of the first things I do is build off planet colonies on Mars, Io, etc. it is usually a priority for me. I'd say at anytime you have more than one colony.
-
Since one of the first things I do is build off planet colonies on Mars, Io, etc. it is usually a priority for me. I'd say at anytime you have more than one colony.
Ha, then we are in agreement! :) I have a plan regarding this around three and more colonies!
-
I checked the wiki and that is in contratiction to what it says... Quote: "The higher the team's skill, the more likely it is that they will find extra minerals and the less likely it is that they will give up after each find."
The definitive answer
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4791.30.html
-
Ok... here is my first "coastal" ship for colony protection in Sol system.
Wolf Mk1 class Corvette 2,350 tons 43 Crew 159.5 BP TCS 47 TH 60 EM 0
1276 km/s Armour 2-15 Shields 0-0 Sensors 3/5/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 15
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 470% IFR 6.5% 1YR 25 5YR 368 Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months Spare Berths 1
SDN-A04/01 Nuclear Thermal Stardrive (3) Power 20 Fuel Use 96% Signature 20 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 1.6 billion km (14 days at full power)
LS-10-01 10cm Infrared Laser (5) Range 30,000km TS: 1276 km/s Power 3-2 RM 1 ROF 10 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BFC-x30-x1250 Main Laser-array Fire-control (1) Max Range: 60,000 km TS: 1250 km/s 83 67 50 33 17 0 0 0 0 0
PP-02-05 Pressurised Water Reactor (6) Total Power Output 12 Armour 0 Exp 5%
ASS-020/2.2 Graviton Search Sensor (1) GPS 200 Range 2.2m km Resolution 20
TH-x03-05 Thermal Sensor System (1) Sensitivity 3 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 3m km
EM-x05-05 EM Detection System (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 5m km
The Wolf class corvette does have its flaws and strengths. It can operate completely individually and can function as a patrol or reconnaissance ship within about 500-750m km from its base. Though, it does not have any maintenance facilities on-board so it is prone to system failures if operated more than a couple of days from its base (5+ days). This could be remedied by adding an engineering section to the ship but I chose not to in this case. I would, however, add a smaller one once that was researched but a normal one is overkill and the chance for failure is sort of acceptable for the ships purposes.
It has a decent PPV for its cost at 160BP and 15PPV. A few of these can provide security for colonies with about 500m people.
The ship obviously have no defence what so ever against missiles, but at this stage missiles in space was not even considered plausible since ships move so fast they are practically impossible to hit. This is obviously an error and later corvettes will sport dual purpose turreted laser guns.
Usually at tech level 4-5 I have technology enough to advance my corvettes into more self sufficient platforms. They will usually be much bigger, perhaps around 4000t and be missile based with at least one turreted multi-purpose laser for defence and a small 250t boat bay with a pinnace for remote sensing and reconnaissance. They are not meant to actually engage large enemy groups but more act as small scouting platforms with some offensive power. The main difference between my corvettes and frigates are their range an deployment times, frigates will be slightly larger and are long range patrol and reconnaissance ships. Able to operate with battle-groups and in systems other than which they are stationed in and might even operate with tenders for even more extended missions.
Some other tips you "might" not know about...
- One thing that I saw in your video I would like to give you a tip about is that you should tick the "Conscript" box for commercial ships or any ships without weapons for that matter. You don't really want to put combat trained personel on non combat ships, yo are just wasting trained crew from your academies for nothing.
- Another tip is that you should check out the "Production Overview" screen. That is the eighth button from the right on the main screen. This screen give you a very good overview of all your colonies and project you have going. As long as you only have Earth to worry about it's easy to keep everything in your head, but later on this screen is very helpful.
- Troops on a planets do not give you PPV value, they will police the planet and increase morale if you become overcrowded and the PPV value of your naval forces is too low in the system. If you are anything like me then your colonies will grow faster than you anticipate and start demanding protection before you actually provided them with any.
- Don't build missiles to early. Missiles need quite alot of research to be close to effective in the early game. I rarely go for missiles until I reach an average of tech level 3 and I start with offensive missiles first and AMM missiles at the next level. I mostly rely on defensive strategies until then. Doing any sort of offensive operation before tech level 3-4 will generally be futile. ;)
- Look into developing tractor beams and Tugs so you can build large harvesters and asteroid mining stations. These stations are quite resource efficient in the long run.
- Be careful of using reduced thermal engines in the beginning of the game. Your ships will usually have very small thermal signatures since they are both slow and small. I usually reserve this technology to either very large military ships or fast pure recon/scout ships. Reduced thermal engines will make your engines very expensive and hard to refit later on because of it.
In regard to civilian ships you might want to show the "Wealth tab" of the "Economy" screen and the "Shipping Line" screen. Explain that civilian ships will automatically go around and satisfy supply and demand of produced civilian goods. Also note that your civilian population actually produce infrastructure and as colonies demand infrastructure civilian ships will automatically send surplus from one colony to the demand of growing colonies. In many cases you will not have to provide the infrastructure yourself and it will save you some precious Duranium and production capacity.
I also don't think that you showed the Wealth tab so far at all and how wealth also is an important resource in the game, I might be mistaken there though...
-
Some notes on fighters...
With the change introduced in version 6 you can actually build fighters in the early game, but they are usually not very good. I find that I only use the small 500t or below crafts as recon before I reach an average tech level of about 4. Before that they are not really worth the investment in research needed, at least this is in my humble opinion. The reason is the amount of research you need to make them viable as a fighting platform (with all the support) versus all the more important stuff you need to research before then.
I usually go the more traditional transition of beam weapon ships to missile ships and then to carrier based warfare. Carriers are "probably" the most potent type of ship in Aurora based on how dynamic they are as a fighting platform.
-
Ok... here is my first "coastal" ship for colony protection in Sol system.
Wolf Mk1 class Corvette 2,350 tons 43 Crew 159.5 BP TCS 47 TH 60 EM 0
1276 km/s Armour 2-15 Shields 0-0 Sensors 3/5/0/0 Damage Control Rating 0 PPV 15
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 470% IFR 6.5% 1YR 25 5YR 368 Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.5 months Spare Berths 1
SDN-A04/01 Nuclear Thermal Stardrive (3) Power 20 Fuel Use 96% Signature 20 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 20,000 Litres Range 1.6 billion km (14 days at full power)
LS-10-01 10cm Infrared Laser (5) Range 30,000km TS: 1276 km/s Power 3-2 RM 1 ROF 10 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BFC-x30-x1250 Main Laser-array Fire-control (1) Max Range: 60,000 km TS: 1250 km/s 83 67 50 33 17 0 0 0 0 0
PP-02-05 Pressurised Water Reactor (6) Total Power Output 12 Armour 0 Exp 5%
ASS-020/2.2 Graviton Search Sensor (1) GPS 200 Range 2.2m km Resolution 20
TH-x03-05 Thermal Sensor System (1) Sensitivity 3 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 3m km
EM-x05-05 EM Detection System (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 5m km
The Wolf class corvette does have its flaws and strengths. It can operate completely individually and can function as a patrol or reconnaissance ship within about 500-750m km from its base. Though, it does not have any maintenance facilities on-board so it is prone to system failures if operated more than a couple of days from its base (5+ days). This could be remedied by adding an engineering section to the ship but I chose not to in this case. I would, however, add a smaller one once that was researched but a normal one is overkill and the chance for failure is sort of acceptable for the ships purposes.
It has a decent PPV for its cost at 160BP and 15PPV. A few of these can provide security for colonies with about 500m people.
The ship obviously have no defence what so ever against missiles, but at this stage missiles in space was not even considered plausible since ships move so fast they are practically impossible to hit. This is obviously an error and later corvettes will sport dual purpose turreted laser guns.
Usually at tech level 4-5 I have technology enough to advance my corvettes into more self sufficient platforms. They will usually be much bigger, perhaps around 4000t and be missile based with at least one turreted multi-purpose laser for defence and a small 250t boat bay with a pinnace for remote sensing and reconnaissance. They are not meant to actually engage large enemy groups but more act as small scouting platforms with some offensive power. The main difference between my corvettes and frigates are their range an deployment times, frigates will be slightly larger and are long range patrol and reconnaissance ships. Able to operate with battle-groups and in systems other than which they are stationed in and might even operate with tenders for even more extended missions.
Some other tips you "might" not know about...
- One thing that I saw in your video I would like to give you a tip about is that you should tick the "Conscript" box for commercial ships or any ships without weapons for that matter. You don't really want to put combat trained personel on non combat ships, yo are just wasting trained crew from your academies for nothing.
- Another tip is that you should check out the "Production Overview" screen. That is the eighth button from the right on the main screen. This screen give you a very good overview of all your colonies and project you have going. As long as you only have Earth to worry about it's easy to keep everything in your head, but later on this screen is very helpful.
- Troops on a planets do not give you PPV value, they will police the planet and increase morale if you become overcrowded and the PPV value of your naval forces is too low in the system. If you are anything like me then your colonies will grow faster than you anticipate and start demanding protection before you actually provided them with any.
- Don't build missiles to early. Missiles need quite alot of research to be close to effective in the early game. I rarely go for missiles until I reach an average of tech level 3 and I start with offensive missiles first and AMM missiles at the next level. I mostly rely on defensive strategies until then. Doing any sort of offensive operation before tech level 3-4 will generally be futile. ;)
- Look into developing tractor beams and Tugs so you can build large harvesters and asteroid mining stations. These stations are quite resource efficient in the long run.
- Be careful of using reduced thermal engines in the beginning of the game. Your ships will usually have very small thermal signatures since they are both slow and small. I usually reserve this technology to either very large military ships or fast pure recon/scout ships. Reduced thermal engines will make your engines very expensive and hard to refit later on because of it.
In regard to civilian ships you might want to show the "Wealth tab" of the "Economy" screen and the "Shipping Line" screen. Explain that civilian ships will automatically go around and satisfy supply and demand of produced civilian goods. Also note that your civilian population actually produce infrastructure and as colonies demand infrastructure civilian ships will automatically send surplus from one colony to the demand of growing colonies. In many cases you will not have to provide the infrastructure yourself and it will save you some precious Duranium and production capacity.
I also don't think that you showed the Wealth tab so far at all and how wealth also is an important resource in the game, I might be mistaken there though...
Thank you for the design. When look at it and I think about my first ships I have something similar in mind except for giving it the capacity to work for a longer time. I would probably give it one more engine, enough maintenance and try to make it a bit stronger when it comes to sensors/offensive capability so it could work as a patrol ship in-between the colonies. Which is, if I understand it correctly, pretty much what your frigate size is. Correct? :) As I intend for this to be a role-play and realistic play through my designs will most likely not be perfectly optimized for offence/defence but sort of multi-purpose. I already heard many times that it’s not the ideal way to go but... that’s how I roll in this one (I always try to avoid exploiting the game).
For the defence of colonies I thought I would go for PDC’s as a first thing though you made it clear missiles are really hard to maintain in the beginning. Any example of a good, starting missile and the technologies needed to give me a bit more outlook? I mean a worthwhile one, not something I will build and it will fail horribly. I am pretty sure the PDC’s will be the only thing that can stop any advancing ship as the military ships will not be able to do anything at all at the start (except take some hits and die). But for that I would need either defensive missiles or going crazy on the turret speeds and targeting control (or so I think).
The advice you provide is great!
* The conscript button I know about however I... well... I consider all my ships („Commercial“ or „Naval“) part of the army. The only difference is classification but they are not civilian ships. That is why I wasn’t using it. I am not even sure where it is located but I saw a discussion about it on the forums or mentioned it in the wiki and I decided not to use it. However great thing to mention in the notes on the video – it conscripts the crew and a captain from outside of the navy pool, correct?
* I am not really familiar with that screen, will do check it out and show it in the video ! :)
* Ah, now I see your point! BTW is there any way how to retrain the troops I have to new units? Or do I have to disband them and train new ones? And is there any need to disband them at all? Can’t I keep them as morale patrol? (haven’t noticed any upkeep other than fuel I think).
* I already talked about missiles above :)
* Yup, in the long run I agree. I did a mistake though last time when I went for it really fast in the beginning and the costs /output made me cry. It is really a long term project for me but man do they take time to pay off. Any example of such mining station? How many modules you put on it? The size of that thing is shocking though not as much when you think of the size of a regular mine. And creating mining ships unless they have a tonnage of over 100 thousand tons seemed like a bad idea (shipping the mines and mass drivers seemed like a better idea).
* The only time I will use those is for military/scout ships as you mentioned. Normal ships can always kill their engines and hide somewhere. They can’t run or evade anyway so it’s a best bet. I will also do a general refit where all of my ships (survey/mining/cargo) will get a sensor array that can warn them if something happens somewhere nearby in the future too. Might be expensive but I think it can pay off in the saved lives/resources.
Again thanks for all the positive advice. I hope I am not coming off as a jerk when I say: „yeah I know this and that“, it’s not meant to be snarky or something. Just trying to eliminate what I already know from what I need more advice in! :)
-
Some notes on fighters...
With the change introduced in version 6 you can actually build fighters in the early game, but they are usually not very good. I find that I only use the small 500t or below crafts as recon before I reach an average tech level of about 4. Before that they are not really worth the investment in research needed, at least this is in my humble opinion. The reason is the amount of research you need to make them viable as a fighting platform (with all the support) versus all the more important stuff you need to research before then.
I usually go the more traditional transition of beam weapon ships to missile ships and then to carrier based warfare. Carriers are "probably" the most potent type of ship in Aurora based on how dynamic they are as a fighting platform.
The reason why I ask for fighters is that you build corvettes – frigates and I would build scout fighters – frigates. But... I am not sure how.
I mean when I reduce the tonnage of the ship below 500 tons it still marks the ship as a vessel. Do I need some technology or...?
-
Don't worry your remarks are not snarky or anything... :)
I think that we are on the same page when it comes to role-play. I generally look at what I need and make decision on what I think a real person or society would in my place. I usually play a rather civilized society so wasting human lives is not acceptable unless it is the only choice so my ship designs will be based on those premises.
My Wolf class corvette is humanities first military design in my game and is only suppose to protect Earth and the Luna colony. There is an automated mining base on Io and there are no real civilian traffic in this area so no point in providing protection outside the inner part of the solar system. By the time I develop a real colony on Io I will probably have a new class of corvettes or a modified Wolf class with slightly better range with reduced failure rates. In my case I will need smaller engineering modules to keep the size of the ship small enough so it is cheap enough.
In regard to conscript and academy personnel I go with the highest training level (5) of my personnel so I restrict naval crew for "military" designs, I do get very few crew trained each year. My reasoning is that any ship that is deemed "commercial" is not really a military ship but a civilian ship commissioned by the military and put in command by military officers but with a civilian crew. Commercial vessels are still maintained by the civilian sector and do not really tax the military complex. But there is no such thing as being right on these issues... ;)
Missiles will need allot if investment in max engine power. Generally you need at least 2x (which is 4x for missiles) to get any decent missiles that are balance between range and speed. Below this and your missiles will not be able to actually hit anything but slow commercial ships and certainly nothing with a higher tech level than yourself. This is a research investment of at least 15000RP. I also like to have at least ION tech engines before I build missiles that I really rely on, though this is not necessary in theory. Then you also need a couple of level of research in to missile reload and magazine technology. At least 2-3 levels in each category so that is about another 10000-15000RP. Then you need to invest in nuke strength or else you will not do damage once you actually do hit so that is another 7000RP to get at least 4 damage per MSP, lower will just make missiles too weak to be useful.
Now, even with all this research, you will still struggle to build ships that have enough launchers to launch salvoes big enough to penetrate same tech beam defences so you might want to invest in reduced launcher size, perhaps down to 50% that would then be another 3000RP. But this does not have to be necessary depending on your style and and military doctrines.
As if this is not enough, missile ships also need long range and expensive fire controls and active sensors, in general more expensive than beam fire controls. You also need to build up an initial ordnance factory base where you will build your missiles, this will also take time and resources.
Fighters must have a hangar or they will break down once created. Any ship with a tonnage at 500t or below (with at least one 50+t engine) is a fighter and must be built in a fighter factory. Any ship this size should be marked as a fighter.
-
Don't worry your remarks are not snarky or anything... :)
I think that we are on the same page when it comes to role-play. I generally look at what I need and make decision on what I think a real person or society would in my place. I usually play a rather civilized society so wasting human lives is not acceptable unless it is the only choice so my ship designs will be based on those premises.
My Wolf class corvette is humanities first military design in my game and is only suppose to protect Earth and the Luna colony. There is an automated mining base on Io and there are no real civilian traffic in this area so no point in providing protection outside the inner part of the solar system. By the time I develop a real colony on Io I will probably have a new class of corvettes or a modified Wolf class with slightly better range with reduced failure rates. In my case I will need smaller engineering modules to keep the size of the ship small enough so it is cheap enough.
In regard to conscript and academy personnel I go with the highest training level (5) of my personnel so I restrict naval crew for "military" designs, I do get very few crew trained each year. My reasoning is that any ship that is deemed "commercial" is not really a military ship but a civilian ship commissioned by the military and put in command by military officers but with civilian crew, Commercial vessels are still maintained by the civilian sector and do not really tax the military complex. But there is no such thing as being right on these issues... ;)
Missiles will need allot if investment in max engine power. Generally you need at least 2x (which is 4x for missiles) to get any decent missiles that are balance between range and speed. Below this and your missiles will not be able to actually hit anything but slow commercial ships and certainly nothing with a higher tech level than yourself. This is a research investment of at least 15000RP. I also like to have at least ION tech engines before I build missiles that I really rely on, though this is not necessary in theory. Then you also need a couple of level of research in to missile reload and magazine technology. At least 2-3 levels in each category so that is about another 10000-15000RP. Then you need to invest in nuke strength or else you will not do damage once you actually do hit so that is another 7000RP to get at least 4 damage per MSP, lower will just make missiles too weak to be useful.
Now, even with all this research, you will still struggle to build ships that have enough launchers to launch salvoes big enough to penetrate same tech beam defences so you might want to invest in reduced launcher size, perhaps down to 50% that would then be another 3000RP. But this does not have to be necessary depending on your style and and military doctrines.
As if this is not enough, missile ships also need long range and expensive fire controls and active sensors, in general more expensive than beam fire controls. You also need to build up an initial ordnance factory base where you will build your missiles, this will also take time and resources.
Fighters must have a hangar or they will break down once created. Any ship with a tonnage at 500t or below (with at least one 50+t engine) is a fighter and must be built in a fighter factory. Any ship this size should be marked as a fighter.
thanks for the explanation! I will publish another three episodes tonight and some more tommorow so please keep the comments coming :)
Maybe I don't have them marked as fighters because I haven't researched the hangar bay yet? Can that be it?
-
No... there is no particular technology that make them into fighters. Just assign a small engine and they will be classed as...
"This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes"
...in the bottom of the design overview text.
Like this...
Illustrious class Cruiser 415 tons 14 Crew 49.8 BP TCS 8.3 TH 20 EM 0
2409 km/s Armour 1-4 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 51.67 Years MSP 75 AFR 1% IFR 0% 1YR 0 5YR 1 Max Repair 10 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 3
SDN-A04/01 Nuclear Thermal Stardrive (1) Power 20 Fuel Use 96% Signature 20 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 22.6 billion km (108 days at full power)
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes
Just pressed new and added a 200t engine.
-
Thanks for taking the time to do this Alfapiomega. Great job so far. I'm up to episode 15.
When designing a new ship, under the DAC / Rank /Info tab, there's a dropdown box that allows you to choose a Name Type.
Right under that shows you what other ship classes that can be built in a shipyard tooled for the selected class.
This is at least the case for version 5.6 of the "game". I'm 90 years into a game where I have almost 700 Research Labs each producing 840 RP per year. Scientist Joel Howe, an expert in the field of construction and production (65%) with 60 labs under his guidance, is currently fixated on improving the efficiency of our labs so that they produce 1000 RP each.
Keep them coming. :)
-
That error message you got in episode 20 is probably when the civilian ship was spawned. That can happen when you don't have all technology that it is made up of. In this case I think it is "Cargo Handling System".
This has happened to me before and as far as I know have no direct impact on the game.
Some other tip from questions in your 20th episode about engines. You don't save fuel by reducing the maximum speed of a ship, the fuel usage is per power-hour. You can reduce the fuel usage somewhat by giving it less engines because that means less mass to haul around, thus also less speed. Other than that you need to research more fuel efficient technology.
I usually develop two types of commercial engines, one at 25HS (1250t) and one with 50HS (2500t). The larger the engine the more fuel efficient it is. By rule of thumb I always put at least two engines on any ship and usually the big engines if I can to save fuel.
-
Thanks for taking the time to do this Alfapiomega. Great job so far. I'm up to episode 15.
When designing a new ship, under the DAC / Rank /Info tab, there's a dropdown box that allows you to choose a Name Type.
Right under that shows you what other ship classes that can be built in a shipyard tooled for the selected class.
This is at least the case for version 5.6 of the "game". I'm 90 years into a game where I have almost 700 Research Labs each producing 840 RP per year. Scientist Joel Howe, an expert in the field of construction and production (65%) with 60 labs under his guidance, is currently fixated on improving the efficiency of our labs so that they produce 1000 RP each.
Keep them coming. :)
Thanks! That is exactly what I wanted to know :)
I need some sort of a guide how to do this whole "ship's family" thing as I face constant retooling otherwise :-/
-
That error message you got in episode 20 is probably when the civilian ship was spawned. That can happen when you don't have all technology that it is made up of. In this case I think it is "Cargo Handling System".
This has happened to me before and as far as I know have no direct impact on the game.
Some other tip from questions in your 20th episode about engines. You don't save fuel by reducing the maximum speed of a ship, the fuel usage is per power-hour. You can reduce the fuel usage somewhat by giving it less engines because that means less mass to haul around, thus also less speed. Other than that you need to research more fuel efficient technology.
I usually develop two types of commercial engines, one at 25HS (1250t) and one with 50HS (2500t). The larger the engine the more fuel efficient it is. By rule of thumb I always put at least two engines on any ship and usually the big engines if I can to save fuel.
Got it! Four more episodes recorded, ending state: 0,5m colony on Mars, 2 civilian mining colonies, two automated colonies + 500 milion people on Earth :)
-
26 episodes now uploaded, two more coming tommorow! :)
I will not post all of them anymore. You can find the playlist here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpVUxdiS7yw8r36noD0kxn6n_iIuGHNt7 (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpVUxdiS7yw8r36noD0kxn6n_iIuGHNt7)
I am still looking for tips and help! :)
-
You seem to do very well... :)
One thing that you might start to think seriously about is to build a small military ship or PDC. Once Luna hits 10m population it will start to demand protection. Earth don't do this because it is the capital.
You will either need troops to suppress their protesting or ships to please them. You only need a single ship to start with.
I'm going to watch your EU-IV videos as well... this new iteration of the series seem to be quite solid.
-
Thanks man and sorry, I missed you message.
Yes, I am thinking about a small patrol vessel that would scout the solar system. I was waiting for the overall notion of what the players will demand of me and your message made an impact. So a smaller “gunboat” type ship will be it.
I will though make it around 2000 tons – several beam weapons, large sensor arrays so that we know what’s cooking and at least 12 months deployment time. It will have new, faster engines too that will take it from Earth to Mars, around the belt and to Jupiter and back in the period of its patrol.
BTW – you were watching the LP. What would you do next? We both agree on many things but you are more experienced than I am. So my future strategy revolves around this:
a) Increase the size of Mars colony and make it mine more basic minerals. I need a stable influx of Duranium that I can count on. While this goes on I would like to get couple of factories there so that it can produce its own infrastructure from the local mineral deposit. Good idea?
b) I want to colonize Luna, get some Neutronium mines there and have a better basic network to start the trade business rockin’. Also due to it’s proximity I might start to use it as a place for the deep space tracking station (might be roleplay worth to transport those there and make it our main radar base for Sol). Good idea?
c) I want to start an automated mine colony on Mercury – that place has some nice minerals. But it will be a secondary project to getting some more comets mined as those have better accessibility -> faster stockpile generation. Good idea?
d) I was fantasizing about making a colony at either Jupiter or Saturn (the moons of course) but Jupiter (much richer) seems like a better idea. The manned colony could be a local outpost with a small shipyard and defense and it could be a local storage for the minerals mined by automated installations here. Maybe even a small production base could be established so I don’t have to haul the goddamn infrastructure all the time. This will be heavy on resources but I think it could be worth it. Good idea?
e) Earth will be the only big manufacturing and research center we will have for Sol with small infrastructure building centers around the place where Duranium is plentiful. That means more fuel, research and manufacturing + another level or two in starbase and academy. After that is finished we should be ok for at least 40 years regarding logistics and personal. Good idea?
f) Finish the Lilian II design (a combined geo/grav survey ship with sensor arrays and better engines that will mean we eventually retire the old Lilian A1 refit ships) and a Snake class patrol gunboat. Good idea?
PS: the troop transports are still on schedule, don’t worry :)
-
Well here are some of my ideas which are not all based on pure efficiency but also fun... :)
One thing that I usually deem of outermost importance in the early game is to get a good mining of Duranium and Corundium going so I can have a continuous expansion of the industry and mining production. Without those two minerals there are no more mines and that means no more other minerals. So this should be your early engine for expanding your Earth empire. I will admit that I don't remember where you had nice quantities for these minerals. In my own current campaign I hade huge deposits of just these two minerals at very good rates on Luna but I don't think you were as lucky as me. :)
For role-playing purposes I see no reason not to colonize more places in Sol, most places are relatively easy to terraform to decent levels as well. Colonies on Mars and Luna should obviously be a priority for trade income purposes, this income will actually grow to become very significant in the future.
For any colony which I intend to become more or less self sufficient I send about 50-100 factories from Earth, that way they can start producing stuff on their own and relieve my fleets to haul stuff elsewhere (it is also the only way you can build space-ports on a planet since these can't be moved by ships).
This is mainly a role-play thing I do as in Sol you can rather just do it on earth and ship it instead. But I like to have a local industry since that feels like the right thing to do in a well established colony. As in my Luna colony I have shipped about 100 industry there and they are now 50% on building new industry and 50% building mines/auto-mines.
As for survey ships I tend to go with multi-functional ships I call science vessels. This ship would have both grav and geo survey sensors. Although most people would say that it is a waste of resources since the ship can only do one thing at a time and the sensor is actually expensive, which is not completely untrue, except that you only require one class and one yard can build several of them without any retooling wich is both time and resource consuming in and of itself.
Eventually I build large cruiser type ships with hangars and build small 500t shuttles each with either a grav or geo sensor. This ship can usually take about 4-8 of these and have lots of sensors and weapons to defend itself with. One such ship could usually perform both a geo and grav survey on its own in a system as well as scouting them for enemy forces. But this would be at a much later stage.
All in all I think you have it planned out pretty well. :)
-
If you like you could give me my character I introduced in your channel "Morgan Thane"
He should be a high ranking officer with a high survey bonus. Create a new Task-force and put him as head of it and call it Science and Exploration Directorate (SED). Then all resources for exploration (military or civilian go there) could be an interesting plot between the military and the more civilian oriented part of the government. If you feel it suits your role-play style. :)
Personally I usually group my initial forces into three different task-forces, Federal Fleet Headquarters (FHQ), Science & Exploration (SED) and Logistics Department (LOD). You might probably have some more innovative names to call it though. ;)
-
If you like you could give me my character I introduced in your channel "Morgan Thane"
He should be a high ranking officer with a high survey bonus. Create a new Task-force and put him as head of it and call it Science and Exploration Directorate (SED). Then all resources for exploration (military or civilian go there) could be an interesting plot between the military and the more civilian oriented part of the government. If you feel it suits your role-play style. :)
Personally I usually group my initial forces into three different task-forces, Federal Fleet Headquarters (FHQ), Science & Exploration (SED) and Logistics Department (LOD). You might probably have some more innovative names to call it though. ;)
Played a bit today in the morning (4 episodes, about 66 minutes of recording) and new be good! We colonized Luna (it has about 300 thousand people now) and made Mars self-sufficient (about 30 mines and 8 factories – should be XXX and 10 in the end, that way we can keep producing enough infrastructure on it for its own needs). The civilians also found a new civilian mining colony so we are a bit more settled and safe regarding the mining capacity.
I am having serious trouble though in the technology sector. I finished two more techs but I am indecisive which way to go as we have so many technologies we need. I finished the fuel production 28k, improved duranium armor and started researching the battalion transport and got back to the jump point theory. But I still have no one capable of the engines research which is slowing me down greatly. My original plan was to get the jump point theory, then get the jump engines and ion engines and remain at that level for some time while starting to work on the gunboats, PDC’s, Lillian II class type survey ships and so on. However at this point I am just stuck.
On the upside though I am surprised by the capability of the civilians. They have so many ships now. My transport fleet is just docked without anything to do. Which is good – it allows me to save fuel for later when I need it (now to 17 million liters in reserve with 1,7 million every year added).
I will grant your request but not now. You will be our first sector commander ;)
-
I am having serious trouble though in the technology sector. I finished two more techs but I am indecisive which way to go as we have so many technologies we need. I finished the fuel production 28k, improved duranium armor and started researching the battalion transport and got back to the jump point theory. But I still have no one capable of the engines research which is slowing me down greatly. My original plan was to get the jump point theory, then get the jump engines and ion engines and remain at that level for some time while starting to work on the gunboats, PDC’s, Lillian II class type survey ships and so on. However at this point I am just stuck.
Going to reference the bolded part there.
Any scientist is capable of researching in any field. If I recall correctly, they get their bonus to all research. In their speciality however, they get 4x their bonus.
So a scientist with a 20% Logistics bonus gets 20% extra RP on everything except Logistics, where he gets 80%.
-
And that also means that Emma Ferguson is better than an expert in PP with a 15% bonus. And your DS specialist Christopher Lynch is still better than a PP scientist with a 10% bonus. I hope they both are still living. On the other hand you might want to give any PP scientist an research project, no matter how good he is, because it will help him training his skills. Reaching Ion engines will take a few years nevertheless. Have you thought about using Emma Ferguson for better improvements in your research techniques?
I'm already looking forward to the next episodes. :)
-
What kks says is true. Even if they don't research in their area, they have better chances of getting skill ups if they are working.
-
Later on when I have lots of labs I also usually give one lab to each second in command scientist to skill them up so I can replace them when the old one retires (dies).
Even later when you have hundreds of labs you will give scientist more labs than they can use, but that is far far in the future. ;)
-
On the upside though I am surprised by the capability of the civilians. They have so many ships now. My transport fleet is just docked without anything to do. Which is good – it allows me to save fuel for later when I need it (now to 17 million liters in reserve with 1,7 million every year added).
In the early game in Sol I rarely build anything but one or two transport ships that each has one 5000t cargo hold. Civilians will grow very fast and will be able to take care of everything for you. Later on you will want your own ships to perhaps go through jump points with no gates or places that are more than four jump points away. Civilian ships will only go to places that are a maximum of four jump-point away. I think this goes for contracts as well, but I'm not sure.
-
Going to reference the bolded part there.
Any scientist is capable of researching in any field. If I recall correctly, they get their bonus to all research. In their speciality however, they get 4x their bonus.
So a scientist with a 20% Logistics bonus gets 20% extra RP on everything except Logistics, where he gets 80%.
Yes, you are right. Bad wording on my part, I meant that I have no expert in the respective field. I am aware that anyone can do it but a research rate of 165% (Emma Ferguson) and a guy before (100% + 4x 35%) is massive.
-
And that also means that Emma Ferguson is better than an expert in PP with a 15% bonus. And your DS specialist Christopher Lynch is still better than a PP scientist with a 10% bonus. I hope they both are still living. On the other hand you might want to give any PP scientist an research project, no matter how good he is, because it will help him training his skills. Reaching Ion engines will take a few years nevertheless. Have you thought about using Emma Ferguson for better improvements in your research techniques?
I'm already looking forward to the next episodes. :)
I'll start from the end - thanks :) I will publish them sometimes later this week. There is definitely more to come, no worries :)
Regarding the scientists I though that the bonus was 5x when it was their field and once if it wasn't but it's 4x/1x. Then yes, Emma - who is assigned to Jump Point theory btw - so she is still alive :) - is the best choice. But a propulsion expert would free her for better projects. However her condition worsened to serious medical condition so I don't count with her at all now, just trying to squeeze most of her hoping she will die with the blueprints in her hand.
I thought about the upgrade however it's worthless now imo. I have 10 labs = 2000 research points. The research would give me only 400 bonus now which is only 2/25 of the outcome. And it would take 2 and a half years if I gave all the labs to one person. I know Emma would speed it up quite a lot (360% research rate overall) but she is not going to make it, nor am I willing to give her all labs when she's going to kick the bucket. Mineral production, exploration and growth is more important now. I plan to get at least 6 more labs at which point I will go for the upgrade but now it seems like a waste compared to other projects at hand.
-
What kks says is true. Even if they don't research in their area, they have better chances of getting skill ups if they are working.
Yup, I am aware of that. Which is why I have four or five projects running most of the time. But no propulsion expert anywhere nearby -.- Only five defence system experts >:@
Ad Jorgen - I am aware of that possibility which is why I exploit it so much now (and hah, I have a 1x colony ship and 2x cargo ships). In my previous games I did something wrong and the shipping lines did not form or when they formed they did nothing (no ships, no capability to carry anything). However I wasn't as experienced as I am now due to all the advice I get so it was maybe my mistake :)
-
Also, about the engine technology, I have been pondering about this for a while whilst I was reading the wonderful Northern Coalition AAR.
What is the good starting engine to stick with? I mean the cost increases but at some point there has to be one that you stick with for some time, right? My point is - I have nuclear engine now and I will go to nuclear pulse. But once there I might design my whole fleet with them, go adventuring, mass producing ships and in the meantime researching another engine, getting it and then refitting everything. Which locks me in an endless cycle of upgrades and is just stupid.
Instead it would be better a better idea to get one, then stick with it for couple of decades, fully utilize it, then do i.e. two more jumps and do a whole fleet upgrade and sticking with that one. Later on it’s not such a huge problem but in the beginning the research can go quite fast imo.
So how do you do it? So far I decided to go all the way to Ion and stick with it, then to internal confinement fusion and we’ll see then.
-
I always have a scientist and a good proportion of labs working on the next power plant or engine technology. I don't necessarily begin design upgrades upon completion, but I keep the technology progressing.
Especially later in the game when we start moving into studies that require 1,000,000+ research points, achieving the next power plant/engine advance is a 1 or 2 decade endeavor.
Keep up the good work Alfapiomega!
-
I always have a scientist and a good proportion of labs working on the next power plant or engine technology. I don't necessarily begin design upgrades upon completion, but I keep the technology progressing.
Especially later in the game when we start moving into studies that require 1,000,000+ research points, achieving the next power plant/engine advance is a 1 or 2 decade endeavor.
Keep up the good work Alfapiomega!
Thank you for the feedback! Interesting. I see the engines really as a breakthrough that should be held for a while, otherwise you must be in a state of constant flux based on the fact that engines upgrade on the ship is most of the times from what I see is more expensive than a new ship/scraping the old one.
-
Engines however are easy to replace in the sense that a shipyard can often build the exact same ship with completely different engines (as long as ship size is close), whilst building the same ship with different sensors & fire controls will often require a retool. So to upgrade an old ships engine is a pain, but to build a new model with new engines is easy. Big & cheap is easier to change on a design, small & expensive is easier to add to an existing ship (small & cheap even better of course!).
Edit: Thinking about this again, I'm not sure it's 100% correct. Usually when I do this I'm adding commercial engines - building small mineral freighters at my naval shipyards, replacing my commercial ship-engines with higher fuel efficiency models. Will have to double check. A more expensive military engine may be harder.
Edit2: True for commercial vessels. False for military.
-
While Emma's still kicking, I strongly suggest having her improve your research capability and economic output.
-
I usually end up using Ion engines as my first line of mainstream engine technology.
I often skip one level of engine on my military ships while missiles and commercial ships might upgrade a little more easy.
If you have 25-30% of a ship made up of engines as you often have on a military ship it will certainly require a retool unless the other components of the ship is really expensive. Military engines are pretty expensive, especially if you go over power 1x on them. If you go with slightly reduced power levels such as x0.85 you can actually upgrade your military ships with newer engines more often to a much lower price.
The way you go is entirely up to you and your preferences, there is not right way to do it.
-
Thanks for the feedback everyone, I will take you up on your advice and do some changes. I have published an episode and the next three days in the morning a new one will be published too.
There will also be a large session on Sunday which I will upload during the next 14 days automatically as I am leaving for 14 days for my holidays :)
Any advice for a large session? :)
I expect to finish the jump engines and search new system or two, enlarge the colonies on Mars, Moon, start a new one at one of the Jupiter Moons. Also I plan to start the problem Fleet of military ships and maybe even, and that is a dream, starting an interstellar expansion :)
-
So I did what are over 3 hours of recording of Aurora (probably nearly 4) and I got some insane advancements in that time.
We have literally full blown colonies on Mars and the Moon, we are ready to colonize Io, we have tons of civilian mining colonies all over the place with the best two spots mined by the government (Comas Solla and Halley’s Comet), we upgraded the Lilian class ships to new refit A2S1 and preparing to equip them with gravitational sensor arrays, we finished tons of technologies…
But new questions arise!
1) I have a small problem with the laser tech. It has a range of only 30 000 kms. I increased the range by researching the focal size of 12cm but that is still hopeless, I was hoping for at least 200 000 kms. I have checked the wiki fast and it seems that the problem is with the laser tech itself, right? I have only the infrared and nearing the visible light. Will that one up the distance the laser can reach?
2) I build a dedicated shuttle for my survey teams (495 tons – finally got the fighters working!) but I can’t launch it. Is it because I have no PDC with hangar bay?
3) Can somebody explain how the deep space tracking station works? I got it to level 6 now and I checked that the sensor grid is now across the entirety of solar system + the boundaries around. I also know that I can up the resolution by research of the sensor tech but I have no idea how to calculate the resolution and distance of the current one. Can someone give me a formula or a link to somewhere where I could see the calculation?
Thanks in advance! And for those following – the ~15 episodes will be gradually published during the next two weeks when I am out of the city/Youtube/life vacationing myself :)
-
BTW just to make sure... I know about the "Particle Beam Range" tech if that is it but in the game it says it works for torpedoes... So I disregarded that one.
-
Yes, visible light laser will double the range of your lasers. Near ultraviolet's x3 range. Also, 15 cm lasers are much bett.er than 12 cm. Same size, 1.5x the damage/range. The quickest way to get your laser range past 200k km is 15 cm ultraviolet (x4 range) lasers, for 240k km range. Of course, that's 20k RP in total, and to use it you need good BFC tech as well. Might be a bit expensive for you.
What do you mean, 'can't launch'? Unless you did something with hangers, built fighters should just appear in their own task group, and can then be used like any other ship.
DSTS are just MASSIVE thermal and EM sensors that stack with each other. No active sensors, no res, detection distance is proportional to enemy signatures. = 1000 km * signature * sensor strength. Default start gives you four DSTS * 250 str each = detect a strength 1000 signature from 1 billion km out.
-
Yes, visible light laser will double the range of your lasers. Near ultraviolet's x3 range. Also, 15 cm lasers are much bett.er than 12 cm. Same size, 1.5x the damage/range. The quickest way to get your laser range past 200k km is 15 cm ultraviolet (x4 range) lasers, for 240k km range. Of course, that's 20k RP in total, and to use it you need good BFC tech as well. Might be a bit expensive for you.
What do you mean, 'can't launch'? Unless you did something with hangers, built fighters should just appear in their own task group, and can then be used like any other ship.
DSTS are just MASSIVE thermal and EM sensors that stack with each other. No active sensors, no res, detection distance is proportional to enemy signatures. = 1000 km * signature * sensor strength. Default start gives you four DSTS * 250 str each = detect a strength 1000 signature from 1 billion km out.
Thanks! That covers the lasers and confirms what I already suspected :)
Well they are marked in fighter group Task Force (it says New Fighter Group) but I don't have that task force anywhere. I play on conventional start so I have no PDC's or hangar bays installed on Earth. Therefore I thought I might have problem that they have nowhere to operate from? Though I could load the survey teams onto them so that was superconfusing.
-
Your default fighter group should be on Earths orbit. You can then assign the fighters to wings and those can be transfered to motherships.
-
Well they are marked in fighter group Task Force (it says New Fighter Group) but I don't have that task force anywhere.
Do you mean Task Force or Task Group? I assume the later as ships can't assigned to Task Forces directly, or did i missunderstand you?
When you constructed the fighters, did you set a Task Group for the new fighters? I mean if you used the drop-down menu after new fighters?
If you did so, the fighters now should be in the taskgroup you set. You can give orders to them like to any other taskgroup then.
If you left it blank the new fighters/shuttles are lost, I fear. I would suggest to use SM then (or have a few officers retire because of their incompetence :p )
kks
-
I leave it blank all the time, it'll create a task group (new fighters - earth) & place it there. Double check it's not there. You should be able to find it:
In the task groups menu (F12)
or clicking on your ships menu
or listed as a vacancy in the officer's menu
-
Oh, I'm apparently missinformed then. I thought I read somewhere that the fighters would disappear if you leave it blank, but I didn't try it. I'm sorry.
-
Thanks for the feedback, I found the shuttles and put them to good use in the next few parts I recorded :)
My empire is starting to have financial trouble though. Last year I went 100 million over the earnings – I still have 15.5 billion in reserve cash but at this rate I can ran out quite quickly. I will have to start building financial centers on Earth.
Other than that everything is going fine! :) New episodes will be up tomorrow and the next day.
-
Ok, last time that I recorded I got to the point where we surveyed and found four jump points and civilians demanded protection.
So right now I am doing research in that era together with the "laser boat" that quickly turned to a full fledged cruiser that can be found here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6423.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6423.0.html)
Comments welcome!
-
One remark or just a preference of mine when I play.
In the "Population and Production" screen I like to use the "Group by Function" option to sort the planet list. I see now that you have lots of colonized planets and for me those lists becomes hard to find relevant stuff in. Just would like to point that out if you never used that function before.
-
One remark or just a preference of mine when I play.
In the "Population and Production" screen I like to use the "Group by Function" option to sort the planet list. I see now that you have lots of colonized planets and for me those lists becomes hard to find relevant stuff in. Just would like to point that out if you never used that function before.
No, I haven't. What does it do? :) Does it allow you to set "functions" to planets or filters them by installations/population...?
-
No, I haven't. What does it do? :) Does it allow you to set "functions" to planets or filters them by installations/population...?
It just orders the list by the function of the colony. I find it easier to view and sort the list, especially when I have colonies all over the place and in many different system. You might perhaps find it useful.
-
It just orders the list by the function of the colony. I find it easier to view and sort the list, especially when I have colonies all over the place and in many different system. You might perhaps find it useful.
Great by how do you define "function"? ;D
-
On that screen there is a tick mark box called "Group by Function" just tick that and the list will change. ;)
-
The game has a set group of functions - Inhabited Worlds, Mining Colonies (Anywhere with just auto mines or mines), Listening Posts (Just sensors), etc; the game divides them based on what buildings you have there. There may also be more that I don't know of because I've never had a world that met the criteria.
-
The game has a set group of functions - Inhabited Worlds, Mining Colonies (Anywhere with just auto mines or mines), Listening Posts (Just sensors), etc; the game divides them based on what buildings you have there. There may also be more that I don't know of because I've never had a world that met the criteria.
Thanks for the tip! It really helped! :)
-
I played for about four hours yesterday. I am happy to announce we made incredible advances!
The session ended by us sending a scout group through Jump Point 1 and the group emerging in the nearby system for the first time! My money was on Alpha Centauri but I was proven wrong ;D
-
After some time I turn to you guys for advice.
In my last recorded episode (some 10 episodes from what I have already published) I stumbled across a technology "jump drive multiplayer" that I somehow missed before. It spoke about size difference between the size of the jump drive and size of engines but I wasn't really sure what it means. When I looked across the wiki and forums I couldn't find any information either. Is this something I need to calculate with?
The reason why I am asking is that I have came up with a project for my interstellar colonization that will create following task groups:
1x class I freighter (about 130 000 tons, jump engine around 20 000 tons)
2x class II freighter (about 130 000 tons, no jump engine) -> will only accompany the class I freighters
These will operate together but I need to know if there is a limit for the size of the jump drive when you compare it to the size of the engines.
Thank you! :)
-
"jump drive multiplayer" that I somehow missed before. It spoke about size difference between the size of the jump drive and size of engines but I wasn't really sure what it means. When I looked across the wiki and forums I couldn't find any information either. Is this something I need to calculate with?
From what I understand the multiplier is on the actual size of how big the jump engine will be. If you want a fancy jump engine that can jump with a bigger group of ships or arrive further from the jump point, the jump engine size will be increased with the multiplier.
So lets say you have Jump drive efficiency 8 this means a jump engine for a 130'000ton ship will be 16'250 ton. A jumpdrive that can take more ships and arrive further from the JP for jump point assaults might have size multiplier 1.2 which means the jump drive would be 19'500 ton size instead.
I doubt this is something you have to worry about for non-combat freighters.
-
From what I understand the multiplier is on the actual size of how big the jump engine will be. If you want a fancy jump engine that can jump with a bigger group of ships or arrive further from the jump point, the jump engine size will be increased with the multiplier.
So lets say you have Jump drive efficiency 8 this means a jump engine for a 130'000ton ship will be 16'250 ton. A jumpdrive that can take more ships and arrive further from the JP for jump point assaults might have size multiplier 1.2 which means the jump drive would be 19'500 ton size instead.
I doubt this is something you have to worry about for non-combat freighters.
So that is... wait. I am a bit confused. The jump drive efficiency reduces size of the jump drive. And the multiplier does the same thing? I got confused because it talked about normal engines x jump drive but the explanation was not clear at all.
-
If you have a 4x multiplier, then a 5000 ton jump engine can transport a 20000 ton ship. (4 x 5000). If you start to add in the extras (increased ships, increased range), then your jump engine gets bigger. The 5000 ton engine with a 1.2 size modifier becomes 6000 tons. Now I don't recall if that increases the maximum ship size to 24000 tons or not.
-
No, the multiplier makes the engine larger.
Jump Drive Efficiency:
Divide the size of the ship you want to jump by the Jump Drive Effiiency and you have the size of your standard, run off the mill jumpdrive.
This jump drive can (with a squadron jump) take a total of three ships (the jumpship itself plus two other ships of equal or smaller size) through a jump point and will arrive at a random point within a radius of 50,000km around the jump point on the other side.
Now, if you want to take two additional ships with you, for a total of 5, you have to use (Max Jump Squadron Size-5 (size x 1.2) and your jumpdrive will be 20% larger.
If you want to appear further away from the jump point, in order to avoid a beam base parked on the jump point, for example, you can go for Max Squadron Jump Rdius 250k (size x 1.1), so your jumpship and company will appear at a random spot in a radius of 250,000 km around the jump point, again increasing the size of your jumpdrive by 10%.
-
Next question....
I was just informed by a subscriber of a mine that instead of terraforming Luna with Nitrogen I somehow decided it is a good idea to enrich the athmosphere by Nitrogen Dioxide. How can I fix this? Fortunately I have just about 0.005 atm.
I am not sure what the lethal dosage is. Can I remove it if I uncheck the box saying something like: "enrich athmosphere"? Or should I just ignore it and start pumping out Nitrogen and Oxygen?
Thanks! :)
-
I somehow decided it is a good idea to enrich the athmosphere by Nitrogen Dioxide.
I noticed that, but chemistry isn't my strong point and I actually wasn't sure about the differences between Nitrogen and Nitrogen Dioxide, so I decided to say nothing :P
-
I noticed that, but chemistry isn't my strong point and I actually wasn't sure about the differences between Nitrogen and Nitrogen Dioxide, so I decided to say nothing :P
It is quite toxic in larger amounts. I am not sure if the 0.005 atm is that bad but it certainly isn't good... :D
-
Removing gases can be done by selecting the gas you want to remove, and un-ticking the add gas button.
-
You are developing a very impressive youtube channel, congratulation !
I discovered cataclysm DDA with your videos .
-
You are developing a very impressive youtube channel, congratulation !
I discovered cataclysm DDA with your videos .
Thank you for your kind words. I am glad you are enjoying yourself! :)
-
u should update to 6.3 and 6.4 when it comes out
-
u should update to 6.3 and 6.4 when it comes out
There is no way to update and continue the campaign.