I agree with both of the folks that posted, but I also happen to think the tutorials are woefully incomplete and outdated. Even just a quick run-through that tells you how to do a few of the basics and points you to the correct place in the interface is helpful. I was originally 'just' going to give a few tips to give a gentle starting push, but I went a little overboard. I guess that's what happens when one is ill enough to be bedridden but not ill enough to spend a couple of hours writing about a really great game with rather high barriers to entry.
Again, you really can't read enough to be prepared for Aurora - it'll never happen. You've got to play it.
But doing both can't hurt.
Also, from what I've seen, threads like these - where new folks ask a big bunch of questions and get a big bunch of answers - tend to stimulate discussions and provide a wealth of options for those of us less inclined to ask things to search at later dates.
Anyway, I hope this big wall of text is of some benefit.
-
With Aurora, at least as I have experienced it, I believe the most important thing to do is to throw caution to the wind and just run with it. One of the biggest hurdles - the game's interface - is most easily surmounted by pressing buttons until you understand what they do. The way I really learned the game was to fumble around with options, searching the forums here for topics related to what I wanted to do (or just flat out reading the first few pages of the Academy forum, actually). If you've got the time and the inclination there's really a wonderful trove of information to suss out.
I've seen quite a few folk suggest reading the After Action Reports in the Fiction forum, particularly Steve's own, and that is solid advice. They definitely show how a campaign flows in broad strokes. The Soviet vs. NATO campaign is good, and the game comes with the campaign as Steve left it, so you can poke through it to 'play along'.
A minor caveat with the AARs - I personally regret reading them when I did (which was before I even started playing the game, admittedly) because a lot of the finer points of ship design sailed right over my head. Once you understand the numbers, I imagine there's a lot more to glean.
-
To really get started, you have to, well, get started. The cold hard truth is that your first game is almost certainly going to be an enormous mess of poor logistics and half-cocked projects borne of misunderstandings and mistakes. This will all be against one of two backdrops; a universe empty of other souls, maddening in its silence, or the shimmering duranium hulls of beings from beyond the stars pointing guns in your direction and annihilating you. It is a learning experience; it is beautiful. Expect to repeat the process a few times before you feel like you're in control of the ride, and a few more before you realize your grip wasn't quite as tight as you thought it was.
In my experience the game is mostly about the less bloodthirsty Xes - eXploring, eXploiting, and eXpanding. The eXtermination bit will tend to be a sudden fit of activity breaking up what is otherwise spreadsheet management (
exciting, or at least enjoyable, spreadsheet management, hopefully). Thus this is the part you should really worry about, and the part that most of my advice will be geared towards. Given the tutorials are less than helpful as regards missiles, I'll include a bit on designing a missile armed warship at the end of this.
The first thing you should do is check the F2 - Economics window. The second tab, Industry, is what you're looking for. The left side of that tab has a drop down menu labeled "Construction Options". Installations is the default selection, and the most generally important. There's a bevy of options here - Automated Mine, Commercial Spaceport, Construction factory. There are of course numerous viable options, and it depends on your playstyle, but a few general pointers are:
- Build more construction factories and mines. You will inevitably be shipping some off the homeworld at some point, so having a surplus is nice. The choice between automated and non-automated mines is a biggie; automated mines are twice as expensive, but don't need to be manned which makes them the easiest choice for hostile environments like small moons, comets, or deathtraps like Venus. Manned mines are significantly cheaper, but require manpower which in turn requires pesky things like air and suitable gravity. You'll want both, but you should base your decision on initial surveys and current resources. Construction factories, on the other hand, build stuff. This can be a problem if you don't have enough resources to build said stuff, but that's for the future. Most recommendations I've seen say to devote about 50% of your industry between these two.
- Infrastructure. If you get lucky and Mars has cool stuff on it, you can start shipping infrastructure and folks over to begin exploiting it. If not, dump them on Mars to give your civilian shipping lines (and economy) a boost. A single production run of 200 can do you for the whole game, depending; once the civilians get some ships, they'll start moving infrastructure - and
only infrastructure - they've built as a trade good to colonies that need it. For particularly far-flung colonies or if you want more control, you can of course build your own (or shuttle around old infrastructure from now-terraformed worlds).
- Military Academies. There's a pretty good chance you're lacking in totally awesome scientists, and this is your only recourse. You also get naval officers, ground pounders, and civilian administrators (with navy being most common and scientists least, I believe). You also get fodder - rather, crew - from these, which is relevant if you build lots of ships or set the racial training level high (more on that later). The main problem with them is they take a long time to build - but they're worth it.
- Financial Centers. I have never not had an issue with deficit spending early in a game, though unfortunate mineral shortages probably do a lot to stave off the issue. You need a mess of them to make a difference, but sometimes it's best to get started early.
To actually do this, you click on the desired installation name, enter the number of installations you want to build, and the percentage of industry you want to devote to it; you can modify it afterwards by clicking the task in the center of the window, adjusting the numbers, and hitting the modify key. You can afford to run your industry at 100%, so be sure to do it.
As you progress, you'll also want to add other installations to taste; Ordnance factories if you're going heavy on missiles, mass drivers (railguns that can fire mined minerals from a far away outpost to another location), deep space tracking stations, etc. The setup the Tutorial gives you has adequate installations to keep you from accidentally screwing yourself with something like not having enough fuel, at least for a while.
Another big important thing is a Sector Command. You need to research this (under Logistics/Ground Combat) to build one, but it allows you to assign a governor who governs multiple systems, applying 1/4 of his bonuses to every colony in those systems. This is a goal to work towards, even if you don't have any out-system colonies yet.
You can ignore the sections for Missiles and Fighters right now. Fighters are a fairly advanced topic and Missiles I'll cover once you've actually designed some.
-
Speaking of governors, you'll probably want to assign those now. You do this via the Commanders/Leaders menu (F4). At the top left there's the name of your Empire and a tickbox for Automated Assignments; tick that while you're here, as assigning all of your officers by hand is a bit tedious, even if you knew who you wanted where. Below that is a field called Rank and Seniority with a dropdown menu that currently has Naval Officers selected. Change that to Civilian Administrators.
You likely don't have much of a selection. Earth has a minimum rank requirement, which should be listed beside it in the field labeled potential assignments; your governor likely requires an administration rating of 3 or 4 if you used the numbers in the Tutorial. You'll need a guy with at least that administration rating. Click on an administrator's name in the lower-leftmost field and then look at the top right field, Ratings and Bonuses.
There are five bonuses that are particularly important. For the Governor of Earth, you'll likely want a Mining or Factory Production bonus. Mining increases the effectiveness of your mines; Factory Production increases the effectiveness of your factories. Both, naturally, have an end effect of increasing productivity.
Population Growth and Wealth Creation are also biggies. You get a lot of bang-for-the-buck out of these bonuses on Earth because you have so many people. Population Growth can be an issue if you're shipping lots of people off to colonies but not the installations they used to man on Earth. Wealth Creation is another limit on your production, and as with financial centers may or may not come into play.
The final bonus big bonus is Terraforming. A big bonus here can go a long way towards making Mars or a similar extrasolar planet habitable; naturally, it's not very useful on Earth. If you have a high-rating administrator with a big terraforming bonus, his tenure as Earth governor may be short (although he'll make an excellent sector governor if you plan to heavily terraform Sol or nearby systems). It's also worth seeing if any of your current admins has a Terraforming bonus.
Once you've selected who you want to run Earth, click his name, then the position Governor of Earth in the Potential Assignments field, then the Assign button in the lower right corner. His bonuses will now appear in the Summary tab of the Economics (F2) menu.
While you're in the Commanders/Leaders menu, switch the dropdown back to Naval Officers. The Potential Assignments field has a dropdown menu labeled Assignment Type Filter; most of these are self explanatory, filtering warships, commercial ships, etc. The one you're interested in is Staff Officers. You'll need to select a rank that actually has officers (in this case, likely your highest ranked, whatever that may be). You can do this from the field just under the dropdown menu from which you select the Leader type.
Once you've done this, there should be a position called Commander - Fleet Headquarters in the Potential Assignments field. Select an officer of the appropriate rank (one with a high Crew Training bonus is ideal, if you have the Fleet Training option on; otherwise one with many bonuses, no matter how small. Likely, though, you don't have much choice; you've only got one or two officers of the appropriate rank). Assign them as you did with the governor, and it opens up several positions underneath this officer. They'll be filled by Automated Assignments after you actually start playing; you don't need to worry about them too much. Suffice it to say that commanders in those positions apply their bonus to all of the ships in the system. Most of said bonuses are only useful if you have Fleet Training on, though.
-
From here, you can start advancing time so stuff will actually happen. Your surveyors will survey; based on what they find, make plans to ship automated mines and such. Using the Task Groups menu (F12), select the Cargo Task Group from the drop down menu, then select Earth in the lower left System Locations menu, select the Load Infrastructure Order, then select Mars from the System Locations menu and select Unload Infrastructure. You can use your Colony Task Group to do the same with colonists. You move automated mines and such the same way.
Play around with the options, check out different tabs - mess with stuff and search or ask on the forums about things you can't figure out. Produce what you think you need, put it where you think you need it, and hope you were at least partially right.
-
Finally, Missile Ships. I'll start with the ship and do the missiles later, though generally they're designed sort of concurrently.
I'll start with the beam ship from the tutorial stripped down. That is, admittedly, from a few versions ago, so this is a rough approximation.
Tribal class Cruiser 3,700 tons 316 Crew 322.2 BP TCS 74 TH 250 EM 0
3378 km/s Armour 3-21 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
Maint Life 2.32 Years MSP 54 AFR 109% IFR 1.5% 1YR 14 5YR 204 Max Repair 32 MSP
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 48.6 billion km (166 days at full power)
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 960k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR19-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 19.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesBasically, I've removed the lasers, their fire controls, and the reactors that powered them. None of them are relevant to this design. The first decision we'll want to make is the launcher; the size of the missile determines, obviously, how much space the missile takes up in a magazine, how large the launcher has to be, and how much stuff your missile packs.
So let's look at the Missile Launcher in the Create Research Projects screen. There are four factors; The size, the reload rate (a tech area), what the system will be mounted on, and reduced launcher sizes (also a tech area). I'm going to SM up to Reload Rate 3. Reduced size launchers have their uses, but for the first design I'm going to use full-sized, rapid-firing launchers. It's worth noting that you can also make PDC versions of launchers, which are used by planet-bound missile bases and reload in half the time.
Size one missiles are primarily used for destroying other missiles; not the purpose of this ship. Sensors detect all missiles up to size 6 at the same range; any larger, and they can be seen from further out, so we'll focus on missiles under that size. Your primary consideration here is the number of tubes vs. how many tubes there are. Common wisdom is that missiles between sizes 4 and 6 are most useful, at least early game. So if you've dedicated say, 24 hull spaces (1200 tons) to launchers, you could throw six size-4 missiles at once or four size-6 missiles. Generally speaking, more missiles will give the enemy point defenses more to shoot down, so masses of smaller, less capable missiles have an edge over larger, fancier ship-busters. We'll go with size-4 launchers for now, which at Reload Rate 3 gives us a fire time of once every 40 seconds. I add six of these to the design of the ship.
Tribal class Cruiser 5,100 tons 561 Crew 496.2 BP TCS 102 TH 250 EM 0
2450 km/s Armour 3-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 24
Maint Life 1.44 Years MSP 61 AFR 208% IFR 2.9% 1YR 33 5YR 488 Max Repair 32 MSP
Magazine 24
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 35.3 billion km (166 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 960k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR19-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 19.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Now, the design errors say there's no missile fire control. Missile fire controls are a lot like active sensors; in fact, they take all of the exact same inputs as active sensors, and have a significantly longer range for their size. Of course, all they do is allow missiles to fire at a target that's already detected by an active sensor - and often, you'll want more than one fire control. Back to the Create Research Project window.
The above sensors are Active Grav strength 16 and EM Sensitivity 6, so to get identical numbers you'll need to SM those techs in Sensors and Fire Control. Now we want to match the fire control range to roughly that of the active sensor; as a caveat, most real fleets will have larger active sensors, either taking up more space on a ship or mounted on a ship designed to do nothing but light up the void. For our purposes, though, we'll just make an fire control with an antenna size of . 7 (which gives us a range of 20 million kilometers, which is the closest match to the Search Sensor).
We will now add that to our design and it looks like this:
Tribal class Cruiser 5,100 tons 565 Crew 507.2 BP TCS 102 TH 250 EM 0
2450 km/s Armour 3-26 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 24
Maint Life 1.44 Years MSP 62 AFR 208% IFR 2.9% 1YR 33 5YR 494 Max Repair 32 MSP
Magazine 24
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 35.3 billion km (166 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (6) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC20-R100 (1) Range 20.2m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 960k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR19-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 19.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesTechnically speaking, this ship could sling missiles. However, it only has room for missiles in the tubes - no room for reloads. Next up we'll make Magazines from the Create Research project window. Magazines have two unique techs; feed system efficiency, which provides more per room for missiles per hull space, and ejection chance, which improves the chance that a magazine won't explode with everything inside it when it's destroyed. I've upped feed efficiency to 80%. You can also armor magazines to make them less likely to be destroyed; I'm not bothering. Naturally, better armor tech allows you to apply the same amount of armor to a magazine while taking up less space, just like a ship's armor.
I always make size 1 magazines; you have finer control over how many missiles you can carry this way, and from what I understand it's just as efficient as larger sized magazines if you don't use armor. I also don't use armor because, in my opinion, if your magazines are in danger of blowing up you're probably going to blow up anyway. There was a discussion about this somewhere on the forums if you want to try searching for it; I'm sure if someone feels differently they'll chime in on it.
So now we have a Capacity 16 magazine, that has a 20% chance to explode and an HTK of 1. The capacity is the number of Missile Size Points that can be held by the magazine; in this case, our size 4 missiles take 4 of that capacity per missile, rounding out at a nice even 4 per magazine added. I add six magazines, which gives a total of 24 extra missiles, or 4 reloads for a total of 5 salvos. Now, this throw weight seems a bit low, and the ship is only 5450 tons. . . I was aiming for 6200, like the original beam ship. Let's go big and double everything. Unfortunately, that option just knocked us into the 7100 ton range - a bit more than I was aiming for. After fiddling with the numbers, I come up with this.
Tribal class Cruiser 6,200 tons 679 Crew 637 BP TCS 124 TH 250 EM 0
2016 km/s Armour 3-30 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 32
Maint Life 2.69 Years MSP 128 AFR 153% IFR 2.1% 1YR 25 5YR 378 Max Repair 32 MSP
Magazine 192
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 29.0 billion km (166 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (8) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC20-R100 (2) Range 20.2m km Resolution 100
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 960k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR19-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 19.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
A magazine of 192 means it can carry 48 size 4 missiles, which gives it 6 salvos. That's a bit more respectable, especially when you start adding more ships. Of course, there's no such thing as enuff dakka, but it's a start. Now for the missiles.
The Missile Design screen is accessed from the Economics screen - it's a button, on the bottom near the right side. But first, I have the following techs SMed: from Missiles/Kinetics, Implosion and Levitated Pit Implosion Fission Warheads, Missile Agility 32, and from Power and Propulsion Nuclear Pulse and Nuclear Thermal Missile Drives. This gives me a warhead level of 4, an agility level of 32, and a propulsion level of 2.
There's quite a bit to consider with missiles, and it has been covered better by others on the forums.
EDIT:
Here are a couple of links from blue emu about missiles.
Missile Design for noobs: the Kiwi/Emu approximationa sample walk-through, with screen-shots For the basic need-to-know, the basic missile parameters options are what you need. Warhead Strength is how much boom you get, agility and engine affect the missile's speed and chance to hit fast targets, and fuel capacity determines range. The size of the missile is all of the points allocated put together. One point gives you the values I listed above (for example, 1 point of Warhead gives the missile a warhead - or damage - rating of 4; . 5 of agility would give it an agility rating of 16). The Current Missile Technology box in the middle will tell you all of the relevant techs you have.
For now, I'm going to plug the following numbers (generated by the aforementioned spreadsheet) into the relevant fields to get this:
Missile Size: 4 MSP (0.2 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 16
Speed: 18700 km/s Endurance: 22 minutes Range: 20.1m km
Cost Per Missile: 2.3948
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 299.2% 3k km/s 96% 5k km/s 59.8% 10k km/s 29.9%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 1.5449x Gallicite Fuel x1113
Development Cost for Project: 239RPThe Chance to Hit ratings are against targets moving at those speeds; note that this gives an absurd hit chance to hit a ship moving as fast as this ship is itself, but that's mostly because I'm fiddling with low tech and have an extremely short-range missile because of the short-ranged search sensor. Anyway, when you're done, hit Create and check the Missile/Kinetics portion of the Research tab in the Economics window and instant the technology from there.
Then return to the Class Design window, and on your design select the Ordnance/Fighters tab. Refresh the tech, and you should see your missile in the field near the middle of the screen. Double click to add missiles to your magazine; you can select the 10x, 100x, etc. tick marks to add that many missiles at a time. This will be the ship's default loadout when it selects the Load Ordnance from Colony order. The design should now look like this :
Tribal class Cruiser 6,200 tons 679 Crew 637 BP TCS 124 TH 250 EM 0
2016 km/s Armour 3-30 Shields 0-0 Sensors 10/10/0/0 Damage Control Rating 2 PPV 32
Maint Life 2.69 Years MSP 128 AFR 153% IFR 2.1% 1YR 25 5YR 378 Max Repair 32 MSP
Magazine 192
Nuclear Thermal Engine E10 (10) Power 25 Fuel Use 100% Signature 25 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 100,000 Litres Range 29.0 billion km (166 days at full power)
Size 4 Missile Launcher (8) Missile Size 4 Rate of Fire 40
Missile Fire Control FC20-R100 (2) Range 20.2m km Resolution 100
Size 4 Anti-ship Missile (48) Speed: 18,700 km/s End: 22.3m Range: 20.1m km WH: 4 Size: 4 TH: 99 / 59 / 29
Active Search Sensor MR0-R1 (1) GPS 16 Range 960k km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR19-R100 (1) GPS 3200 Range 19.2m km Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
EM Detection Sensor EM2-10 (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
And that is, technically, a missile ship. Not a terribly effective one, but good enough to get the basic idea.
-
Now that you've researched a missile, you can build them like installations by selecting Missiles from the drop down tab in the Industry tab of the Economics menu. Anti missiles are like regular missiles, only size 1 with just enough Warhead to do one point of damage (. 25 with the tech levels I've given for the example), and most of the rest into engine and speed. Range is based on your resolution 1 search sensor and fire control, typically on the order of a million or two kilometers.
Typically, my antimissile ships are similar to the above, with all of the offensive missile stuff replaced with size one launchers and fire controls.
-
A few miscellaneous tips;
- The Racial Training Level can be set in the Race Details window (Ctrl+F2). It's a number between 1 and 5, and a higher number gives you fewer crewmen (1000 / the training level), but said crewmen are better trained by default, whereas normally they would have to spend months or years on a ship commanded by an officer with Crew Training.
- Note that 5 is not necessarily the best; you wind up with relatively few trained crewmen if you don't really dedicate yourself to building military academies.
- You can set all of your ships that likely won't be in a fight to Conscript Only, which gives you crews that aren't good at combat-related things, but conserves trained men for the being blown up positions. This can be set in the upper right corner of the Class Design menu, along with options like Collier, Tanker, Obsolete, etc.
- Fuel Efficiency is a very nice tech to have, especially for missiles.
- Multiple fire controls allows you to break your missiles into more salvos (which can saturate point defense), allows you to fire on more targets in one salvo should you need to, and naturally provides you with backups just in case. This applies to beams as well as missiles.
