Aurora is on version 2.5.1 C#, available at the Aurora Forums.
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C-Class Design
The Class Design interface F5 is used for editing or viewing designs of ships. Here, the player can add and remove components to customize designs. To modify an existing design simply select a class from the left bar's list and use the Class Design tab. To create a new design, click "New Ship Class" at the bottom.
Class List
The leftmost bar of the window lists all your existing ship classes, sorted by class type. This is viewed one race at a time, so if you have more than one player race, you use the drop-down box at the top to select between them.
At the bottom are three checkboxes.
- "Obsolete Class" will show classes you've marked as obsolete (which are normally hidden)
- "Civilian" will show classes designed by civilian shipping lines (which are normally hidden)
- "Obsolete Comp" will highlight ship designs that have any components you've marked as obsolete. These will display in orange text.
Class Design Tab
The Class Design tab is the main tab of this window, and it can be used to design new ship classes.
Class Info Bar (Top)
The top bar lets you select the following:
- The ship's classification (with options from Battleship to Jump Transport to Scout Fighter): This has no game effect, but it will be the main way your designs are organized.
- Armour Rating: The thickness of your ship's armour.
- Deployment Time: The time (in months) that your ship is intended to stay away from its base and remain functional. Longer times will increase the weight needed for crew quarters, but keep morale higher for longer.
It also displays the following:
- Build Time (yrs): How many years it will take to build this ship at one of your shipyards, with your current tech and no other bonuses.
- Load Time: The time (in days:hours:minutes) that it would take to fully load or unload all of the ship's cargo (Cargo Holds, Cryogenic Transport, etc.), with no other bonuses.
- Exact Size: This is the ship's exact size, measured in Hull Spaces (i.e., multiples of 50 tons).
Components List (Left)
The components list is the left part of this tab, and has two settings, "Race Components" (which shows the components available to your race, grouped by type), and "Class Components" (which shows the components already equipped to the design). You use Race Components to add things to the ship, and Class Components to remove things. You can also click Wide View, bottom right of the screen, to see both at once.
Each double-click on a component will add/remove some number of that component, set by the 1/5/20/100 buttons at the bottom of the list.
There's also checkboxes to display obsolete and prototype components, which are normally hidden. Obsolete components display in orange, and prototype components have (P) or (FP) at the end of their names. Toggling these checkboxes will also update the component list, in case you've researched something new.
Detailed Display (Centre)
This provides a detailed display of all your ship's main statistics. For more details, see the Glossary tab, or the Basic Ship Creation tutorial.
The bottom of this segment has two smaller info boxes. The left one shows details on the selected component. The right one shows warnings about your ship, if it lacks certain essential equipment.
Category and Display Options (Right)
These are options you can change even after a class is locked, because they do not change the actual component design - they only affect how the ship is crewed and operated.
From top to bottom:
- Collier/Supply Ship/Tanker allow you to mark a class as being intended to resupply other ships with missiles, maintenance supplies, and fuel, respectively. If these boxes are checked, then other ships can use this class as a resupply point, when the proper orders are given.
- Senior C.O. will increase the minimum rank of all officers on the ship by 1.
- Conscript will crew the ship with a less-skilled conscript crew, not academy graduates. This lowers initial crew training, but conserves your limited pool of trained crew.
- No Armour is used for space stations, as they have a thin structural shell instead of proper ship armour. This option can only be used on stations, never on ships.
- Hull Numbers, (Unsure - please verify)
- Obsolete removes a design from the class list on the left sidebar, unless the "Obsolete Class" checkbox is selected there.
- No Officers will prevent the ship from using any Naval Officers.
- The Range Bands section will display how the stats of your ship's weapons and active sensors will show up. If "Show Bands" is selected, the weapons will display ten range bands and their stats at those ranges. The first number will be for a distance away from your ship equal to the Range Bands value, the second will be for 2x this distance, the third for 3x, and so on. The Target Speed value is used to check the tracking of your fire controls and weapons.
- The bottom box is a list of existing ships within the class, if any.
Design Buttons (Bottom)
These buttons are used to actually complete your designs, and work with related windows.
Top row:
- New Ship Class will leave the class you're working on, and begin design of a new class from scratch.
- Rename Class and Select Name will name your class. Rename is a text box, Select gives you the name lists built into the game, and lets you pick from those lists.
- Lock Class finalizes a design, at which point your components, armour, and deployment time can no longer be changed. If it's been locked, this button will say Unlock Class. Unlocking a class can only be done in SpaceMaster Mode.
- Copy class creates a new class, but the new class will start as a duplicate of the class you're currently working on.
- If you have a prototype component selected, the Research Proto button will add the selected prototype as a research option for your scientists to work on.
- Create Template makes a template version of the class, which will show up in the Class Templates tab.
Bottom row:
- Rename Comp lets you rename the component you have selected.
- Obso Comp lets you mark the selected component as obsolete.
- Design Tech opens the F10 Create Research Project screen.
- View Tech brings up a list of your existing researched components.
- Refresh Tech updates the window to include any new tech you've researched.
- Update Armour will change the ship's armour to the highest-tech variety of armour.
- New Hull, (Unsure - please verify)
- Wide View will change the screen so both component lists are visible at once. The button will then say Normal View, and return you to the default view.
- Delete Class does exactly what it says. A class cannot be deleted if there are any ships of that class in service.
Ships in Class Tab
This lists the existing ships of the selected class, and offers some details on them. You can also rename or renumber ships of the class.
Components Tab
This gives a more detailed view of the components of the class, and explains how they contribute to the ship's overall size/cost/etc.
The top table lists each unique component on a row, and shows the total number, size, cost, crew requirements, and HTK. It then shows the percentage of the total design that the component type represents. Lastly, it shows the odds of the component being damaged by maintenance issues or combat damage (DAC %), and the odds of the component being damaged by electronics-only attacks like High-Powered Microwave weapons (E-DAC %).
You can re-sort the top table with the buttons at the bottom of the tab.
The bottom table details the specific resource needs of the ship, including fuel, parasite craft, missiles, etc.
Ordnance & Fighters Tab
For ships with magazines, hangar deck-type facilities, or Troop Transport Bays, this will let you select the default loadout of your ship. The top part of the tab is missiles, the middle part is parasite craft (usually Fighters or Fast Attack Craft), and the bottom part is ground troops. Double-click the left list to add, double-click the right list to remove. The 1/10/100/1000 numbers at the bottom choose how many will be added/removed each time.
By default, obsolete missiles and fighters will not be shown, and missiles that are too large for the ship's missile launchers will also not be shown. The checkboxes at the bottom change this. The buttons at the bottom right can mark missiles and fighters as obsolete, or rename missiles.
Priorities / Misc Tab
This tab is a grab bag of things that don't fit in other tabs.
Priorities and Parameters
The top-left box sets priorities and parameters for various automatic actions. The Priority options affect how scarce resources will be allocated between different ships, with larger numbers being lower priorities.
Minimum Fuel and Minimum Supplies are used for tankers and supply ships, respectively - the ship will not transfer to other ships if that transfer would leave it below these values.
Instant Build
The middle-left box is for instant creation of the ship. By default, players start the game with a number of instant build points, and can use these to create ships instantly, without need for shipyards or building delays. The Instant Build Points value is the limit on how much can be built instantly (note: this limit is also shared with ground units). If SpaceMaster Mode is active, ships can be built even if this limit has been fully used up.
The other options in this box are for choosing how many ships to build, whether they'll come fully loaded, whether you want to name them individually, which fleet they'll be created into (note: there must be an existing fleet for them, even if that fleet is empty), and whether they'll be assigned to a squadron or a mothership.
Finally, the Instant Build button at the bottom actually creates the ships.
Refit Info
The middle box shows which ship classes can be refitted to/from which. (If this window is blank, there are no possible refits.) "Listed Class" refers to the class you've selected in the Class Design window, and "Current Class" refers to the class listed in the refit info box.
The data given is the cost (in BP), the cost of that refit measured as a percentage of the cost of just building the ship from scratch instead, the percentage of the ship changed by the refit, and whether that percentage is low enough that a shipyard tooled for one design can build the other without retooling. (% Refit needs to be 20% or less for this to be possible.)
Naming Theme
This lets you choose the default naming theme for the ships of this class. By default, it will be Name Plus Number (e.g., Iowa 001, Iowa 002, etc.), but you can also choose a naming theme to use, or add prefixes and suffixes to the ship names. By default, it will choose names from the theme top to bottom, unless Select Random Name From Theme is checked.
Crew Info
This gives information on crew capacity of the ship, and how much space crew quarters take up. This is all automatic and cannot be changed.
Other
The box at the bottom-right of the screen seems to be unused, likely as reserved space for future mechanics, but (Unsure - please verify). The Use Alien Tech option, also (Unsure - please verify).
Class Templates Tab
(Unsure - please verify)
Glossary
A brief glossary of some terms used in the Class Design tab.
See also
- Basic Ship Creation tutorial.