Posted by: Paul M
« on: December 09, 2013, 02:49:28 AM »Depending on your starting conditions what you can expect to have in hand in any period of time is going to change.
What you need to do in my view is establish the following long term goals:
1. Some colonies in Sol. This is good for getting your internal economy moving. It gives you practice at the things that you need to do later.
2. Explore your home system and the near neighbors. This requires developing exploration vessels and the technology for them.
3. Pick a system and start colonizing it. This requires the construction of a government freighter fleet, terraformers, gate construction ships, etc.
4. Get a fuel harvester system up and running. Because you will have a fuel crisis.
5. Get your construction infrastructure in development: space yards, ground unit training facilities, research labs and academy
6. Get a Navy that can do something started.
7. Keep an eye on minerals and get the civillian investment going.
8. Decide on a long term technology strategy both in the technologies you will go for but also how you will allocate your research labs to the development.
These are not in any order as there are too many variable situations you can encounter. But the mineral issue has to be taken seriously. Especially for a conventional start you need a tremendous amount of minerals.
Short term goals are specific to your situation at the moment. Also keep in mind a short term goal can take years in game time to do. An example from my AAR was colonizing Callisto to exploit its corrundium, that is still on going so probably will be 3-5 years. Dealing with gallicite crisis another short term 3-5 year long issue. Not much happens quickly in Aurora.
The most important aspect of short term goal planning is to avoid as much as possible creating a second crisis while attempting to solve the first.
Also given the completely different starting situations the game generates there is no "place to be in 5 to 10 years" as it depends on what you find. "Exploration luck" as it was called in Starfire.
What you need to do in my view is establish the following long term goals:
1. Some colonies in Sol. This is good for getting your internal economy moving. It gives you practice at the things that you need to do later.
2. Explore your home system and the near neighbors. This requires developing exploration vessels and the technology for them.
3. Pick a system and start colonizing it. This requires the construction of a government freighter fleet, terraformers, gate construction ships, etc.
4. Get a fuel harvester system up and running. Because you will have a fuel crisis.
5. Get your construction infrastructure in development: space yards, ground unit training facilities, research labs and academy
6. Get a Navy that can do something started.
7. Keep an eye on minerals and get the civillian investment going.
8. Decide on a long term technology strategy both in the technologies you will go for but also how you will allocate your research labs to the development.
These are not in any order as there are too many variable situations you can encounter. But the mineral issue has to be taken seriously. Especially for a conventional start you need a tremendous amount of minerals.
Short term goals are specific to your situation at the moment. Also keep in mind a short term goal can take years in game time to do. An example from my AAR was colonizing Callisto to exploit its corrundium, that is still on going so probably will be 3-5 years. Dealing with gallicite crisis another short term 3-5 year long issue. Not much happens quickly in Aurora.
The most important aspect of short term goal planning is to avoid as much as possible creating a second crisis while attempting to solve the first.
Also given the completely different starting situations the game generates there is no "place to be in 5 to 10 years" as it depends on what you find. "Exploration luck" as it was called in Starfire.